#16 rjschwarz:CIA had nothing to do with the shuttle, it was the United States Air Force that wanted to be able to put military satellites up and insisted on the massive payload. If first glance, yes, the CIA had nothing to do with the shuttle. But the satellites the shuttle was required to lift were CIA-designed. As per the NRO history link: "By informal agreement, the Air Force provided launchers, bases, and recovery capability for reconnaissance systems, while the Agency was responsible for research, development, contracting, and security. Essentially, the agreement allowed the Agency to decide which systems would be deployed, and the Air Force challenged the CIA's jurisdiction." The informal arraingments were formalized in 1965. A three-man executive comittee was established, made up of the DCI, an ass't sec. of Defense, and the President's scientific advisor. This panel reported to the Secretary of Defense. The arrangement put the DCI in charge of establishing "collection requirements in consultation with USIB." If he disagreed with the SecDef, the DCI could appeal directly to the President. Estabilishing collection requirements would in effect put the CIA in charge of designing the satellites.
Furthermore, this document link suggests that the KH-11 represented a leap in technology the prior satellite programs. Page 15 (as marked in pen in the bottom right) specifically mentions that the leap approach was favored by the CIA, and the Land Panel, which advised the President's Scientific Advisor. This organizational history (link) states: "...although CIA usually handled IMINT and Air Force had primary responsibility for SIGINT." The KH-11 is (was?) most decidedly imint.
I believe the spy satellite requirement was intended to hobble the shuttle, which brings us to LotR: Like what? And why?
I could not say with any degree of confidnece what they have and don't have. What I see are programs designed to stifle development, commercial and otherwise, in certain spheres.
Huebner cites two examples of "trunk" technology (as opposed to the small branches we're filling out now.): "major fields like transportation or the generation of energy." Shuttle and the Glomar Explorer would qualify as transportation. Last time man had a major breakthrough in energy production, man learned to split the atom (and we learned fusion, but we can't control that, yet). This was of course, preceeded by advances in our knowledge of the physical world. There is certainly room for improvement in physics today in unifying different theories.
And that leads us to "why" The last time there was a breakthrough, the nuclear bomb, pound for pound, humbled the chemical explosives that had preceded it. We may have found something more powerful than the atom bomb. I don't know.
Our main opponents for the past 60 years, Russia and China, display remarkably little technical innovation. This is due to their economies. What breakthroughs they get, they steal through espionage, either traditional or industrial. Limiting our own development, commercial and military, also slows our opponents. |
Planetary scientists are using the Hubble Space Telescope to scout out sites for potential human bases on the Moon. Previous missions have observed the Moon at a range of wavelengths. But none have boasted Hubble's sharp resolution at ultraviolet wavelengths - it can identify spectral features just 50 metres across over swathes of lunar terrain. "We're trying to ascertain the potential of ultraviolet spectra for indicating lunar resources," says Bruce Hapke, a planetary scientist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, US. He is one of a team of six researchers led by NASA's chief scientist, Jim Garvin, using Hubble to view the Moon.