Space station Freedom / Alpha / ISS cancelled, 1993

Archibald

Banned
http://www.proaxis.com/cop/hv93desc.htm

Wednesday, June 23 1993.

Tim Roemer (Indiana) proposes to kill the space station. He fails by ONE vote - a 215-216 close tie !

Whatif the space station was cancelled that night ?

Back to the Moon and beyond, on the cheap, after 2000.

Early Lunar Access

http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/ELA.html

A Earth-return capsule mounted atop a lunar lander. The whole thing boosted toward the Moon by a Centaur upper stage.
Only two launches are needed. One shuttle, one Titan IV.

Athena

Mars flyby. Four storable-propellant stages, one inflatable hab.

http://pdf.aiaa.org/getfile.cfm?url... &urlb=!* &urlc=!*0 &urle='+"D"#PJCU0

Asteroid flyby and Webb telescope servicing mission at Sun-Earth L1. NASA toyed with these ideas for its new Orion capsule.

- The shuttle is retired before Columbia accident, around 2002.
- Big reorganization at the Johnson Space Flight Center
- Griffin, Goldin, Abbey (and others) are butterflied away
- NASA administrator Wayne Hale (an excellent man)
- Shuttle-derived heavy lift vehicle, DIRECT style (inline)
- NASA / ESA "divorce"
- Mir space station extended with ESA funds
- Mir 2 build from Mir
 

Workable Goblin

Really doubt any of that comes to pass. More likely, NASA just putters around in LEO with Shuttles for another decade or so, has a crash, and maybe gets a push to do something else from that. Like OTL, but without a space station.

EDIT: Oh yeah, Dan Goldin had already been NASA administrator for almost a year. He's probably going to stay on for a while.

And: OTOH, without a station project to give them something to do, perhaps NASA pushes a lunar landing project (I think Mars stuff at that time is probably ASB, too hard) and they get their "cheaper, faster, better" attempt. Dunno what happens after that, but it probably doesn't involve Moon bases.
 

MarkWhittington

The cancellation of the space station would have likely increased the results of the Gingrich Revolution as registered voters who work in aerospace in Texasm Florida, California, and a few other states see a bleak future.

One factoid, Gingrich has always been a kind of space nut, though he's shifted from a NASA supporter to someone who likes commercial space and prizes. Probably in 1995 Newt would have been more open to reviving the space station, likely something resembling Option C, which was considered in 1993 and would have, as a bonus, gotten us a Shuttle C style heavy lifter. It's an easy leap from there to an early return to the Moon.

Clinton might have gone along with this scheme, looking ahead to 1996 and the electoral votes in various space states.
 

DuQuense

If the Space station loses-- ?Does this mean the 300 mile dia collider in Texas remains funded.? OTL it was presented as a Either Or, funding choice.
 

Archibald

Banned
MarkWhittington said:
The cancellation of the space station would have likely increased the results of the Gingrich Revolution as registered voters who work in aerospace in Texasm Florida, California, and a few other states see a bleak future.

One factoid, Gingrich has always been a kind of space nut, though he's shifted from a NASA supporter to someone who likes commercial space and prizes. Probably in 1995 Newt would have been more open to reviving the space station, likely something resembling Option C, which was considered in 1993 and would have, as a bonus, gotten us a Shuttle C style heavy lifter. It's an easy leap from there to an early return to the Moon.

Clinton might have gone along with this scheme, looking ahead to 1996 and the electoral votes in various space states.
Click to expand...

Ah, Option C. The Skylab-looking big module. I like this one, a neat departure from Freedom / Alpha / ISS designs.

Shuttle-derived HLV give big payload for reasonable costs. Early Lunar Access through shuttle C (not Shuttle / Ariane V / Titan IV) would be a real winner.
Athena could be done with two Shuttle C plus a shuttle flight.

This alt-history pacing item would be the crew taxi. NASA took a long time shifting to a capsule again. The turning point was really 2003, OSP, and this study

The best thing would be such uprated capsule riding to LEO atop a single-stick EELV and LC-37.
Shuttle-C would launch from LC-39.
 

simonbp

The whole reason ISS was adopted was to keep Russian rocket engineers in Russia and making spaceships, not in Iraq/Iran/North Korea and making weapons. Killing ISS might have not good consequences...

Also, remember that ISS flights didn't begin in earnest until 2001, so the 1990's probably aren't very different. By 2001, NASA was already low-level planning for lunar return. It never got high-level because ISS was the priority. Also, the entire reason Shuttle wasn't killed after Columbia disintegrated was the need to finish the ISS.

So, take this as a sketch of a TL:

1. (PoD1) ISS canned in 1993.
2. (PoD2) On a SpaceLab flight in 1996, the turbopump on one of the SSMEs on Atlantis explodes during ascent.* The orbiter manages to reach the TAL site in Spain mostly intact.
3. Immediate calls in Congress for "something safer". Goldin fights for Shuttle II, looses, and is forced out after Clinton is reelected. His replacement is more tractable, and starts work on developing a Shuttle-derived heavy lifter and capsule.
4. After getting reassurances of support from both the House and Senate the White House starts talking to ESA, Japan, and Russia about a lunar mission. The international partners were burned by the ISS experience, but intrigued by the prospect. Russia agrees, on the condition of funding for Energia. ESA and Japan agree in principle, but don't commit any funding just yet.
5. With much pomp and circumstance, Bill Clinton announces the International Lunar Exploration Program...

*This is the most serious shuttle failure mode to never happen.
 
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