With the first Shuttle launch around the corner, well, about four years away, in 1977, NASA described its soon-to-be capabilities in its “NASA Facts” series. “It takes off like a rocket, maneuvers in Earth orbit like a spacecraft, and lands like an airplane.” The “space telescope” – describing the far away yet-to-be-named Hubble telescope, including a picture that is spot on how it appeared over a decade later, gets the opening page too. Our future space station, spacesuits that come “in small, medium and large sizes and can be adjusted to fit both men and women,” and the many nations to fly on the Shuttle are all on the mark.
But amazingly, reading on, we see a “personal rescue enclosure” too, “inside of which is a life support and communications system.” If the Shuttle should be disabled in space, some astronauts would get inside these balloons, while the others would grab spacesuits, awaiting the “rescue ship.” Not everything turned out as envisioned.
And as usual, there is the bottom of the last page – where these booklets were “For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, US Government Printing Office.”
The document has survived till now. Off it goes, into the cloud.
Zapata Talks NASA 