How do you think the World would be different if the 1986 Challenger mission was a success?

Question

How do you think the World would be different if the 1986 Challenger mission was a success?

Answer 1

No. Challenger was a catastrophe, which did not happen by random accident, it was caused by major misconceptions in NASAs management.

If it didn't happen to Challenger, it would have hit a later mission.

If NASA management would have had a realistic understanding of the Space Shuttle (like many engineers had), they would have replaced it by a Space Shuttle 2.0 already in 1985, instead of trying to fly a prototype like a production hardware.

Of course, politics would not have liked this strategy, but it would have increased the chance of working towards fulfilling the promises of the STS program.

Instead of using the ISS only as LEO outpost, as lunar mission infrastructure would also have been possible... the ISS is the valid successor of space station freedom and if NASA would have had the capability to allow launching propellants and reusable space tugs, I have doubts ESA, NASDA or Russia would have prevented NASA from using the ISS as step towards the moon. They would even have liked to cooperate in such a program.

Answer 2

The only difference I can see besides the fact that there would be 7 more people roaming the earth now is we would have finished building the ISS by now and been on our way back to the moon.  The Challenger disaster took 2 years to recover from. That's the same amount of time it's going to take us to finish the ISS.

Answer 3

The Challenger disaster was a wake up call to NASA to put more oversight into flights.  While this has had the feature that they no longer fly the Shuttle when it's too cold, it has had the effect that fewer flights have been flown.  So NASA has gotten fewer flights for the money than it would have.  Assuming no SRB related failure ever happened, the International Space Station would now be completed.  We might still be retiring the Shuttle.  Or, after the Columbia disaster, we might be only flying to the ISS.

The Challenger disaster delayed the launch of the Hubble Space telescope.  HST would have gone up sooner (flaws and all).  HST might have been brought down by a shuttle, repaired, and sent back.

If the Columbia disaster, or the equivalent also did not take place, there's a good chance we wouldn't even be considering retiring the shuttle program.  The shuttle program is very expensive - disposable rockets are cheaper.  Delay in shuttle retirement would delay going back to the Moon, unless a way could be found to use the shuttle program to get Moon bound craft into low earth orbit.