ESA 1980's MANNED SPACEFLIGHT PLANS
Notes:
European space station (Aerospatiale concept, 1982). The European Space Agency (ESA) became an increasingly important factor in space during the late 1970s and early 80s. Europe's “Ariane” launch vehicle was a huge commercial success and ESA also built the “Spacelab” pressurized laboratory module for the American Space Shuttle program. Spacelab contractors such as MBB and Alitalia now started to examine possible follow-on manned projects, including independent ESA space stations such as the design depicted here.
German & Italian companies had already proposed an integrated European manned spaceflight program named “Columbus” when President Reagan invited other countries to join the US-led Space Station program. Columbus would have utilized modified Spacelab pressurized modules but it was not yet clear if the project should be carried out as an independent man-tended European space platform, or if Europe instead should provide an attached laboratory module to the US Station complex. The man-tended free-flying option would have consisted of a pressurized module, "payload carriers" based on Eureca platform technologies and a new Resource Module that would provide power, communications, guidance, navigation and control to the other modules. The option initially favored by the Europeans would have been capable of undocking from the US Space Station complex to perform sensitive microgravity experiments in an unmanned mode. The total estimated cost was 1750 million European Currency Units and Germany was willing to fund up to 50% with Italy providing 25%.
The Europeans were also looking at space transportation elements to complement the Eureca platform (top right) and Columbus space station (top left). Candidates included a winged reusable booster rocket for the Ariane-5 (bottom left) and a multipurpose “space tug” (center) for servicing satellites as well as transporting cargo to Columbus.
