NASA’s Space Shuttle was conceived in the late 1960s as a reusable transport for reducing the cost of Earth-orbiting space station logistics resupply and crew rotation. In 1969, it came to be seen as an element in an expansive Integrated Program Plan that would also have included upgraded expendable Saturn V rockets, reusable Space Tugs and nuclear-powered cislunar Shuttles, Earth-orbital and lunar-orbital space stations, a lunar surface base, and manned Mars expeditions – all by the mid-1980s. This vision of America’s future in space found little favor in the Nixon White House or in Congress, however. By 1973, only the Space Shuttle survived.
Read more: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/mars-in-1995-1980-1981/
No comments:
Post a Comment