On Aug 26, 2011, at 10:17 , John Francis wrote: > On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 10:14:02AM -0400, Mark Roberts wrote: >> Tom Cakalic wrote: >> >>> http://www.space.com/12707-earth-photo-moon-nasa-lunar-orbiter-1-anniversary.html/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=SP_08252011_1 >> >> They have one of those beasts on display at the George Eastman House >> in Rochester. Truly impressive piece of kit! > > In the article quoted above, reference is made to a precursor to that > system, although Kodak partner there is said to be Boeing, rather than > Lockheed (Kodak's co-developer of the "Keyhole" satellite spy cameras). > I've seen one of those on one of the last (and extremely rare) open days > at the Onizuka Air Force Station (a.k.a. "The Blue Cube") in Sunnyvale. > > That system had a rather simpler way of getting the images back to earth > (though one that was not available to a lunar mission) - the exposed film > was ejected from the satellite and parachuted back to earth. It was then > captured in mid-air by a specially modified C130.
That was replaced by the "Talent-Keyhole" system that came to life in 1976. Basically a Hubble that was pointed towards the earth (although we did once point it at a post-Challenger shuttle flight as a precursor to in flight inspections, but that didn't work very well. Too much spectral glare off the white parts of the shuttle.) The TK birds imaged via 3 CCD sensor "strips" with overlapping coverage ( _—_ ) digitally sequenced so they appeared as one long strip. The digital data could be received in real time by sending the signal to a series of relay satellites and ground stations (Alice Springs AU is one) before arriving home in Virginia. There the 2.4 GHz signal was sent via waveguides (old fashioned) from the golf balls containing 20 meter antennae into the facility where it was chopped into quarters (early on) and processed by four IBM 360 (later two IBM 3090s) and cabinet after cabinet after cabinet of custom decription racks, to be simultaneously fed to A: four 48 track 70mm tape recorders that were good for 12 minutes each with their 24 inch pyrex glass reels threaded like 9 inch was, with 4 foot vacuum buffers on either side of the record head. B: about 36 units of hard disc recorders that took 12 platters packs (later on, only the tape for the first few years) and C: four Laser Image Reconstructors (LIRs) which were basically souped up LaserWriters each of which would write on 9" negative film stock a quarter of each image at 2100 LPI. Later on, we cut the number of LIRs to two, as progress allowed them to image the pass in almost real time, using the hard discs as buffers, on one long strip of 5" film. These rolls of film was processed through four of the six huge 30 plus foot long EK processors that spread 100 degree "gorp" developer (very heavy viscosity) onto the film using a knife edge feed trough for 7 to 14 seconds developing time (9 avg) followed by pretty normal chemicals after that, except the stop was a bit hotter, and the "gorp" was scraped off the film first by another knife edge and the fixer was very alkaline (8.x). Later, of course, only one machine was used to process the original. But early on the 4 original negtative rolls were contact printed to positive stock once dry, and the positive stock was contact printed to get a duplicate negative. Using the dupe originals, the rolls were fed into a machine that cut and aligned the images from the each of the resulting 4 rolls of film so they could could be sonically welded into one finished image. It would also package them in clear vinyl sleeves on which was dot matrix printed in bright purple ink all the codes for the contents which were read by the another machine which assembled the correct sets of film for distribution to various customers around the world. As you can surmise, later on this machine could be eliminated. I still have a "horn", the aluminum piece the HF sonic signal was passed thru to contact-weld the film sections together, mounted on an acrylic base and presented to me (untitled) by the maintanence crew for my ability to pinpoint what part of the machine was screwing up, which it did frequently, as you can imagine. I'm sure that machine contributed to the tinitus that I am listening to at this moment, and which I've endured for the past 25 years. What? Keep this very hush hush, as it was Top Secret SCI-TK information. You can Google it. Or — http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB225/index.htm I have no idea of where these programs have gone since 1990. I believe that the GRAB and TK programs were and are now contained in one bird for FLIR, SLIR, ELINT and KEYHOLE are all built into whatever they call the satellite recon. they are now using. I do know that Alice Springs is still a viable part of it. I suspect they are listening to your cellphone calls and texting and data linking, so smile high as you do so, you may end up on someone's desk tomorrow! Joseph McAllister [email protected] The Big Bang was silent, and invisible in it's beginning moments. Photons were one of the earliest particles to develop, but I don't think any were able to escape for a little bit more. Once they could, there would have been a flash during expansion. No one would notice, of course, for another 4.2 billion years. Now we are trying to catch up by looking out, and back in time to that infinitesimally small fraction of a millisecond in an attempt to see what caused that singularity to become the Big Bang. This attempt will fail in any visual way, as the furthest galaxies and elements are now moving faster than light by recent theory, making the information sought beyond a theoretical event horizon. — update to the Pentaxian's thoughts on particle physics, so far. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
