#space station program

"One of the more interesting ideas to come out of the study was this concept to control a tumbling space station. A stream of high pressure water would be directed at the tumbling space station from a direction opposite of its tumble. introducing a high drag coefficient on the space station, slowly stopping it."

“SPACE STATION CONCEPTS as envisioned by General Dynamics. The company’s Convair Division in San Diego, California, has completed studies for NASA to define the mission requirements for a permanent, manned, low Earth-orbit Space Station. Convair has also examined Space Station development missions for servicing space-based transfer vehicles for NASA.”

Date: 1982-83

Posted on Flickr by Mike Acs.

"The SOC is a self-contained orbital facility built up of several Shuttle-launched modules. With resupply, on-orbit refurbish- ment and orbit maintenance, it is capable of continuous operation for an indefinite period. In the nominal operational mode, the SOC is manned continuously, but unmanned operation is possible.

The present mission management and control process is characterized by a people-intensive ground monitoring and control operation involving large supporting ground information and control facilities and a highly- integrated ground-flight crew operation. In order to reduce dependence on Earth monitoring and control, the SOC would have to provide for increased systems monitoring; fault isolation and failure analysis, and the ability to store and call up extensive sets of data to support the onboard control of the vehicle; and the onboard capability for daily mission and other activity planning."

"Like most other space station studies from the mid/late 1970s its primary mission was the assembly and servicing of large spacecraft in Earth orbit -- not science. NASA/JSC signed a contract with Boeing in 1980 to further develop the design. Like most NASA space station plans, SOC would be assembled in orbit from modules launched on the Space Shuttle. The crew's tour of duty would have been 90 days. NASA originally estimated the total cost to be $2.7 billion, but the estimated cost had increased to $4.7 billion by 1981. SOC would have been operational by 1990.

NASA's Johnson Spaceflight Center extended the Boeing contract in February 1982 to study a cheaper, modular, evolutionary approach to assembling the Space Operations Center. An initial power module would consist of solar arrays and radiators. The next launches would have delivered a space tug 'garage', two pressurized crew modules and a logistics module. The completed Space Operations Center also would have contained a satellite servicing and assembly facility and several laboratory modules. Even with this revised approach, however, the cost of the SOC program had grown to $9 billion. Another problem was Space Operations Center's primary mission: spacecraft assembly and servicing. The likely users (commercial satellite operators and telecommunications companies) were not really interested in the kind of large geostationary space platforms proposed by NASA. By 1983, the only enthusiastic users for NASA's space station plans were scientists working in the fields of microgravity research and life sciences. Their needs would dictate future space station design although NASA's 1984 station plans did incorporate a SOC-type spacecraft servicing facility as well."

Article by Marcus Lindroos, from astronautix.com: link

NASA ID: link, S79-10137

Concept art of possibly the Science and Applications Manned Space Platform (SAMSP), aka “Space Platform”.

Artwork by Philip J. Weisgerber. Posted on Flickr by Mike Acs.

Date: 1984

The HL-20 Personal Launch System (PLS) is a concept for assured access to space for people and priority cargo. Pictured is the PLS operating at the Space Station Freedom, which became the International Space Station.

Date: April 26, 1990

NASA ID: EL-1996-00177

"Concept 23 - Initial SS16"

CDG-1 planar-array design space station concept, dated to June 27, 1984. One of the objectives of the Space Shuttle was to build and carry astronauts to a Space Station. In the 1980s, NASA considered several different concepts and configurations Space Stations be settling on the Space Station Freedom, the precursor to the ISS.

The Johnson Space Center's “Racetrack” Space Station concept.

Date: 1984

“The NASA Space Shuttle unloading some cargo which will comprise the Space Station system, in a design by the Boeing Aerospace Company for NASA."

Artwork by John J. Olson

Date: 1985 to 1987