Baker report, 1968 congressional hearings

GENERAL DISCUSSION AMONG SYMPOSIUM PARTICIPANTS
1. General Discussion
2. Article Summary Read into the Record
3. Adjournment
Mr. Roush. Thank you, Dr. Baker.
I anticipated we would have difficulty keeping the members of the committee here at a time when important legislation is
considered on the floor. We thought we would reserve the final few minutes for those of you who have made presentations
to discuss among yourselves questions which may have been aroused by one of your colleagues' presentation today.
With that in mind, we are going to permit you to have a real free for all. Dr. Sagan.
Dr. Sagan. I just wanted to underline one point that Dr. Baker made. Congressman Roush, in his detailed presentation of
the various Air Force systems, I am afraid that the main point won't come across to a lay audience, and that is that with
relatively little expenditure of funds, it would be possible to significantly improve the available information.
Apparently what is now happening is that the Air Force surveillance radar is throwing away the data that is of relevance for
this inquiry. In other words, if it sees something that is not on a ballistic trajectory, or not in orbit, it ignores it, it throws it
in the garbage.
Well, that garbage is just the area of our interest. So if some method could be devised by the Air Force to save the output
that they are throwing away from these space surveillance radars, it might be the least expensive way to significantly
improve our information about these phenomena.
Mr. Roush. Thank you.
Dr. Baker. Let me just make a comment: That is quite true. At the present time our space surveillance sensors are about
200 percent overtasked. That means they could make about 50 percent of their time available to us. They task too many
space objects, their capacity is much greater than the space objects that they are tasked to watch. The space population may
grow to fill this void, but currently what Dr. Sagan says is true, we could as I indicated in conclusion (4) modify our
current space surveillance system.
It is not an expensive thing to modify existing radars. The FPS-85 itself costs something like $100 million. The software
modification called for here I am sure would be much less.
Mr. Roush. Dr. Hynek.
Dr. Hynek. I would just like to concur in what Dr. Sagan has said. I understand there are several hundred UCT's a month,
uncorrelated targets, that because they don't -- 1 understand -- which since they do not follow ballistic trajectory, they are
tossed out. It would not be expensive to introduce a subroutine into the computer to take care of these things for a short
while. I strongly second Dr. Sagan's and Dr. Baker's suggestions.
Mr. Boone. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Roush. Mr. Boone.
Mr. Boone. I think the gentleman should advise you too, though, when you do that, you must make a trajectory
determination on each target including aircraft which may put a terrific burden on the radar you are insisting on upgrading.
Dr. Hynek. I will certainly grant that.