ALL SCI-FI

[bulldogtrekker]

Newly Declassified Photos Show The Crewed USAF Spy Spacecraft That Almost Was
Attila Nagy, GIZMODO

On October 22, 2015 the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) declassified and released 282 rarely or never before seen images and 825 confidential records (a total of 20,681 pages) about the so called Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), the project which would have sent American astronauts to orbit over the Soviet Union in order to take better photos than the best system at the time.

The huge trove of documents — a truly nice pre-Christmas present for space history researchers — reveals a lot of real aspects of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), publicly announced in December 1963. The ostensible mission of the United States Air Force program was to conduct scientific experiments upon astronauts in orbit, meanwhile the classified goal was to place a crewed surveillance satellite into orbit, using Gemini B spacecraft and Titan IIIC rockets......

[img]https://i.imgur.com/IlfTI02.jpg?1[/img]

link to full story and many photos:
http://gizmodo.com/newly-declassified-photos-show-the-crewed-usaf-spy-spac-1739613728

[Bud Brewster]

And amazing article with terrific photos! This shot of the control panel tickles my gadget-loving fancy.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

This has an Alistair MacLean vibe to it & should be the next epic espionage movie ala Ice Station Zebra.

[orzel-w]

In 1970, fresh out of college, I went to work for McDonnell Douglas in Huntington Beach, CA, who had been constructing the MOL (which they pronounced, "mole"). I, however, had been hired for work on the Orbital Workshop, later to be redubbed Skylab.

On my first day at work all the talk I overheard was about who had been laid off from MOL, which had been cancelled because of the larger Workshop project. (Such is the life of an aerospace engineer.) I felt as though I was walking over somebody's grave.
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Krel]

One of the big problems with the MOL, was that the Astronauts were to enter through a hatch in the heat shield. And they couldn't figure out a foolproof way to do that and insure a safe reentry.

David.