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The Manned Orbiting Laboratory was a US proposal in the 1960s to send a manned spy satellite into space.
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High-resolution photographic images of enemies of the United States such as the Soviet Union will be obtained.
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The top-secret program was met with criticism in the middle of the decade, marred by the economic cost of the war.
Gathering intelligence on foreign countries was no easy task for America in the 1960s.
Spy planes like the U-2 captured high-resolution images but ran the risk of provoking foreign governments and being shot down. Photo reconnaissance satellites were safe from anti-aircraft missiles and less provocative than overflights, but they produced lower quality images and were slow at transmitting data to photo interpreters.
Enter the Manned Orbital Laboratory.
The program aimed to expand the U.S. military’s capabilities to spy on foreign adversaries during high geopolitical tensions by combining two methods of reconnaissance: operating a crewed spy satellite in space.
Manned space operations
The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was a joint project between the U.S. Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office and was motivated by the need for rapid and reliable intelligence following the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and during the Cold War and Vietnam War.
Then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara publicly announced the program in December 1963, and President Lyndon B. Johnson formally approved the project in August 1965. The goal of the program was to provide the US military with a reconnaissance observation post in space. As an operation to find out what humans can do in space.
“This program will bring us new knowledge about what humans can do in space,” Johnson said at the time. “It will enable us to connect this capability to America’s defense. It will develop technology and equipment that will help advance human and unmanned spaceflight. It will also enable new and rewarding experiments.”
Operations on MOL began in the spring of 1964. MOL sought to obtain high-resolution photographic images of foreign enemies such as the Soviet Union. While satellites effectively collected intelligence, they faced limitations such as cloud cover and time delays in access, preventing them from consistently capturing useful photographic images. An operator on the satellite will allow them to overcome these issues and determine where and when an image will be captured in real time.
“The idea was that people could help select targets in real time, identify cloud cover and record the film,” Richard Truly, a former MOL crew member, said in 2022. “The resources of the system were limited because it was a film system, not electronic like we have now. But the idea was to have a much more capable intelligence capability because there were people there who could think, act and act in real time while in flight.”
A 60 meter long space station
The MOL program had originally planned to conduct six launches with a flight duration of two to four weeks; An ambitious feat, considering the longest time a human has ever spent in space was eight days during NASA’s Gemini V mission in 1965.
A two-person crew would take off in a modified Gemini capsule atop a spacecraft that would house the MOL. After the duration of the flight, the capsule would separate and return to Earth while MOL remained in orbit.
Recommended configuration
The proposed configuration of MOL was that the front of the spacecraft would house the transfer tunnel and fuel cells, behind this would be the laboratory divided into working and living sections, and the rear of the spacecraft would be the equipment module and breathing tanks.
In addition to the laboratory where astronauts will conduct experiments, MOL’s primary payload will be a telescope used for military reconnaissance.
The telescope was designed to have a 72-inch diameter primary mirror, and the imaging system was codenamed Dorian.
Astronaut selection
After three rounds, the US Air Force selected 17 pilots to participate in the MOL program.
One of the pilots, Robert H. Lawrence, was the first African American selected as an astronaut by any national space program. Lawrence was among the final batch of selections completed in June 1967, but was killed in an F-104 Starfighter crash in late 1967.
astronaut training
MOL crews had an intense training regiment to prepare for a variety of unexpected events while in space. They were given survival training to prepare for unexpected deorbiting in the event of a spacecraft leak.
Crew members also received training on spacecraft simulators and underwent underwater training at the Navy diving school in Key West, Florida.
Most importantly, they received training from the National Center for Photographic Interpretation to learn more about photographic intelligence and subject recognition, a central part of MOL’s program goal.
No need for a spacewalk
The exterior design of MOL’s spacecraft was similar to NASA’s Gemini. But the biggest difference was that a hatch opening into the heat shield allowed astronauts to pass through the capsule at the front of the spacecraft to the laboratory and living quarters at the back without a spacewalk.
narrow passages
The astronauts needed a special spacesuit flexible enough to allow them to pass through the narrow passage between the Gemini capsule and the laboratory at MOL.
Special space suits
Although the spacesuit never went into space, NASA used the technology behind it in future spacesuit development.
Experiments and discovery
While the MOL’s existence was public, its mission to gather photographic intelligence on foreign enemies was highly secret. However, media reports at the time reported that MOL was a reconnaissance mission, and the program’s classification as top secret prevented officials from denying the allegations.
Amid concerns about how other countries would react to the U.S. military operating in space, NRO’s Chief Program Security Officer Louis Mazza proposed “recognizing that DOD has a manned orbital laboratory and its mission is to determine the potential usefulness of man in space.” “
Thus, MOL operations were expanded to include 10 experiments called Project Manifold, which studied cell growth and new technologies on the spacecraft.
test launch
The first and only launch of the MOL program took place at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on November 3, 1966, two years after project work began.
The launch was merely a test, consisting of a Gemini capsule and a mock-up MOL without the imaging payload aboard the Titan-IIIC rocket. The model entered Earth orbit and released three satellites.
Project Manifold experiments were also conducted on the MOL model and were planned to operate for 75 days, but MOL stopped transmitting data just 30 days after deorbiting on January 9, 1967.
Concerns and criticisms
Since the program’s inception, it has been met with criticism and skepticism about the value of MOL. By 1969 the program was years behind schedule and over budget.
Because MOL operated under the guise of testing human “potential usefulness in space,” the program was publicly viewed as very similar to NASA’s Apollo program; So much so that Congress viewed it as a copycat and cut its funding by 60% in 1967.
MOL advocates have attempted to merge USAF efforts with NASA, but this has been met with pushback because it would damage NASA’s image as a peaceful institution.
As budget cuts and delays plagued MOL, military reconnaissance technology was becoming obsolete, rendering the original intent of the program almost useless.
Cancel
President Richard Nixon canceled the MOL program on June 10, 1969—just four years after Johnson approved the program.
At the time of cancellation, 192 military personnel, 100 civilians and 13,187 contractors were working in the MOL program.
Although MOL never officially went into space, its legacy inspired future space missions. MOL’s waste management system was used on Skylab, America’s first crewed research laboratory in space. Technology designed for MOL’s imaging system helped develop NASA’s earth sensing systems.
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