Author Topic: KH-9 HEXAGON Reconnaissance Satellite (Read 401820 times)

hoku · « **Reply #60 on:** 09/21/2011 10:22 pm »

I think we should also commend Giuseppe on the accuracy of his KH-9 visualisations, which he published several months before the actual declassification! Great job! Well done! This made the actual hardware display last Saturday a little bit less of a surprise.

For comparison, pls find attached the HEXAGON System Concept, and Giuseppe's illustration accompanying part 2 of Dwayne's The flight of the Big Bird article in "The Space Review" (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1774/1). Note that the OAS/RCS and SCS sections of the actual hardware are more reminiscent of Giuseppe's illustration than of the System Concept!

Btw., any guess on why the "front view" of the "2 PAN CAMERAS" scanning geometry (which depicts the minimum height of 82 nm, and the viewing angle/swath of 120 degree) is redacted in The HEXAGON Story, while it is revealed on the HEXAGON fact sheet (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26760.msg808385#msg808385)?

kevin-rf · « **Reply #61 on:** 09/22/2011 01:18 am »

Giuseppe did a great job, did anyone predict the orientation of the mapping camera recovery vehicle before the release? It took me by surprise.

edkyle99 · « **Reply #62 on:** 09/22/2011 02:01 am »

Quote from: Targeteer on 09/17/2011 11:37 pm

LOTS of videos and documents now posted at the NRO web-site!!!

http://www.nro.mil/foia/declass/GAMBHEX.html

Displaying "Internal Server Error" tonight. Hmmmmm.

- Ed Kyle

Blackstar · « **Reply #63 on:** 09/22/2011 03:17 am »

Quote from: kevin-rf on 09/22/2011 01:18 am

Giuseppe did a great job, did anyone predict the orientation of the mapping camera recovery vehicle before the release? It took me by surprise.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1785/1

pargoo · « **Reply #64 on:** 09/22/2011 06:30 am »

I've tried that NRO link for days without getting through :/

archipeppe68 · « **Reply #65 on:** 09/22/2011 07:36 am »

I wanna thanks all the folks for the kind comments.

It is a real pleasure to collaborate with Dwayne and much of the accurancy, in detailing the KH-9, it is more due to him rather than me (at the end I'm only a drawer other than a space fan....).

kevin-rf · « **Reply #66 on:** 09/22/2011 01:40 pm »

Personally I am suspecting they took the whole thing off line for some reason. Just glad I managed to read the Perry history's while they where up.

btw. There is a thread with just the Perry histories in it, but none of the other stuff they had up. http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=20232.0

Blackstar · « **Reply #67 on:** 09/22/2011 02:04 pm »

I suspect that one of two things happened--either they got slashdotted, meaning that they got hit with a wave of downloads that overwhelmed their server and so they pulled the stuff, or somebody noticed something in the documents that should not have been declassified, and they pulled it all to check. Considering that lots of people downloaded it already, that's like closing the barn door after the horses ran away. But the government has done that before.

Blackstar · « **Reply #68 on:** 09/22/2011 02:15 pm »

Quote from: kevin-rf on 09/22/2011 01:18 am

did anyone predict the orientation of the mapping camera recovery vehicle before the release? It took me by surprise.

We figured it had to be at the front and looking down. The only question was where the fifth reentry vehicle was located. We speculated that it might be forward of the mapping camera, pointing down like the others (we knew that it was smaller), but the size issue was problematic. I have to look through the declassified materials, but don't know if we have all the dimensions. I kept hearing 60 feet for the length of the KH-9, but don't know if that included the mapping camera at the front and how long that is (it's probably about 6-8 feet).

We did speculate that the mapping reentry vehicle was pointed forward, which we called "Rudolph's nose," but I didn't like that orientation. It seemed wrong. In retrospect, I realize that was kind of dumb of me--after all, that's exactly the way the RVs were mounted on the other vehicles, right?

jcm · « **Reply #69 on:** 09/22/2011 02:20 pm »

Quote from: kevin-rf on 09/22/2011 01:40 pm

Personally I am suspecting they took the whole thing off line for some reason. Just glad I managed to read the Perry history's while they where up.

btw. There is a thread with just the Perry histories in it, but none of the other stuff they had up. http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=20232.0

I have all the docs at http://planet4589.org/space/docs/nro
Unfortunately I didn't download the index html pages that tell you which PDF is what, it's just 1.PDF, 2.PDF etc...

kevin-rf · « **Reply #70 on:** 09/22/2011 02:42 pm »

Thanks!

Vauh · « **Reply #71 on:** 09/22/2011 04:44 pm »

I've got a reply yesterday from NRO:

We are experiencing technical difficulties. Apologize for the inconvenience. The issues should be resolved shortly.

Volker

hoku · « **Reply #72 on:** 09/22/2011 06:27 pm »

I was slightly surprised that they released the sum of the FY66 to FY86 budgets for HEXAGON ($3,262,000,000, Section 12 of The HEXAGON Story). Even w/o knowing the funding profile, this allows us to bracket the program costs.

In case all the money would have been spent in FY86, it would amount to inflation adjusted US$ 6.5 billion in 2011. In case all the money would have been spent in FY66, it would amount to inflation adjusted US$ 22.1 billion in 2011. Thus the HEXAGON program cost is somewhere in the range US$ 6.5 to 22.1 billion.

A big program like Hexagon might start with a steeply rising funding profile for the initial R&D, and the procurement of the first hardware items. Later on this should settle to a constant (or slightly falling) cost per unit (see, e.g., the Agena history). In case half of the budget would have been spent in FY66, and half of the budget in FY86, the sum would amount to an inflation adjusted (2011) US$ 14.3 billion, or an average US$ 715 million per satellite vehicle. For comparison, the KH-11s with their considerably longer operational lifetime have estimated unit costs (w/o R&D?) of US$ 2.1 to 2.9 billion.

Do these numbers seem reasonable?

Blackstar · « **Reply #73 on:** 09/22/2011 07:03 pm »

The ranges for the overall cost are a good boundary--at least an indication of the scale of the program that we're talking about here.

I'm not sure you can glean any kind of useful information out of old budget figures. We are lousy at predicting what stuff will cost next year, so I don't know what we can determine by looking at older stuff. But I too was surprised that the figures were in there.

simonbp · « **Reply #74 on:** 09/22/2011 07:09 pm »

WRT to being Slashdotted, apparently, they didn't think declassified top secret documents about some of the most important vehicles of the Cold War would be interest to the general public...

hoku · « **Reply #75 on:** 09/22/2011 07:49 pm »

Quote from: simonbp on 09/22/2011 07:09 pm

WRT to being Slashdotted, apparently, they didn't think declassified top secret documents about some of the most important vehicles of the Cold War would be interest to the general public...

A US government agency vital to the security of the nation with an annual budget of $15 billion, and which cannot keep a web server running, while several hundred folks (at most) try to download some PDF documents? If this is the case, then I'm really afraid...

kevin-rf · « **Reply #76 on:** 09/22/2011 07:55 pm »

Quote from: hoku on 09/22/2011 07:49 pm

Quote from: simonbp on 09/22/2011 07:09 pm
WRT to being Slashdotted, apparently, they didn't think declassified top secret documents about some of the most important vehicles of the Cold War would be interest to the general public...

A US government agency vital to the security of the nation with an annual budget of $15 billion, and which cannot keep a web server running, while several hundred folks (at most) try to download some PDF documents? If this is the case, then I'm really afraid...

http://xkcd.com/932/

Blackstar · « **Reply #77 on:** 09/22/2011 10:16 pm »

Here is the vehicle being pulled into the vertical.

Blackstar · « **Reply #78 on:** 09/22/2011 10:18 pm »

One interesting aspect of this declassification is that not only are we seeing the vehicles, but we are also seeing Lockheed's test facilities.

Here's a question: because KH-11 and KH-9 (and KH-8) operations were all underway more or less simultaneously from mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, presumably they had separate facilities for each.

ChileVerde · « **Reply #79 on:** 09/22/2011 10:32 pm »

Quote from: Blackstar on 09/22/2011 10:18 pm

One interesting aspect of this declassification is that not only are we seeing the vehicles, but we are also seeing Lockheed's test facilities.

Here's a question: because KH-11 and KH-9 (and KH-8) operations were all underway more or less simultaneously from mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, presumably they had separate facilities for each.

Hmm. I never thought of that before. I'm reasonably sure all three were built in LMSC's Sunnyvale facility on Mathilda Avenue, just in separate bays. But where they were tested is an interesting question. Where was Hubble, also built there, shaken out?