Last night I happened across this picture which led to the article linked below. It's amazing all
that went into building the shuttle program. Irish
Space Shuttle Artist Conception, Photo Courtesy NASA
Born in 1968 at the height of the Apollo program, the Space Shuttle was designed to fulfill two basic roles in NASA post-Apollo manned flight objectives. The first goal of the Space Shuttle program was to provide NASA with an efficient, re-usable method of carrying astronauts to and from a permanently manned space station. At the time, NASA envisioned a space station which would be staffed by 12 to 24 people. The space station was intended to assure a permanent manned U.S. presence in space following the Apollo lunar landings. The space station would support a plethora of scientific research objectives, plus act as an engineering and support base for manned journeys to the planets. In addition, NASA believed that Space Shuttles could serve as multi-purpose satellite delivery vehicles with the potential to completely replace Atlas-Centaur, Delta and Titan rockets. The words “cheap” and “routine” were the words which most closely matched the objectives for Space Shuttles as expressed by NASA. Of course, history would prove otherwise.
