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The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), originally referred to as the Manned Orbital Laboratory, was a never-flown part of the United States Air Force 's human spaceflight program, a successor to the canceled Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar military reconnaissance space plane project. The project was developed from several early Air Force and NASA concepts of crewed space stations to be used for reconnaissance purposes. MOL evolved into a single-use laboratory, with which crews would be launched on 40-day missions and return to Earth using a Gemini B spacecraft, derived from NASA's Project Gemini. The MOL program was announced to the public on 10 December 1963 as an inhabited platform to prove the utility of putting people in space for military missions. Astronauts selected for the program were later told of the reconnaissance mission for the program. The contractor for the MOL was the Douglas Aircraft Company. The Gemini B was externally similar to NASA's Gemini spacecraft, although it underwent several modifications, including the addition of a circular hatch through the heat shield, which allowed passage between the spacecraft and the laboratory. MOL was canceled in 1969, during the height of the Apollo program, when it was shown that uncrewed reconnaissance satellites could achieve the same objectives much more cost-effectively. U.S. space station development was instead pursued with the civilian NASA Skylab (Apollo Applications Program) which flew in the mid-1970s. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union launched three Almaz military space stations, similar in intent to the MOL, but cancelled the program in 1977 for the same reasons. There is a MOL space suit on display at the Oklahoma City Science Museum, presumably never used.
References
- Slayton & Cassutt 1994, p. 174.
- "The Almaz program". Russian Space Web. Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20110514000112/http://www.russianspaceweb.com/almaz.html. Retrieved 12 February 2011.
- Wade, Mark. "Almaz". Encyclopedia Astronautica. Archived from the original on 19 November 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20101119184429/http://astronautix.com/project/almaz.htm. Retrieved 12 February 2011.
- Grahn, Sven. "The Almaz Space Station Program". Sven's Space Place. http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/histind/Almprog/almprog.htm. Retrieved 12 February 2011.
- "MOL". Astronautix.com. http://www.astronautix.com/m/mol.html.
- http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/gemini-b.htm
- http://www.space1.com/pdf/news1096.pdf
- "Gemini B RM". Astronautix.com. http://www.astronautix.com/g/geminibrm.html.
- "Gemini Capsule". Air Force Space & Missile Museum. http://www.afspacemuseum.org/displays/GeminiCapsule/. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
- "Gemini Spacecraft". National Museum of the US Air Force. 7 March 2007. Archived from the original on 2 March 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150302112233/http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=551. Retrieved 12 February 2011.
- "NOVA: Astrospies". PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/astrospies/program.html. Retrieved 13 October 2011.
- Day, Dwayne A. (2018-03-19). "The Space Review: The measure of a man: Evaluating the role of astronauts in the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program (part 1)". http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3456/1.
- Heppenheimer, T. A. (1998). The Space Shuttle Decision. NASA. pp. 204–205. SP-4221. OCLC 40305626. https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4221/contents.htm.
- Nutter, Ashley (2 June 2005). "Suits for Space Spies". NASA.gov. http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/features/found_mol_spacesuits.html. Retrieved 12 February 2011.
- "Index, Declassified Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) Records". National Reconnaissance Office. http://www.nro.gov/Freedom-of-Information-Act-FOIA/Declassified-Records/Special-Collections/MOL/. Retrieved 16 December 2018.
- https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/history/csnr/programs/Spies_In_Space-Reflections_on_MOL_web.pdf?ver=2019-07-11-135535-820×tamp=1562867746595
- Jenne, Mike (2016). Blue Darker Than Black. Yucca Publishing. ISBN 978-1-63158-066-6.
