alternatehistory.com

U.S. Intelligence had learned that Soviet cosmonauts in Salyuts had overseen military exercises in Eastern Siberia, sending down realtime tactical information to battlefield commanders. As a result, after Pete Conrad led the first setup mission to open up Skylab A the second crew had been military, a consolation for the DoD after the shuttle cancellation. Ken Mattingly, an Apollo veteran, had led a crew of military astronauts — Manned Spaceflight Engineers — through a secretive program testing “Terra Scout” and “Battleview” surveillance equipment, radiation-monitoring gear, encrypted-communications beams

(Stephen Baxter, Voyage)

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On April 25, 1963 commander of the Strategic Air Force Thomas S. Power said eventually the really survivable command and control structure" for all U.S. armed forces might be a maneuverable command post in space.

"Should such a spaceborne command post become, necessary it would have to he large enough to carry electronic gear required to gather process and disseminate operational information on a global basis. Also, it would have to be capable of defending itself against any interference or attacks from the ground and space. It is inconceivable to operate i such a central command post, especially one in deep space, without a skilled crew to operate ami maintain its complex equipment and without competent officers fully qualified to assume command of the strike forces whenever necessary. Here, then, may be the first major requirement for military men in space." Powers said.


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Recently space analysists David Winfrey and James Oberg co-wrote a fascinating document about the Air Force long term space vision.

In Winfrey view from its 1963 announcement to project cancellation on June 10, 1969—called by more than one that night “Black Tuesday”—MOL was ostensibly just that: an orbiting laboratory whose crewmembers were to conduct experiments as to what, if anything, the military might do in space with astronauts. Behind a curtain of strict secrecy, however, MOL was something else entirely: a manned spy satellite, whose giant onboard telescope two crewmen would use to photograph Soviet military targets. The latter mission was so secret not even the initials of its patron were to be uttered by the astronauts themselves.

That no MOL saw flight was arguably no grave loss to national security, as by mid-1969 unmanned spy satellites of similar acuity were some two years from entering service.

At time of program cancellation, plans were to fly four MOLs in all. Some $1.3 billion had been spent on MOL, with a projected cost of $1.295 billion required to complete and launch the first MOL, and $130–140 million for each launch thereafter. The ever-escalating costs of Vietnam and the pending advent of the unmanned KH-9 “Hexagon” spysats grounded MOL.

And then three years after the program cancellation, in 1972 NASA picked Big Gemini as its next manned spaceship, and Big Gemini was very similar to the MOL. The Air Force jumped on the occasion to bring back the lost MOL.

What the Air Force did was to procure a handful of Big Gemini off-the-shelf from NASA and stuff it with un-mothballed MOL hardware. So MOL was back but at a much lower overall cost since NASA alone spent Big Gemini development cost of $3 billlion. Buying Big Geminis off-the-shelf helped downsizing all the interrogations that remained about space soldiers.

According to Winfrey while many programs have been cancelled during development, in the course of the last century only two cases of outright abandonment of a unique means of “power projection” come readily to mind.

The most recent was the US Navy’s Seaplane Strike Force of the 1950s, by which fighters equipped with water skis and four-engined jet-powered flying boats would have been supported by ships or submarines. The Martin P6M Seamaster was an outstanding big bird, it was very fast, long ranged and carried a large bombload. But its development was marred by a couple of accidents. The Convair SeaDart also had impressive performance. The advent of missile-carrying Polaris submarines made the seaplane striking force obsolete and redundant.

A quarter-century before, the Navy built a pair of giant airships, each an airborne carrier to five biplanes. The loss of Akron and Macon brought that program to an end. The loss to American defense of Martin Seamasters and Convair Seadarts is perhaps dubious, but what if a fleet of rigid airships and their ocean-surveillance aircraft been operating out of Pearl Harbor, say, in 1941?

Now MOL has return as a lower cost program with the name of Blue Helios (Blue Big Gemini sounded really bad – the Air Force was lucky NASA drew inspiration from the Greek mythology)

As with every seriously considered (which is to say, financially supported) space station proposal in the history of astronautics, MOL was not merely a spacecraft. Instead, the spacecraft that was MOL was the beginning of a system.

Little was done to study what MOL, if continued, could have become. Fortunately Blue Helios started from where MOL stopped in '69 - so we can now speculate over its future developments.

When Blue Helios will fly, and if it ever proved to be of use— won not merely technical but also political advocacy—they could be resupplied in orbit, first by end-to-end docking of cargo carrier, later by small “shuttles”; joined in pairs or trios; used as actual laboratories in space; supported on-orbit construction of large antennae, or used as control stations for separately-launched telescopes.

Winfrey makes some bold comparisons between MOL and the Navy airborne picket airships of the 20's. He argues that “early warning” airships Macon and Akron had been airborne December 7, 1941 on the morning and thus Admiral Yamamoto’s fleet had been detected while incoming, and even attacked and sunk. Would Roosevelt’s speech of December 8, sans evocation of a day of infamy, won public sentiment for a two-front war?

Recently the Air Force deliberately leaked an incredible, 30 pages document to the outside world. It is concerned with MOL (cancelled) future but could be easily applied to the mostly similar Blue Helios. That document dated December 31, 1969, some six months after cancellation, whose cover page reads simply, Advanced MOL Planning.

Winfrey did a thorough analysis of it, with fascinating, far reaching conclusions. James Oberg added his own conclusions to those of Winfrey.

Pages 16–23 illustrate and describe in some detail potential options for the Air Force’s control of the high ground of space. On a page that one finds at upper left a large space station in the shape of a Y, its three modules docked to a central core. From this high-flying descendent of MOL run jagged lines (“LASER OR EHF”) by which the station maintains communications, presumably command and control of “high altitude observation satellites,” “relay satellites,” aircraft and surface ships, and Air Force ground facilities. Beside the image of the station, pointing to it with an arrow, is the caption “SPACEBORNE COMMAND POST; KEY REQUIREMENT - POST ATTACK SURVIVABILITY.”

Today the Air Force already has a control command post flying above Earth surface – aboard a Boeing 747-200. The Boeing E-4 Advanced Airborne Command Post, with the project name "Nightwatch", is a strategic command and control military aircraft operated by the United States Air Force (USAF). The E-4 series was specially modified from the Boeing 747-200B. The E-4 serve as a survivable mobile command post for the National Command Authority, namely the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and successors.

The E-4B is designed to survive a nuclear EMP with systems intact and has state-of-the-art direct fire countermeasures. Although many older aircraft have been upgraded with glass cockpits, the E-4B still uses traditional analog flight instruments, as they are less susceptible to damage from an EMP blast.

The E-4B is capable of operating with a crew up to 112 people including flight and mission personnel, the largest crew of any aircraft in US Air Force history. With in-flight aerial refueling it is capable of remaining airborne for a considerable period (limited only by consumption of the engines' lubricants and food supplies). In a test flight for endurance, the aircraft remained airborne and fully operational for 35.4 hours, however it was designed to remain airborne for a full week in the event of an emergency.

Well, the next logical step beyond a 747 is obviously a space station.

The Air Force document features a “Spaceborne Command Post Characteristics,” detailing a 165,000-pound (75,000-kilogram) 12-man station and a 470,000-pound (213,000-kilogram) 40-man station. The latter was the station previously illustrated, with three mated cylinders and resupplied to the tune of 115,000 pounds (52,000 kilograms) a month.

Both station options include in their functions that of “self defense.” The larger station, whose 25-kilowatt power is either solar or a redacted option, improves upon the “limited” functions of “strategic/tactical decision making” and “force control” for the 12-man station.

Page 23 features a simple diagram of the Y-shaped command post. One of its three arms is devoted to living quarters, while another to “general” quarters and “housekeeping S/S.” The third is labeled “combat information center.” Each arm has a pair of adjustable 25-kilowatt solar panels, for a total power of 150 kilowatts. Such might have been, per caption, the US Air Force’s “SYNCHRONOUS ALTITUDE COMMAND POST.”

Imagine MOL-world’s command posts and space lasers as unremarkable a fixture by the year 2001 as were the always-airborne fleets of nuclear-armed B-52s of the 1960s.

A MOL-world at its most advanced, then, would have put 40 Air Force crew at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers above the Earth. “Strategic/tactical decision making” would, in the event of global war (presumably not otherwise, save at the command of those earthbound), occur aboard a station equipped for self defense. This suppose that both ground and E-4 command centers have been destroyed by the ennemy. The E-4B remains, at core, an extremely vulnerable Jumbo Jet.

Winfrey briefly detailed how to haul a 40 000 pound Blue Helios to a synchronous orbit. The Air Force would need to use a Titan–Centaur similar to NASA Voyager, Viking and Helios launch vehicle. Only the high energy Centaur could loft a significant mass up there. Winfrey noted that it would be rather straightforward to adapt the Agena space tug rendezvous and docking technology to the Centaur.

Will the Air Force launch a command post in geosynchronous orbit ? Winfrey asked in conclusion.

James Oberg then stepped in and developed a frightening scenario that made Winfrey orbital command post a necessity.

Could another Pearl Harbor happen in space ?

Shining in almost continuous sunlight, the satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) seem to float motionless, like ships at anchor. But the fleet is active. It sends billions of bits of information every hour to and from the earth, 22,300 miles away. To a traveler in GEO, the blue-green planet would appear delicate and beautiful, a treasure shining against the flat darkness of space. And many of the more than 100 sentinels at their posts in GEO are programmed to protect the verdant ball with all of their computerized resources.

The fleet is a vital communications and control link in our defense system. And its very distance from Earth would appear to make it invulnerable to enemy attack. But some new studies of geosynchronous orbit suggest that our satellites at GEO may be as vulnerable as were the ships in that other distant and sunny American outpost, Pearl Harbor, in December 1941. Unfortunately Oberg did not developed further Winfrey theory of airbirne picked airships cancelling Yamamoto surprise attack.

The blackboard studies indicate that with a bold, long-distance mission -- involving a trip to the moon and back-potential enemies could wipe out our fleet. It would take but a single vehicle, making a single pass after its lunar voyage. The attack would be over in less than 12 hours. It would require no nuclear weapons. It would render the Western world blind, deaf, dumb -- and open to a full-scale missile attack.

With all these tempting targets lined up along the GEO are, how would an attacker design his flight plan? There is no need to be coy about the identity of the players: The primary targets in GEO are Western, and the leading (essentially only) candidate for attacker is the Soviet Union. The Soviets have no military assets in GEO. Their space vehicles there are presumably commercial communications and navigation systems; their military systems are in different orbits. So they have the freedom to fire against anything they want to shoot at.

The Soviets could use a large Proton booster to place one of their currently operational "killer satellites" into a GEO orbit. For LEO targets, they would use a smeller ICBM derivative, called the F-class. Skeptics point out that the Proton is five times bigger than the F-class and is correspondingly harder to launch. But the Soviets launch the bigger booster more often than the smaller one. So it would be no great problem to loft several killer satellites atop such boosters.
Once near the GEO arc, the weapons could drift along until they made radar contact with their targets. Under ground command, they would close in and execute their shrapnel attack.
Most experts have concluded that although the Soviets might be able to put three or four killer satellites into GEO, they could hardly make a dent in the American military assets there. This is all the more comforting because it would take a long time -- days or weeks -- to get into the proper attack approach path. And the endangered targets, under ground control,would be able to take evasive action.

But suppose the tables were turned. Or rather, suppose the attacking Soviet satellite were at the same altitude as the GEO arc, but moving east to west instead of west to east, the direction in which the earth and the GEO satellites rotate. This so-called retrograde geosynchronous path is far more threatening. The Soviet orbital weapon would be running head-on through the space occupied by the necklace of satellites, like a car hurtling the wrong way on a superhighway. Accidental collision would be unlikely in space, however, since a cross section of the are is at least 100 kilometers across.

The hunter-killer vehicle could pick out one target on one pass, track its path precisely, and on the next pass 12 hours later, fire a small homing missile (of which it could carry a dozen or more). The missile could carry a miniaturized radar guidance system, with the radar transmitter on the main killer satellite. Alternately, a simple optical sensor would be more than adequate since the target is in full sunlight. Desired targets could be picked off one by one over a period of several days.

In another scenario, the Soviet killer satellite merely ejects a cloud of particles ahead of itself. At a combined speed of 16,000 feet per second, the target satellites and the particles -- grains of sand, for example -- would destroy one another. With a suitably thick cloud, the entire GEO are--including the Soviet communications satellites, which have little if any military use -- could be reduced to junk in 12 hours. A thinner cloud would merely take more passes--perhaps five, ten, or twenty -- to eventually turn GEO into a new asteroid belt.

If the Soviets wanted to reoccupy the orbit later, they could use plastic pellets, which would pulverize under solar ultraviolet and eventually blow away on the solar wind.
Could any of this happen? It's easy to dismiss the threat. After all, putting satellites directly into retrograde geosynchronous orbit is an almost impossible task. If the booster takes off from Earth westward instead of eastward, it loses at least a fifth of its total power because it must work against Earth's rotation. If the reversal burn occurs at the top of the long GEO transfer arc, swinging up from parking orbit to the point the second rocket burn must occur, then an enormous amount of fuel would be required to kill off the original motion and apply "full reverse" to get into a retrograde orbit. Little if any payload would be left for the warhead.

But unfortunately, these comforting arguments assume that anyone wishing to throw an object into retro-GEO is not very clever. Putting a hostile craft into "backward" orbit is actually comparatively easy.

The broad lines of the mission can be worked out on a blackboard. While the Soviets may be short of black boxes and esoteric gadgetry, they have plenty of blackboards -- and clever orbital mechanicians to write on them.

To get to retro-GEO the smart way, you merely pretend you are going to the moon. You actually perform a lunar flyby. The chosen path is very much like the free-return trajectories followed by Apollo lunar expeditions, except that the lunar flyby altitude is a little higher.

On the return to Earth, then, the enemy craft would fly by at an altitude of about 22,000 miles. At that point, after about a week of flight, instead of whipping on past and back up and out into the depths of interplanetary space, the vehicle would perform a rocket burn to enter retro-GEO.
The killer satellite could also get into position secretly. The initial launching would of course be detected. But Moscow could merely announce another scientific lunar probe. Something (a small transmitter, for example) could be dropped off in lunar orbit so eavesdropping American antennas would be satisfied. Or else Moscow could simply report that the probe had crashed. And as the killer satellite rounded the moon and headed for its rendezvous, no tracking system on or off Earth could follow it.

Even if it could, what could be done about such a retro-GEO threat? The worst defense the West could mount would be to blow up the weapon, because resulting fragments would merely carry out the original mission and destroy all the satellites.

The only feasible response would be a manned mission to retro-GEO, via the moon, to rendezvous with the killer satellite and disarm it. Presumably, if such a mission were at all feasible, the Soviets would booby-trap the satellite to explode if tampered with. So the tamperers would have to be very clever and very gentle because the jewels of the GEO necklace would be zooming past their heads at three miles per second.

Thrust, counterthrust, parry, and thrust ... the quest for the high ground goes on, even in the depths of space. With current boosters and warheads, such a mission is feasible already. But the nightmare may be prevented by the mere existence of effective countermeasures and by awareness of the threat. And countermeasures in turn provide unadvertised capabilities for much more beneficial space trekking.

Oberg concluded saying that in the nightmare, the moon is a back door to retro-GEO and destruction. In a more hopeful and benign dream, GEO will be a back door to the Moon and the stars.

Winfrey then moved on to close that intresting debate. Oberg and him agreed that the synchronous command outpost could provide a limited protection to the GEO fleet.

As a further deterrent against attack from Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, those who seek greater military use of space are seriously advocating what at first appear to be wildly futuristic projects such as a Manned Orbital Command Post.

General Daniel O. Graham's conservative think tank has urged the use of Blue Helios and its Titan III booster as a transportation system to ferry to an altitude of 100 miles the pieces of a manned orbital command post and space port. Such a port would serve as a home base for one-person space vehicles capable of staging a counterattack against intercontinental missiles after they have left the ground.

Oberg reminded that, once in geosynchronous orbit, cislunar space is very close. He mentionned O'Neil L5 space cities and noted that there were other Earth-Moon libration points much closer from Earth. They are Earth-Moon L1 and L2. Similar libration points exist in the Sun-Earth system, and once again L1 and L2 are the closest from Earth – they are a million mile away.

Oberg sketched a fascinating scenario where the synchronous space station moved to one of the aforementionned four libration points, or even into a high lunar orbit, with a minimum expense of propellant – even less if provided with electric propulsion. Such outpost could support a wide range of missions – it would have science, military and commercial applications. It could be a first step toward O'Neil space colonies, or a lunar base, asteroid mining and a trip to Mars.