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NRO Manned Orbiting Laboratory

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61 pointspueblito25 comments

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.

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.

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz

(Almaz ended up being the direct ancestor of the core life support module of the ISS)

Crazy. I wonder why the ISS didn't get any cannons or missile tubes, since it seems those were de rigueur for the Soviet stations?!

It was the 90s, a new era of peace and friendship, and besides- who was going to shoot at who? The Americans (and Europeans, etc) are just down the hall.

Because no one elects to manage those free-flying microliabilities

I wonder if this was the original inspiration for Thunderbird 5?

>> 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.

> 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.

So does this imply that they'd still be packing film into some sort of reentry vehicle and booting it out the hatch periodically?

Well, they wouldn't be throwing it away. It would have come back with them or via dropped pods.

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".

He was so smug about it too, even to the end (see The Fog of War, 2003 Errol Morris)

So strange that the vision of an astronaut (or astronauts) high in orbit, operating cameras at the behest of NRO, seems so lonely and futile. Yet to be an astronaut on ISS and its predecessors seems more like worthy communal work. Why the shift is perception?

One remarkable past thread:

Manned Orbiting Laboratory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20107534 - June 2019 (4 comments)

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...

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.

I view it as an endearing arch-American interpretation why their loss still has to be their victory ;)

Lol, makes sense. The only ones kept in the dark by program secrecy is the American tax payer.

Right, because the Soviets were spying on the U.S. government, but Americans weren't spying on their government. Something about resources. :)

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.

I did work at the power station for SLC-6 around that time. As a long-haired engineer, I always attracted special attention at the guard shack - especially the first week of the Gulf War, when I drove in my old Volvo station wagon with peace bumper-stickers. It's kind of strange how much of the natural coastline was preserved by the base and which otherwise would have been built up.

Absolutely, it's a real treasure. Was so fun exploring before smartphones and digital maps.

The wildlife at VAFB is also tremendous, whether you're armed with a fishing pole, a hunting rifle, or just a pair of binoculars. It's an incredible place.

Similarly, the exclusion area around Diablo Canyon Power Plant just a bit north is spectacular. I worry what will happen after the plant shuts down. This area's politicians like to sing Progressive songs but they unfortunately get caught up in graft just like other places (the mayor of San Luis Obispo recently resigned in the face of an investigation over bribes for marijuana dispensaries and grow ops).

Dwayne Day has a good series of articles over on The Space Review covering the Manned Orbiting Lab. Gotta do a little digging through the archives, but there are some good nuggets on the NRO in general, as well.

https://www.thespacereview.com/archive.html

John Charles also has a good writeup: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3752/1

I remember that compared to the usual NASA graphics, the graphics for the MOL were oddly empty inside. No attempt to sketch out the "science" payload(s). Shoulda figgered it was spook stuff.

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