What If... the Fantastic Four Had Not Gained Their Powers?

After Frank Miller on a Daredevil/Elektra What If, we get John Byrne on a Fantastic Four What If. Byrne's FF work was the beginning of the most creative run of his career (which for me ends after Next Men). He revitalized Marvel's first series and made it the World's Greatest Comics Magazine again. Unlike Miller, who riffed on his own stories, Byrne goes back to the beginning and not only makes a crucial change (that is more logical than the original story), but retells the first issue all over again.

What If Vol.1 #36 (December 1982)
Based on: Fantastic Four #1
The true history: Lack of funding makes Reed Richards wonder if he should steal into his experimental starship and give it an illegal test flight. Ben Grimm says "whoa there", but is goaded into helping by Sue Storm's girlish manipulations. Their makeshift crew goes into space, but crash down when the shields prove too weak to protect them from cosmic rays, cosmic rays that give them amazing powers.
Turning point: What if Reed Richards listened to Ben Grimm?
Story type: Deviated Origin/New World Order
Watcher's mood: Disturbing foetus
Altered history: In this reality, Reed doesn't let Sue goad Ben into anything. He'll just find the financing some other way and so waits a few months before taking the flight.
This time, he's not bringing Sue and Johnny along, but a real astronaut crew. And with the shields perfected, the ship lands on an alien planet days later. Within a year, Earth is a space-faring planet with outposts on a dozen worlds. Reed becomes rich and builds a huge scientific complex where he and his friends and family like to wear blue jumpsuits and the occasional baseball caps. But Earth still has problems at home...
As in our world, Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny are destined for greatness. Powers or not, Reed tracks the creature to Monster Isle and he and his team go down into the bowels of the Earth. In other words, the Fantastic Four become the Challengers of the Unknown. Of course, things are a little more difficult without superhuman abilities. Reed gets his shoulder dislocated and Johnny can't flame on much more than a flare.
But Ben's still good for a football tackle, and Sue can still get herself ignored in the background. Events proceed as they did in our timeline, with only a few small differences. The team still gets split up and those captured by the Mole Man get an earful of his secret plan.
major difference between our FF and this one. When the monsters show up, these guys run rather than fight. Not that I blame them, especially with Mole Man's atomic bomb ticking away.
Well, that closes off Monster Isle and the Mole Man forever, just like in our world. The U.S. president tells these four they're... fantastic, and the Watcher schools us in how it's the man, not the powers, that make the hero, proving once again that nobody notices the woman in the team. The end. I mean, the beginning.
Books canceled as a result: Looks like the FF can continue regardless, but I doubt Ben Grimm would have carried either Marvel Two-in-One or his own series without powers.
These things happen: As early as FF #39, the Four have been losing their powers. They always get them back. Par for the course for any long-running superhero series.

Next week: What if Nova Had Not Given Up his Powers?
My guess: He'd still have a series today... Uhm, wait a minute...