A lot of my dad's career was spent trying to avoid WWIII with Russia. First there was the U-2 project which was commissioned by Eisenhauer specifically because we did not know what was going on in the USSR. After they had the A Bomb, and then the H-Bomb, some people in the Eisenhauer administration [e.g sec. of the Navy] thought to strike a pre-emptive strike first. Thank God, Eisenhauer thought that was a dumb idea. But we still did not know what was going on there. Maybe they were preparing a first strike against the West? No one knew. The only way to find out was to go and look. ,We could not just ask them. Thus was born the U-2 project. [After my dad's creation of the camera, he went to invent a super sharp copy machine and marketed that for 5 years.] Then the USA needed his expertise in making infrared satellites -mainly for the same reason--to see what was going on there after the U-2 flights over the USSR were impossible.

After those satellites were launched, they got him to create a system of laser beam communication between satellites. Even though this last one is a major achievement, the reason for it was mundane--simply it was so the Soviets could not eavesdrop on our communications.  All this took the major portion of my dad's professional life.

Here is my dad working on the U-2 project