another part of Southern California by the Lockheed Corporation, began to fly clandestine missions over the Soviet Union to search for additional data about the Sovietsâ missile project.
The U-2 began to bring back photographic images of a tableau that, like Stonehenge or the aqueducts of ancient Rome, would become a distinguishing artifact of a particular age in the history of man. They were scenes, photographed vertically from great distances, of new roads in remote areas, of land shaved bare of vegetation, of trucks and new buildings, and evidence of human activity around tall structures called gantries. The photos were evidence of missile-launching pads under construction.
In August, 1957, the Soviet Union announced it had tested a âsuper-long-distance intercontinental multistage ballistic missileâ that had flown at an âunprecedented altitude and landed in the target area.â Six weeks later, on October 4, Moscow announced that, using the ICBM as a rocket booster, the Russians had launched historyâs first artificial satellite, Sputnik I.
Both launchings had come sooner than American officials had expected, and they added urgency to the American project.
Two things happened in 1960 that altered history even more. On May 1, a U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers was brought down over the Soviet Union. The effectiveness of the prized source of intelligence had vanished just when the United States most needed data about the progress being made on a Soviet weapon with the potential to destroy American civilization within half an hour.
The second event was closely related to the first and occurred on August 10. After twelve failures, the Air Force recovered a capsule over the Pacific that had been sent back to earth from an orbiting satellite called Discoverer. The cover story used to describe Project Discoverer was that it was a scientific venture to test the effects of space flight on monkeys and other animals; in fact, its mission was to bring back espionage pictures from space. It was a test bed for an unmanned U-2; instead of operating from fourteen miles above the earth, like Francis Gary Powers, it would spy from one hundred miles or more in space while traveling at a speed of 17,000 miles an hour.
The idea of using satellites for aerial reconnaissance had been proposed to the Pentagon in 1946 by the Rand Corporation. In 1953, the year Chris was born, the CIA hired Rand to study further the feasibility of satellites for espionage.
Although it would be five years before the Atlas and Thor missiles would be available to launch satellites into space, in a secret report called Project Feed-Back, Rand envisaged a push-button era of espionage; from their lofty vantage point in space, Rand concluded, satellites could photograph Russian defense installations and troop movements, ferret out Soviet radio transmissions and, with heat-sensing infrared detectors, detect an enemyâs missile launches. Such a warning of a missile rising from the Siberian wasteland, CIA officials were told, might give the United States enough time to launch a counterattack. Thus, the possibility that such a warning could be sounded might in itself ensure national survival: the certainty that America would know of a surprise attack and would have time to launch a devastating nuclear counterattack, Pentagon theorists said, should deter a first strike against the country because such an attack would become suicidal.
In the summer of 1955, the CIA, through the Air Force, gave Lockheed a contract to develop the first U.S. photoreconnaissance satellite, called Samos, and a companion system that was to detect the fiery plume of a rising missile with infrared heat sensors. Its name was Midas. The success of the Discoverer 13, after so many failures, established that it was possible to recover photographic film from a satellite speeding at five miles a second through the distant reaches of space. While it was developing this
The U-2 began to bring back photographic images of a tableau that, like Stonehenge or the aqueducts of ancient Rome, would become a distinguishing artifact of a particular age in the history of man. They were scenes, photographed vertically from great distances, of new roads in remote areas, of land shaved bare of vegetation, of trucks and new buildings, and evidence of human activity around tall structures called gantries. The photos were evidence of missile-launching pads under construction.
In August, 1957, the Soviet Union announced it had tested a âsuper-long-distance intercontinental multistage ballistic missileâ that had flown at an âunprecedented altitude and landed in the target area.â Six weeks later, on October 4, Moscow announced that, using the ICBM as a rocket booster, the Russians had launched historyâs first artificial satellite, Sputnik I.
Both launchings had come sooner than American officials had expected, and they added urgency to the American project.
Two things happened in 1960 that altered history even more. On May 1, a U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers was brought down over the Soviet Union. The effectiveness of the prized source of intelligence had vanished just when the United States most needed data about the progress being made on a Soviet weapon with the potential to destroy American civilization within half an hour.
The second event was closely related to the first and occurred on August 10. After twelve failures, the Air Force recovered a capsule over the Pacific that had been sent back to earth from an orbiting satellite called Discoverer. The cover story used to describe Project Discoverer was that it was a scientific venture to test the effects of space flight on monkeys and other animals; in fact, its mission was to bring back espionage pictures from space. It was a test bed for an unmanned U-2; instead of operating from fourteen miles above the earth, like Francis Gary Powers, it would spy from one hundred miles or more in space while traveling at a speed of 17,000 miles an hour.
The idea of using satellites for aerial reconnaissance had been proposed to the Pentagon in 1946 by the Rand Corporation. In 1953, the year Chris was born, the CIA hired Rand to study further the feasibility of satellites for espionage.
Although it would be five years before the Atlas and Thor missiles would be available to launch satellites into space, in a secret report called Project Feed-Back, Rand envisaged a push-button era of espionage; from their lofty vantage point in space, Rand concluded, satellites could photograph Russian defense installations and troop movements, ferret out Soviet radio transmissions and, with heat-sensing infrared detectors, detect an enemyâs missile launches. Such a warning of a missile rising from the Siberian wasteland, CIA officials were told, might give the United States enough time to launch a counterattack. Thus, the possibility that such a warning could be sounded might in itself ensure national survival: the certainty that America would know of a surprise attack and would have time to launch a devastating nuclear counterattack, Pentagon theorists said, should deter a first strike against the country because such an attack would become suicidal.
In the summer of 1955, the CIA, through the Air Force, gave Lockheed a contract to develop the first U.S. photoreconnaissance satellite, called Samos, and a companion system that was to detect the fiery plume of a rising missile with infrared heat sensors. Its name was Midas. The success of the Discoverer 13, after so many failures, established that it was possible to recover photographic film from a satellite speeding at five miles a second through the distant reaches of space. While it was developing this
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