space shuttle

The Dream Survives A Space Alternate History by @e of pi, @TimothyC, & @Usili Original Image from Advertisement from Rockwell. OMNI October 1978, p 26 Highest Resolution version from Dave Cross's Flickr "A Spaceship Has Landed On Earth", 2011-07-08 Archived Copy here.

Icons of the Sky: An Alternate History of the Space Transport System & Apollo Spacecraft Chapter 1: Divergence July 20, 1969 Mare Tranquilitatis As millions of people across the world watch as two men are about to land on the lunar surface, those men suit up, preparing for their EVA. This was...

Hello, SPS is a concept I’ve known for a little under a year but been invested in ever since I discovered it. The idea of building these vast structures to beam power down to the earth just sounded magical to me. Looking further and further into it has finally brought me to a point of...

This is an alternate timeline much like For All Mankind where the Space Race continues on beyond Apollo 11. Pathfinder and Sea Dragon also exist because they are friggin awsome and cool so don't @ me. I will update semi regularly and don't worry about accuracies, major plot points or grammar bc...

Prologue: "Tap-off" It was the spring of 1981. A whitish visage emerges from the Orbiter Processing Facility. Rolled back on brand new tires, its fresh silica surface sparkles under the power of floodlights. It dwarfs the swarm of people, mostly reporters, trying to get their first peek at this...

Hey there fellas! For a while I've been wanting to do a somewhat serious/realistic alternate history post focusing on the Space Shuttle. Specifically, this Alt History is based around a odd but interesting concept: Early Lunar Access. Early Lunar Access (ELA) was an early 90s concept focusing...

After the Columbia disaster in 2003, the decision was made to retire the space shuttles, and during these years the Canadian government opened negotiations with the US government and NASA to acquire its retiring shuttles and OV-101 enterprise, while there was initial pushback from the public and...

In the mid-'70s, there was a debate in the house of common's Liberals and Conservatives argue back and forth on the subject, but it is believed that this will revitalize the Canadian Aerospace market after Black Friday "We don't need it," some say. "it will create jobs," others say. finally, it...

Happy Monday Everyone! Today I want to bring you the first chapter in my alternate history story, "One Giant Leap: The Voyage Beyond". A story inspired by my thoughts of a Space Shuttle program that returned us to the moon and took us to Mars. I have often seen alternate history stories that...

Alright! Hello! The following is the hyper-evolved headcanon for a replica shuttle program I started work on 4-5-ish years ago in KSP that I realized about 3 months ago I could turn into an objectively banger alternate history with a strangely low amount of effort. That being said, I have 3...

The space shuttle was intended to provide reliable and inexpensive access to space, however, it failed miserably, being even more expensive than expendable systems, as well as being the deadliest space launch system in history. From Wikipedia: What if the shuttle was developed in a way that...

On Brazen Wings Prologue It was an awfully cold, near frigid Tuesday morning in 1986 when Thomas Paine found himself checking in to a motel, just outside Rockledge, Florida. Normally he would stay closer to the Cape, but tourists in town for the launch were still packing the nearer...

Hi everyone! Today I wanted to bring to you a story inspired by my musings of Mars, and the nostalgia for the iconic Space Shuttle. It has been 10 years this year since the shuttle stopped flying, and I have not been able to stop thinking; what else could we have done? What if the Shuttle had...

EDIT: I have updated and reposted this post, and it is viewable just slightly further down in the thread.

Before we kick things off, a quick teaser... So, I had an idea last year for a timeline centered around the Apollo Program - basically, what reasonable changes could've happened so that more landings occurred. Nothing too complicated. What started out as a small timeline, however, quickly...

So, as I understand it, the 1968 was a pretty close election. If Johnson had handled Vietnam better, it seems to me that he could have won it. And even if he hadn't, had he let Humphrey be his own man, it seems to me that the VP could have gotten the votes to secure the presidency. So what...

The rise of the Russian space station program, the area where the Soviet then Russian government would stay ahead of the west until 2014, started with a treason in 1960. While Gagarin was climbing into space, paving the way for mankind to follow, Chelomei was planning to militarize this feat...

So, I've been wondering what the possibilities are when it comes to creating a timeline for the N1 program that is a) realistic, and b) doesn't have a POD earlier than 1966. So, because I have no actual writing skills, I created this (rather literal) timeline, and I was wondering what some of...

This timeline can also be found on Sufficient Velocity. STS-27 Commander Howard “Skip” Johnson was the first to speak up. “We’re in deep shit.” The rest of the crew of Space Shuttle Atlantis were in agreement. On the second day of mission STS-27, December 3rd 1988, an unusual request was...

So I believe the post-Columbia procedure for all flights but the two Hubble Missions was to essentially abort to the ISS if heatshield damage was detected. What I'm curious about is what would happen to the orbiter and astronauts in such a scenario. Would they keep the orbiter attached to the...