View Full Version : How to Steal a 25K Lb Satellite
https://twitter.com/therealaeroblog/status/1686048370585120770?s=61&t=rmEeUn68HhlFHGKbTPQr_A
How to STEAL a 25,000 lbs Satellite Straight Out of Space
By: NASA
A Thread🧵
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1686048370585120770.html
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Less Hair
1st Aug 2023, 08:47
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2YNH45bgAEYYDh.jpg
Ah yes, one of the proposed "once around" missions out of Vandenburg.
Obviously never flown, but as the text says it's what led to the basically oversize wing which reduced Shuttle performance in other areas (e.g. due to the increase in airframe mass) and possibly increased it's vulnerability to leading edge impact damage.....
Tango and Cash
4th Aug 2023, 21:13
Fascinating thought experiment potential--how would the Soviets have reacted to something like that? "Really mad" probably doesn't begin to describe it.
From an operations/engineering perspective (plus hindsight), given the difficulties in retrieving our own satellites where the engineering, attachment points, etc. were known and understood, what were the chances of getting an unknown satellite secured? Especially in a single orbit!
Probably best that it ended in "never mind" and nobody ever thought of it again.
Edited to add: After reading the PDF on James Oberg's site, sts-3A_B-DRM.PDF (jamesoberg.com) (http://www.jamesoberg.com/sts-3A_B-DRM.PDF), it appears the satellite to be retrieved was one of ours. Could this have been assuming a film-based camera system where the shuttle would be tasked with retrieving the whole satellite to bring back the film for processing?