Information about the early space age that may be lost forever Surely, many military space programs are still hidden behind veils of secrecy. But there are energeitic researchers that will keep digging into the archives (as things get declassified). This is certainly true of the U.S. satellite reconnaissance program where Dwayne Day is hot on the trail. Russian researchers have also been successful in revealing much and after the break-up of the Soviet Union much interesting information was released by Russian space companies themselves. What I am worrying about is that nobody cares about the less spectacular little secrets still not revealed. The risk is that archives are being purged while there is, at the same time, very little interesting in hunting for the last tidbits of information. So, some facts may be lost to space history forever. Let me mention a few examples: P-3, P-30, P-31: Were there any visible differences between the three U.S. lunar probes launched by Atlas-Able. The few pictures available are not identifiable to a specific mission, as far as I know. E3: How similar to Luna-3 were the Soviet lunar probes launched in April 1960? 1M: What was the configuration of the Soviet Mars probes launched in October 1960? Pictures would be nice. Elektron: How were these satellites mounted on the third stage of the rocket? How were they placed in different orbits? Nothing has ever been published about that even if we know what the satellites looked like and what instruments they carried. Courier: I have seen almost no technical data or good pictures of these very early U.S. store-and-forward communications satellites. Cosmos-110: We know what the dog-cabin looked like, but we have never seen a picture of the overall spacecraft. How similar to Voskhod-1 was it? The problem is that we have become so used to sleuthing for information on the Internet, but the really interesting stuff is not on-line. It is hidden in old dusty archives where you have to go yourself. I much regret that I am unable to do such research in other places than in the archives of space organizations of my own country.
Posted on: Thu, 01 May 2014 17:05:11 +0000
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