The legacy of the Space Shuttle

As reusability becomes key to the new era of spaceflight, Ben Evans takes a look at the world's first reusable spacecraft and how it changed space travel forever

NASA's first Space Shuttle commander was on the Moon when he heard the news, in April 1972, that the USA's first reusable spacecraft had been green-lighted for development. “The country needs that Shuttle mighty bad,” astronaut John Young remarked. “You'll see.” He was right. After years of sending people into space in oneuse-only capsules atop one-use-only boosters, programmes like Apollo were unsustainable. War in Vietnam and civil unrest at home convinced many in the US that a cheaper way of transporting people into space was needed. The Space Shuttle was born. Delta-winged, of similar size to a DC-3 airliner, the Space Shuttle boasted a two-tiered cockpit and an 18.3-metre-long (60ft) payload bay used to launch and recover satellites, and to hold Europe's purposebuilt Spacelab module for wide-ranging research from medicine…

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BBC Sky at Night United Kingdom (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2024

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