Project Mercury NASA

he Space Shuttle Program was designed primarily as a successor to the Apollo missions to give NASA a manned space program in the decade of the 80s.
NASA wanted to lower costs and needed a multifunctional hall. One of its uses would bring the satellites that were launched into space for their repair in case of any failure. Another function that would be reusable to avoid the loss of billions of dollars in rockets that were separating in juvenile stages and are discarded once burned during reentry into the atmosphere. Finally be used as transport to the space station that NASA had planned to build.
With all these principles during the’60s, NASA had outlined a series of projects on paper on reusable space vehicles to replace those systems use only as Project Mercury, Project Gemini and Apollo Program. The Air Force of the United States (USAF) also had interest in smaller systems with greater capacity and maneuverability was conducting its own space plane project, called X-20 Dyna-Soar. In order to develop a state of the art in this field, both teams worked together.
In the second half of the’60s, the effort to improve the Apollo was being watered down, and NASA began to look for the future of the space program. His vision was of an ambitious agenda that included the development of a huge space station was launched with great rockets, and that was maintained by a “space shuttle” reusable that could provide service to a permanent lunar colony and that might eventually carry people to Mars.
However, the reality was different, since the budget of NASA rapidly declined. Rather than go back and reorganize its future on the basis of its new economic situation, the agency try to save as much as possible of their projects. Will reject the mission to Mars, but the space station as the shuttle was still in place. Eventually was able to save only one of them, which was the ferry by economic and logistical reasons, because without that system you could not build a space station.
Below are a number of proposed designs, many of them complex and different between them. Maxime Faget, designer of the Mercury capsule, among others, I think the “DC-3”, a small plane capable of carrying a load of 9070 kg or less, four crew members, although with limited maneuverability. The DC-3 was founded on the basic platform which will be compared with the other designs.
With the despair of seeing his latest project saved, NASA asked the blessing of the Air Force of the United States (USAF). The agency made the request that future launches of the USAF were made with the ferry instead of disposable launchers that were being used, such as the Titan II rocket. As remuneration, the USAF Veria significant savings in the construction and modernization of their pitchers, because the ferry would have more than enough capacity to achieve the goals.
Without much enthusiasm, the USAF nodded, but not before requesting a significant increase in capacity to enable it to launch its spy satellites projected. These were large, weighing approximately 18,144 kg, and would have to put into polar orbits, which requires more energy than that required to put an object in low orbit (LEO). The vehicle would also have to have the ability to maneuver toward any side of your footprint to accommodate orbital drift rotational point of launch while in the polar orbit – for example, in an orbit of 90 minutes, the Vandenberg AFB in California , USA would have a drift of 1,600 km, while in orbits more aligned withthe equator, the drift would be less than 400 km. To achieve this, the vehicle should have larger wings and heavy.
With this, the simple DC-3 was left out of the equation because of its small cargo capacity and ability to maneuver. In fact, all the designs were inadequate. All new designs would have to incorporate a delta wing. And that was not the only drawback, with the increased capacity of the vehicle, the thrusters should also be much more powerful. Suddenly, the system had grown to be taller than the Saturn V rocket and its costs and complexity is left all odds.
While all this happened, others suggested a different approach: that NASA used to launch the Saturn existing space station, which would be held by Gemini capsules that would modified Titan II-F rocket, the USAF. The cost would probably smaller, and to attain the objective of the international station soon.