Fixing the NASA Piloted Program After Challenger: Views from 1989 and 1993 (plus an alternate history addendum)

Q's who's "flying" ALL that other shit around ???  huh !

• By David S. F. Portree
• 02.02.14
• http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/02/fixing-nasa-piloted-program-challenger-view-1989-1993/

Shuttle-C. Image: Morton Thiokol.

In 1988-1990, I lived in Orlando, Florida, and back then it wasn’t all that difficult for a writer who had published for only a couple of years (in print, in those days) to get badged to watch Space Shuttle launches from the Press Site bleachers, just three-and-a-half miles from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). On 13 March 1989, I was there as Discovery lifted off at the start of the 28th flight of the Shuttle Program. Discovery‘s mission was to deploy Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-D. The mission, designated STS-29, was widely seen as a bit of a milk run, though it earned attention by being only the third Shuttle flight after the two-and-a-half-year post-Challenger Shuttle stand-down.
The Magellan Venus radar-mapper spacecraft was at KSC in a cleanroom at the time. The KSC Public Affairs Office provided the press covering STS-29 with an opportunity to don sterile bunny suits and visit with the Venus probe. That was so cool (seeing Magellan, not the bunny suits so much) that I talked Astronomy magazine into getting me badged for STS-30, during which the Orbiter Atlantis would launch Magellan into Earth orbit.
Magellan was the first planetary spacecraft to ride a Shuttle Orbiter, and everyone was nervous that Shuttle problems might delay its launch past the closing of its interplanetary launch window on 29 May 1989. A problem with the labyrinthine plumbing in Atlantis‘s boattail scrubbed the first launch attempt on 28 April, and many of the press packed up and went home. On 4 May 1989, however, Atlantis cleared the tower at the start of its fourth flight, and soon after attaining orbit around the Earth sent Magellan on its way. It was the first new U.S. planetary mission launch in 11 years.
While waiting for Atlantis and Magellan to get off the ground, I visited the information counters in the KSC Press Center dome. There NASA and its contractors had laid out press kits and piles of handouts for reporters. Being a packrat, I still have the stuff I collected. Among the interesting items I squirreled away were two small brochures that described ways that the Shuttle system might evolve to expand its capabilities.
The first, authored by Morton Thiokol, prime contractor for the Space Shuttle’s twin Solid-Rocket Boosters (SRBs), pitched Shuttle-C. The “C” stood for “cargo.” Shuttle-C was by then already an old idea (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and its contractors had first floated it during the 1970s). The Utah-based company claimed that replacing the Space Shuttle Orbiter with an expendable cargo module would boost payload-to-orbit from less than 50,000 pounds to more than 150,000 pounds. The cargo module would include a Shuttle Orbiter boattail with two Space Shuttle Main Engines (not the three the Orbiter needed).
Morton Thiokol explained that Shuttle-C could launch Space Station Freedom in a few large packages. This would reduce risk to crew and save money. After finishing with Freedom, Shuttle-C could be applied to “future space planetary missions” and other advanced missions. Shuttle-C could be ready for flight in just 45 months, the company estimated.
Shuttle Orbiter prime contractor Rockwell International wrote of the “economy of evolution” in its brief brochure. First, it praised piloted spaceflight on board the Orbiter, then it offered up Orbiter upgrades. Rockwell reckoned that the Challenger replacement Orbiter, at the time designated OV-105 (and eventually named Endeavour), could be ready in 1991, the same year that Shuttle-C would begin flights (in reality OV-105 first flew in 1992).
OV-105, the three existing Orbiters (Columbia, Discovery, and Atlantis), and Shuttle-C would not, however, be enough to accomplish everything NASA had planned for the 1990s. Four Orbiters and Shuttle-C would not, for example, be capable of maintaining a flight rate of 12 Space Shuttle missions per year. To do that – and as insurance against a future Shuttle accident – Rockwell called on NASA to buy an evolved OV-106 that would first fly in 1995 and an OV-107 that would fly in 2000. Costs would peak twice, reaching to just under $1 billion in 1994 for OV-106 and in 1999 for OV-107. A five-Orbiter fleet would, Rockwell claimed, maintain an 80% probability of meeting NASA’s spaceflight requirements through the year 2008.
Rockwell continued to argue for Shuttle enhancements at least until September 1993, when I picked up two more brochures at a conference in Houston. By then I had been working as a NASA contractor in that steamy, smelly, sprawly city for a year. In the brochures, Rockwell pointed to the B-52 bomber, which had evolved continuously since its debut in the 1950s, as a model for the Shuttle’s future.
Rockwell described upgrades that could turn a Space Shuttle Orbiter into a Long-Duration Orbiter capable of operating in space for up to 90 days while docked with the Space Station. The company also proposed an automated Orbiter it dubbed the Reusable Cargo Vehicle (RCV). The unmanned RCV could be coupled with a lightweight composite External Tank and Liquid-Rocket Boosters with revived and improved Saturn F-1 engines; this would permit it to boost up to 125,000 pounds into orbit. RCV development would, Rockwell added, evolve the Space Shuttle into “a heavy-lift cargo vehicle to return to the moon and go on to Mars.”
Of course, the U.S. took a different course: we elected to develop neither Shuttle-C nor RCV, and built no new Orbiters after Endeavour. NASA’s four Orbiters did, however, undergo almost continuous upgrades. An Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) pallet that enabled flights of up to 17 days flew first in 1992. Eleven years ago yesterday, Columbia, NASA’s oldest Orbiter, was returning to Florida at the end of STS-107 (16 January-1 February 2003), a 16-day EDO mission, when it broke apart over eastern Texas, killing its seven-member crew and setting in motion events that led to the Space Shuttle’s final flight in 2011.
References:
Shuttle Evolution: Bridge to the Future, Rockwell International, April 1989.
Expanding the National Space Transportation System, Morton Thiokol, 1989.
Space Shuttle Evolution: Thinking About Tomorrow with the Resources of Today, Rockwell International, August 1993.
Automated Orbiter Kit, Rockwell International, September 1993.

Alternate history space station design based on the addendum below. A – forward stabilization brace & solar array boom attachment point; B – forward attitude control module; C – modified Orbiter flight deck; D – five-deck space station crew module; E – wing (top surface is auxiliary radiator); F – forward inter-module tunnel; G – aft inter-module tunnel; H – rudder; I – main radiators & payload bay doors; J – modified Orbital Maneuver System engine; K – aft stabilization brace & solar array boom attachment point; L – aft attitude control module. The silhouette on the right shows the docked space station Orbiters and the deployed steerable solar array booms with their inflatable solar arrays. Image: David S. F. Portree.

Addendum, 3 February 2014, 3:10 PM EST: This morning I had occasion to sit (and sit) in a waiting room, which I find is often conducive to letting my imagination run wild. I started thinking about what our space program might be like if we had never stopped building Orbiters; if, after early test flights and the relatively rapid creation of a “starter” three-Orbiter fleet, we had sought to christen a new Orbiter, always with upgrades and improvements, about every four years.
Columbia would fly first in 1981. Enterprise, used for drop-tests in 1977-1979, would be rebuilt for spaceflight and launched for the first time in 1983, then Challenger would join the fleet in 1985.
The Shuttle booster stack of twin Solid-Rocket Boosters and large External Tank would not be immune to modification. Because of this, NASA would find and fix the Solid-Rocket Booster field joint design flaws that destroyed Challenger in our timeline. Shuttle-C missions, which would begin in 1986, would permit testing of engine, tank, and booster modifications without placing crews at risk. The Galileo Jupiter orbiter and probe and its Centaur injection stage would be among the earliest Shuttle-C payloads.
Discovery, the first Orbiter capable of fully automated flight, would reach orbit for the first time in 1989. Aurora, capable of operating in Earth orbit for up to 90 days at a time, would fly first in 1993. By 1996, flight time would be extended to six months by on-orbit resupply. NASA would have had no need of a dedicated space station built up through many flights.
With the addition of Endeavour to the fleet in 1997, Columbia would be retired to the Smithsonian. Enterprise would retire in 2001, after Pioneer joined the fleet. Explorer would replace Challenger in 2005 and Adventure would replace Discovery in 2009.
And so on, more or less indefinitely. Orbiters and crews would, regrettably, be lost to accidents, as is not infrequently the case with experimental high-performance aircraft. These would temporarily knock the fleet down to four orbiters, but a fifth would always be under construction, and Orbiter retirements could be temporarily postponed when necessary. There would be no shortage of men and women eager to face the dangers and fly into space.
An Orbiter would cost perhaps $1.5 billion, placing it in the same cost range as many other aerospace vehicles; for example, the B-2 stealth bomber. Operational costs, quite high in the early years of the program, would fall as design improvements made maintenance and processing less labor intensive. These improvements would include replacement of the thousands of heat shield tiles with a few sturdy metal panels. Liquid-Rocket Boosters would replace the Solid-Rocket Boosters by around the turn of the 21st century, improving safety and increasing payload capacity.
On this day in alternate 2014, the Shuttle fleet would comprise Endeavour, Pioneer, Explorer, Adventure, and the newest Orbiter, Constellation. Pioneer and Explorer would be capable of docking belly-to-belly, forming a 10-person space station. Endeavour and Adventure could dock unmanned with the joined Orbiters to provide resupply, or could visit them with crews and cargo. Constellation would include fittings so that it could serve as an assembly and support platform for piloted cislunar spacecraft delivered by other Orbiters and Shuttle-C. In short, we would have a very different space program.
Related Beyond Apollo Posts
Space Station Columbia (1991)
Evolutions vs. Revolution: The 1970s Battle for NASA’s Future
Shuttle with Aft Cargo Carrier (1982)

I research and write about the history of space exploration and space technology with an emphasis on missions and programs planned but not flown (that is, the vast majority of them). My posts are based on more than 30 years of research into spaceflight history. I provide plenty of historical context. I also include lots of crunchy technical details to help the reader envision what might have been - and, in many cases, what might yet be.