NASASpaceFlight.com Forum
General Discussion => Historical Spaceflight => Topic started by: Proponent on 06/11/2018 08:16 pm
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Attached is a very long list of NASA technical reports, which I found on line. They're described as restricted-access in one way or another, though some of them actually are available on NTRS (perhaps they've been added since the list was prepared).
Anyway, the point is that there are some things here that look really interesting. For example, did you know that there was a study of a Jupiter-Agena (DocID 20150013799)? In that miles-long what-if thread about the Saturns flying well into the 1970's or beyond (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26667.msg1038966#msg1038966), it would have been very interesting to see the reports on the H-1 engine uprating study (e.g., DocID 19640050617).
Would anyone know how to convert this to a more manipulable form? I'm thinking spreadsheet, plain text, or standard document-editor-friendly format.
EDIT: Typo
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Wow, thats a very long list. ~300k entries...
I've attached a preliminary attempt. I just copied and pasted from the pdf into notepad (it took almost 3 minutes for it to fully do so). I did some initial cleanup by hand (cut out the introduction memos and some of the page numbering, and fixed some broken lines), but it looks like its going to take way to long to fully do that by hand. I'll try and make a script to finish the formatting work and then convert it to an excel file.
Archive.org (both the website archival, which has a lot of old NTRS documents, and user-submitted files) and google (use quotation marks for exact terms, great for finding documents if you know the exact title or an id and they've been posted elsewhere) may be helpful for tracking down those not currently on NTRS
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Jupiter-Agena was originally proposed by von Braun's U.S. Army team to serve as an ICBM surrogate (and Jupiter itself as an IRBM target) for Nike-Zeus ABM missiles. After that idea was dropped in favor of using Atlas missiles for targets, Jupiter-Agena appears to have became untenable for any other proposed use.
https://www.army.mil/article/201318/smdc_history_nike_zeus_abma_and_dr_von_braun
- Ed Kyle
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Alright, done. This is supposed to be a CSV file, but NSF doesn't let you upload CSVs for some reason, so its a txt file. Just change the extension and Excel or LibreOffice Calc should be able to open it (its huge though, might take a while). If it doesn't work, you can still open it in notepad anyway, since CSVs are just comma-delimited plaintext
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Thanks very much, Brickmack!
I have corrected a couple of glitches, where two-line titles seem to have confused things, and have saved the results as a spreadsheet. Now it's easier to search (and, to my surprise, smaller).
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For those who weren't around the last time the NTRS was closed down: don't use this list to set up an automated download of large amounts of NTRS material.
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For those who weren't around the last time the NTRS was closed down: don't use this list to set up an automated download of large amounts of NTRS material.
Most aren't available on the current public access NTRS anyway. Lot's of them were accessible up to 2013, but still haven't returned.
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I've fixed a few more glitches (quotation marks in titles sometimes caused problems). Please let me know if you find any more processing errors (as distinct from data errors, e.g., the second report on the list, prepared by Motorola on the topic of semiconductors in the Pershing missile, obviously was not published in 1907!).
Some of these things could not possibly be sensitive, e.g., the first one, "Motion of Suspended Particles in Static Fluids as Required by Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat." As it dates from 1905, I wonder whether this might be the famous paper by Einstein that explained Brownian motion.
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For those who weren't around the last time the NTRS was closed down: don't use this list to set up an automated download of large amounts of NTRS material.
Most aren't available on the current public access NTRS anyway. Lot's of them were accessible up to 2013, but still haven't returned.
Stupid paranoid Frank Wolf, and stupid failed chinese spy that only loved porn. And extremely stupid story overall. And when I use the word "stupid" I'm really bitting my tongue not to use *rude* words... >:(
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That postflight report of Atlas Centaur 5 would be very very nice to have. There's at least ten other Atlas-Centaur flight reports online, but of course they don't have the one you actually want to read.
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For those who weren't around the last time the NTRS was closed down: don't use this list to set up an automated download of large amounts of NTRS material.
Most aren't available on the current public access NTRS anyway. Lot's of them were accessible up to 2013, but still haven't returned.
Stupid paranoid Frank Wolf, and stupid failed chinese spy that only loved porn. And extremely stupid story overall. And when I use the word "stupid" I'm really bitting my tongue not to use *rude* words... >:(
Agreed...So is anyone aware of any web sites lists put together to look/search for any of the documents no longer available on NTRS? Or is Google the best option (which I have found not to be very successful)?
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Agreed...So is anyone aware of any web sites lists put together to look/search for any of the documents no longer available on NTRS? Or is Google the best option (which I have found not to be very successful)?
Archive.org has a lot of them
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I just download them. ;-)
Too bad I can't share them
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If I'm looking for a specific document, what's the best search term to put into archive.org?
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I just download them. ;-)
Too bad I can't share them
Maddening is the almost-certain fact that those who they are trying to keep these from have already had them for many years. (I'm not talking about Jim, of course.)
- Ed Kyle
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If I'm looking for a specific document, what's the best search term to put into archive.org?
On archive.org, I had some success with URLs like
ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/<docid>.pdf
e.g.
ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19670015716.pdf
On Google, a query like
filetype:pdf "19670015716"
works better it seems.
YMMV
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For some reason, they can't be bothered to declassify stuff like the CANYON satellites even though Geoffrey Prime leaked all the info about them to the Russians in, like, 1975 and they're completely obsolete from a technical standpoint.
Also the Air Force for some reason were quite adamant that Atlas 5A (which was on display somewhere) had to be scrapped because bad guys might possibly use a test article missile from the '50s to develop ICBM tech.
But still, I find it a bit hard to swallow that they would have taken documents down from NTRS because China might use them, considering they've had a ballistic missile/space program for 50 years now. It could just as easily be because of people with robot downloaders crashing the NTRS servers. Unless I'm actually underestimating government stupidity (and in the case of Atlas 5A, maybe it's worse than I thought).
It's also slightly strange that I've never seen a mission report of John Glenn's flight even though the reports for most of the other Mercury missions are online. Considering the historical importance of that flight, you think somebody could be bothered to upload them.
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For some reason, they can't be bothered to declassify stuff like the CANYON satellites even though Geoffrey Prime leaked all the info about them to the Russians in, like, 1975 and they're completely obsolete from a technical standpoint.
It isn't the spacecraft, it is the data that is the issue.
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As I understand, the DOD doesn't like to admit that they were tapping into other countries' phones/radio transmitters for political reasons, in spite of the fact that the Soviets found out about it early on and changed their military comm systems from satellite dishes to landlines because it can be construed as an aggressive act against a foreign nation in a way that taking reconnaissance photos is not. In the DOD's convoluted logic, it's ok if the enemy knows you're spying on him and how you do it, but you can't actually admit you're spying on him.
Although in the case of programs like CANYON, the actual operational details about the satellites and what they were doing has been public knowledge for many years, but they can't be bothered to release photos/documents/mission reports for them either for the political reasons mentioned above or because they're simply lazy and it takes time and money to declassify something (the effort involved in scanning and uploading thousands and thousands of images and documents is enormous).
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Ugh. The statements above contain so much misleading information about why stuff is not declassified that I could write about it for an hour.
Instead, here is the simple answer: it's the bureaucracy, and two dozen people need to say "yes" for something to get declassified and all it takes is one person saying "no" to prevent it. Apparently there is a person or person in the NSA opposed to declassifying high-altitude SIGINT satellite programs, even very outdated ones, and so it does not happen.
With the photo-reconnaissance systems, NSA doesn't get a say in the matter, so fewer people who can say "no."
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But the real question is why exactly said NSA persons would be against declassifying it. Jim thinks it's because of the data, I suggested they don't like to admit they tapped into comm systems for political reasons. Other programs such as Jumpseat performed similar sorts of actions that are also more aggressive in nature than taking photographs and one has not seen any sort of effort made to declassify them.
And off the record, the declassification of GAMBIT/HEXAGON was also done to celebrate the NRO's 50th anniversary in 2011.
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But the real question is why exactly said NSA persons would be against declassifying it. Jim thinks it's because of the data, I suggested they don't like to admit they tapped into comm systems for political reasons. Other programs such as Jumpseat performed similar sorts of actions that are also more aggressive in nature than taking photographs and one has not seen any sort of effort made to declassify them.
And off the record, the declassification of GAMBIT/HEXAGON was also done to celebrate the NRO's 50th anniversary in 2011.
I don't think, I know. It is the data and it is for political reasons.
No sensitive photos were released during declassification of GAMBIT/HEXAGON. Commercial sats approach GAMBIT/HEXAGON resolution so no big deal. There is no equivalent for COMINTsats.
It isn't "Other programs such as Jumpseat", it is all SIGINT sats that also do COMINT are in the same category and they can't really be done individually.
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But the real question is why exactly said NSA persons would be against declassifying it.
Because they're spooks. Because many of them think none of this should be declassified ever. You're implying that this is somehow about logic, but it's really more about emotion, about some people being uneasy with even very old information being declassified. It's also about inertia: keeping historical stuff classified costs little money, but declassifying it requires money and effort. And it's about generations: when the older guys die off, the newer guys take over and they look at this ancient stuff and see no reason for it to stay classified.
And mixing GAMBIT/HEXAGON into it doesn't help the argument if you actually know what really happened. For background, in the mid-1990s I was involved in supporting the GWU conference where CORONA was first discussed. We did that in cooperation with the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence. A year or two later we still had a relationship with CSI and proposed a conference on Cold War intelligence collection on the Soviet space program. They actually liked that idea, but thought that it could not be done because of current classification of GAMBIT/HEXAGON (which they could not mention by name to us, so they simply said "post-CORONA systems"). At that time, the NRO historian said that he expected the post-CORONA systems to be declassified within the next year (i.e. 1998 or so), but the other CSI people said no, that was unlikely. They were right and it did not happen until 2011, about 13 years after the NRO historian thought it would. Why? Because somebody kept saying "no" even though a bunch of other people had said "yes."
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Because they're spooks. Because many of them think none of this should be declassified ever. You're implying that this is somehow about logic, but it's really more about emotion, about some people being uneasy with even very old information being declassified. It's also about inertia: keeping historical stuff classified costs little money, but declassifying it requires money and effort. And it's about generations: when the older guys die off, the newer guys take over and they look at this ancient stuff and see no reason for it to stay classified.
That's pretty much concurring with what I said earlier--government "logic" doesn't follow the same rules of logic you and me follow and to those looking in from the outside, it seems actually quite non-logical. Declassifying things does cost time and money as I mentioned and of course if you're looking for a practical as opposed to an emotional reason, there's that.
For example, about 100 GAMBIT photos of Israel (most likely taken during the 1967 war) were not released presumably to avoid offending a US ally with the knowledge that we were snooping on them. This is one example of government "logic" at work--it's ok to admit you were spying on an ally, but somehow releasing the photos isn't. Either that or they simply lost/misplaced those images so they were left out of the GAMBIT photo release--that's also possible.
Also they still don't want to release those KH-11 shots of Columbia during the STS-1 mission although we already know the photo capabilities of the first-generation KH-11 from the Samuel Morison leaks and that a cell phone from 2001 takes better photos than that. The ostensible reason given is that they don't want to admit that they have the ability to photograph satellites, never mind that the cat was out of the bag years ago that they photographed the Shuttle. Which is another example of the strange way government logic works.
In regard to the third point you made, I was actually going to mention that in my previous post but forgot to include it. It is also true that everyone involved with the programs in the '70s would have retired some time ago and in some cases passed on (it was over 40 years ago after all). Someone working in the NSA today probably doesn't even know those programs ever existed unless he dug in an old file cabinet in a basement somewhere.
And mixing GAMBIT/HEXAGON into it doesn't help the argument if you actually know what really happened. For background, in the mid-1990s I was involved in supporting the GWU conference where CORONA was first discussed. We did that in cooperation with the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence. A year or two later we still had a relationship with CSI and proposed a conference on Cold War intelligence collection on the Soviet space program. They actually liked that idea, but thought that it could not be done because of current classification of GAMBIT/HEXAGON (which they could not mention by name to us, so they simply said "post-CORONA systems"). At that time, the NRO historian said that he expected the post-CORONA systems to be declassified within the next year (i.e. 1998 or so), but the other CSI people said no, that was unlikely. They were right and it did not happen until 2011, about 13 years after the NRO historian thought it would. Why? Because somebody kept saying "no" even though a bunch of other people had said "yes."
Aside from the earlier mentioned point that 2011 marked the NRO's 50th anniversary, that year was also significant in that it was 25 since the last HEXAGON flew (well, really 27 years since we all know what happened to the last HEXAGON ::)) and it has to be a minimum of 25 years before something can be considered for declassification. So, there you go--2011-1986=25 years and HEXAGON was eligible to be declassified.
And some people who worked on the programs have said that back in the day, they never imagined GAMBIT et al being declassified for the next 100 years. The end of the Cold War did bring some radical changes nobody had foreseen and then it was just four years after the Soviet Union died that the CORONA photos were released.
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1. Also they still don't want to release those KH-11 shots of Columbia during the STS-1 mission although we already know the photo capabilities of the first-generation KH-11 from the Samuel Morison leaks
2. In regard to the third point you made, I was actually going to mention that in my previous post but forgot to include it. It is also true that everyone involved with the programs in the '70s would have retired some time ago and in some cases passed on (it was over 40 years ago after all). Someone working in the NSA today probably doesn't even know those programs ever existed unless he dug in an old file cabinet in a basement somewhere.
1. It doesn't matter about leaks, they don't count as official acknowledgement
2. Not true
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Some good news to share. As I was reading two books on Atlas Centaur history, I was also interested in the more original, engineering reports from NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS). Last year, I even visited NASA HQ library to see whether they could help with the unavailable ones. Anyway, after the list of NTRS documents became available in June 2018 via this forum and thread, I requested four reports with NASA STI on Atlas Centaur AC-[3456] launches.
From the list:
19710069675 (http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19710069675) @ Postflight evaluation of Atlas-Centaur AC-3 /launched 30 June 1964/ @ 1965
19710069676 (http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19710069676) @ Postflight evaluation of Atlas-Centaur AC-4 /launched 11 December 1964/ @ 1965
19750077283 (http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19750077283) @ Postflight evaluation of Atlas-Centaur AC-5, launched 2 March 1965 @ 1965
19710070509 (http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19710070509) @ Postflight evaluation of Atlas-Centaur AC-6, launched 11 August 1965 @ 1966
That includes one report mentioned upthread about AC-5.
That postflight report of Atlas Centaur 5 would be very very nice to have. There's at least ten other Atlas-Centaur flight reports online, but of course they don't have the one you actually want to read.
As we are now in February 2019, the request for these four reports is about eight months old. Yesterday, I received a friendly email from NASA HQ-STI advising me that all four Atlas Centaur AC-[3456] reports are now available on NTRS (https://www.sti.nasa.gov). I checked the document numbers and as of today, indeed they are all there. Cool!
For future reference, I was also advised about a new procedure which could be relevant here:
We have updated our help desk to utilize a new ticketing system. For future requests or concerns, please use our new contact from https://www.sti.nasa.gov/sti-contact-form/.
If you have a question about a document, you can use the Document Inquiry button in the document's NTRS record. The forms allow for faster and more streamlined help desk support.
In summary, all four requested reports now on NTRS :) A big "thank you!" NASA for releasing these reports to interested space enthusiasts. Now I can read the AC-5 report for the first time. For reference, if someone did a similar request and is also waiting, this took eight months to complete. Now, back to my designated weekend reading :)
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That's fabulous, leovinus! Thank you very much!!
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I echo Proponent! Thank you for your work Leovinus