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Comment by one2know | Hacker News Reader

I don't have access to classified military secrets, but you don't think they would build a vehicle that could return 15 tons of payload to earth to retrieve US satellites? US could just build and launch a new satellite easier and cheaper than bring one down to fix only to launch it again.

Obviously there is the movie about Salyut 7 that depicts the shuttle trying to capture the station. Salyut 3 had a machine gun attached to it.

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Back in the 70s spy satellites used film cameras and used to return the film in re-entry capsules. There’s a _really_ good (fictional) move called Ice Station Zebra about a retrieval mission in the arctic that goes wrong.

Retrieving the satellite allows you to safely recover the film, and re-equip the satellite with new film and propellant. The latter is important because it’s useful for spy satellites to be able to change their orbits frequently to observe new targets or evade tracking.

Also bear in mind some spy satellites are huge and incredibly costly. The Hubble Space Telescope is based on a spy satellite series.

I read something about naval engagements with soviet ships. The US ships were trying to find something underwater before the soviets did while at the same time not alerting the soviet ships as to the location of what they were trying to find. It became clear they were both looking for one of these film canisters that maybe they weren't able to retrieve in mid-air. People today can't imagine the stakes during the cold war.

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