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The Manned Orbiting Laboratory was an American proposal to send a manned spy satellite into space in the 1960s.
It would obtain high-resolution photographic images of American adversaries, such as the Soviet Union.
The top-secret program has faced criticism in a decade marred by the economic costs of war.
Gathering intelligence on foreign nations was no easy task for America in the 1960s.
Spy planes like the U-2 captured high-resolution images but risked 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 in transmitting data to photo interpreters.
Enter the manned orbital laboratory.
The program aimed to expand the U.S. military's capabilities to monitor foreign adversaries at a time of high geopolitical tensions by combining two methods of reconnaissance: operating a manned spy satellite in space.
Manned space operations
The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was a joint project of the U.S. Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office, motivated by the need for rapid and reliable intelligence following the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and during the Cold War and Vietnam War.
Then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara publicly unveiled the program in December 1963, and President Lyndon B. Johnson formally approved the project in August 1965. Although the program was intended to give the U.S. military a reconnaissance point in space, it was portrayed as an operation to discover what people in space are capable of.
"This program will bring us new knowledge of what humans can do in space," Johnson said at the time. "It will allow us to connect that capability to America's defense. It will develop technology and equipment that will help advance manned and unmanned spaceflight. And it will make it possible to conduct their new and rewarding experiments. "
The story continues
Operations on the MOL began in the spring of 1964. The MOL sought to obtain high-resolution photographic images of foreign adversaries such as the Soviet Union. Although satellites collected information effectively, they faced limitations such as cloud cover and retrieval delays that prevented them from consistently producing useful photographic images. An operator on board the satellite would allow them to circumvent these problems and identify where and when to capture an image in real time.
"The idea was that people could help pick out targets in real time, identify cloud cover and store film," said Richard Truly, a former MOL crew member, in 2022. "The system had limited resources because it was a film system was, not electronic as we have now. But the whole idea was to have a much more capable intelligence capability because you had people there who could think, act and take action in real time on the fly."
A space station over 18 meters long
The MOL program originally planned six launches with a flight duration of two to four weeks - an ambitious feat considering that the longest time a human had previously been in space was eight days during NASA's Gemini V mission in 1965.
A two-man crew would take off in a modified Gemini capsule atop a spacecraft that would house the MOL. After the flight duration, the capsule would detach and return to Earth, while the MOL would remain in orbit.
Suggested configuration
The proposed configuration of the MOL was that the front of the spacecraft would house the transfer tunnel and fuel cells, behind it the laboratory would be divided into working and living compartments, and the rear of the spacecraft would house the equipment module and breathing tanks.
Aside from the laboratory where astronauts would conduct experiments, the MOL's primary payload would be a telescope used for military exploration.
The telescope was designed with a primary mirror with a diameter of 180 cm and the imaging system was codenamed Dorian.
Selection of astronauts
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 a national space program. Lawrence was among the last selection group completed in June 1967, but he died in an F-104 Starfighter crash in late 1967.
Astronaut training
MOL crew members had a busy training regiment to prepare for various unexpected events in space. They received survival training to prepare for unexpected disconnection in the event of spacecraft leakage.
Crew members also trained in spacecraft simulators and underwent underwater training at the Navy Dive School in Key West, Florida.
Most importantly, they received training at the National Photographic Interpretation Center to learn more about photographic intelligence and subject recognition - a central part of the MOL's program objective.
No spacewalk required
The external design of the MOL spacecraft was similar to that of NASA's Gemini. But the biggest difference was that a hatch in the heat shield allowed the astronauts to go between the capsule at the front of the spacecraft to the laboratory and living quarters in the back without a spacewalk.
Narrow passages
Astronauts needed a special space suit that was flexible enough to crawl through the narrow passage between the Gemini capsule and the laboratory on the MOL.
Special spacesuits
Although the space suit never actually made it into space, NASA has used the technology behind it in the future development of spacesuits.
Experiments and exploration
Although the MOL's existence was publicly known, its mission to collect photographic intelligence on foreign adversaries was top secret. However, press coverage at the time portrayed the MOL as a reconnaissance mission, and the program's top secret classification prevented officials from denying the claims.
Amid concerns about how other countries would respond to the U.S. military operating in space, NRO Chief Program Security Officer Louis Mazza suggested "admitting that we have a Department of Defense-manned orbital laboratory , and its mission is to determine man's potential usefulness in space. ."
Thus, MOL operations expanded to include ten experiments called Project Manifold, which studied cell growth and new technologies on board 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 work began on the project.
The launch was only a test, consisting of a Gemini capsule and a mockup of the MOL without the imaging payload on top of a Titan-IIIC rocket. The mockup entered Earth's orbit and released three satellites.
The Project Manifold experiments were also aboard the MOL mockup and were intended to operate for 75 days, but the MOL stopped transmitting data after just 30 days before disappearing from orbit on January 9, 1967.
Concerns and criticism
Since the program's inception, it has been met with criticism and skepticism about the value of the LDC. In 1969, the program was years behind schedule and over budget.
Because the MOL operated under the guise of testing the "potential utility of man in space," the program publicly looked all too similar to NASA's Apollo program, so much so that Congress saw it as a duplicate and cut its funding by 60% in 1967.
MOL advocates pushed to combine USAF efforts with NASA, which was met with resistance because it would damage NASA's image as a peaceful agency.
As budget cuts and delays plagued the MOL, military reconnaissance technology became obsolete, rendering the program's original intent virtually useless.
Cancellation
President Richard Nixon canceled the MOL program on June 10, 1969 - just four years after Johnson approved the program.
At the time of the cancellation, 192 military personnel, 100 civilians, and 13,187 contractors were working on the MOL program.
Although the MOL never officially reached space, its legacy inspired future space missions. The MOL waste management system was used aboard Skylab, America's first manned research laboratory in space. The technology intended for the MOL's imaging system helped develop NASA's Earth detection systems.
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