What if...the Challenger disaster had never occurred?

Archibald

Banned
NASA was the back against a brickwall.
For the record
- They had obtained funding for the shuttle promising one flight per week, 52 flights a year.
- Yet they had already dropped to 24 a year if possible right from 1987 or 88.
- Yet even going full steam they only launched 10 times in the whole year 1985
- the maximum the shuttle ever flew was 8 times, in 1996

Bluntly, they tried to fly the shuttle fleet seven times the flight rate it could really endure.

The 1986 launch planning was constrained by
- the Halley comet (to be observed from the shuttle early march 1986, per lack of a planetary probe)
- the Ulysse and Galileo planetary probes had fixed planetary launch windows (both to Jupiter), back-to-back in mid-May 1986, each with a Centaur in the payload bay ! With the Centaur so heavy the SSME had to be run at 109% (104% was already pushing the limits)

STS-51L was a mission leftover from the 1985 schedule that had nearly dropped to February 1986. NASA was in a hurry flying it and starting the 1986 gruelling year launch shedule.

A disaster was bound to happen. There was plenty of failure modes hidden in the shuttle.
Boom goes the hypergolic APU.
Boom goes the SRBs or a SSME.
Kaboom goes the Centaur in the payload bay.
Failing brakes at landing.
External tank doors not locking properly after the tank drop, leaving a STS-107 like- gap in the heatshield.
Debris hitting the TPS.
 

Tovarich

Banned
ASB. A catastrophic accident was (probably) inevitable given the way the Space Shuttle was designed, and when it does happen, it won't just kill seven astronauts, it'll potentially kill a politician or a movie star as well. At the time that Challenger happened NASA was in negotiations to fly John Denver, the idea being that he would write a song in space, and NASA almost flew Big Bird on Challenger's last mission.
I almost hesitate to ask which of them was planning on running for office.
 
I almost hesitate to ask which of them was planning on running for office.

Pre-Challenger, you had Jake Garn, the Senator of Utah, and Bill Nelson, the Representative of Florida who had both flown on the Space Shuttle. So it could have been likely that a politician might have been assigned to one of the flights that would replace TTL's Challenger.
 
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