AH Challenge: Man on Mars by 1985

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have either the United States or the Soviet Union place a man on Mars by 1985 with a POD no earlier than 1965. Bonus points for sustained presence after the First Landing. Bonus points for a Soviet Moon Landing.
 
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have either the United States or the Soviet Union place a man on Mars by 1985 with a POD no earlier than 1965. Bonus points for sustained presence after the First Landing. Bonus points for a Soviet Moon Landing.
A Soviet moon landing might be the only way to keep the US in the 'race'. If the Soviets follow up their landing with a lunar base, or threaten to go to Mars the US might feel that going to Mars was politically necessary. Getting the 10s or 100s of billions (milliards) of dollars needed to go to Mars would not be politically easy. OTL, the US 'won' the 'moon race', and didn't face any perceived competition from the Soviets, so rested on their laurels. You need to change that somehow.
 
I concur that a Soviet landing on the Moon is probably the only way to keep the program alive. If the Soviets are obviously making a concerted push with some victories, there will be much more pressure from hawks and anti-Communists to keep the program going to show them what for, instead of just cost-cutting for more obviously useful stuff. However, to get a Mars program going this must occur about the same time as the OTL landings, so you'll need to mess with the Soviet leadership structure at the time and perhaps improve Korolev's health. In particular, you'll need more support from the top in the mid-60s and a *Brezhnev more interested in supporting the space program. Having Khrushchev more interested in sustainable development rather than reckless firsts would also be helpful.

The on-hold no Shuttle TL in my sig is going to use exactly this--the Soviets are going to land on the Moon in the late '70s; together with preserved Saturn tech, Reagan is going to increase NASA funding and tell them to go back to the Moon when he enters office as part of his anti-Communist efforts.
 

No offense to Von Braun, but his Mars ideas were examples of lunacy, at best. That link says that his plan was for Mars craft with a starting mass of 727 tonnes! That is just absurd.

But I have an idea to run by you guys: Spiro Agnew's committee decides on both a Post-Apollo Manned Mission to Mars, and a miniature Space Shuttle (X-20, anyone?). Would either of these get through Nixon's desk?

And here's two other POD's: The guy who tried to kill Nixon does it in 1969, and succeeds. The other POD is a Soviet moon landing (Korolyov lives! and no N-1). Which of those three is best, in your opinions?
 
First pics from the Mariner flyby in '64...

plmars2.jpg
 
Early end to the Vietnam war?

I'm thinking that if the Vietnam war, or US participation in it, had ended earlier that might have helped some. Another option might have been keeping US involvement more low-key. Maybe something that kept South Vietnam from falling apart as much as it did in the welter of coups and counter-coups of late 1963/1964.

Here's another semi-related possibility: Nixon wins in 1960. The Soviets kick our butt in 1960-64 with a bunch of space spectaculars. Kennedy runs again in 1964, with a moonshot as the centerpiece of his campaign. Another option: Kennedy avoids assassination, is a two-term president, and is followed by 8 years of Johnson starting in 1968, assuming Johnson isn't too old by then. Of course none of this works without a less divisive and costly Vietnam war.

Of course none of that would eliminate the main obstacles to a Mars shot: (1) Cost, (2) Lack of assured return beyond prestige, (3) Risk of losing astronauts to a solar flare or some random accident, and (4) Length of the trip, with all of impacts of that much micro-gravity on the human body and all of that alone time on the human psyche.

Maybe a breakthrough in propulsion? Some kind of fusion? Of course we don't even have practical fusion power 25 years later, so it's hard to imagine it happening in time for a Mars shot in 1985. Fission-powered rockets might do the job with enough development time and political support, but I'm not sure how much support there would be for sending a bunch of nuclear material up there. Maybe if the anti-nuclear movement hadn't gotten so strong. But what would have prevented that?

Hmmm. So far I've been assuming US expeditions, but a Soviet attempt might have been more likely. Let's say that the Soviets get their super-booster working in time to beat us to the moon, or at least overshadow us by doing something we didn't--maybe a larger, more sophisticated mission, with what looks like the beginnings of a permanent base. That could work. Let's say that they beat us in sending a manned craft around the moon. We land first. They then somehow top us in terms of the landing within a week or two. The two powers then continue the space race, and the next objective for both sides is Mars. The moon and Mars missions act as a technology driver for both sides, and we develop fission or fusion-powered rockets, or some other technology. Assuming that the scientific breakthroughs are there to be made, that might give us a shot at making them.

Have to figure out some way of avoiding or downgrading the Vietnam war though. Even with a continued race with the Soviets, the mood in the US would turn against a wide range of technologies if the war continued.
 

Archibald

Banned
My usual scenario is Kennedy is killed in 1963, but not Diem (SVN tyran). Not that I like Diem (crackpot dicator) but the crazy guy only value was to keep SVN more or less united. Enough to avoid US intervention in the war in 1964. No viet-nam.

Johnson is elected again in 1968, then suceeded by Nixon in 1972. History more or less follow a course similar to our timeline.

The rest is similar to Stephen Baxter Voyage, particularly the Mars ship.

It consists of
- A modified Saturn S-II stage with two tanks on the sides (probably no-engines S-IIs)
- A Skylab for the crew
- An Apollo CSM to ferry the crew from and back to Earth

The three are direct Apollo spinoffs. Hence they cost nothing to develop.

- The Mars Excursion Module.

That's new, and expensive. nothing worse than the Shuttle hovewer.

Somewhere on a blog I've seen a Rockwell paper of 1967 citing a MEM development cost of $4.1 billion.
The space shuttle cost $7 billion, so the MEM is affordable to NASA even at the 70's budget levels.

I think you need a second POD (for NASA) around 1967. That's the year Apollo budgets started to drop; first victim was Saturn V.

James Webb is both good and evil for NASA.
his logic was "man on the moon by 1969, period. That's what Kennedy asked myself to accomplish in 1961, and I'll suceed !"

that mean: beyond Apollo ? nothing. "Wait for Armstrong to set its foot on the Moon, we will imagine NASA next program AFTER."

It's much too late. Don't wait 1969 ! Webb should have started post-Apollo planning as early as 1965. He did not do it.

So NASA centers or contractors did it by themselves. Guess what they imagined ?
A precursor manned Mars flyby for 1975. Not only it was a dumb idea, they hoped to fund that in 1967.
Aye.
1967 was the year of the Apollo fire, the year budgets started to drop after a huge peak in 1966, Johnson last year in power. Truly the worst moment to propose Mars missions. Really.

When Nixon come in 1969 it was too ate - Apollo was dead right from the moment Armstrong walked on the Moon. An unstainable program, public lost interest soon thereafter.
And Paine was an idiot. Of its grandiose 1969 plan only the shuttle remained.
 
you need several major POD like

the ends of production run of 1967 Saturn B-1 and 1968 Saturn V
with scrap of almost complet SA-516 and SA-517 in August 1968
and final close of Saturn V production line in January 1970

lost of Saturn B-1 is easy replace with cheaper Titan IIIC or IIIM
but we need the Saturn V to launch a manned Mars spaceship in this TL

there was in 1967 a proposal from General Electric called:
Mission Engineering Study of Electrically Propelled Manned Planetary Vehicles

it uses both nuclear-thermal and nuclear-electric propulsion.
so a crew of 8 men on 450 day mission to Mars and back
(with 4 men crew for 30 day stay on planet surface.)

the GE Mars ship is assembly during 32 day in 482 km orbit,
by 5 "improved" Saturn V with 160 tons payload

is this something you can use in the TL, Polish Eagle ?
 
If the Soviets get to the moon around the time of Apollo 13 and have Salyut up by Apollo 15, I imagine that would light a fire under NASA's ass. Of course, how to do it is beyond me...
 
If the Soviets get to the moon around the time of Apollo 13 and have Salyut up by Apollo 15, I imagine that would light a fire under NASA's ass. Of course, how to do it is beyond me...

Probably the way to do it is:

First, avoid Kruschev/Brezhnev/etc. ignoring space between 1963-1967. That's when NASA leaped forward while the Soviet program stalled. They didn't take Kennedy seriously. Make them.

Second, avoid Korolev's death. Possibly have him avoid the camps earlier, somehow, though that might ruin his reputation. Make that your POD, maybe--he doesn't develop cancer, or that annoying heart condition. After he died, the Soviet program completely fell apart into infighting factions. Mishin was a good engineer, but nowhere near the politician (somewhat like NASA losing itself after Webb)

Third, avoid Korolev and Glushko falling out. Make the former understand that cryogens just aren't practical, and he'll have to sell a multi-launch solution (somehow), or the latter work on cryogenic engines anyways. The former is probably better. But having the preeminent Russian spacecraft designer and engine designer essentially in opposing camps really hurt their program.

Finally, and this is related to the first point, have them test their big booster more before launching; I mean stage by stage ground tests. The lack thereof played a big role in the repeated failures of the N1, and eliminating that would be necessary for a successful landing.
 
you need several major POD like

the ends of production run of 1967 Saturn B-1 and 1968 Saturn V
with scrap of almost complet SA-516 and SA-517 in August 1968
and final close of Saturn V production line in January 1970

lost of Saturn B-1 is easy replace with cheaper Titan IIIC or IIIM
but we need the Saturn V to launch a manned Mars spaceship in this TL

there was in 1967 a proposal from General Electric called:
Mission Engineering Study of Electrically Propelled Manned Planetary Vehicles

it uses both nuclear-thermal and nuclear-electric propulsion.
so a crew of 8 men on 450 day mission to Mars and back
(with 4 men crew for 30 day stay on planet surface.)

the GE Mars ship is assembly during 32 day in 482 km orbit,
by 5 "improved" Saturn V with 160 tons payload

is this something you can use in the TL, Polish Eagle ?

You mean Saturn 1B, right?

As for the nuclear engines, nuclear thermal is a possibility, but nuclear electric isn't. Even with a system like VASIMR, we need 600 tonnes in LEO to send a mission to Mars. NERVA, on the other hand, is possible.

As for on-orbit assembly...no. No. If there's anything ISS has taught us, it's that on-orbit assembly is a really bad idea.

@Truth is life: I consider your options, and decide that Glushko going cryogenic is better. I think his thoughts will go: cryogenic=higher specific impulse=more complicated=needs less engines=bigger motors. Because having 31 engines in the lower stage, compared to the Saturn's five F-1s, can increase chance of failure 6 fold.
 
@Truth is life: I consider your options, and decide that Glushko going cryogenic is better. I think his thoughts will go: cryogenic=higher specific impulse=more complicated=needs less engines=bigger motors. Because having 31 engines in the lower stage, compared to the Saturn's five F-1s, can increase chance of failure 6 fold.

The first and fourth points are critical if you want a Soviet program that's about holding its own with NASA (as jaybird indicated). The second can be finessed, and the third just has to resolved one way or the other.

The question of cryogens is about the upper stage engines. The F-1, for example, was an RP-1/LOX engine, just like the ones on the R-7! Clearly, the Russians were more than capable of building semi-cryogenic engines for use on their rockets, however the focus on ICBMs meant they used a lot of storable propellants, with lower ISPs and more safety issues. OTL, they didn't build any cryogenic (LH2/LOX) engines until the '80s, for Energia.

I would say that the Soviets probably couldn't have gotten any good cryogenic uppers together until the late '60s, which is a bit too long. If Korolev admits that cryogens aren't going to happen, the N1s engines will probably be built by Glushko, which in of itself would be highly beneficial as the OTL contractor had no idea what he was doing when he started[1], and quite possibly an RD-170 solution will emerge, giving the Russians an engine similar in performance to the F-1. RP-1/LOX upper stages will likely be adequate for a lunar mission, though a two-launch profile may have to be followed. As I said, the first and fourth points must be done so that there is enough political support to do that.
...
[1] Of course, the Kuznetsov engines did turn out to be extremely good. Eventually.
 
A two POD solution: Oswald fails to kill JFK in 1963 and Sergei Koralev survives until 1975. Under Korolev'sguidance, the development of super-large rockets continues, with the stated goal of establishing a permanant Soviet presence on the moon. JFK and his successor (LBJ or RFK?) up the ante by setting the goal of a human Mars landing by 1980. Given the technology required, probably way too ambitious and likely to fail.
 
First Mars pictures

It seems to me that a Mars mission would require two things: Motivation and enough financial resources.

You can tweak the financial side three ways: (1) Drop the cost of a Mars mission via some kind of tech twist--maybe a working Big-Dumb Booster if that would really drive down costs, and/or (2) Make sure that there was enough money to cover the mission. For the US, that means no large-scale involvement in Vietnam and probably no large-scale expansion of social programs as part of the Great Society. Whether or not the Great Society programs were helpful, they did compete with space exploration for dollars. Another possibility: (3) Embed the technology and the spending in something the country has to have. For example, if the military had needed Saturn/Apollo technology for some reason, the tech could have remained in production during any temporary slump in support for space and been available for missions once support picked up again. The US airforce had a manned program, but it was scuppered by a combination of NASA resistance and technical advances that allowed unmanned surveillance satellites to do the jobs less expensively. If those advances had been delayed a bit, and if the military had had more money available to it in the late 1960s, I could see the airforce doing something like a Blue Apollo program, using the Saturn/Apollo/Skylab tech with some of their own twists to put up and maintain an airforce space station.

Finally, whatever else happened there had to be motivation for a mission. This doesn't help us get there, but it might help with motivation: The first reasonably close-up pictures of Mars made it look a lot like the moon--craters, lifeless looking. I was in grade-school at the time, but I remember how discouraged I was when I saw those pictures. Mars didn't seem interesting to me anymore. Then I became aware that Venus was essentially hell, and I went from budding space buff to disinterested (at least until later discoveries gave a better and more interesting picture of Mars). I think a lot of other people went the same way.

People lost interest in space in the late 1960s because the planets we could realistically get to didn't seem to have anything of interest or value. Given a different and more interesting part of Mars in those initial pictures, I think there might have been more sustained interest in space exploration. As to how that interest could have manifested itself in terms of hardware and missions, I don't know, but I suspect that continued motivation would have eventually led to at least some additional unmanned Mars missions, whether it be using Saturn/Apollo tech or something else.

There could have been a favorable feedback loop, with motivation to explore space leading to retention of the Saturn/Apollo tech, which makes faster/better unmanned exploration possible, leading to discoveries that increase motivation to explore space. That does lead to a question: would availability of Saturn 1b or Saturn V lead to better/faster unmanned exploration?
 
As for on-orbit assembly...no. No. If there's anything ISS has taught us, it's that on-orbit assembly is a really bad idea.
Howso?

And if you want to put a craft large enough to support 3+ astronauts for 2+ years in orbit in one shot you're going to need (at least) one of the larger Nova variants.
 
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