> Way longer than that. The first KH-11 satellites that Hubble shares its design with were in orbit in the late 1970s.

I'm not sure if it actually "shares its design" with KH-11, but has a more indirect connection, e.g.:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23150092:

> My favorite KH-11/Hubble story is that during the design of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA originally wanted a 3 meter mirror. However when they began to design and budget the satellite they were quietly told they should reconsider and use a 2.4 meter mirror, as this would be significantly cheaper since they would be able to leverage existed machinery capable of created mirrors of that size and precision. That infrastructure and manufacturing process had already been created a decade earlier for Keyhole.

For historical details of some of the subsystems/stuff that ended up in this category of craft, google "history of Ball aerospace" or "eastman kodak NRO history"

For instance: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/5003/1

> Way longer than that. The first KH-11 satellites that Hubble shares its design with were in orbit in the late 1970s.

That's all fascinating stuff! What are some books that cover the start of the pursuit of those advanced machines? Can I say warfare machinery? Was it the end of WWII and a race to self-protect, was it the start of cold war, establishment of NATO, or a particular administration?

It occurs to me that projecting the image of NASA struggling (but always successfully) to deploy this kind of tech might intended be a part of the cover.