Following the STS-9 disaster and ensuing chaos within the agency, it became clear the shuttle program was not going to be long-lived. It looked like the space shuttle program might not even make it to the 90s.

In this chaos, several designs were studied for in-house replacements to the shuttle for both cargo and eventually crew missions.

Requests for designs went out.

Crewed spacecraft varied greatly from smaller spaceplanes to reusing apollo Hardware for capsules, which would ride atop an OMS pod derived service module. Even with the project being in its infancy, it was clear that development was not going to happen fast enough. Submitted designs kept "re inventing the space shuttle" when they'd try to replicate all the capabilities the shuttle has as DODIS had desired. Progress couldn't be made with this many requirements placed on one spacecraft.

For cargo payloads, the submissions were less competitive, and urgency was greater.…