In 1869, the Atlantic Monthly published the work by Edward Everett Hale, where he described the 'Brick Moon', a satellite 60 meters in diameter with the crew of 37, which helps to navigate ships at sea. At the turn of the 20th century, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Russia envisioned many elements of future spaceflight, including space station. By 1923, Hermann Oberth wrote 'The Rocket to Planetary Space', a theoretical work, discussing among other things the roles and the design of the space station. By 1929, the H. Noordung advances the idea of the station further in his work 'The Problems of Navigating the World'. With the beginning of Space Age, the space station concept could be examined based on existing technology. With the loss of the moon race in 1969, the Russian government adopted the space station concept as the major direction for the Soviet manned program. Since then several generations of the Salyut, Almaz and finally Mir space stations had flown. Mir-2 would follow as the main Russian effort in the manned spaceflight. The project went through several reincarnations during the 1980's and beginning of the 1990s, starting with the large space station launched by the Energia super heavy-lift booster and ending with a more modest design of the Proton-launched core and a single truss carrying solar arrays and helio-concentrators. Not unlike, Freedom project, the station could grow as more modules are added. However, unlike Freedom, the crew could board the station immediately after the launch of the first element -- the core module. In 1972, Nixon administration approved the development of the reusable Space Shuttle as a main direction for the US manned space program. The Space Shuttle was envisioned as a cheap and reliable transportation system between Earth and low orbit. For NASA it meant the Space Shuttle would launch and service a space station -- the next 'logical step' in the human exploration of space. However these dreams were stalled for years by the difficult birth of the Space Shuttle. Finally in 1984, President Reagan gave official green light to the ambitious project, which envisioned permanently manned space station by 1991. As President Clinton moved into the Oval Office in 1993, NASA was asked for another redesign of the space station Freedom. In response, NASA came up with three options known as A, B, and C, however none of them would meet the projected budget restrictions. At the time, Russian Space Agency proposed NASA to merge Freedom and Mir-2 projects. The inclusion of the Mir-2 core module into the Freedom design would allow early presence of the crew onboard, while the use of Progress cargo ships would provide much cheaper and reliable refueling and supply capabilities for the station, comparing to the use of the Space Shuttle. On Sept. 2 Russian Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin and US Vice President Al Gore signed an agreement to merge Freedom and Mir-2 projects.

• published: 03 Sep 2013
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