Hacker Cinema
Ice Station Zebra
1968 · Film · 149 min
Directed by John Sturges
A top-secret Soviet spy satellite -- using stolen Western technology -- malfunctions and then goes into a descent that lands it near an isolated Arctic research encampment called Ice Station Zebra, belonging to the British, which starts sending out distress signals before falling silent. The atomic submarine Tigerfish, commanded by Cmdr. James Ferraday, is dispatched to save them.
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8 comments on Hacker News
Even mentioned in a darkly humorous tone in the 1968 movie "Ice Station Zebra" (cold war thriller). The character played by Patrick McGoohan has a line: " The Russians put our camera made by our German scientists and your film made by your German scientists into their satellite made by their German scientists."
Is there a good history of spy satellites anywhere? It ought to be amazing - I remember watching Ice Station Zebra as a kid, where super-spies fought to the death over a canister of film, and now Google gives away better resolution photos.
The US downgraded moon photos to prevent Russians getting an idea of the quality, Russian subs were analysed with one photo and a scratch on the titanium plating. It would be great to see that playing out - technology, analysis and politics shown together.
So there is a certain "pedigree" problem with stuff randomly plucked from the internet - it I just love the James Bond-iness of a submarine cave, but also I remember Ice Station Zebra, where US and Russian spies battled it out on frozen Arctic to find a satellite film canister that had pictures of US and Russian nukes or something.
I mean, going in fifty years from satellite imagery of military hardware is national security level one to "lets just put it some on a blog and see who clicks" tells me something about the next war - you won't be able to fool the opposition into thinking you will attack from over there.
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.
My favorite movie on this topic is Ice Station Zebra: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063121/
And the mcguffin for the film Ice Station Zebra. Great film.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Station_Zebra
> Tell me what action/fantasy/sci-fi movie is not good guy vs. bad guy ?
Ice Station Zebra http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063121/
For anyone interested in the Cold War stuff, especially satellite image recovery. I recommend watching the movie (fictional) Ice Station Zebra [1]
Also, when it comes to satellites nothing blew my mind as much as learning the Hubble Space Telescope was initially created as a spy satellite [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Station_Zebra [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennan