It is not that simple. Hubble was developed in the open by nasa civil servants who did not have access to KH-11 design. The non-optical systems are entirely different between the two platforms. Some of the contractors were shared however, and may or may not have reused IP and tooling. A lot of it is convergent evolution though. The size of the space shuttle payload bay was set by the DOD to be large enough to carry or return a KH 11 spy satellite, even though it was never used for that purpose AFAIK. The size of the Hubble was obviously the max size they could fit in the space shuttle. So they both ended up being identically sized optical telescopes, and it’s not surprising that similar design requirements end up making similar devices.
My grandfather worked on some aspect of the Hubble design (I was young; I think the timing would have put him at Lockheed M&S in Sunnyvale at that time). He never said anything about his work on it being classified. He used to say "when I retired, the stack of NDAs was this tall" and show his index finger and thumb being about 3 inches apart.
He was a very serious guy and would never talk about anything he shouldn't have. So yes, I believe the fact that he was willing to talk about Hubble meant it was done in the open. And also, he never expressed any sort of amazement that it was still up there, working. Why wouldn't it be?
Hubble was done in the open, this is an established fact. Since some of the contractors companies were the same, though usually not the same employees, it’s an open question we plebs may never know as to whether some aspects of KH-11 were declassified and shared with the workers doing Hubble.
But if we’re talking anecdotes, I worked at Lockheed as well, though not back then, and one of the stories I heard was that when the Hubble was in Sunnyvale to get tested in the vacuum chamber, one of the KH-11 workers stopped by to check it out. He spotted something that was a unique invention for the KH spy satellites and alerted the government. It took a LOT of paperwork to show that nope, it was just accidental convergent design. It was a tricky thing to sort out, but really the only way of solving that problem given the identical requirements.
> usually not the same employees, it’s an open question we plebs may never know
The impression was that my grandfather did classified work more often than not; he probably would have been one of the crossovers if it had been the case. He was exceptionally severe if any discussion came too close to whatever line existed, not that anyone else knew if or where such a line was. My mother and her siblings did not find it to be a very happy childhood, on the subject of anecdotes :). The stuff he talked about was fascinating, but you learned quickly not to ask many questions.
We don't know how much of it is the same but the mirror is very similar.
> KH-11s are believed to resemble the Hubble Space Telescope in size and shape, as they were shipped in similar containers. Their length is believed to be 19.5 meters, with a diameter of up to 3 meters (120 in).[5][23] A NASA history of the Hubble,[24] in discussing the reasons for switching from a 3-meter main mirror to a 2.4-meter (94 in) design, states: "In addition, changing to a 2.4-meter mirror would lessen fabrication costs by using manufacturing technologies developed for military spy satellites".
> In January 2011, NRO donated to NASA two space Optical Telescope Assemblies with 2.4 meters (94 in) diameter primary mirrors,[53][54][55][56] similar in size to the Hubble Space Telescope, yet with steerable secondary mirrors and shorter focal length (resulting in a wider field of view). These were initially believed to be KH-11 series "extra hardware", but were later attributed to the cancelled Future Imaging Architecture program.[57] The mirrors are to be used by NASA as the primary and spare for the Roman Space Telescope.
And the shuttle was designed to launch and recover DoD payloads. There's a lot of "military synergy" in the early space program. No one else was interested in paying.
I was a huge Ambrosia fan back in the day, so thank you for stopping by!
One thing I don't understand is why Ambrosia never put their back catalogue on Steam. At least with EV Nova's Windows version, it seems to me that if you stripped out the licencing system and tossed it up on Steam, you could have had a nice income stream from there. I'd have bought it.
Most of the other games you might have been able to package into an emulator, like GOG games running in DOSbox.
But that's my outside perspective, so maybe there were bigger legal or technical hurdles?
I was also a fan before I was an employee. I know the love they inspired!
I had moved on from Ambrosia before Steam became a thing, but have also wondered the same. I did point this thread out to Andrew, and he has dropped in some replies, so maybe he can shed some light. I would guess it is a case of all the legal shenanigans needed to make it happen cleanly. Various people external to Ambrosia own various parts of the rights, so you would need to get a bunch of people on board and spend money on lawyers.
I also thought some games could be suited to something like the Nintendo Switch. However, that would obviously need a bunch of technical work to convert it (something I admit to having looked into late last year!).
I spent about fifteen years working at Melbourne House in Australia (which went from being independent to being bought by Infogrammes/Atari, and was then bought by Krome, before finally being wound down, but it was mostly the same awesome group of talented folks for most of that time. At the end, I’d been there for fifteen years and still wasn’t in the top ten list of longest-serving employees; I felt like only a medium-sized fish in a very large pond).
After that, I went to an EA studio for a couple years (which was very difficult for me, as I was put on a smallish team where I literally had more years of experience than everyone else on the team added together; I was suddenly in the very strange situation where any silly thing I said would just be taken as gospel and acted upon, and it took me a very long time to figure out how to behave to mitigate the risks of that). Then I did a couple years in (non-games) statistics software to pad out my resume a bit and show that I could do non-games work as well.
After that, I started freelancing, doing both games and non-games work, to support myself while I worked on my own game, which is now up on Steam in Early Access. Freelancing was a lot of fun, and I love the freedom to switch between projects and solve the most difficult problems of one project and then moving on to a new, different project with a new ‘most difficult’ problem to solve. Though obviously the lack of job security was a bit of a strange new experience, after spending my whole career on a salary!
I also spent a couple years acting as an advisor on the local Film Victoria’s games funding grant program, helping select projects to allocate grant funds toward and just generally advising applicants (whether or not they eventually received funding). I’m super proud of the work those folks do and that I got to be a small part of it for a while. I feel like the blossoming we’ve seen here in the local indie games scene has a lot to do with their support for the industry.
