Strategic Defense Initiative was not just lasers; in this Kinetic Energyt Weapon test, a seven gram Lexan projectile, a projectile trademark for SABIC Innovatiove Plastics’ (formerly General Electric Plastics) brand of polycarboinate resin thermoplastic, was fired from a light gas gun at a velocity of 23,000 feet per second (7,000 meters per second) of 15,682 miles per hour) at a cast aluminum block.
The Delta 183 program used a satellite known as “Delta Star” to test several sensor-related technologies. Delta Star carried an infrared imager, a long-wave infrared imager, an ensemble of imagers and photometers covering several visible and ultraviolet bands, as well as a laser detector and ranging device. The satellite observed several ballistic missile launches including some releasing liquid propellant as a countermeasure to detection. Data from the experiments led to advances in sensor technologies.
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven American uniformed services. Their Military Satellite Communications Systems Wing (MCSW) is an organization headquartered at Los Angeles Air Force Base, located in El Segundo, California, a state located in the West Coast of the United States. The Space & MIssile Systems Center established the MILSATCOM Systems Wing on August 1, 2006. MCSW is previously known as the MILSATCOM Joint Program Office (MJPO).
Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) is a major command of the United States Air Force, with its headquarters at Peter Air Force Base, Colorado. MCSW is one of its several wings and other units that make up its Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC).
The MCSW develops, acquires, and sustains space-enabled, global communications capabilities to support national objectives. It has five groups and one squadron which deliver three primary Satellite Communications (SATCOM) product lines.
A greenhouse gas (GHG) is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range, or the long-wavelength infrared, the “thermal imaging” region, in which sensors can obtain a completely passive picture of the outside world based on thermal emissions only and requiring no external light or thermal source such as the sun, moon or infrared illuminator. The absorption of electromagnetic radiation is the way by which the energy of a photon is taken up by matter, typically the electrons of an atom, while the emission spectrum of a chemical element or chemical compound is the spectrum of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation emitted by the element’s atoms or the compound’s molecules when they are returned to a lower energy state.
The greenhouse effect is a process by which thermal radiation from a planetary surface is absorbed by atmospheric greenhouse gases, and is re-radiated in all directions. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth that is retained by Earth’s gravity, are: water vapour (“aqueous vapor”), the gas phase of water; carbon dioxide (CO2), a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom; methane, a chemical compound with the chemical formula CH4; nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas or sweet air, a chemical compound with the formula N2O; and ozone, or trioxygen, a triatomic molecule, consisting of three oxygen atoms.
In the Solar System, consisting of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago, the atmosphere of Venus (much denser and hotter than that of Earth), Mars (relatively thin and is composed of carbon dioxide—95.32%), and Titan, the only known moon with more than a trace of atmosphere, also contain gases that cause greenhouse effects. Greenhouse gases greatly affect the temperature of the Earth, the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. Without them, Earth’s surface would be on average about 33°C (59°F) colder than at present.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, a period from 1750 to 1850 where changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural of the times, the burning of fossil fuels, or fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms, has contributed to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 280 ppm to 390 ppm, despite the uptake of a large portion of the emissions through various natural “sinks” involved in the carbon cycle. The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth.
Anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, like emissions produced by human activities, come from combustion of carbonaceous fuels, principally: wood, a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees; coal, a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in “layers or veins” called “coal beds” or “coal seams”; oil, any substance that is liquid at ambient temperatures and does not mix with water but may mix with other oils and organic solvents; and, natural gas, a naturally occurring hydrocarbon gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, with up to 20 percent concentration of other hydrocarbons, usually ethane, as well as small amounts of impurities like carbon dioxide.
Petroleum is a naturally occurring liquid found in rock formations, consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights, plus other organic compounds. It is generally accepted that oil is formed mostly from the carbon rich remains of ancient plankton after exposure to heat and pressure in the Earth’s crust over hundreds of millions of years. Over time, the decayed residue was covered by layers of mud and silt, sinking further down into the Earth’s crust and preserved there between hot and pressure layers, gradually transforming into oil reservoirs.
See: Ka Band
The distribution of oil and gas reserves among the world’s 50 largest oil companies. The reserves of the provately owned comanies are grouped together. The oil produced by the “supermajor” companies accounts for less than 15% of the total world supply. Over 80% of the world’s reserves of oil and natural gas are controlled by national oil companies (NOC), oil companies fully or in the majority owned by a national government. Of the world’s 20 largest companies, 15 are state-owned comapnies, or a legal entiuty created by a government to undertake commercial activities on behalf of an owner government.
Please note that this chart assumes that Petrochina, Gazprom, and OAO Rosneft are state-owned companies. According to Wiki, they are:
Source: http://www.petrostrategies.org/Links/Worlds_Largest_Oil_and_Gas_Companies_Sites.htm
Launched on October 4, 1957, the first artificial satellite was the Soviet Sputnik 1. It was equipped with an on-board radio (the tranmission of signals through the free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies significantly below those of visiblie light) transmitter, an electronic device which in electronic and telecommunications, with the aid of antenna , produces radio waves, that worked on two frequencies, 20.005 and 40.002 MHz.
In 1958, the first American satellite to relay communications was Project SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment), which used a tape recorder to store and forward voice messages. Store and forward is a telecommunications technique in which information is sent to an intermediate station where it is kept and sent at a later time to the final destination or to another intermediate station. SCORE was used to send a Christmas greeting to the world from the 34th U.S. President (1953-1961) Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), an agency of the United States government responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and aeronautics and aerospace research, launched an Echo satellite in 1960. Project Echo was the first passive communications satellite experiment. NASA also introduced the 100-foot (30 m) aluminized PET film balloon as a passive reflector for radio communications. BoPET (Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate) is a polyester film made from stretched polyethylene terephthalate (PET) used for its high tensile strength, chemical and dimensional stability, transparency, reflectivity, gas and aroma barrier properties and electrical insulation.
Courier 1B is the world’s first active repeater satellite after launch on 4 October 1960. It was built by Philco, the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company (formerly known as the Spencer Company and later the Helios Electric Company), a pioneer in early battery, radio, and television production as well as former employer of Philo Farnsworth, inventor nof cathode ray tube television.
With the launch of Alouette 1 in 1962, Canada, a North American country, became the third country to put a man-made satellite into space. Because Canada did not have any domestic launch capabilities of its own (and still does not), Alouette 1, which was entirely built and funded by Canada, was launched by the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from Vandenberg AFB in California.
