Abstract
While NASA’s nineteen new astronauts were settling into their training in Houston, the first two classes of Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) astronauts were progressing through their own preparation program. Based in California, the MOL training program bore similarities to that of NASA, with academic work on the basics of spaceflight, briefings on the hardware and systems, and various survival courses, though the primary objectives of each program were very different.
“Upon assignment to a specific orbital flight, the primary and backup crews will commence 12 months training as prescribed by the formal Preflight Training Plan.”
Taken from the MOL flight crew training description, MOL Program Plan, Volume 1, June 15, 1967
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Notes
- 1.
Lt. Cmdr. L. N. Hoover, USN, was originally listed to attend this course, but was apparently replaced by Torosian.
- 2.
It was the development of these large reconnaissance satellites, with their upper stages, which became instrumental to the Air Force’s argument for a larger payload bay for the Space Shuttle in the early 1970s. [ 11]
- 3.
The Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance (CSNR) is an independent National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) research body reporting to the Director, Business Plans and Operations.
- 4.
‘Yankee Station’ was a geographical reference point in the South China Sea, in the Gulf of Tonkin just off the coast of Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, it was used by USN aircraft carriers of Task Force 77 to launch air strikes. Its origin came from the ‘Y’ pronounced “Yankee” in the NATO phonetic alphabet and from the launch point (“Point Yankee”) used by the aerial reconnaissance missions flown over Laos in 1964.
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Shayler, D.J., Burgess, C. (2017). Preparing for MOL. In: The Last of NASA's Original Pilot Astronauts . Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51014-9_7
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