(2 of 2)
For optimists of the aerospace industry, MOL points the way to the Air Force's pet project: manned orbiting space stations. Building and supplying a fleet of these stations will cost many billions of dollars per year, but Air Force space enthusiasts believe that the stations will pay for themselves by serving as military patrols—watching and photographing activity behind the Iron Curtain, inspecting suspicious satellites and destroying them, if desirable. Patrols might carry nuclear weapons for use against the ground or other spacecraft. Some optimists believe that they might even detect hostile nuclear submarines below the surface of the ocean.
For all such promise, though, McNamara insists that the first step must be to find out whether humans can stay in top form in space and perform difficult duties better than nonhuman instruments. This is by no means sure. Said Albert C. Hall, DOD's space expert, "The astronaut will have to do more than throw a switch, which is about all they have done in Mercury." The partisans of such manned space stations must also prove that an alert enemy cannot destroy them with a small fraction of the effort that it took to put them in orbit. Says skeptical Dr. Hall: "When I came to the Department of Defense last summer, I didn't think much could be done with a man in space. My attitude is still 'I gotta be shown.' "