Part of their secret would be mission were a few things Ian could be proud of.
007 Spacesuit Found in Storage
Amit Asaravala 06.03.05
NASA got a reminder of its Cold War origins recently when a probe into a locked storage room at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station unveiled two spacesuits from a canceled spy program -- and one had a "007" name tag.
The suits were discovered when two security agents came across the locked room during a check of the facility. They used a master key to unlock the door and found, among other things, the two blue spacesuits "complete and in remarkable shape," according to a report posted to NASA's website on Friday.
The space agency said the suits were used to train Air Force astronauts for a 1960's spy program involving an Earth-orbiting space station known as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory. The station never got off the ground and the program was canceled in 1969, according to NASA.
One of the suits bears the number 008 and the name "Lawyer" on the left sleeve. It belonged to Lt. Col. Richard Lawyer, one of the first astronauts recruited to the program in 1965.
The other suit bears the number 007 -- better known to fans of spy fiction as the number assigned to British Secret Service agent James Bond. The suit has no other identifying information.
The NASA report calls the similarity with the world's favorite spy "intriguing," but does not say whether it was intentional. Representatives for the agency were not immediately available to comment on the suit.
Author Ian Fleming published his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1953, more than a decade before the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program got its start.
NASA's plans for the mystery suit are "still being determined," according to the report.
As for Lt. Col. Lawyer's suit, NASA said it was officially transferred to the Smithsonian Institution in 1983, but somehow ended up in the storage room at Cape Canaveral. The agency will return the suit to the institution.
Another spacesuit from the MOL program and a mockup of the station are on exhibit at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Ohio.
'007 spy suit' found in Nasa bunker
By Irene Mona Klotz
at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida
The spy was definitely not called Bond, for that name is not among the military officers selected 40 years ago to conduct reconnaissance missions for the US from an orbital laboratory in space.
But secret agent Bond shares a number - 007 - with one of the US spies-in-training.
Space historians are trying to find out who the mystery man is after his spacesuit turned up, along with an identical outfit bearing number 008, in an abandoned space agency (Nasa) blockhouse last used to launch Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom into space in 1961.
"I wish I knew how they got there," said Roger Launius, chairman of the space history department at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
Suit 008 was easier to trace, as the word "LAWYER" was emblazoned on the left shoulder.
Though some, no doubt, would have applauded the idea, sending the Nasa attorney into space was not part of the programme.
Rather, the suit belonged to Air Force Lt Col Richard Lawyer, a member of the first group of eight military officers selected in 1965 to serve in a programme known as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MOL.
Robot spies
Over the next two years, the programme, run by the Air Force in cooperation with Nasa, signed up another nine aspiring space spies and began training them for what was expected to be month-long missions aboard an orbital outpost based on a modified Gemini capsule.
The programme died in 1969, as advances in robotics and satellite technology began to match what the military wanted to achieve by stationing human eyes in space - namely keep watch over its Cold War Soviet foes - and do so at a fraction of the cost.
"The programme didn't get too far," Launius said. "In the end, the programme didn't require humans in the loop.
"Plus, with the pressures on the military during the Vietnam War, it was a pretty easy decision on the part of the secretary of defense to cancel MOL."
Programme relics, including at least 22 flight training suits made by Hamilton Sundstrand, were collected over the years and dispatched to the Smithsonian, which serves as the official US space programme archivist.
But at least two of the sky-blue suits disappeared.
No one knows how long the suits languished in the dark and rodent-infested Blockhouse 5/6 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center.
Space mouse
Late last year, however, fire marshals inspecting part of the facility noted piles of decomposing film and deemed them a fire hazard, said Luis Barrios, a design specialist hired by Kennedy Space Center to work with its museum and tourist centre.
When security officials went to clean out the blockhouse, they found a locked annexe with no key. After tracking down a master key, the officers stumbled upon a blue box on the floor of the building and opened it.
A hand-painted Nasa meatball emblem adorned the inside cover and nestled inside the container were two blue spacesuits and four or five pairs of gloves.
The suits were found in amongst the boxes
"We had to open it up and look at the suits because [with KSC] being a wildlife preserve, you never know what else might be in there with it," Nasa security officer Dann Oakland said.
The officers did, in fact, find a mouse nest in the box and tossed it away before packing up the space artefacts and taking them to a secure site.
Lawyer's suit has already been shipped to the Smithsonian, which will soon begin the restoration process. Suit 007 would be following shortly, Barrios said.
For its efforts, KSC will be getting another MOL suit to display at its visitors centre museum.
"It's a reward for something that nobody expected to have the good fortune of finding," Barrios said.
Was 007 ready to hit the orbit?
So it would seem, at least according to the latest find made in an abandoned storage space of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, nearby the Kennedy Space Center, as reported by Irene Klotz for BBC online.
Following some maintenance works, a real "cache" was discovered in one of the decommissioned buildings around the air base, containing all sorts of junk, collected in over 40 years of space flight. Amongst these, the fire marshals inspecting the place found numerous film canisters, electronic equipment and even a used tire from the main landing gear of a space shuttle.
But the most interesting discovery was that of 2 blue space suits, one of them bearing the number 007, and the other the number 008 and the name "Lawyer" in capital letters, on one of the sleeves.
Actually, this was the key to the whole mystery. "Lawyer" turned out to be Lt. Col. Richard Lawyer, one of the first astronauts selected by the Air Force to participate in the MOL (Manned Orbiting Laboratory). The MOL program, which was initiated in 1963, had the purpose of putting spies in orbit, using for this purpose a modified Gemini capsule, allowing the two crewmen to remain in space for periods up to one month.
But the program has been cancelled in 1969, because "The Department of Defense never found a good reason to fly people in space", said Roger Lanius, head of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's space history department.
It’s not yet clear how the two MH-7 training suits landed in the abandoned building, but it is very likely that at least one of them will be an exhibit of great interest within Kennedy Space Center’s own visitor center museum, even though it will probably be only a replica or one of the other 22 suits of this type still existing, because the originals must first undergo a thorough decontamination process.
References:
A History of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory
Wikipedia Manned Orbital Laboratory
NASA-Suits for Space Spies
