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37 textbooklike work was a landmark in establishing the credibility of a sci- entific search; scientists could claim that their research was based on extrapolations from established fact and theories." Ambitious Automata Another, less widely known book published in 1966 suggested a differ- ent model of sentience beyond the Earth. In their work Intelligence in the Universe, early electronic computing specialist Roger MacGowan and space expert Frederick Ordway proposed that the most advanced alien minds would be intelligent machines, which they called autom- ata.’ Although this theory has been revived by others, it has lacked the emotional resonance of encountering biological intelligences like ourselves. One of the hotbeds of activity was the NASA Ames Research Center in California, which had been doing experiments on the origins of life in our solar system. John Billingham, a medical doctor who worked on life sci- ences research at Ames, persuaded center director Hans Mark to authorize a study of making the radio search an official project. In 1971, Billingham and electrical engineer Bernard Oliver brought together a group of scientists and engineers to do a design study of a system for detecting radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligent life. The result was a report proposing Project Cyclops, an expandable array of radio telescopes that would grow in size as needed. (This report expanded on a concept proposed by Oliver in 1966.) At its maximum extent, Cyclops would aim 1000 great dishes at the heavens, a giant multifaceted eye. The scale of the full Cyclops array would have been staggering, with projected expenditures comparable to those of the Apollo program. The report’s authors even visualized a city called Cyclopolis, where the obser- vatory’s staff and their families would live.” Mind-Stretcher. Cyclops might be seen as the scientific equivalent to the medieval cathedral, built incrementally by generations of believers as an act of faith. The study’s authors explicitly admitted that the premises behind their conclusions were beliefs. Although NASA never sought funding for Cyclops, the science and engineering concepts in the study proved to be a rallying point for people interested in the radio search. “Project Cyclops was really the start,” Billingham said years later. “That was the thing that launched SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).””! American Initiatives