Day: April 28, 1969

NASA solicits shuttle, station proposals

Space ShuttleNASA formally asks various major players in the aerospace industry for proposals for what the agency sees as its two major projects for the 1970s: an orbiting space station and a reusable Space Shuttle to make routine flights from Earth to the station – which NASA hopes will be a “50 man space base” – and back again, with supplies, experiments, and new crew members. (Within mere weeks, the hypothetical station’s equally hypothetical crew will be downsized to a dozen.) In the event that the development curve on the Space Shuttle proves to be a long one, NASA says it will keep Apollo and even Gemini spacecraft in service to make flights to the station.