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Space shuttles in fiction
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Even before the first space shuttle was launched, science fiction filmmakers were featuring the craft in their productions. The laws of physics have traditionally been no impediment to creativity, as some of the following demonstrate:
In gamesIn 1983 Activision released Space Shuttle: A Journey into Space for the Atari 2600 VCS game console system. Your goal once in orbit is to dock with a satellite one or more times before returning to Earth. The player needs to take care that their shuttle is properly configured for reentry to avoid burning up in the atmosphere or crashing upon landing. A player who managed to complete four dockings and return with at least 4,500 units of fuel would earn a Space Shuttle Pilot patch from Activision upon submitting a photo demonstrating said requirements were met. If a player was truly good enough, and completed six dockings and returned with at least 7,500 units of fuel, they would get a special message, and sending a photograph of that would allow them to receive a special Space Shuttle Commander patch.
The game was written by Steve Kitchen. The game was so complex for the early 8bit game console, that it required overlays to be placed over the console switches on the Atari 2600 which acted as additional controls in the game. The original Atari 2600 joystick only have 1 fire button and the additional control inputs for actions such as: Primary and backup engines activation and shutdown, opening and closing the cargo bay doors, raising/lowering the landing gear and activating the launch sequence were all required during the gameplay.
In the video games Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow for the Game Boy the space shuttle Columbia can be found in the space museum in Pewter City, though following the disaster, new edited versions of the game have removed the Columbia and replaced it with the Discovery.
Also Space shuttle orbiters can be found in the video game for Nintendo NES "Space Shuttle Project." The orbiters include; Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.
There is also a space shuttle in in the Florida level inside a hangar. The level also contains other NASA spacecraft and a lunar lander.
Williams Electronics produced a pinball machine named "Space Shuttle" that was released in 1984. The player scored points by completing a series of "missions" aboard a fictional shuttle named Defender, while being guided by the voice of mission control. Depictions of the shuttle on the machine's artwork were identical to NASA's design, except that a plastic replica on the playing field lacked the vertical tail fin for space reasons.
In the Orbiter free software spaceflight simulator, space shuttle Atlantis is a default shuttle which can be piloted. Other shuttles (real and fictional, as well as unrealized conceptions or purely fictional) can be downloaded from the fan sites.
In Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight, At Kennedy Space Center's 39-A&B launch pads, You see 2 space shuttles, however, they are not player or computer-usable.
A bonus mission in the Nintendo 64 game Blast Corps. deals with destroying a small town so that an unnamed fictional shuttle can make an emergency landing.
In the PC Adventure game The Dig a space shuttle is used to take a crew to a meteor that is on an impact course with Earth.
In the game Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Sonic and company are launched to Space Colony ARK by a space shuttle.
In the Nickelodeon game Rugrats: The Search for Reptar, there is a mini-golf game, where there's a space shuttle seen at the first hole.
In , if the player watches the news reports throughout the game, they will overhear that a rescue shuttle is due to arrive at the International Space Station following a meteor strike that damaged both the station and the shuttle docked with it. However, in Mission 3, it is overheard that the shuttle is delayed due to technical problems. The game's final level reveals that the station personnel are rescued by a Chinese capsule.
In printDavid Onley wrote Shuttle: A Shattering Novel of Disaster in Space, a bestselling novel about space travel, published in 1981. It was nominated by the Periodical Distributors of Canada as book of the year. He was founding president of the Aerospace Heritage Foundation of Canada and is the currently serving Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.
In A Flag Full of Stars (Classic Star Trek #54) by Brad Ferguson, the Space Shuttle Enterprise is retrofitted with impulse engines and serves as an important element of the story late in the book.
In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's alien invasion book Footfall, all the shuttles except Enterprise (Endeavour did not exist at the time of writing) are used as spacefighters launched from a carrier spacecraft derived from Project Orion to attack the alien mothership. The shuttles used External Tanks as microwave and laser shields.
In Uncanny X-Men, superheroine Jean Grey piloted the fictional shuttle StarCore within which parts of her personality merged with a cosmic force to become the all-powerful Phoenix.
In Shuttle Down by Lee Correy, the space shuttle Atlantis is forced to make an emergency landing following a failed launch attempt. Since it's a polar orbit launch, they have to land on Easter Island.
David Brin's novel Earth uses a modification of the Shuttle Down scenario; in this case, a shuttle that had made an emergency landing on an island years earlier was abandoned in place because it was impractical to retrieve it from there. The shuttle eventually winds up back in orbit under highly exotic circumstances.
Ignition by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason centers on a terrorist attack on the shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center.
Storming Intrepid, a novel by Payne Harrison, concerns the hijacking of the fictional shuttle Intrepid.
A fictional Space Shuttle Gettysburg appears in a sub-plot of the novel Cyclops by Clive Cussler. The crew is cut off from communications with Mission Control Houston while a secret Soviet control center on Cuba uplinks false reentry procedures to facilitate a landing on the island. The Gettysburg transports a crew from a secret moon base and their research back to earth. The U.S. president orders the Shuttle to be shot down to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Soviets but in the last moment, the command center is taken over and communications reestablished. The crew guides the ship to a successful emergency landing at the NAS Key West when it becomes clear that the Kennedy Space Center is out of reach.
In Dale Brown's novel Silver Tower, Enterprise appears as a retrofitted vehicle, supplying the military space station Silver Tower. It is severely damaged in an attack by soviet space planes but is able to shoot down one of the attackers after being revived when the station is under attack again. Given that the first attack exposes the crew cabin to the vacuum of space and the onboard electronics are not qualified for use in vacuum, the scenario in the book is highly implausible.
In Stephen Baxter's novel Titan, the shuttle Discovery is reconfigured using Apollo capsules and International Space Station modules to make the trip to Saturn's largest moon Titan.Columbia is lost during re-entry in the novel's opening chapters, while the other surviving shuttles are converted to Shuttle-C for launches supporting Discovery's mission.
In Homer Hickam's novel Back To The Moon, the shuttle Columbia is hijacked by former astronaut Jack Medaris who takes it on an unscheduled trip to the moon. At one point, NASA decides to send up Endeavour to try and capture the crew of Columbia.
In Jerry Ahern's The Survivalist series, an emergency program to guarantee the survival of the human race uses space shuttles to send a few hundred people in cryonic suspension into a long-term orbit which will bring them back to Earth centuries after a nuclear war.
In David R. Palmer's post-apocalyptic novel Emergence, a stripped-down space shuttle is launched on a one-way suicide mission to disable an orbiting Soviet 'doomsday bomb'.
The 1982 novel The Descent of Anansi by Steven Barnes and Larry Niven features a fictional space shuttle named Anansi.
In War Day by Whitley Strieber the space shuttle Enterprise was destroyed by a Soviet anti-satellite weapon during the deployment of an anti-missile system.
A comic of Little Dee involves Dee (a girl) and her caretakers (a bear, a dog, and a vulture) finding and going on a space shuttle. It was probably made in honor of the Return to Flight mission STS-114.
The fictional Space Shuttle Venture appears in the 2003 graphic novel Orbiter.
The novel Final Orbit by S. V. Dáte|Avon]], New York, 1997) is a thriller involving sabotage, politics, and a cover up in the space shuttle program. It includes a landing of Atlantis and a Columbia mission makes up the climax. The author's detailed knowledge of the subject matter comes from his having covered NASA as a newspaper reporter.
In the Amusement Industry
Six Flags Great America currently operates a motion simulator ride named Space Shuttle America, which features a life-sized mock up of a real space shuttle sitting outside the ride's building. The shuttle is so accurately replicated that it even uses real fireproof "tiles" used on the space shuttle to protect it from the heat of atmospheric reentry. However, it is just a hollow fiberglass shell and would never be capable of actual space flight.
In Dubai (United Arab Emirates), the amusement park Dubailand has a reproduction of a space shuttle. Dubailand is slated to be open in 2010.
Other vehiclesA number of spacecraft are often referred to in science fiction as "shuttles", yet bear no resemblance to the current Space Shuttle Orbiters. The Star Trek franchise, for example, has portrayed numerous small landing craft called shuttlecraft, used to descend from and return to larger orbiting starships. This began in the first season of TOS however and as such predates the space shuttle by more than ten years.
ten years.
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