Wednesday, February 16, 2011

NOVA AstroSpies



This is some sort of a new information leaking through the soviet regime into the historians log book & it tells much more about the star wars going through the Cold war era. Both sides USA & the Soviets trying to beat eachother not on civilian space breakthroughs but purely on defensive grounds!!
The MOL & ALMAZ projects are covered in great detail. With the integration of Cannons in space shuttles boths sides not only were spying on eachother from miles away but also protecting their space warships.
Millions remember the countdowns, launchings, splashdowns, and parades as the U.S. raced the USSR to the moon in the 1960s. But few know that both countries also ran parallel space programs, whose covert goal was to launch military astronauts on spying missions. In this program, NOVA delves into the untold story of this top-secret space race, which might easily have turned into a shooting war in orbit. 

An early photo of the first MOL crew, the "Magnificent Seven". Maj. Robert Lawrence, the eighth member profiled here (see photo at right), joined MOL later as part of the third crew.



They were the "Magnificent Seven" of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, some of the best pilots the U.S. military had to offer the officials who were making the first MOL crew selection in 1965. Two more crews would follow, including that of Bob Lawrence, the first African-American astronaut. These men, 17 in all, were set to make history in space as the first military astronauts, performing covert reconnaissance from orbit. Yet while NASA's astronauts were gracing magazine covers and signing autographs, the MOL teams were sworn to secrecy; most of the program's details remain classified even today. And MOL was canceled in 1969, before any of its astronauts went into space. To learn more about some of these secret astronauts and their subsequent career achievements, click on the images at right above.—Rima Chaddha

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PBS Nova - AstroSpies.rmvb

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