3 years ago

April 12th is a landmark date in space exploration — Yuri Gagarin became the first human to explore outer space in 1961 and Space Shuttle Colombia, the first re-usable space craft, was launched on this day in 1981.While the technology which launched Gagarin into space has a legacy which continues to this day, the Space Shuttle was a departure from space systems which came before it, and its DNA does not seem to have been passed on to further systems. In a sense, each spacecraft type was a new version and each mission was was an MVP which added a few new features — developing a dot release in an agile fashion, as it were.

Alan Shepard’s flight, the first American in space, could be called spaceflight version 1 while John Glenn, who was the first to orbit the Earth, would be spaceflight version 1.3 and Edward White II would walk in space on the second Gemini mission which would be spaceflight version 2.

While Mercury-Gemini-Apollo all had distinct, clear and specific goals — Mercury to prove that humans could live in space, Gemini to prove that they could work in space and Apollo that they could reach the Moon — the Space Shuttle was supposed to be a long term solution to all of America’s goals in space. The Shuttle would be a universal solution which could deploy all the planned satellites of the United States government and civilian clients, be a flying laboratory for both basic research and experimental industrial experiments, be a repair shop for damaged satellites, a platform for building a space station, allow (relatively) untrained civilians access to space, perform highly secure and secretive missions for the Department of Defense, land on runways around the world, return hardware from space and more!The shuttle had so many capabilities no single mission could or would use them all!For example, the shuttle hoisted its entire payload bay into space each and every time it launched, no matter how many satellites it was going to launch or whether there was a full laboratory in it.