Secret Satellite (27 of 28)

Powerful new systems that did not use film were on the way.
But CORONA's reliability and relatively low cost, made planners loathe to cancel it.
CORONA was very early in the um, application of space for any purpose.
And ah, it did pioneer the recovery of payloads from space ah, high performance imagery in space, ah, three-axis stabilization of camera or of ah, space systems.
All of which were absolutely vital.
If they had not been done in CORONA, they would eventually have been done some other way.
But this was ah, really the very fastest and the cheapest way to do it.
Even though there were an even dozen failures, so-called failures, where ah, no film was returned with imagery on it.
Ah, yet at a cost of seven million dollars or so, per launch, eight hundred fifty million dollars for the hundred forty-five launches as I recall, ah, that was a cheap price to pay.
CORONA was the first successful US space program and it managed to outlive NASA's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs as well.
By 1972, when the last and final CORONA satellite was launched, Americans had already wearied of men walking on the moon.
But CORONA's long term legacy extended far beyond its technical accomplishments.
You know we all felt a part of something that was going on that was terrible important to national defense and to national policy.
And ah, it was not the usual squabbling between contractors, and there was not the usual squabbling between agencies.
You know, the CIA and the Air Force got along.
We were all working for what appeared to be a very important end goal.
And um, we all felt pretty good about that.