Hexagon Finally Declassified

Wow, when Xnewsman drops a bombshell he drops a big one! Now I, as a general rule, don't often post about cold war politics or the skunkwurkz that went on during that period...but when I started reading a post from the Canadian Business page written by Helen O'Neill for the Associated Press that X sent me, I was transported as well as transfixed...how bout that for conflicting emotions! lol.

The article tells about a gathering of technical personnel, engineers, scientists, draftsmen and inventors, that worked for Perkin-Elmer Corp., an optical design company in Danbury Connecticut. These highly skilled men worked on an ultra top secret project called Hexagon KH-9 during the cold war era from the mic 60s to the late 80s designing cameras for spy satellites. The technicians were sworn to secrecy so stringent that none of their family members knew what they were working on and only those with extremely high government clearance had any idea what so ever.

The specs alone are stunning considering that the system was envisioned in the 60s and was 60 feet long, 30,000 pounds in weight and had to handle film transport speeds of 200 feet per second!  Putting something this size into Earth orbit even today is no mean feat.

Hexagon remained classified for 45 years which meant that many of the people who worked on the project took the secret of their involvement to their grave, the rest are only now speaking about what has to be one of the most fascinating projects to come out of the cold war.

Check out the article here  for a top notch read.  I really thought I was reading the opening pages of a spy novel - this was written so well.

And the WIKI article here
Truly facinating!