Word: vandenberg
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Under construction since 1979 and now nearly four-fifths complete, the Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex (SLC 6),* dubbed "Slick Six," is a prodigious arrangement of lofty mobile towers and gaping tunnels, rugged bunkers and squat tanks, covering 150 acres...
...Vandenberg Air Force Base was chosen as a shuttle facility because it offers ideal conditions for launching spacecraft into polar orbit. Shuttles lifting off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida enter a more or less equatorial orbit and fly over only part of the earth's surface. Spacecraft sent from Vandenberg into polar orbit will slice across the earth's twirling path and pass over a slightly different strip of the globe on each swing. Satellites placed in polar orbit have the capability of photographing any section of the earth. This gives them an intelligence-gathering potential significantly...
...Force, which will operate Slick Six, plans to fly up to ten missions annually. Another point in Vandenberg's favor: shuttles will be launched due south and will fly over Antarctica as well as vast stretches of water, regions where the craft's solid-fuel rocket boosters and external tank can be safely jettisoned...
Until 1969, Vandenberg was the planned launch site for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). Congress canceled the construction of the launch pad when it was months away from completion. After the shuttle launch complex was approved and funded, the Air Force figured that it could save $100 million to $300 million by converting the MOL site rather than building from scratch. In fact, the most imposing structure at Slick Six, the 285-ft.-high Mobile Service Tower, is a refitted and slightly shortened version of a MOL facility. The Air Force also cannibalized the steel used in that structure, constructing...
Launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California last January, the $250 million observatory, which was built jointly by the U.S. and The Netherlands, has completed four separate surveys of virtually the entire sky. During these sweeps, IRAS'S 22.4-in. mirror and electronic sensors, which are chilled by liquid helium to nearly 4° above absolute zero (-459.7° F) so that their own heat will not impede observations, picked up infrared emissions from more than 200,000 sources. Most of these celestial pinpoints are much too cool to have been recorded by conventional telescopes. Many are extremely...