CFE - 25/8/2007 7:55 PMAt what point was it decided that NASA would get four orbiters? I assume that the agency had hoped for even more orbiters during the 70's, and budget realities capped those dreams at four production examples (including the one that was supposed to be the converted Enterprise, but later replaced by STA-099/Challenger.)
Steve G - 3/4/2008 6:23 PM I recall seeing a drawing shortly after the Challenger accident of a second generation orbiter with a separate lifting body spacecraft incorporated into the crew module that could detach from the rest of the orbiter in case of emergency.
I remember this as well. May have been in Popular Mechanics but I distictly remember reading about it in the mid-late 80s in my high school library. IIRC it would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions to refit the orbiters and even then you would have had a nose heavy orbiter that would have suffered a payload penalty. The as built/flown RSRBs would probably have had to be switched to FWC along with going to the SLWT. (I know the SLWT and FWC were never intended to be paired just hypothesizing on what coulda been)
Archibald - 30/3/2008 1:16 PMDon't forget private firms Spacetran and Astrotech which wanted to finance building of a fifth orbiter in the early 80's. Spacetran CEO was Klauss Heiss, the man of Mathematica' shuttle study around 1971...