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This new topic on a ** very ** old initiative is offered for NewMars members who might like to help build up a collection of knowledge.
MOL came up in discussion of GW Johnson's current study of landing methods for Mars.
Very few individuals or organizations are working on the Mars landing problem, and NewMars is fortunate to have one of them as a member.
One of the distinctive features of MOL (I understand) was the (to me surprising) idea of placing a hatch right in the middle of the heat shield.
Apparently this idea was tested and found to be workable, so this topic might include links to online resources about that work.
With that one exception (to the best of my knowledge) all other heat shields have been designed as single piece structures, or assemblies of multiple pieces designed to function as a single piece. An example of the latter is the Artemis heat shield that flew recently on a Moon Loop flight.
My concept for this topic is that it would function as a repository of historical facts, with comments upon those facts as a bonus.
This would not be a topic well suited for new ideas.
We have plenty of topics for new ideas.
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This post is reserved for an index to posts that may be contributed by NewMars members.
My hope is that our authors will attempt to create a series that is enlightening and possibly entertaining for our readers.
Index:
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Manned Orbiting Laboratory (or MOL) was a USAF program aimed at a manned spy satellite capability. It was to be launched by a Titan-3 upgrade to the then-existing Titan-2 launcher, and it consisted of a modest house trailer-sized laboratory and a Gemini-B capsule.
Gemini-B was a revised design with shorter life support and electric power duration, and with the seats displaced angularly more at the heads, so that a hatchway through the heat shield would be accessible by the two astronauts. This hatchway led directly into the laboratory, so that the crew could go into it without depressurizing and going outside. The capsule had a month of life powered-down, but only a few days powered-up.
The mission was a month long, and the lab not reused or recovered. This was the first use of telescopic cameras with folded optical paths, to enable car license plates to be read from orbit. (They can recognize human faces from orbit now.) Most of the lab volume was the camera telescope. It was fairly crowded in there for a crew of 2, but not as crowded as the Gemini itself.
This program began before 1963, along with the X-20 Dyna-Soar, also a USAF program. In 1966, the USAF manned space program was terminated in favor of the NASA manned space program. That killed X-20, and MOL was then in limbo, pending unmanned spy satellite development progress. Gemini-B flew successfully with the hatchway cut through its heat shield, in 1969, I think it was. But by that time, the unmanned spy satellite technologies were ready to deploy and proved to be superior in terms of both cost and lifetime on-orbit. That was the end of MOL. Most of the USAF astronauts went to NASA, and became shuttle astronauts, some by way of the X-15.
The Russians had been doing something similar, called Almaz. If memory serves, it flew 3 times under the name Salyut as the initial Russian space stations. But the Russians found most of the same answers we did: unmanned spy satellites had longer on-orbit life and lower costs. Many of theirs were nuclear-powered. Cosmos 954 that crashed in Canada was one of those.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2026-08-05 13:15:24)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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