During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States Air Force (USAF) sought to justify military human spaceflight through a variety of programs, but USAF leaders found it difficult to specify requirements that only military astronauts could fulfill. Military research pilots who wanted to fly in space found themselves constrained to applying for admittance to the NASA astronaut program. After more than two decades of mostly disappointing efforts to formulate and sustain a military human spaceflight program, the advent of the Space Shuttle renewed hopes for success. In 1979, the USAF undertook a special, experimental project to select and train a cadre of Manned Spaceflight Engineer (MSE) officers for onboard support of Space Shuttle flights carrying payloads managed by the Department of Defense (DoD). This paper provides a detailed explication of the establishment, evolution, and demise of the MSE program during 1980s and how its vestiges endured through the Military-Man-In-Space (MMIS) concept of the 1990s. Broadly assessing the persistent USAF desire to justify MMIS, this paper briefly contemplates prospects for realizing that goal in the twenty-first century.
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