Saturn Shuttle

Mission Profile

Saturn Shuttle was a mid-1960s concept for a small winged crewed vehicle launched on a Saturn IB or Saturn V rocket, studied by NASA as an alternative to a fully independent shuttle system. The concept involved a reusable crew-carrying winged craft that would return to Earth for runway landing after its orbital mission, sharing some design elements with the later Space Shuttle orbiter but much smaller in scale. Saturn Shuttle represented one of the many post-Apollo planning concepts studied before NASA committed to the full Space Transportation System that became the Space Shuttle.