KH-11 KENNEN

Dig that old style IT technology, the monitors alone look like they are out of the arc!

That film does raise a personal bugbear that is it mentions the importance of satellite reconnaissance in the Cuban missile crisis, yet you get all these history books about that event and they are happy to mention the U-2 but you never hear anything about the satellite side of things.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAB68KaTpg0
 
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By October 1962 the only game in town was CORONA. GAMBIT-1 did not started until May 1963. And everything else - ARGON LANYARD SAMOS - was utter shit. Never worked properly.
 
Apparently 10cm commercial imagining will soon be available with some limitations.

spacenews.com

Albedo raises $35 million for commercial very low Earth orbit constellation

Albedo raised $35 million to build and launch its first high-resolution Earth-imagery satellite.
spacenews.com spacenews.com

payloadspace.com

Albedo Granted NOAA License to Sell 10cm Satellite Imagery

Albedo has been approved to sell 10-cm commercial satellite imagery, the Austin-area startup announced yesterday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has granted a license to Albedo, allowing it to sell satellite imagery at a resolution of 10 cm/pixel.
payloadspace.com payloadspace.com
 
Flyaway said:
That film does raise a personal bugbear that is it mentions the importance of satellite reconnaissance in the Cuban missile crisis, yet you get all these history books about that event and they are happy to mention the U-2 but you never hear anything about the satellite side of things.
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They weren't responsive enough
 
Flyaway said:
That film does raise a personal bugbear that is it mentions the importance of satellite reconnaissance in the Cuban missile crisis, yet you get all these history books about that event and they are happy to mention the U-2 but you never hear anything about the satellite side of things.
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Satellites are a known overhead time, and the low altitude satellites only hit their area of interest every so often due to how their orbital path works.

If you want pictures at 9am local, you send a plane.
 
Byeman said:
They weren't responsive enough
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Scott Kenny said:
Satellites are a known overhead time, and the low altitude satellites only hit their area of interest every so often due to how their orbital path works.

If you want pictures at 9am local, you send a plane.
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Also at that time satellite reconnaissance was in its very infancy.
 
Flyaway said:
Also at that time satellite reconnaissance was in its very infancy.
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Indeed.

This blog has a nice breakdown of why the Corona images of Cuba that were available were not useful. Resolution was one problem, sun angle another (the Corona mission was timed to pass over Kamchatka at the favorable sun angles, so it was not optimized for Cuba at all), and lack of retaskability (KH-4 shot what it was preprogrammed to shoot, and could not be redirected on the go).

theaviationgeekclub.com

U-2 Vs Corona: why KH-4 satellite failed to provide photographic intelligence during Cuban Missile Crisis while U-2 provided useful Time-critical intelligence

Why Corona satellite failed to provide photographic intelligence during Cuban Missile Crisis while U-2 provided Time-critical intelligence
theaviationgeekclub.com theaviationgeekclub.com

And if I'm not mistaken, there wasn't even a KH-4 on orbit during the Crisis proper. One KH-5 was up at the beginning of the blockade, but KH-5 was a survey camera, not suitable to this kind of intelligence collection.
 
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TomS said:
Indeed.

This blog has a nice breakdown of why the Corona images of Cuba that were available were not useful. Resolution was one problem, sun angle another (the Corina mission was timed to pass over Kamchatka at the favorable sun angles, so it was not optimized for Cuba at all), and lack of retaskability (KH-4 shot what it was preprogrammed to shoot, and could not be redirected on the go).

theaviationgeekclub.com

U-2 Vs Corona: why KH-4 satellite failed to provide photographic intelligence during Cuban Missile Crisis while U-2 provided useful Time-critical intelligence

Why Corona satellite failed to provide photographic intelligence during Cuban Missile Crisis while U-2 provided Time-critical intelligence
theaviationgeekclub.com theaviationgeekclub.com

And if I'm not mistaken, there wasn't even a KH-4 on orbit during the Crisis proper. One KH-5 was up at the beginning of the blockade, but KH-5 was a survey camera, not suitable to this kind of intelligence collection.
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Thanks for the link, never had bothered to check spysats in orbit during the Cuban missile crisis, for reasons I mentionned up thread (and yes KH-5 was a piece of junk).
 
Josh_TN said:
Satellite photos of the time were probably incomparable to U-2 photos, ignoring the low altitude RF-8s imagery that was probably even more detailed.
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Can only imagine the pucker factor those photo Crusader drivers had... "Vne is what? yeah, I was flying at about 30knots above that..."
 
Scott Kenny said:
Can only imagine the pucker factor those photo Crusader drivers had... "Vne is what? yeah, I was flying at about 30knots above that..."
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Watch the movie "Thirteen days" (2000, with Kevin Costner). It features one such Crusader mission, three minutes of awesomeness. The movie itself is very good.
 
Archibald said:
Watch the movie "Thirteen days" (2000, with Kevin Costner). It features one such Crusader mission, three minutes of awesomeness. The movie itself is very good.
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If I remember correctly (saw it in the theaters once at the time), didn't someone talk to the RF-8 pilot and say he had a series of (23mm) "bird strikes"? Given the tensions of the time, I can seriously believe something like that conversation happened. In fact I would surprised if it didn't. I think in another scene one of the cabinet charaters chastises a USN admiral for one of his destroyers shooting star shells at a Russian ship, and says something along the lines of "don't you see what is happening here? Kennedy is talking to Khrushchev", referring to all the military back and forth. I remember it being a well put together and fairly historically accurate film, but I was super young then.
 
@Josh_TN : the scene comes from a Kevin Costner movie, Thirteen days.

images


Wiki:
While the film carries the same title as the 1969 book Thirteen Days by former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, it is in fact based on the 1997 book, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow. It is the second docudrama made about the crisis, the first being 1974's The Missiles of October, which was based on Kennedy's book. The 2000 film contains some newly declassified information not available to the earlier production, but takes greater dramatic license, particularly in its choice of O'Donnell as protagonist. It received generally positive reviews from critics who praised the screenplay and performances of the cast but was a box-office bomb grossing $66.6 million against its $80 million budget.
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I would greatly recommend watching for anyone that hasn't.
 
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I remember Kevin Costner phoning the reco pilots before their flights, telling them "Don't get shot down, please don't get shot down." As if to not tempt fate.
And of course poor Rudolph Anderson in his U-2 gets blown out of the sky on October 27, 1962 - worst day in the crisis. Also the day when the B-59 Soviet sub almost fired a nuclear torpedo into USS Randolph carrier.
 
Scott Kenny said:
All hail some kind soul on YT, that scene is available to watch without renting the whole movie.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSNLeC-eMUQ
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Retired Phillipine AF F-8s were used with the F8U-1Ps being mocked up with a couple of the airframes. You see some PAF F-5 tails in the scene where they are taxiing out.

Can't forget the RF-101s did the low level work too.....

Enjoy the Day! Mark
 
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