thanks for sharing,
@Gigem ...
one thing I learned dealing with gov't, contracts, black budgets, etc, over the years while id did so was not to ask a lot or even a few questions unless you were intentionally read in. that doesn't mean you don't have some SA of things going on in the peripheral of your lane. honestly and factually, i always believed the space program to be a slush fund - one mighty cozy to the military and other smaller groups such as DARPA and DTRA. Add to that the interests intersect in some occasions making overt pursuit of something reasonable.
as a for instance, we can identify a radioactive isotope from a very far distance by pointing a laser at it. we can also point into a plume aka cloud and identify not only if there are biologicals in it but what size they are, and how they react under introduced conditions- identifying, with certainty, the presence of potentially harmful and purposeful biological agents... again, from a vast distance.
there is a thing called the 'hazmat ID' and later the 'hazmat360' which is a computer/device in a pelican box with a little glass tray, and which has a crystal under it a laser is scattered through... anything positioned on that tray can be analyzed and identified in seconds.... the chemistry of it's structure, that is. These things came out of funding, at least, through the 'space program'.
