The International Space Station - Early Visions Of A Space Station

The first serious proposal for a space station was made in 1923 by the scientist Hermann Oberth (1894–1989). Although born in Transylvania, Romania, he lived and worked in Germany. Oberth is considered one of the fathers of rocket science. His doctoral dissertation was titled Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space).

Oberth proposed building an orbiting structure called a weltraumstation (space station) that would serve as a launching and refueling station for spacecraft engaged in deep space travel. Six years later he expanded upon his ideas in Wege zur Raumschiffart (Methods of Achieving Space Flight). Oberth's writings had a profound effect on the young Wernher von Braun (1912–77), who later became a key developer of American rocket science.

In 1929 Austrian engineer Hermann Noordung (1892–1929) published his idea for an orbiting space station. Noordung's spacecraft was wheel-shaped and primarily designed to be an observatory and scientific laboratory.

In 1952 German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun published a drawing of his vision of a space station. It was a wheel-shaped structure that would orbit 1,075 miles above the Earth and serve a variety of purposes. Von Braun envisioned the station aiding navigation and weather forecasting on Earth and serving as a military outpost, spaceport, and a launching platform for ventures into deeper space.

According to NASA historians, the von Braun team encouraged NASA to build a space station prior to sending a man to the moon. President Kennedy decided that the Apollo program should receive priority. However, a space station was always considered the next step after Apollo.

The U.S. Air Force pursued its own version of a space station during the 1960s. The Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) included a large laboratory module that was reached by a Gemini-type spacecraft launched aboard a Titan rocket. The military hoped to use the MOL for reconnaissance missions and for weather observation. The U.S. government spent more than one billion dollars researching and developing the MOL. The project suffered constant budget overruns and schedule delays and was finally cancelled in 1969. By that time, unmanned reconnaissance satellites were available that could do much of what the MOL was to accomplish. Military astronauts who had been training in the MOL program were transferred to NASA.