NASA's Abandoned Plan To Carry Soviet Spacecraft In The Space Shuttle

In 1991 NASA was still designing its Freedom space station, and with the recent opening up of the Soviet Union NASA began to investigate using the Soyuz as a return vehicle for the station. Due to complications resulting from Orbital mechanics this would require flying the Soyuz spacecraft *inside* the Space Shuttle payload bay.

I have to give a lot of credit to David Portree who researched this in the past and made it easy for me to find the sources I needed. This is his original article from 2015:

He also has a Patreon which is supporting him while he's between jobs, I'm a supporter because he's one of the best space historians out there :


Here's a few other references for those who are interested:

Shuttle