"Astrospies" Episode of Nova on PBS

[Mysterion]

Anybody see this yet? It aired last night here in the Puget Sound area, and it was very interesting. Went into the USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program that was cancelled about six week before APollo 11 landed on the moon. It was publically meant to be a research oriented space station, but was actually meant to spy on the Soviets. I'd heard about this program before, but what blew me away was the material about the equivilent program the Soviets had, and actually launced in the early '70s. Maybe I've just not been paying close enough attention, but I had no idea whatsoever that the Soviet Union orbited a manned, armed spy platform for five years in the 1970's. Very interesting stuff.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

Take a peek at www.deepcold.com Mark Wade has some interesting information on stuff like MOL, Blue Gemini, the Soviet Almaz, program, and more.

AG

 

[Mysterion]

Alpha_Geek said:
Take a peek at www.deepcold.com Mark Wade has some interesting information on stuff like MOL, Blue Gemini, the Soviet Almaz, program, and more.

AG

Thanks for the link! Interesting stuff, indeed.

 

[Alpha_Geek]

Just tried the link I cited earlier, seems like it may be going up and down.

Some of the same data is available on Wades other site, www.astronautix.com but doesn't have the nice renderings that deepcold has.

I absolutely drool over the X-20 as depicted there. If we had gone forward with the Dynasoar, the space program would have been way more cool!

AG

 

[estrea]

Three words: "Wow!" and "Holy shit!"

Thanks for posting this. And I had no idea. I thought the Russians were just being paranoid. Obviously, I was wrong. We (the USA) did at one time make a foray into spying from space (I mean with humans on board). YIKES!

 

[Alpha_Geek]

Re: "Astrospies" Episode of Nova on PBS

Seems like Deep Cold may be down for the count.

Here's a link to an archive of the site. UNfortunately, the animations that Mark Wade made of the Cold War space hardware aren't preserved.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070809210204/http://www.deepcold.com/index.html

Since the flash based animations didnt make it to the archive either, you may have to click around some to get to stuff.

AG

 

[22 Stars]

Re: "Astrospies" Episode of Nova on PBS

I saw the show, and was fascinated too. I had never seen viewfinders in space like the one on MOL outside of Spock's famous scope at his station.