Imagine if Google Earth had to drop its pictures off at the Sooper-Sekrit PhotoMat first.
Back in the 1970's, the Cold War was being fought by some bad asses with old slide-rules and new TI calculators. They wore ties and short-sleeved shirts and kept long hours and never talked about their work.
Now we know about Hexagon, the ambitious and remarkably successful project wherein 60 mile spools of camera film was loaded aboard 30,000 lb satellites, which used the most sophisticated cameras of the time to take high-speed, ultra-high resolution photographs of the ground, and to then drop buckets full of the film to be caught midair while parachuting down, to be developed and searched for clues of our cold enemy's doings.
Finally, the old farts who never talked about their jobs can discuss the most fascinating endeavor of their careers.
It makes you think about how many people performed amazing thankless service for years for our country.
Labels: gadgets, History, in the news, One Nation, war
posted by Matt G @ 11:51 PM
3 Comments:
My father-in-law did satellite intelligence for the Air Force during Vietnam. He spent all day in a locked bunker interpreting satellite photos and wasn't allowed to talk about his job for fear that the photo technology would leak.
Now that technology is called "Google Earth". It kind of freaks him out.
The interesting thing, to me, is that my father-in-law was almost certainly one of the pilots doing the catching. And throughout a significant fraction of his career, he could have gone to prison for merely speaking the correct name of his employer aloud to his family. He had some kick-ass stories anyway, though, since that wasn't the only job he'd had.
Too bad he was already dead when I met his daughter. At least she remembers most of the stories.
Matt- Remember these are the ones they 'can' talk about... Just sayin...
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