Thats Columbia not Columbus FYI
And Enterprise could never have been refit to have flown in space - it would have had to have been rebuilt almost completely
It was an atmospheric test vehicle not space capable
FYI The loss of Atlantis is incorrect by the way - the loss of one engine would not have caused them to ditch it in the Atlantic - loss of one engine during ascent means you have to abort to an alternate landing site not ditch - the person who wrote the article obviously didnt know the protocols for the Shuttle
Also given the US and Soviets continuing to have the space race Freedom would have most likely been manned and operational for sure by the war start - it was only delayed as it was due to the Cold War winding down - if that stays hot then Freedom is up there and manned - maybe not fully completed but manned for sure - if anything the start of the war with China would have definitely made them rush deployment just to get continual manned resources there
and a continuing Cold War means that they dont mothball the Vandenberg facility - and you are looking at a new shuttle as well - the only reason we cancelled the follow on to Endeavour was due to cost savings after the Cold War ended - so a V2 timeline would have no shuttles from Vandenberg and no new shuttle
V1 would have had at least one new shuttle and launches from Vandenberg
FYI all one engine failure modes (and even two engine failure modes) past Challenger lead to landing on a runway somewhere - the only ocean ditching option would have involved a failure with the strap on rockets and an engine or the shuttle being too damaged during orbit to successfully deploy its landing gear - thus the whole article should be treated as Apocrypha - and you cant have the shuttle damaged by sabotage - not after Challenger - it was checked way too much for that
But you cant really fault the author - have a feeling GDW didnt have someone who was an actual Rockwell Downey or NASA space shuttle engineer working for them
Last edited by Olefin; 01-18-2018 at 08:05 AM.
|