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The Blue Cube, the USAF Satellite Control Facility, was not that advanced. They were using much the same technology as the Apollo control center, well into the 1980s. A modernization program, involving a midrange IBM mainframe, had been a flop, so they were stuck with two decade old technology. Like NASA, it was hugely labor-intensive. They were proud that they'd never lost a satellite through an error. The Blue Cube "drove the bus", that is, they controlled satellite position and orientation. This was done with a low-bandwidth link, omnidirectional antennas on the satellite, and huge steerable dishes on the ground at eight locations around the world. Two of those dishes were outside the Blue Cube. Once a satellite was stable and its directional antenna pointed properly, more bandwidth was available. The payload organization then talked to the payload, which was usually a camera or a radio of some form, over their own links. Very USAF - there are pilots, who drive, and there is cargo, which is along for the ride. Talking to a satellite as it passed over one of the eight ground stations involved connecting up three computers, one of which was emulating a vacuum tube machine. Connecting meant patch cords, not Ethernet. We at the aerospace company that built the place had one of the first color Sun workstations. Two monitors, low-rez color and high rez monochrome. When it came in, somebody ported over an orbital mechanics program and loaded up the 3-line element sets for the USAF satellites, to display a wireframe globe showing where they all were relative to the ground stations. A visiting USAF general saw this, and demanded that it immediately be shipped to the Blue Cube, where they were doing that job by hand, plotting lines on maps from coordinates on printouts. This was done. Eventually the whole operation moved to Falcon Air Force Base in Colorado, with different technology. I was out of it by then. |