Space Shuttle Fictional Debut

[bucky74]

Does anyone know the fist time a space shuttle was featured in a story or novel? I'm referring to the actual shuttle rather than a similar craft dreamt up by an author.

 

[sferrin]

The Orbiters were in Niven's "Footfall" that came out in '85. I'm sure there were others before that.

 

[collins355]

They were definitely in "Moonraker".

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2394143232/tt0079574?ref_=ttmi_mi_all_sf_18

 

[Graham1973]

Moonraker is 1979.

I have a novel called "Class G-Zero" by a 'Walter B. Hendrickson Jr' which is copyrighted 1976 and from the description he provides the shuttles in his universe are the same as the ones that eventually flew (Orbiter/ET/Boosters), which is intersesting because much of the rest of his 'universe' draws on earlier plans from the late 1960s.

 

[Archibald]

Just for the record: as early as the fall of 1974 (long before OV-101 roll out in July 1976 with the Star Trek cast) a wooden full-scale mockup of the orbiter had been already, so any sci-fi author could have a good idea of what an orbiter was really like. Popular mechanics was on the case.

https://books.google.fr/books?id=tE0idc3G364C&pg=PA70&dq=%22space+shuttle%22%22mockup%22&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCqszRkMfJAhWLPxoKHfDAAxMQ6AEITDAH#v=onepage&q=%22space%20shuttle%22%22mockup%22&f=false

 

[The Artist]

Moonraker was made in the late 70s, but those were not NASA's shuttles they were owned by a corporation. The earliest I'm aware of NASA's shuttles being used was in 1980. G. Harry Stine, writing as Lee Correy, wrote "Shuttle Down." This appeared first as a 4 part story in Analog from December 1980 through March 1981. Later that year it was published as a novel by Ballantine/DelRey. The story involved the shuttle Atlantis being forced down by a failure after launching from Vandenberg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Down

 

[bucky74]

Thanks everyone! Gotta check these out. I have read Shuttle Down - very interesting scenario.

 

[Graham1973]

Moonraker was made in the late 70s, but those were not NASA's shuttles they were owned by a corporation. The earliest I'm aware of NASA's shuttles being used was in 1980. G. Harry Stine, writing as Lee Correy, wrote "Shuttle Down." This appeared first as a 4 part story in Analog from December 1980 through March 1981. Later that year it was published as a novel by Ballantine/DelRey. The story involved the shuttle Atlantis being forced down by a failure after launching from Vandenberg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Down

I've got that one and it is an interesting scenario, minor correction to my post, the shuttles in "Class G-Zero" are operated by the International Space Agency (ISA) a merged version of NASA, ESA and whatever the Russians called their agency back in the early 70's.

Australian author John Baxter, opens his 1978 disaster novel "The Hermes Fall" with the discovery that the asteroid Hermes is on an impact trajectory with Earth by the crew of the shuttle Enterprise on the first shuttle mission in 1980. He specifically states that portion of the novel was based on NASA press material about the shuttle program.

Something else worth looking at is Wikipedias 'List of Fictional Astronauts', most of the Shuttle entries appear in the Modern Period (1975 - ongoing) section:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_astronauts

 

[bucky74]

Thanks for the link to that list, Graham!

 

[Grey Havoc]

Some Moonraker related images:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IKahbz75xo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYw69v0GIaA

 

[Grey Havoc]

 

[Graham1973]

Forgot to mention one story (Which only fits if you count the X-20 as a space shuttle...), in the June 1963 issue of Analog magazine is a short story entitled 'The Trouble with Telstar' by John Berryman in which an X-20 is launched to intercept and repair a satellite in orbit.

The picture linked below shows part of John Schoenherr's cover...

The Trouble With Telstar (Cover Exerpt)

 

[Sineva]

One of the earliest that I remember coming across was in a comic,,X-Men vol1 #99 [june 1976 cover date].This actually pre-dates the shuttles public unveiling by at least a couple of months,not to mention its actual maiden flight by almost 5 years.

Something in a similar line would be Mike Mars flies the Dyna Soar [vol#5 in the Mike Mars series,published waaay back in 1962]