President Richard Nixon announces that, after three years of studies, design concepts, and deliberations, he has given NASA the go-ahead to develop a reusable space vehicle, the Space Shuttle, which can perform multiple mission profiles, land safely and launch again, with the eventual goal of launching a shuttle almost every week of the year. The contract to build the shuttle is awarded to Apollo command/service module contractor North American Aviation, which is later to complete a merger with Rockwell International, which assumes the task of building the shuttles. The first launch date is projected to take place at some point in the mid-to-late 1970s.
