Electronic Weather Control
October 1963 Radio-Electronics

October 1963 Radio-Electronics [Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Radio-Electronics, published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

Death by a thousand cuts - Lingchi. That idiom is often used to describe the slow, sure demise of a person, place, or thing. This "Electronic Weather Control" editorial by Hugo Gernsback from a 1963 edition of Radio-Electronics magazine predicts mankind's ability to control weather on Earth via instruments in orbit around the planet. Part of the scheme entailed constructing large reflecting mirrors (the Oberth spatial mirror) to selectively direct sunlight toward Earth to directly heat the atmosphere (most natural heating is the ground re-radiating visible light as infrared into the atmosphere). Here is a rare instance where I do not believe Mr. Gernsback fully thought through the long-term effects of the plan. Whilst the intention was to minimize frosts and deep snows in normally temperate zones, eventually the articifical heating would cause polar ice to melt - a situation he specifically meant to avoid. While thankfully the plan for a giant space mirrors never came to fruition, we might be inadvertently constructing a distributed version of it with the orbiting of tens of thousands - eventually maybe hundreds of thousands - of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites for Internet and cellphone service. Watch a clear, dark night sky for a few minutes and you will almost surely see a few drift by. They will be following a straight path much faster than an airplane, with no blinking navigation lights... don't bother calling NORAD about UFOs.

Electronic Weather Control

... We Now Have the Technical Means to Modify the Weather ...

It was Charles Dudley Warner (and not Mark Twain) who first observed: "People are always talking about the weather, but no one does anything about it!" True in his day, and true today. But it probably will not be true at the turn of the next century, A.D. 2000.

The key, as we see it, is a combination of meteorology and electronics. But first let us look at the problem.

Scientists are in full accord that the sun, our titanic atomic furnace, 92 million miles distant, is the supreme and chief source of all weather. Its huge caloric output varies little over the ages and may, for all practical purposes, be called constant in its radiant heating power. Its energy is so great that on each square mile of our earth we receive over 4 1/2 million horsepower of actual energy. A good percentage of this energy is lost - radiated back into space by reflection. Much more energy is lost by the heated earth at night when the sun is below the horizon.

Our largest heat reservoirs are the atmosphere and the oceans, but on account of the seasons, the total amount of solar energy received at any given point on earth varies constantly. Meteorology is not yet an exact enough science to cope with this variability, which is further complicated by the earth's daily rotation and seasonal inclination of its axis toward and away from the sun - its chief heat source. This is also the reason for the great variability of the weather - to an extent. Admittedly, this outline is an oversimplification of the problem, but for our purpose quite adequate. (There are other lesser factors that influence weather: internal heat of the earth, the polar icecaps, glaciation of high peaks - the Himalayas, the Swiss Alps, etc., man-made vitiation of the atmosphere by hydrocarbons, etc.)

It probably will be impossible for many thousands of years for man to influence either the rotation of the earth on its axis or change its seasons. Nor would this be advisable, even if it could be accomplished. Such a change would certainly aggravate acutely the weather problem.

But suppose we could equalize or modify solar radiation received by the earth to a certain degree. Suppose we could partly light the dark side of the earth with the sun's radiant energy every day, during all seasons. In other words, a sort of perpetual "day" for much of the habitable world. This we can do in the foreseeable future if the world governments are willing to pay the considerable price - which in the end may be very low, if one figures the huge benefits that will accrue to humanity.

The answer to the problem is the Oberth spatial mirror. Prof. Hermann Oberth, the great mathematician and physicist, in the early Twenties published his epochal book, Wege Zur Raumschiffahrt (Ways and Means to Space Navigation).*

In this classic book, Professor Oberth laid the entire groundwork for our present-day space navigation as well as all pertaining mathematics. Not only did he develop the proto-principles of modern space ships, but he was also the inventor of the World War II German V1 and V2 rockets.

More important was his brilliant conception of the gravitating space mirror, also called a spatial mirror. When he designed it in the mid-Twenties, 20 years before the atom bomb, the space mirror became widely known as the world's most frightful potential weapon.

Assembled in space, the lightweight mirror was to be about 60 miles in diameter, constructed of paper-thin squares of sodium, a white silvery metal of high reflecting power. These squares were to be mounted on a light metal frame network. All the metal squares would be hinged individually so they could be focused by electric motors in any desired direction.

The spatial mirror, gravitating between 400 and 700 miles above the earth, would make one complete revolution around the earth in about 1 3/4 hours. As a purely military weapon, Oberth wanted to use it as a gigantic burning glass to destroy cities, cause cyclones and hurricanes and destroy armies in the field by literally burning them alive.

It was also Oberth's idea to have a resident (military) crew on the mirror to guide it for observation and for eventual offensive purposes. But since the advent of the A- and H-bombs, the space mirror as a war weapon has become obsolete.

Yet for purely peaceful uses and particularly for meteorological reasons, to regulate the earth's weather, the spatial mirror now appears an ideal instrument that is certain to come into its own in the not-too-distant future.

To be fully effective, the space mirror will probably be much larger than the original Oberth concept, probably over 100 miles in diameter.

It will also be unmanned, electronically operated by radio impulses from earth. The electric power to focus the individual facets made of paper-thin chrome sheets will come from solar semiconductor batteries, which will operate continuously because the mirror will always be in full sunlight.

To be fully effective, we must use a plurality of mirrors, say eight to ten (or perhaps more). Because the mirrors are constantly moving around the earth, they cannot all illuminate the night side of the globe (at the same time), which is their prime purpose. Hence more mirrors are needed to illuminate the dark side.

The space mirrors always turn their face, the "mirror" side, toward the dark side of the earth which they illuminate; their own dark side is turned to the sun when they are over the sunny side of the earth.

The entire philosophy of the space-mirror meteorology is based on the concept that, for the maximum climatic efficiency, man requires but one season - eternal spring, or if you wish, eternal autumn. No destructive frosts, no hurricanes, no tornados, no heavy winter-long snows, no months-long glaciation. The result-blooming deserts, more abundant crops, more food for more people.

Here are a few technical details in this rather sketchy account of the idea - many books can and probably will be written on it.

 1. It is not the sole purpose of the mirrors to illuminate the dark side of the earth. At best, with all mirrors working at maximum illumination, the night side will be in a constant twilight.

2. The chief purpose of the mirrors is to heat the two subpolar regions sufficiently to keep the so-called temperate zones free from frost, deep snow and ice. No attempt would be made to melt the polar caps. (That would raise the level of the oceans more than 100 feet and put all the world's coastal cities under water.)

3. The solar mirrors would seldom concentrate their heat on the earth itself. The mirrors would chiefly heat the atmosphere at the stratosphere level and above. It is here weather is created and air currents are generated, the so-called jet currents that vastly influence our weather. It will be one of the tasks of the space mirrors to regulate these air currents for full efficiency.

4. Most important, just where, geographically, are the mirrors to concentrate their maximum heat for full efficiency? These regions will change from day to day, depending upon the seasons. Hence a global meteorological network must continuously feed such information to the mirrors' central headquarters.

5. This vastly detailed global weather information is then fed into special electronic computers and the result is then transmitted to the individual mirrors which now will concentrate their energy on the exact regions and atmospheric altitudes for the exact period required.

The above outline gives only an incomplete idea how the weather on our planet can be regulated in the future.

6. It must be realized that here we have to do with extremely vast cosmic forces running into many billions of horsepower an hour. Hence we must understand that even with all solar mirrors working at full efficiency, the climatic changes will be very slow and gradual. It will not be perpetual spring all over the world immediately.

It will take a number of years to derive the full benefit of our vast expenditures, which will run into many billions. But in the end it will be cheap and very much worth while.

- Hugo Gernsback

* Published in 1925 by Verlag von R. Oldenbourg, Munich and Berlin.