Meeting the challenge

As one of the few Americans (or the only one?) who bugged the heck out of their elected leaders for this satellite's declassification, I was elated to hear of a "first-person" tale of the KH-9 Hexagon's human element - y'know, the stories you hear around the family kitchen table from grandma or grandpa about "something they worked on a long time ago...

The book is mostly about the Danbury days of Big Bird. There were other Perkin-Elmer personnel assigned elsewhere that sacrificed a lot of their time away form their families working 12 hour days for months on end to keep the birds working properly on-orbit.

Phil Pressel and his colleagues at Perkin Elmer have created a marvelous story of the development of the camera system for the HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite, arguably the most complex system placed into earth orbit and an achievement that has played a crucial role in national security. The book suffers from careless editing, but this hardly detracts from the compelling narrative.