The Shuttle-Mir docking—a memoir

摘要

In mid-1991, I was asked to participate in designing a docking system for the U.S. Orbiter to NASA's then-planned Freedom space station. The project's first 12 months produced several design studies and options, which eventually resulted in a U.S.-Russian alliance to join the Orbiter to Mir prior to building a new international station. The obvious implication was that Russian hardware would be needed to match the two spacecraft; less obvious was how much hardware and integration would be required.