Bamford's book "Body of Secrets" has a lot of good discussion on moon-bounce work by the NSA. As Phillip wrote, two of the main applications were passive eavesdropping on Soviet communucations (though satellites later did a *much* better job) and very non-directional communications to/from spy ships. At 04:03 PM 08/06/2001 -0400, Phillip H. Zakas wrote:
John Young Wrote: [...] What else is being done there remains to be disclosed.
Two applications I've heard of:
1. Here's an excerpt from a US Navy press release: "Jim Trexler was Lorenzen's project engineer for PAMOR (PAssive MOon Relay, a.k.a. 'Moon Bounce'), which collected interior Soviet electronics and communication signals reflected from the moon." URL: http://www.pao.nrl.navy.mil/rel-00/32-00r.html
2. On another site: "...The new Liberty was a 455-foot-long spy ship crammed with listening equipment and specialists to operate it. The vessel's most distinctive piece of hardware was a sixteen-foot-wide dish antenna that could bounce intercepted intelligence off the moon to a receiving station in Maryland in a ten-thousand-watt microwave signal that enabled it to transmit large quantities of information without giving away the Liberty's location.* *The system, known as TRSSCOMM, for Technical Research Ship Special Communications, had to be pointed at a particular spot on the moon while a computer compensated for the ship's rolling and pitching. The computers and the antenna s hydraulic steering mechanism did not work well together, creating frequent problems." URL: http://www.euronet.nl/~rembert/echelon/db08.htm
phillip