Challenger doesn't blow up

MrHola

Banned
In 1986, Spaceshuttle Challenger blew up after only 75 seconds. Suppose that NASA disovers the mistakes a few months before/years before launch or something like that. In any case, the astronauts return from their trip and are hailed as heroes.

What next?
 
All they have to do is postpone the launch for a few days while the weather warms up. As for the long term effects on the shuttle program, I don't know.
 

Xen

Banned
Im not familiar enough with the mission, but I dont think it changes too much, perhaps we are slightly ahead or maybe even behind, disasters like this make people go back to square one and look at everything. If the Shuttle Mission is delayed a couple of days, all the crew survives, five years later another shuttle mission is supposed to pick up where they left off and explodes upon reentry or something.
 

Blackwood

Banned
Would be interesting to do this WI in the future, since different crews dying might have massive butterfly effects later on.
 
Unfortunately, NASA, under pressure to keep up launch rates, was pushing the allowed launch parameters. Sooner or later they were going to get bit big time. Now... It's possible that there could have been a 'disaster' that wasn't fatal - say an SSME goes out early or something and the Shuttle lands hard in West Africa or something. But getting a problem big enough to fix the 'launch anyway' pressure, but small enough to not derail the whole program is ... tough.

Unfortunately, the Shuttle is a very non-practical spacecraft, I'm afraid.
 
The Galileo probe gets launched earlier.

Arthur C Clarke subsequently writes a different sequel in the Space Odyssey series to 2061, and releases it later than OTL.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
The Shuttle was (and is) an inherently poorly-designed and dangerous vehicle. Accidents such as Challenger and Columbia were statistically bound to happen every once in awhile.
 
The design flaws with the booster O-rings would have gone unrecognized until the next time NASA launches when the weather was too cold. Or the next. Eventually the problem would manifest itself and a shuttle would be lost.

The immediate result would be no let-up in NASA's desire to shorten the turn around time of shuttle missions. Until the next disaster, this would speed up construction of the International Space Station and maintain the perception that manned space flight via the shuttle was becoming routine and safe. Some satellites and probes would be launched earler. Perhaps more thought and financial commetment would be put into a follow-on reusable spacecraft vehicle to replace the shuttle, rather than the Apollo rehash we are going with now.

In the long term, however, the Columbia would still be lost several years later even if no reoccurence of the o-ring failures happened. As said by another poster the shuttle is a poorly designed compromise. Because of cost concerns, the system is not truly reusable, and compromises were made in the materials used to construct it.
 
The Shuttle was (and is) an inherently poorly-designed and dangerous vehicle. Accidents such as Challenger and Columbia were statistically bound to happen every once in awhile.

not to go too far off topic, but if NASA had been given money and carte blanche to build the best orbital vehicle it could come up with, what would they have built instead of the current shuttle?
 

Archibald

Banned
Something similar to Buran but based on Saturn V.
A fully reusable system was not possible in the 70's.

Get ride of the ET and SSME and use an expendable rocket instead.
As it is expendable, try to build it as cheap as possible, using Truax pressure-fed booster as first stage.

The orbiter itself would become a 40-tons lifting body with a load of 12 tons only. This won't please USAF of course, but you'll avoid a compromised design at least.

Btw get ride of the crew and send it separately into a Big gemini or Apollo capsule. Once in orbit unload the shuttle cargo bay putting the "canadarm" onto the space station, not on the shuttle itself.

If USAF really want a spaceplane, best option would be the Black Colt / Pathfinder option, build from existing technology.

Back to topic, I just agree on the fact that an accident was due to happen sooner or later. Just look at the rate of (cancelled) missions on Astronautix... way too much for such a flawed design!
 
Last edited:
Top