The Space Transportation System (STS) was a proposed system of reusable manned space vehicles envisioned by NASA in 1969 to support extended operations beyond the Apollo program. (NASA appropriated the name for its Space Shuttle Program, the only component of the proposal to survive Congressional funding approval.) The purpose of the system was twofold: to reduce the cost of spaceflight by replacing the current method of launching "capsules" on expendable rockets with reusable spacecraft; and to support ambitious follow-on programs including permanent orbiting space stations around the Earth and Moon, and a human landing mission to Mars.