p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"A/N: Welp, boys, and girls. I'm back. With a fucked up NASA idea! I've been partially working on it over the span of 5 years, with notes and stuff. I do not wish anything that happens in the story to the characters, on to the actual people. Also, I'll be changing the age of a character to make the story a teeny bit more interesting. This is also an AU, where the Challenger and Columbia incidents never happened. I have a tendency to save people's lives./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"SUPER EXTRA AU: This chapter is meant as a baseline for all the stories in the NASA fics I will be writing. I thought it over and talked with some people becasue I have several ideas stemming from just this chapter alone. For this fic it'll be about STS 107 and the "What-ifs" if it had been saved. SO I'm keeping all the characters that'll be in the series here. I'll break down the characters in each story. Enjoy the chaos, everybody./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Now that that's out of the way, let's see our setting and meet our characters./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Setting: Years Winter 20003-Fall 2011 NASA (Johnson Space Center in Texas, and Kennedy Space Center in Florida), Other places in Texas, Russia, possibly New York, space (duh obvs)/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Characters:/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Chris Ferguson, commander of STS 135/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Doug Hurley, STS 135 Pilot/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Sandra Magnus STS 135 Mission Specialist/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Rex Walheim STS 135 Mission Specialist/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Steve Lindsey, STS 133 Commander/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Eric Boe STS-133 Pilot/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Alvin Drew STS-133 Mission Specialist/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Nicole Stott STS-133 Mission Specialist/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Steve Bowen * STS-133 Mission Specialist/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Tim Kopra * STS-133 Mission Specialist/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Mike Barrat STS-133 Mission Specialist/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Ken Ham STS-132 Commander/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Tony Antonelli STS-132 Pilot/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Karen Nyberg-Hurley Doug's wife/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Jack Hurley*-Doug's son/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"STS-107 crew/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Various Mission Control members: Norm Knight, Rick Jones, Holly Ridings, Leroy Cain, Mike Moses (possibly)/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Bowen replaced Kopra on STS 133 because Kopra got into an accident a month before launch. He was fine but he couldn't go on the launch,/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Jack Hurley, Doug's son was just a baby when STS 135 launched, so for all intents and purposes, he's now 12/p
hr style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;" noshade="noshade" size="1" /
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"On a warm May morning, 10 men and women were standing around at NASA' Johnson Space Center, waiting for crew assignments. Due to a complete mix up on NASA's part, STS 134 was assigned and started training first, on Space Shuttle Endeavour./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"A brown-haired woman looked up at one of the commanders, Steve Lindsey. He and Chris Ferguson were already assigned as commanders of STS-133 and STS-135 respectively. "Steve, do you think I'll be on 133?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"She asked. Her name was Sandra Magnus. She had hoped to be on STS 135. She had a huge crush on Chris Ferguson. Actually, they were dating. Basically everyone at NASA knew they were dating./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Steve chuckled/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Maybe. Maybe not. Don't you wanna be with Ferguson? Either way, I'm guaranteed to have a woman on my flight, and the same with Chris. Chris loves you so much."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Steve smiled, seeing the crew listings were put up. He kind of grew nervous. He'd have 5 lives in his hands. If someone died, he'd be screwed. He waited for Chris to check first./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Chris jogged over to the board. "Let's see... Me, Hurley, Walheim and... SANDRA?"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"His eyes widened. That was unexpected because of Chris dating Sandra. At least everyone knew they were a thing, right? He walked back to Sandra. "Lucky me, huh? At least you don't beat me up, like somebody" he glares at Nicole, jokingly./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Nicole rolled her eyes, laughing. "Yeah, alright Chris. I like Barratt anyways"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Nicole smirked. She and Mike grew up together. Well sort of. They were in the same astronaut group, chosen in 2000. They're the third known relationship at NASA, between the astronauts at least. Chris and Sandra, and Doug and his wife Karen were the other two./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Steve jogged to the board himself, even though he pretty much knew who he'd have on his mission. He smiled weakly as he said them aloud./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""Eric Boe, Tim Kopra, Nicole Stott, Alvin Drew, and Mike Barratt. Nice. Like I said, if someone gets hurt, I'm so dead. Same with you, Fergy." he shook his head, jokingly./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Chris suddenly wondered if he was actually ready to be the commander. The shuttle program was ending in 6 years, and he just felt like he wasn't experienced enough to be the commander. Why didn't they give Rick Husband, STS-107's commander, who basically saved the lives of his crew, when there was a sudden change of the weather, and they had to land in Niagara Falls, NY. He was soon snapped out of his daze by two of his good friends. His classmate Ken Ham, and Ken's pilot, Tony Antonelli were due to launch in about 3 days./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Tony was about 5'11, tan, and dark-haired. So many interns at NASA fell for him, much to his annoyance. Ken was 5'9, and blond-haired. They had just come back from a test flight, so they were still both wearing their sunglasses. Ken spoke up./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;""So who's on whose missions? Antonelli owes me $20 if I'm somewhat right. I know Chris has 4 people in total on his crew, and 6 on Steve's. Chris has Boe, Kopra, and Walheim. Steve has Hurley, Barratt, Drew, Magnus, and Stott."/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Chris laughed and shook his head. "I have Hurley, Walheim, and Magnus. Steve's got: Boe, Stott, Kopra, Drew, and Barratt. Therefore, Ken owes Tony $20"/p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"Ken frowned, handing over the money, jokingly whining. "I thought I was right for sure. Well, it's time to head back to training. Two more days until quarantine, so 9 days until launch. I'm kinda scared, but McCool keeps annoying me about it and saying I won't fuck up as Husband did in 2003."/p