Some information about what my Dad was working on at TRW

USA spy satellites during the Cold War


TRW

Here (Los Angeles), close to the major contractors for the spy satellites, such as TRW at Redondo Beach, California, and also the major launch site, Vandenberg Air Force Base, the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) is principally headquartered. (p.249)

In mid-December 1966 the contract for the [new SIGINT satellite program] was awarded to TRW, and the sensor kit went to Aerojet Electrosystems. Twenty months later, on August 6, 1968, the first of the series, designated DSP code 949 [DSP=Defense Support Program], was secretly shot aloft from the Eastern Test Range at Cape Carnaval, Florida. (...) The satellite was placed in an extremely high, 22'300-mile geosynchroneous orbit. At this height, the speed of the satellite would be almost exactly that of the earth, thus allowing it, in effect, to hover over a single spot on the earth's surface near the equator. Perched over Singapore, the long-nosed bird could "see" almost half the earth, including most of China and western Russia, but missing northernmost Sibiria. (p.250)

Under the National Reconnaissance Office framework, the CIA awarded the contract to TRW, which put together the satellite in its windowless M-4 building at Redondo Beach. It was the same facility that built the early-warning DSP Code 949-647 satellites, but, unlike it's predecessors, Rhyolite was pure SIGINT. (p.254)

---

Apparently believing that satellites at extreme geosynchronous orbits were incapable of intercepting signals as directional as their very-high-frequency (VHF) and microwave band used for the transmission of telemetry data, the Soviet Union never bothered to encode telemetry. This reportedly changed in mid-1977, about six months after the USSR learned about Rhyolite from a jerk janitor (sealing secrets to the KGB) working at TRW. (p.255)

-- James Bamford: THE PUZZLE PALACE, 1982. 


Also see

https://fas.org/spp/military/program/sigint/overview.htm




I actually saw the lab where my Dad was doing his work for this. I guess he could bring his kid. It was all top secret. It was laser communication. And this is the first time I have seen such a thing mentioned in print:http://edition.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/05/18/spy.satellite/index.html 


[The first years if work at TRW were for the Infrared satellites. They had obviously contacted and hired my dad because he was the inventor of such a kind of system at the Army base in Monmouth Fort in N.J. as you can see in the Life Magazine article concerning that,- July 26, 1954]

laws about lashon hara [slander]

In the laws about lashon hara [slander] what is an apikorus [heretic] comes up.  Yet what is an apikorus [heretic] seems to me to be unclear. There is the three way debate between the Rambam, Joseph Albo and the Abravenal about how many principles of faith are really required.

[That is not necessarily the same thing as Torah  from Sinai. A person might believe the Torah was given by Divine inspiration but not necessarily the whole thing at Mount Sinai.

[The Rambam also is exacting in his words--one must believe in Torah from Heaven, and says nothing about Torah from Sinai.]

I think that the Rambam was right for considering Islam to be Monotheism-not idolatry.

I think that the Rambam was right for considering Islam to be  Monotheism-not idolatry. Even if there are troubles with Islam today, that does not seem any different that the troubles with violent Islam in the days of the Rambam. And even so the Rambam said what ever the problems with Islam are, that does not mean to deny that it is Monotheism. [That is, it is not idolatry].

But how can we tell nowadays what other lunatic ideas have taken over our minds?

Toxo Plasmosis is a parasite that causes the mouse to think the cat is attractive.
Dr Sapolsky  from Stanford asks in the video where he talks about this "Who knows what else is out there?"

You see a similar things with wasps and caterpillars. It is not just that the wasp uses the caterpillar's body as a hot house for its eggs but that the mind of the caterpillar is taken over as you can see in this article.

This brings to the larger problem of the fact that the Dark Side can take over people's minds. People can become possessed by forces not of their own making.

[The force of the Dark Side I got an impression about by reading about the many revolutionary movements of the 1800's. The main idea there was that just by throwing out the "System", and all authority, everything would somehow become peachy. People would just work for altruistic reasons. There would never be a worker who slacked off. Now it is easy to see the lunacy of the political movements of the 1800's. But how can we tell nowadays what other lunatic ideas have taken over our minds? [Actually come to think of it, this might not be that hard to figure out. ]

A debate about trust in God-whether it should be along with effort or if it is best to do no effort at all

Even though it is generally recognized that there is a debate about trust in God-whether it should be along with effort;-- or if it is best to do no effort at all. Still you can see this last type in the חובות לבבות (Obligations of the Heart) as a מעלה (good trait) --a great thing even if it might not be an obligation. Therefore, it makes the most sense to divide the issue into (1) what is obligated and (2) what is simply better and more preferred, but not an actual obligation.

The general opinion is trust with effort is from the Obligations of the Heart by Behayee Ibn Pakuda, and trust with no effort is from the Gra and Ramban. But looking at the very end of the Gate of Trust in the Obligations of the Heart you can see this distinction is not at all clear.


[This debate is the traditional source of the Litvak yeshiva approach of just sitting and learning Torah and waiting and trusting in God to take care of one's needs. That however is what I understood when I was in yeshiva. Nowadays some Litvak people seem to think learning Torah is a good way to make money--& a legitimate way also. [I heard that from such people myself. They seem to think that if one is learning Torah without making money from it, then he is wasting his time!! ]
There have even been situations when people urged one fellow's wife to divorce him because he was learning Torah for its own sake. And those were people that were themselves in kollel!!

In terms of this basic issue I would have to say that most secular Jews that I have known are a lot closer to the viewpoint of Torah than the pseudo religious world. [That is in terms of believing that trust in God is what everything depends on--whether with or without effort.]

Tosphot.I would have to say how you deal with Tosphot probably depends on your situation. If you have a learning partner with a high IQ, that is probably the best thing.

It is hard to know how to deal with Tosphot.
I have avoided this subject because it seems to me that people in a Litvak yeshiva would have to go about Tosphot in a different way than me.
Since I anyway try my best to divide my time between Torah and Physics, that gives me a kind of space to deal with Tosphot in my own way which would not work for people in a Lithuanian Yeshiva. Since my time is limited anyway what I usually do is just to take one page of Gemara and go over it with Tosphot for about a month. That means I am trying to review each Tosphot every day.  That is from where the ideas come from that I wrote in my two small books on Bava Metzia and Ideas in Shas. The fact that I was doing a lot of review on those Tosphot or on Rav Shach or Rav Haim Halevi helped me to come to the ideas that I wrote down there.
But when I was a  Litvak in a Litvak yeshiva doing Gemara all day, I clearly was not doing that. I was just reviewing each  Tosphot about twice, and then go straight to the Maharsha and Pnei Yehoshua. I would try to get the basic idea and then simply go on. [Understanding the Pnei Yehoshua and Maharasha as you can imagine took me a lot more  review than just twice. Sometimes I had to get up to about 15 times of review before I would get the idea.]
And then there was the time I was learning with my learning partner who has an IQ many magnitudes above me, and he would prepare, so when I got to the learning session he had already thought  of some of the difficulties with Tosphot.

So in conclusion  I would have to say how you deal with Tosphot probably depends on your situation.
If you have a learning partner with a high IQ, that is probably the best thing. If you are in a Litvak yeshiva, then in fact it probably makes the most sense to try to make progress. Learn the Tosphot, Maharsha and Pnei Yehoshua a few times and then go on. Also have a separate session in the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. [That is I think the best idea with the Avi Ezri is just to plow through it straight since Rac Shach usually explains the issues clearly before he gets to his basic new idea. It is probably the clearest sefer on learning Gemara in depth that I have ever seen or ever heard of]

learning Torah.

I see the Hafetz Haim has a section of his book that deals with the importance of learning Torah.
That is after the first two sections of the Hafetz Haim he has the section Guarding of the Tongue.
In that section he has a whole subsection dealing with learning Torah. With that I agree wholeheartedly. The trouble is nowadays the world of Torah has been penetrated by the Sitra Achra [the Dark Side]. That makes the issue difficult to resolve. I experienced this myself with the religious world which imagines itself to be keeping Torah.
What might seem like the best solution would be to stick with the straight Litvak yeshivas that more or less try to follow the European Model of what a Lithuanian Yeshiva is supposed to be. But I have found that even though that might be the best solution available, still in many places the Dark Side has managed to find entrance.

There is another kind of approach that people learn the Gemara Rishonim, Tur and the two books of Rav Joseph Karo, the House of Joseph  בית יוסף and the Laid Out Table and take exams for the Rabanut in Israel. From what I can tell this a good approach if one really intends to learn Torah not for money but rather accepts money in order to learn Torah.

Still since  many people have been severely hurt and burnt by Torah Scholars that are demons,  it makes more sense to me to learn Torah at home and just to avoid the religious altogether.

I figure there must be some kind of measuring stick to tell the difference between the real thing Torah of holiness and the torah of the Sitra Achra. Mainly my suggestion would be to follow the Gra and Rav Shach to the letter.

[Just to repeat a point I have made before. I do not think Rav Nahman from Breslov is included in the letter of excommunication that was signed by the Gra. See the book that brings down the entire letter and be exact in understanding  its language.]