Description
Author: David Baker, ISBN: 9781785210860, Hardcover, Published in 2016, 188 pages.
An insight into the technology and engineering of military intelligence-gathering spacecraft.
This fascinating story of the origins and evolution of US spy satellites describes how pioneers in space technology worked in secret to build the world's flrst photo-reconnaissance and surveillance cameras and activate them from orbital platforms developed in secret and operated without public disclosure. Instigated by President Eisenhower in the chill of a Cold War, the satellites were able to provide the first positive evidence of Russia's military strength, its missile development programmes arid its potential for waging nuclear war.
Under the name Discoverer, several score satellites were launched, beginning in 1959, as part of the "silent" space programme, which in reality pioneered much of the engineering and science that underpinned America's prowess in space during the 1960s. This is a story which has for decades remained hidden behind a veil of secrecy - at the time essential in the light of threats posed to the United States.
This extensively illustrated manual, featuring many previously unpublished images and technical diagrams, provides details of the evolutionary development of the technology involved in an expanding inventory of satellites, rockets and space vehicles, but it also tells the story of the repeated failures during the early days of development and testing. The book focuses on the development of the spy satellites themselves arid on the political arena in which their successes, and failures, were played out.
Here is the story of an intensive and costly effort to learn about a secretive and closed society behind the Iron Curtain, which to the public eye appeared to pose a military threat to the United States. However, from the intelligence gathered using advanced photographic and imaging systems, the truth emerged that Russia was in fact behind the United States in its capability to wage nuclear war. Accordingly, successive US governments limited the expansion of America's nuclear deterrent, and thereby pulled back from unnecessary provocation. The resulting cost savings more than paid for the entire US spy-satellite programme.
About the Author
Dr David Baker worked with NASA on the Gemini, Apollo and Snuffle programmes between 1965 and 1990. He has written more than 1(X) books on space flight and military technology and is the former editor of Jane's Space Directory and Jane's Aircraft Upgrades. In 1986 he was made a member of the International Academy of Astronautics by NASA manned flight boss George Mueller and is a member of the US Air Force Association and The Association of Former Intelligence Officers. He received the 1998 Rolls-Royce Award for Aerospace Journalist of the Year and in 2005 he was a recipient of the Arthur C Clarke Award. David is currently the editor of Spaceflight. the monthly space news magazine of the British Interplanetary Society, of which he is a Fellow. He lives in East Sussex, England, with his wife Ann,
