Seven were accepted and became NASA’s seventh class of astronauts, the MOL Seven. Since the astronaut office was quite full, the agency decided to take only those who were under the age of thirty-five since it would be at least a decade before any of them made it into space. The Gemini B capsule is now on display at the Air Force Space & Missile Museum on Cape Canaveral, Florida.īut what about the would-be astronauts? NASA was accepting applications from those still with the MOL program who were interested in flying for them instead. Despite its success, it was the only flight of the MOL program. Fortunately for the program, the test flight was a success and the capsule survived reentry, therefore becoming the first capsule to fly in space twice. It launched on November 3, 1966, from Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 40 on a Titan IIIC-9 rocket on a thirty-three minute suborbital flight. The Gemini 2 and OPS 0855 would together be a prototype of the Gemini B. To distinguish it from other Gemini spacecraft, the name “US Air Force” was painted on its side. It was attached to NASA’s old unmanned Gemini 2 spacecraft, which had already flown in space, as well as a MOL mockup built from a Titan II rocket propellant tank. The OPS 0855, also designated OV4-3, was the boilerplate used to test this method. If the hatch/heat shield was not in place during reentry, the crew would burn up and perish. But in order to do this, a hole needed to be cut in the bottom of the spacecraft where the heat shield is located. ![]() In order for astronauts to exit the capsule and enter the space station attached to it (and vice versa), they would have to crawl through a hatch. Another critical change to the Gemini was its heat shield. The cockpit layout was also changed, as well as the type of atmosphere (helium-oxygen instead of pure oxygen). For example, the systems were upgraded for thirty days of orbital storage since the longest NASA flight would be only fourteen days. Although it looked similar to NASA’s many of the systems were changed for its missions. The capsule was a modified version of NASA’s Gemini capsule called Gemini B. The spacecraft itself consisted of two parts- a capsule and a space station. In fact, the secrecy of MOL was so extreme that each class of astronauts participated in exactly one press conference before training began and disappeared into the darkness. ![]() The USSR actually did have their own military space station named Almaz in the 1970's. Second, if the Soviet Union was aware their enemy would be spying on them from space, what was to stop them from doing the same. People were already protesting the Vietnam War and if it was discovered the military was planning on sending spies into space, the public might turn on the government and even become suspicious of NASA operations. It was important to hide the actual purpose of MOL for two reasons: First, public support. Johnson first announced MOL to the public in 1964, he claimed it was primarily for science experiments and to “prove the utility of man in space for military missions.” While NASA Gemini missions did perform some experiments, its primary goal was preparation for manned lunar flights.
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