Black Ops And The Shuttle

[Flyaway]

http://thespacereview.com/article/3390/1

Black ops and the shuttle (part 3-1): Recovering spent HEXAGON reconnaissance satellites with the space shuttle
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, December 11, 2017

The James Bond movie You Only Live Twice started with a covert satellite sneaking up on an American spacecraft in orbit, swallowing it like an alligator and smuggling it back to Earth. But by the early 1980s, the American National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) began contemplating launching a space shuttle north out of Florida, dropping its solid rocket boosters off of Daytona Beach, and heading inland over the mid-Atlantic states overflying Cleveland, Ohio, and Canada. Once in orbit, it would open its payload bay doors, grab hold of a top-secret American HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite the size of a school bus, and bring it back to Earth. It was an audacious plan, not only because it would overfly the American and Canadian landmasses on its way to orbit, but also because it would first show up on Soviet radar as it rose over the North Pole—and they might be a little upset. “The political problems were agreed to be most difficult,” an NRO memo declared with remarkable understatement.

 

[Michel Van]

That Reason why USAF (and NRO) build the Shuttle Launch Pad on Vandenberg AFB
To launch the Shuttle in polar orbit, official for "Experiments".
But in 1986 Challenger disaster ended those plans...

 

[antigravite]

Another interesting article:

Michael Cassutt, "Secret Space Shuttles — When you’re 200 miles up, it’s easy to hide what you’re up to," Air & Space Magazine, August 200, access: https://www.airspacemag.com/space/secret-space-shuttles-35318554

A.

 

[Flyaway]

Here’s part 2.

Black ops and the shuttle (part 3-2): The HEXAGON ghost haunting the desert storm

http://thespacereview.com/article/3394/1

 

[antigravite]

Here’s part 2.

Black ops and the shuttle (part 3-2): The HEXAGON ghost haunting the desert storm

http://thespacereview.com/article/3394/1

This is a truly remarkable research article, as always.

A.

 

[blackstar]

Here’s part 2.

Black ops and the shuttle (part 3-2): The HEXAGON ghost haunting the desert storm

http://thespacereview.com/article/3394/1

This is a truly remarkable research article, as always.

A.

Thank you. Was gonna run it a few months ago and then had a few sources contact me and share info, and so I ended up revising it several times. All that stuff about Desert Storm resulted from some insider tips.

I've got ZAMAN and SDS in the works...

 

[Nigelhg]

Probably the best article on hexagon I've read- thank you

 

[blackstar]

Probably the best article on hexagon I've read- thank you

That is most kind. But the series is really on efforts to replace the HEXAGON. There are better sources on the HEXAGON itself, including Phil Pressel's book "Meeting the Challenge" from AIAA Press. Lots of information there. Phil has also written some shorter articles specifically on the H. And there are some excellent declassified histories and documents about the program. HEXAGON was a big, powerful, very complex and very important spacecraft. There are a lot of fascinating stories about it.