Science: The Orbiting Lab

APACE

Eight days in space will seem like a short mission to the men who go up in the Manned Orbiting Lab (MOL). They will stay in orbit a month or more. Working and walking around in a fairly roomy, pressurized cabin, they will wear ordinary street clothes. Occasionally they will don space suits, step outside for a stroll or a bit of research.

In ordering the Pentagon to start building the MOL immediately, President Johnson made the U.S.’s most important and expensive commitment to manned space flight since the decision to aim for the moon. He also put the U.S. military into the manned space enterprise for the first time. The Air Force, which will control MOL, plans to test-launch some components in 1967, orbit an unmanned lab early in 1968, and send up a two-man MOL later that year. Altogether the $1.5 billion program calls for a series of unmanned test shots and five MOLS.

As the Air Force envisions it, the orbiting lab will be a canister, about 41 ft. long and 10 ft. wide, that will be attached to a stripped-down Gemini. The two vehicles will be lofted together into space by a Titan IIIC rocket. Once they are in orbit, the spacemen will crawl through a hatch in the Gemini heat shield and enter the lab. For the return to earth, they will simply reverse the procedure, then detach from the 7½-ton canister and descend in the Gemini. Later on, other Gemini crews will take off from the earth, link up in space with the lab, and continue the work.

The MOL will carry many more instruments than the much smaller Gemini. With its farsighted cameras, radar and infra-red sensors, its crew will be able to make more accurate maps of the continents and ocean currents than now exist, forecast weather and survey crop conditions. The orbiting Air Force technicians will also perform telescopic studies of the planets, and investigate the proton showers and other radiation from the sun. But the most significant work will be for defense. MOL can be used to reconnoiter targets, detect nuclear blasts and spot missile firings. Already the Navy has asked the Air Force to investigate whether MOL can keep track of Russian and Red Chinese submarines. Eventually, MOL will be able to double as a floating fortress capable of intercepting and knocking down hostile spacecraft.