Project Cyclops

Project Cyclops was a 1971 NASA project that investigated how SETI should be conducted. As a NASA product the report is in the public domain. The project team created a design for coordinating large numbers of radio telescopes to search for Earth-like radio signals at a distance of up to 1000 light-years to find intelligent life. The proposed design was shelved due to costs. However, the report became the basis for much of the SETI work to follow.

The main conclusions, taken verbatim from the report. The italics are in the original, as is the flowery language (see for example conclusion 12):

1. It is vastly less expensive to look for and to send signals than to attempt contact by spaceship or by probes. This conclusion is based not on the present state of our technological prowess but on our present knowledge of physical law.

2. The order-of-magnitude uncertainty in the average distance between communicative civilizations in the galaxy strongly argues for an expandable search system. The search can be begun with the minimum system that would be effective for nearby stars. The system is then expanded and the search carried farther into space until success is achieved or a new search strategy is initiated.

3. Of all the communication means at our disposal, microwaves are the best. They are also the best for other races and for the same reasons. The energy required at these wavelengths is least and the necessary stabilities and collecting areas are fundamentally easier to realize and cheaper than at shorter wavelengths.

4. The best part of the microwave region is the low frequency end of the "microwave window"- frequencies from about 1 to 2 or 3 GHz. Again, this is because greater absolute frequency stability is possible there, the Doppler rates are lower, beamwidths are broader for a given gain, and collecting area is cheaper than at the high end of the window.

5. Nature has provided us with a rather narrow quiet band in this best part of the spectrum that seems especially marked for interstellar contact. It lies between the spectral lines of hydrogen (1420 MHz) and the hydroxyl radical (1662 MHz). Standing like the Om and the Um on either side of a gate, these two emissions of the disassociation products of water beckon all water-based life to search for its kind at the age-old meeting place of all species: the water hole.

6. It is technologically feasible today to build phased antenna arrays operable in the 1- to 3 GHz region with total collecting areas of 100 or more square kilometers. The Cyclops system is not nearly this large, but we see no technological limits that would prevent its expansion to such a size.

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