Talk:Integrated cargo carrier

THis article about the ICC neglects to mention the important multi-lateral development effort that resulted in the ICC's creation.

SPACEHAB's small in-house project team developed the ICC concept in response to a need to fly combined pressurized and unpressurized payloads aboard the Shuttle. The SPACEHAB team directed concurrent development of the Cargo Pallet by RCS Energia in Korolev, Russia, and the Keep Yoke Assembly by Daimler Benz Aerospace AG (later ASTRIUM) in Bremen, Germany. The development project went from a clean sheet of paper to first flight in approximately 18 months, and was undertaken as a commercial venture even after significant resistance from the intended customer, NASA, which was already invested in the development of an alternative unpressurized cargo carrier. Ultimately, the ICC system flew many more missions than NASA's carrier, which itself was not completed until very late in the Space Shuttle's operational lifetime. This development uniquely combined American, German, and Russian technical teams to produce extremely versatile and capable commercial space flight hardware in record time and at a cost far below that of a typical NASA procurement.

In its earliest configurations, the ICC's Keel Yoke Assembly, seperable from the cargo pallet, could be installed prior to inspallation of pre-existing pressurized tunnels that provide access between the Orbiter's mid-deck and the SPACEHAB modules. THis capability, combined with the innovative adaptive geometry of the ICC's interfaces to the Orbiter, enabled the ICC system to be manifested with great flexibility on many Shuttle missions which would otherwise have been far less effective. The modular Keel Yoke Assembly and Cargo Pallet Assembly could be variably configured to present discrete directional loads to the Orbiter in preferred locations that were compatible with the Orbiter's structure. Later ICC iterations (with vertical pallets) were also modular; a portion of the verticl pallet could be optionally flown as small pallets in combination with the Keep Yoke Assembly.

All ICC pallets shared a common versatile configuration of standard interfaces for the accommodation of cargo via various common types of optionally flown adapters. This versatility proved critical to enabling the ICC system to meet many cargo manifesting requirements on various Shuttle missions.

The ICC was originally conceived with the intent of enabling its pallets to become permanent fixtures of the International Space Station, even though NASA had no plans to assimilate ICC pallets into the ISS assembly at the time of ICC conception. Ultimately, the ICC proved its value as a Shuttle borne cargo carrier and as an ISS-integrated unpressurized storage pallet.

There's a lot more to the ICC story than meets the eye. Like the SPACEHAB module fleet, the ICC is a chapter in the early history of commercial contributions to human space flight, and its impact on the ISS program will be best appreciated in hindsight.

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