Word: sdi
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...Pentagon is worried about the delay in lofting experiments for SDI research. It also frets about its diminished ability to keep a clear space eye on the Soviets and Middle East hot spots with its KH (keyhole) and Big Bird spy satellites. The Air Force has sent seven KH craft into polar orbits over the past nine years, but only one is still operational. The satellites are normally used in pairs, and a replacement for the last one to go dead was lost in last August's Titan rocket explosion. The single eye is expected to function for at least...
These questions have been largely obscured by the national debate about the technical feasibility of Star Wars weapons and the political and military , consequences of building an antimissile shield. Yet a key problem of SDI from its inception has been the weight and quantity of equipment that would have to be put into space. The hardware would vary enormously according to what types of weapons were selected for deployment. It makes a big difference, for example, whether laser beams are generated by millions of pounds of chemicals aboard satellites or produced on earth and bounced off mirrors in space...
...weight is secret) of military payloads into space, at an estimated cost of $3,000 per lb. In the first year of deployment of a relatively primitive Star Wars system, according to Lieut. Colonel Louis Kouts, Air Force deputy for space plans and policy, some 2.6 million lbs. of SDI weapons, sensors and other gear would have to be rocketed up. That, says Kouts, would grow to 4.4 million lbs. annually around the year 2000, as more exotic weapons are put in orbit...
Other estimates go much higher: 4 million lbs. per year to start and vastly more than that if, for example, satellites were armored and made maneuverable to protect them against Soviet attack. SDI officials, says John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists, "are looking at increasing their annual to-orbit weight by a factor of ten to 50 times, and that assumes survivability apart from armor. If they go to armor, the numbers quickly become bizarre as opposed to just daunting...
...weights involved seem well beyond the lifting potential of any launchers the U.S. now has. Says Colonel George Hess of the Pentagon's SDI organization: "We cannot handle this volume with shuttles and Titans and Delta rockets. Something new will have to come along." More precisely, the U.S. will have to design and build far more powerful launching vehicles: perhaps new unmanned rockets, or an upgraded "space truck" version of the shuttle, or President Reagan's "Orient Express" space plane. An SDI report to Congress says the cost could approach $60 billion just for lift, without counting a penny spent...