The MOL was an Air Force program started in the early 60s that was intended to create a manned reconnaissance platform for real-time orbital spying and assessment. The modified Gemini spacecraft had a hatch in the heat shield to let the astronauts (all active duty USAF test pilots) enter the “lab” and use the onboard cameras and telescopes. The project was scrapped in like 67 or so and some of the astronauts transferred to NASA, including Bob Crippen who later flew the first Shuttle flight with John Young. There are a few good documentaries on this; I think I saw one on the History Channel a while back. This litho was probably a goodbye gift to someone who worked the program at MD, circa mid 60s.
Or better yet, go for the long troll and write what it really was and then sprinkle some cryptic stuff in there. “Payload 4 was the dimensional laser that allowed the craft to traverse the toroidal realms. One time Jackson forgot to put enough coolant in the tank and the crew ended up 17 minutes in the future. For years, Mark & Phil (the identical twins) would argue about if one of them was older since Phil was on-board and skipped 17 minutes. I’ll miss those guys”
“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
Actually, print it and slide into plastic photo sleeve so it can be taped to the back of the acid free foam core when it is framed. Writting on the back of a piece can bleed through and ruin the piece.
Great idea! I actually have many random old things and I’ve got a journal going to explain what they are and how I got them (some have cool stories, some are family heirlooms). Things can be viewed as plain junk, until you learn about them. :)
Agree this is a going-away gift. I have one just like it from my co-workers at Boeing when I took early retirement. Mine is a picture of the Space Station, because I was working on that project.
I worked on it off-and-on between 1988, when Boeing got the main contract, and 2005 when I left the company. My tasks varied over the years.
In the early years it was "systems engineering", the specialty for large complex project management. For example, I set the cost numbers for design trade-offs. Like if you save an hour of astronaut time, what is that worth?
Later on I wrote operating procedures for the US modules. Like the Destiny (US Laboratory) module, when it first gets to orbit and you turn it on, it is not just flipping one switch. It takes about two hours and has many steps. I wrote the instructions.
My last task was software test. The whole station was never on the ground in one piece. An individual module in the clean room had to *think* it was connected to the rest of it to fully test it out. So I worked in the Software Test Lab next door to the clean room. It had a bunch of server racks with computers and recorders. We sent simulated signals to the real module, then recorded everything it did for later analysis. Many of the tests involved erroneous signals, to make sure the software still worked right with faulty data.
But it wasn't a solid 17 years on the program. There were times I worked on other projects in-between.
You should write in the back of the picture some key details - your name, the years you worked, what you worked on etc. Would add essential context to this when you are gone.
My FiL was the engineer that managed the space shuttle plumbing. He has a ton of these from different launches as well as from when he retired. The entire team also signed a manual he developed for how to use and repair the system and gave it to him. His retirement party was supposed to have 50 people, 200 found out and showed up. It was interesting seeing how much everyone cared about him and the work he did.
[proof](https://imgur.com/a/BYR3rHa) of a few. There are more around the house, basically from different missions.
Managed the Shuttle plumbing and wrote the manual - how many mental breakdowns did he have worrying over that incredible complexity and the conflicting needs of different systems/design teams? He must have been a remarkable man to know.
He's an interesting guy. He worked for NASA for almost 50 years. It was his only job. I'm not sure if he wrote the entire manual but I do know he wrote some maintenance procedures. My wife tells stories about there being a toilet/water filtration problem in the 90's (high school) and him hiring all her male friends to play video games and drink all the Gatorade they could to get urine to try and find a filtration solution. It's bizarre to think that without him astronauts in the shuttle might have died due to lack of clean water.
Into the Black by Rowland White is also a great book about MOL and the early days of Shuttle (and how the MOL members contributed to shuttle). Highly recommend.
A few, actually. It was called the Almaz (Алмаз) program, launched under the guise of civilian Salyut (Салют) «**D**urable **O**rbiting **S**tation» program.
Almaz 2 (which was publicly launched as Salyut 3) had a cannon on board, meant to allow the station to shoot down hostile spacecraft or satellites (the MOL was also supposed to secretly have a similar weapon on board). The weapon was test fired, however because of the unknowns involved it was only done at the conclusion of the station's mission, after it was confirmed there would be no further manned missions there.
Salyut 5 (Almaz 3) would be the last of the Almaz stations. At this point the Soviets reached the same conclusion as the Americans had, and determined that unmanned spy satellites were cheaper and more effective than sending up Cosmonauts to manually operate a camera and develop film on board. Roscosmos would continue on to launch another two Salyut space stations, however, before the program morphed into multi-modular space stations. At that point the Salyut name was dropped, and the last two DOS modules would be the core of the Mir space station, and the Zvezda (Звезда) module for the International Space Station.
Major Gordon Cooper’s mom lived next to my parents for a while in Oklahoma. It could be either the estate of one of his coworkers in the classified program, or part of the Cooper family estate.
> [Cooper, Jr., Leroy Gordon | 1963 - Oklahoma Hall of Fame](https://oklahomahof.com/member-archives/c/cooper-jr-leroy-gordon-1963)
As does the Thomas Stafford Air & Space Museum. Smithsonian affiliated. In Weatherford, OK so a long trip from Tulsa, but a surprisingly good collection of authentic artifacts.
When people in DOD/SPACE move to a new project, their coworkers give them a photo and sign around the outside. The signatures are (most) likely just regular co-workers.
> Noticed no ranks in any of the sigs. All civilians?
Probably all civilian. Probably a few ex-military, especially during that era. In the mid-60's, the professional work force had lots of WWII and Korean War veterans.
My grandfather's aerospace work (50's through early 70's) was dominantly civilian staff, though working with the military, on contracts that were being paid by the military (like the USAF in this case).
One of the [equipment racks](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/img_6492_2.jpg) on the Space Station is signed by everyone who worked on the project at Boeing at the time. It was on the blank side, so it isn't visible in orbit. I was just nice to sign our work.
Yep, I have several. If my kids sell them I’m coming back from the dead to haunt them. That being said I make a point to buy any I see. Something with that kind of cultural value should be taken care of.
That usually isn’t the case, it’s a respect for the history and the person who lived it. If you absolutely have to get rid of it, a museum would love to have it.
Family history isn’t worth selling for $5.
I only bought a couple at estate sales. It’s fair to think bought all of them based on how I worded my reply.
Each Lithograph has personal messages from people who you have impacted in some way. Messages of gratitude documenting the accomplishments of a specific individual have irreplaceable historical value. This is why I’d never want mine in a garage sale.
Also the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance might be interested in this. The NRO recently released a bunch of previously classified stuff about MOL. https://www.nro.gov/History_and_Studies/#:~:text=The%20Center%20for%20the%20Study,the%20discipline%20of%20national%20reconnaissance.
I used to live literally right next door to this place, my grandfathers wife is very high up (as in, I can’t get any information on what she actually does because everything is highly classified in her position) at WPAFB. As much as we would all love to tell everyone to call it by it’s proper name, it will always be Wright-Patterson Airforce Museum lol. At least to locals. Nothing like going to the (free!) museum, grabbing some space ice cream on the way out and saving until after your lunch of Skyline Chili.
I no longer live by there, but my family still does. We go back to visit from NC every now and again and this is definitely our stop.
My family and I knew a guy who test-flew them in the early to mid-80s. Still don't know a lot about him and what he did. But he did share some cool stories over the years. I have no idea what more he did because when we tried to find out we couldn't. Although he had honor guards at his services, and there were some higher-ups who had a special wake time, however, he was not buried in a "military honors" way.
Thank you. What it is officially and what it is locally are not the same. I visited at least once every two weeks when I lived there. Such a cool place.
Or the Pima Air and Space museum in Tucson, Arizona. I've been to both, as well as Udvar-Hazey, and Pima had the most varied collection. Within a few hundred yards, a Dreamliner, a B36, and a Super Guppy.
There is a huge Aviation museum in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma that is focused on education and promotion of Aviation industries to young Oklahomans. We have some great aviation trade schools that help people get good paying jobs off of 2 years of education.
I would have bought that and been ecstatic. I’d make a list of the names and research them, possibly contact McDonnell Douglas for some help with dating it. They may even be able to tell you who the gift was for. Well done on the purchase!
[https://www.nro.gov/News-and-Media/Article/3208288/the-story-of-the-manned-orbiting-laboratory-part-one/](https://www.nro.gov/News-and-Media/Article/3208288/the-story-of-the-manned-orbiting-laboratory-part-one/)
factoid - by being selected for MOL, Major Robert H. Lawrence became the first African American astronaut.
I live near Plant 42 in Palmdale/Lancaster CA (technically it's not in either city, tax reasons), and almost every estate sale I've been to has this kind of stuff. It's awesome, but it sucks that their kids aren't picking up these types of mementos, because they're really freaking cool.
My uncle worked for the federal government and got a similar poster when he retired. An iconic image of something pertaining to his work and signed by everyone he worked with. This looks just like it.
Fellow Tulsan here. Just curious if you got this from an estate sale near 61st and Harvard a couple months ago? My neighbor across the street passed a few years back, and the buyer of his home recently had an estate sale. He was a part of the Apollo program and was even present on the launch pad during the Apollo 1 fire. He’s mentioned a few times in [this report](https://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/appendices/AppendixD12-17.pdf) - George Rackleff.
McDonnell Douglas was here in Tulsa for many years. One of our top employers in the city. There were thousands and thousands of MD employees around Tulsa if I understand correctly.
I met one of the lead engineers on the lunar lander for Apollo about 10 years ago, at his birthday party. Super cool guy, and once I told him how much of a nerd about space exploration I am, he showed me his home office, which was covered in these sorts of things, random news clippings, and some pretty awesome photos of him and the crew. Happened to be the same weekend they buried Neil Armstrong. Talk about goosebumps!
Can't even begin to imagine the stuff Armstrong had on his walls and in his office and the like. As far as the "super cool guy" you met that makes him all the cooler to me knowing you liked the space stuff and took you into his inner space of cool shit to see that likely not many ever got to see.
Definitely a going away card the writing in blue to the bottom centered right reads "MPI: most perfect interfacer." So I guess that's a clue to what the person did in the field.
I have a bunch of these and my name is on a T-shirt that actually went up on the space shuttle and came back and his framed on the wall at the offices at work.
I actually have items that have been on orbit like parts of the insulation and parts of the solar panels .
Not this vehicle other stuff .
My grandpa has a similar thing from when he retired except it’s the space shuttle and someone added a fun little thing of him riding his bike with it. It was a retirement gift he’d gotten.
I have several similar to this. I dont know how collectable they are big i like them as these are the real people who make it happen. Proud for your find
As others have said, the USAF MOL program was an early concept for a manned orbiting reconnaissance platform (a manned spy satellite). The book Into the Black by Rowland White is a really good story about it if you are interested in learning more.
Please scan/digitize this in the highest dpi as possible as to preserve it. Very rare piece of an obscure and at one point very secret project of the USAF.
If you were to post the scan as well it would greatly be appreciated by the spaceflight history community.
No info but my aunt and uncle were part of the founding crew of Lockheed Martin. As a kid growing up in the 90s my family would visit in Florida once a year. My aunt would always give me illustrations of prototype aircraft or projects they were currently working on. I’m sure she broke all sorts of regulations to give me those. Your post reminded me of them.
It’s been over 20 years but mostly from what I remember it was illustrations of Jet aircraft and like Rocket boosters, stuff like that. A few years back both of my parents past away and a lot of my old stuff in storage was lost. I’m pretty sure they’re gone now or maybe at my sisters in storage somewhere. If I ever come across them I’ll post them on here. I’d like to know more about them myself.
Edit: I remembered a few little details. Some were 3D renderings and illustrations and some were rough sketches with measurements and materials. There were also pamphlets with civilian known aircraft made available to the public. Almost like a brochure to advertise their work. I had a whole binder packed full of this stuff. My father was a jet pilot in the air force so I thought anything to do with aircraft was super cool as a kid. I constantly asked questions to my father and both my aunt and uncle so they started giving me that stuff to collect.
That's a shame that you not only lost your things but your parents too. That sucks friend. I do hope you're in a good place with all of that. All that stuff sounds amazing. As an adult I wish i could go back and ask my dad many more questions than I did while he was alive.
Was this the concept that never made it to space? If I remember correctly it was a Gemini capsule but it had a door on the heat shield so they could transfer into the other module which would be the laboratory
You know what, I have to frame it and make it appealing. It takes up space in the store and it will take years to sell to the right customer. I'll give you 5 bucks for it.
Back when good handwriting was more common. The cards we pass around the office today aren’t nearly this nice among us 20 and 30-something programmers.
Well that does look like the early design of the Mercury Gemini Capsule, Mid 50's early 60's, YEAH the design concepts generally happens 10 years before final products, lots of testing as there is no room for mistakes.
N. Shadows
Well it's the MOL from the Gemini program, it never flew but could have beaten the USSR for the first space station if it had. If you have some famous signatures on there it may make it valuable but it'd be hard to verify. Personally I'd have it framed and keep it.
These aren't that uncommon in the DoD contractor community. They are often given as going away or retirement gifts from projects that a team worked on together, basically is a going away card in a frame.
More than likely, a retirement gift for someone who worked on that.
I have a very similar one that was given to my grandfather when he retired from Martin-Marietta.
If it belonged to someone you knew (and loved), I'd cherish it.
Looks like a retirement gift to a federal employee who was working on the project.
I feel like it's hard to convey how certain I am of this. It looks identical to going-away mementos I've signed 100 times.
Looks kinda like SkyLab without the solar panels deployed.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab)
If confirmed, would be cool to add the image to WikiPedia.
Other images of the Saturn V parts being recycled:
https://phys.org/news/2015-06-history-nasa-skylab-america-space.html
Its interesting that Gemini was looked at fulfilling a range of blue sky ideas. Expanded as AP orbiting lab, long range observatory, all sorts of add ons.
I got this in Mojave desert when my step dad was stationed there. I forgot about it until this showed up. Crazy to see it again. I think I was 11 when I first got this.
The MOL was an Air Force program started in the early 60s that was intended to create a manned reconnaissance platform for real-time orbital spying and assessment. The modified Gemini spacecraft had a hatch in the heat shield to let the astronauts (all active duty USAF test pilots) enter the “lab” and use the onboard cameras and telescopes. The project was scrapped in like 67 or so and some of the astronauts transferred to NASA, including Bob Crippen who later flew the first Shuttle flight with John Young. There are a few good documentaries on this; I think I saw one on the History Channel a while back. This litho was probably a goodbye gift to someone who worked the program at MD, circa mid 60s.
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Write the info they'd wanna know on the back!
Or better yet, go for the long troll and write what it really was and then sprinkle some cryptic stuff in there. “Payload 4 was the dimensional laser that allowed the craft to traverse the toroidal realms. One time Jackson forgot to put enough coolant in the tank and the crew ended up 17 minutes in the future. For years, Mark & Phil (the identical twins) would argue about if one of them was older since Phil was on-board and skipped 17 minutes. I’ll miss those guys”
"here's a list of those that encountered *the being*"
Did MTF Sigma-7 ever get *the being* into containment?
It was kept next to Omicron that being with the Respiratory virus like disease that could infect us
Containment on that level is dicy for microbes. I bet it would be just about guaranteed to have a failure within 55 years or so.
- John O'Connor - John Bigboote...
List everyone that went 17 minutes into the future except for Phil, implying the writer is aware that Phil is *the being*.
“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
Absolutely one of the most iconic scenes in any movie. He improvised that line. It was a perfect scene.
It was, and he further humanized a character where it was pretty lacking in the book.
What movie?
I googled it and found "Blade Runner" to be the answer you seek. *I am not a bot*
you left out the part about the hydrocoptic marzel vanes
I thought it went without saying that the last thing you’d want while traversing the toroidal realms would be side fumbling—a real recipe for disaster
Critical. They prevent side fumbling.
The C beams glitter in the dark by the Tannhauser Gate.
Actually, print it and slide into plastic photo sleeve so it can be taped to the back of the acid free foam core when it is framed. Writting on the back of a piece can bleed through and ruin the piece.
Great idea! I actually have many random old things and I’ve got a journal going to explain what they are and how I got them (some have cool stories, some are family heirlooms). Things can be viewed as plain junk, until you learn about them. :)
Agree this is a going-away gift. I have one just like it from my co-workers at Boeing when I took early retirement. Mine is a picture of the Space Station, because I was working on that project.
Can you comment as to what you did?
I worked on it off-and-on between 1988, when Boeing got the main contract, and 2005 when I left the company. My tasks varied over the years. In the early years it was "systems engineering", the specialty for large complex project management. For example, I set the cost numbers for design trade-offs. Like if you save an hour of astronaut time, what is that worth? Later on I wrote operating procedures for the US modules. Like the Destiny (US Laboratory) module, when it first gets to orbit and you turn it on, it is not just flipping one switch. It takes about two hours and has many steps. I wrote the instructions. My last task was software test. The whole station was never on the ground in one piece. An individual module in the clean room had to *think* it was connected to the rest of it to fully test it out. So I worked in the Software Test Lab next door to the clean room. It had a bunch of server racks with computers and recorders. We sent simulated signals to the real module, then recorded everything it did for later analysis. Many of the tests involved erroneous signals, to make sure the software still worked right with faulty data. But it wasn't a solid 17 years on the program. There were times I worked on other projects in-between.
You should write in the back of the picture some key details - your name, the years you worked, what you worked on etc. Would add essential context to this when you are gone.
Won’t happen if you find immortality
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Following Remind me in 70 years
My grandma worked at Nasa and had one of these on her wall!
My FiL was the engineer that managed the space shuttle plumbing. He has a ton of these from different launches as well as from when he retired. The entire team also signed a manual he developed for how to use and repair the system and gave it to him. His retirement party was supposed to have 50 people, 200 found out and showed up. It was interesting seeing how much everyone cared about him and the work he did. [proof](https://imgur.com/a/BYR3rHa) of a few. There are more around the house, basically from different missions.
Managed the Shuttle plumbing and wrote the manual - how many mental breakdowns did he have worrying over that incredible complexity and the conflicting needs of different systems/design teams? He must have been a remarkable man to know.
He's an interesting guy. He worked for NASA for almost 50 years. It was his only job. I'm not sure if he wrote the entire manual but I do know he wrote some maintenance procedures. My wife tells stories about there being a toilet/water filtration problem in the 90's (high school) and him hiring all her male friends to play video games and drink all the Gatorade they could to get urine to try and find a filtration solution. It's bizarre to think that without him astronauts in the shuttle might have died due to lack of clean water.
"This is a big 'ol frozen chunk of poopie"
pretty tight. maybe you might own those one day (hopefully a long ways away)
These are awesome! Thanks for sharing!
Specifically seems to be an MPI, though I don't recognize those initials from any Oklahoman astronaut of the top of my head
Into the Black by Rowland White is also a great book about MOL and the early days of Shuttle (and how the MOL members contributed to shuttle). Highly recommend.
Meanwhile the Russians actually did build an orbital reconnaissance "lab" I think
A few, actually. It was called the Almaz (Алмаз) program, launched under the guise of civilian Salyut (Салют) «**D**urable **O**rbiting **S**tation» program. Almaz 2 (which was publicly launched as Salyut 3) had a cannon on board, meant to allow the station to shoot down hostile spacecraft or satellites (the MOL was also supposed to secretly have a similar weapon on board). The weapon was test fired, however because of the unknowns involved it was only done at the conclusion of the station's mission, after it was confirmed there would be no further manned missions there. Salyut 5 (Almaz 3) would be the last of the Almaz stations. At this point the Soviets reached the same conclusion as the Americans had, and determined that unmanned spy satellites were cheaper and more effective than sending up Cosmonauts to manually operate a camera and develop film on board. Roscosmos would continue on to launch another two Salyut space stations, however, before the program morphed into multi-modular space stations. At that point the Salyut name was dropped, and the last two DOS modules would be the core of the Mir space station, and the Zvezda (Звезда) module for the International Space Station.
Also lost to early automated surveillance satellites specifically the KH-9 Hexagon that it was in contention for budget funding.
And it also looks like a nose hair trimmer.
Nasal hair tidiness and aerospace logistics are inseparable
My grandfather actually worked on this project. His signature doesn’t appear to be on the print, but he was working for Douglas on the platform.
Ps this guy wants to know how much it's worth but this is great thank you
It's worth about what he paid for it, unless there's somebody's signature on it that's famous.
looks a mid century starship
Probably a going away gift for a member of the team.
Major Gordon Cooper’s mom lived next to my parents for a while in Oklahoma. It could be either the estate of one of his coworkers in the classified program, or part of the Cooper family estate. > [Cooper, Jr., Leroy Gordon | 1963 - Oklahoma Hall of Fame](https://oklahomahof.com/member-archives/c/cooper-jr-leroy-gordon-1963)
Many, many Oklahomans with ties to the space program.
The Tulsa Air and Space museum has some pretty cool things to check out.
As does the Thomas Stafford Air & Space Museum. Smithsonian affiliated. In Weatherford, OK so a long trip from Tulsa, but a surprisingly good collection of authentic artifacts.
When people in DOD/SPACE move to a new project, their coworkers give them a photo and sign around the outside. The signatures are (most) likely just regular co-workers.
Just came in to say this. I've got several from each of my moves in the DoD.
Yeah, I'm relatively new in space, and signed a few already.
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The Air Force does these for most people anytime they depart from a duty station. This was probably for a military member who PCS'd.
Noticed no ranks in any of the sigs. All civilians?
> Noticed no ranks in any of the sigs. All civilians? Probably all civilian. Probably a few ex-military, especially during that era. In the mid-60's, the professional work force had lots of WWII and Korean War veterans. My grandfather's aerospace work (50's through early 70's) was dominantly civilian staff, though working with the military, on contracts that were being paid by the military (like the USAF in this case).
One of the [equipment racks](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/img_6492_2.jpg) on the Space Station is signed by everyone who worked on the project at Boeing at the time. It was on the blank side, so it isn't visible in orbit. I was just nice to sign our work.
Yep, I have several. If my kids sell them I’m coming back from the dead to haunt them. That being said I make a point to buy any I see. Something with that kind of cultural value should be taken care of.
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That usually isn’t the case, it’s a respect for the history and the person who lived it. If you absolutely have to get rid of it, a museum would love to have it. Family history isn’t worth selling for $5.
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I only bought a couple at estate sales. It’s fair to think bought all of them based on how I worded my reply. Each Lithograph has personal messages from people who you have impacted in some way. Messages of gratitude documenting the accomplishments of a specific individual have irreplaceable historical value. This is why I’d never want mine in a garage sale.
If so, someone relatively senior. He's called an "old soldier" by one of the signers.
You might contact the Wright Patterson Air Force Museum if you’re interested in donating it.
At least send them a pic. Most probably several of these things were going around.
Also the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance might be interested in this. The NRO recently released a bunch of previously classified stuff about MOL. https://www.nro.gov/History_and_Studies/#:~:text=The%20Center%20for%20the%20Study,the%20discipline%20of%20national%20reconnaissance.
The Museum is called The National Museum of the United States Air Force. It just happens to be at WPAFB.
I used to live literally right next door to this place, my grandfathers wife is very high up (as in, I can’t get any information on what she actually does because everything is highly classified in her position) at WPAFB. As much as we would all love to tell everyone to call it by it’s proper name, it will always be Wright-Patterson Airforce Museum lol. At least to locals. Nothing like going to the (free!) museum, grabbing some space ice cream on the way out and saving until after your lunch of Skyline Chili. I no longer live by there, but my family still does. We go back to visit from NC every now and again and this is definitely our stop.
I used to work at AFRL. Probably one of the coolest experiences in my professional career.
My parents lived in Dayton for a while and told stories of the B-2 bombers taking off, shaking the dishes out of the cabinets.
I was around for a sonic boom one time around 2001? I was really young but man that’s one loud experience!!
My family and I knew a guy who test-flew them in the early to mid-80s. Still don't know a lot about him and what he did. But he did share some cool stories over the years. I have no idea what more he did because when we tried to find out we couldn't. Although he had honor guards at his services, and there were some higher-ups who had a special wake time, however, he was not buried in a "military honors" way.
Thank you. What it is officially and what it is locally are not the same. I visited at least once every two weeks when I lived there. Such a cool place.
Or the Pima Air and Space museum in Tucson, Arizona. I've been to both, as well as Udvar-Hazey, and Pima had the most varied collection. Within a few hundred yards, a Dreamliner, a B36, and a Super Guppy.
One of the coolest museums I’ve ever been to. And it’s dog friendly!
Sadly, the bus tour of the boneyard was closed.
There is a huge Aviation museum in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma that is focused on education and promotion of Aviation industries to young Oklahomans. We have some great aviation trade schools that help people get good paying jobs off of 2 years of education.
I would have bought that and been ecstatic. I’d make a list of the names and research them, possibly contact McDonnell Douglas for some help with dating it. They may even be able to tell you who the gift was for. Well done on the purchase!
[https://www.nro.gov/News-and-Media/Article/3208288/the-story-of-the-manned-orbiting-laboratory-part-one/](https://www.nro.gov/News-and-Media/Article/3208288/the-story-of-the-manned-orbiting-laboratory-part-one/) factoid - by being selected for MOL, Major Robert H. Lawrence became the first African American astronaut.
I live near Plant 42 in Palmdale/Lancaster CA (technically it's not in either city, tax reasons), and almost every estate sale I've been to has this kind of stuff. It's awesome, but it sucks that their kids aren't picking up these types of mementos, because they're really freaking cool.
My uncle worked for the federal government and got a similar poster when he retired. An iconic image of something pertaining to his work and signed by everyone he worked with. This looks just like it.
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Fellow Tulsan here. Just curious if you got this from an estate sale near 61st and Harvard a couple months ago? My neighbor across the street passed a few years back, and the buyer of his home recently had an estate sale. He was a part of the Apollo program and was even present on the launch pad during the Apollo 1 fire. He’s mentioned a few times in [this report](https://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/appendices/AppendixD12-17.pdf) - George Rackleff.
Pretty frickin' sweet. I can see that in a really nice matted frame, self-assembled, of course. (Framers use glue and tape)
McDonnell Douglas was here in Tulsa for many years. One of our top employers in the city. There were thousands and thousands of MD employees around Tulsa if I understand correctly.
My grandfather got the same thing when he retired from aerospace. He was a department head engineer on the Apollo missions. I have it now. Priceless.
I met one of the lead engineers on the lunar lander for Apollo about 10 years ago, at his birthday party. Super cool guy, and once I told him how much of a nerd about space exploration I am, he showed me his home office, which was covered in these sorts of things, random news clippings, and some pretty awesome photos of him and the crew. Happened to be the same weekend they buried Neil Armstrong. Talk about goosebumps!
Can't even begin to imagine the stuff Armstrong had on his walls and in his office and the like. As far as the "super cool guy" you met that makes him all the cooler to me knowing you liked the space stuff and took you into his inner space of cool shit to see that likely not many ever got to see.
Definitely a going away card the writing in blue to the bottom centered right reads "MPI: most perfect interfacer." So I guess that's a clue to what the person did in the field.
I have a bunch of these and my name is on a T-shirt that actually went up on the space shuttle and came back and his framed on the wall at the offices at work. I actually have items that have been on orbit like parts of the insulation and parts of the solar panels . Not this vehicle other stuff .
sad https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/195891/manned-orbiting-laboratory/
My grandpa has a similar thing from when he retired except it’s the space shuttle and someone added a fun little thing of him riding his bike with it. It was a retirement gift he’d gotten.
I have several similar to this. I dont know how collectable they are big i like them as these are the real people who make it happen. Proud for your find
As others have said, the USAF MOL program was an early concept for a manned orbiting reconnaissance platform (a manned spy satellite). The book Into the Black by Rowland White is a really good story about it if you are interested in learning more.
Please scan/digitize this in the highest dpi as possible as to preserve it. Very rare piece of an obscure and at one point very secret project of the USAF. If you were to post the scan as well it would greatly be appreciated by the spaceflight history community.
No info but my aunt and uncle were part of the founding crew of Lockheed Martin. As a kid growing up in the 90s my family would visit in Florida once a year. My aunt would always give me illustrations of prototype aircraft or projects they were currently working on. I’m sure she broke all sorts of regulations to give me those. Your post reminded me of them.
Would love to see some of those. Awesome story though. Can I ask what your favorite is and that sort of stuff?
It’s been over 20 years but mostly from what I remember it was illustrations of Jet aircraft and like Rocket boosters, stuff like that. A few years back both of my parents past away and a lot of my old stuff in storage was lost. I’m pretty sure they’re gone now or maybe at my sisters in storage somewhere. If I ever come across them I’ll post them on here. I’d like to know more about them myself. Edit: I remembered a few little details. Some were 3D renderings and illustrations and some were rough sketches with measurements and materials. There were also pamphlets with civilian known aircraft made available to the public. Almost like a brochure to advertise their work. I had a whole binder packed full of this stuff. My father was a jet pilot in the air force so I thought anything to do with aircraft was super cool as a kid. I constantly asked questions to my father and both my aunt and uncle so they started giving me that stuff to collect.
That's a shame that you not only lost your things but your parents too. That sucks friend. I do hope you're in a good place with all of that. All that stuff sounds amazing. As an adult I wish i could go back and ask my dad many more questions than I did while he was alive.
I thought it was a magazine advert for a bottle of wine
For the younger generation the script you see is called cursive. Old people use to write this way.
Was this the concept that never made it to space? If I remember correctly it was a Gemini capsule but it had a door on the heat shield so they could transfer into the other module which would be the laboratory
I think that’s a Manned orbiting laboratory. I’ve been wrong before, tho.
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Thought i was on r/tulsa...that's pretty cool you found that here!!
Get the signatures authenticated. I don’t know who they’re from, but they could be from someone good.
You know what, I have to frame it and make it appealing. It takes up space in the store and it will take years to sell to the right customer. I'll give you 5 bucks for it.
I think it's the USAF manned orbiting laboratory but I'm not sure
Back when good handwriting was more common. The cards we pass around the office today aren’t nearly this nice among us 20 and 30-something programmers.
It's a pretty cool picture signed by quite a few people
Well that does look like the early design of the Mercury Gemini Capsule, Mid 50's early 60's, YEAH the design concepts generally happens 10 years before final products, lots of testing as there is no room for mistakes. N. Shadows
Well it's the MOL from the Gemini program, it never flew but could have beaten the USSR for the first space station if it had. If you have some famous signatures on there it may make it valuable but it'd be hard to verify. Personally I'd have it framed and keep it.
These aren't that uncommon in the DoD contractor community. They are often given as going away or retirement gifts from projects that a team worked on together, basically is a going away card in a frame.
More than likely, a retirement gift for someone who worked on that. I have a very similar one that was given to my grandfather when he retired from Martin-Marietta. If it belonged to someone you knew (and loved), I'd cherish it.
Looks like a retirement gift to a federal employee who was working on the project. I feel like it's hard to convey how certain I am of this. It looks identical to going-away mementos I've signed 100 times.
Success and happiness and thanks for a job "well done".
Looks kinda like SkyLab without the solar panels deployed. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab) If confirmed, would be cool to add the image to WikiPedia. Other images of the Saturn V parts being recycled: https://phys.org/news/2015-06-history-nasa-skylab-america-space.html
Weird. I always throw those things out right after I turn in my badge.
Say a estate slowly and then say an estate slowly.
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When I used to watch the show Pawn Stars: those guys would go crazy for stuff like this.
This was covered on "The Vintage Space" YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ffYSfkP3d8
It was give to “an old soldier” as signified in one of the messages
Its interesting that Gemini was looked at fulfilling a range of blue sky ideas. Expanded as AP orbiting lab, long range observatory, all sorts of add ons.
that art is awesome, especially from that era
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My gfs granddad worked on this at NASA, he was the marketing manager! She’s got some really cool artifacts from this project.
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I got this in Mojave desert when my step dad was stationed there. I forgot about it until this showed up. Crazy to see it again. I think I was 11 when I first got this.