Item Detail
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27756
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0
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0
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English
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Utah's Spaceport : A Failed Dream
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Utah Historical Quarterly
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Summer 2016
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84
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3
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Salt Lake City, UT
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Utah Historical Society
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255-262
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In 1971, as the Apollo program was still putting astronauts on the moon, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) envisioned space travel and exploration in the future. Though many space enthusiasts hoped for a large space station or moon base, a reusable spacecraft called the space shuttle was projected as the next obvious step, because putting people and cargo into orbit with single-use booster rockets was very expensive. When budget cutters in the Nixon Administration cancelled the final three planned Apollo moon flights, NASA decided to build a winged booster vehicle and winged orbiter that could each be able to fly back to the ground for reuse, dramatically lowering launch costs. NASA wanted a "space truck" that could carry into orbit astronauts, satellites, sections of a space station, or sections of vehicles to be assembled in space in order to later take astronauts to Mars. [From the text]