As an Air Force officer who worked in the Hexagon program, my analysis, transmitted to Michael later that day, was as follows:
It's pretty obvious that these drawings depict a Hexagon forward section in reverse orientation in the aft section of both the manned and unmanned MOL configurations. The KH-10 camera is in the same position relative to the Hexagon forward section as was the KH-9 camera on Hexagon itself, just reversed along the longitudinal axis. Before I saw this, I was already wondering whether KH-9 and KH-10 were simply variants of the same basic camera design, developed to serve both Hexagon and Dorian. I had already concluded that MOL had to have film buckets since there was no room to return the film in the Gemini B.
The unmanned configuration doesn't make sense to me. I identify what appear to be six buckets near the nose of the fairing, plus two more objects in the nose that appear to be different. The film path from the camera to the six buckets is evident. But then, what was the Hexagon forward section used for if not for four more buckets? A total of ten buckets? Really? How long was this thing supposed to stay in orbit, at what altitude, and where was the reboost engine? Also, two suites of buckets, one forward and one aft, would have required two separate film paths out of the camera. This is too complicated for my engineer's taste. It smells of kludge.
Also, while the film path to the six forward buckets in the unmanned configuration passes over a large object that could be the film supply drum, in the manned configuration there is a habitable module in this same space. So where was the film supply in the manned configuration? Or were the crew going to be snapping photos with Kodak Instamatic 110s?
And why would Manned Orbiting Laboratory have had an unmanned configuration anyway, given that the Hexagon program was a parallel effort? I wonder whether this is disinformation, possibly even a hoax? Or maybe the Dorian program barfed up these drawings in 1969 in a desperate pitch to merge Dorian and Hexagon as the former was facing cancellation? You've made some pitches in your time so you can write the scene: "We can turn re-orient Dorian as a Super-Hexagon!"
The longer I stare at these drawings the sillier they look. The Hexagon forward section structure appears to have no support beneath it, which means that it would have been suspended from above during launch. I have never seen a payload of that size that was designed to take launch loads in suspension. But then, supporting the structure from below would have transmitted launch loads that the Hexagon forward section was not designed to take. I don't believe that there was ever a single engineering drawing for either of these configurations; these are "artist's (mis)concepts."
Go to Part 7
More Declassified Drawings of Manned Orbiting Laboratory (Dorian)
2 comments:
What do you mean by "The Hexagon forward section structure appears to have no support beneath it"?
"It's pretty obvious that these drawings depict a Hexagon forward section in reverse orientation in the aft section of both the manned and unmanned MOL configurations"
I don't know what you are seeing here, but there is no HEXAGON hardware in those pic. A "HEXAGON forward section" is the part of the HEXAGON spacecraft that contained the four RV's. You mistaking the light baffles for the Hexagon.
And also, the Gemini capsule was to return film. The astronauts did practice transferring it and there was storage for it in the capsule.
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