Outposts on the Frontier: A Fifty-Year History of Space Stations (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of Spaceflight)

by Jay Chladek

  The KH-10 camera was designed to have up to a three-inch resolution, meaning an object about the size of a miniature toy car would appear as one pixel. Something the size of a telephone would be about two pixels. At that resolution, it is possible to identify the model of a car, a plane, or a tank and to potentially see what visible weapons were carried aboard them. A photograph analyst could easily count the number of airplanes on the deck of an aircraft carrier or at a base, likely identify them all by type, and perhaps even read the serial numbers on the wings. Looking at tire tracks on a road, it would be possible to see if an area had experienced increased activity, perhaps exposing military maneuvers or a hidden base. Still, viewing such things from Earth orbit is easier said than done when the spacecraft is travelling at about 17,500 miles per hour. Decisions needed to be made quickly to focus on a target for pictures before it sailed out of view, so the MOL was equipped with a sophisticated optical tracking system.

  The crewmember operating the system would look at a wide image of the area being photographed with a periscope viewfinder system. Spotting a target of opportunity, the camera operator could then focus in tight to determine if a photograph might be taken, and the auto-tracking systems aboard the MOL would focus on the target long enough to cancel out the motion blur of the earth to shoot a photograph or two. While additional capabilities aren’t fully known due to the classified nature of the system, the MOL likely also had the capability to transmit imagery back to Earth, similar to the way unmanned space probes to the moon and Mars were already doing back in the day. Recently declassified drawings also suggest that the MOL could have been equipped with film return capsules, allowing crewmembers to send exposed film home midway through a mission.

  6. This recently declassified illustration shows how the MOL’s optics could examine alternative areas on the ground if the primary target was obscured by weather. Courtesy National Reconnaissance Office.

  Additional proposals were drawn up to utilize the MOL for other things. The air force had plans to conduct battlefield surveys, provided an orbit gave the MOL the opportunity to do so. Some of the more ambitious plans called for astronauts to erect a giant parabolic antenna in orbit that could be used to relay signals on Earth between military stations or perhaps to eavesdrop on electronic and communications signals from threat countries. There were also plans to equip the MOL with antennae for electronic intelligence (ELINT) and communications intelligence (COMINT) missions. The potential eavesdropping capabilities of the MOL weren’t necessarily limited to observations of Earth itself, as a couple of mission studies also looked at using the MOL to get a close look at, and possibly even commandeer, a Soviet satellite in orbit. Such a mission likely would have required a different mission module than the one planned for the KH-10 camera, as additional fuel and more powerful engines would be needed for changing orbits.

  Cancellation of the MOL

  When the MOL program was announced by President Johnson in 1965, the budget for the program was projected to be $1.5 billion, a rather exorbitant amount of money to spend in the 1960s. The DoD funded the project, but ultimately its purse strings were controlled by Congress. American combat operations in the steadily escalating war between North and South Vietnam during the 1960s were causing strains to the DoD’s annual budgets, forcing cuts to the MOL program’s funding. The funding had been cut a little each year, while cost overruns were causing additional problems.

  At the time the MOL was given approval, the plan was to have the first unmanned production MOL launch in April 1968, with the first manned flight coming a few months later. Due to budgetary and development issues, the schedule slipped to 1969 and then later to 1970. By the early part of 1969, many hardware elements of the MOL were well along in production and testing. McDonnell Douglas had delivered its first production version of the Gemini-B spacecraft, and everything else with the program seemed to be progressing steadily toward a mid-1970 launch. At Vandenberg AFB, the finishing touches were being put on Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6), a launchpad built specifically to handle the Titan III-M and the MOL. The MOL astronauts were also preparing to relocate from their main offices in Los Angeles to newly built crew quarters at Vandenberg.

  On the NASA side, the Apollo missions had finally left the ground with the launch of Apollo 7 in October 1968 and Apollo 8 in December of that year. With the lunar-landing goal just months away, NASA began thinking more about flying a space station with leftover Apollo hardware. The MOL program’s publicly stated goal of “space research” began to look like something NASA should be doing instead.

  There were calls in Congress to merge the MOL with NASA’s efforts, or at least utilize some of NASA’s tracking-station assets rather than maintaining the air force’s own network. If the MOL was indeed just an open-ended orbital research facility, there were potential advantages to that. But with its secret reconnaissance objective, using civilian tracking-network assets wasn’t desirable. The air force was having a hard time justifying the MOL to certain members of Congress who didn’t have a “need to know” the MOL program’s actual mission.

  Ultimately, the main factor working against the MOL was the NRO and its expanding surveillance satellite capabilities. The NRO was created in August 1960 by the Eisenhower administration due to the poor management and insufficient capabilities of the air force’s first two intelligence satellite programs, SAMOS and MIDAS. The creation of the NRO was almost like a black-project version of NASA, as it incorporated some legacy organizations from the military side into its ranks, similar to how NASA gained some of its research centers. Unlike NASA, however, the NRO was part of the DoD and answered to the secretary of defense. The NRO was highly classified, and its name wasn’t even revealed publicly until the 1990s.

  While the KH-10 system for the MOL program was being developed, the NRO was hard at work on a parallel program. This system was known as KH-11, and it apparently had the same three-inch optical resolution as the MOL’s KH-10 camera. Reports suggest that the KH-11 looked very much like an early version of the Hubble Telescope, except the optics would have been pointed at Earth instead of toward the stars.

  Many of the MOL astronauts were reportedly allowed to see the KH-11, even though the NRO was apparently reluctant to let them do so until orders from very high up made it happen. There were two schools of thought for surveillance that were in direct competition with one another. The unmanned side said astronauts weren’t needed, while the manned side said astronauts were absolutely necessary.

  In January 1969 a new president, Richard Nixon, took office, replacing Lyndon Johnson, who had opted not to run for reelection, partly due to the state of affairs with the Vietnam War. Nixon likely had extensive knowledge of the state of orbital reconnaissance, given that he was vice president during the Eisenhower administration. With Nixon came a new secretary of defense, Melvin R. Laird. Nixon took a hard look at the MOL, as did his Budget Bureau director, Robert Mayo, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

  At first, the MOL did get increased funding from Nixon to help correct some of the underfunding problems it had incurred during the final two years of Johnson’s presidency. But even with the funding increase, the damage was done. The launch schedule slipped further, with the first unmanned launch now scheduled for 1971 and the first manned launch scheduled for a year later. Another problem was a reduced number of missions. Ultimately, it looked like the DoD would only be able to fly five missions total, with just four of those being manned. A decision to fund additional missions would not to be made until later. With these factors in mind, plus the ramping up of NRO’s KH-11 program, the MOL seemed to have run out of time and became obsolete before it even left the ground.

  Finally, Nixon, Mayo, and Kissinger decided that it was best to cut their losses and made the decision to cancel the MOL program. Defense Secretary Laird reportedly was not in favor of the decision at all, but it was out of his hands. On 10 June 1969, a month before Apollo 11 made its flight to the moon, the decision to
cancel the MOL program was announced publicly by David Packard, the undersecretary of defense.

  The astronauts involved with the program had no advanced warning that the decision was coming, and neither did the contractors. Richard Truly was at a contractor plant having an argument with an engineer about something, when “Mac” Macleay tapped him on the shoulder and whispered to him quietly that the program had been canceled. Hank Hartsfield listened to the news on the radio as he was driving in his car. Stories from the other MOL astronauts are about the same. All of them were shocked and dismayed when they heard the news.

  Aftermath and MOL’s Legacy

  Even though the MOL program had been canceled, many of the program’s astronauts stayed together to plan their future as a group. They continued to have regular meetings each week to exchange ideas about what to do next. Richard Truly and Bob Crippen made a trip to the Pentagon to see what the navy might have for them as far as programs that could utilize their expertise. It was “Bo” Bobko who apparently made the first suggestion to contact NASA to see if they had any openings. The support he got wasn’t enthusiastic, since all the MOL astronauts knew that the Apollo program was also facing budget cuts with many of NASA’s astronauts still not having flown in space.

  The MOL group eventually traveled to Houston, where they were interviewed by NASA’s director of Flight Crew Operations, former Mercury astronaut Donald “Deke” Slayton, who expressed similar concerns about potentially taking on so many new astronauts. Meanwhile, NASA officials in Washington DC felt that it would be a good idea to hire at least some of the MOL program astronauts, as NASA was starting to ramp up its space station program, which eventually became known as Skylab. Having worked on a similar program, the MOL astronauts had valuable experience they could contribute.

  Ultimately, Slayton made the arbitrary decision that he would only accept astronauts from the MOL program aged thirty-five years or younger. This cut the number of eligible candidates from fourteen down to only seven. Slayton met with the seven and said that he obviously did not have any upcoming missions for them but that he would welcome their help on Skylab. There was also the space shuttle program in the works, even if it still hadn’t been approved by Congress. Chances were that none of the seven MOL astronauts being given the opportunity to join NASA would even get a chance to fly for at least a decade, if at all. Nevertheless, all seven men said they were willing to join NASA and did so.

  NASA’s seven new astronauts were Richard Truly, Bo Bobko, Bob Crippen, Gordon Fullerton, Hank Hartsfield, Robert Overmyer, and Donald Peterson. All would provide invaluable support to the Skylab program, and all would fly missions as shuttle astronauts with six of the seven eventually becoming shuttle commanders. Al Crews, while being too old to join as an astronaut, still had an incredible wealth of knowledge to contribute, as he had been part of the Dyna-Soar program before he was selected for the MOL. Crews therefore joined NASA’s Flight Crew Directorate in Houston and was involved in flight operations and systems testing for many years.

  While the remaining MOL astronauts not selected to join NASA were obviously disappointed that they did not get a chance to fly in space, they enjoyed very fruitful careers both in the military and in the private sector. Naval officer John Finley had already left the MOL program in 1968 due to the project delays. He flew a tour of duty in Vietnam and served in many fighter squadrons throughout the 1970s in addition to other command-level postings before he retired from the navy as a captain in 1980. He died in 2006 after a long battle with diabetes and cancer. Richard Lawyer retired from the air force in 1982 as a lieutenant colonel after a long career as a test pilot. He continued flying as a civilian test pilot for many years until he suddenly passed away in 2005.

  “Mac” Macleay would fly combat in Vietnam as commander of the Twenty-Third Tactical Air Support Squadron. After he retired from the air force in 1978 with the rank of colonel, he worked on missile systems for Hughes Aircraft Corporation. Greg Neubeck would fly combat in Vietnam as well. He then served as the vice commander of the Tactical Air Warfare Center at Eglin AFB in Florida before retiring from the air force in 1986 with the rank of colonel. He also attempted a run for the U.S. Congress but was not elected.

  Lt. Col. James Taylor unfortunately had a very short life after the MOL program was canceled. He returned to Edwards AFB and became a test pilot instructor and deputy commandant of the test pilot school. On 4 September 1970 he and French Air Force exchange test pilot Capt. Pierre Dubucq were killed when their T-38 crashed at the Palmdale Regional Airport in Los Angeles, California, while performing touch-and-go approaches. The cause of the crash was attributed to wake turbulence from a cargo plane taking off. An award was given in Taylor’s honor for the most outstanding student graduating from the ARPS phase-one course, but the award was eliminated after 1971 when the two-tier ARPS program was canceled.

  James Abrahamson would eventually become the second-highest-ranking officer of the MOL astronaut veterans when he retired with the rank of lieutenant general (three stars) in 1989. He served on the staff of the National Aeronautics and Space Council in the early 1970s and was the air force’s managing officer on the AGM-65 Maverick missile program. He became the associate administrator for the space shuttle program in 1981 and supervised the shuttle program’s first ten successful missions. In Abrahamson’s final assignment before retirement, he became the first director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization in 1984, a group tasked with using space- and missile-based technologies to develop a defensive shield against Soviet ICBMs.

  Robert Herres would eventually become a four-star general and serve as the first vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1987 until his retirement in 1990. Prior to that period, he served as commander of strategic bombing squadrons and also as commander of the Eighth Air Force. He later went on to become commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and became the first commander of U.S. Space Command when it was activated in 1985. After he retired from the air force, Herres served as chairman and CEO of United Services Automobile Association, a private insurance company for military veterans. He died in 2008 after a two-year battle with brain cancer at the age of seventy-five.

  Most of the hardware designed and built for the MOL was never used. But NASA did take on some of the systems and hardware contracts to use in the Skylab program. The IBM command-and-control computer design was one such piece of hardware adapted for the station. The pressurized transfer tunnel from the Gemini-B to the MOL would form the basis of the crew transfer tunnel used for the European Space Agency’s Spacelab used during the shuttle program.

  The Titan III-M never flew from SLC-6 at Vandenberg, and the launch facility was mothballed after its completion. When the shuttle program began, SLC-6 was modified to become a shuttle launchpad for polar orbit missions. Following the loss of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, the DoD decided to use unmanned rockets instead of the shuttle to launch its satellites from Vandenberg, so SLC-6 was once again mothballed. Coincidentally, former MOL astronaut Bob Crippen, by that point a veteran of multiple shuttle missions, was scheduled to be the commander of the first space shuttle mission from Vandenberg when it was canceled. Today, SLC-6 has finally become operational as a launchpad for Boeing’s Delta IV rocket, with several successful launches taking place since 2006.

  As for the reconnaissance mission goal intended for the MOL, indications are that the NRO programs that replaced the MOL have been doing their jobs efficiently. Today, many of the early Keyhole satellite programs have been declassified and revealed to the general public, with the latest one being the KH-9 Hexagon system. However, the MOL KH-10 is likely to remain classified for many years yet, since it apparently shares many of its design traits with the KH-11, which first began flying in 1976. Refined versions of the satellite, known in some publications as the KH-12, continue to be launched into orbit on a semiregular basis. Reconnaissance from Earth orbit is as important to protecting a country’s interests t
oday as it was when Wernher von Braun first proposed the idea over five decades ago, and it isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

  The MOL’s legacy did not die with the program’s cancellation in 1969. There were others watching the MOL’s progress, and they were located halfway around the world in the Soviet Union. Despite the classified nature of the MOL program and its cover story, the Soviets knew exactly what the MOL’s true purpose was. While not known publicly at the time, the Soviet response to the MOL would have a major influence on the following four decades of space station history in ways nobody could imagine, not even the Soviets themselves.

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  Chelomei and Almaz

  The story of the Soviet Union’s space station program is rather convoluted by Western standards. It is fully intertwined with enough politics, intrigue, confrontation, and behind-the-scenes maneuvering to make the story not seem out of place in a popular spy novel. Many engineers were involved, but ultimately it would be one man who got the project started. Soviet engineer and designer Vladimir Nikoleyevich Chelomei (pronounced Chel-o-may) isn’t well known in the Western world, but without his efforts, Soviet, Russian, and even international efforts to build space stations would have evolved along a very different path.

  Vladimir Chelomei was born on 30 June 1914 to a family of teachers in the Ukrainian town of Sedlets, located halfway between modern Warsaw, Poland, and Brest, Belarus. Today, the town is known as Siedlce, Poland. At the time of Chelomei’s birth, the region was part of the Russian Empire.

  When he was a few months old, Chelomei’s family moved to Poltava in Central Ukraine to escape the fighting on the eastern front. Few accounts of Vladimir Chelomei’s early life have been published outside Russia, so most details of his childhood are unknown. What is known is while growing up, he was encouraged to learn what he could from both a family of teachers and various neighbors who were also intellectuals. However, life could not have been easy for them when the October Revolution of 1917 removed Tsar Nicholas II from power and helped to create the Soviet Union. School closings were common in 1920 during the struggle for power among the various factions that saw the Communist Party eventually become the ruling body. When Chelomei was twelve, his family moved to Kiev, and it was here that he studied auto mechanics at a technical school. In 1932, now age eighteen, he attended Kiev Polytechnic Institute, which had an aviation branch. This was the same school that future chief designer Sergei Korolev had attended eight years earlier.