For me, one of the highlights of the era that conceived the skyhook was the CORONA program. The spy satellites in this early era would use film and, unlike their civilian counterparts, they didn't want to rely on a low resolution copy that had been transmitted to the ground. So they would shoot the canisters out, deorbit them, and then snatch them mid-air with a plane.

That's just insane from any reasonable perspective. I can't imagine how they made it work even once let alone dozens of times.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/CORONA_f...