| I HAVE decided today that the United States should proceed at once with the development of an entirely new type of space transportation system designed to help transform the space frontier of the 1970's into familiar territory, easily accessible for human endeavor in the 1980's and 1990's. This system will center on a space vehicle that can shuttle repeatedly from earth to orbit and back. It will revolutionize transportation into near space by routinizing it. It will take the astronomical costs out of astronautics. In short, it will go a long way toward delivering the rich benefits of practical space utilization and the valuable spin-offs from space efforts into the daily lives of Americans and all people. The new year 1972 is a year of conclusion for America's current series of manned flights to the moon. Much is expected from the two remaining Apollo missions--in fact, their scientific results should exceed the return from all the earlier flights together. Thus they will place ...read full document |