page_title: Manned Orbiting Laboratory
section_title: Planning
hierarchical_section_title: Manned Orbiting Laboratory / Planning
caption_attribution_description: English: Major General Joseph S. Bleymaier Jr.
context_page_description: The Manned Orbiting Laboratory was part of the United States Air Force's human spaceflight program. The project was developed from early USAF concepts of crewed space stations to be used for satellite reconnaissance purposes, and was a successor to the canceled Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar military reconnaissance space plane. MOL evolved into a single-use laboratory, for which crews would be launched on 40-day missions, and return to Earth using a Gemini B spacecraft derived from NASA's Gemini spacecraft.
  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; its use for satellite reconnaissance was a secret black project. Seventeen astronauts were selected for the program, including Major Robert H. Lawrence Jr., the first African-American to be chosen as an astronaut. The prime contractor for the spacecraft was McDonnell Aircraft; the laboratory was built by the Douglas Aircraft Company.
context_section_description: On 16 December 1963, USAF Headquarters ordered Schriever to submit a development plan for the MOL. About $6 million (equivalent to $37.9 million  in 2018) was spent on preliminary studies, most of which were completed by September 1964. McDonnell prepared a study of the Gemini B spacecraft, Martin Marietta of the Titan III booster, and Eastman Kodak of camera optics.  Other studies examined key MOL subsystems such as environmental control, electrical power, navigation, attitude control stabilization, guidance, communications, and radar.
  The United States Under Secretary of the Air Force and the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Brockway McMillan, asked the NRO Program A Director (responsible for the Air Force aspects of NRO activities), Major General Robert Evans Greer, to look into its potential reconnaissance capabilities. In all, $3,237,716 (equivalent to $20.4 million  in 2018) was expended on these studies. The most expensive was of the Gemini B spacecraft, which cost $1,189,500 (equivalent to $7.51 million  in 2018), followed by the Titan III interface, which cost $910,000 (equivalent to $5.75 million  in 2018).
  With these studies in hand, the USAF issued an RFP to twenty firms in January 1965. At the end of February, Boeing, Douglas, General Electric and Lockheed were selected to carry out design studies. Covert NRO activities to be carried out by MOL were classified secret and given the code name "Dorian". In February 1969 the MOL was given a Key Hole designation as KH-10 Dorian.
  As a black project (i.e. one that was secret and publicly unacknowledged), but one that was impossible to completely conceal, MOL needed some "white" (i.e. unclassified and publicly acknowledged) experiments as cover. An MOL Experiments Working Group was created under Colonel William Brady. Some 400 experiments proposed by various agencies were examined. These were consolidated and reduced to 59, and twelve primary and eighteen secondary ones were selected. A 499-page report on the experiments was issued on 1 April 1964. Although reconnaissance was its main purpose, "manned orbiting laboratory" was an accurate description; the program hoped to prove that soldiers could perform militarily useful tasks in a shirt-sleeve environment in space for 30 days.
  The USAF recommended that the MOL use the Gemini B spacecraft with the Titan III booster. A program of six flights (one uncrewed and five crewed) was proposed, with the first flight taking place in 1966. The program was costed at $1.653 billion (equivalent to $10.4 billion in 2018). The Science Advisor to the President, Donald Hornig, reviewed the USAF's submission. He noted that for the sophisticated reconnaissance missions proposed, a human-operated system was far superior to an automated one, but speculated that with sufficient effort, the gap between the two could be reduced. He also noted that while the notion of satellites passing overhead was accepted, a crewed space station might be a different matter, but the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, thought that this could be managed.
  There remained the question of whether the improved performance compared to the automated KH-8 Gambit 3 satellite then under development justified the cost. The Director of Central Intelligence, Admiral William Raborn agreed that it might. McNamara took the proposal to President Lyndon Johnson on 24 August 1965, who approved it, and issued an official announcement at a press conference the following day.
  In January 1965, Schriever had appointed Brigadier General Harry L. Evans as his deputy for MOL. Evans had previously worked with Schriever in the USAF Ballistic Systems Division. He had been the Discover/Corona program manager, and had supervised  SAMOS, MIDAS and SAINT, together with the early communications and weather satellite programs. In addition to being Schriever's deputy, Evans became Zuckert's Special Assistant for MOL on 18 January 1965. In this role, he reported directly to Zuckert, and was responsible for liaison between MOL and other agencies such as NASA.
  In the wake of the P
caption: Major General Joseph S. Bleymaier, head of the MOL System Program Office (SPO)
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.10.18", "Image DateTime": "2020:04:17 12:16:38", "Image ExifOffset": "148", "Thumbnail ImageWidth": "203", "Thumbnail ImageLength": "256", "Thumbnail BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail PhotometricInterpretation": "6", "Thumbnail SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "298", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7245", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2273", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2861"}