Would Endeavour exist if Challenger had not been destroyed?

[simonbp]

While alternate realities may be fun for some to speculate on what could have/would have happened, it was the capabilities of the orbiter that allowed Hubble to be fixed.

And the delay caused by the Challenger explosion that caused the Gallieo High-Gain Antenna to fail, resulting in only about 10% of the planned science return, and the need to send Juno now to plug the gaps. And while something the size of Shuttle was needed to launch HST, a Dragon or CST-100 is plenty capable of doing a servicing mission.

Reading Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane is downright scary when he gets to the mid-1980s. He definitely seems of the camp that had 51L not exploded, another flight that year would have. Considering Mullane was supposed to be on the next launch (from VAFB), I'll take his word for it...

[Namechange User]

While alternate realities may be fun for some to speculate on what could have/would have happened, it was the capabilities of the orbiter that allowed Hubble to be fixed.

And the delay caused by the Challenger explosion that caused the Gallieo High-Gain Antenna to fail, resulting in only about 10% of the planned science return, and the need to send Juno now to plug the gaps. And while something the size of Shuttle was needed to launch HST, a Dragon or CST-100 is plenty capable of doing a servicing mission.

Reading Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane is downright scary when he gets to the mid-1980s. He definitely seems of the camp that had 51L not exploded, another flight that year would have. Considering Mullane was supposed to be on the next launch (from VAFB), I'll take his word for it...

What the frack does this have anything to do with Dragon and CST-100?  Nothing.  And no, quite likely, they are not.

Yet, you claim they are, even though they do not really exist yet, are hardly operational, all the while comparing it to another system that was barely operational at the time being "scary".  Odd. 

[Sarah]

Reading Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane is downright scary when he gets to the mid-1980s. He definitely seems of the camp that had 51L not exploded, another flight that year would have. Considering Mullane was supposed to be on the next launch (from VAFB), I'll take his word for it...

A little OT but it depends on the circumstances. Had Challenger not encountered the vertical wind shear it did and held together, I would have liked to have seen NASA's response after recovering the right SRB and analyzing it. I bet it would have scared the *blank* out of them. Maybe the flights would have been halted and Thiokol would have been redesigning the SRB's.

[bholt]

I suspect NASA really wanted another orbiter in the mid-80s since they were effectively losing one in 1986 when Discovery was scheduled to to be transferred to VAFB and become a military shuttle so to speak.

Unfortunately, it sometimes taken an accident to wake people up to the fact that spaceflight is far from routine. Even if Challenger had managed to make it back from 51-L with at least one field joint that basically failed (but held together by sheer luck from the aluminium oxide residue from the SRB exhaust) it may have grounded them for awhile, but would not have had the same impact as actually losing an orbiter and crew.

The memories of old promises lingered even after RTF. I can remember CNN being vicious in 1990 due to shuttle delays and the Hubble debacle.

I do seem to remember serious discussion for awhile around 1991 about building an OV-106, but plans were scrapped when it was decided that the shuttle would be "replaced" soon. We all now how that went.

Brent

[gordo]

Where the programme failed was not taking the core OV-100 design and evolving into a new fleet of OV-200 spacecraft, with technology and aerospace upgrades that were 25 years on from the original ideas.

We had 3 main evolutions of the ET in this time, why did the next generation orbiter development for the "NSTS" programme stand still?

That's the fail.

[Mark Dave]

Who knows what would happen. I could see Challenger with the same look as the shuttles have today with the present logos on it.  The drag chute......? It probably would have come later than we saw with Endeavour. *shrugs*

Yeah, many speculated after Columbia is NASA will build a new orbiter to replace OV-102.  Hmm, that did give me an idea for my current shuttle model kit.  Any ideas for a good name for  OV-106 in 1/72 scale?  

[Jorge]

Where the programme failed was not taking the core OV-100 design and evolving into a new fleet of OV-200 spacecraft, with technology and aerospace upgrades that were 25 years on from the original ideas.

We had 3 main evolutions of the ET in this time, why did the next generation orbiter development for the "NSTS" programme stand still?

Money.

That's the fail.

That's called "playing the hand you're dealt."

[Downix]

Who knows what would happen. I could see Challenger with the same look as the shuttles have today with the present logos on it.  The drag chute......? It probably would have come later than we saw with Endeavour. *shrugs*

Yeah, many speculated after Columbia is NASA will build a new orbiter to replace OV-102.  Hmm, that did give me an idea for my current shuttle model kit.  Any ideas for a good name for  OV-106 in 1/72 scale?  

I heard that the original plan for OV-106 was to be named Enterprise, but OV-101 Constitution got renamed to that.  Why not return the favor?

Incidentally, does anyone have the original proposed list of ship names?  I used to have a copy but it long ago vanished.

[Blackstar]

Just acquired this. It is a December 1982 document about internal US government discussions about purchasing a fifth orbiter. I don't know if there is anything new here.

Note in particular page 5 on the Office of Science and Technology Policy position: "Purchase of a fifth orbiter now would produce a large overcapacity of U.S. Government launch services, resulting in a reduction of U.S. space capability and technology, and higher costs of doing both government and commercial business in space. This will reduce the utility of space to the U.S. Government and discourage private sector investment.

The U.S. Government therefore should not commit to a fifth orbiter, but should maintain adequate support for a four-orbiter fleet."


Keep in mind that this is just a snapshot of a discussion that was going on. There were undoubtedly other inputs and opinions.

[psloss]

Keep in mind that this is just a snapshot of a discussion that was going on. There were undoubtedly other inputs and opinions.

Still interesting information, including the amplification on the next page.  Thanks for sharing.

[Jeff Bingham]

Just acquired this. It is a December 1982 document about internal US government discussions about purchasing a fifth orbiter. I don't know if there is anything new here.

Note in particular page 5 on the Office of Science and Technology Policy position: "Purchase of a fifth orbiter now would produce a large overcapacity of U.S. Government launch services, resulting in a reduction of U.S. space capability and technology, and higher costs of doing both government and commercial business in space. This will reduce the utility of space to the U.S. Government and discourage private sector investment.

The U.S. Government therefore should not commit to a fifth orbiter, but should maintain adequate support for a four-orbiter fleet."


Keep in mind that this is just a snapshot of a discussion that was going on. There were undoubtedly other inputs and opinions.

Very interesting..thanks for sharing it. In a quick glance at some OLD notes, I came across the following:

“Discussion of  fifth orbiter, possible block buy of 104/105, etc….” (pp. 28-30)
Reference for above:
U.S. Senate, Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space, 97th Congress, 2nd Session, NASA Authorization for Fiscal Year 1983, Hearings, February 23, 25, March 16, 18, 30, and April 1, 1982, Serial No. 97-112.

[Blackstar]

The document is from a newly declassified collection that includes some material from the Reagan-era space policy-making body called the Senior Interagency Group (SIG) Space, or SIG-Space for short.

SIG-Space was part of Reagan's National Security Council. It annoyed the heck out of a number of Democrats and some Republicans during this time, because everything that SIG-Space did was classified and hidden from scrutiny, even when they were discussing civil space policy. It was because of anger over SIG-Space that Congress started to pass legislation that created the Space Council, and Reagan kept threatening to veto it, or (I think on one occasion) actually did veto it. Eventually when Reagan left and George H.W. Bush became president he agreed to the creation of the National Space Council, which lasted for only four years until eliminated by Clinton.

SIG-Space's activities have never been closely examined. Some of the documents are declassified at the Reagan Library, but I don't know how much remains classified.

As for the fifth orbiter issue, I imagine that this is extensively discussed by Jenkins and Heppenheimer in their respective books.

[wolfpack]

Reading Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane is downright scary when he gets to the mid-1980s. He definitely seems of the camp that had 51L not exploded, another flight that year would have. Considering Mullane was supposed to be on the next launch (from VAFB), I'll take his word for it...

A little OT but it depends on the circumstances. Had Challenger not encountered the vertical wind shear it did and held together, I would have liked to have seen NASA's response after recovering the right SRB and analyzing it. I bet it would have scared the *blank* out of them. Maybe the flights would have been halted and Thiokol would have been redesigning the SRB's.

From what I've read, the safety culture at that time was pretty seriously flawed. They probably would have just added a low temperature constraint to the launch commit criteria and kept on flying with the old boosters. That's all that Thiokol had asked for at the time of 51-L anyway. Don't fly outside of the temperature database.

[Airlock]

While alternate realities may be fun for some to speculate on what could have/would have happened, it was the capabilities of the orbiter that allowed Hubble to be fixed.

And the delay caused by the Challenger explosion that caused the Gallieo High-Gain Antenna to fail, resulting in only about 10% of the planned science return, and the need to send Juno now to plug the gaps. And while something the size of Shuttle was needed to launch HST, a Dragon or CST-100 is plenty capable of doing a servicing mission.

Reading Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane is downright scary when he gets to the mid-1980s. He definitely seems of the camp that had 51L not exploded, another flight that year would have. Considering Mullane was supposed to be on the next launch (from VAFB), I'll take his word for it...

As far as the Gallieo mission is concerned, the only way the high-gain antenna problem could have been avoided was if the plans to load a fully fueled Centaur booster in the payload bay had continued on.  Even if Challenger hadn't have happened, I'm not convinced a centaur in the Shuttle payload bay would have ever flown.  If it ever did fly, it very well could have caused an accident similar in nature to Challenger.

[Jim]

1.  As far as the Gallieo mission is concerned, the only way the high-gain antenna problem could have been avoided was if the plans to load a fully fueled Centaur booster in the payload bay had continued on.

2.   Even if Challenger hadn't have happened, I'm not convinced a centaur in the Shuttle payload bay would have ever flown.

3.  If it ever did fly, it very well could have caused an accident similar in nature to Challenger.

1.  Not true.  As it was suspected that the cross country trips of the spacecraft is what caused the antenna failure but it was not known which one.

2.  The Centaur missions were  after the Astro missions which was next in line.

3.  It would not have been similar to Challenger.  A explosion in the payload bay would be much different than what happened to Challenger.  Also, those missions carried RTG's which would have changed the SAR efforts.

[Archibald]

They probably would have just added a low temperature constraint to the launch commit criteria and kept on flying with the old boosters.

Well said. The writting was on the wall; sooner or later there was to be an accident, one way or another.  NASA was ramping up the shuttle flight rate to 24 a year, the holy grail, where the shuttle started to make economic sense, as promised to Congress 15 years earlier. It was like a steamroller; no way they stopped for weeks or months. Not when they were proving the (economic) soundness of the vehicle...

[wolfpack]

They probably would have just added a low temperature constraint to the launch commit criteria and kept on flying with the old boosters.

Well said. The writting was on the wall; sooner or later there was to be an accident, one way or another.  NASA was ramping up the shuttle flight rate to 24 a year, the holy grail, where the shuttle started to make economic sense, as promised to Congress 15 years earlier. It was like a steamroller; no way they stopped for weeks or months. Not when they were proving the (economic) soundness of the vehicle...

I could have said "stop waiving the low temperature constraint", because there probably already was one in place.

[brad2007a]

[/quote]

1.  Not true.  As it was suspected that the cross country trips of the spacecraft is what caused the antenna failure but it was not known which one.

[/quote]

I thought the failure had something to do with the lubricants used on bearings to deploy the antenna - it was stored for all that time without being re-lubricated, resulting in enough drying out so that the antenna stuck (bearings literally grinding to a halt) during the deployment...

[Jim]

I thought the failure had something to do with the lubricants used on bearings to deploy the antenna - it was stored for all that time without being re-lubricated, resulting in enough drying out so that the antenna stuck (bearings literally grinding to a halt) during the deployment...

The trips "used up"/"wore out" the lubricants.

[Downix]

Reading Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane is downright scary when he gets to the mid-1980s. He definitely seems of the camp that had 51L not exploded, another flight that year would have. Considering Mullane was supposed to be on the next launch (from VAFB), I'll take his word for it...

A little OT but it depends on the circumstances. Had Challenger not encountered the vertical wind shear it did and held together, I would have liked to have seen NASA's response after recovering the right SRB and analyzing it. I bet it would have scared the *blank* out of them. Maybe the flights would have been halted and Thiokol would have been redesigning the SRB's.

I would imagine the filament wound SRB's (which had the new o-ring design on them) would have been rushed out while the legacy SRB's were retrofitted, to avoid the black-eye.