Eyes Turned Skywards

[e of pi]

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."

--Commonly attributed to Leonardo da Vinci

Truth is Life and I have been working on this for a while, and we're finally ready to begin posting this. The below is a teaser for our new project, Eyes Turned Skywards. The first real post will follow in the next few days, and after that we're planning on a weekly posting schedule. Hope everyone enjoys this as much as Truth and I have enjoyed making it.

[Shevek23]

The teaser is hilarious, considering the conventional wisdom of our OTL space-fans who post here that the Shuttle was in retrospect, evil and dumb and everything would be so much better if we only didn't get caught by that tar-baby!

It's amazing how much greener the grass is in some other timeline!

[Redem]

That was a nice teaser, hope to see other presensation of that format or any variation of it

[Ariosto]

Don't see enough TL's of this nature, so it is a nice change. Looking forward to what you and Truth put together.

[truth is life]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

The teaser is hilarious, considering the conventional wisdom of our OTL space-fans who post here that the Shuttle was in retrospect, evil and dumb and everything would be so much better if we only didn't get caught by that tar-baby!

It's amazing how much greener the grass is in some other timeline!

Well, think of the '70s attitude towards the thing without ever being dosed by the cold shower of reality to wake up. It's not quite the same, but still fairly close.

Originally Posted by Redem

That was a nice teaser, hope to see other presensation of that format or any variation of it

We're planning on doing a couple of posts in this format later on, last time I checked at least. You can thank Jared for the idea--I got it from LORAG, ran it by e of pi, and we both thought it was a great way to introduce the TL.

[e of pi]

Originally Posted by truth is life

We're planning on doing a couple of posts in this format later on, last time I checked at least. You can thank Jared for the idea--I got it from LORAG, ran it by e of pi, and we both thought it was a great way to introduce the TL.

Yeah, it was fun to write, and hacking up screenshots to make it was pretty easy once I figured out what I needed. We do have a few more planned, but there aren't any others in the buffer, so it might be a few months before we get to another one. They have some of the same issue as a normal DBWI, in that it sounds forced if you cram too much exposition in, so they're really best as teasers like this, or to give insight into the feelings of those people inside the TL world.

[e of pi]

As promised, here's the next installment in Eyes Turned Skyward.



Eyes Turned Skyward, Post #2:

When Nixon won the 1968 Presidential election, the future of the US space program looked grim. Strongly identified with his hated rivals, Kennedy and Johnson, it was practically a symbol of his near-decade in the political wilderness. And yet...and yet...some element of the American psyche has made every president, from Eisenhower down to Clinton, seek not to destroy the program, but put their own stamp on it. Nixon was no different, and after briefly considering the interim Administrator Thomas Paine as the man to lead Nixon's transformation of the program, decided that the manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, George M. Low--the man, in short, responsible for making sure that the Apollo spacecraft would be a safe and reliable method of transporting men from Earth to the Moon--would be an ideal pick as only the third Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Low would serve into Carter's term, having a large impact impact on NASA, perhaps larger than the legendary James Webb.

Once confirmed as Administrator in mid-1969--just in time to see the fruition of his work at the ASPO in the triumph of Apollo 11--Low quickly proved a perceptive and far-seeing leader. Low realized that the techno-optimism that had driven the '50s and '60s was coming to a close, and the coming decade would be an era not of unbounded growth for the space program, as some at NASA hoped, but instead, as Jerry Brown would later put it, an era of limits. It was not just the war in Vietnam, nor the war on poverty, nor the war in the cities. Indeed, there was a growing opinion that technology was a war against the planet itself, that the high technology symbolized by a man walking on the Moon was fundamentally destructive and immoral, that it should be abandoned. To the extent possible, the mission of the Administrator at the start of the decade would be to convince Congress and the public that spaceflight could play an important role in all these problems, a role symbolized by the partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that was beginning the public weather satellite system. At the same time, with the success of the civil rights movement, the burgeoning women's rights movement, and the nascent gay rights movement, the all white male (and mostly test pilot) astronaut corps was increasingly out of step with the country. This, too, was damaging the space program, as the image of astronauts as elite heroes exploring a new frontier was slowly changing into a view of them as elitist jocks having fun at public expense. It was clear that the astronaut needed to be remade as a dedicated public servant, and a vital part of that would be including minorities and women in future astronaut groups. All this, too, would have to be done on a far smaller budget than had achieved lunar landings in less than a decade from the beginning of the program.

Post-Apollo planning had of course been in progress for some time, both within NASA itself and amongst all those outside of the Administration who favored spaceflight. Most, naturally enough, concentrated on the reuse of the capabilities developed during the Apollo program, such as the heavy-lift capacity of the Saturn V or the ability to land on the Moon demonstrated by the LM in July 1969. The efforts doing so were gathered under the heading of the Apollo Applications Program, which would see a series of increasingly advanced and long-term lunar missions and the launch of basic orbital stations during the early part of the decade, just following the basic Apollo flights. In the middle of the decade, a reusable logistics "space shuttle" and a corresponding deep-space "nuclear shuttle" would be developed, and then used to establish major stations on and around the Moon and in Earth orbit. This would be followed up in the 1980s by a mission to Mars utilizing the technology developed earlier. Such a project would require billions of dollars but would fully leverage the capabilities developed by Apollo. Many of the ideas were very clever in their reuse of existing technology, such as the "wet workshop" idea for basic space stations. A wet workshop was a Saturn IB upper stage launched into Earth orbit, emptied of its fuel, then pressurized and filled with equipment for a short-term mission by an astronaut crew, an audacious but brilliant plan to get a space station on the cheap. Nevertheless, despite such economies, AAP would be very expensive, and Nixon and Congress were sending out clear indications that such expense could not be sustained. Shortly after Low's appointment, Nixon had asked the National Aeronautics and Space Council, chaired by his Vice-President Spiro Agnew, to develop and present a plan for NASA's future. At first, this seemed like a golden opportunity to produce a plan that would continue America's advance in space indefinitely, especially considering Agnew's dedication to the prospect. However, shortly reality set it. With the Vietnam War still raging in Indochina and Johnson's massive and costly domestic agenda not on the cutting block, neither Nixon nor Congress showed any enthusiasm for an expensive space exploration program, with the latter continuing to cut back on investment in the nuclear rockets assumed at that time to be needed for trans-Mars voyaging even after Armstrong's triumphant first step. The message was clear to Low, and despite Agnew's energy he began to turn towards the plans proposed by the Administration and OMB.

[Timmy811]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

The teaser is hilarious, considering the conventional wisdom of our OTL space-fans who post here that the Shuttle was in retrospect, evil and dumb and everything would be so much better if we only didn't get caught by that tar-baby!

It's amazing how much greener the grass is in some other timeline!

Those people aren't especially in favor of building space stations either.

[Shevek23]

So sorry not to have kept up in realtime; between work and volunteerism-related exhaustion and an Internet freeze-up this morning, I haven't looked at AH at all since I believe Tuesday night.

I've been refining my Timberwind-based evil plan for the Single-Stage-to-orbit thread (BTW, I think if those things work, and no one worries about the various potentials for disaster, they could serve as bases for a real SSTO vehicle--but I still think that overall it would still prove far more sensible to use the same technologies to put payloads into orbit much more efficiently using disposable stages--however, recovering the nuclear engines, at least for reprocessing and waste disposal purposes!)

However I can't find my calculator, so I've been learning to estimate exponentials in my head. Typically I have neither scrap paper, reliable pens, nor time to even write things down--and when I do much of it is literally on the backs of envelopes! Then my pens die, this seems to be either a consequence of living in a high semidesert (Washoe County Nevada) or a personal jinx.

OK, so I continue to enjoy this TL while spectating. I think if there had been a real live active space program with American astronauts in orbit between my middle school and high school years--well, who knows, maybe I'd have been more focused on actually going to work for NASA. As things were OTL while waiting for the Shuttle my mentality was more soft-focused on the fantastic ships we ought to have eventually and the message was that the huge pointy rockets of my childhood were now old hat and obsolete.

So, a question inspired by some remarks in a product of those doldrum years of OTL--in Stardance Spider Robinson made the theme of people who can really make the full mental transition to operating in zero g (OK, I know it's technically "microgravity" everywhere but the dead center of mass of the object and that's only if there's no air drag or solar wind--sue me, it's effectively zero g on a human scale) being rather rare. He mentioned Owen Garriot of IIRC Skylab Mission 2 as an example, perhaps the only one to that date, of a person who became completely comfortable operating without visual cues implying a local (and uncontradicted) vertical, and freely shifting between differently oriented zones and having no problem with two or more rival "verticals." Garriot, said Robinson, quite enjoyed zero G and "three-dimensional thinking." (The book later ended with the hope that given time--years, decades--in zero G far larger numbers of people would eventually learn to make the same transition).

I believe your Skylab missions that correspond to ours OTL had the same crews; Garriot presumably had his good times on your second mission.

With more astronauts kicking around Skylab, do you suppose there'd be more insight into the nature of human mental adaptation to zero G?

For that matter in 1978 of OTL, when I believe Stardance was evolving from a short story to a novel, while a number of Soviet space stations (all smaller than Skylab) had flown and some cosmonaut missions had been extended to many months, information from those missions would not have flowed freely, and with less space to kick around in in any of the Salyuts I suppose the Russians had fewer chances to observe variations in human adaptation, and were focused on the obviously crucial questions of physical adaptation (and for the most part, how to stop it!) But in this timeline, a few more missions of US astronauts made it to Skylab and shared its spaces, most of which had been designed to provide a particular vertical reference. So they'd know more by the late 70s than we did.

So OTL with Mir and the ISS, have there been signs of this diversity of human response, with some people like poor Schweickart having an especially hard time, a norm of people who can handle it as long as there are visual cues that there is still some sort of up and down, and more cases like Garriot showing up who sometime in the course of the mission find they can do just fine without pretending some direction is up and are mentally at ease?

It seems to me that the modular nature of Mir and ISS tends to make it easy and automatic to design in local verticals--for one thing, the modules are not only designed but assembled on the surface of the Earth, where just for practical reasons of layout during construction we'd impose the actual vertical on the module. Then, when the modules get linked up, there may well be a deliberate policy of lining up the visual verticals of each module so that as much as possible, any line of sight even through several (and from footage I've seen, one can typically only see two or three at once--the one you are in plus the next ones up and down the chain) would be consistent. People would tend to think of the ISS as a flat array of modules laid out on the "ground" on pretty much one level--kind of like Bag End--"no going upstairs for the hobbit!"

Still there must be junctions where different visual verticals clash, and the way Mir was laid out this must have been more of an issue there.

In fact, do we get these 3 "tribes" of people, the ones who really dislike not having real gravity, the ones who get by with visual verticals (but probably would be uncomfortable where these clash and either avoid the locations where this happens or arrange visual screens to minimize the problem) and finally the ones who just start caroming around freely and find virtual verticality at best an irrelevance, and perhaps an annoying restriction? With I forget how many men and women spending some time up there, what has been the verdict? Do people tend to evolve out of the spacesick phase at least into comfortable-as-long-as-it-looks-Ok phase, given time, and given time do some of that middle majority get more adventurous and comfortable with orienting any which way that happens to be momentarily convenient?

[Hnau]

Just like to let you guys know I am following the timeline and liking its direction. I'm not too science/math-savvy and the space race is not my forte, so, sorry if I can't give more constructive criticism.

Originally Posted by e of pi

That is roughly my thinking as well, but even there the high engine mass means you may not see an improvement in payload. After all, the burnout mass in the rocket equation is payload plus the rocket mass. For instance, an ISP increase from 420 s to 900 s in an Earth Departure Burn with delta-v of 4 km/s will see a mass ratio drop from 2.59 to 1.56. However, if the atomic engine craft masses anything more than 1.66 times the chemical engine craft (which is well within the range of the possible) then the chemical craft will actually have a smaller initial mass in LEO for the same payload to the transfer orbit. The higher burnout mass of the atomic engine cancels completely the benefits of the higher mass ratio.

So, sorry to go a little off-topic with this, but is there any situation in which building a nuclear thermal rocket would be cost-effective? Or is it really just a waste of investment? Is there any way the space race could have seen them?

[e of pi]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

I've been refining my Timberwind-based evil plan for the Single-Stage-to-orbit thread (BTW, I think if those things work, and no one worries about the various potentials for disaster, they could serve as bases for a real SSTO vehicle--but I still think that overall it would still prove far more sensible to use the same technologies to put payloads into orbit much more efficiently using disposable stages--however, recovering the nuclear engines, at least for reprocessing and waste disposal purposes!)

However I can't find my calculator, so I've been learning to estimate exponentials in my head. Typically I have neither scrap paper, reliable pens, nor time to even write things down--and when I do much of it is literally on the backs of envelopes! Then my pens die, this seems to be either a consequence of living in a high semidesert (Washoe County Nevada) or a personal jinx.

Google has a pretty nice calculator built in (due to rocket equation calculations, I now get about a hundred "you recently searched for e^((4000km/s)/(421 s* 9.81 m/s^2))" things when I start one...), and Excel's can handle it as well. Excel's is nice because you can then use formulas to do multistage or multiburn missions (like a lunar mission: what do you need to get back to Lunar Orbit, so what does you descent stage carry as payload other than that ascent stage and fuel).

I really believe chemical TSTO makes more sense than nuclear SSTO, especially since chemical TSTO can be done with large margins, while getting any payload out of a nuclear SSTO is kind of marginal, especially with thrust levels.

I believe your Skylab missions that correspond to ours OTL had the same crews; Garriot presumably had his good times on your second mission.

Garriot did fly on Skylab 3 as OTL, though it was a few months later than OTL due to Apollo 18. He's likely to fly to Spacelab, since OTL he stuck on until STS-9 to fly again in '83.

With more astronauts kicking around Skylab, do you suppose there'd be more insight into the nature of human mental adaptation to zero G?

Well, there's only been 2 more missions than OTL to date in the TL: Apollo 18 and Skylab 5. The real differences in US flight rates are still to come in about '78, since the Saturn IC first stage is taking its sweet time in development. However, it may interest you that Rusty Schweickart was the commander of the Skylab 5 mission (as backup commander of Skylab 2, he rotated into the slot) and he was sort of the prime guinea pig for space sickness OTL which is why he didn't get a chance to fly again in Apollo, they basically stole him for ground research during prime training periods.

For that matter in 1978 of OTL, when I believe Stardance was evolving from a short story to a novel, while a number of Soviet space stations (all smaller than Skylab) had flown and some cosmonaut missions had been extended to many months, information from those missions would not have flowed freely, and with less space to kick around in in any of the Salyuts I suppose the Russians had fewer chances to observe variations in human adaptation, and were focused on the obviously crucial questions of physical adaptation (and for the most part, how to stop it!) But in this timeline, a few more missions of US astronauts made it to Skylab and shared its spaces, most of which had been designed to provide a particular vertical reference. So they'd know more by the late 70s than we did.

So OTL with Mir and the ISS, have there been signs of this diversity of human response, with some people like poor Schweickart having an especially hard time, a norm of people who can handle it as long as there are visual cues that there is still some sort of up and down, and more cases like Garriot showing up who sometime in the course of the mission find they can do just fine without pretending some direction is up and are mentally at ease?

As I said, the real differences in US flights won't come until Spacelab in '78, so it'll be the early 80s before we really know a ton more than OTL. However, I feel some need to defend Rusty: in my understanding it wasn't that he was unusually susceptible so much as that he made some bad decisions that delayed his adaption period. In an attempt to minimize the symptoms, he avoided rapid head movements (which read differently to the inner ear in space, and essentially have to be re-adapted to) and avoided the LEM (with its local down at 180 degrees to the CSM). Then, they go to get the LEM ready, he gets busy and starts moving his head around a lot and all of a sudden the fact that avoiding the symptoms also delays adaption comes to bite him on the butt and he gets sick. By the next day, he was feeling much better and the mission could go ahead, but he'd gotten a reputation he never had a chance OTL to fix since he missed Apollo missions spending time with the docs working out stuff to mitigate space sickness in the future.

As to your question about whether there are different "tribes" of people in terms of adaption to zero-g...I don't know. If you're interested, you might try looking around the NASA Technical Reports Server and reading up on zero-g adapation research yourself.

It seems to me that the modular nature of Mir and ISS tends to make it easy and automatic to design in local verticals--for one thing, the modules are not only designed but assembled on the surface of the Earth, where just for practical reasons of layout during construction we'd impose the actual vertical on the module. Then, when the modules get linked up, there may well be a deliberate policy of lining up the visual verticals of each module so that as much as possible, any line of sight even through several (and from footage I've seen, one can typically only see two or three at once--the one you are in plus the next ones up and down the chain) would be consistent. People would tend to think of the ISS as a flat array of modules laid out on the "ground" on pretty much one level--kind of like Bag End--"no going upstairs for the hobbit!"

Well, the Russian segment is largely in one plane, but it's actually the vertical plane: modules stretch up and down from a central line of modules. the US segment is more horizontal, but there are modules that stretch above and below the plan: Kibo's storage module goes up, and the PMM and Cupola stretch below Node 1 and Node 3 respectively. However, Node 3 was altered from the originally planned location on Node 1 Nadir (down) to the installed location of Node 1 port because of issues with verticals, especially since it was going to see a lot of travel. It limits the usefulness of the module for future expansion, but since the other modules that were to berth to it were cancelled, it was done anyway.

With I forget how many men and women spending some time up there, what has been the verdict? (1) Do people tend to evolve out of the spacesick phase at least into comfortable-as-long-as-it-looks-Ok phase, given time, and (2) given time do some of that middle majority get more adventurous and comfortable with orienting any which way that happens to be momentarily convenient?

(1) Roughly, that is my understanding. Space sickness is more technically known these days as Space Adaption Syndrome specifically because it goes away after a few days of letting your body re-orient.

(2) As I understand, yes, but if you're really interested you should dig into the NTRS I linked to earlier and look for more detailed information from people who spend their careers studying this for real, not just the off-the-cuff impressions of an engineer in progress.

Originally Posted by Hnau

Just like to let you guys know I am following the timeline and liking its direction. I'm not too science/math-savvy and the space race is not my forte, so, sorry if I can't give more constructive criticism.

Glad to hear you like it.

So, sorry to go a little off-topic with this, but is there any situation in which building a nuclear thermal rocket would be cost-effective? Or is it really just a waste of investment? Is there any way the space race could have seen them?

Even Winchell Chung (the Atomic rockets webmaster) thinks solid-core NTR is pretty marginal in terms of being a "good trade-off" for chemical, and especially for launch from the ground. You really have to get to liquid or gas-core reactors before the ISP advantages can consistently outweigh the issues of added mass in reactor and shielding. So...my off-the-cuff answer would be "No and no."