Posts: 1751
From: Killingly, CT
Registered: Mar 2002

Posts: 6210
From: Geneva, Switzerland
Registered: May 2006

posted 05-19-2010 08:34 AM               

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Hard to tell after Challenger.

Before Columbia the shuttle was to fly to 2020, so the accident accelerated the retirement process.

And after the completion of the ISS, what missions would the shuttle have performed anyway?

Posts: 2896
From: Titusville, FL USA
Registered: Feb 2005

Posts: 42988
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 05-19-2010 10:17 AM               

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Also: Hubble servicing missions (two more were originally expected) and commercial missions (plans to partially privatize/commercialize the orbiters were underway when Columbia was lost).

Miles O'Brien would have become the first journalist in space on a mission soon after Columbia, which was expected to open a new 'citizen-in-space' type program, as well.

Posts: 1031
From: New Jersey, USA
Registered: Mar 2010

Posts: 2272
From: Bellevue, NE, USA
Registered: Aug 2007

posted 05-21-2010 01:48 AM               

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Challenger and Atlantis were slated to launch a pair of solar system probes using the Centaur upper stages in the payload bay sometime in mid 1986 (Galileo and Ulysses). The astronauts supposedly nick named those missions the "Death Star" missions for how ambitious they were as cryogenic tanking of a rocket stage had never been done in orbit before and they were doing it twice.

As ambitious as the flight schedules were planned for in 1986, I think it was only a matter of time before a fatal accident happened. Challenger STS-51L just happened to be the flight to roll snake eyes. Then Discovery was going to be a trend setter launching from Vandenberg for the first time on STS-62A.

If Challenger hadn't happened, commercial satellite and DoD payloads would have been more the established norm and Discovery would likely have been permanently assigned to Vandenberg for SLC-6 launches. Plus, Space Station Freedom might have gotten up 10 years earlier then it did (as the ISS) as an entirely US run project. After that, who knows.

As for shuttle's retirement in that environment? Well it does assume a lot of things. But the Soviet Union still would have likely broken up by the late 1980s, just as it did as it had essentially gone bankrupt. I imagine though that if by some stroke of luck the shuttle fleet had gone say 10 years without a fatal accident, then I figure Buran would likely be flying by then as a manned system to counter the American one. With such a system likely operational, then the US might have worked on a replacement for shuttle sooner, meaning if one went operational, the orbiter fleet would likely be retired sooner.