posted 12-13-2004 01:15 AM               

Looking forward to the 2nd BIS-book on ISS!

posted 12-13-2004 05:45 PM               

We have a lot of plans for 2005.

May I extend to all BIS members and fellows my best wishes for Christmas and 2005.

I also wish that those of you who have not been converted to take out membership will do so in 2005. Support a real space society and keep the dream alive.

P.S. There are also some fabulous articles in these magazines. Informative, well researched and adding knowledge to those who have an interest in aspects of space travel. My plug.

I declare an interest. I am President of the BIS.

posted 12-18-2004 12:11 AM               

Actually, if I can be honest, if not modest, I think that I'm a great researcher, but only a decent writer. I'm very good at digging up new information, whether it be in archives or through interviews, and good at getting it into the public realm.

That said, a number of the articles that I wrote in 2004 contained little new information and were primarily intended to showcase new photographs that I had obtained, many of which had not been published before. The couple of articles on early Discoverer missions (13 and 14) and the ASAT article I wrote primarily because I had some new photographs.

I have a number of articles submitted to Spaceflight for future publication and some that are in final draft form that I am going to submit. Here's an overview of what I am working on:

• the Lunar Orbiter article should appear in the February issue. In that case I traced the camera technology back to a failed USAF reconnaissance program. Little of this information is substantially new. However, I think I drew some interesting conclusions from the material. One conclusion is that the fact that Lockheed had so much experience and so much existing spacecraft work may have hampered them in their proposal for the Lunar Orbiter contract. Boeing won with a superior design because they recognized the importance of the radiation effect on the film.

• a very short article on the dropping of the NOAA N-Prime weather satellite in its factory cleanroom in 2003. I wrote this primarily because I obtained some excellent photographs of the dropped satellite.

• the first article in a 3-part series on early US military weather satellites. This traces the origins of the Tiros program and recounts several military weather satellite proposals in the late 1950s. This is a rather lengthy article and it may be awhile before they can fit it in.

• an article on the Teal Ruby spacecraft that was scheduled to be the first military spacecraft launched from the Space Shuttle on its first launch from Vandenberg. Almost nothing has been written about Teal Ruby since the program's cancellation in 1989. This is a case where I got some excellent photographs of the satellite and wrote an article around them. I have to admit that most of my information came from secondary sources (magazines) not documents. I actually don't like writing articles like that, because I consider it cheating--I like to publish information that the average reader cannot get in any other way. Anybody can go to the library or bookstore. But not everybody can dig through declassified archives or interview former officials.

  Teal Ruby was an experimental infrared satellite intended to spot Soviet strategic bombers like the Backfire from orbit. It was a test program, but it suffered major problems. Originally it was supposed to cost $60 million, but it ended up costing $500 million. And it never flew!

  I think that it is possible to do new research on Teal Ruby by filing Freedom of Information Act requests for program documents. It's simply a case that nobody has done this.

  However, I think that I have some interesting information on this program.

• another article that has been submitted for publication sometime in the future concerns American ferret satellites. I keep unearthing bits and pieces of information about the USAF ferrets of the 1960s. Nothing particularly groundbreaking. But in this case I gathered up information on who ran the projects and on what some of those projects were. I found information that starting around 1966 the NRO developed a specific class of ferret satellites to gather Soviet anti-ballistic missile (ABM) radar information.

I also have numerous articles that I have not submitted yet. Some of these are quite polished, but require me to assemble good photographs for them.

• an article on the KH-6 LANYARD. This is a substantial update of an earlier article I published around 1997 or so. It contains much new information on this program.

• the second and third parts of the military weather satellite series. Part 2 is on the early years of the highly classified NRO metsat that eventually became the DMSP program. Part 3 is on the more advanced versions of these satellites, up to the Block IV satellites.

• a three-part series on the development of the Samos E-6 recoverable satellite and the KH-7 GAMBIT high-resolution satellite. I have lots of new information on both of these, such as the first ever (and apparently only) illustration of the E-6, and information on how the KH-7 became the KH-8, and the evolution of that program. The KH-8 started out with only a single recovery vehicle, but eventually carried two. There was a simpler version of the E-6 search satellite proposed called SPARTAN, but it never got off the ground. In addition, I found several proposals for air-launched reconnaissance satellites during the 1960s. One would be dropped out of the back of a C-130, and the other would be mounted atop a Minuteman 2 missile carried under a B-58 Hustler and launched at supersonic speeds. Neither was practical.

In addition, I have started yet another article on ferret satellites, focusing on US Navy White Cloud satellite development. But that one is very rough and my information is limited. I don't like to simply recount what has already been published. I want to provide new material. So this one may gestate for a year or more.

Also, in addition to all of the above, I have been considering several other projects, some in collaboration with people I know. For instance, a colleague has gathered some significant information on the F-15 ASAT program and I'd like to write something with him about that. Another colleague has also gathered some information on the Soviet MiG-31 ASAT weapon and maybe these things could be combined. And I have gathered a significant amount of information on American intelligence information concerning Soviet space projects that I would like to publish. Finally, a few years ago I wrote the first part of an article on proposed Mercury spacecraft designs. I have more of those illustrations, but have not written an article around them.

But I haven't really started on these articles. I also wonder how much I should spend time on them. After all, I already have 11 other articles in various states of publication for Spaceflight, so anything I start now might not be published for well over a year.

posted 12-19-2004 07:11 AM               

Anyway, glad you liked it.

posted 01-21-2005 02:12 AM            

Huygens landing on Titan or MER operations on Mars?

posted 01-21-2005 07:25 AM               

(I have a photo article on Young's career in the issue.)

posted 01-22-2005 10:11 AM               

MER has produced some great photos, but as my girlfriend (who does graphic layout for NASA) says, "it's getting old."

I provided the editor of Spaceflight with a couple of absolutely outstanding photos of the Delta IV launch. But I don't have an article to accompany them.

posted 02-12-2005 01:49 PM               

The April issue will have an article by me on the Teal Ruby spacecraft, which was supposed to be the first shuttle launch from Vandenberg and the first military shuttle payload.

posted 03-07-2005 08:43 PM               

The strong points with this CD are:

• Finding an author's article from the earliest to latest (or last) based on title, name or keyword.
  
• Finding a regular or special series of articles from the earliest to latest (or last) based on title, name or keyword.
  
• Some author/title/keyword searches avoids the need to lookup yearly index issues and allows you to see the subject's coverage across a span of time.
  
• Gives pages numbers for articles per issue.

• The worksheet tab should be more descriptive then "Sheet1" perhaps it should read something like, SFindex; 1956-2003; or Volumes 1 to 45.
  
• Issues with Satellite Digest numbers 188 to 217; 223 to 271; 296 to 374 are not indexed.
  
• There is no index of correspondences, which is a shame because they may sometimes have some very interesting items.

posted 03-11-2005 12:43 AM            

Anyway good remark on the BIS index CD-ROM, which I also plan to buy but will wait for the 2005 version which will probably have a PDF file and will be available at the end of this year?

posted 03-13-2005 07:25 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by ed zigoy:
Here's is a personal view of the 1956-2003 Spaceflight CD-ROM index.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ALAIN:
Furthermore any news on 2nd ISS book as "NASA Return to Flight" is within 100 days now?

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posted 03-17-2005 09:43 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Philip:
Dwayne, any idea if "Raumfahrt Concret" have a multimedia CD-ROM or something similar for sale with drawings of unmanned spacecraft?

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posted 03-17-2005 11:01 AM               

They offer a set to Europe or the US. I think the material will be available in the period July to September 2005. I suggest you email and ask.

They list Almaz, Voshkod 2, Zenit satellite plus various launch vehicles.

posted 03-22-2005 11:46 AM               

• I have no special agreement with Spaceflight. I submit stuff for their approval and if they like it, they print it. Right now I think they have at least two of my articles awaiting publication. Both of them contain info not previously published. One article is on early American signals intelligence satellites. Another is on the origins of the American military metsat program.

  There is an old saying by some writer whose name I forget -- "Sorry that this is such a long letter; I did not have time to write a short one." That describes my writing. I really try to get in depth on the subjects and bring out new information that has not appeared before. I don't like superficial articles that merely retell a story told dozens of times before. But it is hard for the Spaceflight team to publish long articles. They have to find the space. So I know my stuff presents problems for them and I am grateful when they publish it.

• As to where I get good photos? The general answer is that it takes a lot of work. But it helps to have an eye for this stuff. Back in the late 1990s I worked as an assistant to the photo editor for Air & Space magazine and she helped me appreciate the importance of good photographs. So I look for stuff that is new and has not been published before. I take the same approach to photos as I do for documentary research, always looking for new material that has not been made public before.

  As far as these Teal Ruby photos go, however, I got lucky. I cannot really go into the details, but I had some help acquiring them from an archive, and have some good photos scheduled for future articles. Some of those may have appeared before in magazines like Aviation Week. But I don't think anybody has published more than one or two of them at a time.

• Regarding the photos of the Soviet-era Backfire bomber, I got those from Steven Zaloga, who writes for Jane's and several other publications. Zaloga is one of the foremost writers in the US/UK on Soviet/Russian weaponry and he generously allowed me to use some photos from his personal collection. I don't get paid for the articles in Spaceflight and I could not have afforded to pay Steven to use his photographs. Steven helped me out and I appreciate it.

  I was actually hoping to locate a photo I saw in an aviation journal several years ago showing a Backfire bomber in full afterburner during takeoff. The jet produces a cool blue glow from the engines and this photo was taken from behind, illustrating those large, very hot engines which could be detected by satellite. Unfortunately, I do not know who took that photo. And I also appreciate that most photographers for magazines have to make a living selling their product, so even if I could find out who owned the photo, I'm not sure I could have used it for free. But I'm very happy with Zaloga's photos.

  (One additional aside: in the early 1980s there was an intercept of a Soviet Backfire over the Baltic Sea. I think the intercept was made by Swedish or some other Nordic air force planes. The photos were officially NATO photographs and were reprinted in the West many times because the Backfire was such an important airplane. Those photos of the Backfire are excellent because of the color of the sky and the color of the airplane -- both blue. I would have loved to acquire high quality prints of those, but had no luck. If anybody is familiar with these photographs and knows where I can obtain high quality prints or scans, please let me know. I would find an excuse to use them in a future article.)

Most of the information in the article came from a media search using the powerful Lexis/Nexus search engine. That gave me a lot of hits on the subject. I then printed them out and compiled them into an article. About 95% of that information came from Aviation Week and although it was very good, it was not always complete or consistent. Some of the information on the early sensor development and the laser crosslink development is very incomplete and I had to make some educated guesses about it. I am not happy working from secondary sources (i.e. magazines), because it means that you can repeat other writers' mistakes or biases. However, in this case I did not have much other information on Teal Ruby.

However, I also found a few CIA documents on the Backfire bomber that had been declassified. The Backfire was a very important subject during the 1970s Cold War and arms control negotiations. There were major debates between the CIA and the Air Force over the Backfire's performance (specifically its range). Ultimately, the CIA was correct and the Air Force was wrong. But unfortunately, we do not have many intelligence assessments from that period. They have not been declassified yet.

Finally, two points. First, I had to make some informed guesses about the link between the Backfire's appearance and the development of the Teal Ruby. I have no source that specifically states that Teal Ruby was intended to search for Backfire bombers. However, all the pieces fit together fairly well and it is clear that this is what Teal Ruby was supposed to detect. If Teal Ruby had been successful, some people in the Air Force and Navy would have argued for developing an operational system to detect Soviet aircraft like the Backfire. But Teal Ruby never flew and the subject became moot.

posted 04-12-2005 08:37 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Rex Hall:
I have sent the comments about the CD-ROM to the Executive Secretary for her thoughts on the production and the ideas put forward.

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posted 04-29-2005 12:03 AM            

I'm buying it as an add-on to Astronomy Now (also excellent) because Spaceflight magazine also covers unmanned space exploration.

posted 05-10-2005 10:35 AM               

I previously submitted two articles for possible publication. One is the first of a three-part series on the top secret American military weather satellite program. The second was a detailed article on American signals intelligence "ferrets" of the 1960s. The editor and I agreed to sit on the latter for awhile becaue he wanted me to acquire a photo of one of the key engineers who worked on the program. I have been in touch with the engineer, but he has not been very responsive. I may simply suggest that the editor go ahead with publication anyway.

In the meantime, I have submitted two new articles to Spaceflight. The first is a detailed article on options for post-Hubble astronomy. It discusses the history of the Hubble servicing decision and then the options such as robotic servicing or "re-hosting" the instruments that were built for the servicing mission on another, new telescope. The article includes a bunch of computer illustrations of possible future telescopes.

The second article is a very short one on space nuclear propulsion. It covers NERVA, Orion and Timberwind and is the first of a 3-part series. It features a few previously-unpublished photos and illustrations. Part 2, which is written but not submitted, is also short and will deal with space nuclear power sources such as RTGs and space reactors. It will also include some photos of the SNAP-10A and SNAP-8 reactors. Part 3 will deal with current plans for space nuclear power and propulsion and it will have the most new information, which I think some people will find really interesting.

This research prompted me to do some digging into the SNAP-8 reactor program. The United States has flown only one reactor in space, the SNAP-10A in the mid-1960s (compared to the Soviet Union, which flew dozens of RORSAT reactors). During the 1960s the US also had a more ambitious space reactor development program known as SNAP-8. This was for a 30-60 kilowatt electric (vs. around 2kwe for the Soviet RORSAT) reactor.

The idea was to use the SNAP-8 for advanced human exploration missions such as a lunar base, as well as powering things like a space station. However, the program ran into serious development problems and was canceled.

I have found significant documentation on SNAP-8 in NASA files, including a lot of primary source memos from virtually the entire run of the program. From a preliminary look, this information should provide a detailed overview of SNAP-8 development, including what went wrong. I also located a few photographs of SNAP-8 developmental hardware.

posted 05-27-2005 10:20 AM               

I know that many people may yawn and fall asleep at mention of a weather satellite program. But in this case, the US military metsat program was a highly classified activity because it was used to support the reconnaissance effort. Part 1 deals with the Army metsat program that became Tiros, and the decision to create a classified USAF program. It includes a lot of previously unpublished information. For instance, I was able to locate one of the first RCA (the late Radio Corporation of America electronics firm) engineers who worked on the Army metsat when it was still known as Janus. He explained how that program had initially started out as a reconnaissance satellite until the Army was banned from that activity. During a meeting in a hotel lobby with Wernher von Braun, they discussed what to do about it. "I know," von Braun said, "We'll look at clouds!"

The article also includes some bare-bones information on some very ambitious metsat proposals that Lockheed made to the USAF in 1958-1959. That information has never been published before.

posted 06-01-2005 11:08 AM               

quote:

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Amrom Katz was a short, energetic, outspoken physicist who worked for the RAND Corporation in the 1950s. RAND was located in the Los Angeles beachside suburb of Santa Monica, California. It was a "think tank" where engineers, scientists and policy experts studied advanced technologies and ideas for the US Air Force. At lunch RAND's thinkers would sip margaritas at a beachside bar and then return to their offices to think about nuclear war, earning the moniker "wizards of armageddon."

Much of what RAND did during the 1950s concerned developing strategies for targeting, using and protecting Air Force strategic weapons. But the think tank had a small group of experts devoted to the subject of strategic reconnaissance and Katz and his partner Merton Davies were the lead thinkers in this area. Although Katz was rarely the first person to come up with an idea, he was often the first person to study it in a comprehensive manner and recommend what the Air Force should do. Sometimes, but less often than Katz liked, they took his advice.

In March 1959 Katz wrote an internal RAND "draft" document about weather satellites. RAND drafts were actually discussion papers, not intended for external release, and unlike most bureaucratic documents, Katz's drafts were often filled with wry, slightly sarcastic remarks about the military bureaucracy. RAND was far from the Washington power corridors, which was disadvantageous in some ways. But as Katz once wrote, from their detached perch above the bureaucratic fray, "sometimes the view is tremendous."

In this particular draft, Katz recommended that the Air Force begin a "cloud reconnaissance satellite" as soon as possible. Katz suggested that the service specifically not call it a "weather satellite," because an accurate title would create problems. "If we claim this is a weather or meteorological satellite," he wrote, "various political and jurisdictional hackles at NASA and DoD, and US Weather Bureau levels will rise to the occasion. This we really don't need. We feel that sleeping hackles should be left lying.

Katz also outlined the reasons why an Air Force "cloud reconnaissance satellite" would be useful for the Air Force. But what he did not know was that not only were the bureaucratic squabbles more complex than he imagined, but in spring 1959 the Air Force was strangely indifferent to the idea of a military meteorological satellite. It would take several years for this attitude to change in the Air Force, but Katz's arguments were prescient. Amrom Katz was being reminded of something he knew only too well: it was lonely being ahead of your time.

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