As far as NASA is concerned, the game of "what if" goes like this:

What if?...NASA had got off lucky on January/28th/1986, and remained lucky for 20 years after?....
Under such hypothetical circumstances It's hypothetically possible then that the "Freedom" space station, as it was then called, might have been occupied, if not completely built by 1993...More likely completed by 1996, and with only
a small cost overrun.
We might even have a small moonbase running by this time.

But....such a stretch of hypothetical luck would have defied logic and statistical probabilities....In other words?...Such a 'what if' possibility would have been extremely unlikely.

NASA has never completely recovered from the Challenger disaster.