Plucked from piles of decomposing film, cardboard boxes and, as one NASA employee tactfully put it, "evidence of rodent activity," two sky-blue spacesuits recently returned to the light of day, anachronisms from an abandoned U.S. military program to put spies in space.
Identified by fire marshals at Florida's Kennedy Space Center as a hazard, the suits were found because film stored in Blockhouse 5/6 at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station had been earmarked for removal.
When security officials arrived at the building, they found a locked room with no key, NASA exhibits developer Luis Berrios told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Security officers finally located a master key and explored by flashlight, as the building had been without electricity for years, said Berrios, a design specialist hired by Kennedy Space Center to work with its museum and tourist center.
An ad-hoc storage chamber, the place housed an eclectic collection of junk from 40 years of spaceflight, including old film canisters, electrical equipment and one shuttle main landing gear tire (used).
Opening a locker-sized blue box on the floor, the searchers made an unusual discovery: tucked inside were a pair of sky-blue spacesuits and four or five pairs of blue gloves.
"We're supposed to cover all the nooks and crannies of Kennedy Space Center — places most folks don't go to or even know about," said NASA security officer Dann Oakland. "I've never found anything like this, though."
One suit marked 007
The discovery sent space historians scrambling to identify the suits, one of which bears the number 008 and the word "LAWYER" in capital letters on the left sleeve. The other was simply and appropriately numbered 007.
"Lawyer" turned out to be Lt. Col. Richard Lawyer, who was among the first group of astronauts chosen by the Air Force to serve in its Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MOL.
The project, started in 1963, aimed to station military officers aboard a small space station in orbit for reconnaissance. MOL was to use a modified NASA Gemini capsule to put two crewmen in space for up to a month at a time.
"The program didn't get too far," said Roger Launius, head of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's space history department. "The Department of Defense never found a good reason to fly people in space."
Training suits collected
The program was mothballed in 1969, and over time most of the 22 MH-7 training suits produced by Hamilton Standard for the MOL astronauts were collected and transferred to the Smithsonian for preservation and public display.
At some point, however, at least two outfits disappeared.
"I wish I knew how they got there," Launius said. "The MOL suits are nice. They are very close to some of the Apollo suits which were made in the same era. The unique thing everybody sees is that these are blue and the others are white."
For its find, the Kennedy Space Center is expected to be rewarded with an MOL suit it can display at its own museum, said Barrios. But it will probably not be one of the MOL suits found in Blockhouse 5/6. Decontamination of the material in those suits will take some time.
