In the world of public policy, there are few truly new ideas. Rather certain theories come in and out of fashion with slight variations. In military spaceflight, once such concept that keeps reappearing periodically are using small satellites as a replacement for the large and expensive spacecraft the Pentagon and National Reconnaissance Office have traditionally preferred.
Indeed, the Pentagon has again been toying with the idea of smallsats for the last few years. With that in mind, Dwayne Day offers up the curious history of Stacksat, an Air Force launch in 1990 with three small experimental satellites back when smallsats were last in fashion. I say curious because the Stacksat story involves Les Aspen, DARPA, 60 Minutes, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and an old ICBM with an underperforming engine.
