Select Space Concepts for the New Space Era
Abstract
In its first 75 years, the RAND Corporation helped shape how humankind thought about and used space for the benefit of humanity. In 1946, more than 11 years before the orbiting of the Soviet Unions Sputnik--mankind's first artificial space satellite--Project RAND published its first report, Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship. The Air Forces own history comments that Project RAND, in its report drafted in just three weeks, accurately predicted the feasibility of a satellite orbiting the Earth and presciently described many of the uses of satellites that we take as common for both military and civil purposes, including the first discussion of the use of a geostationary orbit for communications.1 Other Air Force historians noted that the operating modes for satellites proposed by RAND in 1946 and in subsequent, more in-depth work, were remarkably like that actually adopted when the United States began launching satellites 12 years later.2 RAND research on and recommendations for both military and civilian applications for space and the uses and risks of nuclear weapons went on to shape the United States approach to reconnaissance activities in both air and space.3 RAND's research in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s directly contributed to the development of reconnaissance satellites by helping shape the combined Central Intelligence Agency and Air Force design for the highly successful Corona program--a critically important program that provided 800,000 pictures from space on 2.1 million feet of film between 1960 and 1972.4 At the same time, RANDs analysis contributed to an approach for space that favored freedom of navigation in space, in part to allow reconnaissance satellites to overfly the Soviet Union and detect the build-up of a feared surprise nuclear attack. That freedom of exploration concept is enshrined in Article I of the Outer Space Treaty (OST).5
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 2023
- Accession Number
- AD1214828
Entities
People
- Ajay K. Kochhar
- Bruse Mcclintock
- Dan Mccormick
- Douglas C. Ligor
- Emmi Yonekura
- Henri Van Soest
- Jan Osburg
- Katie Feistel
- Mary Lee
Organizations
- RAND Corporation