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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_1969
April 1969
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The following events occurred in April 1969:
April 1, 1969 (Tuesday)
At Houston, NASA Engineer Max Faget showed 20 colleagues a small balsa wood and paper model with "straight, stubby wings and a shark-like nose" and told them. "We're going to build America's next spacecraft. It’s going to launch like a spacecraft; it’s going to land like a plane." Faget, the director of engineering and development at the Manned Space Center, was introducing the assembled group to a planned reusable spacecraft, the American Space Shuttle.
https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/536821main_Wings-ch1-2.pdf
NASA official website
Wings In Orbit
Scientific and Engineering Legacies of the Space Shuttle
1971-2010
page 13
On April 1, 1969, Maxime Faget, director of engineering and development at the Manned Spacecraft Center, asked 20 people to report to the third floor of a building that most thought did not have a third floor. Because of that, many believed it was an April Fool’s prank but went anyway. Once there, they spotted a test bay, which had three floors, and that was where they met. Faget then walked through the door with a balsa wood model of a plane, which he glided toward the engineers. “We’re going to build America’s next spacecraft. And it’s going to launch like a spacecraft, it’s going to land like a plane,” he told the team. America had not yet landed on the moon, but NASA’s engineers moved ahead with plans to create a new space vehicle. As the contractors and civil servants explored various configurations for the next generation of spacecraft, the Space Task Group, appointed by President Richard Nixon, issued its report for future space programs. The committee submitted three options: the first and most ambitious featured a manned Mars landing as early as 1983, a lunar and Earth-orbiting station, and a lunar surface base; the second supported a mission to Mars in 1986; and the third deferred the Mars landing, providing no scheduled date for its completion. Included in the committee’s post-Apollo plans were a Space Shuttle, referred to as the Space Transportation System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxime_Faget
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- posted by Kerry Burgess 12:58 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Monday 03 September 2018
