After World War II, the race was on for the US to build more and better technology than the Soviet Union, which gave us many weird projects that were launched without anyone asking what could possibly go wrong. Space, being the final frontier, was at the head of the list (along with nuclear arsenals, of course). But communications was also important. We didn't have communication satellites yet, so the next best thing would be to fling something into space that radio signals could bounce off of, like 480,000,000 copper needles. And they did it! Somehow, no one could foresee the problem of space junk in the early 1960s. After all, nothing was up there, so why would it bother anyone? Project West Ford required several attempts, but they eventually got those needles into space. This video from Half as Interesting is only seven minutes long; the rest is an ad.
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