I grew up next to the USAF Museum. It was funny how the SR-71 / F-12 were declassified so much earlier than other things and the U-2 was so much later. When the museum got two Keyhole satellites (which I think they were calling Corona or Hexagon in 1995) the U-2 was STILL classified. So the Cold War section of the museum had two bus-sized spy satellites - super pimped out and covered in gold - along with multiple SR-71s, a YF-12A, a few disassembled J58 engines, and the remaining XB-70. But they didn't even mention the existence of the U-2 since it was still classified.
Remember reading an article years ago that Kodiak removed a portable nuclear reactor from one of its facilities. Now what the hell were they doing with a portable nuclear reactor
@-KillaWatt- I was a history major. Our thesis selection is a process of proposal, denial, adjustment/abandonment, resubmission, acceptance and completion. I started reading intel reports from this period and got very interested in investigating this program.
@@WallaceTheRed Right on. That's pretty cool. The Cold War era is fascinating to me and although I haven't delved into the topic on an academic level I have done a ton of reading about the topic. Especially the spy aspect of it. I'm curious what your take away from this particular program was?
@@-KillaWatt- So the input from my advisor really effected the outcome of the overall thesis of the paper. What it boiled down to for me was the effect of public and private involvement that both improved the cameras, ITEK, and the agencies that drove design for the new use case, satellites. So, RAND, the CIA, the Air Force, all made Corona a system that was developed by committee, which was a tad inefficient, but produced reasonably usable results in a time when the U2 was becoming more and more vulnerable to enemy AAF.
@@WallaceTheRed it is interesting that the overall success of many private companies were in one way or another in part successful due to government contracting. Such as Kodak, as mentioned in this particular video it was contracted by the government. There is no doubt at the time that Kodak had a successful business because in many aspects it had a monopoly on the film business but it makes you wonder what differences it would have had on such companies had they not secured government contracts. I also wonder what it did for competitors as well. With government funding/backing I would be curious to know how much competition was stifled because of the monopoly a company held. I'm sure patents sat dormant in offices or were rejected on the grounds of national security, government exclusivity rights, etc, etc. I would huess the committee approach was for security and confidential purposes to some degree but I can't say for sure but I can see why it would be inefficient. Thanks for the info. It was informative. Much appreciated.
Remind me again why we are killing eachother in these stupid wars? Look at how fucking cool humans are. L9ok at what they were able to accomplish. This is incredible.
They were disposable and their missions only lasted a couple months. But they were huge. The KH-9 satellites were 50 ft. long and carried four film containers which held 500 lbs. of film each, and they were able to photograph the entire earth multiple times.
