Original subtitles

Narrator: They led double lives.

Man: I couldn't tell my family or my friends,

My kids, my wife,

No one could I tell what did I really do.

Narrator: Guarding america's secrets

In the cold war's darkest hours.

Man: It was a black program.

The contractors were invisible,

Work was invisible.

Narrator: A top-secret operation,

Now declassified...

Man: Our mission was to take photographs

Of the soviet union.

Narrator: Revealing a cloak-and-dagger world

Of robotic satellites and orbiting spy stations.

Man: For a rocket engineer,

This was the most amazing capability possible.

Narrator: Until now, few have known how spies in space

Changed the course of the cold war.

Man: In many ways, the shadow space race

Was far more important than the publicly visible space race.

♪

[explosion]

Narrator: 1963.

The soviet union and united states

Have split the atom and divided the planet.

The cold war threatens to turn red hot.

Anton fedyashin: The cold war became this competition

Between two fundamentally different ideological visions

Of how human societies work.

The world was looking

Both to the united states and to the soviet union

For models of how to modernize their own societies.

The space race becomes a litmus test

Of the two superpowers' abilities

To bring humanity into the modern age.

Narrator: America,

The wealthiest nation on earth,

Gets caught up in a space craze.

John charles: The space age really infused the culture.

Announcer: For the boys of today,

The space suit has replaced

The cowboy outfit of an earlier year.

Charles: Everybody was in a space mood.

And it became a way of identifying

Who was thinking upward and outward,

Who was thinking futuristically.

Don't forget,

All the automobiles sported rocket-like tailfins, you know,

Because that was the future.

♪

Narrator: But while america dreams of space,

When it reaches for the stars,

It seems to keep crashing back to earth.

The u.S. Space program

Can't seem to get out of its own way.

A string of embarrassing failures

Sets a sharp contrast to its biggest rival.

Fedyashin: During the first decade,

It's pretty clear that the soviets

Are winning the space race.

They beat the americans into space

With the first artificial satellite

In October of 1957, sputnik.

They beat the americans into space

With the first living being--

The dogs, laika, and then belka and strelka.

They beat the americans into space

With the first human being, yuri gagarin,

In April of 1961.

Then the first woman into space in June of 1963.

Things really were going the soviet way.

Narrator: Soviet successes aren't just pr victories.

Armed with the bomb,

They cast a shadow of fear across america.

James david: And what was critical was

If the soviets could launch these satellites,

The same rockets could launch nuclear warheads

That could be sent from the soviet union

To hit the united states.

Narrator: Americans are terrified of a surprise attack

And fear what's hiding behind the iron curtain.

James outzen: The soviet union was a very closed society,

And we had no means of really understanding

What was happening in this very, very large area.

We didn't have the ability to put human spies in

To gain information.

Narrator: Desperate to learn what the soviets are up to,

America dedicates billions of dollars

And recruits thousands of the nation's

Top scientists and engineers

To a single covert mission--

High-tech spying from space.

Here, once-classified films and animations

Show the scale of the military's plan--

Sending robotic cameras into space...

And, even more ambitious,

Putting manned military stations in orbit.

♪

Crucially, the world focuses on another space program--

Apollo's moon mission.

While nasa's dream team gets all the attention,

The military develops a parallel top-secret program.

Robert crippen: All of that was highly classified,

And we couldn't talk about it.

Narrator: In the 1960s,

Robert crippen can't discuss any part of what he does.

Crippen: Ok, I, uh,

I'm afraid I can't go in too much detail on that.

Narrator: For these astronauts,

It's just name, rank, and serial number.

Richard truly: My name's richard truly.

Narrator: But today, for the first time,

They can tell the whole story.

Man: Richard truly, take one.

Truly: Now, 50-some odd years later,

I can talk about it.

But at that time,

It was an introduction to a world

That I didn't know existed.

Narrator: Even the astronaut selection process

Is a mystery.

Truly: So they had a selection,

And they never asked us whether we wanted to or not.

They just assumed that we did, which was correct.

Crippen: I was wildly happy.

Here I was, 28 years old, and, uh, I was gonna get a chance

To do something I'd been dreaming about.

It was a good time, highlight of my life.

Narrator: Crippen and truly are test pilots,

But their training to become astronauts

Will push them to a new level.

[crash]

Charles: It was considered

The best way to train pilots for space flight

Was to subject them to the extremes

Of the environment they were likely to see.

So there were disorientation trainers,

There were vehicles that would tumble the astronauts

In all three dimensions all at once,

To make them disoriented

And to test their ability to reorient themselves

And achieve a stable position again,

Using systems like in a spacecraft.

There were temperature extremes.

They would put astronauts in ovens, human ovens,

To assess not only their physiological

But their psychological resistance

To these kind of things.

Narrator: After selecting their first class of astronauts,

The air force holds just one press conference.

Truly: It was on my birthday. I was 28 years old.

November 12, 1965.

And that was the last time

I ever talked to the media in the program.

The following morning,

They introduced us to the united states'

Most classified and secret space programs.

Narrator: They are astronauts, american heroes.

But unlike the apollo team,

They won't become household names.

Truly and crippen disappear into one of the most expensive,

Secretive, and ambitious space programs

Ever conceived--

The manned orbiting laboratory,

Or mol.

David: The manned orbiting laboratory's purpose

Was very simple and straightforward,

And that was to acquire very high-resolution photography

Of targets in the soviet union.

Narrator: This film,

Recently declassified and never before broadcast,

Shows mol under construction.

It's the size of a bus.

At its heart is a movable 71-inch mirror

For a camera that will be as big as a car.

It will be by far

The largest and most sophisticated

Spy platform in space.

Truly: Imagine the hubble space telescope,

Except pointing down.

Charles: Mol was extremely ambitious.

50 years ago,

This was the most amazing capability possible--

Tracking items in the soviet union

With the resolution

Of as low as 4 inches on the ground.

Something that's the size of a baseball

Could be seen from orbit.

Narrator: But america isn't looking to play ball.

Mol's focus will be on soviet weapons systems,

Especially their intercontinental

Ballistic missiles.

At the start of the space race,

Americans fear that the soviets have far more missiles,

And are willing to use them.

Fedyashin: Nikita khrushchev had a tendency

To make fairly irresponsible threatening statements

On a fairly regular basis.

But this was all part and parcel

Of projecting the image of the soviet union

As a very powerful military presence in the world.

Joe caddell: So, the threat posed by the soviet union

Meant that there was a real fear

Of what people will often refer to

As a nuclear pearl harbor.

♪

I'm talking in terms of killing

Tens of millions of american citizens,

Destroying american cities, infrastructure, military forces,

Essentially ending the american republic

As we know it.

[explosion]

Narrator: In the atomic age,

Total destruction is only minutes away.

Mol could help head off a surprise attack,

Spotting and then monitoring soviet missile sites.

And america has learned the danger

Of getting caught off guard.

♪

October 4, 1957.

America gets a wake-up call from space.

The soviets launch sputnik,

The first human-made object to orbit the planet.

Suddenly, the soviet menace

Feels very real for many americans.

Caddell: It didn't take much imagination

For people to understand in October of '57

That if the soviets could put sputnik into orbit,

They could also deliver a nuclear payload

To an american city.

Narrator: Sputnik also highlights

That the soviets are racing into the future,

While america seems stuck in the past.

Fedyashin: In early September of 1957,

Desegregation is being implemented in arkansas.

And the little rock nine has to be escorted

By members of the 101st airborne division

Into schools with pro-segregationist whites

Holding up signs that read, "race mixing is communism."

And then four weeks later,

You see the soviet union send sputnik into space.

If you are in africa or southeast asia at the time,

Whose version of modernization are you more likely to follow?

And I think in the '50s and the early '60s,

The answer was pretty clear.

The soviet union was winning not only the space race,

But seemed to be winning the ideological standoff.

♪

Narrator: In the cold war,

Both superpowers look to space as the new frontier

And, potentially, the next battlefield.

Charles: In the '50s and '60s,

It's important for america to put people in space

As a way of showing

The superiority of the american way of life.

The next battlefield was in space.

It had to be represented by red-blooded americans,

Protecting us from the communists,

Who were sure to overrun us and subject us to their way of life.

Narrator: Initial plans for mol

Were straight out of science fiction--

An orbiting military outpost,

Armed and ready for war.

♪

Charles: Early on, the mol was all things to all people.

It had capabilities for reconnaissance,

It had capabilities

For intercepting of the enemies' satellites in space

And negating them.

Narrator: But in the final plans,

Mol is an orbiting spy station.

This rarely seen footage of a mol mock-up

Gives a glimpse into just how big it will be.

The air force budgets $1.5 billion in 1965,

Making it one of the defense department's

Most expensive programs.

Each mol would be a single-use spacecraft.

Charles: The five mol vehicles

Were the entire production run.

And it's really interesting to imagine

That such an expensive, such a complex system

Would have been disposable.

Narrator: From the start, mol is an ambitious program,

With a schedule that's even tighter

Than the moon missions.

The goal is to start launching in 1969.

Charles: The mission in space would have lasted about 30 days.

Don't forget, in the 1960s,

The entire worldwide experience in space flight

Was on the order of 15 or 20 days.

So mol was really pushing the envelope

To promise 30-day missions repeatedly.

Narrator: The first step for the mol astronauts

Is to learn the basics of living and working in space.

Team chemistry will be essential.

Crippen: We were all pilots, we all loved to fly.

My fellow mol astronauts were a diverse group.

Uh, we certainly weren't all alike.

Truly: We were like brothers.

Great bunch of people.

Narrator: To get a feel for the microgravity of space,

Mol crewmen start to take elliptical airplane rides.

Truly: If the pilot flying the airplane

Is really good,

They can maintain zero g,

And it's the only way on earth

That you can actually create an environment

Where you can test in zero g.

Narrator: It's a stomach-dropping trip

They nickname the vomit comet.

Charles: Early concerns about weightlessness,

About things such as being able to swallow...

It was seriously considered

That gravity is necessary for swallowing

And, of course, the rest of your digestive processes.

Would your body seize up in the absence of gravity?

The early concerns about space flight weightlessness

Do seem kind of laughable from our perspective now.

Narrator: The mol astronauts move on

To more challenging tasks.

But there are limits to what they can do on zero-g flights.

Truly: The problem is it's only 30 seconds.

And so to get 10 minutes of flight test

Takes 20 of these,

And it's exhausting.

Narrator: Inside one plane,

They build a mock-up of the capsule

The astronauts will fly,

Called the gemini,

And the hatch and tunnel

That'll connect the gemini to the spy laboratory.

They practice moving around the tight spaces,

Turning on cameras and lights only when they reach zero g.

Truly: We would get airborne,

And these were only 25- or 30-second intervals.

And it was show time.

Both of us were in the little gemini.

And we were in full pressure suits.

Turn around, take off the hatch,

Crawl through the tunnel,

Do all that.

Hot, sweaty.

We would get stuck.

And it was hard work.

Narrator: They try loading film in and out of the lab

And crawling back into the gemini capsule.

They focus on the hatch,

Which they'll close at the end of their 30-day mission.

Charles: After the astronauts left,

The vehicles would have been deorbited

To keep them from falling into enemy hands

And revealing american secrets to the soviets.

Narrator: While the lab burns up on re-entry,

The gemini will drop back through the atmosphere,

Protected by its heat shield.

But mol has a potentially fatal flaw--

The specially designed hatch.

Crippen: We needed a way

To get from the gemini into the laboratory,

And they elected to put a hatch through the heat shield,

That you would remove

And then crawl back through that.

Truly: Some of the flight crew

Thought, you know, this is crazy.

Cut a hole in the heat shield,

Because later on when you re-enter,

You depend on that heat shield.

♪

Crippen: If the heat shield failed,

You would have a 5,000-degree penetration of the atmosphere,

And it would cook everybody that was inside,

And it would be a major catastrophe.

Truly: Well, nobody had done any of this before.

Narrator: Mol will be an extremely risky venture,

But america is running out of options.

May 1, 1960.

Newly deployed soviet sa-2 ground-to-air batteries

Swing into action.

An intruder is arcing over the heart of their nation,

Flying out of reach of soviet jets.

At 70,000 feet,

American pilot francis gary powers

Is untouchable in his u-2...

Until today.

In the days following the u-2's shoot-down,

The u.S. Intelligence community

Claims that it's just a weather plane

Blown off course.

But much of the plane, including its powerful camera,

Survives the crash,

And the cover story falls apart.

David: The shoot-down in may 1960

Proved to be a major embarrassment

To president dwight eisenhower

Because of the attempted cover-up.

More importantly,

It cut off the only means

Of collecting photographic intelligence

Of the interior of the soviet union.

Fedyashin: And the most important question

In the late 1950s

Was the so-called perceived missile gap--

The idea that the soviets

Had more intercontinental ballistic missiles--

Icbms as they were known--

And that the americans had fewer.

Narrator: Without the u-2,

America is flying blind.

David: Although photographic intelligence

Doesn't provide 100% of the answers,

It does go a long way in providing the answers

To this absolutely critical question--

Where do we stand with the soviet union

In these long-range nuclear-tipped missiles?

Caddell: Premier khrushchev wasn't shy

About making statements like

"we are churning out missiles like sausages,

We will bury you."

[men yelling]

We had to assume the worst-case scenario.

Narrator: The u-2 is no longer an option over the soviet union.

And mol isn't even a pipe dream yet.

America needs a plan b.

Outzen: Eisenhower recognized

That the u-2 would eventually be shot down.

And in the background,

We needed to be developing technology

That would allow us to continue to understand

What our adversaries were up to

The day that that event occurred.

David: The united states

Started developing reconnaissance satellites

In 1956--

One to collect photographic intelligence,

One to collect signals intelligence--

That is, intercepting soviet radars.

Narrator: The first photo-imaging satellite

Is called corona.

But on January 29, 1959,

It can't even lift off the pad.

One misfire is followed by 12 more attempts...

And 12 failures.

But they can't give up.

David: This was a completely new technology.

No one had ever done it before.

But the system was so important to the united states

For its potential in gathering intelligence,

They did not cancel the program.

Caddell: If corona doesn't succeed,

The americans continue to have to craft

Foreign policy and defense spending

In terms of a giant question mark

Regarding the soviet threat.

Narrator: Even if the military

Can get corona's cameras into space,

Many think there's a better option--

Human spies.

Charles: So to have a flexible system in space,

You needed to have people on board.

And if you had the people on board,

You need to understand

What the capabilities of those people were

And how to keep those people healthy and functional

During the time they're in space.

Narrator: In 1966, the mol team builds an underwater mock-up

Off buck island in the caribbean

To simulate life in space.

This footage gives a rare behind-the-scenes look

At the operation.

Engineers and astronauts

Put on their diving masks and respirators

And then layer on their space suits,

Filled with water.

Neutrally buoyant,

They can practice for as long as their air holds out.

Charles: Planning for the mol

Included underwater training,

And more than training,

Evaluation of procedures.

Narrator: Unlike the 30-second zero-g flights,

They can spend hours each day underwater,

Practicing maneuvers

And passing canisters of film through the tunnel.

The mol program is progressing,

But slowly and over budget.

Crippen: The launch kept moving down the road.

It seemed like every year it was a year away.

Some technical difficulties,

But it was primarily a funding issue.

Man: Five seconds...Mark...

Narrator: In contrast, the simpler, cheaper corona

Has been on the fast track for several years.

On August 10, 1960,

With lucky number 13,

Corona leaves the pad

And reaches orbit.

David: About 24 hours later,

They commanded the satellite to eject the capsule.

They recovered the capsule,

And it was brought back to the white house,

And president eisenhower and some key advisors

Actually had a press conference.

Man: I am proud, mr. President,

To present you this flag of the united states of america.

Narrator: The capsule and flag

Are the very first man-made objects

To fly into space and return safely.

And just one week later,

The next corona launches--

This time, with a top-secret camera on board.

David: And so that was a very, very small film load,

Only about 20 pounds.

A very simple and not too capable camera.

Narrator: Despite its limitations,

The camera photographs

1.6 million square miles of the soviet union,

Giving america its first look

Behind the iron curtain from space.

And it's eye-opening.

Caddell: A senior cia official said

That the availability of corona photography

Over the soviet union

Was like shining a flashlight in a darkened warehouse.

Outzen: Corona, in its very first successful mission,

Was able to return more images from space

Than all of the u-2 flights combined over the soviet union.

Caddell: We found airfields,

Entire cities,

Transportation hubs,

And air defense missile complexes

That were previously unknown to western intelligence.

Narrator: Most important,

Corona spots all of the soviet icbm sites

And makes a surprising discovery.

Caddell: By June of 1961,

The cia estimated that, counter to air force fears

That there were perhaps as many

As 200 ballistic missile launch pads

Inside the soviet union,

There were actually probably only about 10 to 25.

And of that potential 10 to 25,

Only six launch sites could be confirmed.

This gave us a more rational understanding

Of the threat we did face and the threat we didn't.

Narrator: Corona shows that the missile gap is a myth.

For the first time,

America knows it has the upper hand

In the nuclear arms race.

Corona is now america's eyes in space.

And a satellite called grab is its ears,

Listening for soviet radar systems.

David: They were very, very small,

And they were very, very simple.

But that small satellite

Carried a highly classified signals intelligence package,

Which was designed to intercept soviet air defense radars.

And during the roughly three months of operation,

The grab satellite collected so much data of soviet radars,

It took many, many months

For analysts to produce finished and useful intelligence.

[siren]

Outzen: Knowing where those radars were located

Was essential information

In the event that we needed to carry out a counterattack

Against the soviet union.

Our bombers needed to avoid those radars

In order to successfully carry out

That kind of counterattack.

Narrator: But these early robotic satellites

Were far from perfect.

The cameras were pre-programmed to operate at set times,

Regardless of the weather.

Caddell: The earliest corona missions

For the first couple of years

Were as much as 60 to 65% cloud-covered.

Narrator: When clouds obscure corona's targets,

The satellite wastes its precious film.

And it can take weeks from launch to processing

For analysts to determine

If they have any usable intelligence.

A manned station like mol,

In which people can modify the mission

And give real-time updates,

Could solve many of these problems.

In this rarely seen footage,

The mol astronauts train in a simulator.

Crippen: We had a capability

To look ahead of our orbital track

And select targets.

The decision-making that you can have with people

Is extremely important.

Computers can't do that.

That's still true today.

Narrator: The need for human eyes in space

Comes into sharp focus

As the superpowers teeter on the brink of nuclear war.

October 15, 1962.

Cia photo analysts make a stunning discovery.

The soviets are building missile sites in cuba,

Just 100 miles from florida.

Nuclear war has come to america's doorstep.

[explosion]

Fedyashin: The range of missiles that the soviets had on cuba

Was far enough to hit new york city

And everything south of that.

So, the human catastrophe would have been unprecedented,

And of course, the united states would have retaliated

Against both cuba and ultimately the soviet union.

Narrator: Corona cameras are supposed to spot these weapons,

But instead, the cuban missiles

Reveal the spy satellite's limitations.

Caddell: Very famously,

The soviet missiles that are deployed in cuba in 1962

Are found by overhead reconnaissance.

But they're not found

By a corona photo reconnaissance satellite,

Rather they're found

By a manned u-2 photo reconnaissance aircraft.

[click]

[click]

Corona actually does photograph cuba.

However, the imagery,

When you look at it on a light table,

Is horribly cloud-covered.

Moreover, the corona resolution at this time is roughly 15 feet.

That's sufficient to see major infrastructure

In the soviet union.

In cuba, by contrast,

The soviet ss-4s deployed at that island

Are field deployed.

So, because of its limited resolution

And its inability to deal flexibly with weather,

Corona doesn't end up adding any value

To the discovery of missiles in cuba.

Narrator: It's a u-2 that first finds the missiles.

But the spy plane's vulnerability is exposed again

When one is shot down over cuba

And its pilot killed.

America needs a spy platform

That can combine the u-2's high-resolution imagery

With corona's safe overflight.

Mol seems like it could be the solution,

But it takes almost more five more years

To develop and begin production.

The air force has to build and test a rocket

Powerful enough to lift mol's 30,000 pounds

More than 100 miles into space.

On August 26, 1966,

The air force prepares to launch a titan iiic,

A version of the rocket that will carry mol.

It's an intercontinental ballistic missile

Beefed up with two solid fuel boosters.

This mission is to carry communication satellites

Into orbit.

The launch gives truly and the rest of the mol team

A chance to see their future ride in action.

Truly: And so we decided we would go down and watch it.

Announcer: 20 seconds.

Truly: They counted down and...

Announcer: 2, 1, zero...

Ignition.

Liftoff. We're off on the hour.

Truly: It lifted off

And went up in the air.

Man: Looking very nice, 42 seconds.

Truly: And suddenly we saw it turning,

And, uh, the range, uh, control

Blew it up.

[explosions]

Narrator: With the mol team watching,

The rocket explodes into thousands of pieces.

All that's lost are the satellite and the rocket...

But a failure like this on a mol launch

Would kill the two astronauts.

Truly: It was not a great day.

[laughs]

But the flight crew

Comes from a group of people

That understand risk.

We knew that rockets could blow up

And airplanes could crash.

If you don't want to take the risk,

You don't get to fly.

Narrator: The inherent danger strikes home

When one of the 14 mol astronauts,

Robert lawrence,

Is killed in a training accident.

He had been the first african american

Selected to be an astronaut

And a key member of the mol team.

Crippen: What did it feel like? Well, it was very sad.

I'd lost friends before

And lost friends subsequent to that,

But there is risk involved, and, uh, that's part of life.

Narrator: Mol is still years from launch.

But it's not the only program

That struggles to get off the ground.

May 11, 1963.

A new satellite called gambit sits on the pad

When an air bubble in its fuel tank

Triggers the rocket's collapse.

So two months later, they try again.

The successful launch

Places a high-resolution camera in space for the first time.

Caddell: High resolution provided by the gambit 1 system

Offered a fundamentally different class of information

Than what you could get from corona.

High resolution spatial details

Of things like soviet naval vessel

Or aircraft or radar dish,

Allowed you to start characterizing

Some of its operational parameters

And not simply identify what it is.

Narrator: By the mid-1960s,

Corona and gambit are launching almost once a month.

Their success creates a whole new problem--

How do you recover all this film from space?

The satellite ejects a film capsule

To drop northwest of hawaii.

It streaks through the atmosphere,

Lighting up the sky like a shooting star.

A team of air force planes

Flies in a grid pattern over the ocean.

Their goal--

To snag the film capsule before it hits water.

As a plane gets ready to make a pass,

The air crew lets out catch lines.

Outzen: This is one of the hooks

That the air force used

To retrieve the very first film

That was returned from space.

The way the system would work

Is that two of these hooks would be attached to the harness

Out the back end of the aircraft.

The aircraft would fly over the parachute,

And one of these hooks would snag the parachute,

And that film was returned to the united states

Where it was developed and used for intelligence purposes.

Narrator: Gambit, corona, and the next-generation hexagon

Produce hundreds of thousands of images each year,

Cataloging the soviet arsenal.

But the agency in charge of the satellites and mol--

The national reconnaissance office--

Is invisible to the public.

Outzen: The national reconnaissance office

Was not publicly acknowledged

From the time that it was established in 1961

Until 1992.

Narrator: To keep the soviets guessing about these programs,

Everyone involved maintains a wartime level of security.

Phil pressel: So the fact that I worked

On top-secret programs

Meant I couldn't tell my family or my friends,

My kids, my wife,

No one could I tell what did I really do.

There were certain words

That were taboo to use on the telephone.

You couldn't use the word "camera."

And the most taboo word to use was the word "film,"

Because film automatically means taking pictures...Cameras.

When we went on trips,

We were told several times by the cia

You can't stay in this particular hotel

Because they knew that some of the rooms were bugged.

Truly: Not only did the programs not exist,

The national reconnaissance office

Didn't exist

And the security system didn't exist.

It was invisible.

Narrator: But as mol gears up,

And thousands begin to work on it,

The budget balloons from 1.5 to 3 billion dollars.

There's just no way to pretend it doesn't exist.

Crippen: It would be hard for the department of defense

To not publicly state that there was a program.

It was too visible from that standpoint.

However, they had an unclassified mission for us

That was doing experiments on orbit,

That sort of thing.

So, the real mission was very heavily classified.

Narrator: November 3, 1966.

Less than three months after the titan iiic explosion,

Mol faces a crucial test that can only be done in public.

The air force gives it a trial run.

They load a mol laboratory mock-up onto the titan iiic,

Make last minute checks,

And then top it with the gemini capsule

That has been uniquely modified for mol.

Crippen: The idea was

We were gonna test an unmanned gemini capsule

With the hatch cut in it.

Crippen: They had to cut this hatch into the heat shield,

Which made it potentially a failure point,

When you were re-entering.

Narrator: If the heat shield fails on this trial run,

It will be a major setback, likely killing the program.

Man: All systems are good

With the launch vehicle on the pad.

Man: Go ahead.

Narrator: The manned orbiting laboratory

Will be one of the biggest payloads

Ever carried into space.

It will get there on a titan iiic,

The most powerful rocket of its time.

Crippen: We had a titan iiic

That was gonna fly out of cape canaveral

That had a mock-up of our lab and the gemini spacecraft.

Man: Recorders to fast speed.

Man: T minus 30 seconds and counting.

All final checks in the countdown

Still looking good at this time.

Narrator: The future of mol

Rides on this launch.

Man: Zero. Ignition.

[rumbling]

Liftoff.

We have a liftoff at 16 minutes after the hour.

Climbing very nicely.

We have a roll program initiated.

Narrator: The titan

Lifts the mol mock-up and gemini into orbit,

Accelerating to almost 17,500 miles per hour.

But the biggest test is still to come.

Will the heat shield's access hatch hold up

Or fail on re-entry?

Man: We have staging,

And it's been confirmed here on the ground.

After traveling 5,500 miles,

The gemini drops back through the atmosphere.

Temperatures can reach 5,000 degrees.

Parts of the heat shield melt off,

Spraying onto the windows.

[parachute fluttering]

Man on radio: Roger, we're current now on the event timer,

But go ahead...

Narrator: The capsule splashes down in the south atlantic...

Man on radio: Roger, will do.

Narrator: And navy rescue divers scramble to keep it afloat

And secure lines for retrieval.

Hauling it aboard the u.S.S. La salle

Is a lot less high-tech.

The exterior is charred.

Mol engineers have to pry open the doors.

But once inside the capsule,

They discover that the interior is undamaged.

The hatch in the heat shield held,

And mol has cleared a critical hurdle.

But while mol inches forward,

The world is changing much faster.

By the mid-1960s,

Corona and gambit are operating smoothly,

Collecting images of missile sites and weapons systems

Across the soviet union.

Caddell: What corona provided was a broad area scan

Or broad area search capability.

The gambit system was more of a point imaging system.

In a way, the gambit system was like a u-2 in space.

It allowed us to type out and identify

Different types of bomber aircraft,

Different types of transport aircraft,

Even different naval vessels from one another.

Narrator: By 1966,

The two satellites can tag-team any site in the soviet union.

Outzen: So, say a missile silo

Was identified on the corona system.

The gambit system would be programmed

To come and look at that particular missile silo,

But at much higher resolution.

The later generation gambit system,

We were able to identify objects

That were smaller than one foot in size.

Narrator: Teamed with improved radar and signals detection,

They provide critical information

On the soviet military.

Outzen: They each provided

A unique contributing piece of information

That, assembled with another piece of information,

Gave us greater insight

Into the intelligence challenge that we were trying to solve.

Narrator: With satellites passing overhead

Almost continuously,

The soviets realize they're being watched.

Caddell: There are many stories that I have heard

Of soviets writing things in the snow or using dirt

Or other marking agents

To communicate things to the americans.

Many of these are unrepeatable four-letter words.

Narrator: Ground-based controllers

Can remotely reprogram these satellites,

Making them much more versatile.

The later generations are designed to carry much more film

And multiple film buckets

So they can stay in orbit longer.

Robotic satellites with high-resolution cameras

Fill much of the role planned for mol,

With one important difference.

Charles: Robotic missions

Are also gonna be substantially cheaper than piloted missions.

Or if you spend the same amount of money,

You can get more capability out of a robotic mission.

Narrator: By 1969,

Vietnam is consuming most of the defense budget...

And every program comes under close scrutiny.

Mol is running almost three years behind schedule

And more than a billion dollars over budget.

David: When you put humans in space,

It is very, very expensive.

It is very, very complex.

And ultimately, president nixon canceled the program.

Man: This morning,

The chairman and members

Of the appropriate house and senate committees

Were informed that the manned orbiting laboratory,

Mol program,

Has been cancelled by the department of defense.

Narrator: The announcement comes

Just six weeks before apollo 11's moon mission.

Truly: Suddenly,

The program that we had

Thrown ourselves into so much

To make work

Was just gone.

The program was gone.

Crippen: It was devastating is the way I reacted.

You know, as good as it felt when I was selected,

It was a 180-degree opposite

Of how it was when it went away.

So, it was, uh, certainly one of the low periods in my life.

Truly: We thought we were gonna fly in space,

And suddenly our ride was yanked.

And, uh, I didn't know what I was gonna do.

Narrator: Almost immediately,

The whole mol program is shut down,

Scrapped, or recycled.

Charles: The 71-inch mirrors

That would have been used in each of the mol vehicles

Eventually found their way into a telescope

That was used to study the depths of the universe.

Narrator: Half of the mol astronauts,

Including robert crippen and richard truly,

Transfer to nasa.

Truly: It was night and day.

Suddenly we were going from a program

That was at the heart of the cold war

But invisible,

To nasa,

Who encouraged their astronauts to get publicity.

Narrator: Despite their years

Of training and experience with mol,

Truly and crippen have to start at the back of the line at nasa.

Truly: The dream of all astronauts

Is they want to fly in space.

And until you do,

You're not sure you're ever gonna get there.

Narrator: Until 1978,

All they can do is train for the space shuttle

And hope for a chance.

Crippen: The big boss at that time of flight crew ops

Was a guy called george abbey.

George says, "crip,

How'd you like to fly this first space shuttle?"

And I, uh...

I was ready to turn handsprings.

Narrator: It takes crippen 15 years to reach space.

Crippen: I was 28 when I was selected for the mol program.

I was 43 when I flew that first flight,

So, um, tenacity sometimes pays off for you.

Narrator: Over those same 15 years,

Spy satellites prove

That the soviet nuclear threat is not as bad as feared,

And america's atomic anxieties ease.

Caddell: One of the major legacies then

Of 1960s space reconnaissance

Is peace and stability, to a degree.

The ability to have a firm,

Rational, evidence-based understanding

Of the adversary's capabilities,

I would argue, drastically reduced the likelihood

Of accidental nuclear war.

Narrator: In 1972,

America and the soviet union sign salt I,

The first in a series of arms control agreements.

And in July of 1975,

For the first time,

The two superpowers link up in space

With the apollo-soyuz mission.

Crippen: Apollo-soyuz was important

Because it allowed us to find out

That we could work with the soviets

On things like space

And be productive together.

Space is a good way to bring nations together.

It really is.

Narrator: Robert crippen lives every astronaut's dream,

Flying into space on board the shuttle four times.

And on richard truly's 44th birthday, he reaches space.

Truly: I first got to fly the enterprise

On top of the 747,

And then I turned around and commanded challenger.

It was a thrill.

Narrator: He retires from the navy

As a vice admiral.

While mol faded into the shadows,

It played a crucial role

In the evolution from paranoia to peace.

Truly: There weren't a lot of good things

Going on in the '60s.

About the only thing that americans could dream about

Was the magic mission of apollo.

But invisible to the public,

A lot of people, including me,

Were working to win the cold war

And gain peace,

And it was a marvelous experience.