page_title: Space Shuttle program
section_title: Conception and development
hierarchical_section_title: Space Shuttle program / Conception and development
caption_attribution_description: English: Space Shuttle Endeavour delivers P1 truss to the ISS (NASA) Backdropped by a blanket of clouds, the Space Shuttle Endeavour approaches the International Space Station (ISS) during STS-113 rendezvous and docking operations. Docking occurred at 3:59 p.m. (CST) on November 25, 2002. The Port One (P1) truss, which was later to be attached to the station and outfitted during three spacewalks, can be seen in Endeavour's cargo bay Deutsch: Strukturelement P1 in der Ladebucht des Space Shuttle Endeavour während der Mission STS-113
context_page_description: The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its official name, Space Transportation System, was taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development.
  The Space Shuttle—composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank—carried up to eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lb of payload into low Earth orbit. When its mission was complete, the orbiter would reenter the Earth's atmosphere and land like a glider at either the Kennedy Space Center or Edwards Air Force Base.
  The Shuttle is the only winged crewed spacecraft to have achieved orbit and landing, and the only reusable crewed space vehicle that has ever made multiple flights into orbit. Its missions involved carrying large payloads to various orbits, providing crew rotation for the space station, and performing service missions on the Hubble Space Telescope.
context_section_description: Before the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969, NASA began early studies of space shuttle designs. In 1969, President Richard Nixon formed the Space Task Group, chaired by Vice President Spiro Agnew. This group outlined ambitious post-Apollo missions centered on a large permanently crewed space station, a small reusable logistics vehicle that would support it, and ultimately a human mission to Mars. Smaller goals included a variety of space vehicles for moving spacecraft around in orbit.
  Presenting the plans to Nixon, Agnew was told that the administration would not commit to a Mars mission, and limited activity to low Earth orbit for the immediate future. He was then told to select one of the two remaining proposals. After some debate between the station and the vehicle, the vehicle was chosen; suitably designed, such a spacecraft could perform some longer-duration missions and thus fill some of the goals of the station, and over the longer run, could help lower the cost of access to space and make the station less expensive.
  The goal, as presented by NASA to Congress, was to provide a much less-expensive means of access to space that would be used by NASA, the Department of Defense, and other commercial and scientific users.
  During early shuttle development there was great debate about the optimal shuttle design that best balanced capability, development cost and operating cost. Ultimately chosen was a design using a reusable winged orbiter, reusable solid rocket boosters, and an expendable external fuel tank for the orbiter's main engines.
  The Space Shuttle program was formally launched on January 5, 1972, when President Nixon announced that NASA would proceed with the development of a reusable space shuttle system. The stated goals of "transforming the space frontier...into familiar territory, easily accessible for human endeavor" was to be achieved by launching as many as 50 missions per year, with hopes of driving down per-mission costs.
  The prime contractor for the program was North American Rockwell (later Rockwell International, now Boeing), the same company responsible for building the Apollo Command/Service Module. The contractor for the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters was Morton Thiokol (now part of Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems), for the external tank, Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin), and for the Space Shuttle main engines, Rocketdyne (now Aerojet Rocketdyne).
  The first orbiter was originally planned to be named Constitution, but a massive write-in campaign from fans of the Star Trek television series convinced the White House to change the name to Enterprise. Amid great fanfare, Enterprise (designated OV-101) was rolled out on September 17, 1976, and later conducted a successful series of glide-approach and landing tests in 1977 that were the first real validation of the design.
caption: Endeavour in orbit, 2002
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