In the mid 1970s as Apollo was winding down and Shuttle developement was picking up steam, NASA went to Congress to ask for money to continue their Skylab flights and the continue working on the prototype Space Shuttle. Congress only gave them half of the money they needed and the result was that NASA had to choose and focus on either Skylab OR the Shuttle not both. NASA choose the Space Shuttle, but if it had chosen Skylab instead?
WI Skylab instead of the Shuttle
- Thread starter Mike Stearns
- Start date
Fearless Leader
Donor
Okay, I'll bite.
I'd imagine that perhaps several more Saturn Rockets are made in order to ship supplies etc. up to Skylab. With all the funding pouring into Skylab, major repairs begin in '75 some time. The Teleoperator is probably launched aswell putting Skylab into a more stable orbit.
As more research continues with Skylab it becomes apparent that the current set up is too restrictive. The Two unlaunched Skylabs are cannabalized and used for parts for another space station. Freedom station is launched in the late 70's to replace Skylab. This of course takes a huge toll on NASA's booster supply. So a new production line of boosters is begun to supply Freedom Station. These new boosters can carry basically everything needed to supply and maintain Freedom Station. Also an expanded Crew Module based on the Dynasoar program (google it) is used to carry astronauts to Freedom aswell as providing the boosts needed to maintain it's orbit.
With the collapse of the USSR Mir becomes a useless piece of junk and re-enters earth's atmosphere in the early 90's. I doubt that the Russians would pursue a shuttle route if the US didn't so I don't think there'll be a Buran.
I haven't really looked into the whole Politics thing so I can't really say what exactly will happen. All this is very rough timeline. However I'd imagine that as the Republicans regain the presidency in the early 21st century the US will once again head to the moon with a revamped Saturn Rocket and plans to establish a permanent moon base.
I'd imagine that perhaps several more Saturn Rockets are made in order to ship supplies etc. up to Skylab. With all the funding pouring into Skylab, major repairs begin in '75 some time. The Teleoperator is probably launched aswell putting Skylab into a more stable orbit.
As more research continues with Skylab it becomes apparent that the current set up is too restrictive. The Two unlaunched Skylabs are cannabalized and used for parts for another space station. Freedom station is launched in the late 70's to replace Skylab. This of course takes a huge toll on NASA's booster supply. So a new production line of boosters is begun to supply Freedom Station. These new boosters can carry basically everything needed to supply and maintain Freedom Station. Also an expanded Crew Module based on the Dynasoar program (google it) is used to carry astronauts to Freedom aswell as providing the boosts needed to maintain it's orbit.
With the collapse of the USSR Mir becomes a useless piece of junk and re-enters earth's atmosphere in the early 90's. I doubt that the Russians would pursue a shuttle route if the US didn't so I don't think there'll be a Buran.
I haven't really looked into the whole Politics thing so I can't really say what exactly will happen. All this is very rough timeline. However I'd imagine that as the Republicans regain the presidency in the early 21st century the US will once again head to the moon with a revamped Saturn Rocket and plans to establish a permanent moon base.
Tom_B said:
I think that it would make it better. The biggest drawback and the biggest safety risk in the Shuttle Program has always been the SRBs. When the shuttle concept was first concieved in the early to mid 70s, NASA wanted liquid fueled boosters, for very obvious safety reasons, but ran into technical problems that delayed the program and increased the cost of their developement. If the start of the design process is delayed until the 1980s, then it would give NASA a few years to work out the technical problems and bring the cost down.
There is much information on Skylab and STS here in the 'Missions and Launches' and 'Space Business and Technology' sections
http://uplink.space.com/ubbthreads.php
and here
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/category-view.asp
http://uplink.space.com/ubbthreads.php
and here
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/category-view.asp
Slowpoke said:
Yeah, I'd forgptten about that. The Air Force thought that the Shuttle would be a good way to launch SDI weapons platforms and spy satillites.
Unholy alliance? You do realize that the space program was originally a military venture, right?Slowpoke said:
The Sandman
Banned
Well, any mention of space has me interested. So, what changes were made to the space shuttle at the military's behest? I honestly had never heard about that; I'd always thought the satellite-launch capability was built-in from the get-go.
thesandman said:
It was, but NASA had figured on something like a 10 or 12 ton payload capacity. Then the Air Force started working on SDI and thought that they could use the shuttle to launch laser weapons into space.I'm entirely exactly what was changed but the result was that the shuttle had to be redesigned so that it could carry the larger, heavier payloads for the military and its lifting capacity was effectively doubled to somewhere between 20 and 25 tons. My understanding is that the result of this was the Shuttle is now alot heavier then its original design specs stated it would be and that this has effected its aerodynaming handling characteristics.