A very James Bondian trigger for a Cold War crisis: the Soviets shoot down Challenger

[Thande]

I know this sounds a bit far-fetched. But apparently on the STS-41-G mission in 1984, the Soviets (in response to the US renewing funding for the Strategic Defence Initiative, or possibly due to lingering fears about military uses for the space shuttle) fired a laser from their Terra-3 testing facility in the Kazakh SSR at the orbiting space shuttle Challenger. The laser was low-power and just used to highlight and track the shuttle to send a warning to the Americans, but even this apparently caused the temporary blinding of some of the crew and the malfunction of onboard systems. The US lodged a diplomatic protest soon afterwards.

Let's say that, by chance, the onboard malfunctions are just a little worse than OTL and the shuttle loses main systems. Now this is before the OTL Challenger disaster of course and so the shuttle's abort modes are still severely limited. I'm not sure what could be done if they couldn't reach one of the emergency landing sites.

Anyway, what if this Soviet laser had caused the loss of the Challenger and her crew? What would be the diplomatic repercussions of such a crisis? I think the Americans wouldn't hush it up, given their public complaint in OTL.

 

[Gracie]

I know this sounds a bit far-fetched. But apparently on the STS-41-G mission in 1984, the Soviets (in response to the US renewing funding for the Strategic Defence Initiative, or possibly due to lingering fears about military uses for the space shuttle) fired a laser from their Terra-3 testing facility in the Kazakh SSR at the orbiting space shuttle Challenger. The laser was low-power and just used to highlight and track the shuttle to send a warning to the Americans, but even this apparently caused the temporary blinding of some of the crew and the malfunction of onboard systems. The US lodged a diplomatic protest soon afterwards.

Let's say that, by chance, the onboard malfunctions are just a little worse than OTL and the shuttle loses main systems. Now this is before the OTL Challenger disaster of course and so the shuttle's abort modes are still severely limited. I'm not sure what could be done if they couldn't reach one of the emergency landing sites.

Anyway, what if this Soviet laser had caused the loss of the Challenger and her crew? What would be the diplomatic repercussions of such a crisis? I think the Americans wouldn't hush it up, given their public complaint in OTL.

Wow, what a great idea for a novel or alternate history movie.

 

[rottengreekfire]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! The COMMIEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!

 

[Atreus]

Anyway, what if this Soviet laser had caused the loss of the Challenger and her crew? What would be the diplomatic repercussions of such a crisis? I think the Americans wouldn't hush it up, given their public complaint in OTL.

This will get sticky, very fast.

You have a soviet experimental weapon reaching up, into space, and destroying an expensive, relativly new and advanced piece of american hardware. Not to mention killing seven people. When this hits the newstands, the american domestic scene will become a mix of panic at this new soviet "superweapon", and anger at the soviet interference in american programs.

On a side note, if it comes out that this was to prevent Star Wars from being developed, then Reagan may be able to force the development through congress.

 

[Thande]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! The COMMIEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!
[MG]

That's very good

On a side note, if it comes out that this was to prevent Star Wars from being developed, then Reagan may be able to force the development through congress.

Yeah, besides relations hitting rock bottom, you can bet that the US will step up plans to militarise space, and that might lead to escalation (such as an earlier Polyus programme in the USSR?)

 

[rottengreekfire]

That's very good

Thank you.


I think that this will indeed quicken space militarization, but will also quicken the fall of the USSR due to the massive amounts of moolah being spent on having a military presence in space.

Years later people will make a movie about a soviet satellite that "was never dismanteled" and is taken over by terrorists and is goint to zap people if the hero can't blow it up in time.

 

[Vextra]

Years later people will make a movie about a soviet satellite that "was never dismanteled" and is taken over by terrorists and is goint to zap people if the hero can't blow it up in time.

Wait, that sounds familliar... didn't they make like 3 or 4 of those movies already in OTL?

Space Cowboys aside, I think that space millitarization really is totally impractical, no matter how much money you throw at it. Remember, they were talking about Orion Spaceships and Nuclear Missile Platforms as far back as the 50s. They didn't get those things in the 60s or 70s, and I don't think that they'd have gotten anything like them in the 80s.

You might be right in that they'd spend an obscene amount of cash getting it wrong before realizing otherwise, however. Its also possible that without the Challenger Tragedy, the replacement shuttles built would still have the same potential flaws, leading to a much later tragedy, and possibly on a wider scale.

Plus, with Space being seen as a Battlefield, NASA's scientific research would definitely be slashed, and many late-80s early-90s projects might be postphoned or cancelled indefinitely. I think Carl Sagan might have a few choice words to say about this state of affairs...

 

[Thande]

Space Cowboys aside, I think that space millitarization really is totally impractical, no matter how much money you throw at it. Remember, they were talking about Orion Spaceships and Nuclear Missile Platforms as far back as the 50s. They didn't get those things in the 60s or 70s, and I don't think that they'd have gotten anything like them in the 80s.

We're not talking about Nukes...innn...SPAAAAAAACE!!! here. (The Orion stuff can be debated because of the Test Ban Treaty and so forth but that's another discussion). We're talking about SDI, i.e. space-based weapons to shoot down ICBMs, and then other space-based weapons to shoot down the first space-based weapons.

The Soviets had inflated ideas of what the Americans could do about the first, putting lasers or kinetic weapons on satellites to shoot down ICBMs. So in the late 1980s they deployed a battle station called POLYUS, which was armed with recoilless cannon to shoot down the hypothetical American anti-missile satellites. However, it malfunctioned upon launch, orienting itself towards the Earth rather than away from it, and thus fired itself back down into the atmosphere and broke up over the Pacific.

So it is possible to put such weapons in orbit. In TTL, Reagan probably gets all the funds he wants to make SDI a real possibility instead of a pipe dream, and the Soviets don't have Gorbachev trying to shut down POLYUS and similar programmes all the time.

 

[MarkWhittington]

We're not talking about Nukes...innn...SPAAAAAAACE!!! here. (The Orion stuff can be debated because of the Test Ban Treaty and so forth but that's another discussion). We're talking about SDI, i.e. space-based weapons to shoot down ICBMs, and then other space-based weapons to shoot down the first space-based weapons.

The Soviets had inflated ideas of what the Americans could do about the first, putting lasers or kinetic weapons on satellites to shoot down ICBMs. So in the late 1980s they deployed a battle station called POLYUS, which was armed with recoilless cannon to shoot down the hypothetical American anti-missile satellites. However, it malfunctioned upon launch, orienting itself towards the Earth rather than away from it, and thus fired itself back down into the atmosphere and broke up over the Pacific.

So it is possible to put such weapons in orbit. In TTL, Reagan probably gets all the funds he wants to make SDI a real possibility instead of a pipe dream, and the Soviets don't have Gorbachev trying to shut down POLYUS and similar programmes all the time.

A ramp up of American space efforts, both civilian (as the attack would be seen as having been directed at it) and military would be inevitable. Congressional opposition to such things as space station Freedom and SDI would be muted, at least for a while. There might even be an early Moon-Mars effort, sparked by the findings of the National Commission on Space that were released two years later.

Question. Does the SRB problem hit another shuttle flight (with supicians now of Soviet sabotoge) or does that get butterflied away?

On the Soviet side, there is not much more they can do to counter a big push by the US in space. It is possible that Chernenko gets "retired" early--he has only a few months anyway. Gorby still succeeds him and still has the problems he faced in OTL, only in spades. He has a sputtering Soviet economy straining under the efforts to keep up with Reagan's arms and now space build up. Gorby would likely have the same solution as in OTL glasnost and perastroika to try to reform the Soviet system, arms control initiatives to try to hold off Reagan, with the added gambit of, "That business with killing the Challenger was the old regime. We're different. Even Thatcher says she can do business with me. So how about a joint mission to Mars in exchange for you not doing Star Wars." That last was a Sagan idea, btw.

And Reagan has the Godless Commies right where he wants them. The Soviet Empire still falls, albeit perhaps earlier. As a bonus, we might at least be on Mars by now.

 

[Archangel]

Will we see a novel based on this premise?

 

[Thande]

(snip)

I think that's a pretty fair summary. We could spin this into an All-Out Superpower Confrontation (TM) if we wanted to, but I think it's more likely to end up as just a chill of relations and then things developing pretty much as you suggest.

Will we see a novel based on this premise?

It is a thought, but I'm not that up on 1980s geopolitics myself, I was too busy growing up at the time.