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We certainly hauled a bunch of sats home over the decades, see STS-51-A for a typical declassified example of some relatively boring comsats. The classified mi
by VLM 4y ago
We certainly hauled a bunch of sats home over the decades, see STS-51-A for a typical declassified example of some relatively boring comsats.
The classified missions published landing weights for some reason; they were low; the assumption is they never hauled anything home or they faked the landing weights because it wouldn't matter if they told the truth or not to the public (AFAIK no payload related change in realistically observable flight path was ever seen by independent observers)
Westar 6 was later relaunched as AsiaSat 1. It trips non-space people out because "everyone knows" SpaceX and the old shuttle are the only things ever launched into space, landed, and re-launched back into space, but they were doing this back in the 80s with comsats and who knows what the military was up to.
- wkat4242 4y agoThe 60s spy sats also took photos on film that were ejected in re-entry capsules and captured in mid-air using an airplane. Really crazy stuff they came up with and I'm surprised it actually worked. Engineering chops they sure had and balls too because capturing a falling object from space is pretty dangerous. Of course then there were the soviets launching entire nuclear reactors into orbit for a few months' worth of radar duty. Ok the US did one too but it was just one. All those Russian cores are still in orbit except the two that crashed. Crazy times.
- angst_ridden 4y agoYeah, the "snag this roll of film with a plane as it parachutes down" is the kind of thing that elicits a "wait .. what!?" reaction. But then, so does the quality of the images they captured relative to what would be expected given the times.
- zerocrates 4y agoStuff that goes inside the shuttle (as I assume a satellite in this case does) I don't know that I'd "count" in that sense. Like, obviously the humans riding inside various craft were routinely launched, landed and relaunched under that same kind of definition.