On Fri, 5 Jan 2001, James B. DiGriz wrote:
I highly recommend anyone go see it if they get the chance. I also welcome any corrections or additions to 30-year old schoolboy memories.
jbdigriz
Ok, I'll correct myself then. It never was a commercial satellite communications center, but the 85 ft. VHF dishes sure could pick up commercial traffic. It did do telemetry for a lot of vital birds, too. It was the 2nd of NASA's STDN (Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network) VHF telemetry stations, opening in 1963. The first was outside Fairbanks, Alaska. Mostly for unmanned LEO satellites like GEOS-3, but also used when needed on manned missions like Apollo-Soyuz. Data could be routed in real-time to other NASA telemetry stations like Wallops Flight Center for digitizing and processing, or taped and mailed. So there were some serious phone lines running into the place even then. It was mainly used for NASA missions, then, and some DOD stuff. I'm sure some other TLA's had some presence, as well. You can easily see why the NSA would be interested in it, at any rate, given what we know about Echelon now. And it was already built to the nines, isolated, secluded, and crawling with security systems. Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute has a website at http://www.pari.edu that has more informatation and lots of pictures. See especially http://www.pari.edu/ToursHistory.htm. jbdigriz