Note: Only forum leaders may delete posts.
*HTML is ON *UBB Code is ON Smilies Legend
Smilies Legend
[b]Space Cover 731: MOL and its Pilots[/b] The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was part of the United States Air Force (USAF) human spaceflight program in the 1960s. The project was developed from early USAF concepts of crewed space stations as reconnaissance satellites and was a successor to the canceled Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar military reconnaissance space plane. Plans for the MOL evolved into a single-use laboratory, for which crews would be launched on 30-day missions and return to Earth using a Gemini B spacecraft derived from NASA's Gemini spacecraft and launched with the laboratory. For the space hardware – the MOL program got so far as an actual unmanned test launch on November 3, 1966, aboard a Titan IIIC rocket, the spacecraft completed a suborbital trajectory, successfully testing the circular hatch cut into the heat shield, which was to be the configuration to be used in the MOL program so that the military astronauts could transfer to the attached laboratory module. The capsule splashed down in the South Atlantic Ocean near Ascension Island and was recovered by the USS La Salle. Along with the USS La Salle, two secondary recovery ships – the USS Aucilla and USS Fort Snelling – comprised the recovery fleet. Covers were created for the launch by the main cachet makers of the time – such as Orbit (scanned above), Sarzin, and Space Craft Covers. Covers exist for all the recovery ships but they are hard to find with, interestingly for number of covers I have seen, the USS La Salle being harder to find than the secondary ships. USS Fort Snelling covers typically have a hard to read date in the postmark due to over inking. There are also return to port covers for the USS La Salle (Orbit PrtC and Boudwin RSC). Beware – Charles Riser sold multiple suspect USS La Salle recovery date covers with different cachets and some with suspect autographs. The MOL program was announced to the public on December 10, 1963, as an inhabited platform to demonstrate the utility of putting people in space for military missions; its reconnaissance satellite mission was a secret project. To provide prospective astronauts for the X-15 rocket-powered aircraft, Dyna-Soar and MOL programs, on June 5, 1961, the USAF created the Aerospace Research Pilot Course at the USAF Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base. The school was renamed the Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS) on October 12, 1961. with the third class receiving instruction on Dyna-Soar as part of the course. The commandant of the ARPS, Colonel Chuck Yeager, advised the selection of astronauts for MOL be restricted to ARPS graduates thus the MOL program did not accept applications for astronauts. A selection board was convened in September 1965, chaired by Major General Jerry Page. On September 15, 1965, the selection criteria for MOL was announced. Candidates had to be: [*]Qualified military pilots; [*]Graduates of the ARPS; [*]Serving officers, recommended by their commanding officers; and [*]Holding U.S. citizenship from birth. In October 1965, the MOL Policy Committee decided that MOL crew members would be designated "MOL Aerospace Research Pilots" rather than astronauts. However, most people still referred to them as "astronauts" while some refences have them as "MOL Flight Crew Members" and other times simply as "MOL Pilots." The names of the first group of eight MOL pilots were announced on November 12, 1965, as a Friday night news dump to avoid press attention. [*]Major Michael J. Adams, USAF [*]Major Albert H. Crews Jr., USAF [*]Lieutenant John L. Finley, USN [*]Captain Richard E. Lawyer, USAF [*]Captain Lachlan Macleay, USAF [*]Captain Francis G. Neubeck, USAF [*]Major James M. Taylor, USAF [*]Lieutenant Richard H. Truly, USN In late 1965, the USAF began selecting a second group of MOL pilots. Five were selected, and their names were publicly announced on June 17, 1966: [*]Captain Karol J. Bobko, USAF [*]Lieutenant Robert L. Crippen, USN [*]Captain C. Gordon Fullerton, USAF [*]Captain Henry W. Hartsfield Jr., USAF [*]Captain Robert F. Overmyer, USMC The MOL Astronaut Selection Board met again on May 11, 1967, and the MOL Program Office announced names of those selected for the third group of MOL astronauts on June 30, 1967: [*]Major James A. Abrahamson, USAF [*]Lieutenant Colonel Robert T. Herres, USAF [*]Major Robert H. Lawrence Jr., USAF [*]Major Donald H. Peterson, USAF With growing pressure from the expansion of the Vietnam War, the perceived duplication of effort with NASA programs, and improved performance of operating unmanned surveillance systems, in June 1969 the President cancelled the MOL program. With that, many of the MOL Pilots moved to NASA's astronaut program. Previous SCOW posts have talked of the difficulty of obtaining the signatures of various groups of test pilots and astronauts – X-15, moonwalkers, Mercury-Gemini-Apollo, Manned Spaceflight Engineers, etc. This group of 17 astronauts is extremely difficult, if not impossible to complete, due to the secrecy of the program, how short a time it actually existed with MOL Pilots, and three of the MOL pilots killed in crashes – Mike Adams (X-15 and MOL) in X-15 crash in November 1967, Robert Lawrence in F-104 crash at Edwards AFB in December 1967, and James Taylor in T-38 crash at Palmdale Regional Airport in September 1970. The cover shown has the autographs of Robert Herres, Karol Bobko, Richard Truly and James Abrahamson. I have fortunately also seen John Finley and Greg Neubeck from bobslittlebro's collection. The X-20 astronauts are another tough group to complete but that's for another time...
Contact Us | The Source for Space History & Artifacts
Copyright 1999-2024 collectSPACE. All rights reserved.