Challenge: Screw the Space Program

[Emperor Norton I]

We do a lot to make the Space Program broader or better than it was (one part hope, one part hindsight on our part). But what about the other direction? In what ways can we screw over NASA and the space program?

[Cook]

William Proxmire successfully axes funding for Apollo following the fire on the pad.

[The Ubbergeek]

Hotter cold war, more funding to the Army instead - so, out of militaristic projects....

[Delta Force]

Put all rockets and satellites under the DoD, and have most information on rockets, satellites, and the upper atmosphere classified as a military secret (to prevent Soviet spies from stealing US rocketry secrets like they did with nuclear weapons). The US dismisses the Soviet manned program as nothing more than playing for the public. Rocketry is used for purely military purposes such as communications, spy, and weather satellites. Apart from separate nuclear and rocket tests, there are also all up tests of nuclear missiles that test the integrated systems themselves, so there is a lot of resistance in the military to the Partial Test Ban Treaty. Essentially, the whole space program is just a rocketry program with no attempts to appeal to the public imagination at all, it is just a USAF Space Command dream (Space Command would also probably be created much earlier to consolidate the entire program).

[Archibald]

SCREWING THE SPACE PROGRAM IN THE 80's...

1- blew STS-27 in December 1988, columbia style. Then NASA would have the following track

- STS-61J, January 1986: successful
- STS-51L, January 28, 1986 - tragedy

Two years and half later...

- STS-26:September 26, 1988 - return to flight, successful
- STS-27: December 1988 - another tragedy - burn during reentry, a Columbia STS-107 fifteen year earlier...

That proves the shuttle is flawed. Manned spaceflight is DOA.

2 - Add a little scandal somwhere, plus the fact that most of satellites and planetary probes have been designed for the shuttle - a smoother launch environment than ordinary rockets.

3 - Then, have the JPL blew up a billion dollar planetary probe - it happened in 1993 with Mars Observer - because of a stupid blunder (metric vs imperial, it happened in 1999, to another Mars probe).

4 - Oh, and Cold war is over (1989) and then
5- NASA answer to Bush Space Exploration Initiative, the 90 days study, is a disaster - a mission to Mars for 400 billion dollars ?!!

Ruined are manned spaceflight, satellites, planetary probes, and NASA relation with the White House. That should be enough to screw the space program for a long time to come...

[Ariosto]

Very unrealistic given it avoid any and all Butterflies, but:

• Mercury 3 - First American to make a suborbital flight into space
• Mercury 4 - Second suborbital flight. Spacecraft sank before recovery when hatch unexpectedly blew off. Pilot Virgil Grissom drowned during recovery.
• Mercury 6 - First American to orbit the Earth (for a total of 3 orbits). Pilot John Glenn killed when Spacecraft burned up in reentry.
• Mercury 7 - 3 orbits. Reentered off-target by 402 km. Spacecraft and Pilot Malcolm Carpenter lost. Pilot assumed Dead.
• Mercury 8 - Failed to make orbit.
• Mercury 9 - First American in space for over a day. Last American to orbit the Earth solo. 22 orbits. Pilot Leroy Cooper and Spacecraft lost in the Pacific Ocean during reentry. Pilot assumed Dead.
  • Casualties: 4
  • Mission Success Rate: 14%

• Gemini III - First manned Gemini flight, three orbits.
• Gemini IV - Included first extravehicular activity (EVA) by an American; White's "space walk" was a 22 minute EVA exercise. Spacecraft burned up in reentry; assumed to be due to construction error in the access hatch. Command Pilot James McDivitt and Pilot Edward White Dead.
• Gemini V - First week-long flight; first use of fuel cells for electrical power; evaluated guidance and navigation system for future rendezvous missions. Completed 120 orbits.
• Gemini VII - When the original Gemini VI mission was scrubbed because its Agena target for rendezvous and docking failed, Gemini VII was used for the rendezvous instead. Primary objective was to determine whether humans could live in space for 14 days.
• Gemini VI-A - First space rendezvous accomplished with Gemini VII, station-keeping for over five hours at distances from 0.3 to 90 m (1 to 300 ft).
• Gemini VIII - Accomplished first docking with another space vehicle, an unmanned Agena stage. While docked, a Gemini spacecraft thruster malfunction caused fatal tumbling of the craft. Command Pilot Neil Armstrong and Pilot David Scott Dead.
• Gemini IX-A - Rescheduled from May to rendezvous and dock with augmented target docking adapter (ATDA) after original Agena target vehicle failed to orbit. ATDA shroud did not completely separate, making docking impossible. Command Pilot Thomas Stafford and Pilot Eugene Cernan killed during reentry; Stafford attempted to bring Cernan back during reentry by maintaining umbilical connection to Spacecraft.
• Gemini X - First use of Agena target vehicle's propulsion systems. Spacecraft also rendezvoused with Gemini VIII target vehicle. Collins had 49 minutes of EVA standing in the hatch and 39 minutes of EVA to retrieve experiment from Agena stage. 43 orbits completed.
• Gemini XI - Gemini record altitude, 1,189.3 kilometres (739.0 mi) (739.2 mi) reached using Agena propulsion system after first orbit rendezvous and docking. Gordon made 33-minute EVA and two-hour standup EVA. 44 orbits.
• Gemini XII - Final Gemini flight. Rendezvoused and docked manually with its target Agena and kept station with it during EVA. Aldrin set an EVA record of 5 hours 30 minutes for one space walk and two stand-up exercises, and demonstrated solutions to previous EVA problems.
  • Casualties: 6
  • Mission Success Rate: 70%

• Apollo 1 - Cabin fire broke out in pure oxygen atmosphere during launch rehearsal test on January 27, 1967, killing all three crewmen (Command Pilot Walter Schirra; Senior Pilot Don Eisele; Pilot Ronnie Cunnigham) and destroying the CM; canceled.
• Apollo 7 - Successful 11-day flight.
• Apollo 8 - First manned lunar flight, improvised because LM was not ready for first manned orbital test. Ten lunar orbits in twenty hours; first humans to see lunar far side and Earthrise with own eyes; First live television broadcast from a US space flight.
• Apollo 9 - Ten days in Earth orbit, demonstrated LM propulsion, rendezvous and docking with CSM. EVA tested lunar Portable Life Support System (PLSS).
• Apollo 10 - Sea of Tranquility; LM forced to make Emergency Landing on Lunar Surface. Lacks fuel to return to the CM. Commander Russell Schwiekhart and Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell passed away upon the surface.
• Apollo 11 - Sea of Tranquility; LM crashed upon the Lunar Surface. Commander James Lovell and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise died on impact.
• Apollo 12 - Lightning strike during launch destroyed the Saturn V. Commander Charles Conrad, Command Module Pilot Richard Gordon, and Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean were killed in the explosion.
• Apollo 13 - Contact lost en-route to the Moon. Commander John Young, Command Module Pilot John Swigert, and Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke declared Dead.
• Apollo 14 - Landing aborted due to faulty LM abort switch and landing radar.
• Apollo 15 - Saturn V exploded shortly after launch due to the First and Second Stages failing to cutoff, resulting in exhaust buildup. Commander Alan Shepard, Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa, and Lunar Module Pilot Joseph Engle were killed.
• Apollo 16 - Failure of the CM's engines shortly before the Lunar Landings results in the Landing being cancelled. LM used to make return trip to Earth.
• Apollo 17 - Last Apollo lunar landing; most recent human flight beyond low Earth orbit (as of 2011); only lunar mission with a scientist (geologist); 3 lunar EVAs plus deep space EVA
  • Casualties: 16
  • Mission Success Rate: 34%

[DanMcCollum]

Originally Posted by Cook

William Proxmire successfully axes funding for Apollo following the fire on the pad.

I was going to suggest something pretty similar, actually. Proxmire, for all of his many talents and strengths, was no friend of NASA.

[Delta Force]

Apollo 10 would not have made an emergency landing on the Moon because it did not actually have the equipment required to get back off the Moon's surface. It was designed to see what happened on the landing path, not to do anything close to a landing.

[Ariosto]

Originally Posted by Delta Force

Apollo 10 would not have made an emergency landing on the Moon because it did not actually have the equipment required to get back off the Moon's surface. It was designed to see what happened on the landing path, not to do anything close to a landing.

The idea is that a major error occurs that prevents them from making it back to the CM, thus they have to land on the surface. It was the most interesting of the various options available, given the First Men on the Moon were never intended to be there in this case.

[neopeius]

Originally Posted by Delta Force

Put all rockets and satellites under the DoD, and have most information on rockets, satellites, and the upper atmosphere classified as a military secret (to prevent Soviet spies from stealing US rocketry secrets like they did with nuclear weapons). The US dismisses the Soviet manned program as nothing more than playing for the public. Rocketry is used for purely military purposes such as communications, spy, and weather satellites. Apart from separate nuclear and rocket tests, there are also all up tests of nuclear missiles that test the integrated systems themselves, so there is a lot of resistance in the military to the Partial Test Ban Treaty. Essentially, the whole space program is just a rocketry program with no attempts to appeal to the public imagination at all, it is just a USAF Space Command dream (Space Command would also probably be created much earlier to consolidate the entire program).

I like this. I think it's possible given someone other than Ike. It's certainly what USAF wanted at the time. I think you'd likely see some sort of underfunded independent research agency to do unmanned scientific flights that will be clamored for. The universities didn't like working with for-profit companies like STL.

This all will really retard space development and possibly create more tension in orbit, ultimately leading to fiery death from the skies.

I don't agree that the Air Force won't fire the public's imagination or that they will dismiss the Soviet manned missions. They may say the alleged civilian nature of the Soviet program is a cover for military operations. The USAF will definitely push forward a manned program, probably a spaceplane.

[e of pi]

Instead of the Space Shuttle, NASA instead elects to pursue cheap space launch by building Sea Dragon. Contracts are let out in 1971 to begin engine development. Work is slow, since no engines even approaching the scale have ever been constructed before. Finally, by 1985, the firstprototype first-stage engine is ready for static firing. Due to the tremendous power of the engine, it must be tested on a converted oil platform just inside US territorial waters. The first tests go well, but on the third test run, scheduled as a 60-second firing, disaster strikes when combustion instability runs away, and the engine detonates, destroying the platform and resulting in the loss of all but 10 of the hundreds of engineers and technicians on-site. Refining the engine to reduce combustion instability to manageable levels take another 15 years, even with advanced computer modeling techniques. Finally, in 2000, the first Sea Dragon comes to the pad. As predicted, the cost of the actual launch vehicle is low--just $500 million, but the program development has cost more than $200 billion, and taken over a thousand lives while NASA hasn't flown a manned mission since 1973.

Sufficiently screwed?

[truth is life]

Here's a sketch of how I'd really screw the space program:

1930s-1940s: Go-ahead is never given on A-4/V-2 rocket program. Instead, development work is focused on tactical artillery rockets, air-to-surface rockets, and anti-air rockets. This leads to a slightly more powerful Nazi Germany, but one which is still overrun by the Allies in about the same amount of time along broadly similar lines to OTL. Along with most other members of the (OTL) German long-distance rocketry team, Wernher von Braun is killed during the war.

After the war, the Allies begin examining the left-overs of Nazi technology. Unlike OTL, these do not include V-2s for high-altitude rocketry experiments, but do include a number of V-1s, actually somewhat more than OTL. This sparks (more) interest in autonomous long-range jet flight, or rather cruise missiles

1940s-1950s: Both in the US and the Soviet Union (also in Britain, but to a lesser extent), active effort is undertaken into the development of intercontinental cruise missiles, the big brothers of the V-1, for nuclear weapons delivery. Variants are developed for carriage on board surface ships, submarines (this happened IOTL, actually), and large bombers, as both countries also begin actively refining the anti-aircraft missile technology recovered from Nazi Germany.

Some advocates, such as Glushko and Korolev in the Soviet Union, or Truax in the United States, argue for the development of long-range rocket-propelled missiles instead, but such missiles are generally viewed as impractical at best, nonsense at worst by those in charge of funding. Some analysis also takes place into the possibility of satellites and their uses, but that is viewed almost universally as science fiction.

The IGY never happens, although an IPY does as usual.

1950s-1960s: The first ICCMs go into service, providing an effective nuclear deterrent to back up manned bombers. Submarine and surface-launched cruise missiles also exist, but are much shorter ranged due to limited size. Given development of anti-aircraft weapons, both sides realize that their current bomber/ICCM arsenals are vulnerable to interception by both aircraft and SAMs, and therefore start to develop new methods to saturate or evade enemy defensive screens. Some effort is made to go higher and faster, but many of the first forays into stealth design occur in this decade. However, the limited computer* technology makes true stealth aircraft impossible.

*ICCMs, SLCMs, ALCMs, and bombers provide many of the same incentives for electronics miniaturization as ICBMs did IOTL, so those technologies are roughly on the same schedule.

No serious effort is made to develop long-distance rocket technology further. The only advantage they would have over conventional ICCMs is speed, and even that would be effaced by the true hypersonic cruise missile or bomber which has been (to some extent or another) under development since the mid-1950s. However, some effort is being undertaken in related or sibling areas, such as sounding rockets, for other purposes. An orbital spaceflight is technologically possible, and would not be a great leap, but seems unlikely to take place soon.

1960s-1970s: Efforts continue to develop both stealth and hypersonic missiles and aircraft. The former are especially favored by the navies of both sides as they would be far smaller and more fuel-efficient than conventional ICCMs, thereby allowing a greater naval deterrent role (although the US, at least, has carrier-based bombers in addition to the usual submarine-based cruise missiles, and very quite SSCNs).

Development of sounding rockets has led to the suggestion that a cluster of them, with appropriate upper stages, could possibly put a small object into orbit, perhaps for scientific purposes. Governments begin to look with interest into the possibility; this might be a way of bypassing the problems with hypersonics that they have been having, and a way of bypassing extensive air defense networks that have made it essentially impossible to gather IMINT of enemy interior regions. Small programs begin in both the USA and the USSR to define possible uses of satellites and to develop a satellite and its launcher.

1970s-1980s: The first true stealth aircraft and cruise missiles appear. Given the ongoing difficulties with hypersonics, stealth units are widely developed and deployed (think F-117 level, not like the B-2). Both the US and USSR launch their first satellites during the decade, roughly on the level of the OTL Vanguard. Now that launch has been demonstrated, however, there is more interest from both sides in military capabilities, navigation, communications, spy, weather, etc. satellites. The respective Air Forces of each country are quick to capitalize on this, particularly as they spearheaded the projects in the first place.

1980s-1990s: FINALLY, some breakthroughs in hypersonics. A relatively larger program over the past decades is paying off, and some actual hypersonic vehicles fly at this time! However, there aren't any plausible space launch applications, sorry (this IS a -screw!).

Then the USSR goes kaput. Well, the peace dividend screws over the Air Force's burgeoning plans for space development. A limited spy satellite system is developed, of course, along with the needed relay satellites, but the big GPS system, the weather satellites, the global communications network (think Iridium) etc. go away.

I think this pretty well screws over the space program in general and NASA in particular. There's very little development of scientific missions, here; most launches and payloads are military, and there aren't many of those either, since developing the big systems would be expensive for little obvious benefit (to the people with the purse strings). There's no big Russian bear out there to spur these sorts of things, nor enough of an institutional base to keep the big stuff going even without it.

We also missed the Grand Tour

[The Oncoming Storm]

How about just before the first manned lunar landing, a President who has very little time for space exploration is elected, the NASA Administrator is a well intentioned but naive dreamer with little understanding of what way the political wind is blowing, who tries to push forward a grandiose plan featuring a reusable shuttle, space stations, lunar bases and manned missions to Mars using nuclear powered spacecraft.

The President refuses to endorse this plan and instead stops Saturn V production, guts the Apollo Applications Programme to a single orbital workshop mission and some sort of gimmick joint mission with the Soviets, the shuttle is reproved but in order to try and reduce costs NASA is forced to co-operate with the USAF. Military requirements distort the shuttle's design into a clunker that proves hugely expensive to operate and does not have a launch escape system meaning crews have no means of escape during a launch failure, the shuttle's heat shield is also left vulnerable to debris strikes during launch creating another potential crew loss scenario. In order to maintain political support for the project NASA massively overhypes the shuttle's capabilities and is caught out badly when it doesn't meet expectations. Smart people realise the thing is a turkey and call for a replacement NASA does some design work buts it's all half hearted, doesn't get anywhere and is cancelled.

After years of being stuck in LEO politicians finally pull the plug on the shuttle and it's retired with no immediate replacement. I think that would be a pretty major screw,

[Polish Eagle]

Originally Posted by Emperor Norton I

We do a lot to make the Space Program broader or better than it was (one part hope, one part hindsight on our part). But what about the other direction? In what ways can we screw over NASA and the space program?

John Glenn makes orbit before Yuri Gagarin does. Apollo is not directed toward the Moon immediately. Combination of Vietnam War and budget-cutting in the late 1960s cancels any hope of manned lunar operations in the near-term. The J-Class Apollo Missions never demonstrate the immense capabilities of on-site geologists.

Early 1970s: Saturn 1B-launched space stations are classed as inefficient for earth observation and solar observation, and their research into the development of human physiology in microgravity is declared meaningless as they are the only environment in which those conditions occur. Plug is pulled on them. Government impression of man-in-space projects: scientifically useless compared to robot probes.

Without the funding trickle-down of Apollo that helped drive some NASA probe development in the early-to-mid 1960s, and the eventual-manned-mission focus that lies behind a significant part of Mars mission funding, fewer robotic missions are launched ITTL.

End result: American manned space program terminated with a whimper, not a bang. USAF continues on-and-off research into the field, but without major results. A lot of planetary science never happens. Most satellites are earth-observers or orbital observatories.

Not sure how plausible this is, but prior posters already got the easy answers.

[MarshalBraginsky]

So who goes on the Moon if the Space Program is screwed?

[truth is life]

Originally Posted by Sibirskaya

So who goes on the Moon if the Space Program is screwed?

No one, that's the point. A couple of us have been going even further, with no thing going on the Moon (or at least Mars, Venus, etc.) either.

[The Ubbergeek]

Originally Posted by truth is life

No one, that's the point. A couple of us have been going even further, with no thing going on the Moon (or at least Mars, Venus, etc.) either.

Actually, someone could pick the task later, with advanced tech... like 50 years or so... a century.. one day, someone may go there. Or beyond.

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Originally Posted by Sibirskaya

So who goes on the Moon if the Space Program is screwed?

Wallace and Gromit? Tintin?

[truth is life]

Originally Posted by The Ubbergeek

Actually, someone could pick the task later, with advanced tech... like 50 years or so... a century.. one day, someone may go there. Or beyond.

Well, maybe, maybe not. But it's not something that would happen by the OTL present-day, it would be sci-fi or future history. That falls outside the bounds of speculation. And looking at OTL...well, maybe no one would go in 50 years or a century or whatever.

[Emperor Norton I]

Originally Posted by Sibirskaya

So who goes on the Moon if the Space Program is screwed?

The smashed crew of Apollo 10 upon impact. Or Apollo 11 before the moon landings are completely ended right after (or right after Apollo 13). Or no one.

There's lots of ways and variations here.