Challenge : A plausible way to recreate the universe of 2001 : A Space Odyssey ?
- Thread starter Petike
- Start date
LOLZ
I didn't mean the overall storyline, but the space tech they use (that is, people of Clarke's 2001, not the apes)...
ohhh that gona be difficult
so wat Space Hardware has 2001 (for those who don't know)
United States Astonautics Agency 1999 Hardware (from 2001'novel):
5 Big orbital Space Stations (or the Fifth station in use by US)
one Lunar Colonie and several Outpost
one Mars Outpost
and fleet of Spaceships, Satellite, Rockets and Shuttles
there Commercial Spaceflight see the PAN AM Shuttle in Movie.
history ?
one - No Vietnam War
two - a contiguity Spaceprogram over Decades
best way is Kennedy brothers successively take over the office
1961-1968 J.F.K, 1969-1976 Bobby, 1980-1988 Ted
its unlikey but give this TL 27 years !
in 1968 NASA Marshall Center proposed a NASA space program for 1980's
with Space Base with 48 men, GEO station with 24 men
Moonbase with 48 men and manned mars flights with 6 men
Timeline:
1960s Apollo
1970s Apollo Applications Program (SKYLAB, Lunar mission)
1980s Space Stations, Moonbase, manned Mars flights
1990s build of Infrastructure on Moon and a Marsbase
2000s Manned Jupiter flights.
so wat Space Hardware has 2001 (for those who don't know)
United States Astonautics Agency 1999 Hardware (from 2001'novel):
5 Big orbital Space Stations (or the Fifth station in use by US)
one Lunar Colonie and several Outpost
one Mars Outpost
and fleet of Spaceships, Satellite, Rockets and Shuttles
there Commercial Spaceflight see the PAN AM Shuttle in Movie.
history ?
one - No Vietnam War
two - a contiguity Spaceprogram over Decades
best way is Kennedy brothers successively take over the office
1961-1968 J.F.K, 1969-1976 Bobby, 1980-1988 Ted
its unlikey but give this TL 27 years !
in 1968 NASA Marshall Center proposed a NASA space program for 1980's
with Space Base with 48 men, GEO station with 24 men
Moonbase with 48 men and manned mars flights with 6 men
Timeline:
1960s Apollo
1970s Apollo Applications Program (SKYLAB, Lunar mission)
1980s Space Stations, Moonbase, manned Mars flights
1990s build of Infrastructure on Moon and a Marsbase
2000s Manned Jupiter flights.
Yeah... Seriously :
THIS TL NEEDS A LOT OF WANKAGE !!!
But your suggestions partly mirror Baxter's Voyage and Titan (until about the 1980s), which is pretty intriguing...
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You need no or a much shorter Vietnam war. And likely no Oil Crisis of '70es. (although this will hurt Soveit ecconomy much, but maybe things go different for them with Krushchev remaining instead of Brezhnev) And more space competition from Soviets. Khrushchev stays in power for several more years. Korolev survives his surgery and either makes a N1 that can work or admits is hopeless and allows Glushko to start building Vulkan (Energia predecessor that never existed outside paper IRL) by the end of '60es.
For American political scene, its tough to tell. Even if Kennedy isnt assasinated, we dont know whether he would have been reelected. And for his brother to win presidency afterwards... JFKs presidency would have to be flawless.
So a rough sketch of the timeline. Appollo 11 as IRL. Appolo program not shortended, Appolo Aplications program not cut. With Saturn V is continued use it is improved to be a more modern more efficient heavy lift launcher. With it the shuttle can be a small and affordable space plane just for crew launches. That makes it far cheaper than in OTL.
Soviets get a heavy lift vehicle by 1970. and have a succesfull Moon landing by 1971-2. They go both for Salut (to parry USA Skylab) and decide to go for a moonbase, to make it up for the fact that they were second on the Moon.
Basicaly, both space programs go as smoothly as possible following optimistic IRL plans. By 1980. both USA and USSR have Skylab and Salut succesors on orbit, and are plannig a modular MIR type stations. Both are planing manned Lunar outposts, with one having actualy launched the hardware. Spaceplanes for crew transportation are finishing development. And expandable launchers are being continously refined and pushed for price efficiency.
Buildup of hardware and infrastructure troughout '80es. In '90es first GEO manned outposts. (Although there is no need or reason for large number of GEO manned outposts Clarke always predicted. Its irronical, since he was a radar engineer in WWII he had great distrust of electronics, and couldnt belive complex enough systems for big GEO relay stations could function unmanned. With weather and telco GEO satelites from IRL, there is very little need for GEO manned space stations)
By end of '90es first Mars mission is launched, succeds and returns. And TMA1 is discovered on the Moon Since, book and "Lost worlds of 2001" clearly stated. They werent ready for Jupiter/Saturn. They were only forced to figure out how to accomplish something that difficult becasue a freaking alien artifact on the Moon transmited something in that direction.
Edit. RE: Petike's post. While his version is stretching it a bit, my is a bit more balanced. AND AND AND. Without Vietnam and Oil Crisis and recession of the times. And with both space programs running with far less bureaucratic waste and inefficiency, with silly things as Shuttle cost lies being seen on time. It was possible, barely, but possible. There was no scientific problem to reaching Mars in 1980'es or '90es. It would have cost a lot, and with current inefficiencies in space program it would have been directly unaffordable. But with a well managed program all engineering difficulties and issues could have been solved. NASA personnel saying "we don't have scientific capacity to send people to Mars" is 101% just sower grapes, consoling themselves that NASA didn't do anything for last 30 years. Radiotion shielding is possible, just heavy, lander suitable for Mars is possible... it all comes down to mass in LEO needed for a sucessfull Mars run. Just $$$ or waiting to build a LV that doesnt eat money for fuel each launch.
For American political scene, its tough to tell. Even if Kennedy isnt assasinated, we dont know whether he would have been reelected. And for his brother to win presidency afterwards... JFKs presidency would have to be flawless.
So a rough sketch of the timeline. Appollo 11 as IRL. Appolo program not shortended, Appolo Aplications program not cut. With Saturn V is continued use it is improved to be a more modern more efficient heavy lift launcher. With it the shuttle can be a small and affordable space plane just for crew launches. That makes it far cheaper than in OTL.
Soviets get a heavy lift vehicle by 1970. and have a succesfull Moon landing by 1971-2. They go both for Salut (to parry USA Skylab) and decide to go for a moonbase, to make it up for the fact that they were second on the Moon.
Basicaly, both space programs go as smoothly as possible following optimistic IRL plans. By 1980. both USA and USSR have Skylab and Salut succesors on orbit, and are plannig a modular MIR type stations. Both are planing manned Lunar outposts, with one having actualy launched the hardware. Spaceplanes for crew transportation are finishing development. And expandable launchers are being continously refined and pushed for price efficiency.
Buildup of hardware and infrastructure troughout '80es. In '90es first GEO manned outposts. (Although there is no need or reason for large number of GEO manned outposts Clarke always predicted. Its irronical, since he was a radar engineer in WWII he had great distrust of electronics, and couldnt belive complex enough systems for big GEO relay stations could function unmanned. With weather and telco GEO satelites from IRL, there is very little need for GEO manned space stations)
By end of '90es first Mars mission is launched, succeds and returns. And TMA1 is discovered on the Moon
Since, book and "Lost worlds of 2001" clearly stated. They werent ready for Jupiter/Saturn. They were only forced to figure out how to accomplish something that difficult becasue a freaking alien artifact on the Moon transmited something in that direction.Edit. RE: Petike's post. While his version is stretching it a bit, my is a bit more balanced. AND AND AND. Without Vietnam and Oil Crisis and recession of the times. And with both space programs running with far less bureaucratic waste and inefficiency, with silly things as Shuttle cost lies being seen on time. It was possible, barely, but possible. There was no scientific problem to reaching Mars in 1980'es or '90es. It would have cost a lot, and with current inefficiencies in space program it would have been directly unaffordable. But with a well managed program all engineering difficulties and issues could have been solved. NASA personnel saying "we don't have scientific capacity to send people to Mars" is 101% just sower grapes, consoling themselves that NASA didn't do anything for last 30 years. Radiotion shielding is possible, just heavy, lander suitable for Mars is possible... it all comes down to mass in LEO needed for a sucessfull Mars run. Just $$$ or waiting to build a LV that doesnt eat money for fuel each launch.
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Hendryk
Banned
Indeed, that would require a POD some 5 million years ago, not to mention ASB intervention--after all, the beginning of the movie is an ASB scenario, namely "WI an ASB planted a perfectly rectangular monolithic slab where a tribe of protohuman primates would find it?"I didn't mean the overall storyline, but the space tech they use (that is, people of Clarke's 2001, not the apes)...
BTW, does the USSR still have to be around in this challenge?
This one change won't bring out HAL or hibernation chambers among other things, but even more defense spending on space issues might be one factor. The attitudes of both Soviet and US government towards ballistic missile defense needs to be more favourable. This will in turn transform into need of more heavy-lift rockets to bring various space battle stations etc. into orbit.
After all, Soviets tried to deploy their battle station technological demonstrator with Energia in late 1980's:
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/polyus.htm
With much larger space sector in existence at the end of the Cold War there's more political capital to keep the pork barrels rolling, leading to more ambitious projects.
For the sequel 2010 to happen, the USSR must still be around. But the challenge here has two parts.
First, the is the space program that will reach Mars by the 1990's and set permanent space stations into orbit. The scenarios presented by Michel Van and grdja83, even if extended out later, build possible cases. After all, forty years after the story, we still think the first missions to Mars and beyond will look very much like those depicted in the movie.
Now, the ASB part of the story is the notion of rectangular monoliths and extraterrestrial life on Europa. The aliens are not requisite for the space program. However unlikely their existence, it has not been disproven.
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Or simply:
1970...
nasa dude 1: Omg lol I found cheat codes for the universe.
nasa dude 2: OMG let's try.
AH solved!
I'd add:
mid-1970s Soviets deploy N1A1 heavy lift vehicle
1980 Alt. design for U. S. space shuttle and building of US and Soviet
space stations/Luner/Mars bases
mid-1980s early development and deployment of SCRAM jet engine
mid 1990s development of Hibernation tech
Late 1990s development of heavy nuclear rocket engines for deep space
(Personally, I'd just shorten the Vietnam War, ending it in mid '60s) Basicly, the US/Soviet Space Race gets a second wind when the N1 upgrades lets Soviets to continue to compete. It looks good though; very workable.
Oooo, I like how this thread has taken off... Hope I don't kill it by this post.
I like all your ideas guys, I only have one thing to remark :
We're doing a scenario similiar to the Space Odyssey series, not necessarily a recreation. So, you can feel free to scrap the Monoliths, the Firstborn, the Australopitecuses, the whole alien intervention in human evolution hypothesis... you don't even have to come up with fully working A.I. supercomputers like HAL 9000...
I only want to see similiar space tech and similiarly daring and rapid space-faring-and-colonization-wank as seen in Clarke's series... The Discovery One, the Alexei Leonov, the Orion III shuttle - less darn philosophy, and more of the cool and awesome spacecraft designs !
That's all.
*beep* *beep* *beep* *breath* My God, it's full of stars... *beep*
Muhehehehehe, so true !
Hope I don't kill it by this post. I like all your ideas guys, I only have one thing to remark :
We're doing a scenario similiar to the Space Odyssey series, not necessarily a recreation. So, you can feel free to scrap the Monoliths, the Firstborn, the Australopitecuses, the whole alien intervention in human evolution hypothesis... you don't even have to come up with fully working A.I. supercomputers like HAL 9000...
I only want to see similiar space tech and similiarly daring and rapid space-faring-and-colonization-wank as seen in Clarke's series... The Discovery One, the Alexei Leonov, the Orion III shuttle - less darn philosophy, and more of the cool and awesome spacecraft designs !
That's all.
*beep* *beep* *beep* *breath* My God, it's full of stars... *beep*
Or simply: 1970...
nasa dude 1: Omg lol I found cheat codes for the universe.
nasa dude 2: OMG let's try.
AH solved!
Muhehehehehe, so true !
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Oooo, I like how this thread has taken off...
I only want to see similiar space tech and similiarly daring and rapid space-faring-and-colonization-wank as seen in Clarke's series... The Discovery One, the Alexei Leonov, the Orion III shuttle - less darn philosophy, and more of the cool and awesome spacecraft designs !
That's all.
1968 NASA Marshall Center proposal ist best way for this TL,
also know as The Space Task Group Plan of 1969
(Nixon play with idea in 1969 but he pushes the decision until 1973 and take instead only the Shuttle.)
The Integrated Plan necessary Hardware :
Space Shuttle
Improved Saturn V (heavy Lift)
Propulsion Modules with NERVA nuclear engine
Chemical Tugs (also used as lunar lander)
Orbital Fuel Depo for refuel Propulsion Modules and Tugs
Space Station Module (also used for Mars mission and Lunarbase Module)
Mars Excursion Module
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vonn1969.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/spaation.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/spaebase.htm
but this very expensive program
simelar to 90 Day Study of 1989 (also same Hardware, but nor NERVA)
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/90dstudy.htm
that had a $ 258 billion prise tag
so congress and Senat say NO WAY !
also back in 1969 we will hear same
thats $ 52 billion in 1968, the Apollo cost were $ 24 billion in 1968
(vietnam cost around $ 100 billion in 1968 dollars)
so how to get the congress and Senate to approve this project?
Archibald
Banned
Kill Kennedy in 1963, but not Diem (tyran of south vietnam). Diem is of no interest for anybody, aside for us... because if you let this guy head of South Vietnam until, says, 1965, you can probably avoid the Vietnam war.
No vietnam war, less moral crisis, Johnson second term, up to 1973.
In 1965 Von braun and Webb trap Johnson into a Mars /Venus flyby for 1975, as the ultimate Apollo Application Program. Chemical, flyby.
Then in 1969, with Johnson re-elected, lunar landing accomplished, Mars flyby on the way, push for a nuclear mission to Mars using the Nerva, and the whole STG plan detailed by Michel above...
No idea of who would be president in 1972, though...
No vietnam war, less moral crisis, Johnson second term, up to 1973.
In 1965 Von braun and Webb trap Johnson into a Mars /Venus flyby for 1975, as the ultimate Apollo Application Program. Chemical, flyby.
Then in 1969, with Johnson re-elected, lunar landing accomplished, Mars flyby on the way, push for a nuclear mission to Mars using the Nerva, and the whole STG plan detailed by Michel above...
No idea of who would be president in 1972, though...
Oooo, I like how this thread has taken off...
I like all your ideas guys, I only have one thing to remark :
We're doing a scenario similiar to the Space Odyssey series, not necessarily a recreation. So, you can feel free to scrap the Monolits, the Firstborn, the Australopitecuses, the whole alien intervention in human evolution hypothesis... you don't even have to come up with fully working A.I. supercomputers like HAL 9000...
I only want to see similiar space tech and similiarly daring and rapid space-faring-and-colonization-wank as seen in Clarke's series... The Discovery One, the Alexei Leonov, the Orion III shuttle - less darn philosophy, and more of the cool and awesome spacecraft designs !
That's all.
*beep* *beep* *beep* *breath* My God, it's full of stars... *beep*
Muhehehehehe, so true !
Well, if you want rotating stations (complete station launched by one Saturn V).
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/selation.htm
There was also a paper in the December 1991 issue of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society by Michael A Minovitch of Phaser Telepropulsion Inc proposing the building of rotating 2001 type stations 100 metres diameter for at least 150 crew by using automatic wrapping machines rotating round inflated Kevlar torus’ to wind thin layers of aluminium until the required thickness had been made.
The rotating toroidal living section would have a major and minor radii of 100m and 2m while the two central column cylinders with labs etc and constructed in the same way would each be 100m long x 10m diameter. The two column cylinders would connect into a pre-fabricated central hub into which three spokes 100m long x 4m diameter also constructed in the same way would be fitted to join the hub to the toroidal living section.
The station also served as the basis for a 'cycling' ship and would take about 10 HLLV (assuming 100 tons/launch) or 14 Shuttle-C launches and 1 STS flight with minimal EVA.
Costs were about $400 billion for an Earth orbit station, a Mars orbit station and a cycling ship
"2001" was released in 1968 (both the book and movie). So the POD should be post-1968.
To get all of these machines created, we need a need to. Space is big, and empty. Why go there? My reccomendation is have a 1950's POD that makes the Soviet Space program more succesful, and with that success they get the idea to try and put weapons in space. When the Americans get word of this, it balloons the space race x10.
I never understood that. More than 50% of that price was contingency, so it would have likely been only case in history where NASA overestimated costs, just to be sure, and shot itself in the foot doing that. Full program (entire SEI) was $450BN, with similar portion of it being contingency, for everything including kitchen sink over next 40 years in space. With some reorganization it could have likely been done with increasing NASA from 0.5% to ~1% of Fed budget.
in case of the The Space Task Group Plan of 1969
use Apollo Hardware wat save alot development cost
but there still NERVA, Space Station Module; Shuttle and MEM development cost
and Build, Launch and operational cost.
so $450BN is a realistc price tag, wat kill the program SEI (aka 90 Day Study)
but SEI had to be a 27 year program makes $17BN per year cost
that litte detail was overlook by the congress and Senate back in 1990...