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Space United States

NASA Discovers Space Spies From the 60's 302

Posted by Zonk from the wa-wa-wa-waaaaaaaaaaaa dept.
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "In a room forgotten for more than thirty years at NASA's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, NASA recently found suits for space spies. Originally thought to be Gemini suits, the manufacturer determined that they were suits from a short-lived Cold War-era military program to put a manned reconnaissance station in space. Begun in 1964, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program was an Air Force initiative that would have sent Air Force astronauts to a space station in a Gemini capsule. After spending a few weeks in orbit, the crew would undock and return to Earth. An interesting blast from the past."
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NASA Discovers Space Spies From the 60's More

NASA Discovers Space Spies From the 60's

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  • Nasa is just telling you this... (Score:3, Funny)

    by flag burning ( 837301 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:22PM (#12724538) Journal
    Because they don't want you to know what they really found.

  • Lawyer? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:23PM (#12724543)
    Quoth TFA:

    The spacesuit with identifying number 008 had the name "LAWYER" on the left sleeve. The suit was traced to Lt. Col. Richard E. Lawyer, a member of the first group recruited to be MOL astronauts in 1965. Records show that official ownership of this suit was transferred by NASA to the Smithsonian Institution in 1983. The suit itself has now been returned to the Smithsonian.

    I thought the idea was to send lawyers in space WITHOUT environmental gear, sillies.

  • Ah the bygone days of paranoia (Score:5, Funny)

    by Red Moose ( 31712 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:25PM (#12724557)
    It's so quaint to see the evidence of paranoia and insecurity from back in the 1960s. Glad to be around in the 2000s.

    • Wasn't Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)

      by reallocate ( 142797 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:30PM (#12724589)
      Being concerned because your enemies are aiming a few tens of thousand nukes at you is not paranoid.
    • Erm, the paranoia and insecurity aren't gone. Case in point: http://www.ready.gov/ [ready.gov]

      What's that little "DHS Threat Advisory" image in the top right doing there? Just a reminder that paranoia isn't a think of the past, the only thing that's changed is the thing we're supposed to be afraid of.

    • Re:Ah the bygone days of paranoia (Score:4, Funny)

      by craXORjack ( 726120 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:49PM (#12724691)
      Yes we were so silly back then with our fears of global thermonuclear war. But back then we didn't have terrorists blowing themselves up because they hate freedom or UN inspectards not being able to uncover massive WMD programs that we all know are there. And to top it off now we have to worry about judges legislating us into marrying partners of the same sex! I think we are just too busy with real problems nowadays to be paranoid.
    • Lighten up, people, he was just making a joke. See? +3 Funny. Sheesh.

    • Not gone, just bye (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @02:21PM (#12724833) Homepage Journal
      You think things are less paranoid now? There's more orbital surveillance now than ever! This is "quaint" only because it assumed that orbital surveillance required somebody to be physically present.

      Back in the 40s and 50s, there was a lot of talk about doing things like surveillance (you can see a lot) and communications (a lot of people can see you) from orbit. One common assumption (which turned out to be correct) was that these things would be extremely important in the near future. Another assumption (which turned out to be totally wrong) was that this would be done by sending people to go live in orbit. Once there, they'd use photography, electronics, and other technology that wouldn't be much more advanced that what people were familiar with. You can see this in Arthur C. Clarke's original proposals for communications satellites [lakdiva.org] and in fiction from Clarke, Heinlen, and others.

      What really happened, of course, is that rocket technology progressed relatively slowly, while electronics progressed very rapidly. So long before it was practical to a space station in orbit, it was practical to put a simple electronic gadget in orbit that would do all those chores pretty cheaply. Kind of sad, really -- if building better rockets had been more of an economic and military necessity, we'd probably be the space-going civilization that eveybody back in the 50s assumed we would be.

      Then again, the need to build smaller and more reliable electronics did a lot to jump-start the computer revolution -- so we mustn't complain too much!

  • Wow... the 1960's.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by brxndxn ( 461473 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:26PM (#12724564)
    Articles like this make me look forward to the 1960's..

    They were really advanced.. and we're lame - we just have Internets.

    • Re:Wow... the 1960's.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman@gmaiBLUEl.com minus berry> on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:47PM (#12724685) Homepage Journal
      Articles like this make me look forward to the 1960's.. They were really advanced..

      There is some truth to this. The US developed *amazing* levels of space technology in the 1960s. Take a look:

      8,000,000 tons from ground zero to anywhere in the Solar System [wikipedia.org]
      Plenty of power for regular Moon trips [wikipedia.org]
      Jets with unlimited range [wikipedia.org] (Okay, the actual design of this one was a little scary. Still, the principles are sound.)
      Complete Space Station in one launch [wikipedia.org]
      118 metric tons to orbit [wikipedia.org]

      Now all of it has been buried and forgotten. Advancement? We've buried our collective heads in the sand. That's why Bush's CEV program [wikipedia.org] actually makes sense. He must have listened to his NASA engineers for a change, because the CEV is a staged program that is predicated on using existing technology to build a space infrastructure. No waiting for someone to invent the Starship Enterprise, we're going NOW. And to do it, we're pulling out many of the bits of technology [nuclearspace.com] that we forgot. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm excited about this program. :-)

      • Re:Wow... the 1960's.. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman@gmaiBLUEl.com minus berry> on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:56PM (#12724737) Homepage Journal
        I almost forgot my favorite bit of 1960's tech:

        Skin tight Space Suits [wikipedia.org]

        As crazy as it may sound, these suits (correctly named "Space Activity Suits") were designed to actually *expose* the wearer to hard vacuum while still providing life support for the astronaut! This sort of suit would allow astronauts to have the same working freedom in the suit as the freedom enjoy inside the ship! Such a suit could make regular space construction and maintenence possible. It's also safer than regular suits as it is far less susceptible to depressurization. Perfect for environments like Mars where spacesuit damage becomes a major concern!

  • Forgotten in a room for 30 years?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by SleepyHappyDoc ( 813919 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:26PM (#12724565)
    Holy smokes, they can build spaceships, land men on the moon, but they can't take an inventory? What else do they have laying around?
    • There was also "one flown shuttle main landing tire" in there, so that had to have been placed there after STS-1 in 1981 [nasa.gov]. But, it's also a designated museum room, so all the stuff in it had been put there on purpose and is hopefully only suitable as museum artifacts.
    • That's actually a very good question. When you figure that our government alone has spent untold billions of dollars (we will never know just how much ... probably we could have just saved the money and bought the Kremlin for cash) on rocketry and military tech of all kinds since the beginning of World War II ... well. I have the feeling there's a whole lot of really interesting stuff buried in back rooms and underground depots and hidden laboratories. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the hydrogen bomb
    • Well, maybe that's asking for too much. They very likely do have a lot that is either not catalogued or mis-filed, especially at older sites, where cellars and basements for buildings that no longer exist are entirely possible, and where closed-off sections (disuse/disrepair/contaminated and not worth cleaning up) are quite probable.

      It is highly likely that in the 60s, more programs were theorized than were ever really started (eg: the Orion space program), that many that were started were abandoned as pe

    • Holy smokes, they can build spaceships, land men on the moon, but they can't take an inventory?

      No, most likely they did. From the article:

      Other historical treasures found in the room include old film canisters, one flown shuttle main landing tire, electrical equipment, and various miscellaneous boxes.

      Huh. Historical treasures, that just happened to be in a room which nobody said they had a key to. Huh.

      Records show that official ownership of this suit was transferred by NASA to the Smithsoni

      • Re:someone was building a private collection... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Rorschach1 ( 174480 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @04:46PM (#12725528) Homepage
        "Sounds to me like someone at NASA was building up their own private collection, and used a room they thought they had the only key to, not realizing there was a master key system in use."

        I don't know about that. I work at a certain military facility, and in the building where I used to work there was a room way in the back of the basement, through two sets of locked doors, that used to contain a computer system I was responsible for and still had parts and manuals and such. I found out about it from someone who used to work there, and when I went to get access it was determined that not only did no one have access, but no one was even declared as being responsible for the area.

        And this wasn't just a matter of not knowing who had the key. All the doors were tied into the central entry control system and there simply weren't any prox keys issued with access, aside from some master keys used by maintenance.

        Keep in mind that this is a military base, and very few active duty types stick around for more than a few years in one assignment. The room in question was run by contractors, and hadn't been used over the span of a couple of contract transitions.

        I did finally get access and found a whole rack of modems (1200 or 2400 baud, I forget) still powered up and ready. A power line monitor had run itself out of recording tape years before but kept going. To this day there are still racks of VAX spares and tape reels down there.

        Oh, and it turned out at least one portion of that area WAS being accessed. Turns out the maintenance guys had figured out no one ever came down there and had turned an adjacent office area into their private lounge.

        Anyway, never underestimate the ability of the government to lose things. Portions of buildings included.

        • Re:someone was building a private collection... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04, 2005 @05:30PM (#12725760)
          A related story:

          The aircraft carrier USS Independence (CV-62) was originally named the USS Constellation. But there was something that held up on the original Independence's shipbuilding process, so the original Constellation was completed as the Independence... sometime later, there was a fire on the Independence's forecastle, and when the layers of grey paint were burned off, there was the logo for the USS Constellation!

          Many years later, during a refit some engineers were going over the ship's blueprints, and "discovered" a compartment along the midship line, down in the ship. The compartment was opened (it had no doors or hatches into it, so they had to cut through a bulkhead), and the shipyard workers discovered a complete machine shop - the drill presses and lathes still covered in original preservative grease.

          Apparently, during the ship's original construction, someone had walled up the machine shop.

          So yes, the gov't can occasionally misplace things... :)
        • Anyway, never underestimate the ability of the government to lose things. Portions of buildings included.

          I understand, and believe you. However, the VAX and its modems were most likely put there for a reason. Which is exactly my point- how did this seemingly random collection of objects get there in the first place?

          First thing that pops to mind is someone building a private collection to sneak off-site piece at a time or something. They should have just pretended to have given up, slapped an alarm on

          • It's still easy to conceive of a situation where they wound up there by accident. Program gets cancelled, someone rounds up random abandoned stuff and throws it in storage, couple years later that area gets renovated and everything gets shuffled to another unused area, whoever's got the key retires and their successor never has any reason to access a bunch of junk and forgets all about it.

            Hell, I've heard they've still got the Ark of the Covenant somewhere in one of those warehouses. ;]

  • Concept Picture (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cyberfunk2 ( 656339 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:28PM (#12724579)
    Does anyone (preferably knowledgable) care to comment on that concept picture in the article @ NASA ?

    In particular, i'm wondering about the following:

    What do people think those pulsese going down to the planet are in a weird curly line?

    That thing above the hurricane that appears to be shooting something into it ? What's that ?

    The guy standing on the right side of the picture in the MOL who appears to be "fishing" for the incoming spacecraft... with a what.. a big magnet on a tether ?

    • >>That thing above the hurricane that appears to be shooting something into it ? What's that ?

      I think a more interesting question is : What is that thing above the hurricane that appears to be shooting something through it and down into Cuba?

      Remember, this /was/ from the 1960's.

      wbs.
    • >>The guy standing on the right side of the picture in the MOL who appears to be "fishing" for the incoming spacecraft... with a what.. a big magnet on a tether ?

      Could be a big mirror...Maybe it's the prototype for the heat absorbing tile inspection. Just another NASA project that got cancelled.

      wbs.

  • Why is this news? (Score:3, Informative)

    by drsmack1 ( 698392 ) * on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:28PM (#12724580)
    Uh, we found some stuff that was from a project that is public knowledge. The fact that the suits still exist is not news either; it is not like they throw those kinds of things out. I don't think they are biodegradable.

    Also, how about adding some better links for contect? It took about 2 seconds to find this: http://www.deepcold.com/deepcold/dyna_main.html [deepcold.com]

  • Space Cowboys... (Score:3, Funny)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:28PM (#12724581)
    I guess that movie with Clint Eastwood was true after all!

  • Some clarifications (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:30PM (#12724591) Homepage
    The reason the suits looked like Gemini era suits was because the MOL program was based on Gemini technology.

    A Titan IIIC booster with a 'Blue Gemini' atop would launch with the space station afixed, they would do their observation, then the Gemini would detach and land. Later missions could dock with the existing observation platform when feasible.

    The launches would have taken place from Vandenburg Air Force Base in California. This is needed to efficiently put spacecraft into polar orbit without overflying populated land during boost.

    A launch site was created at Vandenburg to handle manned spacecraft launches, but the program was cancelled as the article says. What it doesn't say is that the same complex was refurbished in the 1980s as part of the effort to launch the Space Shuttle into polar orbit for military missions. That program was cancelled as well (following the Challenger destruction).

    For people interested in MOL, go check out the X-20 Dynasoar. It was a related program that would have had a reusable spaceplane 15 years before the shuttle.

  • Bond. James Bond. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by chadpnet ( 627771 )
    How cool is it that the suit # was 007.

  • "We must control the high ground!" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:44PM (#12724667) Homepage
    In the 1960s, the USAF thought that the next generation of air combat was going to be in space. After all, they already had airplanes that could just barely make it into space for a short period.

    So they had the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, the Dyna-Soar program, and the USAF Space School. None of those survived the 1960s, although they were all good, workable ideas. The MOL incorporated the Gemini spacecraft, the best space flying machine to come out of NASA. (Mercury was the "man in a can" capsule, and Apollo was less maneuverable.)

    As for the blue MH-7 suit, there's one of those on display at Wright-Patterson AFB. [af.mil]

  • Who thinks the space spying program stopped by mothballing those suits, just as America's space and spying budgets went through the roof?

  • Spending money on space (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @01:52PM (#12724710) Homepage

    This does raise the question again about what Space exploration is for. With George W stating that its about going to the Moon, then Mars and putting people on planets this is a lesson in how easy it is to put people into Orbit (but how much more expensive to get to the moon, Gemini v Apollo).

    With elements like Hubble being decomissioned despite its achievements, and a lack of long range probes being planned the question has to be asked.

    Is NASA a marketing campaign for US Military "dominance" of earth and space. Or about futhering Mankind. In the 60s the president gave a target of something that just seemed right (landing on the moon). In the 21st Century the best we aim to achieve is... what JFK wanted us to do in the 60s.

    Imagine what MIT, Berkley, Cambridge, Moscow, Paris and a bunch of other top Universities could do in terms of pushing human achievement forwards if they had the budget that NASA gets.
    • Space development really has more to do with divvying up Federal funds than anything else, at this point. Oh sure, when it comes to near space a lot of good work gets done (geosynchronous stuff is big business now), but when it comes to anything more distant we're more in the realm of pork-barrel politics than meaningful exploitation of the solar system.

      I got news for you ... those Universities already have research budgets that are in the same league as NASA's, but like NASA they squander much of it. I'
    • It is an unfortunate reality that unless the US and other countries of similar mindset must be able to militarize space when needed.

      Now the reason I like GW's listed goal is that we have been parked in orbit for 40+ years and haven't budged except once to the moon. Sure we send probes out there but probes are not going to advanced space exploration in any meaningful array other than to say "hey, neat rocks here".

      Establishing a presence on the moon will do much more than parking ourselves in a tincan in o
    • Beside the fact that universities already have huge research budgets, as other posters have noted, I would argue that space exploration should have the ultimate goal of colonization.

      Mankind is quickly depleting the natural resources of Earth, growing fast enough that overcrowding might be a problem in a few centuries, and is highly vulnerable to a "planet killing" event like a large meteor or nuclear war. While conservation, population controls, and Bruce Willis can protect us for now, their usefulness wi
  • What, did the room dissapear in some sort of visual vortex, then just reappear?

    Or did it have a 'dont not disturb' sign on it all these years? And no one noticed until it fell off due to dry rot..

    It just sounds fishy...
    • It's like some of the rooms along the hallways of the buildings at my college that are always closed and locked and no one ever pays attention to. Everyone just assumes that someone else is responsible for that room and knows whats in it. Years can go by while no one actually realizes that no one is responsible for that room. I'm sure there are atleast a few rooms like that at my school, full of who-knows-what.

  • The soviets actually did this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @02:46PM (#12724954) Homepage
    The USSR actually DID have a series of manned military space stations that orbited during the 1970s. It was known as the Almaz [wikipedia.org] project (more info here [russianspaceweb.com]). In addition to reconnisance equipment on board, they also carried anti-satelitte weaponry.

    The USSR also had some other scary space plans [k26.com] for military space stations. I mean, it even LOOKS sinister, painted black and all...
    • I believe the main reason the USAF ditched the MOL was that unmanned platforms had matured to the point where a space crew would have been an unneccessary complication and expense. Back in the late 50's and early sixties, it wasn't a given that robotic spacecraft would pass muster, hence the manned AF programs.

      The Soviets eventually came to the same conclusion, only after blowing the big rubles on Almaz and military Salyuts.

      Incidentally, the first successful US launch after Challenger was an SDI experiment [skyrocket.de]

  • Here's [deepcold.com] what the MOL might've looked like . . .
  • This historically accurate movie [imdb.com] depicts a Space Shuttle mission to repair and re-orbit a Russian "communications" satellite.
  • Mmmm... space pies...

    oh, wait...
  • Is it just me, or if you look at this [nasa.gov] you can see a small spacecraft firing some sort of proyectile towards Earth? Left corner over the storm.

  • They must be kinda crusty. (Score:4, Funny)

    by boodaman ( 791877 ) on Saturday June 04, 2005 @05:01PM (#12725606)
    I love the headline, inaccurate as it is.

    NASA Discovers Space Spies From the 60's

    No, NASA discovers SPACE SUITS from the 60's. It's not like there were a bunch of astronauts tucked away in a closet somewhere waiting for the "go" signal.

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