In 1991 NASA was still designing its Freedom space station, and with the recent opening up of the Soviet Union NASA began to investigate using the Soyuz as a return vehicle for the station. Due to complications resulting from Orbital mechanics this would require flying the Soyuz spacecraft *inside* the Space Shuttle payload bay.
I have to give a lot of credit to David Portree who researched this in the past and made it easy for me to find the sources I needed. This is his original article from 2015:
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He also has a Patreon which is supporting him while he's between jobs, I'm a supporter because he's one of the best space historians out there :
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Here's a few other references for those who are interested:
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