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The first time I read the story about how they retrieved the film canisters from the KH-9, I didn't believe it.. tl;dr - the satellite would drop "buckets" wit
by sbarre 6y ago
The first time I read the story about how they retrieved the film canisters from the KH-9, I didn't believe it..
tl;dr - the satellite would drop "buckets" with exposed film from orbit, and the US Air Force would catch them mid-air over the Pacific ocean.
Some good details and photos here: https://spie.org/news/spie-professional-magazine-archive/2018-october/hexagon-kh-9-meeting-the-challenge?SSO=1 https://spie.org/news/spie-professional-magazine-archive/201...
- rektide 6y agoI was lucky enough to hear about a KH-9 being shown off at Smithsonian Air & Space Udaz Hazy, back in 2011[1]. Hung out with some of the crew & engineering folk, heard stories of trying to catch these buckets with if I recall up to 500 lbs of film in them. For some reason I'm picturing them in helicopters with a long boom arm out the front, but I feel like the Air Force isnt allowed to use helis? Quite the amazing satellite. [1] http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1568 http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1568
- sbarre 6y agoVery cool! I was at Udvar-Hazy back in 2013 and I guess I completely missed the KH-9 because I was in a hurry so I sort of ran through the place mostly to see the Blackbird and the Space Shuttle.. I guess I'll just have to go back! The article I linked shows that they used Hercules aircraft to catch the buckets as they parachuted down back towards the water...
- dylan604 6y agoSome of the ideas they came up with during the cold war sound like people were quite high when they came up with them. However, these were serious people coming up with outside-the-box ideas. "If we can think of it, so can $THEY" was a huge motivator.
- mhh__ 6y agoA practically unlimited budget goes a very long way
- raylad 6y agoIt feels like there's some detail missing here. You can't just "drop" something from a satellite that's in orbit: it will also stay in orbit. So you need something to slow it down enough that goes low enough to start re-entry. Then there's the whole problem of re-entry. You can't just drop something and expect it to survive re-entry without burning up in the atmosphere unless it has things like a heat shield and a way of keeping the heat shield oriented so that it keeps acting like a heat shield. The missing details may be in the referenced book, but either way there certainly are some.
- sbarre 6y agoHence my "tl;dr" prefix.. ;-)