Research into spaceflight history and the early science of space travel, this film is a wonderful find. Many thanks to the San Diego Air and Space Museum group for digitizing this film.

That's quite a sizable blob of John Glenn's booster that survived reentry (7:18).

That artist's conception of a Convair space station looks like an orbital jail cell.

"Ancient" analog computer at 4:00.

Still another program that Convair failed to win.

This film is quite interesting. Everything in it is basically true, but its really part of the cover story about the true purpose of this space station, which was as a manned spying platform. It was cancelled when it became clear that the spy satellite program was going to do the job better and cheaper. And of course, the Russians knew what it really was. They actually put a manned spy satellite in orbit and used it for a while, but it didn't last long . . . for the same reason the US station was cancelled.