A History of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory

The Best Laid Plans: A History of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory

Steven R. Strom

In the mid to late '60s, an ambitious project to launch an orbital space laboratory for science and surveillance came to dominate life at Aerospace.

During one particularly momentous press conference on December 10, 1963, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announced both the death of the Dyna-Soar space plane and the birth of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). Like the Dyna-Soar, MOL was a farsighted Air Force program that explored the potential for piloted space flights. Like the Dyna-Soar, it was cancelled before reaching its goal—but not before making some important contributions in the field of spaceflight and space-station technologies.

MOL had a profound influence on Aerospace for two important reasons. First, in terms of sheer size, the MOL program office represented an enormous expenditure of corporate funds, human resources, intellectual capital, and effort. Second, its cancellation in 1969 had a deep psychological impact on all Aerospace personnel—not just those who worked on it—because it was the first time that the company was forced to make any sizeable reductions in workforce. The program's termination represented a stark ending to the large budgets and expansive optimism that had characterized America's space programs in the 1960s and foreshadowed leaner budgets and lower expectations for the years to come.

Concept Development

By the early 1960s, the demise of Dyna-Soar already seemed imminent, and the Air Force was searching for a viable way to continue human activities in space. An orbiting space platform offered opportunities for human surveillance over the Soviet Union and China, which was important because American reconnaissance capabilities were severely limited after Col. Francis Gary Powers and his U-2 plane were brought down over Soviet territory in 1960. Remote-sensing satellites, such as Corona, were still limited in their surveillance capabilities.

A few days before Secretary McNamara's announcement, a team of representatives from the Air Force Space Systems Division and Aerospace flew to Washington, DC, to review several possible implementations of MOL. Consultation with other NASA and Department of Defense (DOD) personnel produced a working sketch of the program. Planners envisioned a pressurized laboratory module, approximately the size of a small house trailer, that would enable up to four Air Force crewmembers to operate in a "shirt-sleeve" environment. The laboratory would be attached to a modified Gemini capsule and boosted into near-Earth orbit by an upgraded Titan III. Astronauts would remain in the capsule until orbit and then move into the laboratory. In addition to military reconnaissance duties (still largely classified), the astronauts would conduct a variety of scientific experiments and assess the adaptability of humans in a long-duration space environment (up to four weeks in orbit). When their mission was complete, they would return to the capsule, which would separate from the laboratory and return to Earth. Launch facilities would be located at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to permit launch into polar orbit for overflight of the Soviet Union.

Planners agreed that the use of existing Gemini technologies would make MOL's acceptance easier for those in Congress who were concerned about additional defense spending and those within the space community who worried that a concurrent Air Force space program could slow down work on the Apollo program, possibly endangering the U.S. effort to beat the Soviets to the moon. The press release announcing the startup of MOL stressed cooperation with NASA to emphasize that the Air Force was not embarking on an entirely solo project: "The MOL program will make use of existing NASA control facilities. These include the tracking facilities which have been set up for the Gemini and other space flight programs of NASA and of the Department of Defense throughout the world. The laboratory itself will conduct military experiments involving manned use of equipment and instrumentation in orbit and, if desired by NASA, for scientific and civilian purposes." NASA continued to provide a great deal of logistical support to MOL over the course of the program's lifetime.

A Quick Start

Following McNamara's announcement, Aerospace immediately began work as part of the concept study phase. At the beginning of 1964, seven Aerospace scientists and 19 engineers developed possible experiments for MOL and worked to define possible MOL configurations as well as vehicle and subsystems concepts. On February 1, 1964, the Air Force Space Command announced the creation of a special MOL management office, headed by Col. Richard Jacobson. Two days later, Aerospace initiated a major organizational restructuring, with Pete Leonard appointed to lead the newly formed Manned Systems Division. The next month, Walt Williams came to Aerospace from NASA to become vice president and general manager of this new division. By the end of the year, the number of Aerospace technical staff members assigned to work directly on MOL had increased to 34. These researchers regularly gave presentations and briefings on their findings in Washington throughout 1964; still, outside the Defense Department, MOL lacked a committed core of government supporters.

Construction began on Vandenberg's SLC-6 in March 1966. This was one of the most complex construction projects ever attempted by the Air Force at Vandenberg. With the cancellation of MOL, SLC-6 would have to wait several decades for its first successful launch. (U.S. Air Force)

The Air Force assigned more research contracts for the MOL laboratory vehicle in early 1965, and Aerospace continued studies concerning the future of the military in space. Although the first MOL crew was scheduled to fly sometime between late 1967 and early 1968, full approval of the program was contingent on the DOD's demonstrating a genuine national need to deploy military personnel in space. To facilitate approval, the Defense Department affirmed that NASA's lunar landing program would remain the top priority and that duplicative programs would be avoided, with the Air Force continuing its use of existing hardware and facilities and cooperation with NASA on MOL experiments.

The program finally received formal approval from President Lyndon Johnson on August 25, 1965. Johnson's announcement included a budget of $1.5 billion for MOL development. The MOL program would enable the United States to gain "new knowledge of what man is able to do in space," Johnson said, "and relate that ability to the defense of America." Johnson's approval marked the formal recognition that the Defense Department had a clear mandate to explore the potential applications of piloted spaceflight to support national security requirements.

Early Successes

Following official approval, the MOL program immediately began work on Phase I, which extended from September 1, 1965, to May 1, 1966. After working primarily with the planning for MOL, including the design concepts for the spacecraft, Aerospace now had formal GSE/TD (general systems engineering/technical direction) for both the spacecraft and the Titan IIIC launch vehicle under contract to Air Force Space Systems Division, commanded by Gen. Ben I. Funk. Pete Leonard was appointed head of a new MOL Systems Engineering Office, with Walt Williams as his associate and William Sampson as his assistant. The three were collectively known as "the troika" by Aerospace employees. During Phase I, the Aerospace technical contingent working on MOL more than doubled in size, from 80 to 190. The Air Force's MOL program office had a complex organizational structure, with Gen. Bernard Schriever serving as program director in Washington, DC, and Brig. Gen. Russell Berg, who reported directly to Schriever, acting as deputy at the Space Systems Division in El Segundo, California. To improve administrative efficiency, Aerospace began colocating employees from its MOL Systems Engineering Office with members of the Air Force MOL program office in early 1966.

Aerospace Phase I activities were primarily directed toward firming up contractor work statements and duties and initiating contractor and in-house studies required for system definition. Aerospace conducted numerous cost analyses to verify the accuracy of contractor estimates for MOL components. About halfway through the first phase, the Air Force and Aerospace received instructions to design MOL so that it could also operate without an onboard crew—just in case the Soviet Union objected to overflight of its territory by military personnel. Aerospace had already conducted automation tests and was able to direct the contractors on necessary changes. The alterations, however, added roughly one ton to the space-station weight. As a result, Aerospace had to conduct additional studies during the next year to determine which subsystems could be reduced in mass without harming the space station's overall performance.

In November 1966, a Gemini capsule attached to a modified Titan II propellant tank (to simulate the MOL) was launched from the Eastern Test Range by a Titan IIC. This test flight marked the only occasion that the Titan IIIC/MOL configuration was actually flown. (U.S. Air Force)

The Phase II schedule called for a series of seven qualifying test launches of the laboratory from the Western Test Range beginning in April 1969, with the first piloted flight set for December 15, 1969. Thus, it was an important milestone when construction began on Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) at Vandenberg on March 12, 1966. This was one of the most complex construction projects ever attempted by the Air Force at Vandenberg. Aerospace had a major role in the launch site's design and construction as part of the company's GSE/TD responsibilities.

In November 1966, MOL enjoyed a much-needed success when a Gemini capsule, attached to a modified Titan II propellant tank (to simulate the laboratory), was launched from the Eastern Test Range by a Titan IIIC. One important purpose of this launch was to test the stability of a hatch door that had been cut into the heat shield of the Gemini capsule, an addition that would enable the astronauts to transfer directly from their capsule to the laboratory. The capsule was ejected and recovered near Ascension Island, and the heat-shield test was declared a success. This test flight marked the only occasion that the Titan IIIC/MOL configuration was actually flown.

By the end of 1966, MOL planners were seeing genuine signs of progress, but these were tempered by several negative trends—most notably, the continued underfunding of the project and the concurrent cost overruns. These budget problems would only worsen as the program grew in complexity and increasingly had to compete for funds with the Vietnam War.

A Growing Project

The principal MOL contractor and major subcontractors were selected in early 1967. Negotiations were somewhat protracted because the government insisted on fixed-price contracts. These contracts, intended to save costs, only added to the work of Aerospace, which had to conduct numerous studies to verify the pricing information submitted by the contractors.

When Project Gemini successfully concluded, 22 members of that program office were transferred to MOL, where their expert knowledge of Gemini hardware could be effectively used. Some veterans of the Mercury and Gemini programs were disappointed that they would not get to support the Apollo program, which would have been a logical next step if the Air Force had not decided to embark on its own piloted space program. In February, Aerospace made another organizational adjustment, reflecting management's belief that MOL would remain a major component of the company's activities. Three directorates were established under the aegis of the MOL Systems Engineering Office: Engineering, led by Sam Tennant, who would later serve as president of Aerospace; Operations, headed by Robert Hansen; and the Planning, Launch Operations, and Test Directorate, led by Ben Hohmann, who had achieved such great success with the Mercury and Gemini programs.

In a reflection of the growing bureaucratic and engineering complexity of MOL, by May 1967, Aerospace had 28 MOL working groups, including software management, environmental control and life support, crew transfer, and ground-systems coordination. The proliferation of bureaucracy, not only at Aerospace but in the Air Force as well, sometimes made the transmission of information difficult. Joe Wambolt, who served as the director of launch operations in Ben Hohmann's directorate, remembers that, "It was almost impossible to find out what another office was doing. No one ever seemed to know the 'big picture' of what was going on. A lot of people knew a great deal about what was happening in their particular offices, but the only person who ever understood everything that was going on in the entire MOL program, in my opinion, was Sam Tennant."

Artist's conception of the MOL ascending into orbit. When this image was made, in 1964, planners expected to use a Titan IIIC to lift the laboratory. (U.S. Air Force)

A Shrinking Budget

A variety of problems surfaced in 1967. The year began with the tragic Apollo 1 fire on January 27, in which three astronauts died testing their Apollo capsule on the ground. The fire prompted several reviews of the Aerospace decision to use a mixture of 70 percent oxygen and 30 percent helium onboard MOL, but as Ivan Getting, who served as the president of Aerospace during the life of the MOL program, noted in an interview, the mixture proposed by Aerospace "was much safer from the standpoint of ignition and fire" than the all-oxygen environment used by NASA inside Apollo 1. Meanwhile, in March, the increasing weight of the laboratory module forced the Air Force to propose upgrading the Titan IIIC. (The crew-rated version of Titan IIIC, under development specifically for the MOL program, was designated Titan IIIM.) Much support for MOL came from the Aerospace Titan program office, which was assigned to study the proposed Titan IIIC improvements.

Further financial woes arose later in the year when details of the next federal budget were released. The president only allocated $430 million for total MOL spending, slightly more than half of the $800 million that contractors said they needed to complete their work. This drain on MOL funding, caused by the escalating costs of the Vietnam War, forced the Air Force to push back scheduled MOL launches.

Aerospace had been making recommendations for technical and schedule changes to cut costs since the beginning of 1966—but by the fall of 1967, funding problems became so severe that the Air Force asked Aerospace to review the entire program to identify its most important objectives and note measures that could save money. This study was known formally as Project Upgrade, while a concurrent technical audit conducted by Aerospace was named Project Emily (the derivation of this name is unknown). Project Upgrade eventually identified 22 major MOL objectives, and in March 1968, Aerospace published a new performance and requirements document that became the standard guide for MOL contractors. The idea was to reduce costs by eliminating requirements that could not be traced to program objectives.

When specifics of the federal budget for fiscal year 1969 began to appear in June 1968, further problems arose. The $515 million proposed for MOL—at least $100 million below estimates of the amount needed—necessitated another series of schedule changes. The first launch was still set for late 1970, but the third was pushed back three months. It was now planned for MOL to be operational by 1971. By this time, constant schedule changes and budgetary problems were affecting workforce morale. Joe Wambolt recalls that, "No matter how hard we worked, we were always a year away from launch. We just never seemed to get ahead." The 1969 budget also forced Aerospace to cut the number of technical personnel working on MOL from 300 to 275. According to Air Force and Aerospace projections, roughly $700 million annually would be needed for the next few years—but with the Vietnam War still raging, there was little likelihood of receiving more than $500 million for each of the next three fiscal years at least.

The Air Force asked Aerospace to conduct another series of technical reviews to determine possible changes for the program to accommodate the reduced budgets. In January 1969, a new president, Richard M. Nixon, was inaugurated, but there was little likelihood that he would increase funding for a program like MOL after campaigning on a platform of greater restraint in federal spending.

Impending Disaster

Despite cutbacks and constant budget limitations, MOL still had the largest support of any research and development program within the DOD. Moreover, by 1969, the program had made many significant advances, including substantial progress toward the completion of SLC-6 as well as the development of the Titan IIIM launch vehicle and various MOL subcomponents. Fourteen pilots (eleven Air Force, two Navy, one Marine) had already been selected as MOL astronauts and were in training. It still appeared to many Air Force and Aerospace observers that a viable military "man-in-space" program was on the verge of implementation. Thus, with the approach of June and the announcement of the 1970 fiscal budget looming, there was nervousness among MOL team members as to how much funding that the program would receive, but apparently no sense of impending disaster.

Fourteen pilots (eleven Air Force, two Navy, one Marine) were selected as MOL astronauts. A MOL fact sheet from early 1968 notes that, "in addition to their formal training in advanced aeronautics, they work as engineering consultants, providing the pilot's view in the design of equipment. For example, in the past year tests have been successfully conducted by the crew members in a specially equipped jet aircraft flying parabolic arcs to demonstrate the capability of astronauts to transfer back and forth between the Gemini B and the laboratory in a weightless environment." (U.S. Air Force)

On June 10, 1969, Ivan Getting was in Washington, DC, attending a meeting of the Vietnam Panel of the President's Scientific Advisory Board, when he heard the startling news that Defense Secretary Melvin Laird had just told Congress that MOL had been cancelled. In an effort to reduce costs, President Nixon had opted to cut further funding for MOL in favor of NASA's much more visible Skylab program, which was also in development as a follow-up to Apollo. Even though roughly $1.4 billion in development funds had already been spent on MOL, the projected cost increases, the continuing advances in automated space surveillance systems, and the lack of supporters outside the DOD made MOL an easy target. "Regardless of the justice of the decision," Getting wrote in his autobiography, "the impact on Aerospace and its people was traumatic." The Air Force was similarly stunned by Nixon's decision, and the official Air Force announcement of MOL's cancellation was made at the site of the nearly completed SLC-6 at Vandenberg.

When the cancellation of MOL was announced, nearly 600 Aerospace employees were working on the program. Beside the 205 working in the MOL program office, this number included employees working in various support functions, such as the 50 technical staff members in the Titan office assigned to work on the Titan IIIM. One out of every six members of Aerospace's technical workforce was affected by the cancellation. The fiscal year would end on June 30, leaving only three more weeks of funding for the Aerospace program office. MOL represented about 20 percent of the work performed at Aerospace; job cuts were inevitable.

Nonetheless, Getting refused to allow the company to lose some of the country's most productive technical minds. Working closely with Aerospace management and the Air Force, he quickly initiated a process of screening and reassigning MOL staff to other Aerospace programs. The Air Force, well aware of the quality of the Aerospace MOL scientists and engineers, assisted the transfer of some Aerospace personnel to support other program offices. Still, there were only so many slots available, and a corporate-wide layoff took place over the next several weeks. Even though these layoffs were not as severe as initially feared, they did affect corporate morale. In the final year of the 1960s, the boundless optimism of that decade came to an abrupt halt for many at Aerospace who wondered if their programs might be axed next. It was, wrote Getting, "a bitter pill."

The MOL Legacy

Though undeniably important in the history of The Aerospace Corporation, MOL also played a vital role in the history of the American space effort. It remains, much like the Dyna-Soar, one of the great "what-ifs?" in the history of space exploration. Had it not been terminated, MOL would have been the first U.S. orbital space station, and its crews would have been the first to reach space from the Western Test Range (a feat still unaccomplished).

Despite the contention in 1969 that technology had overtaken the need for human observers in space, the same argument originally used to support the presence of MOL astronauts is used today to justify a crew onboard the International Space Station. Some MOL experiments were eventually performed on Skylab missions, and some of the reconnaissance systems were later employed on the KH series of satellites. MOL's use of Gemini technology, proposed at the time as a useful maneuver to help the program win approval, has its admirers in the space community today because of the widespread perception that Gemini hardware was able to perform its tasks using relatively cheap, yet reliable, technology. With renewed emphasis today on the importance of space to U.S. military efforts, more and more observers are looking back to the concepts first proposed 40 years ago by the advocates of MOL.