MOL - Manned Orbital Laboratory

This project was started in the early 1960's and was cancelled at the end of the sixities!

On the same day in 1963 that Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara cancelled Dyna Soar, he formally re-committed to another USAF space project originally announced in 1960: the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MOL.

Boosted aloft atop a Titan III booster and capped with a Gemini spacecraft, the Douglas-built MOL station would be able to support a crew of 2 during long duration military surveillance missions. But by 1967 - with unmanned Corona satellites effectively managing this task and military costs escalating in Vietnam - MOL was cancelled.

Major Robert Lawrence was the first African-American selected to be an astronaut. He was selected to be an astronaut in a proposed Air Force space program called Manned Orbiting Laboratory.

Lawrence died in a plane crash during a training mission in 1967, however. This occurred before he had an opportunity to fly into space.

Note that the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program eventually was canceled.

MOL Links:

• African-American Astronauts
• Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory
• Bondarenko Hall-Manned Orbiting Laboratory
• Early Space Station Activities: NASA site
• Launch Vehicle Hall
• Manned Orbiting Laboratory Suit, 1963
• mol
• Mwade's MOL:
• SMC Historical Overview Manned Orbiting Laboratory
• Space-Frontier.org's MOL

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