Is there any indication any of the (built or proposed) balloons were dirigible rather than jetstream-riders?
There are a few new things in my Space Review article on balloons. The story about how the GENETRIX balloons developed the air-catch technology, and the WS-461L balloons developed the panoramic camera has long been known. What's new is how starting in 1963 the CIA investigated using balloon payloads to detect Soviet missile telemetry. This was around the same time that the first PUNDIT telemetry intercept satellites were being launched. There were four PUNDIT satellites and two SAVANT satellites (from 1963-1969). They apparently were really limited, because it was rare for them to be overhead when the Soviets launched a missile. A very high altitude balloon could loiter for along time, collecting signals. However, the program, known as AKINDLE, was not approved.Another new bit of information is how high-altitude balloons were used to carry large optics systems high over Arizona to test atmospheric effects. One of these was a leftover camera from the KH-6 LANYARD reconnaissance satellite program.Finally, there's the story about the Soviet aircraft developed in the late 1970s/early 1980s, supposedly to shoot down American reconnaissance balloons. There is no evidence that the US was operating reconnaissance balloons at that time, and the Soviets never displayed any balloons that they shot down. I suspect that there were no balloons, but Soviet officials were justifying these systems "just in case" the Americans started launching balloons again.
I remember that story about the CIA planting a RTG-powered gizmo on a 7000 m high Himalayan mountain to try and spy faraway Lop Nor. When you think about it, a balloon flying 150 000 ft above in that corner of the world could eavesdrop all the way from Lop Nor to Xinjiang... and Kazakhstan on the other side of the border, with three key sites there - Semipalatisnk - Baikonur - Sary Shagan Or they could try from inside Imperial Iran borders, pre-1979... The spooks really were imaginative and creative people. They threw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at spying the Soviets.
Quote from: edzieba on 04/19/2023 07:26 amIs there any indication any of the (built or proposed) balloons were dirigible rather than jetstream-riders? Not that I know of. I presume that a dirigible has altitude limitations because it is carrying that structure.
Quote from: Larry Golo on 04/19/2023 03:43 pmI remember that story about the CIA planting a RTG-powered gizmo on a 7000 m high Himalayan mountain to try and spy faraway Lop Nor. When you think about it, a balloon flying 150 000 ft above in that corner of the world could eavesdrop all the way from Lop Nor to Xinjiang... and Kazakhstan on the other side of the border, with three key sites there - Semipalatisnk - Baikonur - Sary Shagan Or they could try from inside Imperial Iran borders, pre-1979... The spooks really were imaginative and creative people. They threw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at spying the Soviets. The two systems that the CIA was trying to push in the 1960s were gathering telemetry signals from missile tests, and some kind of photographic system. The former makes a lot of sense (with caveats) because the satellites were over the missile sites for such short periods of time that the chance of catching a test as it was happening was really small. I believe that in one of my SIGINT articles I quoted a document about that probability. It was so low that it's surprising that they even tried doing it. It's also surprising that at least a few times it worked. My suspicion is that in the cases that it worked the Soviets may have been sending the signals from the rocket while it was still on the pad and were leaving it on for long periods of time. <snip>But they were trying to gather intelligence any way possible, and balloons could possibly close some of the gaps left by satellites.
I am going off-topic (somewhat) with another use of the CORONA data used for the Climate Change study.How the CIA Secretly Spied On Climate Change - The MEDEA Project
He's older than that, it's probably a jukebox.
Quote from: catdlr on 06/02/2023 01:40 amHe's older than that, it's probably a jukebox.My friend was referencing those big data storage units that used to be connected to supercomputers. Really cool.
Gore was just stiff. It was weird. The people around me were starting to laugh at his long pauses. He did push the CORONA declassification because of his interest in Earth science. That's what his speech at that event was about. After he left everybody else followed out (they kept us in the building for a few minutes until his motorcade departed), and then my friend and I were left alone with the CORONA. We looked at it trying to figure out how it worked. This was before any real documentation on it had been released. Later the CIA co-hosted a big CORONA symposium at George Washington University. I helped get that to GWU. That was pretty cool.
What I had not realize was just how much NRO had looked into CORONA launch readiness. They had actually held CORONA's in launch reserve since the mid-1960s, and apparently adjusted that readiness rate a few times. The problem was that holding a CORONA ready to launch in a short period of time cost more money than holding one in readiness to launch in a longer period of time. I don't have details of why, but you can guess that it includes things like paying contractors overtime to have people at the launch site and so on.
Quote from: Blackstar on 06/01/2023 06:11 pmWhat I had not realize was just how much NRO had looked into CORONA launch readiness. They had actually held CORONA's in launch reserve since the mid-1960s, and apparently adjusted that readiness rate a few times. The problem was that holding a CORONA ready to launch in a short period of time cost more money than holding one in readiness to launch in a longer period of time. I don't have details of why, but you can guess that it includes things like paying contractors overtime to have people at the launch site and so on.I wonder how much of that was informed by the performance of Program 437 Alternate Payload, effectively a Mural without the Agena? It was operational as a rapid-response photoreconnaissance capability from '63 to '66 (with successful launches) though was suborbital only. By '69 Program 437 as a whole was shuttered, but it at least means at time time they were looking at Crisis Reconnaissance options, a "ready Corona" was a capability that was not just theoretical, but one that had been demonstrated operationally and had experienced staff and contractors available (albeit Hurricane Celeste had effectively destroyed the existing launch facilities at Johnston Island). It's more of a surprise that they estimated it would have taken until '73 to return that capability, unless they outright ruled out occupying an existing Titan pad and demanded construction of a new one before standing up that capability.
I wonder how much of that was informed by the performance of Program 437 Alternate Payload, effectively a Mural without the Agena? It was operational as a rapid-response photoreconnaissance capability from '63 to '66 (with successful launches) though was suborbital only.
I've been researching the crisis reconnaissance subject lately. There was a push in 1970-1971, mainly by the State Department, to develop a crisis reconnaissance satellite. Multiple options were studied, all of them were ultimately rejected. The impetus at this time seems to have been (don't quote me) concern that a Middle East ceasefire agreement was ending, and State wanted the ability to detect if hostilities were flaring up. For those of you unfamiliar with the history, Israel and Egypt in particular were battling each other and taking shots at each other during the late 1960s into the early 1970s (with big wars in 1967 and 1973).
Quote from: edzieba on 06/02/2023 07:44 amI wonder how much of that was informed by the performance of Program 437 Alternate Payload, effectively a Mural without the Agena? It was operational as a rapid-response photoreconnaissance capability from '63 to '66 (with successful launches) though was suborbital only.That's a very interesting thought. 437 was designed to be ready fast. Of course, Thor was designed to be fired on short notice too. The question this raises is what was the tall post in the tent for CORONA readiness? Probably not the Thor, probably the Agena or the camera system or something associated with them, like the computer/sequencer. The docs I have are only high-level policy documents and not technical documents about the system. So I'm not going to be able to get at an answer. I did just see something that indicated that one way they could get to a higher readiness rate was with two vehicles at two pads at different states of readiness. So (guessing) something like allow one to count down to a few days before launch and hold it there, then ready the other one and start it counting down days to launch. Then launch the first one, and hold the second one in a readiness state.CORONA was not expensive, but they were always making choices based upon how much they had to spend. I don't think that the money became a bigger concern until the 1970s.
Quote from: Blackstar on 06/02/2023 12:54 pmQuote from: edzieba on 06/02/2023 07:44 amI wonder how much of that was informed by the performance of Program 437 Alternate Payload, effectively a Mural without the Agena? It was operational as a rapid-response photoreconnaissance capability from '63 to '66 (with successful launches) though was suborbital only.That's a very interesting thought. 437 was designed to be ready fast. Of course, Thor was designed to be fired on short notice too. The question this raises is what was the tall post in the tent for CORONA readiness? Probably not the Thor, probably the Agena or the camera system or something associated with them, like the computer/sequencer. The docs I have are only high-level policy documents and not technical documents about the system. So I'm not going to be able to get at an answer. I did just see something that indicated that one way they could get to a higher readiness rate was with two vehicles at two pads at different states of readiness. So (guessing) something like allow one to count down to a few days before launch and hold it there, then ready the other one and start it counting down days to launch. Then launch the first one, and hold the second one in a readiness state.CORONA was not expensive, but they were always making choices based upon how much they had to spend. I don't think that the money became a bigger concern until the 1970s.There likely was limit on how long the Agena could be loaded with propellants. Delta II was 30 days.