Hi. Here�s the start of the Introduction Week I discussed during my Introduction Day last Friday, for my new series which has its start next Monday.. SPUTNIK ONE The space age came into existence on the 4th of October 1957 with the lunching of the Russian built Sputnik (or satellite) One. Originally designated under the code-name �Object D� the original design for the Sputnik One was far bigger and far more complex but constant design complications, mainly the inability of the various Russian companies who were contributing to the design to get the parts made to the required specifications, led to a vast re-think of the design into what the world would come to know as the simple Sputnik with a simple radio transmitter inside. Its beep-beep signal would continue to transmit for 21 days after entering Earth orbit until its re-entry and burn up. Weighting in at just 184 pounds or just over 13 stone it was launched atop the mighty R-7 booster, a booster which had originally been designed to carry a 5 ton nuclear warhead and which would weigh in at 280 tons and develop a thrust of 403 tons at lift off (that�s approximately 6.4 million house power). This booster had been originally designed to become the world�s first inter-continental ballistic missile. A booster which itself had only had its first successful test flight on the 3rd of August 1957, only two months before the launch of Sputnik One. Just four weeks after the successful launch of Sputnik One, on the 3rd of November 1957, the R-7 booster would once again be used to launch into space the first living creature from the planet Earth � the Russian Space Dog Laika. New Series Introduction - Day One 2010 sees the final flight of the space shuttle programme, a programme which has lasted for nearly 30 years with a total of 134 missions, 36 of which had been tasked with the construction in Earth orbit of the International Space Station or ISS. The plan after the final shuttle mission, as I understand it, is to decommission the remaining three shuttles (Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour), make them safe, and sell them off to various exhibition sites. In my version of history whilst Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour are decommissioned, the US Government has the foresight to see a time when the shuttles may be needed again at short notice to take part in space based rescue or other operations from the ISS and therefore orders that the shuttles plus six External Tanks (ET�s) and six paired sets of Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB�s) are placed into cold storage and kept in a state of readiness by a team of dedicated NASA engineers and technicians. To be continued