Beyond the Stars –NASA’s 50 Years of Manned Space Flight Part 6 the Space Shuttle Henry
by M. Holden
2020-04-23 16:46:24
Beyond the Stars –NASA’s 50 Years of Manned Space Flight Part 6 the Space Shuttle Henry
by M. Holden
2020-04-23 16:46:24
This 7,000 word monograph is illustrated by more than three-dozen photographs many unpublished or rarely seen over the course of the manned space program. This Part 6 of the Beyond the Stars –NASA’s 50 Years of Manned Space Flight serie...
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This 7,000 word monograph is illustrated by more than three-dozen photographs many unpublished or rarely seen over the course of the manned space program. This Part 6 of the Beyond the Stars –NASA’s 50 Years of Manned Space Flight series explores how the shuttle got its shape from the early lifting body trials and the vast knowledge accumulated pby the earlier Mercury, gemini and Apolloprograms.The space shuttle is a winged orbital launch vehicle that evolved from the lifting body trials. The manned reusable space system was designed to slash the cost of space transport, and replace all expendable launch vehicles. It did neither, but it did keep NASA in the manned space flight business for an additional 30 years based on the tremendous amount of data gathered in the first 20 years of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space program. The Space Shuttle was approved as a national program in 1972. Part spacecraft and part aircraft, it required thinking “out of the box.” With larger crews, than Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, Shuttle astronauts were divided into three categories: pilots responsible for flying and maintaining the orbiter, and mission specialist responsible for experiments and payloads. A third category was payload specialists, who may not be career astronauts to tend to specific onboard experiments.
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