ASAT Test-1959

From NJT comes this video of a series of air-launched ballistic missile tests in the late `50s:

The missile's code name was High Virgo. The ASAT test failed. At the same time as the High Virgo program, the Air Force was running the Bold Orion ALBM tests, air-launched from a B-47. The ASAT test, a few weeks after the High Virgo attempt, did get close enough to a satellite to destroy it with a nuke warhead.

At a time when there probably weren't a dozen satellites in orbit, the Air Force was already playing with how to shoot one down. Brute force ASAT weapons, as the Chinese accidentally demonstrated, would end up denying everyone the use of orbital satellites.