Re: The Grand Archive

Jonathan McDowell (jcm@head-cfa.harvard.edu)
Tue, 01 Oct 1996 15:39:35 -0400

Rainer -
 Pierre's paper archive is a great resource. But the real question
is, can we get the electronic stuff out of NORAD? Some
old off line archive must still exist. Can anyone on the list
shed any light on this?
  Failing that, there are two important things to do.
Long term, we must preserve Pierre's archive and get it on line,
if necessary by taking bunches of TLEs and typing them in by hand.
(OCR will not work well on old, faded paper, I suspect).
Short term, can we identify a short list of crucial payloads in the
pre-1975 era whose
TLEs are of historical interest? I suggest this includes:
  - all piloted flights
  - all 'mystery satellites' (Kosmos-102, 1964-87A, Polyot, etc..)
  - all manuevrable satellites
   - satellites in constellations, where we want to study orbital
  plane relationships.

This would be a much more manageable list for manual typing in.
Would Pierre be receptive to visitors with laptops rifling
(reverentially) through his data? (Hmm.. I *do* miss France...)
  - Jonathan McDowell