[HN Gopher] NRO Manned Orbiting Laboratory
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NRO Manned Orbiting Laboratory
Author : pueblito
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-09-07 18:03 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (archive.org)
| areoform wrote:
| Here's an accident of history that most people don't realize. It
| is likely possible that MOL led to Vostok, which then led to the
| American commitment to the Space Race and Project Apollo+.
|
| Originally, leaders on both sides of the Atlantic were skeptical
| about a crewed space program. Eisenhower's attitude has been
| widely reported as,
|
| _> Why go to the Moon, he asked, if we don't have any enemies
| there?_
|
| [Rocket Age: The Race to the Moon and What It Took to Get There,
| George D. Morgan]
|
| And his attitudes were shared by most of his advisors and the
| senior administrators. Bob Gilruth has stated, on record, that
| during one meeting one of them remarked (and I believe this was
| in front of the POTUS), "It would be only the most expensive
| funeral [a] man has ever had."
| https://airandspace.si.edu/research/projects/oral-histories/...
|
| Everyone laughed.
|
| The attitude was similar behind the Iron Curtain. Despite the PR
| coup of Sputnik, Korolev, at best, received tepid support from
| the politburo,
|
| _> In 1958 the Soviets finally authorized Korolev to begin work
| on a manned space capsule, but budgeted no money to actually send
| it aloft. The Soviet military wanted satellites that could pass
| over the United States and other countries and point spy cameras
| below to keep watch. Khrushchev and the Politburo had feelings
| similar to Eisenhower--cosmonauts flying around in space just
| seemed like so much joyriding. The message given to Korolev was
| blunt: a "reconnaissance satellite is more important for the
| Motherland."_
|
| [Rocket Age: The Race to the Moon and What It Took to Get There,
| George D. Morgan]
|
| Both Eisenhower and Krushchev saw astronauts and crewed
| spaceflights as joy rides on the national dime. Almost everyone
| was politically against it.
|
| And then came MOL.
|
| In March 1959,
|
| _> the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, General
| Thomas D. White asked the USAF Director of Development Planning
| to prepare a long-range plan for a USAF space program. One
| project identified in the resulting document was a "manned
| orbital laboratory"_
|
| And then August of that year,
|
| _> The USAF Air Research and Development Command (ARDC) issued a
| request to the Aeronautical Systems Division (ASD) at Wright-
| Patterson Air Force Base on 1 September 1959 for a formal study
| to be conducted of a military test space station (MTSS)._
|
| These two events winded up reaching the Soviets, and one plucky
| scientist in particular - Sergei Korolev. He spun up the idea of
| an equivalent military space station++, and he got the funding he
| needed to _actually_ send someone up in the capsules he had been
| designing.
|
| Arguably, without MOL the Soviets wouldn't have fully funded
| Vostok, and Gagarin wouldn't have beaten Alan Shepard into space
| by a few chance weeks. And a charismatic POTUS then wouldn't have
| had his VP, Johnson, draw up plans for a counter-proposal that
| then led to the Apollo Program and the Space Race.
|
| + The links go a bit deeper when you realize that Neil Armstrong
| qualified as a MOL astronaut before he became one with NASA.
|
| ++ What's funny is that they got what they paid for. After his
| death, the Salyut stations that the Soviets put up were military
| and likely performed surveillance activities similar to what was
| proposed with MOL.
| varjag wrote:
| I view it as an endearing arch-American interpretation why
| their loss still has to be their victory ;)
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| But does it have an artillery piece?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| When a storeroom was opened and mysterious blue space suits were
| discovered, it made a bit of a splash at the time:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/features/found_mol_spacesu...
| gedy wrote:
| This was originally going to be launched from Vandenberg AFB in
| California into polar orbit to cover more of the Earth. SLC-6 was
| never used for MOL but was later rebuilt for the Space Shuttle
| military flights, which were cancelled after Challenger disaster.
| I snuck around their back in the 90s, cool place.
| trothamel wrote:
| For those who don't know what this is, the Manned Orbiting
| Laboratory was a plan in the 1960s to create a manned space
| station with a large telescope in it, for the purpose of
| reconnaissance. Essentially, a manned spy satellite.
|
| The reason for this was that, at the time, spy satellites would
| take pictures on film, which would then be landed in capsules and
| interpreted - hence, there would be a significant delay between
| when a photo was taken, and when it could be used. The idea would
| be that the astronauts would be able to take pictures and
| interpret film on-orbit, and relay back the results.
|
| As the ability to scan film in orbit was developed, and
| eventually electronic devices like CCDs, the MOL was cancelled
| before it became operation. Several of the MOL Astronauts
| transferred over to NASA, and eventually flew on the Space
| Shuttle.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The idea would be that the astronauts would be able to take
| pictures and interpret film on-orbit
|
| That is a modern take on the problem. At the time, the
| astronaut's role was to interpret the situation and ensure the
| best photographs were taken. Getting a spy sat to point at the
| correct location, at the correct time, and take a good
| photograph was a huge engineering challenge. But a person
| looking through a viewfinder could ensure that every snap was
| useable rather than another picture of Russian trees. They were
| never going to sit in space with magnifying glasses and do
| actual image analysis, a process that takes hours and many
| different people. They would evaluate a target for the most
| interesting details and ensure those details made it into
| frame.
|
| And unlike satellites, a manned station could take photographs
| of targets of opportunity, targets that cannot be pre-
| programmed such as a moving ship.
| roywiggins wrote:
| See also:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz
|
| (Almaz ended up being the direct ancestor of the core life
| support module of the ISS)
| misnome wrote:
| I wonder if this was the original inspiration for Thunderbird
| 5?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| MOL, Dyna-Soar, Lifting Bodies, X-15 ... my favorite era of
| space exploration.
|
| Damn you, Robert McNamara: instead of Space Command we got a
| Vietnam "conflict".
| nickff wrote:
| Small correction and addendum: Bob Crippen was a MOL astronaut
| who flew on Skylab (via an Apollo capsule, and pre-shuttle),
| and also flew on the first shuttle launch.
| dang wrote:
| One remarkable past thread:
|
| _Manned Orbiting Laboratory_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20107534 - June 2019 (4
| comments)
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