1961 – Orbital Space Tug – General Electric (American)

GE Orbital Space Tug MISSILE AND SPACE VEHICLE DEPARTMENT GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA INTRODUCTION The General Electric Company has been active in the manipulator and remote-handling equipment fields for several years. primarily in connection with its nuclear laboratories and test facilities. The application of remote-handling equipment to operations in space and lunar situations is …

1960 – SLOMAR Space Tug – The Martin Company (American)

  Above: The 2-man Space Tug Extra Images sourced from here. Cancelled Projects: SLOMAR By Jos Heyman (with some help from the correspondents of the Secretprojects forum) In 1959 the US Air Force started the Space Logistics, Operations, Maintenance and Rescue (SLOMAR) study to generate preliminary designs of crewed space vehicles that could support manned …

1958 – Astrotug – Lockheed (American)

Astrotug in Operation – Artist's Conception The Astrotug Tugboat for Space: Spaceborne scientific laboratories and platforms for further exploration into space are an accepted concept based on established engineering techniques. Components would be fired  as individual units into space, on precalculated orbits, and there assembled. To solve the major problems of how men are to …

1959-61 – Concept O-9 Manned Utility Tug – (American)

Concept O-9: Rendezvous by Manned Utility Tug From a report compiled between 1959-61 and presented in 1961 are various concepts {Suffixed by 'O' for Orbital Rendezvous). This extract only selects those concepts that have a manipulator component. WADD TECHNICAL REPORT 60-857 LAUNCHING AND ALIGHTMENT SYSTEMS FOR AERO-SPACE VEHICLES Nelson T. Levings, Jr. Cleveland Pneumatic Industries, …

1965 – Manned Space Pod with Manipulators (Concept) – Boeing (American)

Found in the old Boeing Historical archive some years back was a piece of artwork dated 20 Dec 1965 illustrating a “work pod” for orbital use. Space Pod sourced from here. Compare with later 1976 Boeing Space Tug concept here. See other early Space Teleoperators here. See other early Lunar and Space Robots here.