Apollo Program Continues

I was watching a show on Discovery Science the other days about orbital habitats etc. One of the talking heads stated that if the Apollo Program and it's successors had not been curtailed in the early 70's then there would have been a permanent manned base on Mars by 1991.

Firstly, how likely do people think this is, given the space program is continued, and what would be necessary for it to be continued??
 

Alcuin

Banned
Roadwarrior said:
I was watching a show on Discovery Science the other days about orbital habitats etc. One of the talking heads stated that if the Apollo Program and it's successors had not been curtailed in the early 70's then there would have been a permanent manned base on Mars by 1991.

Firstly, how likely do people think this is, given the space program is continued, and what would be necessary for it to be continued??

My mum still has some PG Tips cards from the seventies (a series called "The Race Into Space". That had the Mars Mission scheduled for 1982.

For it to have continued, the Russians would have had to step up their own programme. There's nothing like a rival to spur them on.
 

Glen

Moderator
I'd say we would have kept going to the moon with a continued Apollo program, small moonbase is a real possibility.

Mars...I doubt we'd be there yet, unless we had an 'Apollo-like' program devoted to going there, rather than just continuing Apollo.
 
If the Soviets manage to get a man on the moon, the USA would outspend and outdo them and establish a moonbase. If the Soviets succeed at that, the US will go to Mars. Then we will watch if the Soviets can afford to do that. If they do that as well, look out for those American space stations mining the Jovian moons.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Apollo was a dead end. It had been designed to reach a single goal, in which it succeeded beyond expectations, but it HAD no follow up program. There was NOTHING waiting in the wings to build on the success. In order to have the glowing future of bases on the Moon, Mars & large permanent orbital bases the follow up program would have needed to be sold in the mid-'60's. Nothing was even shopped. Without the USSR showing any interest in reaching the moon once the American's won the race, the political will simply didn't exist to keep drilling holes in the sky. It was a tragedy, but it was also just about a certainy.

The shuttle program, had NASA gotten what it originally requested, was the next logical step. It would have allowed for the construction of a true orbital base. Without such a base, it is nearly impossible to see how a lunar base, much less a Martian habitat, could be maintained at any reasonable cost. The Shuttle program, as originally laid out, would have had permanent bases on the Moon by 2000.

Unfortunately, NASA got Congress' version of the Shuttle since they lacked a sufficiently powerful sponsor in the Senate & House to get the full version built. Congress saaved some bucks (Of course it also killed two crews, but that's okay, none of them were related to members of Congress.) and NASA figured it would go back & get the full version, with an updated orbiter, in a few years. That, as we all know, never happened. Now, we are going to toss everything we learned from the shuttle into the dustbin & start all over.

Can anyone say "failure"?
 
Sorry if the title is misleading. Creative block at the time of posting.

Calbear - pretty much confirmed my suspicions, thanks.
 
Roadwarrior said:
I was watching a show on Discovery Science the other days about orbital habitats etc. One of the talking heads stated that if the Apollo Program and it's successors had not been curtailed in the early 70's then there would have been a permanent manned base on Mars by 1991.

Firstly, how likely do people think this is, given the space program is continued, and what would be necessary for it to be continued??
There are a number of novels out that explore this scenario, including The Tranquility Alternative, Voyage, and--of course--my own Children of Apollo.

My guess is, exempting the PODs in the forementioned books, a somewhat different political situation in the mid to late 60s would be necessary. Either no or a less controversial Vietnam would be necessary, IMHO.
 
Greetings,

The Americans did have a follow-up on paper to the Saturn V Calbear. It was called 'Nova'. IIRC it was going to be about 30% larger than the Saturn V as it had 8 of the main engines for the first stage. I think that something was mentioned about the first stage not being released until the Nova was about to leave the atmosphere, which would allow the second and third stage boosters to potentially give the vessel the range to reach the moon faster or with more supplies (maybe both. I can't remember. It has been a while since I saw the articles).

Regards,

Khib Yusa
 

Tielhard

Banned
Ah! what dreams we had when I was growing up. In the early 1970s NASA had very detailed plans for going to Mars in 1986 using two NERVA powered spacecraft in tandem. This was before Apollo died with a wimper.

The Apollo programme was intended to run out to Apollo 20 it was halted to save money after Apollo 17. One of the remaining Saturn V's was used to loft Skylab the world's second space station. The other two complete human rated rockets and I think one reserve are now expensive lawn ornaments in various parts of the USA. The one at the KSC on Canaveral has been tarted up and museumified it looks beautiful but it will never fly.

So the answer to the question is that no, three more Apollo flights will not a moonbase make.
 
Sea Dragon might have had a look in but once funding started drying up....

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm

Orbital launch vehicle. Year: 1962. Family: Truax. Country: USA. Status: Design 1962.


Sea Dragon was a two-stage design of 1962 capable of putting 1.2 million pounds (550 tonnes) into low Earth orbit. The concept was to achieve minimum launch costs through lower development and production costs. This meant accepting a larger booster with a lower performance propulsion system and higher stage dead weight then traditional NASA and USAF designs. The first stage had a single pressure fed, thrust chamber of 36 million kgf thrust, burning LOX/Kerosene. The second stage was ‘considerably smaller’ (thrust only 6.35 million kgf!) and burned LOX/LH2. The complete vehicle was 23 m in diameter and 150 m long. The all-up weight was 18,000 tonnes. The launch vehicle would be fuelled with RP-1 kerosene in port, then towed horizontally to a launch point in the open ocean. It would then be filled with cryogenic liquid oxygen and hydrogen from tankers or produced by electrolysis of sea water by a nuclear aircraft carrier (such as the CVN Enterprise in the painting). After fuelling, the tanks at the launcher base would be flooded, and the vehicle would reach a vertical position in the open ocean. Launch would follow. The concept was proven with tests of the earlier Sea Bee and Sea Horse vehicles. Aside from the baseline two stage expendable version, a single-stage-to-orbit reusable vehicle with a plug nozzle was designed. Costs to low earth orbit were estimated to be between $60/kg and $600/kg - eg one fourth that of the Saturn V or less.

Stage one used liquid nitrogen to force the propellants into the engine. At ignition, combustion chamber pressure was 20 atmospheres, and kerosene was forced into the chamber at a pressure of 32 atmospheres and liquid oxygen at 17 atmospheres. By burnout 81 seconds later combustion chamber pressure had declined to 14 atmospheres, kerosene feed pressure to 20 atmospheres, and liquid oxygen pressure to 8.5 atmospheres. At burnout the stage had reached a velocity of 1.8 km/second at an altitude of 40 km and a range of 33 km. After separation the stage would impact the ocean 290 km downrange (one alternate was recovery and reuse of the stage). Losses due to gravity and drag were minimised by the high 2:1 thrust-to-weight ratio and low drag losses (deceleration at max q was about 0.2 G’s ) resulting from the large size of the booster.

Stage two had a burn time of 260 seconds and a low constant combustion chamber pressure of 7 atmospheres. The stage achieved a total delta V of 5.8 km/second, shutting down at orbital velocity at an altitude of 230 km and 940 km downrange from the launch point. A significant feature of the concept was the use of an expandable nozzle exit cone. This increased the area ratio of the nozzle from 7:1 to 27:1 when deployed. Initial tests showed considerable promise, but development ceased because of lack of in-house funding. This concept was later fully developed under the solid rocket Peacekeeper program.

The design was reviewed with Todd Shipyards, who concluded that it was well within their capabilities, and not too unlike making a submarine hull. 8 mm thick maraging steel was used, similar to the Aerojet 260 inch solid motor of the time. NASA Marshall gave the Aerojet designs to TRW for evaluation. TRW fully confirmed Aerojet's costs and engineering, a great surprise to both TRW and NASA. Aerojet was considering purchasing Sudden Ranch as a launch site for Sea Dragon. This property included several kilometres of coastline between Santa Barbara and Vandenberg AFB. This was the only site on the continental United States that could launch directly into a polar orbit without overflying populated areas (and was later incorporated into Vandenberg).
But this came just as Apollo was being cut back and the Viet Nam war was eating an ever greater amount of the US budget. NASA dissolved their Future Projects Branch (dropping almost all the manned Mars landing work). Prospects for Sea Dragon essentially disappeared, and Aerojet could no longer fund it on IR&D.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
CalBear said:
Apollo was a dead end. It had been designed to reach a single goal, in which it succeeded beyond expectations, but it HAD no follow up program.

This is not entirely true. During the Apollo era, NASA did develop plans to establish a base on the Moon by 1980 and send a manned expedition to Mars by 1990. The fact that these plans never went beyond the planning stage is Nixon's fault.

When I worked for the NASA Oral History Project, I interviewed several engineers who had been involved in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. Many of them worked on development projects for a Moonbase, including one who was involved in designing the fuel cell power system.

All of these guys, who were in a position to know, told me that we would today have permanent outposts on the Moon and Mars if the 1968 election had gone differently. Although they were straight-laced conservatives to a man, they blamed Nixon for killing off the program.
 

Glen

Moderator
Here's an interesting question....

....WI Nixon had decided differently and the ambitious plans of the Space Program continued....

....and the Soviets tried to keep up....

....could the Soviet Union at some point have collapsed economically from the increased spending on their SPACE PROGRAM?:eek:
 
If the Soviets don't want: Maybe China goes a different way, Mao decides to send a man to the moon instead of his Culture Revolution (maybe we have to let him die for that), and with the new competition, the US have to come up with something new...
 
The idea was for the space shuttle to be part of a group of vehicles that allowed a permanent manned station. A lunar base, and a manned Mars mission.

The vehicles were

1) The space shuttle
2) permanent space station
3) nuclear powered orbital transfer stage
4) large lunar lander
5) mars lander.

Thus, in this scenario you would have the space shuttle taking the large lunar lander to the space station where it would be linked to the nuclear powered orbital transfer stage which would propel it to the moon and back for long stays.

For Mars missions you would have the Mars lander linked up to a space station module (which would serve as the mission module for the mission) and the both of them would be propelled to Mars by the orbital transfer stage.
 
@ PMN1: Aaaah, Sea Dragon. It looks wonderful, doesn't it? The description is almost like a pulp cartoon, or a steampunk vision of what a rocket ship should be.
"The design was reviewed with Todd Shipyards, who concluded that it was well within their capabilities, and not too unlike making a submarine hull. 8 mm thick maraging steel was used, similar to the Aerojet 260 inch solid motor of the time."
Mmmmm... big space submarine...
 
This is not entirely true. During the Apollo era, NASA did develop plans to establish a base on the Moon by 1980 and send a manned expedition to Mars by 1990. The fact that these plans never went beyond the planning stage is Nixon's fault.

When I worked for the NASA Oral History Project, I interviewed several engineers who had been involved in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. Many of them worked on development projects for a Moonbase, including one who was involved in designing the fuel cell power system.

All of these guys, who were in a position to know, told me that we would today have permanent outposts on the Moon and Mars if the 1968 election had gone differently. Although they were straight-laced conservatives to a man, they blamed Nixon for killing off the program.

Why did Nixon "kill the program"? It must of been more than because he was anti-space exploration or anti-space because Kennedy and the Democrats were for space exploration. What would President Humphery have done differently w/the space program?
 

Riain

Banned
I think it's a fallacy to say Apollo was a dead end, the moon race maybe, but the hardware was excellent and had a lot of development and mission potential. The developed hardware could have supported long term moon stays/bases, permamently-manned highly capable space stations, manned exploration of the 2 nearest planets and serious robot exploration of the outer giants. All this from rockets, spacecraft and ground facilities which are already developed and don't need big dollars spent on them to achieve the results.

The next best I think is the Shuttle, but even in its mooted heavy lift versions doesn't match the capability of the Saturn V let alone its developments. This lets it do some good stuff in earth orbit but not much else.

G3 and Energia/Buran haven't achieved what the Saturn or the Shuttle have, so the only Soviet/Russian alternative is the Proton, and I don't think anyone would consider this as the rocket to conquer Earth space and explore solar space.
 
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