Archibald
Banned
Whatif the shuttle, instead of being retired in 2011, never existed in the place - from 1971 ?
This is only a teaser for a much bigger alt-history of the space age... and beyond.
CLIPPED WINGS
March 15, 1972
"...we will fly the remaining Saturn IBs and try to restart the shuttle program, probably in the 80’s. " NASA administrator James Beggs declared.
“But what will the shuttle look like ?”
“At the time of its cancellation our baseline was the Saturn-Shuttle. The orbiter and its external tank topped a Saturn V first stage. The Shuttle Engine is probably dead in the water, but we have an alternate solution. General ?”
So that’s the reason General Bernard Schriever is there today.
What will the Air Force decide… ?
“Damn, we really hoped to fly military astronauts onboard the shuttle to deploy satellites. Every program I pushed in the past decade..."
Schriever continued
"...be it DynaSoar, Blue Gemini or the Manned Orbital Laboratory, all cancelled, aimed to put USAF pilots in orbit. Whatever happens, the space plane problem will remain unresolved in the next future. We lept backward by a decade; that DynaSoar, it might have made a useful testbed for the shuttle, but McNamara cancelled it in December 1963. This marked a serious setback for our strategic reconnaissance systems."
“Gary Power U-2 shot down over USSR in May 1960 meant than even our mach 3 Blackbirds or Oxcarts could no longer overfly the Soviet Union. After DynaSoar got canned I thus pushed for another suborbital spaceplane called ISINGLASS - mach 20, 400 000 ft, dropped from a B-52; pure rocket, no airbreathing engines. We developed a marvel called the XLR-129 with four time the performance of the J-2. Very high chamber pressure, you see; it was a leap forward. ISINGLASS did not lasted long, but we gave Pratt&Whitney enough money so that they ran the XLR-129 on the ground."
"Whatever, shuttle cancellation will force USAF to rely on Titan III for the next future. We will try to drop the Titan costs down by flying more missions. We could also reuse the large solid rocket motors if we parachute them in the ocean. It may save some money."
"As for Big Gemini - our opinion is that it is similar enough to the Manned Orbiting Laboratory that we will fly some military missions out of Vandenberg SLC-6. This pad is currently in mothball, finishing it for Big Gemini operations should be straightforward."
So that was their plan all along. Yes, the military really had little interest for the shuttle... and to think they ruined the program through their wish of delta wing for large crossrange, and huge payload bay. They didn't even fought its cancellation...
This is only a teaser for a much bigger alt-history of the space age... and beyond.
CLIPPED WINGS
March 15, 1972
"...we will fly the remaining Saturn IBs and try to restart the shuttle program, probably in the 80’s. " NASA administrator James Beggs declared.
“But what will the shuttle look like ?”
“At the time of its cancellation our baseline was the Saturn-Shuttle. The orbiter and its external tank topped a Saturn V first stage. The Shuttle Engine is probably dead in the water, but we have an alternate solution. General ?”
So that’s the reason General Bernard Schriever is there today.
What will the Air Force decide… ?
“Damn, we really hoped to fly military astronauts onboard the shuttle to deploy satellites. Every program I pushed in the past decade..."
Schriever continued
"...be it DynaSoar, Blue Gemini or the Manned Orbital Laboratory, all cancelled, aimed to put USAF pilots in orbit. Whatever happens, the space plane problem will remain unresolved in the next future. We lept backward by a decade; that DynaSoar, it might have made a useful testbed for the shuttle, but McNamara cancelled it in December 1963. This marked a serious setback for our strategic reconnaissance systems."
“Gary Power U-2 shot down over USSR in May 1960 meant than even our mach 3 Blackbirds or Oxcarts could no longer overfly the Soviet Union. After DynaSoar got canned I thus pushed for another suborbital spaceplane called ISINGLASS - mach 20, 400 000 ft, dropped from a B-52; pure rocket, no airbreathing engines. We developed a marvel called the XLR-129 with four time the performance of the J-2. Very high chamber pressure, you see; it was a leap forward. ISINGLASS did not lasted long, but we gave Pratt&Whitney enough money so that they ran the XLR-129 on the ground."
"Whatever, shuttle cancellation will force USAF to rely on Titan III for the next future. We will try to drop the Titan costs down by flying more missions. We could also reuse the large solid rocket motors if we parachute them in the ocean. It may save some money."
"As for Big Gemini - our opinion is that it is similar enough to the Manned Orbiting Laboratory that we will fly some military missions out of Vandenberg SLC-6. This pad is currently in mothball, finishing it for Big Gemini operations should be straightforward."
So that was their plan all along. Yes, the military really had little interest for the shuttle... and to think they ruined the program through their wish of delta wing for large crossrange, and huge payload bay. They didn't even fought its cancellation...
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