Abstract
An orbiting satellite can photograph, send radio signals to, or shoot at objects anywhere on the part of the earth that the satellite can see. This unique vantage point not only is the key to the communications satellite industry but also offers a number of other practical applications. Anyone in the world who can receive TV signals from anywhere, even people in the boonies who can pick up only the tiniest TV stations, can see satellite pictures of the earth on their evening weather forecasts. These pictures and other global weather data are a key part of weather forecasting, not just visual trimmings added to the evening news. Satellite-based navigation systems can pinpoint the location of any military or civilian vehicle in the part of the world that the satellite sees—half the globe from geosynchronous orbit.
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Reference Notes
Chapter 05
Yes, it checks. NOAA’s weather data for 1980 give twenty-nine days with more than a tenth of an inch of rain for the 330 days in all months of the year excluding August at the University of Arizona station in Tucson.
R. A. Kerr, “Pity the Poor Weatherman,” Science 228, (10 May 1985):704–706;
see also R. A. Kerr, “Forecasting the Weather a Bit Better,” Science 228, (5 April 1985):40–41;
R. A. Kerr, “Weather Satellites Coming of Age,” Science 229, (19 July 1985):255–257.
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Civilian Space Policy and Applications (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1982), 341–342.
For the purposes of this example, I’m assuming that it costs the utility 5 cents to generate each kilowatt hour. The actual cost of electricity varies from one part of the country to another but is really somewhat higher because you have to add the cost of transmission and billing. A 10% saving is a saving of 0.5 cents per kilowatt hour, which (when multiplied by America’s use of 600 kilowatt hours per year) adds up to $3 billion.
W. L. Smith, W. P. Bishop, V. F. Dvorak, C. M. Hayden, J. H. McElroy, F. R. Mosher, V. J. Oliver, J. F. Purdom, and D. Q. Wark, “The Meteorological Satellite: Overview of 25 Years of Operation,” Science 231, (31 January 1986):455–462.
M. Mitchell Waldrop, “A Silver Lining for the Weather Satellites,” Science, 226, (14 December 1984): 1289–1291.
Perry’s testimony and the suggestion that the Iranian rescue mission could have been saved by satellite navigation are contained in Thomas Karas, The New High Ground: Systems and Weapons of Space Age War (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), 124–126.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA Satellite Programs Briefing (August 1983) (Washington, DC: Department of Commerce, 1983), 26–27, 70–71.
The Doppler effect is a technical name for an effect that causes the frequency of a signal to change, depending on whether the source of the signal is moving toward or away from you. Listen to the siren on a police car, or the whistle on a train, and you will notice the musical pitch drop when the vehicle passes you (if you have a musical ear), because the frequency is boosted by the Doppler effect when the siren moves toward you and is lowered by this effect when the siren moves away from you. Don’t worry: you don’t need to understand the details (I hope) in order to get my main point either here or elsewhere.
Robert Nichols, “Rescue from Space: Search and Rescue Satellites,” STV 3, no. 9 (September 1985):54–59.
General Advisory Committee [to the President] on Arms Control and Disarmament, “A Quarter Century of Soviet Compliance Practices under Arms Control Commitments,” in W. C. Potter, ed., Verification and Arms Control (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, Lexington Books, 1985), 239–250.
B. D. Blair and G. D. Brewer, “Verifying SALT Agreements,” in W. C. Potter, ed., Verification and SALT: The Challenge of Strategic Deception (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980), 9.
D. A. Wilkening, “Monitoring Bombers and Cruise Missiles,” in Potter, Verification and Arms Control, 110–111.
B. G. Blair and G. D. Brewer, “Verifying SALT Agreements,” in Potter, Verification and SALT, 19.
J. Richelson, “Technical Collection and Arms Control,” in Potter, Verification and Arms Control, 169–216. This is a good summary of satellite capabilities.
Blair and Brewer, 16.
Department of Defense Appropriations for J983, Part 5, 16; Department of Defense Appropriations for 1984, Part 8, 337; House Committee on Armed Services, Department of Energy National Security and Military Applications of Nuclear Energy Authorization Act of 1984 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), 383–384.
J. Richelson, 190–197.
Ronald Reagan, quoted in U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Ballistic Missile Defense Technologies, OTA-ISC-254 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1985), 297–299.
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Ballistic Missile Defense Technologies; Jeff Hecht, Beam Weapons (New York: Plenum Press, 1984).
G. Yonas, “Strategic Defense Initiative: The Politics and Science of Weapons in Space,” Physics Today (June 1985):24–32; Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, “The Strategic Defense Initiative: Perception vs. Reality,” 34–45.
Hecht, 353, based on U.S. Defense Department data.
Most of these numbers are from D. Walker, J. Bruce, and D. Cook, “SDI: Progress and Challenges,” unclassified staff report submitted to Senator William Proxmire, Senator J. Bennett Johnston, and Senator Lawton Chiles, 17 March 1986. I obtained a copy from Senator Proxmire’s office. The FY 1987 appropriation is taken from the New York Times, (31 October 1986).
Reagan’s speech is quoted in “Excerpts from Reagan’s Speech at Jersey School,” The New York Times, (20 June 1986):A8.
J. E. Cushman, Jr., “Weinberger Terms Missile Defense Test a Success,” The New York Times, (2 July 1986):A8.
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Ballistic Missile Defense, 286–289.
Quoted by Robert Scheer in The Los Angeles Times, (22 September 1985):1, 14.
Walker, Bruce, and Cook, 12 (emphasis in the original).
Quoted in Mark Crawford, “In Defense of ‘Star Wars,’” Science 228, (3 May 1985):563.
Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), especially Chap. 22.
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Ballistic Missile Defense, 223.
The list is modified slightly from Hecht, 86.
M. Mitchell Waldrop, “Resolving the Star Wars Software Dilemma,” Science 232, (9 May 1986):710–713.
This list is largely taken from Jeremy J. Stone, “The Four Faces of Star Wars: Anatomy of a Debate,” FAS Public Interest Report 38, no. 3 (March 1985): 1, 3, 6–9, and U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Ballistic Missile Defense, 5.
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Ballistic Missile Defense, 59–61.
See Paul B. Stares, The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945–1984 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985); U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Anti-Satellite Weapons, Countermeasures, and Arms Control, OTA-ISC-281 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office) 52, 91–102.
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© 1987 Harry L. Shipman
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Shipman, H.L. (1987). The Orbital High Ground. In: Space 2000. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6054-2_5
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