Something Borrowed, Something Blue: Repurposing NASA’s Spacecraft

Abstract

While much of the study of invention and innovation in space exploration focuses on the creation of new technologies, some of NASA’s most ambitious efforts and important technical and budgetary successes have surrounded efforts to modify existing spacecraft to serve new functions. Examples of creative reuse include technologies associated with the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project and the Skylab space station (which drew heavily from the 1960s’ Project Apollo and Project Gemini), as well as ambitious efforts to extend Skylab’s life into the space shuttle era of the 1980s. Rather than being a footnote to the history of NASA innovation, these efforts reflected a remarkable degree of engineering flexibility and inventive skill within the agency, and continued a longstanding tradition of bricolage in aviation innovation. (Matthew H. Hersch)