Quote from: Jim on 07/26/2008 01:49 pm2. You were saying that use of Apollo hardware would be cheaper and quicker. Saturn launch pads at VAFB would have been very expensive. This would be a bigger waste of time and money.The Air Force built a new pad from scratch for MOL at Vandenberg, SLC-6. A new pad for Titan III-M or a new pad for Saturn IB, I don't see how there would have been much difference. LC-34 and LC-37 were both smaller than their Titan III counterparts at the Cape and had long since demonstrated that you don't need something the size of LC-39 to launch Saturn IB.
2. You were saying that use of Apollo hardware would be cheaper and quicker. Saturn launch pads at VAFB would have been very expensive. This would be a bigger waste of time and money.
Quote from: Jim on 07/26/2008 01:49 pm2. You were saying that use of Apollo hardware would be cheaper and quicker. Saturn launch pads at VAFB would have been very expensive. This would be a bigger waste of time and money. LC-34 and LC-37 were both smaller than their Titan III counterparts at the Cape
Never knew the Air Force/Vandenberg facility was slated to use the Saturn 1-B from their location; can you cite (or provide links) to your source?
The discussion here begs the real issues surrounding MOL. Two things drove MOL:-The USAF, having lost the Military Man in Space mission with the cancellation of Dyna Soar, decided to move toward a man tended orbital reconnaissance platform after searching for an acceptable manned mission. This was to be a successor to the Corona and KH-9 optical platforms.-As MOL development costs grew, the concurrent development of digital reconnaissance platforms in the KH-11 series negated the need for the man tended film return type of platform. As the digital technology overtook the MOL development, the program became excess to USAF and NRO needs and was cancelled.expensive, would have made a cancellation decision even easier.
I do not understand why USAF ,instead wasting time and money to develop MOL laboratory , man rated Titan IIIC and Gemini-B capsule,simply not bought some Saturn 1B rockets and some Apollo capsules.MOL could be developed from dry workshop/saturn derived concept,and Apollo capsule coluld be send the crew (2 or 3 "space pilots") on the surveillance station.In this way MOL could be operational from 1967-69.This sound sensate to me.
Quote from: brihath on 07/26/2008 02:04 pmThe discussion here begs the real issues surrounding MOL. Two things drove MOL:-The USAF, having lost the Military Man in Space mission with the cancellation of Dyna Soar, decided to move toward a man tended orbital reconnaissance platform after searching for an acceptable manned mission. This was to be a successor to the Corona and KH-9 optical platforms.-As MOL development costs grew, the concurrent development of digital reconnaissance platforms in the KH-11 series negated the need for the man tended film return type of platform. As the digital technology overtook the MOL development, the program became excess to USAF and NRO needs and was cancelled.expensive, would have made a cancellation decision even easier.That's not quite right. MOL was _never_ intended to be a successor to the Corona or KH-9. For starters, KH-9 did not get started until the late 1960s, by which time MOL was well advanced. KH-9 was the Corona successor. The digital electro-optical system you refer to was also started _after_ MOL was canceled.MOL was intended not to succeed anything, but to complement other platforms. The idea was to achieve both high resolution and near real time (by having astronauts look at the targets live).Also, keep in mind that MOL evolved over time. It did not start out as a high resolution system. It became one around 1965 or so. See:http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1104/1
I stand corrected. MOL was cancelled in 1969 and KH-9 first flew in 1971. I thought they had flown before that.I do believe that as MOL evolved and grew more expensive, concurrent evolution in other optical systems made the expense of a man tended system hard to justify.
Consider this: did the USAF even have the option of using NASA hardware circa 1965? I doubt it -- there were political challenges (civilian vehicles going to a military program) and logistical-budgetary issues(Congress funded X number of Saturn 1Bs -- the USAF would have needed a new authorization).
Look into the history of the Blue Gemini program -- the idea that the USAF might claim a pair of Gemini missions was not well-received by NASA. And went nowhere quickly.
Quote from: Michael Cassutt on 07/27/2008 10:31 pmConsider this: did the USAF even have the option of using NASA hardware circa 1965? I doubt it -- there were political challenges (civilian vehicles going to a military program) and logistical-budgetary issues(Congress funded X number of Saturn 1Bs -- the USAF would have needed a new authorization).(I'm splitting my reply in two posts.) [...]However, I think it's also important to consider the overall evolution of USAF man in space at this time. Around 1962 or so USAF started to consider using Gemini in large part because Dyna Soar was so far off into the future. They did not want to wait to acquire spaceflight experience. So first they came up with Blue Gemini and a space station proposal called MODS. When Dyna Soar got canceled, MODS evolved into MOL. MOL had an experimental purpose at first and gradually evolved into an operational vehicle for reconnaissance. So they were always turning limited capabilities into more capable platforms (on paper, anyway). Asking for Apollo would have been way too big a leap. It's just contrary to how they were thinking at the time, which was much more incrementally.
Quote from: Michael Cassutt on 07/27/2008 10:31 pmLook into the history of the Blue Gemini program -- the idea that the USAF might claim a pair of Gemini missions was not well-received by NASA. And went nowhere quickly.I haven't found any evidence of NASA objecting to this. The Blue Gemini story has long been distorted. Lots of people thought/think that BG was the Air Force's Gemini spacecraft for MOL. In reality, Blue Gemini was a USAF proposal that only lasted about six months in 1962. The idea was for USAF to buy about 6-7 Gemini spacecraft and start flying concurrently with NASA's Gemini program. I think that the plan was that initially, they would fly 2 joint crew NASA missions, i.e. one NASA astronaut and one USAF astronaut. Missions 3-4 would be all USAF missions primarily to gain experience. And missions 5-7 would be dedicated to USAF experiments.There is very limited documentation on Blue Gemini so far, but what I'm aware of indicates that NASA actually supported the program, because their thought was that more Geminis produced would mean cheaper Geminis. Now I'm guessing that had the BG program continued, NASA might have had problems with USAF getting in the way on Gemini and the plans would have changed (probably by eliminating joint missions), but it seems like at least initially NASA (administrator James Webb) liked the BG idea. (See On the Shoulders of Titans). [snippage]One last comment: there must be more documents on Blue Gemini in an archive somewhere. The place to look would be at LAAFB. But they probably still have a classification stamp on them.
Another factor -- Dyna Soar was run by the Air Force's Aero Systems, not the satellite and missile types Schriever raised up in Los Angeles. They wanted their own space program and Dyna Soar wasn't it.
Well, I've seen a couple of these Yes, Webb certainly was open to cooperation with the DOD. He pretty much had to be, didn't he? In order to keep getting his hands on Atlas and Titan launchers.My note about the resistance to Blue Gemini referred to the Houston component of NASA, and referred strictly to a proposal to dedicate two of the ten manned Geminis to USAF missions.
I think the simple answer would be to spend the dollars to modify Gemini with an internal transfer tunnel in an Apollo docking adapter. Yes, I know that's a big job.With that one modification, MOL could have been flown on a standard Titan IIIC, and Gemini-B could have flown 2 week missions on an "uprated" Titan II, out of VAFB. Moreover, once the first mission were complete, recurring Geminis could have been launched to the same station. This would have resulted in an earlier, more effective military space station.If this sounds like Almaz, well, yeah.
This all is funny considering that the part of Skylab where the CSM docked was part of the MOL hardware. A
Coulda been done, just the USAF wanted their own toys. McNamara killed all these programs as they were "destabilizing".
an air-launch ballistic missile whose name escapes me at the moment.
Quote from: wingod on 07/30/2008 04:03 pmThis all is funny considering that the part of Skylab where the CSM docked was part of the MOL hardware. AThe MDA (Multiple Docking adapter) was built by Martin Marrietta. MOL was to be built by MDAC and GE. There was no MOL heritage hardware on Skylab
skybolt