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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)