The ISS as it might have been…

Before the International Space Station was the International Space Station, it was originally Space Station Freedom. This was in the heady days of Reagan and anti-Soviet technological developments such as the Strategic Defense Initiative, the latter half of the 1980s. The Station as then envisioned would have been an all-American Station (although the Europeans and Japanese could tag along with modules of their own), designed to fulfill NASA and DoD requirements, rather than State Department requirements like the ISS. As with SDI, it was grandiose and of course not to be.

The Station as planned circa 1987 could be grown into a “dual keel” design quite a bit larger than the ISS as actually built. It would feature numerous solar power plants, both photovoltaic and solar dynamic. It was planned that a satellite servicing center would be fitted, allowing, as the name suggests, for the repair and refitting of satellites. In order to permit that, a space tug (OMV – Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle) would also need developing that could retrieve the satellites, then return them to their orbits.

Sadly, the Station was always a political football. The cost was immense, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the military applications of the Station (not least of which would have been the propaganda value of a Real American Space Station) ceased to seem relevant. Plans were scaled back, it was transformed into an International effort in order to spread cost  and curry political favor, and the ISS end result is but a shadow of what was originally planned.