In a letter to President Lyndon B. Johnson, Senator Clinton P. Anderson, Chairman of the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, recommended that the Air Force's MOL and NASA's Apollo X programs be merged. Senator Anderson argued that a jointly operated national space station program would most effectively use the nation's available resources. He claimed that $1 billion could be saved during the next five years if the MOL were canceled and those funds applied to NASA's Apollo-based space station program.

In mid-December, Anderson issued a statement saying that the Department of Defense and NASA had worked out an agreement on MOL and Apollo X that in large measure answered the questions he had earlier raised. "The Air Force and NASA will take advantage of each other's technology and hardware development," Anderson said, "with all efforts directed at achievement of a true space laboratory as an end goal."