Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster design or replacing them altogether with liquid "flyback" boosters using either Atlas V or Delta IV EELV technologies. The 5-segment SRB, which would have required little change to the current shuttle infrastructure, would have allowed the space shuttle to carry an additional of payload in an International Space Station-inclination orbit, eliminate the dangerous "Return-to-Launch Site" (RTLS) and "Trans-Oceanic Abort" (TAL) modes, and, by using a so-called "dog-leg maneuver", fly south-to-north polar orbiting flights from Kennedy Space Center. After the destruction of "Columbia", NASA shelved the five-segment SRB for the Shuttle Program, and the three surviving Orbiters, "Discovery", "Atlantis", and "Endeavour"
Space Shuttle Pathfinder cost of US$1 million and hired Teledyne Brown Engineering to refurbish it to more closely resemble an actual Space Shuttle. It was named "Pathfinder" and displayed at the Great Space Shuttle Exposition in Tokyo from June 1983 to August 1984. After the exhibit, "Pathfinder" returned to the United States. The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama designed the display and built a stand. NASA provided MPTA-ET and two filament-wound Solid Rocket Booster casings, which had been designed for polar-orbit launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. On February 16, 1988, NASA shipped MPTA-ET, a external tank, which had been