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engineer, the mathematical calculations required for the project were"almost beyond comprehension." As many as thirteen components had tobe joined together at one point, which demanded up to ninety-twoseparate formulas to be worked out simultaneously, a feat that wouldhave taxed the capability of even the largest commercial computer thenavailable. Despite the fact that an IBM 704 computer had been workingon the design specifications for more than half a year, by 1961 theconstruction still had advanced no further than the rotating tracks andpintle bearings. The money also began drying up as newer, morepromising ideas emerged.At both NSA and NRL, officials slowly began to accept that the onlyworkable long-term solution lay in the vast and nearly virgin arena ofouter space. "Only receivers aboard satellites could provide the in-depthreception required by NSA," Nate Gerson finally concluded. But althoughNSA's director was impressed with the idea, other senior NSA staffmembers thought the concept harebrained. "The idea," said Gerson,oblivious to the pun, "went over like a lead balloon. I had not expectedthis reaction." Eventually, after he submitted more papers, Gerson'stheory began to take hold.To test that theory, a receiver was placed on the top of a rocket, whichwould then be fired into space. The idea was to determine if the receivercould satisfactorily pick up the signal of an unwitting U.S. televisionstation below. However, because of a long delay, by the time the launchwas about to take place the TV station was about to go off the air.Nevertheless, shortly after liftoff it successfully recorded the last of thestation's signoff, a few seconds of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Despitethe brevity of the intercept, the concept was successfully proven.At a Howard Johnson's restaurant in Pennsylvania, during a blizzard,Reid D. Mayo was coming to the same conclusion. Stranded with hisfamily at the rest stop during a snowstorm in early 1958, the NRLscientist began to work out the details with a pencil on the back of astained placemat. "The wife and two children were asleep at the tablebeside me, and I got to thinking about it," recalled Mayo. "So I did somerange calculations to see if truly we could intercept the signal fromorbital altitude, and the calculations showed that clearly you could, up tosomething a little bit over six hundred miles." He added, "We have beencredited with doing some of our finest work on placemats."Mayo had earlier completed another unique eavesdropping project:"The submarine service had us installing a small spiral antenna insidethe glass of the periscope, and affixed to that spiral antenna was a smalldiode detector. It allowed the submarine skipper to have anelectromagnetic ear as well as an eyeball above the surface. And itworked so well that we thought that there might be benefit to raising theperiscope just a little bit—maybe even to orbital altitude."313