Integrated Program Plan “Maximum Rate” Traffic Model (1970)

NASA's 1969-1971 Integrated Program Plan (IPP) was the stuff of space cadet dreams, and for many remains *the* space exploration blueprint. Yet it contained fatal flaws, not least being an utter lack of support from President Nixon. Space historian and Beyond Apollo blogger David S. F, Portree asks: was the IPP grand or grandiose?

Image: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.
When one reads documents connected with the 1969-1971 Integrated Program Plan (IPP), it is often difficult to decide whether to laugh or to cry. The IPP, a product of George Mueller’s Office of Manned Space Flight, began to evolve as early as 1965, but did not take on the grandiose form NASA Administrator Thomas Paine stubbornly advocated to President Richard Nixon until May 1969.
Paine, a Washington neophyte, expected that the IPP would be NASA’s reward for winning the race to the moon. He believed that, having vanquished the Soviets, it was time for the U.S. civilian space agency to “think big.”
The IPP (image at top of post) included space stations in low-Earth orbit (LEO), geosynchronous orbit (GEO), and near-polar lunar orbit, Saturn V and Saturn V-derived rockets for launching them, a fully reusable Earth-to-LEO Space Shuttle for launching ...