What if the Columbia Disaster never happened?

[fredinno]

How would have affected the eventual ISS construction and configuration? Would, for example, the Habitation Module be made? Would Constellation, Commercial Crew, SLS/Orion, and/or Commercial Cargo still happen?

Would SpaceX even exist today, or would its Falcon 1 (and possibly later 1e and 5) be able to keep it alive?
How about Orbital Sciences?
Would Kistler Aerospace still exist, and have its K-1 Vehicle, or was it doomed?

<This is a speculation thread>

[Kryten]

Plan was still to retire shuttle by 2020, and there was doubt they could actually last that long. There's a good chance they'd have been gone by now anyway, and nothing all that much different.

[FishInferno]

I would say that the shuttle would have been in use for as long as NASA could get it to work (read: until a failure like [I]Columbia[/I]), but SpaceX would still exist. They were founded in 2002, before the Columbia tragedy. Granted, they would probably not be as far along as they are now without commercial crew.

So no, Commercial crew and Orion would not exist, SpaceX would be a small satellite launcher, and I can;t really say about the other two

[Kryten]

Certainly there's no reason to assume Kistler or their designs would be any more viable than they turned out to be in our timeline.

[fredinno]

[quote name='Kryten']Plan was still to retire shuttle by 2020, and there was doubt they could actually last that long. There's a good chance they'd have been gone by now anyway, and nothing all that much different.[/QUOTE]
There were plans to end Shuttle by 2030- bascially, Shuttle would end with the ISS. But yeah, I don't think those vehicles would be able to keep together. Discovery would probably be retired at some point due to its greater age.

[prophet_01]

Without another shuttle accident until the end of the program my question would be if there might have been a new shuttle design. Not that I would expect it to be competetive with the comercial programs we have right now and especially not with reusable first stage concepts.

But still, I wonder if the focus of R&D would be as concentrated on capsules and expendable launchers as it is now. Maybe ideas like the aerospike, dreamchaser or unmaned reusable uppers stages would have been used in new ways or would generally receive more interest and funding. It often seems to me that they are now labled as ancestors of a program that failed on almost any level. Though I'm not sure wether that would be good or bad. Edited November 24, 2015 by prophet_01

[Alias72]

No. The entire concept of a plane-style RV was proven uneconomical within the first decade or two of the shuttle. The idea was that shuttle would partially cover its cost by partnering with companies for satellite maintenance and orbit adjustment but the cost was ridiculously prohibitive, no one needed the service, and the soviet union collapsed adding a vast number of cheap launch systems to the market. by 2002 the United States had lost virtually all of the commercial space market to Europe and Russia.

The shuttle was not truly re-usable.
The shuttle was difficult to maintain.
The shuttle was overly complex.
The shuttle was uneconomical.
The shuttle was a failure.

Colombia doesn't change this it merely quickens the death of the shuttle somewhat. Also keep in mind how old the shuttles actually were. When they were created the idea was to learn more about the economic and technical difficulties of space-planes. Lesson learned.

[Van Disaster]

Well, it might have been a more viable reusable orbiter if it hadn't been crippled by having too much capability forced on it ( all that crossrange? ). Might be more interesting to ask what would have happened if Challenger hadn't blown up - didn't that send the USAF back to using disposable launchers?

It was ideal for building a space station ( or being a temporary space station ), and pointlessly complicated for practically everything else. You really don't need crew to launch sats...

[wizzlebippi]

Also, the Columbia accident was inevitable. NASA has a bad habit of considering the lack of failure a success. Despite knowing that foam from the external fuel tank had been damaging the orbiter's heat shield for decades, little was done until Columbia broke up on reentry. We could just as easily be talking about any of the other shuttles. Apollo 1, Apollo 13 and Challenger are all good examples of this mentality.

[Guest]

There would have likely been another, worse, disaster as we wouldn't have learned anything from a previous disaster.

[adsii1970]

There's another important lesson here. NASA knew from nearly the beginning of the STS program that the falling insulation posed a considerable risk to the leading edge of the shuttle's wings. I had read somewhere that although the chunk of foam insulation and ice that ultimately caused the leading edge to fail was larger than previous incidents, NASA was well aware of the potential for a [I][B]catastrophic[/B][/I] mission failure resulting from either damage there or damage caused to the underside's heat resistant tiles because of space junk impacts/micrometeorite damage potential. NASA reassured the public there were procedures in place to prevent a catastrophic failure as was witnessed by Columbia...

When the shuttle plan was still in development, I remember in the mid 1970s, watching a NASA/NOVA special on television where the plan was to have a second orbiter on the second launch tower either at Cape Canaveral or at the NASA NTC in Mississippi's launch/test pad. Both locations can actually launch shuttles and there was even a designation, [B]STS 300[/B] actually was a planned emergency second shuttle launch to rescue the crew from a damaged and failing orbiter. By the mid-1980s, although the plan was still "official," NASA no longer even made rudimentary plans to even have STS 300 mission ready within 72 hours. Had this procedure been in full effect for Columbia's last mission, here's what probably would have happened:

[LIST=1]
[*]Columbia's crew would have survived.
[*]Repair of the Columbia might have been possible. One of the contingency plans was to have STS carry enough adhesives and a variety of heat resistant tiles - especially leading edge of wing tiles, to repair the damaged orbiter.
[*]Installation of a plug-and-play computer component to remotely fly the shuttle from Houston. this was a plan designed in the early years of the program in the event a crew became incapacitated, the shuttle could return to Earth. The master component - the plug and play hardware - was never installed in the active shuttles because of its weight (close to 400 pounds). without the weight of the crew, the component could be added... (I'm speculating here).

No, the program was not perfect but it did perform an important mission - it fueled our imaginations!
[/LIST] Edited November 24, 2015 by adsii1970

[Van Disaster]

[quote name='adsii1970']No, the program was not perfect but it did perform an important mission - it fueled our imaginations![/QUOTE]

Any manned spaceflight does that though; replace the Shuttle with a range of Saturn-derived vehicles - proven tech at the time - and if you must have a spaceplane, have a winged crew capsule something like Hermes was meant to be, and think what might have been. There'd have been need for continuous development in unmanned commercial sat launchers the entire time too.

[fredinno]

[quote name='prophet_01']Without another shuttle accident until the end of the program my question would be if there might have been a new shuttle design. Not that I would expect it to be competetive with the comercial programs we have right now and especially not with reusable first stage concepts.

But still, I wonder if the focus of R&D would be as concentrated on capsules and expendable launchers as it is now. Maybe ideas like the aerospike, dreamchaser or unmaned reusable uppers stages would have been used in new ways or would generally receive more interest and funding. It often seems to me that they are now labled as ancestors of a program that failed on almost any level. Though I'm not sure wether that would be good or bad.[/QUOTE]
Commercial crew and cargo would have to face the significant challenge of trying to find a market- It would not be competitive, but none of the commercial alternatives would EXIST, so...:P

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[quote name='Alias72']No. The entire concept of a plane-style RV was proven uneconomical within the first decade or two of the shuttle. The idea was that shuttle would partially cover its cost by partnering with companies for satellite maintenance and orbit adjustment but the cost was ridiculously prohibitive, no one needed the service, and the soviet union collapsed adding a vast number of cheap launch systems to the market. by 2002 the United States had lost virtually all of the commercial space market to Europe and Russia.

The shuttle was not truly re-usable.
The shuttle was difficult to maintain.
The shuttle was overly complex.
The shuttle was uneconomical.
The shuttle was a failure.

Colombia doesn't change this it merely quickens the death of the shuttle somewhat. Also keep in mind how old the shuttles actually were. When they were created the idea was to learn more about the economic and technical difficulties of space-planes. Lesson learned.[/QUOTE]

Actually, it was 80%, not virtually all- but that's still pretty bad. Also, the transition away from US launchers happened many years after Shuttle stopped launching dedicated commercial missions. It had little to do with the loss- Things like the Delta III had far more effect.

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[quote name='Van Disaster']Well, it might have been a more viable reusable orbiter if it hadn't been crippled by having too much capability forced on it ( all that crossrange? ). Might be more interesting to ask what would have happened if Challenger hadn't blown up - didn't that send the USAF back to using disposable launchers?

It was ideal for building a space station ( or being a temporary space station ), and pointlessly complicated for practically everything else. You really don't need crew to launch sats...[/QUOTE]

W/O Crossrange, Shuttle development would have taken even longer.

[adsii1970]

[quote name='Van Disaster']Any manned spaceflight does that though; replace the Shuttle with a range of Saturn-derived vehicles - proven tech at the time - and if you must have a spaceplane, have a winged crew capsule something like Hermes was meant to be, and think what might have been. There'd have been need for continuous development in unmanned commercial sat launchers the entire time too.[/QUOTE]

Personally, I do not think the shuttle program ever reached its full potential because of politics. NASA had planned for six orbiters; Congress grudgingly paid for five (and the GAO included the [I]STS Enterprise[/I] as one of the "funded" orbiters). It was not until the loss of [I]STS Challenger[/I] that we had an additional one funded. There was two more shuttles planned once [I]STS Endeavour [/I]as completed but again, never funded. (I believe proposed names were [I]STS Kennedy[/I] and [I]STS Langley[/I], in honor of America's first aircraft carrier). After the loss of the Columbia, no further shuttles would be ordered.

(UPDATED--) It was designed to be a program that would have two launches a month, with each shuttle rotating on a roster to extend the life of the orbiters and to equally distribute the wear and tear. This was to bring the cost down, but there were other factors that made this a more expensive and less attractive commercial venture. One of which was the military's ability to "bump" commercial cargoes to later missions. It should have always been "first-come, first-served" to facilitate commercial usage. As a result, NASA lost commercial launches to private companies and other nations, more specifically Russia, India, and the European Space Agency.

If I had been NASA's director, I would have retired the shuttle program with a bang. I would have launched two shuttles within 12 hours of each other, did a mid-orbit rendezvous, before returning both orbiters to the Kennedy Space center, again, 12 hours apart. It would have been an awesome sight...

Nevertheless, yes, while getting man into space should be a priority, we also need to focus on a SSTO program that could reduce the cost of transportation into LEO... Edited November 24, 2015 by adsii1970

[fredinno]

[quote name='adsii1970']There's another important lesson here. NASA knew from nearly the beginning of the STS program that the falling insulation posed a considerable risk to the leading edge of the shuttle's wings. I had read somewhere that although the chunk of foam insulation and ice that ultimately caused the leading edge to fail was larger than previous incidents, NASA was well aware of the potential for a [I][B]catastrophic[/B][/I] mission failure resulting from either damage there or damage caused to the underside's heat resistant tiles because of space junk impacts/micrometeorite damage potential. NASA reassured the public there were procedures in place to prevent a catastrophic failure as was witnessed by Columbia...

When the shuttle plan was still in development, I remember in the mid 1970s, watching a NASA/NOVA special on television where the plan was to have a second orbiter on the second launch tower either at Cape Canaveral or at the NASA NTC in Mississippi's launch/test pad. Both locations can actually launch shuttles and there was even a designation, [B]STS 300[/B] actually was a planned emergency second shuttle launch to rescue the crew from a damaged and failing orbiter. By the mid-1980s, although the plan was still "official," NASA no longer even made rudimentary plans to even have STS 300 mission ready within 72 hours. Had this procedure been in full effect for Columbia's last mission, here's what probably would have happened:

[LIST=1]
[*]Columbia's crew would have survived.
[*]Repair of the Columbia might have been possible. One of the contingency plans was to have STS carry enough adhesives and a variety of heat resistant tiles - especially leading edge of wing tiles, to repair the damaged orbiter.
[*]Installation of a plug-and-play computer component to remotely fly the shuttle from Houston. this was a plan designed in the early years of the program in the event a crew became incapacitated, the shuttle could return to Earth. The master component - the plug and play hardware - was never installed in the active shuttles because of its weight (close to 400 pounds). without the weight of the crew, the component could be added... (I'm speculating here).

No, the program was not perfect but it did perform an important mission - it fueled our imaginations!
[/LIST]
[/QUOTE]

Atlantis was actually capable of being rushed to launch and save Columbia due to Atlantis' upcoming mission to the ISS- provided you recongised the problem early. A Camera of the ET might have cut it.

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[quote name='adsii1970']Personally, I do not think the shuttle program ever reached its full potential because of politics. NASA had planned for six orbiters; Congress grudgingly paid for five (and the GAO included the [I]STS Enterprise[/I] as one of the "funded" orbiters). It was not until the loss of [I]STS Challenger[/I] that we had an additional one funded. There was two more shuttles planned once [I]STS Endeavour [/I]as completed but again, never funded. (I believe proposed names were [I]STS Kennedy[/I] and [I]STS Langley[/I], in honor of America's first aircraft carrier). After the loss of the Columbia, no further shuttles would be ordered.

If I had been NASA's director, I would have retired the shuttle program with a bang. I would have launched two shuttles within 12 hours of each other, did a mid-orbit rendezvous, before returning both orbiters to the Kennedy Space center, again, 12 hours apart. It would have been an awesome sight...

Nevertheless, yes, while getting man into space should be a priority, we also need to focus on a SSTO program that could reduce the cost of transportation into LEO...[/QUOTE]

Your mission proposal would be incredibly expensive- we're talking about at least a billion over 2 Shuttle flights. Not worth it. And I;m pretty sure you meant Challenger, not Columbia....

[Kryten]

[quote name='Van Disaster']Any manned spaceflight does that though; replace the Shuttle with a range of Saturn-derived vehicles - proven tech at the time - and if you must have a spaceplane, have a winged crew capsule something like Hermes was meant to be, and think what might have been. There'd have been need for continuous development in unmanned commercial sat launchers the entire time too.[/QUOTE]
The only way you'd get Saturn-derived vehicles after Shuttle is if one of Marshall's pie-in-the-sky warp propulsion studies stumbled upon a time machine.

[Kerbart]

[quote name='fredinno']Atlantis was actually capable of being rushed to launch and save Columbia due to Atlantis' upcoming mission to the ISS- provided you recongised the problem early. A Camera of the ET might have cut it.[/QUOTE]

From what I understand that would have been a [I]very[/I] theoretical exercise, and a very exciting race between Atlantis being rushed to launch and Columbia running out of life support*. The options were basically to put survival on the crew on the timely launch of Atlantis with a ton of unknowns and opportunity for failure (how to ship the crew on board of Atlantis, including suiting up and doing unprepared EVA's which apparently is a lot harder with humans than with Kerbals), or to continue the mission and hope for the best. Given the MO of the Atlantis rescue mission, if anything failed the Columbus crew was certainly doomed as there would be no way to get them back; it wasn't merely an option of "well let's see if we can make it happen".

So, knowing that there was a more than minimal chance that the vessel was damaged but that there was nothing (with a reasonable chance of success) that could be done about it. NASA decided to not investigate the wing, as it wouldn't really change their options. It all came down to statistics; and the dice rolled the wrong way. All subsequent launches did have a "rescue launch" ready; that was one lesson learned.


* CO[sub]2[/sub] scrubbers, drinking water, whatever. Take “life support” in the widest sense of the phrase as in “whatever resources are needed to prevent the crew from dying”

[wumpus]

[quote name='adsii1970']There's another important lesson here. NASA knew from nearly the beginning of the STS program that the falling insulation posed a considerable risk to the leading edge of the shuttle's wings.
[/QUOTE]
Two question about this whole debacle:
Is there any mention about the cost of having an entire shuttle "gassed up and ready to go"? You don't (I hope) have to perform all the maintanence (pretty much a full shuttle rebuild) of a launch, but all the costs involved in a launch need to be paid (i.e. all operations required from sticking the shuttle on the pad to T-3 days). If you look at the economics behind the falcon, you will note a huge cost not involving the cost of the rocket: my guess is that a shuttle on the pad would eat most of those costs (at shuttle prices).

Isn't the whole issue with heating tiles peculiar to the Columbia? My understanding was that was why it was "retired" in the first place. Columbia required reseating huge amounts of tiles every flight, while Challenger and later units had a solid heat shield. Simply protecting for this one narrow failure would likely leave way too many dangers for the shuttle fleet (a handy shuttle certainly wouldn't have helped Challenger).

[DunaRocketeer]

Well, let me preface this by saying it's wild speculation.

If I had to guess they'd continue ISS assembly, while the Orbital Space Plane program (a sort of shuttle replacement) trundles along in the background. Probably starved of funding and with no progress made, it would have been cancelled and consigned to the same scrapheap as Shuttle-Saturn, Shuttle-C, X-30, and X-33/VentureStar.

Then the inevitable accident happens. It occurs at a later date than the loss of Columbia, so any hypothetical subsequent NASA Commercial Services program (if they decide to go that route in the first place) would happen too late to save SpaceX, which would go bust before Falcon 9 1.0 even gets off the pad. Blue Origin wouldn't be very far along either, because they wouldn't have a funding boost from ULA for the BE-4 engine: ULA wouldn't feel the need to create the BE-4 powered Vulcan, what with no Falcon 9 eating into their defence missions.

What happens next is tricky, but I'm going to guess that there will be strong parallels to our reality. Constellation was spearheaded by Bush, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the shuttle accident happens during the Obama administration. He advocates that NASA reduces its scope down to a more modest research oriented agency with a small capsule program and cargo services from EELV's. This faces opposition in Congress who push for a big shuttle derived launcher and a return to the moon (not shuttle-C though, because that would be relatively cheap and make too much sense - at NASA, they still haven't learned that 'perfect' is the enemy of 'good enough') . A lot of in-fighting between the EELV camp who claim they can get the same mission done with fuel depots for cheaper (starting to sound familiar?) and the congressionally backed MSFC super booster which has some political support, but not enough money.

So it's 2015, and in this alternate reality we have NASA's human spaceflight program in just as great a shambles. The crucial difference is no SpaceX, which despite the funding mountain they have to climb to finance their Mars campaign, are the only outfit going that's worth a damn.

[razark]

[quote name='Kerbart']So, knowing that there was a more than minimal chance that the vessel was damaged but that there was nothing (with a reasonable chance of success) that could be done about it. NASA decided to not investigate the wing, as it wouldn't really change their options. It all came down to statistics; and the dice rolled the wrong way.[/QUOTE]
Computer simulations that were run during the flight showed the risk of damage severe enough to cause loss of vehicle from a foam strike to be extremely low. The simulations were later shown to be faulty, but were the best information available at the time. There was also a lack of management knowledge of satellite imaging capabilities due to the classified nature of those programs. Some NASA managers later obtained security clearances for this reason.

Rushing OV-104 through processing would have meant a lot of shortcuts would need to be taken, which would have been a huge amount of risk. Safety checks and taking the time to make sure everyone was doing everything correctly would have to be skipped. At the time, NASA knew the foam was shed by the ET. However, they did not understand what caused the foam to shed. If they had been able to determine that the foam had crippled OV-102, they would not have time to figure out what the issue was, or had time to verify and possibly repair an ET before they needed to launch a rescue mission. When STS-114, the Return To Flight mission, was launched, foam shedding occurred again and the fleet was grounded for another year. NASA would not have risked launching a vehicle under the same risk conditions as STS-107, and would not have undertaken a rescue flight that would have raised those risks even higher.




[quote name='wumpus']Isn't the whole issue with heating tiles peculiar to the Columbia? My understanding was that was why it was "retired" in the first place. Columbia required reseating huge amounts of tiles every flight, while Challenger and later units had a solid heat shield.[/QUOTE]
No, the heat shield of all shuttles was a system of tiles.

[adsii1970]

[quote name='fredinno']Your mission proposal would be incredibly expensive- we're talking about at least a billion over 2 Shuttle flights. Not worth it. And I;m pretty sure you meant Challenger, not Columbia....[/QUOTE]

As I said, go out with a bang - two shuttles in orbit at once? I would have written a donation check to see it happen... as I am sure others would have. Nope, [I]STS Columbia[/I] was correct. There actually was talk of building a replacement, the [I]STS Kennedy[/I], but it never survived Congress; [I]STS Columbia's[/I] loss was all the proof the critics of NASA needed to defund the STS program and discontinue shuttle usage. In the big scheme of things, NASA's 14 lost astronauts is a small human price to pay, although tragic from the standpoint of the value of life, compared to the number of lives that have been lost in the pursuit of general aviation.

[quote name='wumpus']Two question about this whole debacle:
Is there any mention about the cost of having an entire shuttle "gassed up and ready to go"? You don't (I hope) have to perform all the maintanence (pretty much a full shuttle rebuild) of a launch, but all the costs involved in a launch need to be paid (i.e. all operations required from sticking the shuttle on the pad to T-3 days). If you look at the economics behind the falcon, you will note a huge cost not involving the cost of the rocket: my guess is that a shuttle on the pad would eat most of those costs (at shuttle prices).

Isn't the whole issue with heating tiles peculiar to the Columbia? My understanding was that was why it was "retired" in the first place. Columbia required reseating huge amounts of tiles every flight, while Challenger and later units had a solid heat shield. Simply protecting for this one narrow failure would likely leave way too many dangers for the shuttle fleet (a handy shuttle certainly wouldn't have helped Challenger).[/QUOTE]

Had to log back in to post this - forum logged me out and said I had timed out. :sealed:

Two things here, each of the orbiters had [I]some[/I] issue with the heat resistant tiles. [I]Columbi[/I]a had a problem because of an adhesive substance used on it alone; the remaining shuttle fleet had a different adhesive system. As [I]Columbia's[/I] tiles were replaced, the new system was used on the replacement tiles ONLY.

The other issue of STS 300 - while in theory could be done, was never actually "fueled up" or ready to go within the 3 day window. I read somewhere that NASA/JPL had done a feasibility study and decided that in the event of a catastrophic failure, the goal would be to dock with the ISS, use a Soyuz capsule for extraction of critically injured crew, but jettison the orbiter and allow gravity to run its course. As the manned missions to Mars were on the horizon, the thought was to use the Orion Capsule to retrieve a crew since the new Orion does have the ability to be remotely controlled from Houston... Again, this was nowhere near being ready for testing at the time of [I]Columbia's [/I] failure.

[fredinno]

[quote name='adsii1970']As I said, go out with a bang - two shuttles in orbit at once? I would have written a donation check to see it happen... as I am sure others would have. Nope, [I]STS Columbia[/I] was correct. There actually was talk of building a replacement, the [I]STS Kennedy[/I], but it never survived Congress; [I]STS Columbia's[/I] loss was all the proof the critics of NASA needed to defund the STS program and discontinue shuttle usage. In the big scheme of things, NASA's 14 lost astronauts is a small human price to pay, although tragic from the standpoint of the value of life, compared to the number of lives that have been lost in the pursuit of general aviation.



Had to log back in to post this - forum logged me out and said I had timed out. :sealed:

Two things here, each of the orbiters had [I]some[/I] issue with the heat resistant tiles. [I]Columbi[/I]a had a problem because of an adhesive substance used on it alone; the remaining shuttle fleet had a different adhesive system. As [I]Columbia's[/I] tiles were replaced, the new system was used on the replacement tiles ONLY.

The other issue of STS 300 - while in theory could be done, was never actually "fueled up" or ready to go within the 3 day window. I read somewhere that NASA/JPL had done a feasibility study and decided that in the event of a catastrophic failure, the goal would be to dock with the ISS, use a Soyuz capsule for extraction of critically injured crew, but jettison the orbiter and allow gravity to run its course. As the manned missions to Mars were on the horizon, the thought was to use the Orion Capsule to retrieve a crew since the new Orion does have the ability to be remotely controlled from Houston... Again, this was nowhere near being ready for testing at the time of [I]Columbia's [/I] failure.[/QUOTE]

No, weren't they planning a dedicated CRV (aka HL-20?)

[WestAir]

After reading this and the previous thread that focused on the "how to save Columbia" theme, I'm also of the opinion that saving the crew was improbable. For those of you familiar with aviation disasters, I'd almost compare it to Alaska 261 where the crew operated an aircraft that was impossible to land. The only discussion about Columbia we could really have is if NASA was right in not investigating the tiles during the mission, and whether NASA was right in not allowing the crew to know that they were not making it home.

Personally I would want as much heads us as viable if my flight was going to crash. I'd want to know so I could come to terms with it, instead of hearing cockpit alarms and freaking out.

To the OP, if Columbia never happened I imagine we may still have an STS program. (Someone mentioned they were thinking of running them until 2020). I don't know what affect that would have on the private space industry but I am thinking that if the STS was still running and VSS Enterprise still crashed, critics of the private industry might have been a lot more influential this past year. It may have even given solid ground to the argument that the STS should remain funded longer. Edited November 24, 2015 by WestAir

[fredinno]

[quote name='DunaRocketeer']Well, let me preface this by saying it's wild speculation.

If I had to guess they'd continue ISS assembly, while the Orbital Space Plane program (a sort of shuttle replacement) trundles along in the background. Probably starved of funding and with no progress made, it would have been cancelled and consigned to the same scrapheap as Shuttle-Saturn, Shuttle-C, X-30, and X-33/VentureStar.

Then the inevitable accident happens. It occurs at a later date than the loss of Columbia, so any hypothetical subsequent NASA Commercial Services program (if they decide to go that route in the first place) would happen too late to save SpaceX, which would go bust before Falcon 9 1.0 even gets off the pad. Blue Origin wouldn't be very far along either, because they wouldn't have a funding boost from ULA for the BE-4 engine: ULA wouldn't feel the need to create the BE-4 powered Vulcan, what with no Falcon 9 eating into their defence missions.

What happens next is tricky, but I'm going to guess that there will be strong parallels to our reality. Constellation was spearheaded by Bush, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the shuttle accident happens during the Obama administration. He advocates that NASA reduces its scope down to a more modest research oriented agency with a small capsule program and cargo services from EELV's. This faces opposition in Congress who push for a big shuttle derived launcher and a return to the moon (not shuttle-C though, because that would be relatively cheap and make too much sense - at NASA, they still haven't learned that 'perfect' is the enemy of 'good enough') . A lot of in-fighting between the EELV camp who claim they can get the same mission done with fuel depots for cheaper (starting to sound familiar?) and the congressionally backed MSFC super booster which has some political support, but not enough money.

So it's 2015, and in this alternate reality we have NASA's human spaceflight program in just as great a shambles. The crucial difference is no SpaceX, which despite the funding mountain they have to climb to finance their Mars campaign, are the only outfit going that's worth a damn.[/QUOTE]

Columbia was inevitable, but was largely still bad luck on where the foam hit on the Shuttle. The entire program could probably have gone on without a disaster like that until its end. I wonder if we would have gotten the "Full" ISS that was originally planned.

Vulcan would still be needed, in one form or another- b/c of Russian RD-180 engines. The lack of help from NASA, to the company's Biconic capsule though, might have made it so that the AR-1 is a more attractive option.

One of the big problems with Shuttle-C is that it's much more difficult to upgrade than an Inline SLS/Jupiter DIRECT, and need to be loaded [I]carefully[/I] so that the mass of the payload= the designed payload capacity (probably 70t to LEO), or else it might go out of control. Also, Orion would have needed a giant truss structure INSIDE Shuttle-C to nominally launch on it. Of course, it is also cheaper to develop- problem is probably that it lacked a "pusher". If it had the same people pushing for it as Jupiter DIRECT, it could have happened instead- but that's just by 2 cents.

[wumpus]

[quote name='adsii1970']I read somewhere that NASA/JPL had done a feasibility study and decided that in the event of a catastrophic failure, the goal would be to dock with the ISS, use a Soyuz capsule for extraction of critically injured crew, but jettison the orbiter and allow gravity to run its course. [/QUOTE]
I'm pretty sure that the inclination of the last Columbia flight wasn't anywhere near the ISS*. There was simply no way to get there. I also didn't seriously expect NASA to have a rescue shuttle ready. I was merely pointing out that once they had a ballpark figure of the cost the whole idea would be abandoned (especially since the first failure had no chance of rescue, they probably assumed the next wouldn't either).

source - Strictly from my own lousy memory, an aside of one of Scott Manley's videos.