Slide 3 of 99
Notes:
NASA's Johnson Spaceflight Center extended the Boeing contract in February 1982 to study a cheaper, modular, evolutionary approach to assembling the Space Operations Center. Depicted here is the initial power module, which consists of solar arrays and radiators.
The next launches would have delivered a space tug “garage”, two pressurized crew modules and a logistics module.
The completed Space Operations Center also would have contained a satellite servicing & assembly
facility and several laboratory modules. Even with this revised approach, however, the cost of
the SOC program had grown to $9 billion. Another problem was Space Operations Center's primary
mission: spacecraft assembly and servicing. The likely users (commercial satellite operators
and telecommunications companies) were not really interested in the kind of large geostationary
space platforms proposed by NASA. By 1983, the only enthusiastic users for NASA's space station
plans were scientists working in the fields of microgravity research and life sciences. Their
needs would dictate future space station design although NASA's 1984 station plans did incorporate
a SOC-type spacecraft servicing facility as well.
