photographs of the Soviet Union. The experiments were all, or mostly, eliminated. Navy officials would, over the next several years, come to regret their involvement. In early 1964, as MOL was first being defined, an Air Force officer, whose name remains unknown, warned that it was becoming an operational reconnaissance platform when it should be a laboratory. (See “Doomed from the start: The Manned Orbiting Laboratory and the search for a military role for astronauts,” The Space Review, June 17, 2019.) A laboratory, the officer argued, could take advantage of an astronauts’ ability to think, reason, and adapt, and explore the military potential for space. Reducing astronauts to the role of taking photographs and adjusting a camera was not using them to their fullest potential. But the USNavy decided to take advantage of the laboratory nature of the program, not realizing that at least some in the Air Force already knew that was a sham. Navy officials would, over the next several years, come to regret their involvement. Soviet Kresta II class cruiser during the Cold War. Starting in the 1960s, the Soviet Navy began venturing farther from its shores, operating in the open ocean, which made it more difficult for the US Navy to track its ships. In response, the US Navy sought to develop space systems, such as satellite-based radar, to detect large ships in the open ocean. (credit: US Navy) Looking for ships—from orbit The Navy had an experiment to test: a space-based radar to perform ocean surveillance detecting ships at sea.