Word: klasse
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Neither country, naturally, is very talkative about its espionage system. But in a new book, Secret Sentries in Space (Random House; $7.95), Philip J. Klass, senior avionics editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology, offers a first, fascinating look at the space hardware that has, so far, contributed to global stability. By allowing the two major nuclear powers to examine one another's military installations in exact detail, the satellites have considerably diminished the danger of war through miscalculation...
Florida Force. During the 1961 Berlin crisis, the "first generation" of Discoverer satellites was aloft, and John Kennedy was able to show Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko photographs indicating exactly how few iCBMs the Soviets really had. "I believe," says Klass, "that after Gromyko saw those pictures he persuaded Khrushchev to back down...
Similarly, Klass writes, "the President entered the Cuban missile crisis with a very precise inventory of Soviet strategic missile and bomber strength, thanks to U.S. satellite photos." At the same time, the Soviets undoubtedly used their Cosmos satellites to watch the buildup of U.S. aircraft in Florida and the American task force assembled in the Caribbean. "What role, if any, Russian satellite pictures played in convincing Kremlin leaders that the U.S. was prepared to go the limit," Klass writes, "probably is known only to a few Russian leaders...
...most flying-saucer buffs, the frequent appearance of Unidentified Flying Objects near power lines is only natural; the UFOs, so the stories go, are either attempting to sabotage the power system or are merely recharging their batteries. To Author Klass, a former electrical engineer who is now an editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology, there is a more logical answer: the power lines themselves may actually create UFOs in the form of coronas-clouds of glowing, ionized air that can form in intense electrical fields...
...this intelligently written and rational book (a rare phenomenon in UFO literature), Klass describes the scientific detective work that led him to decide on the probable cause of most previously unexplained UFO sightings. The enigmatic, incandescent objects, he concludes, are really a family of atmospheric phenomena that include not only coronas but ball lightning, St. Elmo's fire and "Foo Fighters," the same luminous globs that tailed World War II military aircraft. Klass seems resigned to the fact that it will take more than his well-documented evidence to shake dedicated saucer believers out of their state of UFOria...