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Ok this absolutely not intend to be a realistic scenario, just something based on Reza Pahlavi great (megalomaniac?) projects of the 70's... :D

September 1969 saw a turn in Werner Von Braun life. His Mars expedition project was dead now that NASA budget had dried out to 3.5 billion for 1970, not the 8 billion needed to reach the red planet.

But something worse happened to Von Braun itself. A car accident resulted in serious injuries, particularly broken ribs.

But X-ray showed something even worse,as a tumor was found on one of its kidney.Fortunately it was very small and had not spreaded yet, it was removed by surgery.

Thanks to this accident which had revealed a nascent cancer, Von Braun would live to its 90, dying only in 2002!

But this accident marked the end of its NASA carier, already near its completion at the time. In fact he had been removed from Marshall Space Center and proposed a honorific job at NASA.

Then he decided to refused it and to work for the space private sector which at the time was in infancy.

There he met Klauss Heiss, an austrian scientist working for the Mathematica institute. He had been tasked by NASA to analyse Shuttle economics for the next 15 years.
Once its task accomplished the young and brilliant austrian mathematician has become interested in private access to space, too.

Von Braun and Heiss first met in 1970 and imediately sought to preserve remaining Apollo hardware.
They already knew that Shuttle hardware was coming and would push Apollo to museums after 1975 and Skylab missions.

So the two men created the Apollo Hardware Fundation. Heiss had close links with New York banks, Von Braun was of course very influent in the space industry.

In 1972 they were joined by a third men (another German brilliant rocket scientist!) Lutz Kayser. This one had analysed, too, the space shuttle concept on demand of the German governement involved in the forthcoming spacelab program.
He had found that the Shuttle concept as chosen by NASA in spring 1972 was rather flawed.

The Apollo - Hardware Fundation or AFH become more and more influent in the 70's.
Von Braun dream was to maintain flight status for heavy Apollo hardware left such as Saturn IB, Saturn V, Apollo capsules or even Skylab 2 if it was never launched.

As predicted by Von Braun and Heiss the occasion presented in 1976. Nasa sold remaining Apollo hardware as surplus.

But they were not to end at the Smithonian or rusting under Florida harsh climate.

The AHF had been backed by New York banks thanks to Heiss, but also by Rockwell and Rocketdyne thanks to Von Braun.

These firms wanted to preserve their workers "savoir faire" in Saturn Apollo harware.
Nasa drying budget and operations in low earth-orbit only had meant a marked decrease in Aerospace industry manpower.

Of course the AHF had enough money to buy Apollo hardware to NASA, but not enough to fly a costly Saturn booster.

For three years Saturn and Apollo stayed in mothballed at Michoud plant, in the hope someone would be interested by it.

Then came Reza Pahlavi in 1979. An assasination atempt in 1976, the interim of its wife and young son and pressure by the Carter admnistration had marked a turn into Iran internal policies.

A badly hurt Shah had understood (to the price of its own blood) that a slightly democratic change was needed. Bakhtiar was tasked with that difficult mission in 1977.

But this had not diminished the Shah great expectencies for its country. As the Iranian Air Force grew bigger and bigger, the Shah turned its eyes to space.
Some people said that this idea came after seeing Moonraker in 1979, as the Shah had been impressed by Hugo Drax fleet of shuttles as seen in the movie.

As a result Reza now wanted a Space Shuttle for its air force!

Of course this was politely dismissed by Carter as "totally unrealistic".

This was an occasion the AHF couldn't miss. They offered their Apollo hardware to Pahlavi in late 1979, at least a combo of Saturn I and Apollo CM.

The Shah was enthusiast, and as usual cash flowed quickly.

A huge facility was build in the Iranian desert to launch Saturn IB and Apollo capsules.

Alas they were in very limited numbers, there was only three to four rockets and capsules.

This did not stopped the Shah, which reacted quickly by asking Rockwell to start again production production of Apollo capsules! (without Sommand Modules, much too heavy for a Saturn IB and unusefull in low earth orbit)

The firm agreed not only because of cash, but also because they already have a rather similar project. NASA had asked them to study an upgraded Apollo capsule as Shuttle escape system!
The 4500 kg Apollo capsule easily found its way to Iran, but there was still the problem of Saturn IB.

The Shah solved it by asking Robert Truax to design a cheap and reliable launcher. At the same time the AHF main members - Von Braun, Heiss and Kayser- followed Bob Truax to Iran.

Kayser and Truax were tasked to build the launcher, which of course was to be pressure-fed and able to lift the 4500 kg Apollo CM block.3 into LEO.

This happened in the year 1981.

But the Shah never had enough, and he had also bought Saturn SA-514 and SA-515.
He hoped to use one of the two to launch Skylab 2, but he had not been allowed to buy the Space Station.

So the two huge boosters stayed in mothball for years after their transfer to Iran in 1983 (a huge fleet of 747-200 cargo was needed).

First launch of Saturn IB from the Iranian Space Center happened in the late 80's, they were replaced 5 years later by the Truax/Kayser booster.

Result was that in the early 90's Iran become the third country in the world for manned spaceflight.
this was Shah main triumph just before his death in 1993.

But the ISA (Iranian Space Agency) had crazier projects.

When USSR collapsed in 1991 two Buran shuttles were considered "flyable".
Buran had flew in 1988, but its sibling known as "Pitchka" or "Zarya" at the time was near completion.
Then Kazakstan become owner of Pitchka and Buran after USSR collapse and Yeltsin announced that the russian shuttle program was over.

In 1994 Iran bought Pitchka and decided to launch it using Saturn SA-514.
The origins of this project went back to the Shah atempt of bying a shuttle in the late 70's.

Even before the Carter administration had said "no", Kayser had warned the Shah of space shuttle flaws. As a consequence the ISA had asked Rockwell to study a Shuttle without external tanks nor SSME and launched, just as Skylab had been, on top of a two-stage Saturn V (dubbed Saturn INT-20).

Shuttle mass was rather similar to Skylab, when Saturn V could lift as much as 118 tons in low earth orbit...

Rockwell had concluded that this was probably doable, but the Carter administration negative answer had killed the project.

It was resurrected in the 90's and as a result Ptichka was launched from Iranian space Complex atop a Saturn INT-20 in 2001...
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