Christa McAuliffe

On its 40th anniversary, we reassess 1986's SpaceCamp

Forty years ago, the future seemed just around the corner—and the vehicle that was going to take us there was NASA's Space Shuttle. Originally envisioned as part of a larger integrated space transportation system, the shuttle was billed as a fully reusable vehicle, totally unlike the one-and-done capsules of the fading Apollo era, capable of making monthly (and perhaps even weekly) ferry flights to low Earth orbit. The shuttle, it was hoped, would transform human space flight from...