Apollo: General Electric design, March, 1961

Before the Apollo CSM we’ve all come to know and love was born, there was a long period when everybody who was anybody in American aerospace had their own ideas on what the Apollo spacecraft would look like. Spaceplanes, lifting bodies, “flying saucers,” the works. One of the more interesting and detailed proposals was GE’s, which bore more than a little resemblance to the later Soviet Soyuz spacecraft. Note that the shape of the GE re-entry capsule is almost exactly the same as that of the Soyuz. Little details like this have caused many to specualte that the Soviets half-assed copied the GE Apollo design for Soyuz, though it’s unlikely.

GE even built a mockup of the “couch” the astronauts would be stuffed into.

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