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The (ALS) was a joint USAF and NASA study from 1987-1990 that began during the post-Challenger period. Colonel John R. Wormington (Brig. Gen., USAF, Ret.) was assigned as program director of the Joint Department of Defense and NASA Advanced Launch System Program Office located at Los Angeles, CA AFB, with Lt Col Michael C. Mushala (Maj. Gen., USAF, Ret.) as his Deputy Program Director. Mushala was promoted to Colonel in October 1989, and became Program Director when Wormington was reassigned as commander of the Eastern Space and Missile Center, Patrick AFB, FL in February 1990. Col Mushala closed out the program and the System Program Office (SPO) was disbanded in July 1990 with remaining propulsion development efforts being managed by NASA alone. Total cost of this R&D effort was slightly under $3 Billion as it ended earlier than originally planned.
The program's office was unique in that it was the only SPO within Space Systems Division (AFSC) that was allowed to be completely furnished with Apple's Macintosh OS personal computers instead of the Command's mainline Microsoft Windows OS PCs. This was in part because NASA had already been using Apple computers and the joint program needed
The program considered the requirements and launch vehicles for
First, the USAF was tasked to deploy the space-based elements of the [[Strategic Defense Initiative]] (SDI) program and secondly, because the SDI was initially projected to require many thousands of tons of payload to reach low Earth orbit, ALS was intended to reduce the cost of space transportation by an order of magnitude, from about $10,000 per kilogram to less than $1,000 per kilogram which interested NASA.<ref>"ALS Contractors Concentrate on Expendable, Reusable Designs", Aerospace Daily, 20 June 1989 page 463</ref>
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