Manned Laboratories In Space PDF Download

This report was released by the NRO in May 2019. Between 1965 and 1969, quietly and without fanfare, 17 non-NASA individuals were astronaut-trained in order to meet the reconnaissance needs of the United States. They came from across the military services. Participants in the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program trained tirelessly and worked relentlessly because they believed they could contribute something unique to U.S. reconnaissance efforts and because they all shared a dream of flying in space. The purpose of this book is to offer a first-hand account of the MOL program for the first time. Shrouded in secrecy, the MOL program was declassified by the National Reconnaissance Office in 2015. This is the first opportunity many participants had to share their experiences with anyone outside their small cadres. The bulk of the book is written in their words, taken directly from transcripts of oral history interviews conducted over the last five years with program participants, as well as official documents and transcripts written by the officers who participated in and managed the programs.This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.Although the US Air Force announced the MOL project, they did not disclose the primary purpose of the program-to serve as a manned reconnaissance platform in space. Instead, the Air Force disclosed that the platform would be used for space experiments. During the early planning stages of the MOL program, the US Air Force sought a compelling reason for developing the program given NASA's mandate for manned space flight. The newly formed National Reconnaissance Office provided the most compelling reason for a military manned space program, putting a high resolution telescope into space to observe the activities of the Soviet Union and other US adversaries. At the time MOL was under development, the United States had already demonstrated that imagery and signals intelligence from space satellites provided compelling insight to US leaders, including the president. The limitations, especially of photoreconnaissance satellites, included timeliness of the intelligence and capture of the intelligence in optimal weather conditions. Photoreconnaissance satellites captured images on film that took days to weeks to be deorbited, processed, analyzed, and made available to senior US leadership. Often the imagery was of limited value because of persistent cloud cover over areas of interest to the US. A manned imagery collection system in space seemed an elegant solution for overcoming these limitations. In theory, national reconnaissance astronauts could spot targets of interest, especially in a crisis, and image on orbits where those areas of interest were free of cloud cover. The astronauts could then develop and provide a preliminary readout of conditions on the ground in a crisis situation. If successful, the MOL program would provide intelligence information that would otherwise not be available for critical US decision-making.Although the MOL program was cancelled, its legacy continued not only through the contributions to US space and defense programs by the astronauts who trained for the program, but also the technological development from the program. The technology investments in MOL were transferred to NASA for its own manned laboratory program that launched in the 1970s. The NRO also directly benefited in investments in both launch and reconnaissance collection systems that would mature for use in other NRO programs.