Spying from Space: Constructing America's Satellite Command and Control Systems

2. Of Vital Strategic Importance: Developing a Satellite Command and Control System

Of Vital Strategic Importance Developing a Satellite Command and Control System We cannot be fearful of failures and thus attempt only the sure things, which result only in a short-term gain. —Brig. Gen. Homer A. Boushey Air Force Deputy Director of R&D 31 2 I N THE EARLY 1950s, nobody knew how to build antennas capable of tracking a low-Earth-orbiting satellite; the air force and its contractors learned as they went along. During construction of the earliest ground stations to support the national satellite reconnaissance program, mechanical problems plagued the command and control antennas on the ground. Because the analog transmitters on board the satellites sent only weak signals, the tracking stations needed big reflectors to acquire the transmissions. Enormous antennas on the ground also compensated for the limited power available on the satellites . Lockheed and Philco, the Philadelphia-based radio company that served as Lockheed’s subcontractor on the tracking stations, mounted the big parabolic dishes—some 70 feet in diameter—to ensure movement in all three axes. In high winds technicians had difficulty pointing an antenna with accuracy and stability because the dishes vibrated and oscillated, especially those that Lockheed furnished. Philco furnished antennas that one former program officer recalled had been “built like battleships.” Making the pedestal for the modified World War II–era SCR-584 radar antennas from inch-and-aquarter -thick boilerplate, Philco undertook a major challenge in installing and outfitting them. In fact, Philco built only two or three of these expensive, heavy antennas. Because of their great mass, these antennas often came to a stop accompanied by the screeching of motors and grinding of gears. The drive motors could just barely move the antennas at a rate that allowed it to track a low-orbiting satellite like the reconnaissance satellite, which moved from horizon to horizon in roughly five minutes. As the technology improved, it became evident that the spacecraft could transmit a stronger signal, meaning that the ground antennas could be lighter. The air force and Lockheed went to a lighter ground antenna, the AN/TLM32 C H A P T E R 2 A typical Discoverer/Corona launch. Courtesy of the Air Force Historical Research Agency collection. 18, which was 60 feet in diameter but with a mesh reflector instead of a solid steel dish. Lockheed supplied and reworked some of the base structures for the TLM-18s several times in order to make them three-axis tracking antennas . After some delay, Lockheed finally completed an expert technical installation of the expensive antennas.1 To develop a technology for satellite command and control, engineers constructed test environments that became successively more complex and more like the world that the system would encounter in actual operation. In doing so, the large organization that was inventing and developing the system assigned subprojects and problems to different types of professionals. As engineers strove to develop a support scheme for the reconnaissance satellites, they continued to give the military’s system of satellite command and control everything it needed to function in not only the new physical environment of space but also the social environment of politics and high technology. Incorporating Economic, Political, and Social Characteristics into the System While developing the technical components of the military’s system of satellite command and control, the air force’s Western Development Division, aerospace corporation Lockheed, and radio corporation Philco incorporated in their invention the political characteristics it needed to survive in the maze of government agencies. This unexpected intersection of society, politics, economics, and technology, which result in a transformation of one technology ’s function, exemplifies what historians have come to understand as the social construction of technology. Satellite command and control, therefore, changed from a relatively simple idea into a complex technological system infused with various factors. The Air Force Satellite Control Facility’s inventors introduced economic, political, and social changes during its development as it grew and became indispensable to American military satellite command and control.2 In 1951, Air Research and Development Command (ARDC) authorized the RAND Corporation to make specific recommendations for the start of developmental work on a reconnaissance satellite system. RAND recommended in Project Feed Back that as a matter of “vital strategic importance” the air force should begin studying the “use of an efficient satellite reconnaissance vehicle.”3 After reading the Project Feed Back reports that addressed matters such as orbital mechanics and satellite photography of...