Shuttle Atlantis Near Miss What Ifs

[drwayne]

I posted this story in a thread in M&L a few days ago about a military flight of Atlantis that
had a close call with catastrophy:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/s ... 0327sts27/

Another forum that I read (and post in rarely) on alternate history development has a thread on
"What if the failure had happened"

http://www.alternatehistory.com/discuss ... p?t=120205

So, what would have happened if a Columbia like failure had occured just two flights after
Challenger?

Please try to keep to the "what if" and what would happen, rather than getting into a
bashing of NASA, government programs in general etc. The what if naature of this
question is why I put it here rather than M&L.

Try and be creative about longer term logical consequences. "It would be the end of
the Shuttle program" is nearly a given level of obviousness.

Wayne

 

[jimglenn]

I have never heard of this incident. Was it in the normal media, or AvWeek? The only what if

is what if they had learned from this and fixed the insulation problem. That flaw has been a danger
from the beginning. If they figured this out in the original design process, someone might have
suggested to scrap the whole thing.

 

[newsartist]

I haven't read it yet, but saw a headline in passing today.

There is a feature on Hoot in the current "Air and Space" magazine. It probably mentions this, perhaps with different wording.

 

[drwayne]

The timing part would have been really horrendous, falling as it did on the second
flight after Challenger.

Wayne

 

[abq_farside]

I am guessing that would have been the end of the shuttle program and would have pushed the Orion or similar type vehicles program more quickly.

What is really troubling is that it appeared that NASA did not move to fix the problem. People are good at learning from failures, but you can also learn from near misses. Having hindsight and the Columbia accident to help our vision it seems clear what should have been learned.

 

[vogon13]

Not sure an Orion type vehicle would have been pursued.

Concepts like the National Aerospace Plane and SSTO were being studied in that time frame, and might have been viewed as a logical followup to the shuttle. They still had a space station to build and an Orion just doesn't seem like the craft to do that.

(assuming the ISS would still have been seen as important to accomplish after a second shuttle failure)

 

[abq_farside]

Not sure an Orion type vehicle would have been pursued.

Concepts like the National Aerospace Plane and SSTO were being studied in that time frame, and might have been viewed as a logical followup to the shuttle. They still had a space station to build and an Orion just doesn't seem like the craft to do that.

(assuming the ISS would still have been seen as important to accomplish after a second shuttle failure)

Maybe, but I seem to remember hearing people come to the realization after Challenger that putting the crew module strapped along side a huge controlled bomb was not nearly as good of idea as putting it top of one (and somewhat away danger).
Of course I think people still like the idea of a plane-like structure to carry astronaut to and from space - seems more futuristic then a tin can.

 

[jimglenn]

Here is the answer. BRING IT BACK!