Space Shuttle Design Process - Air Force Involvement

Air Force Involvement

During the mid-1960s the United States Air Force had both of its major piloted space projects, X-20 Dyna-Soar and Manned Orbiting Laboratory, canceled. This demonstrated its need to cooperate with NASA to place military astronauts in orbit. In turn, by serving Air Force needs, the Shuttle became a truly national system, carrying all military as well as civilian payloads.

NASA sought Air Force support for the shuttle. After the Six-Day War and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia exposed limitations in the United States' satellite reconnaissance network, Air Force involvement emphasized the ability to launch spy satellites southward into polar orbit from Vandenberg AFB. This required higher energies than for lower inclination orbits. The Air Force also hoped that a shuttle could retrieve Soviet satellites and quickly land. It thus desired the ability to land at the Vandenberg liftoff point after one orbit, despite the earth rotating 1,000 miles beneath the orbital track. This required a larger delta wing size than the earlier simple "DC-3" shuttle. However NASA also desired this increased maneuvering capability since further studies had shown the DC-3 shuttle design had limitations not initially foreseen. The Air Force launched more than 200 satellite reconnaissance missions between 1959 and 1970, and the military's large volume of payloads would be valuable in making the shuttle more economical.

Despite the potential benefits for the Air Force, the military was satisfied with its expendable boosters and did not need or want the shuttle as much as NASA did. Because the space agency needed outside support, the Defense Department (DoD) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) gained primary control over the design process. For example, NASA planned a 40 feet-long and 12 feet-wide cargo bay, but NRO specified a 60 feet by 15 feet bay because it expected future intelligence satellites to become larger. When Faget again proposed a 12 feet-wide payload bay, the military almost immediately insisted on retaining the 15-feet width. The Air Force also gained the equivalent of use of one of the shuttles for free despite not paying for the shuttle's development or construction. In exchange for the NASA concessions, the Air Force testified to the Senate Space Committee on the shuttle's behalf in March 1971. As another incentive for the military to use the shuttle, Congress reportedly told DoD that it would not pay for any satellites not designed to fit into the shuttle cargo bay.

The Air Force planned on having their own fleet of shuttles, and re-built a separate launch facility originally derived from the canceled Manned Orbiting Laboratory program at Vandenberg called Space Launch Complex Six (SLC-6). However for various reasons, due in large part to the loss of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986, work on SLC-6 was eventually discontinued with no shuttle launches from that location ever taking place.

SLC-6 was eventually used for launching the Lockheed Martin-built Athena expendable launch vehicles, which included the successful IKONOS commercial Earth observation satellite in September 1999 before being reconfigured once again to handle the new generation of Boeing Delta IV's. The first launch of the Delta IV heavy from SLC-6 occurred in June 2006, launching NROL-22, a classified satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)