Last time we found out the idea of space stations is surprisingly old. By the 1950s, everyone knew we’d be working in beautiful space stations that rotated like a wheel to give us the illusion of gravity. Of course, that didn’t happen. But we did get some practical space stations, even before the current crop. The road to get there, though, was predictably bumpy.

Convair: From TASSEL to MARS

Convair had been studying multi-person orbital stations under Krafft Ehricke since the late 1950s. One result was TASSEL, an acronym for the Three Astronaut Space System Experimental Laboratory. Proposed in 1960, TASSEL was a three-man laboratory intended for an Atlas-Centaur launch into a roughly 200-nautical-mile orbit and missions lasting two or three weeks.

Around the same time, the Air Force asked contractors for proposals for a Military Test Space Station, or MTSS. Convair was one of five companies selected for the study in 1960. The surviving record suggests that Convair’s TASSEL work fed directly into its MTSS proposal.

Continue reading “An Early History Of Space Stations: Where’s My Wheel?” →