S.A.M.S.P. [MCDONNELL-DOUGLAS]
Notes:
While NASA/Johnson was studying the Space Operations Center concept, the Marshall Space Flight Center was lobbying for its own station -- the Science & Applications Manned Space Platform (SAMSP). MSFC envisioned a series of cheap “platforms” costing only $500 million that could be outfitted for different missions. This illustration shows three SAMSPs in different Earth orbits. One mission would be to service spacecraft such as the Hubble Space Telescope (bottom)
This McDonnell-Douglas illustration from 1980 depicts the basic unmanned platform equipped with a small Spacelab telescope pallet. The platform would provide power, communications, thermal control and other services for standard Shuttle payload experiments -- it essentially served as a surrogate Shuttle payload bay.
SAMSP could gradually evolve into a manned space station by adding pressurized crew modules derived from Spacelab. McDonnell-Douglas illustration from 1981. Initially, SAMSP would have a crew of three to four astronauts.
This illustration from 1981 depicts the assembly of a large telecommunications antenna (right) at the Science & Applications Manned Space Platform.
