You are not logged in.
*Not a joke:
http://www.space.com/news/mol_spacesuit … html]1960s Air Force Initiative
Established in 1964, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was an Air Force initiative that would have sent USAF-selected and trained astronauts to a military- contracted space station in a modified Gemini capsule. After a few weeks in orbit, the crew would undock and return to Earth. The Air Force abandoned the program in 1969, but not before three groups of military officers had trained to be astronauts.
They've found two blue spacesuits and "extra sets of gloves of various sizes."
A recent venture into a long-locked room at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida uncovered artifacts of a by-gone era: spacesuits for Americans who trained in the 1960s to be space spies, reports NASA on its website.
Agent numbers 007 and 008 used.
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
Offline
Like button can go here
Actually, the Air Force had lots of interesting space programs, and still does, and wants to have more. I believe it's the pilot mentality - most of the people making decisions are/were pilots (whether fighter, bomber, etc..) and flying a spacecraft appeals to them on some primal level. The end result is a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of interesting/innovative ideas - the USAF pushed hard to have the manned space program instead of NASA, and their proposed ideas of how to do it look a lot more like modern EELV's than NASA's, to the point where I think JFK made the wrong call in giving space to NASA.
Offline
Like button can go here
Maybe we should give space to both NASA and the Air Force. NASA is needed to conduct science and exploration, something that should not be handed over to the military. Thus JFK probably made the right call, since we would otherwise have more space weapons, space spies, etc. and fewer science missions and planetary probes. We might not have even gotten to the moon. However, allowing the Air Force to have its own space program would give a bigger budget and more ideas for spaceship design leading to better ways for putting people in space whatever they plan to do there. The military also has a lot more money to work with than NASA and a lot easier time getting more when it wants it. My only concern would be increased militarization of space which would probably have negative consequences, although I suppose it's bound to happen someday.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
Offline
Like button can go here
Maybe on the right track if the air force and Nasa budgets were reversed, even if only for every other year...
Offline
Like button can go here