NRO To Declassify Cold-War Spy-Sat Tech 77
Muad'Dave writes "The National Reconnaissance Office is set to reveal details of two of the cold war's most capable spy satellite programs on September 17th — the GAMBIT and HEXAGON projects, aka the keyhole KH-7, -8, and -9 satellites. These bus-sized sats provided critical imagery during the height of the cold war, and were likely the inspiration for the movie Ice Station Zebra. The article links midway down the first page provide a fascinating look into the world of real spy-vs-spy, cloak-and-dagger intelligence gathering."
Re:It's nice to know stuff 60 years after it matte (Score:4, Insightful)
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Dude you can not take reason with the an unquestioning true believer.
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The number of scary things the US military and CIA have done in the last 50 years is well-documented and not tinfoil-hat material. Sure, Assange may or may not have been set up, but the point remains that a lot of what was going on then that we know about now would have been assumed to be paranoia by those who thought it to be true at the time too.
In sixty or seventy years, when the truth is declassified about now, you might not be around for the "i told you so" ... so do yourself a favour and assume a zeb
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In sixty or seventy years, when the truth is declassified about now, you might not be around for the "i told you so" ... so do yourself a favour and assume a zebra doesn't change its stripes much.
I'm assuming you meant "assume an Ice Station Zebra doesn't change..." here.
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The only thing that one can say for certain about 60-70 years from now, there will always be people filling 'news entertainment' with stories of governmental conspiracies and plans. It's an easy business to be in, and people like Glenn Beck will continue to exploit the easily fooled for financial gain.
According to your 'schedule' we should just now be finding out all of the terrible things that people like you claimed happened in the 30's, 40's, and 50's. Can you point out one thing that was effectively '
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Can you point out one thing that was effectively 'suppressed by the government' in the same manner that you might suggest is commonplace?
I can do better than than. How about a whole book [amazon.com] of them?
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doesnt point really any terrible things the CIA did
You obviously read a different book. That's pretty much ALL "Legacy of Ashes" does. It's the most damning critique of the CIA ever produced (among REPUTABLE journalists anyway, not tinfoil hat types).
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I'll take that as a 'no I cannot'; you might as well point at a pubic library and claim 'it's in there'.
I'm sure that anything 'big' in that tome was widely known at the time or exposed within a few years. Sure, the operational details might be classified, but you would seem to claim that there are big secrets still hidden. I know for a fact that the CIA sometimes goes out and kills people and the eavesdropping worries me, but it's not well hidden. People leak stories, especially as they grow older, disg
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There is still stuff from the 50's and 60's that they've never even declassified yet (or is still so heavily redacted as to be useless). And you think all the details of this "War on Terrorism" are coming out within a decade?!? We'll be lucky to see any of the real nasty stuff in our LIFETIMES, much less in ten years.
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That's the idea of voluntarily declassifying this information. You seem to want all intelligence automatically posted to a Twitter feed. These are groups who seem some days to think using lemons and water to make invisible ink should still be classified.
They aren't going to release relatively recent information on ongoing wars and their alleged operations against a person they see as a near terrorist just because in an ideal world we citizens should know what the government is doing in our name.
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"human thought..."
Are you wearing your tinfoil hat?
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Oh yeah. That Sat' sure can read the brainwave patterns of a single Human being from 120 miles above the surface. Easy!
Pfft.
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Lets put it this way. The movie was Very Loosely based on the novel.
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...of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane?
Does anyone know more? (Score:2)
According to several sources, the NRO plans to display several declassified objects on the grounds of the Smithsonianâ(TM)s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Museum for a short period of time, possibly only on September 17. One of these objects is the massive camera system from the KH-9 HEXAGON. Another is the camera system from the KH-7 GAMBIT.
Some /.er has to know more.
Make a few phone calls if you have to!
If they're only on display for one day, I'll make a special trip to the museum.
They already have an older keyhole satellite in their collection, with a part of it on display.
The film retrieval system was "we're going to have a plane catch it in mid-air".
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After that they will be permanently displayed at the Air Force museum in Dayton, it's not like they'll be put back in the government warehouses.
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The book by Alistair MacLean.... (Score:2)
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Which was better?
Is this the book that seemed to imply that satellites in polar orbits never passed over any part of the Earth but the poles?
(It's possible I mis-remember, but I'm pretty sure I didn't misunderstand--I recall reading the passage several times, trying to get some sensible interpretation out of it.)
also found on The Space Review site: (Score:2)
It was Discovery II Corona that inspired the movie (Score:3)
"The plot has parallels to events reported in news stories from April 1959, concerning a missing experimental CORONA satellite capsule (Discoverer II) that inadvertently landed near Spitsbergen, situated in the Arctic Ocean on April 13, which was believed to have been recovered by Soviet agents."
The book was published in 1963 the first KH-7 was launched in July of 1963 so the math doesn't add up for the Gambit to be the satellite in the book.
KH-11 is a copy of Hubble? (Score:2)
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The Hubble is the size it is because of the size (and shape) of the space shuttle cargo bay. The Department of Defense redesigned the shuttle cargo bay after NASA begged the DOD to piggyback on the shuttle's lift capacity so NASA could get funds to build the shuttle in the first place (after congress cut NASA funds to the bone late in the Apollo program). DOD needed a way to get KH satellites in orbit, and a match was made in heaven (OK, in low earth orbit). A rocket launch can only put a paylod into one po
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Uh, the shuttle isn't really capable of making significant changes in orbit - beyond what is possible with another launcher. In particular inclination changes are very expensive. Plus, these satellites are big so it isn't like the shuttle could carry a bunch on one flight.
The original concept behind the shuttle was launching something or taking pictures from polar orbit and de-orbiting on the swing back around the earth, landing back where it started (ie a suborbital flight that just barely makes it aroun
ObStan (Score:2)
9/11 was not an intelligence failure (Score:2)
All the intelligence collection can't fix an inter-departmental communication failure. Yet each year, US government grants itself ever more sweeping intelligence collection power. I wonder if the inter-departmental communication problem was ever fixed?
Spy Satellites were a pain in the butt... (Score:3)
Back in the 1970s I had the pleasure of working on several large-scale classified projects (one included a large ship). Everything we did had to be done on a schedule that would take into account whether a Soviet spy satellite was passing over or not. I can remember being frustrated that this caused a lot of extra work and time but at least we knew when NOT to do something.
I suspect that it's a lot more difficult now.
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Yup... but mostly on the west coast for me. :)
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These days those arrangements are thwarted by Facebook and Twitter.
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This building wouldn't be a porta-potty, would it? That might explain the location of the pain...
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As of the 90's and 00's when I was in the biz. Yes, much more complicated.
Anyway, was a pleasure here too... good people, good tech, good missions, "boring" job (i.e. that you can't talk about it).
Proven Technology (Score:3)
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And the answer is, well, no. Unless the license plate is laying flat on the ground, and the Hubble is in a 90 mile orbit. If the plate is on a car it's too far for a look from the side.
And, as you said, this leaves out atmospherics.
Re:Proven Technology (Score:4, Interesting)
Hubble's size, weight, and CG were based on what was possible within the Shuttle's cargo bay. The size, weight, and CG capabilities of the Shuttle's cargo bay were based on current and reasonable future spy birds.
QED
That being said, the optical path (and weight/CG) are probably going to differ somewhat between Hubble and a notional spy bird. Hubble looks straight out axially, while spy birds are generally believed to have a mirror that allows an axial camera to look out the side of bird. There's also some debate over whether or not the supposed mirror is fixed or movable. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.
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Puts the near-sighted hubble mirror in a new perspective.
The commercial outfits are now that good (Score:3)
Digital Globe [digitalglobe.com] and GeoEye [geoeye.com] now operate commercial imagery satellites. That's where Microsoft and Google get their imagery for areas where they don't have close aerial coverage. DoD buys a lot of their info. Best commercial resolution is 45cm. Which, realistically, is enough to find most threats that can be seen from above.
Digital Globe has an analysis of Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. [digitalglobe.com].
Nice NOVA documentary (Score:3)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/astrospies.html [pbs.org]
I highly recommend it. The Soviets actually got a manned space satellite to work. Which is probably where they learned so much about extended space missions.
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That's known as "making lemonade out of lemons". The Soviets pursued that path because their automatic systems were not up to the task. The US did not, not only because our systems were up to the task, but because the vibrations caused by men on/adjacent to the camera reduced it's resolution
Not really. The Almaz stations were only visited three times - for a total s
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I know of Salyut amd MIR. But I think the spy satelitte came first.
81 days was pretty long in those days in a space station, when the US was only in space for a few days to/from the moon in a capsule. It served as "proof of concept" and probably worked out a few bugs in the process.
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Nope. Skylab accumulated 171 days by 1973, while it took until 1977 for Almaz/Salyut to accumulate 81 days. In fact, Skylab 3 (1973) accumulated 84 days all by itself.
On top of that, the Soviets wouldn't bust the Skylab total time accumulated record until 1977, or the Skylab single mission record until 1977/78. And it took them 11 manned flights or flight attempts (
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Resolution? (Score:2)
That is an interesting question. I don't know what can be made out by the military spy sattelites but my experiencr with Google maps is this. I can clearly make out who has and has not a backyard fence in my subdivision. Also I was a backpacker and knew exactly where some foot paths were. I could detect some of them in a Google maps satellite picture. By the way, these paths were not very heavily traveled (they were in the Wind River Range) and the paths were sometimes hard to follow at ground level.
Correction.... (Score:2)
"since the mid-1990s, when an executive order signed by President Clinton—apparently over some opposition from NRO leadership—declassified the CORONA reconnaissance satellite program"
No the biggest thing they released in the 90's was during 1992: That the NRO existed.
What have they got now (Score:2)