Boldly Going: A History of an American Space Station

But it is entirely plausible that in this timeline, Bush will still pick him for his administrator, so I'm certainly not being critical of our authors here. I think they have done a fine job of generating a timeline that is not only *plausible*, but even quite *probable*, given their point of departure. The logic that drove George Bush to appoint Dick Truly will have a lot of the same force here, too.
He already did:

President George H.W. Bush and Former-President Reagan met with Administrator Richard Truly for photographs and speeches commemorating the success of the program.

It should be noted that already having Space Station Enterprise in orbit and having a different disaster in the past does change the incentives for Truly on the SEI.
 
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Guys, I found Space Station Enterprise!
 
Another set of amazing images and great to see that at least for now everything is going to plan. Long may it continue. On that note the Shuttle apparently visits three stations? Assuming that the Shuttle can make it to the mid 10's (anything much beyond that seems implausible considering the age of the system and ever escalating running costs). This space station while large doesn't have the expansion capacity of a more modular design like Freedom so it makes sense that after a decade of service NASA will want to replace it with something more flexible and useful. But what could the 3rd station be?
 
This space station while large doesn't have the expansion capacity of a more modular design like Freedom so it makes sense that after a decade of service NASA will want to replace it with something more flexible and useful. But what could the 3rd station be?

If the JCS boys have anything to say about it, it *will* be a clean sheet modular station like, well, Freedom.
 
If the JCS boys have anything to say about it, it *will* be a clean sheet modular station like, well, Freedom.
Yes, but in practice I suspect what they will get in this scenario is something akin to a Salyut core module stuffed into a Shuttle C. If not (more likely imo) expansion modules for Enterprise designed with the intention to be shifted to that third gen station once it is available.
 
Well we know the Shuttle visits two more space stations so a "cheap" Shuttle C derivative followed by a "proper" modular station makes sense as a path to get the requisite number of destinations. Or the modular station could be the next NASA station and the 3rd station could be a much more successful alt Bigelow private space station.
 
Well we know the Shuttle visits two more space stations so a "cheap" Shuttle C derivative followed by a "proper" modular station makes sense as a path to get the requisite number of destinations. Or the modular station could be the next NASA station and the 3rd station could be a much more successful alt Bigelow private space station.
Or the second one could be Mir...
 
Enterprise looks beautiful hanging in space like that. Wonderful installment as usual.
But I do have to wonder what H.W.'s new program will be, or rather, whether or not it will just be SEI. A lot of work has been done thus far to keep things relatively close to OTL, at least in trajectory, but there's plenty of room to butterfly away SEI in favor of another program with better chances of success.
 
Enterprise looks beautiful hanging in space like that. Wonderful installment as usual.
But I do have to wonder what H.W.'s new program will be, or rather, whether or not it will just be SEI. A lot of work has been done thus far to keep things relatively close to OTL, at least in trajectory, but there's plenty of room to butterfly away SEI in favor of another program with better chances of success.
Well SEI already has a somewhat better chance on account of there already being a big space station in orbit, though NASA will still need to seriously adjust their planning compared to OTL.
 
Well SEI already has a somewhat better chance on account of there already being a big space station in orbit, though NASA will still need to seriously adjust their planning compared to OTL.
At the very least, some of the work on Enterprise should be possible to carry over to Shuttle-C or Shuttle-Z, if NASA commits to that for later heavy-lift operations. And with the station half-done, JSC will be less focused on covering their own behinds.
 
At the very least, some of the work on Enterprise should be possible to carry over to Shuttle-C or Shuttle-Z, if NASA commits to that for later heavy-lift operations. And with the station half-done, JSC will be less focused on covering their own behinds.
We do know from the intro that some sort pf shuttle-derived heavy lifter will fly, though not until "STS-99-C"
 
We do know from the intro that some sort pf shuttle-derived heavy lifter will fly, though not until "STS-99-C"
Late 1990's then if the schedule holds anywhere close to OTL. In any case an unmanned cargo carrier would have given the shuttle some expansion capacity if you don't have to launch the orbiter on every trip.
 
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