NASA Comms: GSFC and other dirtside places

I participate in a forum that's interested in ATT's Long Lines
Cold War-era communications facilities. Short version: Ma built all
kinds of hardened coax cable and microwave facilities to support the
"Continuity of Government" program, so that Bert the Turtle had some way
to call up his leaders the next day.

Much of the network is physically impressive: dozens of well-buried
25Kft^2 stations, with double blast doors & 2ft thick walls,
750 KW of White-Superior Diesels with a few weeks of fuel, air filters,
etc. Microwave dishes cast from concrete, and lined with mesh....

Most everything was built to be dual-purpose: they served usual LD
traffic and TV network users, but also had spurs that went places Uncle
Sam wanted, such as Site R & Mt. Weather. Sites housed FTS and Autovon
switches, as well as radio relays for air-to-ground for the 89th Airlift
Wing.

[BTW, You and I paid for it all on our phone bill; virtually none was USG
owned...]

Much of this was built up in the 60's just when NASA was ramping up, and
that likely affected ATT's design decisions. We know, for example, that a
southern route carried lots of KSC-MSFC traffic.

There were other accommodations; an Condition Blue alert would go out
15 min before every manned launch, invoking a "hands-off" policy on the
entire network to avoid interdicting NASA circuits.

Ma also build and ran an enormous conference calling system that NASA
used.

In an era when a single DS-1 was a LOT of data, NASA must have had really
big phone bills every month, but we know damn little about the details.

We know Goddard was fed by an 11 Ghz spur from the Garden City site
in Arlington, VA. This 1951 site first brought network TV to DC from
NYC. [While the 300 ft tower remains, the building was just recently torn
down for a housing development.]

My question is: I'm dubious that NASA would have let everything depend
on single points of failure, but we've not found any sign of alternative
access to GSFC or the other Centers. Does anyone here have knowledge
of the feeds to the Centers? Someone recalled an engineer "Karl
Martersteck" who might know details; does anyone know him?


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is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433