MARCHES AHEAD -- IN VIETNAM
Astrosystems International, Inc., has built a kleig-light under a $250,000 U.S. Air Force contract "which will permit the Vietnam war to continue into prime evening time," reports Gar Smith, science correspondent of the Sunday Ramparts. The airborne light, burning a mixture of liquid oxygen and jet fuel doped with sodium, is capable of lighting up a two-square-mile radius, providing illumination fifty times greater than moonlight and at one-tenth the cost of commercial flares.
Westinghouse and Boeing, under another U.S. Air Force contract, are studying the feasibility of putting an enormous mirror in outer space 22,000 miles above Vietnam. With a diameter of 2,000 feet, the mirror would reflect sunlight with an intensity almost twice that of a full moon across an area 220 miles broad, enough to illuminate Vietnam from Hanoi to Hue. Gar Smith comments that "with the escalation of the war into the late hours of night under a perpetual moonlight, armchair commandos may be able to look forward to the Late Late show from Vietnam by early October."