The Space Shuttle Decision: NASA's Search for a Reusable Space Vehicle (review)

Not one but two decisions launched the United States space program into the shuttle era. In late 1971, the administration of President Richard Nixon decided to authorize a space shuttle. In January 1972, it finally decided [End Page 386] what kind of shuttle to build. The first decision replaced the Apollo program's Saturn rocket with a reusable launch vehicle intended to lower costs, routinize spaceflight, keep a human presence in space, and make possible a space station and ultimately human flights to Mars and beyond. The second decision tied the nation's hopes to a partially reusable shuttle fueled by an external tank and a pair of recoverable, solid-fuel boosters, launching a delta-wing, glide recovery vehicle capable of carrying 50,000 pounds of cargo in a bay sixty feet long and fifteen feet in diameter.