Space Station - Canceled Projects

Canceled Projects

• United States Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory project, canceled in 1969 about a year before the first planned test flight; this was unusual in being an explicitly military project, as opposed to the Soviet Almaz program, which was heavily intertwined with, and concealed by, the contemporaneous Salyut program.

• A second Skylab unit (Skylab B) was manufactured, as a backup article; due to the high costs of providing launch vehicles, and a desire by NASA to cease Saturn and Apollo operations in time to prepare for the Space Shuttle coming into service, it was never flown. The hull can now be seen in the National Air and Space Museum, in Washington DC.

• A number of additional Salyuts were produced, as backups or as flight articles that were later canceled.

• The U.S. Space Station Freedom program, which, despite being under development for ten years, was never launched, instead evolving into the International Space Station

• The Soviet/Russian Mir-2 station, which was never constructed, had some of its elements incorporated into the International Space Station.

• The Industrial Space Facility was a station proposed in the 1980s that was to be privately funded. The project was canceled when the company created to build it, Space Industries Incorporated, was unable to secure funding from the United States government.

• The European Columbus project planned to create a small space station serviced by the Hermes shuttle. It evolved into the ISS Columbus module.