So this will be my first TL in the After 1900 forum,and I'm excited (I've been a space geek for the LONGEST time). What should I call it?
Just clean off half a decade's worth of weather damage,shore up the fuel tanks,replace the F-1s with upgraded SSMEs (a daunting task,but it could be done),.
Or just spend the engineering effort on a Shuttle-C or other Shuttle derived heavy you can keep building once it's flown instead of spending a billion dollars or more to make a lawn ornament fly.5 F-1 engines have the same thrust as 18.2 (regular) SSMEs... (at sea level) Also, the 1st stage would need to be completely redesigned, as is was made for kerosene-oxygen instead of hydrogen-oxygen, which needs a lot more space due to hydrogen's low density... Seems like it'll be easily to just get new F-1s, or to get the ones they have to be flight-ready...
Even keeping the F-1s, the studies on 1960s preservation were not enacted. There's careful preservation for flight, and then there's this (actual image from 1980): Launching that rocket is possible, but requires either a PoD in 1972 or so, or a depth of engineering effort that would be better spent on the year or two of work required for Shuttle-C or other SDHLVs. Baxter is not always ruled by realistic logic, and Titan has many examples of which that is only one. A similar logic applies to the Hunstville engineering mockup. As far as I know, it was not a flight-quality stage even at the start, only a high-fidelity training mockup, so the only thing using it would gain you is a pressurized rigid hull. You'd have to rip the guts out of it and rebuild it from scratch. At that point, you might as well design to fit something Shuttle or Shuttle-C can launch, so you can use the design as the test and base for your permanent station.All right,i'll keep the F-1s.