This footage was rescued from the archives of Republic Aviation and was discovered in a Long Island storage locker. It contains raw footage intended to showcase the planned Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). See below for more about this program.
The various segments in the film include a look at plasma engine development for satellite maneuvering (17 seconds) developed for the Office of Naval Research. Animation shows a satellite being controlled with plasma thrusters. At 1:19 prototype plasma thrusters are shown. Other animated clips show the principles of operation of the plasma thrusters. At 22:50 a thruster is test fired in lab conditions.
At 24:16 titles state “Survival in Space”. This footage shows the Paul Moore Research And Development Center at Republic Aviation Corporation, located at Route 110 and Conklin Street. Here astronauts or test subjects are undergoing tests inside simulated space station modules for the M.O.L. At 24:45 a subject’s breathing is monitored at rest and various other astronaut candidate style medical tests are undertaken including using an exercycle. At 25:09 the telemeter ground station is shown with whirring tape machines and computers monitoring human physiological response. At 25:38 sensors are placed on a test subject and then his vital signs remotely monitored in the trailer. At 26:35 a simulated Apollo (?) capsule is used for testing. At 27:04 testing is again shown in the M.O.L. mock-up. At 29:24 a computer mainframe crunches data from the tests. At 29:35 a Saturn I rocket launch is shown.
At 30:58 the Astrovac, a zero gravity personal bathing system, is demonstrated by a man in underpants.
The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), originally referred to as the Manned Orbital Laboratory, was part of the United States Air Force’s manned spaceflight program, a successor to the cancelled Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar military reconnaissance space plane project. The project was developed from several early Air Force and NASA concepts of manned space stations to be used for reconnaissance purposes. MOL evolved into a single-use laboratory, with which crews would be launched on 40-day missions and return to Earth using a Gemini B spacecraft, derived from NASA’s Gemini program.
The MOL program was announced to the public on December 10, 1963, as a manned platform to prove the utility of man in space for military missions. Astronauts selected for the program were later told of the reconnaissance mission for the program.[1] The contractor for the MOL was the Douglas Aircraft Company. The Gemini B was externally similar to NASA’s Gemini spacecraft, although it underwent several modifications, including the addition of a circular hatch through the heat shield, which allowed passage between the spacecraft and the laboratory.
MOL was cancelled in 1969, during the height of the Apollo program, when it was shown that unmanned reconnaissance satellites could achieve the same objectives much more cost-effectively. U.S. space station development was instead pursued with the civillian NASA Skylab (Apollo Applications Program) which flew in the mid-1970s.
In the 1970s, the Soviet Union launched several Almaz military space stations, very similar to the MOL in intent, but cancelled the military program in 1977
