History
The crew size for the ISS depends upon the crew return capability: the crew was limited to three because the Russian Soyuz TMA vehicle that will remain docked to the ISS can only hold three people. Now with two docked Soyuz vehicles, the ISS has been crewed with 6 members since May 2009. Since it is imperative that the crew members be able to return to Earth if there is a medical emergency or if other complications arise, a Crew Return Vehicle able to hold up to seven crew members was planned from the outset: this would have allowed the full complement of seven astronauts to live and work on board the ISS. NASA has designed several crew return vehicles over the years with varying levels of detail.
A small, in-house development study of the X-38 concept first began at JSC in early 1995. In early 1996, a contract was awarded to Scaled Composites, Inc., of Mojave, Calif., for the construction of three full-scale atmospheric test airframes. The first vehicle airframe was delivered to JSC in September 1996.
Read more about this topic: NASA X-38
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“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)