the story of spaceflight told through missions & programs that didn't happen - that is, the great majority of them
Engineer Philip Bono described his conceptual ROMBUS launch vehicle as a crew-carrying system, though he did not describe the crewed spacecraft it would launch. The image above displays a ROMBUS vehicle on its launch platform with a typical conical payload shroud. Image credit: Douglas Aircraft Company via San Diego Air & Space Museum.As the 1960s decade began, NASA Marshall Space Flight
Image credit: NASA.The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) had its origins in talks aimed at developing a common U.S./Soviet docking system for space rescue. The concept of a common docking system was first put forward in 1970; it was assumed at that time, however, that the docking system would be developed for future spacecraft, such as the U.S. Space Station/Space Shuttle, not the U.S. Apollo
In this drawing by NASA engineer Caldwell Johnson, twin human-like Space Shuttle robot arms with human-like hands deploy from the Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) Scientific Instrument Module (SIM) Bay to grip the derelict Skylab space station. Image credit: NASA/Caldwell Johnson.Caldwell Johnson, co-holder with Maxime Faget of the Mercury space capsule patent, was chief of the Spacecraft
Phobos, the inner moon of Mars, as imaged by the Viking 1 Orbiter. Viking images of Deimos, Mars's outer moon, can be found at the bottom of this post. Image credit: NASA.In June 1972, NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) in Hampton, Virginia, contracted with Martin Marietta Corporation to look at using spacecraft based on the planned Viking Mars Lander and Orbiter designs to explore the martian
Big tank: External Tank-1, with the Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia and twin Solid Rocket Boosters attached, arrives at Launch Pad 39-A at NASA Kennedy Space Center, Florida, after its roll-out from the Vehicle Assembly Building on 29 December 1980. Note the fire truck for scale. Image credit: NASA.NASA announced in August 1973 that it had awarded Martin Marietta Corporation a $
The Nomad Explorer Very Long Traverse Vehicle (VLTV) with its "power cart" in the background (right). A cable links the cart's nuclear reactor to the VLTV. Please note the "periscope" viewing window (below Earth at upper left), robotic arm (one of a pair), and EVA Bell (lower center). Image credit: Madhu ThangaveluNorth America and Europe combined have fewer square kilometers of surface area than
Cislunar abort: the crew of Apollo 13 on the deck of the aircraft carrier Iwo Jima after their safe return to Earth. Pictured are Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise (left), Commander Jim Lovell, and Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert. Image credit: NASA.On 13 April 1970, an oxygen tank exploded in the Apollo 13 Command and Service Module Odyssey, badly damaging the spacecraft 200,000 miles
Image credit: NASA.For a time in the early 1960s, Thomas Evans headed up the Advanced Lunar Missions Study Program in the NASA Headquarters Office of Manned Space Flight. By May 1965, when the 11th Annual Meeting of the American Astronautical Society (AAS) was held in Chicago, Illinois, he had retired from NASA to become a farmer in Iowa. This gave him the freedom to speak his mind about what he
The Project Hyreus mission emblem. Image credit: University of Washington Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.In Greek mythology Hyreus (pronounced "HY-ree-us") is Orion's father. Students in the University of Washington (UW) Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics had a different take on this obscure figure, however. The end of the Cold War and efforts to rein in a galloping U.S.
26 November 2011: Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, atop an Atlas V 541 medium-lift expendable rocket. The first launches of the HERRO mission in late 2030-early 2031 would see three Atlas V or equivalent rockets each launch a Truck rover bearing two Rockhound rovers to Mars. The three Truck/
Douglas Aircraft Company built the S-IVB stage and IBM built the Instrument Unit (IU) that rode atop it. In the image above, the S-IVB/IU combination for the Apollo 4 mission is hoisted in the Vertical Assembly Building at NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida. The black ring at the top is the IU; the red object mostly hidden by the tapered interstage adapter at the bottom is the S-IVB's J-2
A recovered ROOST booster is towed back to its seaside home base for refurbishment and relaunch. The recovery fleet and cable arrangements in this painting differ from those described in the December 1962 primary source report for this post. Image credit: Don Charles/Douglas Aircraft Company via San Diego Air & Space Museum.Douglas Aircraft Company's Reusable One-stage Orbital Space Truck (
Leaving home: Earth as viewed from Apollo 4 on 9 November 1967. Image credit: NASA.It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. (With apologies to Charles Dickens.)For NASA, the year 1967 began with the promise of a bold start for the Apollo Applications Program (AAP), the planned successor to the Apollo lunar program, which would see space station missions in low-Earth orbit and advanced
The Skylab 2 Command and Service Module sits atop its Saturn IB launch vehicle on Pad 39B at NASA Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The spacecraft, with astronauts Charles Conrad, Paul Weitz, and Joseph Kerwin on board, lifted off on 25 May 1973, docked with the Skylab space station, and returned to Earth on 22 June 1973. Image credit: NASA.The Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) was the
The crew of a piloted flyby spacecraft prepares to retrieve the upper stage of a Mars Surface Sample Returner probe. Image credit: NASA.In the 1960s NASA expended at least as much study effort on piloted missions that would fly past Mars and Venus without stopping as it did on missions to land crews on Mars. Piloted flybys were seen as a low-cost stepping stone linking Apollo lunar landings and
Comet Halley's last visit before the space age: a photographic plate captured at Yerkes Observatory on 6 June 1910. Image credit: Yerkes Observatory.Herman Michielsen was a Senior Staff Scientist at Lockheed Missiles & Space Company's Palo Alto Research Laboratory in California in August 1967, when he presented a paper on possible missions to Comet Halley to an American Institute of
Scary ride: second stage and crew cabin of the Bellcomm minimum Mars Excursion Module (MEM) ascent vehicle. The unpressurized cabin would have included few displays and minimal communications. Image credit: Bellcomm/NASA.The NASA Planetary Joint Action Group (JAG) saw the addition of the Mars Surface Sample Returner (MSSR) probe to the piloted Mars/Venus flyby mission scenarios it studied in 1966
The Tharsis hemisphere of Mars. The four large volcanoes are marked by clouds and the western half of Valles Marineris is visible at right. Image credit: NASA.In 1977-1978, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Mars Program studied a low-cost "minimum" Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission as a potential follow-on to the Viking missions. Late in 1978, JPL Mars Program engineers called upon the
Robotic flyby: encapsulated in a streamlined shroud, the Mars-bound Mariner IV spacecraft awaits launch from Florida atop an Atlas-Agena rocket. Image credit: NASA.The piloted Mars/Venus flyby concept — the hallmark of which was a Sun-centered trajectory intersecting one or more planets and beginning and ending at Earth — was first proposed by Gaetano Crocco in 1956, at a time when robotic probes
Radar image of 1620 Geographos. The white dot at the center of the image marks the axis of rotation, which points toward the viewer. Dots along the left side are a kilometer apart. The image is a compilation of multiple radar returns. Image credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The National Geographic Society-Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (NGS-POSS) imaged the sky from the North Celestial
Engineer Special Study Sheet 1: Generalized Photogeologic Map of the Moon. Please click to enlarge. Image credit: USGS.The race to the Moon began on 17 August 1958 and the Soviet Union won. This isn't the opening line of an alternate history story; rather, it is an acknowledgment that more than one Moon race took place. The first, with the goal of launching a small automated spacecraft to the
Triamese target: a large Earth-orbital "Space Base" assembled from modules launched atop two-stage Saturn V rockets. The Space Base, expected to be operational by about 1980, would be staffed by up to 100 people. Image credit: NASA.The Triamese concept originated in 1967 in a reusable launch and reentry vehicle study General Dynamics Convair (GDC) performed on contract to the U.S. Air Force (USAF
Lunar electromagnetic launch track. Image credit: R. A. Smith/The British Interplanetary Society. In the 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, British author Arthur C. Clarke invoked an old spaceflight concept to begin a voyage to the Moon. Dr. Heywood Floyd, a space agency bureaucrat, boarded a winged, reusable Earth-to-orbit shuttle mounted horizontally atop a winged, reusable booster, which
Graphic representation of a circumlunar journey. Image credit: Martin Marietta CorporationOn 18 August 1965, U.S. Representative Olin Teague of Texas, chair of the House Subcommittee on NASA Oversight and an ally of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, wrote a letter to NASA Administrator James Webb. "Much discussion is now taking place," the veteran Congressman wrote, "on the possibility of a
U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson (right) welcomes home astronauts Gus Grissom (center) and John Young (left) after their March 1965 Gemini III test flight. Earth-orbital Gemini was conceived as a means of bridging the yawning gap between "simple" one-man Mercury flights and complex three-man Apollo lunar-orbital and landing missions. Piloted Mars and Venus flybys based on Apollo