Cosmic Penguin
Geek Penguin in GTO
It is interesting to see that one of the most important aspects of spaceflight, military reconnaissance in orbit, never reached the Orbiter world. It's a shame really, for it could be quite fun to simulate the difficulties required to gather intelligence from orbit. So I'll try to ask for someone to make the most classical type of spysats: the film-return optical spysats from the Cold War era.
Here are the spysat programs I am thinking of:
USA:
USSR:
My idea is to simulate the different phases of the flight of satellites from launch to recovery. Here's the deal:
Launch: the easy part, as autopilots for the different launch vehicles shouldn't be too difficult to program. However this phase requires some development effort, especially since the main launch sites for these spysats (Vandenberg AFB on the American side and Plesetsk on the Soviet/Russian side) are completely under-developed compared with the more famous launch sites of Cape Canaveral/Baikonur/Kourou. Multiple new pads and facilities would be required. The launch vehicles are in a slightly better state (the Titan family is here, as is the R-7, but new fairings would be required to use them. The Thor and Atlas series, on the other hand, are mostly missing and would require new meshes and textures.).
On-orbit operations: Since it seems pointless to just roll the satellite around, I have an idea: make a new MFD that defines the "mission targets" and controls the satellite to "take photos" of that area. This includes the stabilization of the satellite to turn the satellite in the right attitude, the controlling of the shutters, the simulation of the film feeding into the recovery capsule(s), power generation, orbit trimming and adjust, the separation of the sub-capsules, and de-orbiting. If possible, it would be nice to save the "photo frames" as picture files that shows the simulated results of the "photography passes" in a separate file, or simulate possible problems that could occur to the spacecrafts in orbit.
The spysats themselves, of course, would need to be modeled. I would suggest that, if possible, the major components of the spysats (mirrors, cameras, film spools etc.) can be added to the meshes.
Recovery: This phase would need to be coded as well, including the re-entry part (just code it like others did with the manned spacecrafts) and recovery. The Russian ones are easier to do, because the capsules are designed for land-recovery, but the American method pose a headache: the capsules are snatched in mid-air by C-130s using booms extended from the tail that snatches the main parachute of the capsule, which is then moved into the aircraft using winches. I've no idea how to simulate that, so I would like to hear from the experts.
Since the whole project is so complex, I would recommend that this be done as a group project. Assistance from our Russian members is encouraged, as I don't think there're good English reference materials to the Soviet spysats. Unfortunately my hands is too full to participate in such a complex project, hence the request.
I'm currently collecting a list of reference materials for these ex-black projects, which will appear in a subsequent post.
GPS
Here are the spysat programs I am thinking of:
USA:
- CORONA (KH-1/2/3/4/4A/4B/5 (ARGON)/6 (LANYARD))
- GAMBIT (KH-7/8)
- HEXAGON (KH-9)
- SAMOS
USSR:
My idea is to simulate the different phases of the flight of satellites from launch to recovery. Here's the deal:
Launch: the easy part, as autopilots for the different launch vehicles shouldn't be too difficult to program. However this phase requires some development effort, especially since the main launch sites for these spysats (Vandenberg AFB on the American side and Plesetsk on the Soviet/Russian side) are completely under-developed compared with the more famous launch sites of Cape Canaveral/Baikonur/Kourou. Multiple new pads and facilities would be required. The launch vehicles are in a slightly better state (the Titan family is here, as is the R-7, but new fairings would be required to use them. The Thor and Atlas series, on the other hand, are mostly missing and would require new meshes and textures.).
On-orbit operations: Since it seems pointless to just roll the satellite around, I have an idea: make a new MFD that defines the "mission targets" and controls the satellite to "take photos" of that area. This includes the stabilization of the satellite to turn the satellite in the right attitude, the controlling of the shutters, the simulation of the film feeding into the recovery capsule(s), power generation, orbit trimming and adjust, the separation of the sub-capsules, and de-orbiting. If possible, it would be nice to save the "photo frames" as picture files that shows the simulated results of the "photography passes" in a separate file, or simulate possible problems that could occur to the spacecrafts in orbit.
The spysats themselves, of course, would need to be modeled. I would suggest that, if possible, the major components of the spysats (mirrors, cameras, film spools etc.) can be added to the meshes.
Recovery: This phase would need to be coded as well, including the re-entry part (just code it like others did with the manned spacecrafts) and recovery. The Russian ones are easier to do, because the capsules are designed for land-recovery, but the American method pose a headache: the capsules are snatched in mid-air by C-130s using booms extended from the tail that snatches the main parachute of the capsule, which is then moved into the aircraft using winches. I've no idea how to simulate that, so I would like to hear from the experts.
Since the whole project is so complex, I would recommend that this be done as a group project. Assistance from our Russian members is encouraged, as I don't think there're good English reference materials to the Soviet spysats. Unfortunately my hands is too full to participate in such a complex project, hence the request.
I'm currently collecting a list of reference materials for these ex-black projects, which will appear in a subsequent post.
GPS
, but there are so many military satellites that has reached orbit that producing all of them on Orbiter would probably take many years by different developers, all of which is interesting on different points. This is just the largest tip of iceberg available. 
