by Jay Chladek
Astronaut Selection
To fly the MOL, the air force needed its own corps of astronauts. While the astronauts selected by NASA were almost all active-duty military or civilians with previous military experience, the air force could not draw on NASA’s ranks to perform the MOL missions. But they could at least recruit from the same pool of talent.
Every astronaut selected for the MOL had experience as a test pilot, with all of them having been trained at the Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS) at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB). Today, the ARPS is known as the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School. But from 1961 to 1972, as reflected in its name, its curriculum included much more than that. There were two phases of study at the school, with the first phase focusing on the original test pilot curriculum and the second phase focusing on studies in orbital mechanics, astronautics, thermodynamics, and the various engineering disciplines required for aerospace projects. To complete both phases would take one year, and the knowledge provided was so thorough that it was considered equivalent to two years of engineering study at a major university. There were very high requirements to get into the school; once accepted, the students were subjected to even higher scrutiny as they progressed. Only the best students were selected to take part in the phase-two program.
Most of the first group of candidates selected to become MOL astronauts came from the 1963 and 1964 classes. Not all members of the group were U.S. Air Force, either, as the U.S. Navy also sent its eligible candidates to ARPS. In November 1965 eight MOL astronaut candidates were publicly announced. From the canceled Dyna-Soar program came Maj. Albert Crews, an early ARPS graduate. Next was test pilot Maj. Michael J. Adams. Prior to his MOL selection, Adams graduated from ARPS with honors and had been one of four aerospace pilots from Edwards AFB to have taken part in early moon landing studies at the Martin Aircraft Company. The third person was U.S. Navy lieutenant John Finley, who was invited to stay on at Edwards as an ARPS instructor after he graduated in 1963. Capt. Richard Lawyer, another member of the 1963 class, was fourth. Capt. Lachlan “Mac” Macleay was the fifth selection, while Francis G. Neubeck was the sixth. Both men attended the test pilot school in 1960 but returned to attend ARPS when the aerospace curriculum was added. Capt. James Taylor, a 1963 ARPS graduate, was the final air force selection for the first MOL group. The final candidate was Lt. Richard Truly of the U.S. Navy. Truly was the youngest of the first group; like Lieutenant Finley, he was serving as an instructor at Edwards after graduating from the ARPS program in 1963.
Over the next couple of years, two more groups of astronaut candidates were named to the MOL program, and many of their names are familiar today. The second MOL astronaut group included the following: Capt. Karol “Bo” Bobko; Lt. Robert (Bob) Crippen, from the navy; Capt. Gordon Fullerton; Capt. Henry Hartsfield; and Capt. Robert Overmyer, from the U.S. Marine Corps. The third MOL astronaut group, which was selected in 1967, consisted of Maj. James Abrahamson, Lt. Col. Robert Herres, Maj. Robert H. Lawrence Jr., and Maj. Donald Peterson. Prior to attending ARPS, James Abrahamson had been the U.S. Air Force project officer on the Vela nuclear detection satellite program. Robert Herres attended the Air Command and Staff College prior to attending ARPS, making him unique among the MOL astronauts as he was being groomed for a command assignment. Donald Peterson was a nuclear systems analyst and a flight instructor prior to becoming a test pilot.
3. Fourteen of the seventeen MOL astronauts selected. Pictured (from left to right) are (back row) Herres, Hartsfield, Overmyer, Fullerton, Crippen, Peterson, Bobko, and Abrahamson and (front row) Finley, Lawyer, Taylor, Crews, Neubeck, and Truly. Courtesy U.S. Air Force.
Maj. Robert Lawrence was among the youngest candidates selected for MOL, as he had only just graduated from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School in June 1967. He was the first person of African American descent to be selected as an astronaut and was already a respected scientist with a PhD in physical chemistry from Ohio State University. Unfortunately, his time as an MOL astronaut candidate was very brief.
All the crewmembers selected for the MOL did another six-month tour of duty at ARPS to help gain as much experience as possible. Major Lawrence was taking part in this training when he was killed in a plane crash in December of 1967. He was in the backseat of a TF-104, a two-seat trainer version of the F-104 Starfighter, while chief of operations at ARPS, Maj. Harvey J. Royer, was flying a high angle of attack, high-energy, power-off approach to the runway at Edwards. This flight profile is very similar to that used in the X-15 program, and it was under consideration for the space shuttle proposals. But this method of approach has practically no margin for error, since things happen fast. The aircraft flared too high on the approach, ballooned up into a slight climb, and then came back down hard. On the second touchdown, the nose gear collapsed. Since the F-104 is a very slender airplane with stubby wings, mission rules called for ejection in the event of a gear failure, as the aircraft would likely end up tumbling after that. Major Royer ejected safely, but the aircraft rolled on its side before Major Lawrence’s seat fired, killing him instantly.
Interviewed for the “Astrospies” episode of the American PBS Television program Nova in 2007, fellow class-three MOL candidate Robert Herres talked about his recollection of the accident: “That morning, Bob wanted to change his flight and wanted me to fly in his place on that particular flight. That’s about all there is to say. I should have been in the backseat of that airplane instead of him.”
Barbara Lawrence, Robert’s wife, who was also interviewed for the same episode, continues, “I was standing at home changing buttons on a dress, and I looked out the window and saw Bob Herres coming up the walk. I thought, ‘I don’t have to ask.’ That’s what they call a life-changing experience, you know. Suddenly, you know, in the morning everything seems okay, and then a few minutes later it’s all over.”
Robert Lawrence wasn’t the first fatality of an MOL astronaut candidate, as Michael Adams had been killed less than a month earlier. Major Adams was dissatisfied with the slow pace of MOL’s hardware development and asked to be removed from the program so he could participate in other assignments. His request was granted, and he was selected to become part of the X-15 program, a joint effort of the U.S. Air Force and NASA.
Flying an X-15 mission on 15 November 1967, Major Adams was descending from a flight path that peaked at an altitude of 266,000 feet when the aircraft broke apart. The accident investigation determined that Adams was likely distracted by a previous electrical failure in the aircraft’s control system and might also have been suffering from vertigo. He failed to make corrections when the aircraft began to deviate from its intended flight path. The aircraft yawed sideways in practically zero atmosphere. When the plane continued its descent sideways into the thicker atmosphere, it entered a violent spin at Mach 5 and finally broke apart at sixty-five thousand feet. Adams—likely unconscious—failed to eject. The air force posthumously awarded Major Adams astronaut wings, since he had exceeded the fifty-mile altitude mark on what became his final flight.
Crashes while flying such cutting-edge aircraft were commonplace among test pilots the world over, and they served as sobering reminders of the fate that can be dealt on a high-risk assignment. Indeed, Mike Adams himself had managed to cheat death a few years before. He was riding backseat in a TF-104 with a fellow ARPS student up front when the engine failed and the aircraft ended up dropping at a fast rate. The aircraft impacted with the runway at a higher-than-normal speed. The main gear snapped off, and the jet went careening down the runway before sliding off and coming to rest in the desert sand and scrub brush. Mike Adams ejected, but the front-seat pilot did not. Yet both pilots survived to fly again, as both had made the correct decision. At impact, the jet engine broke loose and punched through the back wall of the rear cockpit. It would have killed Adams if he had stayed with the plane. As for the pilot in the front seat, the ejection seat rails had buckled on impact; if the seat had fired, it would likely have blown up in the cockpit,
killing the occupant instantly. The pilot in the front seat was Dave Scott, who would be selected as part of the third class of NASA astronauts. Dave Scott would eventually fly with Neil Armstrong on Gemini 8 and help test docking procedures in Earth orbit on the Apollo 9 mission before finally commanding the Apollo 15 mission to the moon.
First Flight Test of the MOL
In 1966 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, a new rocket was unveiled at Launch Complex 40. Unlike the five previous Titan III-Cs that had flown, this one had a long cylindrical extension and a Gemini capsule on top. The rocket was assigned to fly a mock-up of the MOL. This boilerplate module, made from a Titan I rocket stage, contained several experiments and pieces of MOL hardware to test in orbit. The Gemini capsule was a used spacecraft, as it had originally flown unmanned as part of the Gemini 2 mission in January 1965. For this MOL test flight, the Gemini spacecraft had a crew transfer hatch inserted into its heat shield to test how well the system would work.
4. The first MOL test launch took place in November of 1966 with a modified Gemini capsule and a mock-up station on a Titan III-C rocket. Courtesy U.S. Air Force.
On 3 November 1966 the test rocket ascended from the launchpad at 13:50 GMT. After separation of the solids and both the first and second stages, the Titan’s Transtage pitched the spacecraft stack downward and fired its engines to accelerate the capsule to orbital reentry velocity before it was jettisoned. Once the capsule was released, the Transtage changed its flight path again and continued to carry the boilerplate MOL into orbit. Along the way, it also launched three small research satellites. The Gemini capsule was recovered near Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean after its thirty-three-minute suborbital flight. The heat shield with the hatch performed flawlessly. The hatch had fused solid with the rest of the heat shield, just as it was designed to do. The experiments aboard the boilerplate MOL were meant to transmit data back to Earth for seventy-five days, but the onboard telemetry system failed after just thirty. Eventually the payload, given the designation OPS 0855, continued to orbit until it reentered Earth’s atmosphere and broke up on 9 January 1967. Even with the telemetry failure cutting the orbiting mission short, the launch of the boilerplate MOL and recovery of the modified Gemini capsule were important successes.
MOL Training
Work was progressing toward a manned launch sometime in 1968, and the MOL astronauts were actively involved in each phase of the program, performing similar duties to their NASA counterparts as they trained for spaceflight, monitored development of the hardware, and provided valuable input to the engineers. They also flew with MOL equipment in cargo aircraft to gain zero-g experience.
The cargo plane would fly parabolas during the training flights. On the dive phase, the astronaut candidates would experience about thirty seconds of weightlessness as they tried to perform their tasks. Many of these tasks were quite complex, involving an evaluation of the interior of the redesigned Gemini craft with its heat shield hatch and crew transfer techniques. During their brief periods of weightlessness, the trainees would have to move out of their Gemini seats, open the hatch, shimmy through the transfer tunnel, stow the hatch, and continue back before the end of the weightless cycle, when the aircraft would begin its two-g climb for the next parabolic simulation run.
Weightless simulations in an airplane could only achieve so much, and something better was needed, especially for EVA training. During the end of the Gemini program, NASA determined that by performing some activities underwater, an astronaut could be weighed down so he would be neutrally buoyant, meaning he would neither float nor sink. A similar system was used by the MOL program.
Rather than using a pool, the air force decided instead to build a training facility just off an inlet known as Buck Island near St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. This particular area was selected in part because it was federally owned land and the U.S. Navy already had a UDT (underwater demolition team) training base on the island. It took approval from six federal agencies to get permission to build the MOL program’s underwater training facilities there. Former air force test pilot Norvin C. “Bud” Evans, who had been working for General Electric at the time, was placed in charge of the facility.
The clear waters and favorable weather of the Caribbean were almost perfect for neutral-buoyancy training, and security could be maintained in this remote part of the world. The crewmembers used modified Gemini-style pressure suits for these training missions. The tight-fitting helmets used for spaceflight were replaced by two-piece Plexiglas bubble helmets that were joined by a diagonal flange and held together by C-clamps. Rather than pressurizing the suit with air, water was used instead to maintain a pressure differential with the outside seawater. This practice simulated the pressure differential between the interior of a space suit and the vacuum of space, as a pressurized suit doesn’t bend or flex as easily. Crewmembers would wear scuba masks inside the helmet, receiving air from the surface via a lifeline and breathing it through a regulator mouthpiece. It was a clever system, although the closed helmet meant that an astronaut could not easily clear water from his mask or mouthpiece should either develop a leak during a five-to-six-hour training session. Nor could an astronaut talk. Hand signals and written signs had to be used to convey information. The underwater facility was used not just for training but also for evaluating equipment and procedures. According to Bud Evans, in an interview conducted for “Astrospies,” “We had to know how long these tasks were going to take. This was one way to get some real timeline studies.”
The equipment briefings and the training had the MOL astronauts going to places all over the country. Sometimes they would travel under aliases, and usually they would wear civilian clothes instead of their military uniforms. Occasionally their assignments would take them to Houston, Texas, home of NASA’s manned space program. As Richard Truly explained in his “Astrospies” interview, “You know, the NASA astronauts back in the sixties were all good friends of ours. We knew them all. We went to Houston, and when we went to Houston, they’d tell us all about what they were doing, and we wouldn’t tell them anything about what we were doing.”
Being out of the public eye meant that the MOL astronauts received none of the creature comforts that some of their NASA colleagues enjoyed, such as magazine deals or leases for Corvettes. This was the way the Department of Defense wanted things, and the men had no problem with that, as they felt their mission was worthwhile. As “Mac” Macleay described in his “Astrospies” interview, “I think everybody was tickled. I mean, it was something that we really thought would contribute. We weren’t going to go check how the African fruit fly worked under zero gravity, you know, we were going to do something worthwhile—okay—that we thought was worthwhile.” Richard Truly adds, “Although we did have a joke in the program that one day there was going to be a little article back on page 50 of the newspaper that said, ‘An Unidentified Spacecraft Launched from an Unidentified Launchpad, with Unidentified Astronauts, to Do an Unidentified Mission.’ That’s the way it was.”
The MOL’s Actual Mission
While there are plenty of details available regarding the MOL’s pressurized laboratory and the Gemini-B spacecraft, the mission module, over thirty feet long, is still clouded in secrecy to this day. While suspected for many years, it has only recently been confirmed that the MOL’s primary mission involved reconnaissance and intelligence gathering of the Soviet Union from Earth orbit.
While surveillance satellite technology had matured in the 1960s after the first Corona satellites had flown, there was still no really effective way to control exactly what the satellite was shooting pictures of as it circled the globe. Many of the images taken by the first Coronas were obscured by cloud formations over the Soviet Union, which blocked details on the ground that they were trying to photograph. It also took time for a photograph interpreter to examine developed film of an area of interest in order to identify something. If images of a specific subject of interest were sho
t at the beginning of a roll and the film canister had not been returned to Earth until a month or so later, the subject itself might not be there by the time another satellite was sent up to shoot pictures of the same area. With the large volume of film taken by a satellite’s camera, it might take weeks for interpreters to go through all the developed film to prioritize every target of interest. This was assuming the film canister had even been recovered safely in the first place.
5. This recently declassified illustration of the MOL shows its primary mission being one of photographic reconnaissance with a large telescope-based system. Courtesy National Reconnaissance Office.
It was felt that by putting a man in space with a camera system, he could more easily locate targets of opportunity. From orbit, he could observe a great many things on the ground and make decisions in real time about what to photograph. If an area were obscured by clouds, the astronaut could save precious film or use it to photograph a different location.
The primary camera system intended for the MOL was code-named Dorian, also known in some publications as KH-10 or Keyhole 10. “Keyhole” was one designation used by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to identify its intelligence-gathering satellites in memos and documents. The Corona series were designated KH-1 through KH-4. Camera resolution and mission potential increased with the KH-7 and KH-8 Gambit satellites, and advanced plans were underway to start flying the KH-9 Hexagon series satellite. But the later satellites had sacrificed high resolution in favor of being able to image a wider area, mainly because there was no capability at the time to direct a satellite to focus in on a tight area of study at a moment’s notice.