Slide 40 of 99
Notes:
McDonnell-Douglas illustration of the “Dual Keel” crew modules. The major modification was the introduction of separate “node modules” or docking ports which also accomodated many systems that would not have fit inside the original “Power Tower” crew modules. NASA was still planning to contribute two laboratory modules plus two habitation modules in late 1985. Gordon Fullerton and other observers felt the Station's habitable volume was too limited when the number of US modules was reduced to one lab plus one habitation module. There would be no room for a second shower, commode or 'safe haven' emergency provisions.
This Boeing illustration shows the longer 13.3-meter module introduced in early 1986. The Space Station was briefly suspended by a major row in the summer of 1986 when NASA tried to reassign some habitation module responsibilities from the Johnson Space Center to the Marshall Space Flight Center. A compromise was reached in September 1986, but it was yet another indication of the Station's byzantine management structure and turf battles between NASA centers. But Congress still approved the project's $420-million Fiscal 1987 budget while imposing a number of restriction: power levels of at least 37.5KW, fully outfit the microgravity lab by the sixth assembly flight, attach useful science payload by the third flight, launch all US elements before the foreign modules and restrict ESA's Columbus module to life sciences. The congressional requirements would essentially have forced NASA to change the Station along the lines of a new proposal which then, surprisingly, emerged from JSC. NASA had previously testified in Congress that no Station funds were being spent on alternative design studies. Using funding earmarked for alternate assembly sequence research, the Johnson Space Center nonetheless ordered its main contractors (Rockwell and McDonnell-Douglas) to examine a smaller, more compact configuration while keeping NASA headquarters in the dark about it... This caused additional confusion about who was really in charge of the project: NASA headquarters or Johnson.
