Across the high frontier: a Big Gemini space TL
- Thread starter Archibald
- Start date
Soviets in space (20)
Archibald
Banned
A now a little speech about Soviet conquest of space through the MKBS
Moscow
February 14, 1978
Boris Chertok adressed the assembly of engineers and polititicians gathered that day near Moscow.
“Three years ago in 1975 we stopped production of the N-1 at vehicle 14L. So far vehicle 8L has been expended into an automated lunar flight. Vehicle 9L has launched the 4NM Mars rover in 1976. The year after vehicle 10L had been readied for the 5NM Mars sample return mission, but the mission collapsed after the 4NM rover failure.
Currently there is five N-1 lunar booster in storage. What can we do with all these massive rockets ? Over the last few years we feverishly hunted for payloads for them. And actually, very interesting prospective projects materialized, which in the future could led to new achievements in the field of fundamental astrophysics research, global communication systems, information systems development, and also monitoring in the interests of the national economy and national security.
We could create “Globis” - a global communication system using a heavy universal space platform (UKP) with a mass of 18 tons, which only the N-1 rocket could insert into geostationary orbit. And we attained consideration and approval of proposals for the UKP in the Defense Council. A draft decision of the USSR Council of Ministers appeared. The ministry and Military-Industrial Commission declared that the work on the UKP ranked second in terms of importance after the MKBS orbital station.
The new super-comsat should solve the problems of space in the geostationary orbit; four of these satellites - three on duty and one reserve - could be used to direct most of the data traffic worldwide. The system should take shape in two stages: the first two units would be launched, which would meet a demand of 100 000 telephone lines, enough for several million subscribers, and dozens of television channels. The second stage would see the launch of two additional heavier and more powerful units that could provide commercial services worldwide. The satellites of the first stage would have a mass of 13.8 tonnes and solar panels 10 kW. His life would be only five years, and they would use traditional Soviet technology that required pressurized systems and corresponding temperature control devices with moving parts. The units of the second stage would have an estimated ten years, almost the same as their Western counterparts of the time, a mass of 17.8 tons and a 15 kW solar panel life.
Beside Globis we have an ambitious scientific proposal to launch an international large space telescope. One wonders what is the advantage of placing a radio telescope in space, since, unlike other wavelengths, radio waves easily penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. The answer in this case has to do with the obstacle the Earth's atmosphere for other observatories, but with the resolution. If we place a telescope in space and we do work with antennas located on land we can get a resolution equivalent to a telescope equipped with an antenna the size of the orbit of the space telescope. It is what is called very-long-baseline interferometry, or VLBI for its acronym in English.
The Kosmícheski RadioTeleskop main antenna would have a drop of about 25 meters, hence the project was known as KRT-25. Would use a secondary reflector of two meters and the whole study the sky in the frequency range of 5-2000 GHz, but would focus on the frequencies around 60 GHz, a region of the spectrum blocked by molecular oxygen in Earth's atmosphere. The mission would last about five years and the satellite would be placed in an initial orbit of 5000 x 20,000 km and an inclination of 63,45º. Subsequently, IVS reach its working orbit is highly elliptical, 5,000 x 150,000 kilometers. The space telescope would have a huge mass for a satellite in an orbit that is this: nothing more and nothing less than 27.8 tons (15.8 tonnes of fuel). Just like Globis the satellite should use the Universal Space Platform or UKP. The UKP had dimensions of 5.5 x 3.3 x 2.5 meters and solar panels can generate a power of 15 kW, but for this mission only require five to six kilowatts.
Next year the cosmonauts Vladimir Lyajov and Valeri Ryumin will install in the Salyut 6 (DOS-7K No. 5) the KRT-10 radio telescope. This should be the first instrument of a series of increasingly ambitious telescopes that were to culminate in the ROS-7K (Radiotejnícheskaia Orbitalnaia Stantsia, 'orbital station radio engineering') space stations. ROS-7K are space stations incorporating a KRT-30 radio telescope with an antenna thirty meters in diameter. They would be placed in an orbit of 600 km height and tilt 64,8º. ROS-7K would be replaced by other stations - DOS-Gals. I shall remember you that two Almaz hulls have been in storage for months; we could use these hulls for the KRT.
Beside Globis and KRT-25 we propose a space factory to produce ultra-pure semiconductor alloys and crystals. That would be the TMP, Technological Production Module. With a mass of 90 tons, it would be 35 m long and a diameter of 4 m. The Instrument Cargo Compartment would be derived from the TKS-FGB. Power would be 60 kW and mission duration five years.
The on-board production complex derived from the MKBS Kristall module would weigh 25 tons. The finished products would return to Earth in ballistic of gliding capsules – subscale EPOS lifting body, or TKS or Soyuz shape vehicles that could hold up to 140 kg of materials. Robotic manipulator arms would be used to remove a capsule from storage, load it, and then transfer it to a small airlock for ejection. The TMP would have two docking port to receive resupply and crewed ships, with crews being able to spend up to 10 days aboard the facility to unload supply ships and perform maintenance work. TMP would be the ultimate step in a phased program for space-based materials processing, which also included the launch of TKS-VA capsules and Almaz-derived 20 tons vehicles.
So that's the main three projects we want to use the remaining N-1 for – big geostationary communication platforms, large radiotelescopes to peer at the deep Universe, and material processing in space.
Beside these three there is no lack of huge projects planned to take advantage of N-1 capabilities to realize Soviet military and international space goals.
We identified varied far-reaching missions
The eroding ozone layer of the earth could be replenished using a constellation of space-based lasers that would bombard the stratosphere at 30 km altitude for 30 years. The N-1 launch vehicle would launch 30 to 40 satellites, each with a mass of 60 to 80 metric tons, into a sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of 450 km. They would use on-board ion engines to move to operational orbits at 1600 km altitude. Each spacecraft would consist of a 600 m diameter solar collector, a 35 MWt oxygen-iodine laser of continuous function and an equipment module with ion orbit correction engine
The entire inventory of high-level nuclear waste (100 metric tons) would be permanently disposed of in a solar orbit at 1. 2 AU between Earth and Mars using 10 to 15 launches of the N-1 launch vehicle. The waste would be encapsulated; in case of a launch vehicle failure it would be recovered from the equatorial ocean of the earth and sent back into space. The waste disposal vehicle consisted of two rocket stages. The first, conventional stage, puts the 50 metric ton payload into an 800 km parking orbit around the earth. The second 150-200 kWt nuclear electric stage uses an ion engine to transfer the waste to its permanent solar orbit. The net payload of waste per launch would be 9 metric tons.
Or the N-1 could place observation platforms of 18 to 21 metric tons in geostationary orbit. These platforms would provide continuous multispectral monitoring of the surface in the visual, ultraviolet, and infrared bands. Any environmental changes could be noted and radio and laser links used to command low orbit satellites to take a detailed look at the problem.
We also thought about the growing issue of space debris. A 15 metric ton maneuverable satellite, consisting of an engine unit and a satellite collection mechanism, would maneuver at geosynchronous altitude in orbits with inclinations of between 0 and 14 degrees. The spacecraft would collect dead communications satellites and move them from the geosynchronous orbit zone. An operating life of six months was expected.
Now how about a Polar City Illuminator ? The N-1 launch vehicle could be used to launch 100 orbital reflectors to provide light to cities located in the polar regions. These reflectors would be placed in sun synchronous orbits at 1700 km altitude / 103 deg inclination. Each satellite would be 240 m in diameter and have a mass of 5 to 6 metric tons. Each satellite would have a ten year life and be usable 8 hours daily, and illuminate a 17 km diameter circular area on the earth's surface. That's the Znamya concept. The satellite's equipment module would include solar panels, a KAR gyroscopic pointing system, and a laser unit to scan and control the form of the reflector. Pressure from the solar wind would be used to make orbital corrections. The illuminators would be orbited 10 to 12 at a time. A single N-1 launch would put a 69 metric ton payload into a 450 km / 103 deg orbit. A solar electric engine interorbital tug would take the satellites to the higher operational orbit and then deploy them.
Arm control has become a very important aspect of international relations. A satellite consisting of a 33 metric ton equipment bus and a 17 metric ton rocket stage would be placed in a 600 km / 97 degree orbit for arms control and environment monitoring. It would be equipped with a videospectrometer, optical electronic camera, and phased array radar. Solar panels would provide 13 kW of power.
In conclusion, as of today we have four N-1 in storage, and we have to define at least three missions around them. Since we have two Almaz hulls in storage, I suggest we use them as point of departure. Of all the projects detailed here, I personally favor the KRT-25 radiotelescope. We could build a pair of them from Almaz OPS-3 and OPS-4. My second prefered alternative is to turn the Almaz into prototypes of the Globis heavy geostationary communication platform. I really think we should expand the MKBS upward, to gestionary orbit. A N-11 could easily send a Soyuz up there. As an alternative, a Proton could loft a much-lightened TKS to geosynchronous orbit. We can do it !
Moscow
February 14, 1978
Boris Chertok adressed the assembly of engineers and polititicians gathered that day near Moscow.
“Three years ago in 1975 we stopped production of the N-1 at vehicle 14L. So far vehicle 8L has been expended into an automated lunar flight. Vehicle 9L has launched the 4NM Mars rover in 1976. The year after vehicle 10L had been readied for the 5NM Mars sample return mission, but the mission collapsed after the 4NM rover failure.
Currently there is five N-1 lunar booster in storage. What can we do with all these massive rockets ? Over the last few years we feverishly hunted for payloads for them. And actually, very interesting prospective projects materialized, which in the future could led to new achievements in the field of fundamental astrophysics research, global communication systems, information systems development, and also monitoring in the interests of the national economy and national security.
We could create “Globis” - a global communication system using a heavy universal space platform (UKP) with a mass of 18 tons, which only the N-1 rocket could insert into geostationary orbit. And we attained consideration and approval of proposals for the UKP in the Defense Council. A draft decision of the USSR Council of Ministers appeared. The ministry and Military-Industrial Commission declared that the work on the UKP ranked second in terms of importance after the MKBS orbital station.
The new super-comsat should solve the problems of space in the geostationary orbit; four of these satellites - three on duty and one reserve - could be used to direct most of the data traffic worldwide. The system should take shape in two stages: the first two units would be launched, which would meet a demand of 100 000 telephone lines, enough for several million subscribers, and dozens of television channels. The second stage would see the launch of two additional heavier and more powerful units that could provide commercial services worldwide. The satellites of the first stage would have a mass of 13.8 tonnes and solar panels 10 kW. His life would be only five years, and they would use traditional Soviet technology that required pressurized systems and corresponding temperature control devices with moving parts. The units of the second stage would have an estimated ten years, almost the same as their Western counterparts of the time, a mass of 17.8 tons and a 15 kW solar panel life.
Beside Globis we have an ambitious scientific proposal to launch an international large space telescope. One wonders what is the advantage of placing a radio telescope in space, since, unlike other wavelengths, radio waves easily penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. The answer in this case has to do with the obstacle the Earth's atmosphere for other observatories, but with the resolution. If we place a telescope in space and we do work with antennas located on land we can get a resolution equivalent to a telescope equipped with an antenna the size of the orbit of the space telescope. It is what is called very-long-baseline interferometry, or VLBI for its acronym in English.
The Kosmícheski RadioTeleskop main antenna would have a drop of about 25 meters, hence the project was known as KRT-25. Would use a secondary reflector of two meters and the whole study the sky in the frequency range of 5-2000 GHz, but would focus on the frequencies around 60 GHz, a region of the spectrum blocked by molecular oxygen in Earth's atmosphere. The mission would last about five years and the satellite would be placed in an initial orbit of 5000 x 20,000 km and an inclination of 63,45º. Subsequently, IVS reach its working orbit is highly elliptical, 5,000 x 150,000 kilometers. The space telescope would have a huge mass for a satellite in an orbit that is this: nothing more and nothing less than 27.8 tons (15.8 tonnes of fuel). Just like Globis the satellite should use the Universal Space Platform or UKP. The UKP had dimensions of 5.5 x 3.3 x 2.5 meters and solar panels can generate a power of 15 kW, but for this mission only require five to six kilowatts.
Next year the cosmonauts Vladimir Lyajov and Valeri Ryumin will install in the Salyut 6 (DOS-7K No. 5) the KRT-10 radio telescope. This should be the first instrument of a series of increasingly ambitious telescopes that were to culminate in the ROS-7K (Radiotejnícheskaia Orbitalnaia Stantsia, 'orbital station radio engineering') space stations. ROS-7K are space stations incorporating a KRT-30 radio telescope with an antenna thirty meters in diameter. They would be placed in an orbit of 600 km height and tilt 64,8º. ROS-7K would be replaced by other stations - DOS-Gals. I shall remember you that two Almaz hulls have been in storage for months; we could use these hulls for the KRT.
Beside Globis and KRT-25 we propose a space factory to produce ultra-pure semiconductor alloys and crystals. That would be the TMP, Technological Production Module. With a mass of 90 tons, it would be 35 m long and a diameter of 4 m. The Instrument Cargo Compartment would be derived from the TKS-FGB. Power would be 60 kW and mission duration five years.
The on-board production complex derived from the MKBS Kristall module would weigh 25 tons. The finished products would return to Earth in ballistic of gliding capsules – subscale EPOS lifting body, or TKS or Soyuz shape vehicles that could hold up to 140 kg of materials. Robotic manipulator arms would be used to remove a capsule from storage, load it, and then transfer it to a small airlock for ejection. The TMP would have two docking port to receive resupply and crewed ships, with crews being able to spend up to 10 days aboard the facility to unload supply ships and perform maintenance work. TMP would be the ultimate step in a phased program for space-based materials processing, which also included the launch of TKS-VA capsules and Almaz-derived 20 tons vehicles.
So that's the main three projects we want to use the remaining N-1 for – big geostationary communication platforms, large radiotelescopes to peer at the deep Universe, and material processing in space.
Beside these three there is no lack of huge projects planned to take advantage of N-1 capabilities to realize Soviet military and international space goals.
We identified varied far-reaching missions
- Restoration of the earth's ozone layer
- Disposal of nuclear waste outside of the solar system
- Illumination of polar cities by reflection of the sun's light – the Znamya project
- Large-area space energy reflectors (Znamya again)
- Solar sails for interplanetary flights (Znamya final goal)
- Exploitation of lunar resources for fusion reactors on the earth
- Space control system to assure ecological compliance and guarantee strategic stability
- International global information communications system
- Removal of space debris in geostationary orbit
- Large space radio telescope to study galaxies
The eroding ozone layer of the earth could be replenished using a constellation of space-based lasers that would bombard the stratosphere at 30 km altitude for 30 years. The N-1 launch vehicle would launch 30 to 40 satellites, each with a mass of 60 to 80 metric tons, into a sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of 450 km. They would use on-board ion engines to move to operational orbits at 1600 km altitude. Each spacecraft would consist of a 600 m diameter solar collector, a 35 MWt oxygen-iodine laser of continuous function and an equipment module with ion orbit correction engine
The entire inventory of high-level nuclear waste (100 metric tons) would be permanently disposed of in a solar orbit at 1. 2 AU between Earth and Mars using 10 to 15 launches of the N-1 launch vehicle. The waste would be encapsulated; in case of a launch vehicle failure it would be recovered from the equatorial ocean of the earth and sent back into space. The waste disposal vehicle consisted of two rocket stages. The first, conventional stage, puts the 50 metric ton payload into an 800 km parking orbit around the earth. The second 150-200 kWt nuclear electric stage uses an ion engine to transfer the waste to its permanent solar orbit. The net payload of waste per launch would be 9 metric tons.
Or the N-1 could place observation platforms of 18 to 21 metric tons in geostationary orbit. These platforms would provide continuous multispectral monitoring of the surface in the visual, ultraviolet, and infrared bands. Any environmental changes could be noted and radio and laser links used to command low orbit satellites to take a detailed look at the problem.
We also thought about the growing issue of space debris. A 15 metric ton maneuverable satellite, consisting of an engine unit and a satellite collection mechanism, would maneuver at geosynchronous altitude in orbits with inclinations of between 0 and 14 degrees. The spacecraft would collect dead communications satellites and move them from the geosynchronous orbit zone. An operating life of six months was expected.
Now how about a Polar City Illuminator ? The N-1 launch vehicle could be used to launch 100 orbital reflectors to provide light to cities located in the polar regions. These reflectors would be placed in sun synchronous orbits at 1700 km altitude / 103 deg inclination. Each satellite would be 240 m in diameter and have a mass of 5 to 6 metric tons. Each satellite would have a ten year life and be usable 8 hours daily, and illuminate a 17 km diameter circular area on the earth's surface. That's the Znamya concept. The satellite's equipment module would include solar panels, a KAR gyroscopic pointing system, and a laser unit to scan and control the form of the reflector. Pressure from the solar wind would be used to make orbital corrections. The illuminators would be orbited 10 to 12 at a time. A single N-1 launch would put a 69 metric ton payload into a 450 km / 103 deg orbit. A solar electric engine interorbital tug would take the satellites to the higher operational orbit and then deploy them.
Arm control has become a very important aspect of international relations. A satellite consisting of a 33 metric ton equipment bus and a 17 metric ton rocket stage would be placed in a 600 km / 97 degree orbit for arms control and environment monitoring. It would be equipped with a videospectrometer, optical electronic camera, and phased array radar. Solar panels would provide 13 kW of power.
In conclusion, as of today we have four N-1 in storage, and we have to define at least three missions around them. Since we have two Almaz hulls in storage, I suggest we use them as point of departure. Of all the projects detailed here, I personally favor the KRT-25 radiotelescope. We could build a pair of them from Almaz OPS-3 and OPS-4. My second prefered alternative is to turn the Almaz into prototypes of the Globis heavy geostationary communication platform. I really think we should expand the MKBS upward, to gestionary orbit. A N-11 could easily send a Soyuz up there. As an alternative, a Proton could loft a much-lightened TKS to geosynchronous orbit. We can do it !
Soviets in space (21)
Archibald
Banned
February 1978
In late 1977, a Soviet RORSAT, designated Kosmos 954, began behaving erratically shortly after launch. Ground controllers struggled to control the spacecraft and the reactor-ejection maneuver failed. In December, the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) began planning for an uncontrolled re-entry. In January, Kosmos 954 lost all attitude control and began its descent.
The USSR remained tight-lipped throughout the crisis, but eventually confirmed the loss of Kosmos 954 and its on-board nuclear reactor. The Soviet Union assured the world that the falling spacecraft would burn up during re-entry. The U.S. took no chances and stood up a whole-of-government response.
The NSC brought together liaisons and experts from State, Defense, the CIA and the Department of Energy (DOE). DOE ran much of the search and processing through its Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST. A computer contributed the operation's code name: MORNING LIGHT.
The nuclear emergency response system got its first real-world test—a tougher, more dangerous test than any drill. Kosmos 954's reactor core contained over 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium.
Three C-141 aircraft carried most of NEST's gear to a Royal Canadian Air Force base in Edmonton, Alberta. Equipment included enough photographic processing tech to increase the base's photo lab size tenfold. Another base was set up in Yellowknife. The Canadians had good nuclear detection gear, but it was designed for aerial prospecting, not debris location. State-of-the-art American instruments rode aboard Canadian aircraft.
The Kosmos blunder had far-reaching consequences.
At the time one men was deeply engaged in an overwhelming effort aiming at developing a structured Canadian space program. That man was John Herbert Chapman, already the father of Alouette, the first Canadian satellite that had made Canada the world third space power after the U.S and USSR.
At the time the Kosmos 954 disaster struck Chapman had already sold the Trudeau government a complete, highly structured space program.
The Blue Streak Agena would carry three important missions, A, B, and C.
Mission A would be launch of the Anik B communication satellites.
Mission B would carry second-generation "International Satellite for Ionospheric Studies" (ISIS) sensors either in orbit or to the American Liberty space station.
Mission C would have the Agena outfitted with the Canadian robotic arm, the Canadarm.
In the wake of Kosmos 954 Chapman tackled space debris. At the time another derelicted vehicle was becoming a threat. Skylab A certainly carried no nuclear reactor, but it was just enormous, a good 150 000 pounds of metal. As such it was quite sure to left a huge trail of debris striking the planet – but where ? The sticky point was that NASA was no longer able to control its creature – all gyroscopes were dead.
Chapman stroke of genius was to use the Canadarm to grapple the Skylab. And then Agena would ram itself into the workshop Apollo docking collar.
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"Information reaching London is that the G-1-e big Russian rocket is meant to launch modular components of a large space station for collection and assembly by a space tug some 400 to 450 km above the Earth. Whether or not this is still the intention, or whether smaller modules will be launched by the Proton booster, only time will tell. At all events, the present Salyut stations are expected to continue, in some form, well into the 1980s. "
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May 5, 1978
Music: The Mammas and the papas, Monday Monday
They had boarded Enterprise two weeks before. Everything was clean and neat and well packaged, although that state of thing would not last very long. For all the valiant efforts of their crews space stations tended to become messy places.
To the veteran crew the Skylab legacy was evident. A new era was dawning, that of long duration stays well past Skylab 84 days benchmark. The veteran crew was slowly outfitting Enterprise, and they had a brief thought for the pair of Soviet cosmonauts not that far away. It was a unique situation in the history of spaceflight: for the first time two space stations shared a similar inclination over the equator - 51.6 degree (in the 74-76 era Salyut 4 had had an orbital inclination similar to Skylab, but it was flying much lower and the cluster had already been abandonned at the time.)
It was a pure coincidence: NASA space station had been there because of Skylab science heritage, because there were more landmasses under its path to be observed. The Soviets, for their part, where there because of Baikonur; Salyut orbit made launches easier for them.
There was no risk, however, that the two stations ever collided; nor that a Soviet crew could ever defect to the American orbital facility, Belenko style.
Both space stations were racing around Earth like two cars racing at the Indianapolis oval track. They were at the same height, and their path crossed Earth equator at the same angle – an inclination of 51.6 degree. Yet the speedway was very long, a thousand miles long track. Simply, the space stations had been launched at the opposite ends of the oval; and since their speed and height were essentially similar, they would never catch each other. Neither crew intended to hit the brakes and wait for the adversary; space-wise, slamming the brakes meant firing a rocket motor against the orbital motion to lose height and speed, and that cost a helluva lot of propellants.
...
Down on the same orbit were the Soviets. To NASA relief a kind of new space race had started, that, perhaps someday would end on Mars surface. Truth be told, the Soviet competitor remained manned space program best driving force. The soviet crew was manning Salyut 5, an evolved model where two ships could dock, one at each end, one for the crew and the other for cargo. It was the fifth DOS space station, most of which had failed either at launch or in orbit.
After a string of failures, Almaz and Salyut reached success circa 1975 and at the very moment when emphasis shifted to the huge MKBS - making their future rather uncertain. That was, of course, before Glushko kicked Chelomei out of his empire.
Chelomei empire once consisted of its own OKB-23 bureau that build antiship missiles. In 1960 he had been given OKB-52 - Myasishchev aviation shop that rivaled Tupolev strategic bombers. Khrushchev has stopped believing in strategic aviation and, most importantly, Chelomei wisely hired his son Serguey !
Twenty years later Glushko had been given OKB-52 and made it the nucleus of his new empire, stripping down Chelomei empire of everything beside antiship missiles at OKB-23. In the process Glushko had its hands on the Proton rocket workhorse (which engines he had designed, by the way) he renamed Buran; the Almaz and Zvezda military space stations; and the TKS (now Zarya) manned ship to support them.
Because Salyut was a derivative of Almaz, and because Chertok was extremely busy with the much more important MKBS, Glushko also had Salyut returns home - Chelomei OKB-52. Under Glushko leadership, Salyut, Almaz, Almaz 35 ton derivative Zvezda, and the TKS support ship were being consolidated.
Glushko intended to build Salyut and Almaz aplenty and for many tasks.
The military stations were redirected to man-tended platforms supported by the MKBS; while Salyut was to hang on much longer, to fill the gap until the early 80's.
Some stations would be outfitted with giant foldable antennas 10 or even 30 meters in diameter; others would be tasked with remote sensing of earth and astronomy. A couple of hulls would even be loaded with kinetic projectiles to shoot American satellites and ballistic missiles. That was called Kaskad and was of uttermost screcy.
Another concept had a plain old Salyut hull modified with the MKBS docking ball, all eight docking ports of it. The modules would be only two more hulls in the production run, which would be readied for launch in case the MKBS core failed. If it did not, then the modules would officially go into mothball.
A rule of thumb with space stations was they were always build in pair; and the next generation of Salyuts (with a docking collar at both end) was no exception. There would be a Salyut 5, and it would have a twin and backup, Salyut 6. Had there been no MKBS, the two stations would have launched 5 years apart, succedding each other over the span of a decade.
Instead, once launched (in 1979) Salyut 6 would join its older sister and they would dock, forming a 40 tons spaceship matching Enterprise. To confuse the imperialists, the Orbitalniy Pilotiruemyi Eksperimentalniy Kompleks – OPSEK or Orbital Manned Assembly and Experiment Complex - would be presented as the first step in the direction of a modular orbital facility, masking the massive MKBS and its N-1 launcher.
Because Peter N. James had guessed Soviet intentions quite well – the MKBS and its military implications – OPSEK would be presented as a purely civilian program; and to make matters clear, the complex was to be called according to the russian word for peace.
It was called Mir.
In 1976 Glushko had started “operation Mir”. It was obvious the extremely complex and expensive MKBS wouldn't be ready until 1981 at best. He compared this situation with NASA, where the Enterprise module would be launched in 1978, ahead of Liberty core. In Glushko opinion, an interim space station was needed, but it would have to test module assembly in orbit. Glushko also accelerated the TKS heavy manned ship. Glushko grand scheme was to dock a TKS at both end of Mir, forming a 80 tons modular station. OPSEK was to last until the MKBS reached full operational status – probably in the late 80's.
Glushko had decided to hijack the Intercomos project; foreign cosmonauts would fly both Soyuz and TKS, to Mir, for a week up there.
Gushko "operation Mir" then expanded to the military. Just after the Apollo – Soyuz joint flight in 1976 Ustinov and Afanasyev requested both Glushko and Chertok to start studies of Skif and Kaskad concepts. Initially, the Soviet military plan was to use space-based these laser and kinetic weapons to shoot down American intercontinental ballistic missiles early in flight, when they were still moving relatively slowly. Glushko Salyut or Almaz space stations would serve as the core for either the laser-equipped Polyus spacecraft or the missile-armed Kaskad. The stations could be refueled in orbit and could house two cosmonauts for up to a week. Obviously the refueling station would be Chertok MKBS.
The killing Salyut - Kaskad early concept (Buran.ru)
The designers quickly abandoned this plan, however, and with it the notion of having cosmonauts live on board the Skif and Kaskad spacecrafts. Another major change in plan was that the Soviet Ministry of Defense determined that Soviet technology was not up to the challenge of shooting down ICBMs from space, and directed that Skif and Kaskad instead be used to disable American anti-missile satellites—which didn't yet exist, and hadn't even been approved. The MKBS always had had a military role, reaching back as far as 1962 and Korolev early sketch of the monster space station.
As for lasers, incredibly the Soviets started flying them long before Reagan "evil empire" and "star wars" 1983 speeches.
In 1977 the Beriev OKB started the design of a flying laboratory designated '1А'. The purpose was to solve the complex scientific and engineering problems regarding the creation of an airborne laser and also to facilitate research on the distribution of beams in the top layers of an atmosphere. Work on this topic occurred with wide cooperation between the enterprises and the scientific organizations of the USSR, but the basic partner OKB was TSKB Almaz headed by B.V.Bunkin. The '1A' flying laboratory first flew on 19 August 1981. The aircraft began laser tests against airborne targets in late 1983–1984 and fired against high-altitude balloons at 30–40 kilometers altitude. The plane later was used to successfully attack an airborne La-17 drone aircraft.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1865/1
In late 1977, a Soviet RORSAT, designated Kosmos 954, began behaving erratically shortly after launch. Ground controllers struggled to control the spacecraft and the reactor-ejection maneuver failed. In December, the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) began planning for an uncontrolled re-entry. In January, Kosmos 954 lost all attitude control and began its descent.
The USSR remained tight-lipped throughout the crisis, but eventually confirmed the loss of Kosmos 954 and its on-board nuclear reactor. The Soviet Union assured the world that the falling spacecraft would burn up during re-entry. The U.S. took no chances and stood up a whole-of-government response.
The NSC brought together liaisons and experts from State, Defense, the CIA and the Department of Energy (DOE). DOE ran much of the search and processing through its Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST. A computer contributed the operation's code name: MORNING LIGHT.
The nuclear emergency response system got its first real-world test—a tougher, more dangerous test than any drill. Kosmos 954's reactor core contained over 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium.
Three C-141 aircraft carried most of NEST's gear to a Royal Canadian Air Force base in Edmonton, Alberta. Equipment included enough photographic processing tech to increase the base's photo lab size tenfold. Another base was set up in Yellowknife. The Canadians had good nuclear detection gear, but it was designed for aerial prospecting, not debris location. State-of-the-art American instruments rode aboard Canadian aircraft.
The Kosmos blunder had far-reaching consequences.
At the time one men was deeply engaged in an overwhelming effort aiming at developing a structured Canadian space program. That man was John Herbert Chapman, already the father of Alouette, the first Canadian satellite that had made Canada the world third space power after the U.S and USSR.
At the time the Kosmos 954 disaster struck Chapman had already sold the Trudeau government a complete, highly structured space program.
The Blue Streak Agena would carry three important missions, A, B, and C.
Mission A would be launch of the Anik B communication satellites.
Mission B would carry second-generation "International Satellite for Ionospheric Studies" (ISIS) sensors either in orbit or to the American Liberty space station.
Mission C would have the Agena outfitted with the Canadian robotic arm, the Canadarm.
In the wake of Kosmos 954 Chapman tackled space debris. At the time another derelicted vehicle was becoming a threat. Skylab A certainly carried no nuclear reactor, but it was just enormous, a good 150 000 pounds of metal. As such it was quite sure to left a huge trail of debris striking the planet – but where ? The sticky point was that NASA was no longer able to control its creature – all gyroscopes were dead.
Chapman stroke of genius was to use the Canadarm to grapple the Skylab. And then Agena would ram itself into the workshop Apollo docking collar.
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Information reaching London is that the G-1-e big Russian rocket is meant to launch modular components of a large space station for collection and assembly by a space tug some 400 to 450 km above the Earth. Whether or not this is still the intention, or whether smaller modules will be launched by the Proton booster, only time will tell. At all events, the present Salyut stations are expected to continue, in some form, well into the 1980s. "
--------------------------------------------------------------
May 5, 1978
Music: The Mammas and the papas, Monday Monday
They had boarded Enterprise two weeks before. Everything was clean and neat and well packaged, although that state of thing would not last very long. For all the valiant efforts of their crews space stations tended to become messy places.
To the veteran crew the Skylab legacy was evident. A new era was dawning, that of long duration stays well past Skylab 84 days benchmark. The veteran crew was slowly outfitting Enterprise, and they had a brief thought for the pair of Soviet cosmonauts not that far away. It was a unique situation in the history of spaceflight: for the first time two space stations shared a similar inclination over the equator - 51.6 degree (in the 74-76 era Salyut 4 had had an orbital inclination similar to Skylab, but it was flying much lower and the cluster had already been abandonned at the time.)
It was a pure coincidence: NASA space station had been there because of Skylab science heritage, because there were more landmasses under its path to be observed. The Soviets, for their part, where there because of Baikonur; Salyut orbit made launches easier for them.
There was no risk, however, that the two stations ever collided; nor that a Soviet crew could ever defect to the American orbital facility, Belenko style.
Both space stations were racing around Earth like two cars racing at the Indianapolis oval track. They were at the same height, and their path crossed Earth equator at the same angle – an inclination of 51.6 degree. Yet the speedway was very long, a thousand miles long track. Simply, the space stations had been launched at the opposite ends of the oval; and since their speed and height were essentially similar, they would never catch each other. Neither crew intended to hit the brakes and wait for the adversary; space-wise, slamming the brakes meant firing a rocket motor against the orbital motion to lose height and speed, and that cost a helluva lot of propellants.
...
Down on the same orbit were the Soviets. To NASA relief a kind of new space race had started, that, perhaps someday would end on Mars surface. Truth be told, the Soviet competitor remained manned space program best driving force. The soviet crew was manning Salyut 5, an evolved model where two ships could dock, one at each end, one for the crew and the other for cargo. It was the fifth DOS space station, most of which had failed either at launch or in orbit.
After a string of failures, Almaz and Salyut reached success circa 1975 and at the very moment when emphasis shifted to the huge MKBS - making their future rather uncertain. That was, of course, before Glushko kicked Chelomei out of his empire.
Chelomei empire once consisted of its own OKB-23 bureau that build antiship missiles. In 1960 he had been given OKB-52 - Myasishchev aviation shop that rivaled Tupolev strategic bombers. Khrushchev has stopped believing in strategic aviation and, most importantly, Chelomei wisely hired his son Serguey !
Twenty years later Glushko had been given OKB-52 and made it the nucleus of his new empire, stripping down Chelomei empire of everything beside antiship missiles at OKB-23. In the process Glushko had its hands on the Proton rocket workhorse (which engines he had designed, by the way) he renamed Buran; the Almaz and Zvezda military space stations; and the TKS (now Zarya) manned ship to support them.
Because Salyut was a derivative of Almaz, and because Chertok was extremely busy with the much more important MKBS, Glushko also had Salyut returns home - Chelomei OKB-52. Under Glushko leadership, Salyut, Almaz, Almaz 35 ton derivative Zvezda, and the TKS support ship were being consolidated.
Glushko intended to build Salyut and Almaz aplenty and for many tasks.
The military stations were redirected to man-tended platforms supported by the MKBS; while Salyut was to hang on much longer, to fill the gap until the early 80's.
Some stations would be outfitted with giant foldable antennas 10 or even 30 meters in diameter; others would be tasked with remote sensing of earth and astronomy. A couple of hulls would even be loaded with kinetic projectiles to shoot American satellites and ballistic missiles. That was called Kaskad and was of uttermost screcy.
Another concept had a plain old Salyut hull modified with the MKBS docking ball, all eight docking ports of it. The modules would be only two more hulls in the production run, which would be readied for launch in case the MKBS core failed. If it did not, then the modules would officially go into mothball.
A rule of thumb with space stations was they were always build in pair; and the next generation of Salyuts (with a docking collar at both end) was no exception. There would be a Salyut 5, and it would have a twin and backup, Salyut 6. Had there been no MKBS, the two stations would have launched 5 years apart, succedding each other over the span of a decade.
Instead, once launched (in 1979) Salyut 6 would join its older sister and they would dock, forming a 40 tons spaceship matching Enterprise. To confuse the imperialists, the Orbitalniy Pilotiruemyi Eksperimentalniy Kompleks – OPSEK or Orbital Manned Assembly and Experiment Complex - would be presented as the first step in the direction of a modular orbital facility, masking the massive MKBS and its N-1 launcher.
Because Peter N. James had guessed Soviet intentions quite well – the MKBS and its military implications – OPSEK would be presented as a purely civilian program; and to make matters clear, the complex was to be called according to the russian word for peace.
It was called Mir.
In 1976 Glushko had started “operation Mir”. It was obvious the extremely complex and expensive MKBS wouldn't be ready until 1981 at best. He compared this situation with NASA, where the Enterprise module would be launched in 1978, ahead of Liberty core. In Glushko opinion, an interim space station was needed, but it would have to test module assembly in orbit. Glushko also accelerated the TKS heavy manned ship. Glushko grand scheme was to dock a TKS at both end of Mir, forming a 80 tons modular station. OPSEK was to last until the MKBS reached full operational status – probably in the late 80's.
Glushko had decided to hijack the Intercomos project; foreign cosmonauts would fly both Soyuz and TKS, to Mir, for a week up there.
Gushko "operation Mir" then expanded to the military. Just after the Apollo – Soyuz joint flight in 1976 Ustinov and Afanasyev requested both Glushko and Chertok to start studies of Skif and Kaskad concepts. Initially, the Soviet military plan was to use space-based these laser and kinetic weapons to shoot down American intercontinental ballistic missiles early in flight, when they were still moving relatively slowly. Glushko Salyut or Almaz space stations would serve as the core for either the laser-equipped Polyus spacecraft or the missile-armed Kaskad. The stations could be refueled in orbit and could house two cosmonauts for up to a week. Obviously the refueling station would be Chertok MKBS.
The killing Salyut - Kaskad early concept (Buran.ru)
The designers quickly abandoned this plan, however, and with it the notion of having cosmonauts live on board the Skif and Kaskad spacecrafts. Another major change in plan was that the Soviet Ministry of Defense determined that Soviet technology was not up to the challenge of shooting down ICBMs from space, and directed that Skif and Kaskad instead be used to disable American anti-missile satellites—which didn't yet exist, and hadn't even been approved. The MKBS always had had a military role, reaching back as far as 1962 and Korolev early sketch of the monster space station.
As for lasers, incredibly the Soviets started flying them long before Reagan "evil empire" and "star wars" 1983 speeches.
In 1977 the Beriev OKB started the design of a flying laboratory designated '1А'. The purpose was to solve the complex scientific and engineering problems regarding the creation of an airborne laser and also to facilitate research on the distribution of beams in the top layers of an atmosphere. Work on this topic occurred with wide cooperation between the enterprises and the scientific organizations of the USSR, but the basic partner OKB was TSKB Almaz headed by B.V.Bunkin. The '1A' flying laboratory first flew on 19 August 1981. The aircraft began laser tests against airborne targets in late 1983–1984 and fired against high-altitude balloons at 30–40 kilometers altitude. The plane later was used to successfully attack an airborne La-17 drone aircraft.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1865/1
Last edited:
Archibald
Banned
The Salyut numbering is a nightmare because the Soviets hide Almaz among them. Salyut were DOS- while Almaz were OPS- .
ITTL only two Almaz OPS- have been launched, the third has been grounded. Thanks to that Salyut numbering is a little simpler ITTL. Kind of a cat falling right on its paws, not on its back, meow.
DOS-1 > Salyut 1, two crew, one killed, 1971
DOS-2 > should have been Salyut 2, but Kosmos 557 launch failure, burned up in Earth atmosphere in July 1972
OPS-1 > 1973 atempt at beating Skylab, failed
DOS-3 > 1973 atempt at beating Skylab, failed
OPS-2 > Salyut 3 as per OTL (1974)
DOS-4 > Salyut 4 (also 1974)
Then...
OPS-3 > grounded (so not Salyut 5 as in OTL)
So...
DOS-5 > Salyut 5
DOS-6 > Salyut 6
DOS-7 and DOS-8 also exist ITTL, but of course Mir is different. More detail on these two later.
ITTL only two Almaz OPS- have been launched, the third has been grounded. Thanks to that Salyut numbering is a little simpler ITTL. Kind of a cat falling right on its paws, not on its back, meow.
DOS-1 > Salyut 1, two crew, one killed, 1971
DOS-2 > should have been Salyut 2, but Kosmos 557 launch failure, burned up in Earth atmosphere in July 1972
OPS-1 > 1973 atempt at beating Skylab, failed
DOS-3 > 1973 atempt at beating Skylab, failed
OPS-2 > Salyut 3 as per OTL (1974)
DOS-4 > Salyut 4 (also 1974)
Then...
OPS-3 > grounded (so not Salyut 5 as in OTL)
So...
DOS-5 > Salyut 5
DOS-6 > Salyut 6
DOS-7 and DOS-8 also exist ITTL, but of course Mir is different. More detail on these two later.
Last edited:
The grounding of OPS-3 had a reason
The Red Army lost interest in that Toy after wait years of launch Failures and other disasters
And as they could tested there OPS version in Orbit, the Photo Results were same as from Unmanned units.
while OPS cost are higher, do send a manned crew on board.
I and SpaceGeek played with this in 2001: a Space Time Odyssey (see link for more info)
Here Salyut is planned by OKB-1 based on TMK, but is build by OKB-52 after Chelomei "kicked out of his empire".
Next to the station is launch by Proton N2 rocket and visit by two men crew in pressure suits from 1973 on
The Red Army lost interest in that Toy after wait years of launch Failures and other disasters
And as they could tested there OPS version in Orbit, the Photo Results were same as from Unmanned units.
while OPS cost are higher, do send a manned crew on board.
I and SpaceGeek played with this in 2001: a Space Time Odyssey (see link for more info)
Here Salyut is planned by OKB-1 based on TMK, but is build by OKB-52 after Chelomei "kicked out of his empire".
Next to the station is launch by Proton N2 rocket and visit by two men crew in pressure suits from 1973 on
Big Gemini (3)
Archibald
Banned
October 4 1978
The Learjet that had rushed NASA deputy administrator James Preston Layton here from Washington, after that midnight briefing with the Science Missions Board, was now dropping down toward one of the most familiar, yet most exciting, landscapes in all the world. There lay the first two generations of the Space Age, spanning twenty miles of the Florida coast to the south, outlined by winking red warning lights, were the giant gantries of the Saturns, that had set men on the path to the Moon. Near the horizon, looming against the sky like a man-made mountain, was the incredible bulk of the Vehicle Assembly Building, still the largest single structure on Earth.
After the jet landed at Ellington Preston Layton was taken to the Cape. One of its favorites sights to see was the pad search lights in the distance. Whether it was for Saturn, Titan, Delta or Atlas, they could be seen for 20 miles or more. It was an indicator that something was going to happen. This day, Preston Layton was greeted by a unique sight, two different areas streaming shafts of light. On Pad 39B was a Saturn IB. A Titan III stood on Launch Complex 41, soon to be moved to its final, NASA pad.
The incoming mission was one of the most complex ever staged since the Apollo days.
This day of October Preston Layton was to supervise payload integration at the Titan launch complex, also known as I-T-L – Integrate, Transfer, Launch. Preston Layton visited the teams at a gigantic, cavernous “white room” at pad 41. This environmental shelter was part of the Mobile Launch Tower -the largest moving structure in the world. Despite its size the MLT was only a small element of the I-T-L, itself as big as NASA own moonport.
Build by Martin Marietta in Denver, Titan’s two stages were ferried to the Cape, to the Vertical Integration Building (VIB). They were mated together there and the resulting Titan core and its platform were then pushed out the VIB by two powerful locomotives, going by rail to the Solid Motor Assembly Building (SMAB; USAF was as worse as NASA when considering acronyms). There, two big solid rocket motors were added.
The Titan still lacked its 3rd stage, the payload and the protective shroud – or, if manned, Helios and its escape tower.
Whatever went above Titan second stage, it would be mated to the rocket on the pad. Getting out of the SMAB, the booster continued its rail trip to the pad, pushed by the locomotives – offering the singular vision of a beheaded rocket slowly travelling across the Florida countryside.
Once at the pad, the Mobile Launch Tower literally engulfed the rocket. The environmental shelter Preston Layton visited was integral part of the MLT; a room 30 meter high and six meter wide, divided in a dozen of vertical levels. The lowest level corresponded to the top of the Titan second stage, forty meters above the ground. Once the Titan readied for launch, the MLT would be moved away, leaving only a smaller umbilical tower.
James Preston Layton had been officially, NASA deputy administrator for a year and half - he had been suggered, and imposed to Burt Edelson, by Carter advisor Walter Mondale, a hater of the shuttle. Edelson had been a good friend of Beggs, making the succession easier, to the delight of Carter, which considered the space program as a liability. Edelson had its hand full with large man-tended platforms, but the Titan to launch them were rather expensive. Cheap access to space remained a pipe dream, thanks to the loss of the shuttle.
"A thorning issue with space station Liberty is that of safety during long duration missions. That question remains partially unanswered to this day.
Should Helios on-orbit duration be extended past one month ?
Should crew rotations been accelerated ?
What about a safe haven, a corner of the space station where a stranded crew could wait rescue ?
None of these solutions was found to be truly satisfying. Instead a lifeboat was prefered - a capsule docked to the space station that could be used in case of an emergency. Because NASA budget deflated considerably, that last option remained unfunded. The Soviet record duration flights aboard their Salyuts recently prompted a re-examination of the problem.
In 1977 and 1978, the issue was studied by the Carter Administration but the FY 1979 budget only contained funds for Big G rotations and the space station with procurement of the lifeboat being deferred. By contrast Congress, in its FY 1979 budget deliberations, decided the lifeboat option should be kept open and added $4 million for more studies. The FY 1980 NASA budget request contained funds for the lifeboat, yet these funds were subsequently deleted after program was reviewed within the Administration.
The Rockwell International Corporation has expressed frustration, citing his Apollo-based capsule as a safe, proven vehicle. The OMB, however, see the lifeboat as duplicating Big Gemini in the manned spacecraft role. There's no way they agree to fund two manned capsules at the same time.
In this context it is rather unfortunate that an interesting proposal from McDonnell Douglas has gone unnoticed. The company proposed to re-fly spent Big Gemini crew modules. Touching down on a runway, unlike Apollo these capsules are not ruined by saltwater, although early in the programme NASA decided against a possible reuse, on safety grounds.
The lifeboat, however, would be a different matter. Much like the Agenas it would be launched unmanned, thus not risking a crew. Every module would also be completely checked and overhauled before being reflown as a lifeboat. Chief engineer of the study Owen J. Gordon noted that back in 1967 Big Gemini was imagined as an interim vehicle to be flown before the shuttle, and thus could house an equally large crew - as much as ten astronauts plus a pilot and a co-pilot. "A big lifeboat allows for a big space station crew, he notes, making the orbital outpost more productive." But playing against this proposal is NASA aversion for spent hardware.
"They consider a capsule internal structure suffers too much during ree-entry, taking the brunt of a brutal ballistic reentry. Winged shapes skimming on the atmosphere, bleeding speed with lower G-loads, are preferable if reuse of the hardware is to be considered. It's a point of view I won't discuss; I consider we still lack experience in that field." Gordon concludes.
These days the lack of space shuttle is felt more bitterly than ever; many see the space program as stuck in the 60's. The lifeboat issue, for its part, remains unanswered...
…
music: Isaac Hayes, Shaft
The Titan III-M cleared the launch tower, accompanied by the loud noise of its solid rocket motors. They actually lifted the whole rocket; the LR-87 liquid-fueled engines on the core only started two minutes in flight. The mission pushed Titan III near its maximum payload. Helios was on the the way to orbit, carrying scientist Owen Garriott to its second trip in space. Having flown on Skylab and worked on the Apollo Telescope Mount, Garriott had an important role to play in the incoming mission.
Eight minutes later Titan second stage powered Helios to a 185km parking orbit. Over the next following hours three burns pushed the spacecraft up to 350km. Deke Slayton opened the hatch running through the heatshield, and entered the cargo block to monitor deployment of the Gemini Telescope Mount.
First task of the crew was to jettison the protective shroud above the payload. The two panels were ripped off by explosive bolts, disclosing the big solar telescope. It had been “borrowed” from the backup Skylab workshop and mated to a platform, itself linked to Helios cargo block. Unsurprisingly the idea came from Martin Marietta, builder of both ATM and Titan booster. The platform would provide power, communications, thermal control and other services; it essentially gave Helios a surrogate Shuttle payload bay, even if the platform could not be returned to Earth. These free-flyers would also performs some tasks Liberty was not good at, on different orbits.
The ATM stack was a heavy thing. To not offload Titan payload, engineers had cut two-third of Helios cargo section, leaving only a tiny pressurised module behind the reentry capsule. This shortened cargo section would act as sas for the EVAs, notably to retrieve film from the ATM cameras. This was Garriott job!
On day 7 Bruce McCandless had another task to perform. Back in 1973 Skylab crew had tested the M-509 “Manoeuvring Unit” within the roomy workshop. After satisfactory tests, an evolved variant now waited McCandless at the rear of the ATM platform. He performed an EVA, and first spent a long time carefully strapping himself to the MMU. After some satisfactory testing he tried a greater hop and moved 50 feet away from the platform. Garriott, also out of the ship to work on the solar telescope, took the iconic picture of McCandless floating with the ATM windmill on the background. The platform also featured a small robotic arm built in Canada; a bigger variant would be mounted later on space station Liberty.
"Tally-ho, the Enterprise. We got her in daylight at 1.5 miles, 29 feet per second" Slayton told the ground. Enterprise looked similar to Skylab, but the two differed in many points.
Slayton station-kept Helios around Enterprise for long minutes. Everything nominal, docking was performed. Enterprise had been NASA answer to Salyut. Skylab 4 84 days record had been broken by the soviets, which progressed rapidly – 96, then 135 days. The Helios crew was to spent 150 days at Enterprise.
The crew had to perform lot of tasks – observing the Sun with the ATM, mapping Earth at high resolution. Toward the end of the mission however a thruster on Helios started to leak. There were pressures on NASA to shorten the mission, to no avail. Pictures of McCandless riding the MMU caught public attention, resulting in more pressure to the astronauts. At one time, the crew “forgot” some tasks and fixed some its own priorities.
-------------
With perfect hindsight the two Agena and the Helios CTS-3 missions have become closely linked with the following Skylab desorbit program.
Yet in the times when these missions flew, in 1976-77, Skylab desorbit was NOT in NASA future plans. Largely forgotten today is the fact that Skylab A was boosted into orbit by an even larger Saturn S-II stage – a stage 33 ft in diameter and that weighed nearly 100 000 pounds. NASA confirmed that the 83,790lb AS-513 S-II stage re-entered January 11, 1975, over the Atlantic just before 3.00am EST, radar tracking reporting one large chunk that fell into the Ocean at 34 deg N by 19 deg W, 1,600 km west of Gibraltar. No reports of any impacts or damage elsewhere.
Skylab A was to meet a similar fate; the battered space station was to be abandonned in orbit. The Cosmos 954 crisis happened in January 1978 changed everything. There was no way a nearly 200 000 pounds spacecraft would made an uncontrolled reentry.
The Learjet that had rushed NASA deputy administrator James Preston Layton here from Washington, after that midnight briefing with the Science Missions Board, was now dropping down toward one of the most familiar, yet most exciting, landscapes in all the world. There lay the first two generations of the Space Age, spanning twenty miles of the Florida coast to the south, outlined by winking red warning lights, were the giant gantries of the Saturns, that had set men on the path to the Moon. Near the horizon, looming against the sky like a man-made mountain, was the incredible bulk of the Vehicle Assembly Building, still the largest single structure on Earth.
After the jet landed at Ellington Preston Layton was taken to the Cape. One of its favorites sights to see was the pad search lights in the distance. Whether it was for Saturn, Titan, Delta or Atlas, they could be seen for 20 miles or more. It was an indicator that something was going to happen. This day, Preston Layton was greeted by a unique sight, two different areas streaming shafts of light. On Pad 39B was a Saturn IB. A Titan III stood on Launch Complex 41, soon to be moved to its final, NASA pad.
The incoming mission was one of the most complex ever staged since the Apollo days.
This day of October Preston Layton was to supervise payload integration at the Titan launch complex, also known as I-T-L – Integrate, Transfer, Launch. Preston Layton visited the teams at a gigantic, cavernous “white room” at pad 41. This environmental shelter was part of the Mobile Launch Tower -the largest moving structure in the world. Despite its size the MLT was only a small element of the I-T-L, itself as big as NASA own moonport.
Build by Martin Marietta in Denver, Titan’s two stages were ferried to the Cape, to the Vertical Integration Building (VIB). They were mated together there and the resulting Titan core and its platform were then pushed out the VIB by two powerful locomotives, going by rail to the Solid Motor Assembly Building (SMAB; USAF was as worse as NASA when considering acronyms). There, two big solid rocket motors were added.
The Titan still lacked its 3rd stage, the payload and the protective shroud – or, if manned, Helios and its escape tower.
Whatever went above Titan second stage, it would be mated to the rocket on the pad. Getting out of the SMAB, the booster continued its rail trip to the pad, pushed by the locomotives – offering the singular vision of a beheaded rocket slowly travelling across the Florida countryside.
Once at the pad, the Mobile Launch Tower literally engulfed the rocket. The environmental shelter Preston Layton visited was integral part of the MLT; a room 30 meter high and six meter wide, divided in a dozen of vertical levels. The lowest level corresponded to the top of the Titan second stage, forty meters above the ground. Once the Titan readied for launch, the MLT would be moved away, leaving only a smaller umbilical tower.
James Preston Layton had been officially, NASA deputy administrator for a year and half - he had been suggered, and imposed to Burt Edelson, by Carter advisor Walter Mondale, a hater of the shuttle. Edelson had been a good friend of Beggs, making the succession easier, to the delight of Carter, which considered the space program as a liability. Edelson had its hand full with large man-tended platforms, but the Titan to launch them were rather expensive. Cheap access to space remained a pipe dream, thanks to the loss of the shuttle.
"A thorning issue with space station Liberty is that of safety during long duration missions. That question remains partially unanswered to this day.
Should Helios on-orbit duration be extended past one month ?
Should crew rotations been accelerated ?
What about a safe haven, a corner of the space station where a stranded crew could wait rescue ?
None of these solutions was found to be truly satisfying. Instead a lifeboat was prefered - a capsule docked to the space station that could be used in case of an emergency. Because NASA budget deflated considerably, that last option remained unfunded. The Soviet record duration flights aboard their Salyuts recently prompted a re-examination of the problem.
In 1977 and 1978, the issue was studied by the Carter Administration but the FY 1979 budget only contained funds for Big G rotations and the space station with procurement of the lifeboat being deferred. By contrast Congress, in its FY 1979 budget deliberations, decided the lifeboat option should be kept open and added $4 million for more studies. The FY 1980 NASA budget request contained funds for the lifeboat, yet these funds were subsequently deleted after program was reviewed within the Administration.
The Rockwell International Corporation has expressed frustration, citing his Apollo-based capsule as a safe, proven vehicle. The OMB, however, see the lifeboat as duplicating Big Gemini in the manned spacecraft role. There's no way they agree to fund two manned capsules at the same time.
In this context it is rather unfortunate that an interesting proposal from McDonnell Douglas has gone unnoticed. The company proposed to re-fly spent Big Gemini crew modules. Touching down on a runway, unlike Apollo these capsules are not ruined by saltwater, although early in the programme NASA decided against a possible reuse, on safety grounds.
The lifeboat, however, would be a different matter. Much like the Agenas it would be launched unmanned, thus not risking a crew. Every module would also be completely checked and overhauled before being reflown as a lifeboat. Chief engineer of the study Owen J. Gordon noted that back in 1967 Big Gemini was imagined as an interim vehicle to be flown before the shuttle, and thus could house an equally large crew - as much as ten astronauts plus a pilot and a co-pilot. "A big lifeboat allows for a big space station crew, he notes, making the orbital outpost more productive." But playing against this proposal is NASA aversion for spent hardware.
"They consider a capsule internal structure suffers too much during ree-entry, taking the brunt of a brutal ballistic reentry. Winged shapes skimming on the atmosphere, bleeding speed with lower G-loads, are preferable if reuse of the hardware is to be considered. It's a point of view I won't discuss; I consider we still lack experience in that field." Gordon concludes.
These days the lack of space shuttle is felt more bitterly than ever; many see the space program as stuck in the 60's. The lifeboat issue, for its part, remains unanswered...
…
music: Isaac Hayes, Shaft
The Titan III-M cleared the launch tower, accompanied by the loud noise of its solid rocket motors. They actually lifted the whole rocket; the LR-87 liquid-fueled engines on the core only started two minutes in flight. The mission pushed Titan III near its maximum payload. Helios was on the the way to orbit, carrying scientist Owen Garriott to its second trip in space. Having flown on Skylab and worked on the Apollo Telescope Mount, Garriott had an important role to play in the incoming mission.
Eight minutes later Titan second stage powered Helios to a 185km parking orbit. Over the next following hours three burns pushed the spacecraft up to 350km. Deke Slayton opened the hatch running through the heatshield, and entered the cargo block to monitor deployment of the Gemini Telescope Mount.
First task of the crew was to jettison the protective shroud above the payload. The two panels were ripped off by explosive bolts, disclosing the big solar telescope. It had been “borrowed” from the backup Skylab workshop and mated to a platform, itself linked to Helios cargo block. Unsurprisingly the idea came from Martin Marietta, builder of both ATM and Titan booster. The platform would provide power, communications, thermal control and other services; it essentially gave Helios a surrogate Shuttle payload bay, even if the platform could not be returned to Earth. These free-flyers would also performs some tasks Liberty was not good at, on different orbits.
The ATM stack was a heavy thing. To not offload Titan payload, engineers had cut two-third of Helios cargo section, leaving only a tiny pressurised module behind the reentry capsule. This shortened cargo section would act as sas for the EVAs, notably to retrieve film from the ATM cameras. This was Garriott job!
On day 7 Bruce McCandless had another task to perform. Back in 1973 Skylab crew had tested the M-509 “Manoeuvring Unit” within the roomy workshop. After satisfactory tests, an evolved variant now waited McCandless at the rear of the ATM platform. He performed an EVA, and first spent a long time carefully strapping himself to the MMU. After some satisfactory testing he tried a greater hop and moved 50 feet away from the platform. Garriott, also out of the ship to work on the solar telescope, took the iconic picture of McCandless floating with the ATM windmill on the background. The platform also featured a small robotic arm built in Canada; a bigger variant would be mounted later on space station Liberty.
"Tally-ho, the Enterprise. We got her in daylight at 1.5 miles, 29 feet per second" Slayton told the ground. Enterprise looked similar to Skylab, but the two differed in many points.
Slayton station-kept Helios around Enterprise for long minutes. Everything nominal, docking was performed. Enterprise had been NASA answer to Salyut. Skylab 4 84 days record had been broken by the soviets, which progressed rapidly – 96, then 135 days. The Helios crew was to spent 150 days at Enterprise.
The crew had to perform lot of tasks – observing the Sun with the ATM, mapping Earth at high resolution. Toward the end of the mission however a thruster on Helios started to leak. There were pressures on NASA to shorten the mission, to no avail. Pictures of McCandless riding the MMU caught public attention, resulting in more pressure to the astronauts. At one time, the crew “forgot” some tasks and fixed some its own priorities.
-------------
With perfect hindsight the two Agena and the Helios CTS-3 missions have become closely linked with the following Skylab desorbit program.
Yet in the times when these missions flew, in 1976-77, Skylab desorbit was NOT in NASA future plans. Largely forgotten today is the fact that Skylab A was boosted into orbit by an even larger Saturn S-II stage – a stage 33 ft in diameter and that weighed nearly 100 000 pounds. NASA confirmed that the 83,790lb AS-513 S-II stage re-entered January 11, 1975, over the Atlantic just before 3.00am EST, radar tracking reporting one large chunk that fell into the Ocean at 34 deg N by 19 deg W, 1,600 km west of Gibraltar. No reports of any impacts or damage elsewhere.
Skylab A was to meet a similar fate; the battered space station was to be abandonned in orbit. The Cosmos 954 crisis happened in January 1978 changed everything. There was no way a nearly 200 000 pounds spacecraft would made an uncontrolled reentry.
Archibald
Banned
This TL might seen rarer updates since I landed the job of my lifetime ! Three years ago I decided to change job from librarian to logistics with the hope of one day taking an aerospace job. After two hard years that strategy paid off. Here's for you, Michel: I work for the last remain of Sabena (Sabena technics), which deals with aircraft maintenance.
Saturday 30, July A350 MS-005 (the fifth and last prototype) will enter Sabena immense hangar where it will be converted for passenger service and ultimately sold to Air Caraibes. Because it's a prototype it will be entirely stripped down over the next ten months.
If all goes well I will be one among many others to handle maintenance parts and tools to the mecanicians working on MSN-005. Fingers crossed !!
Saturday 30, July A350 MS-005 (the fifth and last prototype) will enter Sabena immense hangar where it will be converted for passenger service and ultimately sold to Air Caraibes. Because it's a prototype it will be entirely stripped down over the next ten months.
If all goes well I will be one among many others to handle maintenance parts and tools to the mecanicians working on MSN-005. Fingers crossed !!
Congratulation Archibald
On SABENA it was the Belgium State airline, until they went in Join Venture with SwissAir, but they never fulfills their contractual obligations and failing to inject necessary funds into SABENA
In 2001 The Belgium government was forced to liquidate SABENA, Sabena technics is only surviving part.
The Guy responsible for this, Mario Arnold Corti escape justice and live in USA as chairman of Harvard Business School...
On SABENA it was the Belgium State airline, until they went in Join Venture with SwissAir, but they never fulfills their contractual obligations and failing to inject necessary funds into SABENA
In 2001 The Belgium government was forced to liquidate SABENA, Sabena technics is only surviving part.
The Guy responsible for this, Mario Arnold Corti escape justice and live in USA as chairman of Harvard Business School...
Eh, this is a nit-pick I'll admit but the following has been 'bugging' me till I re-read and fully noted the bolded part below:
That's not the way it works
dropping to a lower orbit INCREASES not decreases speed, (with going to a higher orbit having the effect of "slowing" down) and this was highly counter-intuitive, (IIRC, one of the original astronauts in fact based a thesis on this and was considered the 'expert' in orbital maneuvering and rendezvous, Cooper maybe?) and there were issues with early Gemini flights as performing maneuvers to rendezvous with the spent upper stage did not work as planned and practiced until they started doing things 'backwards' from the way they were used to as Earth-bound pilots. In fact though planning for orbital intercept mostly was based on placing the 'interceptor' vehicle in lower orbit to allow it to 'catch' the target vehicle and then raising the interceptor orbit for rendezvous.
Again I know it's a 'nit-pick' but I wanted to throw this out there. Keep it coming I'm loving this one despite not being a Big Gemini or Titan fan
Randy
That's not the way it works
dropping to a lower orbit INCREASES not decreases speed, (with going to a higher orbit having the effect of "slowing" down) and this was highly counter-intuitive, (IIRC, one of the original astronauts in fact based a thesis on this and was considered the 'expert' in orbital maneuvering and rendezvous, Cooper maybe?) and there were issues with early Gemini flights as performing maneuvers to rendezvous with the spent upper stage did not work as planned and practiced until they started doing things 'backwards' from the way they were used to as Earth-bound pilots. In fact though planning for orbital intercept mostly was based on placing the 'interceptor' vehicle in lower orbit to allow it to 'catch' the target vehicle and then raising the interceptor orbit for rendezvous.Again I know it's a 'nit-pick' but I wanted to throw this out there. Keep it coming I'm loving this one despite not being a Big Gemini or Titan fan
Randy
Owen Gordon (3)
Archibald
Banned
February 20, 1979
Saint Louis, Missouri, the home of McDonnell Douglas
Music: the Beach Boys, God only knows
The SM-65 Atlas had been the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed by the United States, and the first member of the Atlas rocket family. It was built for the U.S. Air Force by Convair Division of General Dynamics at the Kearny Mesa assembly plant north of San Diego, California.
In 1973 Convair took over Atlas little brother, the British Blue Streak rocket. In 1954 Convair had transfered Atlas technology to De Havilland. Once a ballistic missile, the Blue Streak had been turned into the first stage of a civilian rocket, Europa. But Europa had been a miserable failure, and scrapped.
Next step for Canada was to build a launch pad. Fort Churchill - from which hundreds of Black Brant sounding rockets had been fired - was the leading candidate, but there was a more simple way: to loan a pad in Cap Canaveral. It was the second option that was chosen, but it had a major caveat, that is, how to ferry the Blue Streak to Florida.
The answer was the Canadair CL-44 Yukon, a cargo aircraft which tail could tilt laterally, opening the cargo hold to large payloads. With a fuselage diameter of 12 ft, the CL-44 could easily swallow a 10 ft wide Blue Streak and carry it to The Cape, 1500 miles to the South. An empty Blue Streak massed only 15 000 pounds, much less than the Yukon 55000 pounds payload. There was no need for Conroy "Skymonster" fuselage extension.
In 1971 the RCAF had sold its fleet of CL-44 to civilian operators; now the Canadian government hunted these aircrafts for its space program.
In December 1961, a Yukon had set a world record for its class when it flew 6,750 mi from Tokyo to RCAF Station Trenton, Ontario, in 17 hours, three minutes. In commercial operations, the CL-44 proved to be an extremely profitable aircraft to run with a fuel burn half that of a Boeing 707.
Convair, Canadair and Chapman decided that Blue Streak – Agena would launch from Launch Complex 13, once home of the Atlas.
Starting in 1958, Atlas B, D, E and F missiles had been tested from the complex. Afterwards, LC-13 remained the primary East Coast testing site for Atlas E missiles, with Atlas F tests mainly running from LC-11. Between February 1962 and October 1963 the pad had been converted for use by Atlas-Agena. The modifications were more extensive than the conversions of LC-12 and LC-14 with the mobile service tower being demolished and replaced with a new, larger tower.
The final launch from LC-13 was a Rhyolite satellite on 7 April 1978, using an Atlas-Agena. Blue Streak Agena came at the right moment to fill the launch pad.
Meanwhile on the other side of the world interest in Blue Streak Agena was growing.
When re-building a Cape Canaveral launch complex, John Chapman suggested to salvage Europa or Blue Streak structures to save money. While nothing was left of Europa in Kourou, Woomera, Australia, was different. There was the Blue Streak and Europa early test range. In 1975 Canada entered talks with the Australian government for salvaging any Blue Streak infrastructure that could be useful. There was brief talk of launching Blue Streak Agena from Woomera, but the Australian government was not interested.
The proposal, however, did not fell into deaf ears.
Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was Queensland’s long serving Premier, ruling the State in his own inimitable way from 1968. When in 1976 the Australian government flatly refused any involvement into the Convair – Canadair space launch venture, Stan Schaetzel from the Hawker De Havilland company floated the idea of a rocket launch facility in Cape York to the Queensland Government. Schaetzel proposed Queensland to join the Blue Streak Agena consortia – and to launch either from good old Woomera or from a new base in Cape York, with Darwin as backup.
Sir Joh was taken with the idea and in 1978 he commissioned the Institution of Engineers in Australia to undertake a preliminary study of what was soon called (pompously) the Queensland Space Agency (QSA).
...
"Telesat launched Anik B1 as the fourth in the world's first series of domestic communications satellite in geostationary orbit, operated by a commercial company. Anik B1 reached orbit aboard a Canadian Space Agency launcher that had lift-off from Cape Canaveral.
The launcher was a Blue Streak Agena build by Canadair in Valcartier, near Montreal under licence from General Dynamics and Lockheed.
For the record, Canadair is a division of General Dynamics; as for Lockheed, Canadair once build the company Starfighters under licence for the RCAF.
When Europe and the British government shut down the Europa program, General Dynamics jumped the bandwagon and marketed the Blue Streak as a little brother of their Atlas, which it really was since its inception, the British government having benefitted from technology transfers. Since the American government saw little interest in a launcher duplicating both Delta and… Atlas, General Dynamics had the idea to try and pitch the Blue Streak through its Canadair division. Of course the company needed support from Ottawa; and General Dynamics found an ally in the person of John Herbert Chapman, the influential author of a praised report on the Canadian space program…”
Reading the newscript brought tears into Owen Gordon eyes.
My country did it in the end – we have an indigenous launch vehicle, like Europe and Japan and China. We are launching our communication satellites; soon we will have our own access to the Liberty space station for Earth resources. This does not avenge the Arrow, but it is a step in the good direction. If only Crawford Gordon had lived to see that !
A colorfoul caracter, one among the bright engineers driving the Arrow project, Crawford Gordon had been devastated by its tragic end, dying as an alcoholic in New York a day of 1967…
And then was the date. February 20...
That day in Saint Louis, Missouri, Story England landed his T-38. Owen Gordon was waiting for him.
"Hello Story, nice to meet you again. It has been a while."
He escorted England into McDonnell headquarters. They had a low-level meeting planned, to discuss a sticky point: to reuse or not the Big Gemini crew capsules. He poured England coffee, and they had a frank discussion.
"You know, we never faced such situation. Look at it this way: Apollos splashed down in the ocean, and saltwater essentially ruined them forever. As far as we know, only a bit of Soyuz come back, and even if it land on solid ground, it is essentially ruined, too." Gordon said.
"Yes, and the shuttle would have been the exact opposite. We would have build a small fleet of reusable ships, flying them hundred of time each." England had some regrets in his voice.
"Forget the shuttle for now." Gordon was taunt "It happens that Big Gemini - Helios, damn it - eerh... Big G opened a can of worms. The thing a capsule with an ablative heatshield, like Apollo; yet it lands on a runway, like the shuttle."
England shuffled papers.
"There's many options, all rather interesting. Or we fully reuse it. Or we salvage the left capsules for spares. Or we try to fly again a couple of ships, to gain experience with the future shuttle... You know, a long time ago it occured to me that Big G looks like a shuttle cockpit flying solo." England noted.
"You are essentially correct. I also noted the similitude between the two."
"What I never really figured" England continued "is what will happen to all the capsules we will fly since, what, 1978. At a rate of five flights per year, we are dealing with, what, thirty ships or so within the next decade.
Gordon looked surprised "You're telling me that past the landing at Edwards you never cared what happens to the ship that carried you in orbit ?"
England had a big smile on his face. "Hell, no. I know that some were preserved for museums - from memory, the first to fly, in 1976; the one that approached Skylab; or the first to dock to Liberty. But all others - zippo. No idea. It's not like the shuttle would have been, you see, or fighters within a squadron; we are not bound to those ships emotionally, because they are expendable."
Gordon had a bizarre look on his face. "All right. Now I'm going to tell you about an interesting story. It entail my company and NASA. Follow me." He led England to a remote hangar, in a dusty, forgotten corner of the plant. He opened a door, set the lights on. England jaw fell to the ground.
a handful of crew capsules were lined - no, piled up - burned, battered vehicles of unmistakable shape. "What the hell is that ?" he muttered stupidly, as he already knew the answer.
"That ? that's the core of our problem. " Gordon laughed. "Everytime you astronauts land a crew capsule at Edwards or at the Cape skid strip, NASA send it to us back. At first those idiots stored them in a corner of the Vehicle Assembly Building, but one day they figured that was wasted space and expensive, and they send the whole fleet back to us. You have to imagine the mess that was, Supper Guppies ferrying the dead capsules, four at a time, again and again."
England shook his head in disbelief. He was aghast "Tell me that at least you salvaged them for spares."
"Nope ! We were forbidden. You should be well placed to know how risk-adverse NASA is those days. They consider that flown hardware is used, unreliable hardware." Gordon made pause. "That also explain why a proposal I made to refurbish those things and fly them as space station lifeboat fell by the wayside. Instead they asked Rockwell to build fresh Apollos ! Of course Carter saw this as NASA having two manned ships, and cancelled the lifeboat. My proposal, by contrast, had Big Gemini as both crew ferry and lifeboat... that was just one ship, and Carter would have accepted that more easily. And now Liberty has no lifeboat, and so we are forced to rotate crew six times a year, on the Titan which is altogether a hangar queen and a beast to fly... "
England nodded. "I don't like the Titan III that much, either." He pressed the palm of his hand on the dusty flank of a module, asking himself vaguely if he had left any noticeable traces among them. Blood, sweat and tears ? - hell no, think urine, sweat, and vomit instead.
"Lifeboats, hmm ? now that was an interesting proposal."
"Sure it was. We planned to refurbish the crew capsule and fly it without the heavy cargo section. A neat thing was that peculiar lifeboat could have brought back as much as twelve astronauts, allowing more men at Liberty at the same time. Another desirable thing was that the capsules are light enough - 6 tons - to fly either on Delta 7000, Atlas II, or Titan IIS. The more launchers, the least risk of your lifeboat gets stuck on the ground if the booster fails. And since Reagan want more private space companies, it may ultimately provides a springboard for private manned space vehicles someday..."
"Heck, that makes a lot of sense. I like it. I should try to push for it, although my position within the astronaut office is still, rather, hmmm, marginal..."
"Doesn't matter, your help should be welcomed. Although I'm not sure we will ever suceed: soon the shuttle will return, fly two times a week, and makes all our worries moot..."
Gordon shut the lights and together they moved back to his bureau.
"Back to reusing Big Gemini – or not. Back in 1972 my company, Douglas, required Philip Bono to work on their Big Gemini bid. Those were the days after the space shuttle was canned by Caspar Weinberg OMB. Bono had mixed feelings about the whole thing. He had never really liked the space shuttle in the first place (he disliked winged spacecrafts as too heavy), but supported it because it was reusable – better than nothing, particularly with government support and money involved. When the shuttle got canned Douglas hierarchy required Bono to work on Big Gemini. They wanted to explore reusability of the crew module. But Bono disliked capsule, and in the end they gave myself, Owen Gordon, the job instead. Bono is a gentlemen and had no rancor against me. We discuss space matters frequently around some beers. He is a little depressed by the lack of RLVs and his failure to interest our Douglas hierarchy and bosses to ROMBUS and other vehicles."
Story England looked embarassed. "You seem to have a lot of respect for that Bono – Sony ?" he said politely. Then Gordon understood. "Good Lord, you have no clue about who is Philip Bono, don't you ?" Story shaked his head. "Hmm, well, look at this." He picked up a thick book from his desk. It was entitled Frontiers of space. "You should read this one, but whatever, look at this instead." Astronauts were easy to impress if the right buttons were pushed. Owen handed Story a glossy promotional brochure. "Early in 72' Philip Bono did a short summary of his decade-spanning work on Single Stage To Orbit concepts. After the shuttle cancellation he hoped his company would notice his internal work and pick up the slack, perhaps overturning OMB's decision on the shuttle if a better design was considered. Instead Bono was told to work on Big Gemini, and flatly refused as I told you earlier."
Story England flickered through the brochure. It was crammed with stunningly beautiful hand-paintings of spacecrafts. The overall feeling was more of a comic book than serious aerospace engineering. There were all kind of different vehicles – OOST, ROOST, ROMBUS, Pegasus, Ithacus, SASSTO, Hyperion. Some dropped tanks, others carried a Gemini capsule. Some were smalls, but ROMBUS was truly enormous. They were all egg-shaped, reentering base-first in the atmosphere, with the engine and vehicle protected by cryogenic hydrogen or liquid oxygen cooling tubes.
Story England was stunned by Bono far-reaching visions.
Ithacus was to carry a platoon of fully-armed Marines across the Atlantic within minutes, twenty-time faster than the C-141 cargo jets entering service with the Air Force Military Airlift Command. And then where project Selena and Phobos, where Bono egg-shaped ships were refueled in low Earth orbit and carried on to the Moon or to Mars moons Phobos and Deimos. While SASSTO was certainly overly optimistic, ROMBUS drop tanks made it a viable proposal on technical grounds, although wholefully oversized.
"Now do you understand my respect for Bono ? Of course you may think that ROMBUS is oversized – who needs 1 million pounds of payload into orbit nowadays ? Same things with Bob Truax monster Sea Dragon battleship rocket build at a shipyard and launched from the ocean rather than from The Cape. Same payload to orbit as ROMBUS, one million pounds. But there was another, great spaceship that needed a lot of payload to be thrown in earth orbit. That was Freeman Dyson Orion – you know, the nuclear-pulse ship."
"Project putt-putt" England said. He knew the legend, but tended to laugh out the proposal as either unworkable or a doomsday weapon in beeing – thousands of small nukes orbiting Earth, my ass. All of sudden however, Gordon made the proposal look much more serious.
"You have to imagine a manned space program at a scale ten times larger than Apollo or NASA - a true atempt at the colonization of the Solar System, starting in 1958 after the Sputnik crisis. Kind of Von Braun 1952 Collier's vision, but on much more realistic technical grounds. Forget the unworkable winged Ferry Rocket: instead, the program would use Sea Dragon for cargo; ROMBUS for the crew; and space battleship Orion puting itself off the ground thanks to a cluster of Titan solid rocket motors, lighting the nuclear pulse drive only high into Earth atmosphere. That would have been one hell of a space program, don't you think ? We might have colonies as far as Saturn moons by now, with thousands of people living all the way from Earth orbit through the Moon and Mars and beyond. That was Freeman Dyson vision back in 1960; ROMBUS and Sea Dragon would have been perfect to loft all that Orion mass – 5000 tons for the smallest designs - out of Earth gravity well."
England was enthralled by that vision, but also by Gordon's way of making it real. So far that little guy remained a mystery to him. There was something inside him that was hard to explain.
Gordon mind was indeed pretty far from Saint Louis and 1979 altogether.
Can't believe these events happened two decades ago. Time's flying fast. I remember it as if it was yesterday.
November 1958.
Driving home from Malton, Ontario, Owen Gordon parks his car on the side of the road, his eyes turned skywards. There's a white contrail streaking very high across the Canadian sky, together with a sound of thunder. The CF-105 Arrow is flying high and fast, at the edge of the world speed record - near Mach 2. With the wrong engines; and ballast in the nose; and only days after the British Lightning, and the French Griffon and Mirage, also broke Mach 2 for the first time. Canada is catching up with countries boasting half of century of experience is aircraft manufacturing; they started a mere decade before.
February 20, 1959.
The dream is over. The government had decided to stop the expense. Sputnik, launched the very day the first Arrow rolled out of Malton, October 4, 1957, means that the nuclear threat switched from bombers to rockets. Since the Arrow can't intercept ballistic missiles, it has to be destroyed. All of it: the machines, the plant, the production line and blueprints. Everything.
July 1959
A brain drain is happening. The Arrow being bleeding-edge technology, Avro Canada now unemployed highly skilled workers are a bonanza... not for Canada, however. The new American space agency is recruiting engineers for mankind next grand venture: men into space. As much as he loved his native country, Gordon has to leave. Jim Chamberlin is leading the pack of canadian engineers to Houston, Texas. Coming from Canada, Texas is a hell of a shock. Thanksfully Gordon beloved wife, Carol, has been the best thing ever happened to him in his shattered life. She was the nicest women ever, very loving and comprehensive, taking care of him everyday. Early in their relation he had told her what he had endured during the war; and she just understood him so well - he considered their relation as truly miraculous.
Twenty years after the Arrow cancellation, Canada was now venturing into space. After the Cosmos 954 disaster the country had taken a leading role in the cleanup of space debris. A major, obvious target was the old Skylab A space station that had no thrusters to control its reentry.
Gordon was still in touch with the Canadian aerospace engineers in exile, such as artillery Czar Gerald Bull. Most of them had worked on both Arrow and Mercury / Gemini before parting ways from 1966.
For years there had been a rumour spreading among the Canadian rocket scientists. A mysterious retired Air Force general with the name of Joseph Bleymaier wanted to shoot a Gemini-B capsule around the Moon using a single Titan Centaur. He knew both because he had worked on the MOL cancelled in 1969. Bleymaier wanted the flight to happen first for the U.S bicentennary, a flight that would be privately funded by ordinary citizens.
As the bicentennary come and gone, Bleymaier set his sight on another symbolic moment: Apollo 11 tenth birthday, July 21 1979. He had recently contacted Gordon because he wanted a couple of Gemini-B that were stored at a remote, classified location. NASA had already used two of the spacecrafts for suborbital flight tests in 1973; three more capsules remained in storage. Gordon was intrigued by the idea and, even if couldn't give Bleymaier what he wanted he nonetheless met him. Bleymaier told him about the Committee For the Future (a bunch of mystical hippies) and their atempt at a privately-funded Apollo mission back in 1973. It made for a fascinating story. Bleymaier had left the CFF and worked a different lunar mission – the lunar Gemini B.
Saint Louis, Missouri, the home of McDonnell Douglas
Music: the Beach Boys, God only knows
The SM-65 Atlas had been the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed by the United States, and the first member of the Atlas rocket family. It was built for the U.S. Air Force by Convair Division of General Dynamics at the Kearny Mesa assembly plant north of San Diego, California.
In 1973 Convair took over Atlas little brother, the British Blue Streak rocket. In 1954 Convair had transfered Atlas technology to De Havilland. Once a ballistic missile, the Blue Streak had been turned into the first stage of a civilian rocket, Europa. But Europa had been a miserable failure, and scrapped.
Next step for Canada was to build a launch pad. Fort Churchill - from which hundreds of Black Brant sounding rockets had been fired - was the leading candidate, but there was a more simple way: to loan a pad in Cap Canaveral. It was the second option that was chosen, but it had a major caveat, that is, how to ferry the Blue Streak to Florida.
The answer was the Canadair CL-44 Yukon, a cargo aircraft which tail could tilt laterally, opening the cargo hold to large payloads. With a fuselage diameter of 12 ft, the CL-44 could easily swallow a 10 ft wide Blue Streak and carry it to The Cape, 1500 miles to the South. An empty Blue Streak massed only 15 000 pounds, much less than the Yukon 55000 pounds payload. There was no need for Conroy "Skymonster" fuselage extension.
In 1971 the RCAF had sold its fleet of CL-44 to civilian operators; now the Canadian government hunted these aircrafts for its space program.
In December 1961, a Yukon had set a world record for its class when it flew 6,750 mi from Tokyo to RCAF Station Trenton, Ontario, in 17 hours, three minutes. In commercial operations, the CL-44 proved to be an extremely profitable aircraft to run with a fuel burn half that of a Boeing 707.
Convair, Canadair and Chapman decided that Blue Streak – Agena would launch from Launch Complex 13, once home of the Atlas.
Starting in 1958, Atlas B, D, E and F missiles had been tested from the complex. Afterwards, LC-13 remained the primary East Coast testing site for Atlas E missiles, with Atlas F tests mainly running from LC-11. Between February 1962 and October 1963 the pad had been converted for use by Atlas-Agena. The modifications were more extensive than the conversions of LC-12 and LC-14 with the mobile service tower being demolished and replaced with a new, larger tower.
The final launch from LC-13 was a Rhyolite satellite on 7 April 1978, using an Atlas-Agena. Blue Streak Agena came at the right moment to fill the launch pad.
Meanwhile on the other side of the world interest in Blue Streak Agena was growing.
When re-building a Cape Canaveral launch complex, John Chapman suggested to salvage Europa or Blue Streak structures to save money. While nothing was left of Europa in Kourou, Woomera, Australia, was different. There was the Blue Streak and Europa early test range. In 1975 Canada entered talks with the Australian government for salvaging any Blue Streak infrastructure that could be useful. There was brief talk of launching Blue Streak Agena from Woomera, but the Australian government was not interested.
The proposal, however, did not fell into deaf ears.
Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was Queensland’s long serving Premier, ruling the State in his own inimitable way from 1968. When in 1976 the Australian government flatly refused any involvement into the Convair – Canadair space launch venture, Stan Schaetzel from the Hawker De Havilland company floated the idea of a rocket launch facility in Cape York to the Queensland Government. Schaetzel proposed Queensland to join the Blue Streak Agena consortia – and to launch either from good old Woomera or from a new base in Cape York, with Darwin as backup.
Sir Joh was taken with the idea and in 1978 he commissioned the Institution of Engineers in Australia to undertake a preliminary study of what was soon called (pompously) the Queensland Space Agency (QSA).
...
"Telesat launched Anik B1 as the fourth in the world's first series of domestic communications satellite in geostationary orbit, operated by a commercial company. Anik B1 reached orbit aboard a Canadian Space Agency launcher that had lift-off from Cape Canaveral.
The launcher was a Blue Streak Agena build by Canadair in Valcartier, near Montreal under licence from General Dynamics and Lockheed.
For the record, Canadair is a division of General Dynamics; as for Lockheed, Canadair once build the company Starfighters under licence for the RCAF.
When Europe and the British government shut down the Europa program, General Dynamics jumped the bandwagon and marketed the Blue Streak as a little brother of their Atlas, which it really was since its inception, the British government having benefitted from technology transfers. Since the American government saw little interest in a launcher duplicating both Delta and… Atlas, General Dynamics had the idea to try and pitch the Blue Streak through its Canadair division. Of course the company needed support from Ottawa; and General Dynamics found an ally in the person of John Herbert Chapman, the influential author of a praised report on the Canadian space program…”
Reading the newscript brought tears into Owen Gordon eyes.
My country did it in the end – we have an indigenous launch vehicle, like Europe and Japan and China. We are launching our communication satellites; soon we will have our own access to the Liberty space station for Earth resources. This does not avenge the Arrow, but it is a step in the good direction. If only Crawford Gordon had lived to see that !
A colorfoul caracter, one among the bright engineers driving the Arrow project, Crawford Gordon had been devastated by its tragic end, dying as an alcoholic in New York a day of 1967…
And then was the date. February 20...
That day in Saint Louis, Missouri, Story England landed his T-38. Owen Gordon was waiting for him.
"Hello Story, nice to meet you again. It has been a while."
He escorted England into McDonnell headquarters. They had a low-level meeting planned, to discuss a sticky point: to reuse or not the Big Gemini crew capsules. He poured England coffee, and they had a frank discussion.
"You know, we never faced such situation. Look at it this way: Apollos splashed down in the ocean, and saltwater essentially ruined them forever. As far as we know, only a bit of Soyuz come back, and even if it land on solid ground, it is essentially ruined, too." Gordon said.
"Yes, and the shuttle would have been the exact opposite. We would have build a small fleet of reusable ships, flying them hundred of time each." England had some regrets in his voice.
"Forget the shuttle for now." Gordon was taunt "It happens that Big Gemini - Helios, damn it - eerh... Big G opened a can of worms. The thing a capsule with an ablative heatshield, like Apollo; yet it lands on a runway, like the shuttle."
England shuffled papers.
"There's many options, all rather interesting. Or we fully reuse it. Or we salvage the left capsules for spares. Or we try to fly again a couple of ships, to gain experience with the future shuttle... You know, a long time ago it occured to me that Big G looks like a shuttle cockpit flying solo." England noted.
"You are essentially correct. I also noted the similitude between the two."
"What I never really figured" England continued "is what will happen to all the capsules we will fly since, what, 1978. At a rate of five flights per year, we are dealing with, what, thirty ships or so within the next decade.
Gordon looked surprised "You're telling me that past the landing at Edwards you never cared what happens to the ship that carried you in orbit ?"
England had a big smile on his face. "Hell, no. I know that some were preserved for museums - from memory, the first to fly, in 1976; the one that approached Skylab; or the first to dock to Liberty. But all others - zippo. No idea. It's not like the shuttle would have been, you see, or fighters within a squadron; we are not bound to those ships emotionally, because they are expendable."
Gordon had a bizarre look on his face. "All right. Now I'm going to tell you about an interesting story. It entail my company and NASA. Follow me." He led England to a remote hangar, in a dusty, forgotten corner of the plant. He opened a door, set the lights on. England jaw fell to the ground.
a handful of crew capsules were lined - no, piled up - burned, battered vehicles of unmistakable shape. "What the hell is that ?" he muttered stupidly, as he already knew the answer.
"That ? that's the core of our problem. " Gordon laughed. "Everytime you astronauts land a crew capsule at Edwards or at the Cape skid strip, NASA send it to us back. At first those idiots stored them in a corner of the Vehicle Assembly Building, but one day they figured that was wasted space and expensive, and they send the whole fleet back to us. You have to imagine the mess that was, Supper Guppies ferrying the dead capsules, four at a time, again and again."
England shook his head in disbelief. He was aghast "Tell me that at least you salvaged them for spares."
"Nope ! We were forbidden. You should be well placed to know how risk-adverse NASA is those days. They consider that flown hardware is used, unreliable hardware." Gordon made pause. "That also explain why a proposal I made to refurbish those things and fly them as space station lifeboat fell by the wayside. Instead they asked Rockwell to build fresh Apollos ! Of course Carter saw this as NASA having two manned ships, and cancelled the lifeboat. My proposal, by contrast, had Big Gemini as both crew ferry and lifeboat... that was just one ship, and Carter would have accepted that more easily. And now Liberty has no lifeboat, and so we are forced to rotate crew six times a year, on the Titan which is altogether a hangar queen and a beast to fly... "
England nodded. "I don't like the Titan III that much, either." He pressed the palm of his hand on the dusty flank of a module, asking himself vaguely if he had left any noticeable traces among them. Blood, sweat and tears ? - hell no, think urine, sweat, and vomit instead.
"Lifeboats, hmm ? now that was an interesting proposal."
"Sure it was. We planned to refurbish the crew capsule and fly it without the heavy cargo section. A neat thing was that peculiar lifeboat could have brought back as much as twelve astronauts, allowing more men at Liberty at the same time. Another desirable thing was that the capsules are light enough - 6 tons - to fly either on Delta 7000, Atlas II, or Titan IIS. The more launchers, the least risk of your lifeboat gets stuck on the ground if the booster fails. And since Reagan want more private space companies, it may ultimately provides a springboard for private manned space vehicles someday..."
"Heck, that makes a lot of sense. I like it. I should try to push for it, although my position within the astronaut office is still, rather, hmmm, marginal..."
"Doesn't matter, your help should be welcomed. Although I'm not sure we will ever suceed: soon the shuttle will return, fly two times a week, and makes all our worries moot..."
Gordon shut the lights and together they moved back to his bureau.
"Back to reusing Big Gemini – or not. Back in 1972 my company, Douglas, required Philip Bono to work on their Big Gemini bid. Those were the days after the space shuttle was canned by Caspar Weinberg OMB. Bono had mixed feelings about the whole thing. He had never really liked the space shuttle in the first place (he disliked winged spacecrafts as too heavy), but supported it because it was reusable – better than nothing, particularly with government support and money involved. When the shuttle got canned Douglas hierarchy required Bono to work on Big Gemini. They wanted to explore reusability of the crew module. But Bono disliked capsule, and in the end they gave myself, Owen Gordon, the job instead. Bono is a gentlemen and had no rancor against me. We discuss space matters frequently around some beers. He is a little depressed by the lack of RLVs and his failure to interest our Douglas hierarchy and bosses to ROMBUS and other vehicles."
Story England looked embarassed. "You seem to have a lot of respect for that Bono – Sony ?" he said politely. Then Gordon understood. "Good Lord, you have no clue about who is Philip Bono, don't you ?" Story shaked his head. "Hmm, well, look at this." He picked up a thick book from his desk. It was entitled Frontiers of space. "You should read this one, but whatever, look at this instead." Astronauts were easy to impress if the right buttons were pushed. Owen handed Story a glossy promotional brochure. "Early in 72' Philip Bono did a short summary of his decade-spanning work on Single Stage To Orbit concepts. After the shuttle cancellation he hoped his company would notice his internal work and pick up the slack, perhaps overturning OMB's decision on the shuttle if a better design was considered. Instead Bono was told to work on Big Gemini, and flatly refused as I told you earlier."
Story England flickered through the brochure. It was crammed with stunningly beautiful hand-paintings of spacecrafts. The overall feeling was more of a comic book than serious aerospace engineering. There were all kind of different vehicles – OOST, ROOST, ROMBUS, Pegasus, Ithacus, SASSTO, Hyperion. Some dropped tanks, others carried a Gemini capsule. Some were smalls, but ROMBUS was truly enormous. They were all egg-shaped, reentering base-first in the atmosphere, with the engine and vehicle protected by cryogenic hydrogen or liquid oxygen cooling tubes.
Story England was stunned by Bono far-reaching visions.
Ithacus was to carry a platoon of fully-armed Marines across the Atlantic within minutes, twenty-time faster than the C-141 cargo jets entering service with the Air Force Military Airlift Command. And then where project Selena and Phobos, where Bono egg-shaped ships were refueled in low Earth orbit and carried on to the Moon or to Mars moons Phobos and Deimos. While SASSTO was certainly overly optimistic, ROMBUS drop tanks made it a viable proposal on technical grounds, although wholefully oversized.
"Now do you understand my respect for Bono ? Of course you may think that ROMBUS is oversized – who needs 1 million pounds of payload into orbit nowadays ? Same things with Bob Truax monster Sea Dragon battleship rocket build at a shipyard and launched from the ocean rather than from The Cape. Same payload to orbit as ROMBUS, one million pounds. But there was another, great spaceship that needed a lot of payload to be thrown in earth orbit. That was Freeman Dyson Orion – you know, the nuclear-pulse ship."
"Project putt-putt" England said. He knew the legend, but tended to laugh out the proposal as either unworkable or a doomsday weapon in beeing – thousands of small nukes orbiting Earth, my ass. All of sudden however, Gordon made the proposal look much more serious.
"You have to imagine a manned space program at a scale ten times larger than Apollo or NASA - a true atempt at the colonization of the Solar System, starting in 1958 after the Sputnik crisis. Kind of Von Braun 1952 Collier's vision, but on much more realistic technical grounds. Forget the unworkable winged Ferry Rocket: instead, the program would use Sea Dragon for cargo; ROMBUS for the crew; and space battleship Orion puting itself off the ground thanks to a cluster of Titan solid rocket motors, lighting the nuclear pulse drive only high into Earth atmosphere. That would have been one hell of a space program, don't you think ? We might have colonies as far as Saturn moons by now, with thousands of people living all the way from Earth orbit through the Moon and Mars and beyond. That was Freeman Dyson vision back in 1960; ROMBUS and Sea Dragon would have been perfect to loft all that Orion mass – 5000 tons for the smallest designs - out of Earth gravity well."
England was enthralled by that vision, but also by Gordon's way of making it real. So far that little guy remained a mystery to him. There was something inside him that was hard to explain.
Gordon mind was indeed pretty far from Saint Louis and 1979 altogether.
Can't believe these events happened two decades ago. Time's flying fast. I remember it as if it was yesterday.
November 1958.
Driving home from Malton, Ontario, Owen Gordon parks his car on the side of the road, his eyes turned skywards. There's a white contrail streaking very high across the Canadian sky, together with a sound of thunder. The CF-105 Arrow is flying high and fast, at the edge of the world speed record - near Mach 2. With the wrong engines; and ballast in the nose; and only days after the British Lightning, and the French Griffon and Mirage, also broke Mach 2 for the first time. Canada is catching up with countries boasting half of century of experience is aircraft manufacturing; they started a mere decade before.
February 20, 1959.
The dream is over. The government had decided to stop the expense. Sputnik, launched the very day the first Arrow rolled out of Malton, October 4, 1957, means that the nuclear threat switched from bombers to rockets. Since the Arrow can't intercept ballistic missiles, it has to be destroyed. All of it: the machines, the plant, the production line and blueprints. Everything.
July 1959
A brain drain is happening. The Arrow being bleeding-edge technology, Avro Canada now unemployed highly skilled workers are a bonanza... not for Canada, however. The new American space agency is recruiting engineers for mankind next grand venture: men into space. As much as he loved his native country, Gordon has to leave. Jim Chamberlin is leading the pack of canadian engineers to Houston, Texas. Coming from Canada, Texas is a hell of a shock. Thanksfully Gordon beloved wife, Carol, has been the best thing ever happened to him in his shattered life. She was the nicest women ever, very loving and comprehensive, taking care of him everyday. Early in their relation he had told her what he had endured during the war; and she just understood him so well - he considered their relation as truly miraculous.
Twenty years after the Arrow cancellation, Canada was now venturing into space. After the Cosmos 954 disaster the country had taken a leading role in the cleanup of space debris. A major, obvious target was the old Skylab A space station that had no thrusters to control its reentry.
Gordon was still in touch with the Canadian aerospace engineers in exile, such as artillery Czar Gerald Bull. Most of them had worked on both Arrow and Mercury / Gemini before parting ways from 1966.
For years there had been a rumour spreading among the Canadian rocket scientists. A mysterious retired Air Force general with the name of Joseph Bleymaier wanted to shoot a Gemini-B capsule around the Moon using a single Titan Centaur. He knew both because he had worked on the MOL cancelled in 1969. Bleymaier wanted the flight to happen first for the U.S bicentennary, a flight that would be privately funded by ordinary citizens.
As the bicentennary come and gone, Bleymaier set his sight on another symbolic moment: Apollo 11 tenth birthday, July 21 1979. He had recently contacted Gordon because he wanted a couple of Gemini-B that were stored at a remote, classified location. NASA had already used two of the spacecrafts for suborbital flight tests in 1973; three more capsules remained in storage. Gordon was intrigued by the idea and, even if couldn't give Bleymaier what he wanted he nonetheless met him. Bleymaier told him about the Committee For the Future (a bunch of mystical hippies) and their atempt at a privately-funded Apollo mission back in 1973. It made for a fascinating story. Bleymaier had left the CFF and worked a different lunar mission – the lunar Gemini B.
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good news
i open a Wiki page about Archibald TL what list his 119 post ! and some background information and excepts from documents.
in Future this will be expand on data about Space Hardware and Background information and Chronology.
http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php?id=timelines:explorers_ad_astra
i open a Wiki page about Archibald TL what list his 119 post ! and some background information and excepts from documents.
in Future this will be expand on data about Space Hardware and Background information and Chronology.
http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php?id=timelines:explorers_ad_astra
Skylab de-orbit
Archibald
Banned
March 15 1979
Kindley Naval Air Station, Bermuda
The space station was dying. And Naval Air Station Kindley was the only tracking station that could still transmit the UHF signals that operated the obsolete telemetry equipment aboard Skylab. With one control moment gyro inoperative and another ailing, with two coolant loops behaving erratically and several of the power-supply modules approaching the end of their expected life spans, the $2.5-billion orbiting laboratory was junk.
Very ironically – the space station carried a solar telescope - it was the incoming solar maximum that threatened to bring Skylab down erratically. After the fall of the Russian nuke sat Kosmos 954 over Canada early in the year, this was no longer acceptable.
Under ground control, an Agena closed from Skylab. It bore a lots of different names and accronyms: once know as the Teleoperator Retrieval System, it had been renamed the DART - for Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology. The Astronauts for their part called it the Orbital Express.
After a launch by a Blue Streak the Agena hauled itself into its final orbit. Following its insertion in orbit the Agena started a series of manoeuvres, first climbing to its target level. From this point onward the slim rocket stage had been controlled from the ground. The time has come for the space tug to live its life and lock onto its target; before that, and just like a fighter chasing a bomber across the sky, it moved into an intercept manoeuvre, entering range of the LIDAR rendezvous system.
Far away, Skylab started emitting a homing signal across the emptiness of space. Long years before, the last men onboard had planted a beacon onto the old workshop. It was this homing system that the Agena antennas frantically sought. The two spacecraft were really playing hide and seek, and to this moment had not yet locked onto each other.
The Agena electronic brain did not panicked.
An impulse was send to the thrusters, and the stage pointed its signal to a slightly different elevation, with success. The LIDAR found the target voice, and locked onto it like an infrared missile on a hot turbojet. The two machines then started talking to each other; it was really an electronic chat between space vehicles.
Now the LIDAR had to know where Skylab was exactly.
The guidance system proceeded by a series of steps. First, the Agena pivoted to an angle so that it faced the target, not its side or its ass. The hemispheric correction achieved, a large antenna sprouted, scanning the sky to locate the target with more precision - range and range-rate cascaded across space, to the brain microchips. In response the Agena rapidly slid close to its target, and literally flew around it, gathering more information in the process before going the final moves of this eerie space ballet - final approach and docking !
Only 200m away did the Agena stopped again; final decision belonged to the ground. And it was positive, so the Agena moved again toward its target at a snail pace, the two space vehicles still chatting in their electronic gobbledygook.
As it closed from Skylab the Agena extended its 50 feet long robotic arm. Four years earlier, in February 1974 the departing Skylab 4 crew had bolted a grapple fixture near the front docking port. The Agena was to catch the grapple with its arm, and then flex the arm inwards to dock itself with the old space station. The maneuver was complex but it was a complete success.
Now the seven ton, diminutive Agena would face the daunting task of bringing the much heavier workshop down into Earth atmosphere.
It was really David against Goliath.
The Agena fired its small control thrusters many times – not even its main Bell engine, which brute force might have broken the workshop. That brought the orbit down to a hundred of miles. The Agena renewed its fight against the dead Skylab again and again, lowering the orbit further. The Agena was helped by the atmosphere; both plotted to diminish the workshop speed below orbital velocity. The result would be an immediate return to Earth. Loss of speed was minimal, 50 meter per second, but Skylab was already doomed.
And the Agena, its mission accomplished, would burn with it. Their graveyard would be a wet place: NASA controllers had picked an area 2,000 miles south-east of Fiji, far from any shipping lanes. The Agena last burn ended at 3:45 a.m. EDT; the workshop and its executioner went into an end-over-end spin, a fiery and deadly waltz.
Skylab had one more trick up its sleeve, however -one that gave flight controllers some anxious moments on the last orbit. They expected the cluster to come apart before it passed over the Atlantic ocean., but radar operators in Madrid reported only a single image. Over Indian Ocean the workshop still had not broken up; a NORAD imaging radar clearly showed that even the fragile solar arrays were still intact. But the telemetry was faltering and stopped entirely as the craft passed south of Australia. It finally fell in the South Pacific, only 1500 km from the cost of Peru.
Kindley Naval Air Station, Bermuda
The space station was dying. And Naval Air Station Kindley was the only tracking station that could still transmit the UHF signals that operated the obsolete telemetry equipment aboard Skylab. With one control moment gyro inoperative and another ailing, with two coolant loops behaving erratically and several of the power-supply modules approaching the end of their expected life spans, the $2.5-billion orbiting laboratory was junk.
Very ironically – the space station carried a solar telescope - it was the incoming solar maximum that threatened to bring Skylab down erratically. After the fall of the Russian nuke sat Kosmos 954 over Canada early in the year, this was no longer acceptable.
Under ground control, an Agena closed from Skylab. It bore a lots of different names and accronyms: once know as the Teleoperator Retrieval System, it had been renamed the DART - for Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology. The Astronauts for their part called it the Orbital Express.
After a launch by a Blue Streak the Agena hauled itself into its final orbit. Following its insertion in orbit the Agena started a series of manoeuvres, first climbing to its target level. From this point onward the slim rocket stage had been controlled from the ground. The time has come for the space tug to live its life and lock onto its target; before that, and just like a fighter chasing a bomber across the sky, it moved into an intercept manoeuvre, entering range of the LIDAR rendezvous system.
Far away, Skylab started emitting a homing signal across the emptiness of space. Long years before, the last men onboard had planted a beacon onto the old workshop. It was this homing system that the Agena antennas frantically sought. The two spacecraft were really playing hide and seek, and to this moment had not yet locked onto each other.
The Agena electronic brain did not panicked.
An impulse was send to the thrusters, and the stage pointed its signal to a slightly different elevation, with success. The LIDAR found the target voice, and locked onto it like an infrared missile on a hot turbojet. The two machines then started talking to each other; it was really an electronic chat between space vehicles.
Now the LIDAR had to know where Skylab was exactly.
The guidance system proceeded by a series of steps. First, the Agena pivoted to an angle so that it faced the target, not its side or its ass. The hemispheric correction achieved, a large antenna sprouted, scanning the sky to locate the target with more precision - range and range-rate cascaded across space, to the brain microchips. In response the Agena rapidly slid close to its target, and literally flew around it, gathering more information in the process before going the final moves of this eerie space ballet - final approach and docking !
Only 200m away did the Agena stopped again; final decision belonged to the ground. And it was positive, so the Agena moved again toward its target at a snail pace, the two space vehicles still chatting in their electronic gobbledygook.
As it closed from Skylab the Agena extended its 50 feet long robotic arm. Four years earlier, in February 1974 the departing Skylab 4 crew had bolted a grapple fixture near the front docking port. The Agena was to catch the grapple with its arm, and then flex the arm inwards to dock itself with the old space station. The maneuver was complex but it was a complete success.
Now the seven ton, diminutive Agena would face the daunting task of bringing the much heavier workshop down into Earth atmosphere.
It was really David against Goliath.
The Agena fired its small control thrusters many times – not even its main Bell engine, which brute force might have broken the workshop. That brought the orbit down to a hundred of miles. The Agena renewed its fight against the dead Skylab again and again, lowering the orbit further. The Agena was helped by the atmosphere; both plotted to diminish the workshop speed below orbital velocity. The result would be an immediate return to Earth. Loss of speed was minimal, 50 meter per second, but Skylab was already doomed.
And the Agena, its mission accomplished, would burn with it. Their graveyard would be a wet place: NASA controllers had picked an area 2,000 miles south-east of Fiji, far from any shipping lanes. The Agena last burn ended at 3:45 a.m. EDT; the workshop and its executioner went into an end-over-end spin, a fiery and deadly waltz.
Skylab had one more trick up its sleeve, however -one that gave flight controllers some anxious moments on the last orbit. They expected the cluster to come apart before it passed over the Atlantic ocean., but radar operators in Madrid reported only a single image. Over Indian Ocean the workshop still had not broken up; a NORAD imaging radar clearly showed that even the fragile solar arrays were still intact. But the telemetry was faltering and stopped entirely as the craft passed south of Australia. It finally fell in the South Pacific, only 1500 km from the cost of Peru.
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Archibald
Banned
Buzz Aldrin it was (currently re-reading Deke slayton biography, Deke !)
The accronyms DART and Orbital Express are significating. OTL they were automated rendezvous and docking missions - in the 2000's !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DART_(satellite)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Express
The reason was both Apollo and Shuttle (unlike Soyuz) were docking manually. ITTL Big Gemini docks manually (the astronauts won that battle) but automated docking is necessary to build the space station by using an Agena rocket stage.
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Soviets in space (22)
Archibald
Banned
May 1979
Paris, France
When President Giscard D'Estaing met Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow last month, the Soviet Leader offered France the opportunity to fly a cosmonaut on board a joint Soviet-French space flight, along the same lines as the agreement to fly non-Soviet cosmonauts from member countries of the Intercosmos program. The offer was accepted, and France will began a spationaut selection process in September 1979, with the goal of slecting two finalists to be named in June 1980 and start training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in September 1980.
The French astronaut will fly to the 40 tons OPSEK – Mir, the mysterious Soviet space station probably made of two Salyuts docked face-to-face. But in 1979, out of the blue come two spacecrafts as big as Salyut, and all of sudden MIR-OPSEK doubled in size and weight, to 80 tons. These ships are probably related to the mysterious Cosmos 929 of 1977. Such vehicle was rumoured to the Soviet answer to Helios, but little is known about it and his hasn't flown since 1977. Cosmos 929 seemed to rival Big Gemini in a “space truck” role.
The selection of French astronaut inevitably begs an intriguing question: how about ESA astronauts ?
This is an old issue that reach back as far as June 1972. That was the moment when after the shuttle cancellation NASA scrapped the so-called sortie lab and offered Europe nothing but the Agena space tug. The harsh reality is that the tug, being piloted from the ground, doesn't need an astronaut corps. Still ESA space tug (major) accomplishments – such as the Skylab desorbit mission - could be a bargain chip for ESA astronauts to fly to space station Liberty. France decision to go it alone may change things. It was De Gaulle that had France cooperating with the Soviets back in 1966 over spaceflight.
In fact selection of an European astronaut corps have started in 1977 but progress have been slow. Meanwhile on September 14, 1976 when the Soviets announced their Intercosmos program. This pushed the U.S Government, and NASA to start a similar program. Invitations were issued to the “Agena tug club” that includes Canada, Japan and Europe. More countries may follow. They were formally invited to space station Liberty and requested to start astronaut selection processes. On the European side Germany dragged, and still drags, its feet because in 1972 it has been excluded from space station module development when NASA picked up large Skylab-size modules instead of the narrower Big Gemini cargo section. Hopefully the French involment in Intercosmos should help cancelling Germany last doubts...
Moscow, the same day
Chertok and Glushko were now fighting teeth and nails for their respective spacecrafts to fly the prestigious Intercomos missions carrying foreign cosmonauts like Vladimir Remek, the first non-US, non-USSR astronaut. Gluhko insisted that his TKS should dock with OPSEK – Mir, while Chertok said that the TKS could for the MKBS; OPSEK-Mir didn't needed all the heavy logistics and their space trucks. As usual Glushko went to see Ustinov, and the latter decided that a handful of TKS would be flown to OPSEK-Mir, but no more than one per year until 1982. Most of the traffic would be handled by Chertok's Soyuz. Intercosmos astronauts could fly on the TKS only after it was thoroughly tested in orbit, probably after 1980.
--------------------
(for the record, VGE - Giscard - is still alive, aged 90 and counting. Still bitter about his 1981 defeat against Mitterrand, and still with a deep hatred of Chirac, who planted a knife between his shoulders when he secretely pushed right-wing voters to vote for Mitterrand rather than Giscard. President Giscard had humiliated Prime Minister Chirac back in 1975, and the two man hate each others. As former President they both seat at the Conseil Constitutionnel, where they humiliate each others to the day)
As we say in French "il a toujours son balai dans le cul" (Giscard is still a psychorigid idiot - he has a broom deeply stuck into his arse)
In 1981 when he was defeated by Mitterrand (with Chirac help !) Giscard was so incensed and angered that while on TV, live, he simply got up, said a single word "Au revoir" "Goodbye"and left an empty chair with the Marseillaise playing.
This is the French equivalent of Nixon getting into the helicopter and out of the White House that day of 1974.
http://www.ina.fr/video/I08358793
Paris, France
When President Giscard D'Estaing met Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow last month, the Soviet Leader offered France the opportunity to fly a cosmonaut on board a joint Soviet-French space flight, along the same lines as the agreement to fly non-Soviet cosmonauts from member countries of the Intercosmos program. The offer was accepted, and France will began a spationaut selection process in September 1979, with the goal of slecting two finalists to be named in June 1980 and start training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in September 1980.
The French astronaut will fly to the 40 tons OPSEK – Mir, the mysterious Soviet space station probably made of two Salyuts docked face-to-face. But in 1979, out of the blue come two spacecrafts as big as Salyut, and all of sudden MIR-OPSEK doubled in size and weight, to 80 tons. These ships are probably related to the mysterious Cosmos 929 of 1977. Such vehicle was rumoured to the Soviet answer to Helios, but little is known about it and his hasn't flown since 1977. Cosmos 929 seemed to rival Big Gemini in a “space truck” role.
The selection of French astronaut inevitably begs an intriguing question: how about ESA astronauts ?
This is an old issue that reach back as far as June 1972. That was the moment when after the shuttle cancellation NASA scrapped the so-called sortie lab and offered Europe nothing but the Agena space tug. The harsh reality is that the tug, being piloted from the ground, doesn't need an astronaut corps. Still ESA space tug (major) accomplishments – such as the Skylab desorbit mission - could be a bargain chip for ESA astronauts to fly to space station Liberty. France decision to go it alone may change things. It was De Gaulle that had France cooperating with the Soviets back in 1966 over spaceflight.
In fact selection of an European astronaut corps have started in 1977 but progress have been slow. Meanwhile on September 14, 1976 when the Soviets announced their Intercosmos program. This pushed the U.S Government, and NASA to start a similar program. Invitations were issued to the “Agena tug club” that includes Canada, Japan and Europe. More countries may follow. They were formally invited to space station Liberty and requested to start astronaut selection processes. On the European side Germany dragged, and still drags, its feet because in 1972 it has been excluded from space station module development when NASA picked up large Skylab-size modules instead of the narrower Big Gemini cargo section. Hopefully the French involment in Intercosmos should help cancelling Germany last doubts...
Moscow, the same day
Chertok and Glushko were now fighting teeth and nails for their respective spacecrafts to fly the prestigious Intercomos missions carrying foreign cosmonauts like Vladimir Remek, the first non-US, non-USSR astronaut. Gluhko insisted that his TKS should dock with OPSEK – Mir, while Chertok said that the TKS could for the MKBS; OPSEK-Mir didn't needed all the heavy logistics and their space trucks. As usual Glushko went to see Ustinov, and the latter decided that a handful of TKS would be flown to OPSEK-Mir, but no more than one per year until 1982. Most of the traffic would be handled by Chertok's Soyuz. Intercosmos astronauts could fly on the TKS only after it was thoroughly tested in orbit, probably after 1980.
--------------------
(for the record, VGE - Giscard - is still alive, aged 90 and counting. Still bitter about his 1981 defeat against Mitterrand, and still with a deep hatred of Chirac, who planted a knife between his shoulders when he secretely pushed right-wing voters to vote for Mitterrand rather than Giscard. President Giscard had humiliated Prime Minister Chirac back in 1975, and the two man hate each others. As former President they both seat at the Conseil Constitutionnel, where they humiliate each others to the day)
As we say in French "il a toujours son balai dans le cul" (Giscard is still a psychorigid idiot - he has a broom deeply stuck into his arse)
In 1981 when he was defeated by Mitterrand (with Chirac help !) Giscard was so incensed and angered that while on TV, live, he simply got up, said a single word "Au revoir" "Goodbye"and left an empty chair with the Marseillaise playing.
This is the French equivalent of Nixon getting into the helicopter and out of the White House that day of 1974.
http://www.ina.fr/video/I08358793
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John Glenn
Archibald
Banned
July 21 1979
Darn, can't imagine Walter Mondale posing with astronauts The photo surely would made history. Alan Shepard, John Glenn; Borman, Lovell and Anders beside the complete Apollo 11 crew. Nothing less than the first American into space; the first to orbit the Earth; the first crew to orbit the Moon; and the first crew to land on the Moon.
The unique gathering celebrated ten years since mankind first landing on the Moon.
William Anders was chairman of the Space Council, a body that had survived against all odds. The space policy body had survived Nixon and Agnew, then found in ally with Gerald Ford - didn't the senator helped creating NASA in 1958, together with the Space Council itself ? The council had also survived into the Carter administration, although it had been a close call.
(Flashback to July 4, 1976, day of the United States Bicentenary.)
That day Helios 2 had been NASA own contribution to the Bicentenary, marking he symbolic assumption that manned spaceflight would continue, even at low level.
Helios 1 had been an unmanned orbital test, so Young and Slayton had a lot of pressure on their shoulders. The mission was essentially a shakedown of NASA new manned ship, a short three day sortie.
More ambitious schemes had been drawn, such as flying an Apollo to geosynchronous orbit – as proposed by Kraft Ehricke. Or another joint flight with the Soviets, or a last mission to Skylab A.
The Soviet were not ready yet for a second joint flight, the space station was too far in the future, while Skylab was much too degraded to be of any usefulness.
Deke Slayton was happy to be up there, for his second flight in space. Down in Houston the capcom was busy, with the crew having a lot of contact with famous people that day - President Ford of course, and many others, all with the same boring questions.
Suddendly, however, a guest get out the pack. The voice was familiar to Slayton.
"John ? is that you ?" It was John Glenn, on his way to the Democrat convention, once a competitor to Mo Udall and Jimmy Carter and now on the VP ticket with Carter.
"Hello, Deke ! How is the view from there ?"
"Wonderful." By god, John, I certainly know how you feel at this very moment.Earth-bound, talking to an astronaut colleague enjoying microgravity up there...
Both men had been Mercury seven. Both had been grounded, Glenn, because he was an icon, Slayton, because of a minor health problem.
Down on the ground, John Glenn turned toward its audience with a large smile. It was definitively a good day - he had met again that Wainwright journalist that published his exploits in Time Magazine in the days he was not grounded.
Within eight days, Glenn would keynote to the Democratic convention. A good speech would influence Carter positively - it was that speech he would test that day, and that Wainwright had reviewed with mixed feelings.
Twenty minutes later, John Glenn had to agree that something was wrong with the speech. For all its fans there today looked bored. He had to talk to Wainwright, and in a hurry.
Wainwright was evidentely appaled. Within a couple minutes, he had seen a complete Glenn transformation from good to worse - from the space hero to the boring politician. He couldn't believe his ears. If he speaks that tone in the coming months, Mondale and Carter and whatever Republican nominee will have a field day against Glenn.
Wainwright reworked Glenn speech just in time for the Democratic convention a week later at the Madison Square Garden. Playing his stature of space hero, Glenn spoke about the belaguered space program and aircraft industries, about the job losts with the SST and space shuttle, viciously attacking Nixon and Ford industrial policies. That angered, passionate speech was welcomed by Democrats willing to fight after the Agnew and Watergate successive scandals. Very ironically in the end the shuttle fiasco had been a torn in Mondale side, if only because all the jobs lost in Florida and California and elsewhere. Mondale had pushed his anti- NASA crusade too far, to unproductive political results.
Last but not least, Glenn presence on Carter ticket made carter victory easier at a crucial moment. Ford being Ford, and Carter being Carter, the 1976 campaign had been complete with gooves and blunders. To Ford, there was no Soviet domination of eastern Europe. Carter, meanwhile, had been interwived by Playboy, recognizing he had lusted for others woman than his wife, although only "in his heart." For christians and feminists, extramarrital lust, even virtual, was too much to endure, and lusty Jimmy got alienated. What tipped the vote in the end was the fate of Vietnam opponents and refugees, Carter pardon outsmarting Ford amnesty.
The running mates had been no better - veteran Robert Dole had warily stated that war fought under democrat presidents were usually more lethals. Glenn, himself a veteran pilot of the WWII Pacific theather and Korean War, blasted him easily, noting that criticism was totally unfair. That found a favourable echos along spectators of the debate.
On a more serious note, Carter easily carried most of the South, yet victories were narrower in large Northern states such as New York and Pennsylvania. The states that ultimately secured Carter's victory were Wisconsin and Ohio. Had Ford won these states and all other states he carried, he would have won the presidency. That's where Glenn proved most useful: as the very Senator of Ohio, he markedly tipped the balance there, making Carter overall victory easier.
What mattered to NASA, in the end, was that a former astronaut ended as chairman of the Space Council. It took all of Glenn charisma and statute of national hero to balance Carter total lack of enthusiast for the space program.
But it worked.
There had been no real gap in manned access to space, Helios rapidly taking over only months after the Apollo - Soyuz flight. Since then NASA budget had remained steady, a good $3.4 billion each year. The space station was well underway, and they had a robust, if not glamourous, orbital space transportation system. Although a far cry from the long gone space shuttle, the Helios / Agena duo worked pretty well. The scientists were under control, happy as they were with large astronomical observatories and a decent number of planetary missions. Some of them even recognized the space station as a valuable endeavour, and that was paramount...
Vice President John Glenn paid a vibrant hommage to defunct Von Braun in June 1977. He discretely made NASA path toward the space station easier, although he could not rise the space agency overall budget, not against his president will.
He at least tried to build a decent commemoration of the lunar landings tenth anniversary, although, again, he could not push for a bold space initiative, not against Carter will. At least he was more receptive to space matters than Mondale would have been.
There had been rumours that Glenn might fly into space again.
NASA flying the vice-president in space would be some awesome Public Relation coup Slayton though dryly. There were rumours of a guest astronaut program; Glenn, Gerard O'Neill were possible candidates, and also that strange, red-capped French ocenanographer, Cousteau (amazingly, a good friend of past deputy administrator George Low, a distant, secretive man ). The astronaut office however was pretty reluctant for moral reasons (space flight remained a dangerous business) and also because, although Big Gemini was much more comfortable than the old Apollos, Titan III-M was a pretty brutish launch vehicle. The space shuttle (either the cancelled one or a new vehicle) would have made things different Slayton believed.
Not all was rosy for NASA, however, even with Glenn as the Vice President. Despite Glenn best efforts Carter had cancelled the Apollo lifeboat, to Rockwell despair. It had been one hell of bitter debate.
From the issue of that debate depended, altogether, astronaut safety and NASA answer to the Soviet flight duration records aboard their Salyuts. Skylab-3 84 days flight duration record had long been broken. Within three years the Soviets had pushed the boundaries from 96 to 175 days, obviously with 200 days in mind.
Fortunately Enterprise allowed NASA to enter the race with the Soviets. In June 1978 exploiting a gap in the Salyut crew sequence the American space agency had staged a major propaganda coup - the first flight to break the symbolic 100 days barrier. Unfortunately the Soviets had lost no time for an answer; at the end of 1978 they had pushed the limit to 150 days.
That July 21, 1979 the record was on the brink of being broken again - Vladimir Lyakhov and Valery Ryumin had already spent 145 days in orbit and where not to come back until August or beyond.
The Soviets rapid progresses had taken NASA by surprise, with their flights soon exceeding Big Gemini certified flight duration in space. Bluntly, the ship had not been build to spent more than two or three months in space, even docked to a space station. The 100 day mission had clearly shown that past that time some components started to degrade dangerously.
So NASA remained stuck with three options.
The agency could try to extend Big Gemini on-orbit duration; or try to accelerate the crew rotations to six per year, one every two months, with all the risks it entailed. The Titan III was a beast, with all his toxic propellants and those two large firecrackers strapped to its sides, and the Air Force pressure to keep its birds. Worse, six rotations per year would not even be enough to significantly lower Martin Marietta production costs: the company had already warned the treshold was at eighteen Titan III a year, with the unmanned missions included of course. So far the best NASA could hope for was ten.
The third solution was to have a dedicated lifeboat, and Rockwell screamed for Apollo. The capsule would be launched unmanned, and provided with the Agena LIDAR so that it could automatically approach and dock. If a problem ever happened to either Liberty or Helios, the astronauts would just jump into their Apollo and return Earth.
The idea made of a lot of sense, and Rockwell had done their best to try and secure their lifeboat.
After the shuttle debacle Rockwell top management had made a 180 degree turn. They had been once an enthusiastic supporter of the Shuttle and a faithfull ally to NASA Johnson space center quest for that program. But the shuttle had been canned and in the ensuing "capsule race" McDonnell Douglas Big Gemini had beaten Rockwell Apollo. The company space division had in turn decided to bet everything on an Apollo lifeboat rather than a shuttle revival, for a simple reason: Apollo was already flying when the shuttle was at best a plywood mockup.
On their own dime, they had modified two Apollos that been leftover by cancelled lunar landings. They had gone as far as loaning a C-130 Hercules to parachute down an Apollo modified for land landings. The test had happened at Edwards AFB in June 1975, with perfect success. The other capsule had had its internal systems and layout totally reworked with up-to-date systems.
Alas, the very idea of an Apollo lifeboat had a big, lethal default. To Carter and Congress, it looked as if NASA was trying to keep a couple of manned ships running in parallel - Helios and Apollo, a no-choice that might cost the taxpayer an arm and a leg. So the NASA budget for the fiscal year 1980 made no mention of the lifeboat, and that was a shame.
The Johnson Space Center, for its part, pushed hard for the Shuttle II. Their argument was it would fly cheaply and it would fly frequently, and only with a reusable vehicle could NASA solve Liberty crew rotation issues. Carter however had no love at all for a shuttle revival. There was no lack of advisors to remind him how the shuttle program had exploded into Nixon face. As for Johnson, they worried about the contractors lack of support for the Shuttle II - Rockwell being an example of that trend. The scar left by cancellation of the shuttle was long to heal.
200 miles above Earth – the OPSEK-Mir space complex.
Since 1976 and Glushko offensive the OPSEK-Mir orbital complex had endured many twists and turns. This day of July 1979, the crew of DOS-5 / Salyut 5 welcomed the twin module, DOS-6. However they wouldn't dock face-to-face as initially planned.
Early 1977 Glushko had added a twist to make Mir mor useful to the coming MKBS. Stuck between the two Salyut hulls was a 50 feet long truss with a 10 feet wide pressurised tunnel running along it so that the astronauts could transfer from one Salyut to the other. The whole thing had the shape of a dumbell.
Then, both Salyuts fired their aft thrusters and the 50 tons OPSEK-Mir started to spin, providing limited artificial gravity to the three-man crew. The rotation would have to be stopped every time a couple of Soyuz or TKS would come and dock to the dumbell ends. The TKS with its large supply of propellants could fire its own thrusters to spun the whole complex – with a pair of 20 tons TKS it would weight 90 tons. For the sake of symmetry manned spaceships docked at the ends of the Salyuts would have to be similar – it was either two Soyuz or two TKS, but not a mix of the two, or a single ship.
The future MKBS was to feature a very similar artificial gravity system; Glushko's last two Almaz hulls OPS-3 and OPS-4 were to be attached to a long thruss and the whole thing would be spun around the MKBS long axis, providing different level of gravity according to the spin rate. It would be possible to simulate the Moon or Mars.
Darn, can't imagine Walter Mondale posing with astronauts The photo surely would made history. Alan Shepard, John Glenn; Borman, Lovell and Anders beside the complete Apollo 11 crew. Nothing less than the first American into space; the first to orbit the Earth; the first crew to orbit the Moon; and the first crew to land on the Moon.
The unique gathering celebrated ten years since mankind first landing on the Moon.
William Anders was chairman of the Space Council, a body that had survived against all odds. The space policy body had survived Nixon and Agnew, then found in ally with Gerald Ford - didn't the senator helped creating NASA in 1958, together with the Space Council itself ? The council had also survived into the Carter administration, although it had been a close call.
(Flashback to July 4, 1976, day of the United States Bicentenary.)
That day Helios 2 had been NASA own contribution to the Bicentenary, marking he symbolic assumption that manned spaceflight would continue, even at low level.
Helios 1 had been an unmanned orbital test, so Young and Slayton had a lot of pressure on their shoulders. The mission was essentially a shakedown of NASA new manned ship, a short three day sortie.
More ambitious schemes had been drawn, such as flying an Apollo to geosynchronous orbit – as proposed by Kraft Ehricke. Or another joint flight with the Soviets, or a last mission to Skylab A.
The Soviet were not ready yet for a second joint flight, the space station was too far in the future, while Skylab was much too degraded to be of any usefulness.
Deke Slayton was happy to be up there, for his second flight in space. Down in Houston the capcom was busy, with the crew having a lot of contact with famous people that day - President Ford of course, and many others, all with the same boring questions.
Suddendly, however, a guest get out the pack. The voice was familiar to Slayton.
"John ? is that you ?" It was John Glenn, on his way to the Democrat convention, once a competitor to Mo Udall and Jimmy Carter and now on the VP ticket with Carter.
"Hello, Deke ! How is the view from there ?"
"Wonderful." By god, John, I certainly know how you feel at this very moment.Earth-bound, talking to an astronaut colleague enjoying microgravity up there...
Both men had been Mercury seven. Both had been grounded, Glenn, because he was an icon, Slayton, because of a minor health problem.
Down on the ground, John Glenn turned toward its audience with a large smile. It was definitively a good day - he had met again that Wainwright journalist that published his exploits in Time Magazine in the days he was not grounded.
Within eight days, Glenn would keynote to the Democratic convention. A good speech would influence Carter positively - it was that speech he would test that day, and that Wainwright had reviewed with mixed feelings.
Twenty minutes later, John Glenn had to agree that something was wrong with the speech. For all its fans there today looked bored. He had to talk to Wainwright, and in a hurry.
Wainwright was evidentely appaled. Within a couple minutes, he had seen a complete Glenn transformation from good to worse - from the space hero to the boring politician. He couldn't believe his ears. If he speaks that tone in the coming months, Mondale and Carter and whatever Republican nominee will have a field day against Glenn.
Wainwright reworked Glenn speech just in time for the Democratic convention a week later at the Madison Square Garden. Playing his stature of space hero, Glenn spoke about the belaguered space program and aircraft industries, about the job losts with the SST and space shuttle, viciously attacking Nixon and Ford industrial policies. That angered, passionate speech was welcomed by Democrats willing to fight after the Agnew and Watergate successive scandals. Very ironically in the end the shuttle fiasco had been a torn in Mondale side, if only because all the jobs lost in Florida and California and elsewhere. Mondale had pushed his anti- NASA crusade too far, to unproductive political results.
Last but not least, Glenn presence on Carter ticket made carter victory easier at a crucial moment. Ford being Ford, and Carter being Carter, the 1976 campaign had been complete with gooves and blunders. To Ford, there was no Soviet domination of eastern Europe. Carter, meanwhile, had been interwived by Playboy, recognizing he had lusted for others woman than his wife, although only "in his heart." For christians and feminists, extramarrital lust, even virtual, was too much to endure, and lusty Jimmy got alienated. What tipped the vote in the end was the fate of Vietnam opponents and refugees, Carter pardon outsmarting Ford amnesty.
The running mates had been no better - veteran Robert Dole had warily stated that war fought under democrat presidents were usually more lethals. Glenn, himself a veteran pilot of the WWII Pacific theather and Korean War, blasted him easily, noting that criticism was totally unfair. That found a favourable echos along spectators of the debate.
On a more serious note, Carter easily carried most of the South, yet victories were narrower in large Northern states such as New York and Pennsylvania. The states that ultimately secured Carter's victory were Wisconsin and Ohio. Had Ford won these states and all other states he carried, he would have won the presidency. That's where Glenn proved most useful: as the very Senator of Ohio, he markedly tipped the balance there, making Carter overall victory easier.
What mattered to NASA, in the end, was that a former astronaut ended as chairman of the Space Council. It took all of Glenn charisma and statute of national hero to balance Carter total lack of enthusiast for the space program.
But it worked.
There had been no real gap in manned access to space, Helios rapidly taking over only months after the Apollo - Soyuz flight. Since then NASA budget had remained steady, a good $3.4 billion each year. The space station was well underway, and they had a robust, if not glamourous, orbital space transportation system. Although a far cry from the long gone space shuttle, the Helios / Agena duo worked pretty well. The scientists were under control, happy as they were with large astronomical observatories and a decent number of planetary missions. Some of them even recognized the space station as a valuable endeavour, and that was paramount...
Vice President John Glenn paid a vibrant hommage to defunct Von Braun in June 1977. He discretely made NASA path toward the space station easier, although he could not rise the space agency overall budget, not against his president will.
He at least tried to build a decent commemoration of the lunar landings tenth anniversary, although, again, he could not push for a bold space initiative, not against Carter will. At least he was more receptive to space matters than Mondale would have been.
There had been rumours that Glenn might fly into space again.
NASA flying the vice-president in space would be some awesome Public Relation coup Slayton though dryly. There were rumours of a guest astronaut program; Glenn, Gerard O'Neill were possible candidates, and also that strange, red-capped French ocenanographer, Cousteau (amazingly, a good friend of past deputy administrator George Low, a distant, secretive man ). The astronaut office however was pretty reluctant for moral reasons (space flight remained a dangerous business) and also because, although Big Gemini was much more comfortable than the old Apollos, Titan III-M was a pretty brutish launch vehicle. The space shuttle (either the cancelled one or a new vehicle) would have made things different Slayton believed.
Not all was rosy for NASA, however, even with Glenn as the Vice President. Despite Glenn best efforts Carter had cancelled the Apollo lifeboat, to Rockwell despair. It had been one hell of bitter debate.
From the issue of that debate depended, altogether, astronaut safety and NASA answer to the Soviet flight duration records aboard their Salyuts. Skylab-3 84 days flight duration record had long been broken. Within three years the Soviets had pushed the boundaries from 96 to 175 days, obviously with 200 days in mind.
Fortunately Enterprise allowed NASA to enter the race with the Soviets. In June 1978 exploiting a gap in the Salyut crew sequence the American space agency had staged a major propaganda coup - the first flight to break the symbolic 100 days barrier. Unfortunately the Soviets had lost no time for an answer; at the end of 1978 they had pushed the limit to 150 days.
That July 21, 1979 the record was on the brink of being broken again - Vladimir Lyakhov and Valery Ryumin had already spent 145 days in orbit and where not to come back until August or beyond.
The Soviets rapid progresses had taken NASA by surprise, with their flights soon exceeding Big Gemini certified flight duration in space. Bluntly, the ship had not been build to spent more than two or three months in space, even docked to a space station. The 100 day mission had clearly shown that past that time some components started to degrade dangerously.
So NASA remained stuck with three options.
The agency could try to extend Big Gemini on-orbit duration; or try to accelerate the crew rotations to six per year, one every two months, with all the risks it entailed. The Titan III was a beast, with all his toxic propellants and those two large firecrackers strapped to its sides, and the Air Force pressure to keep its birds. Worse, six rotations per year would not even be enough to significantly lower Martin Marietta production costs: the company had already warned the treshold was at eighteen Titan III a year, with the unmanned missions included of course. So far the best NASA could hope for was ten.
The third solution was to have a dedicated lifeboat, and Rockwell screamed for Apollo. The capsule would be launched unmanned, and provided with the Agena LIDAR so that it could automatically approach and dock. If a problem ever happened to either Liberty or Helios, the astronauts would just jump into their Apollo and return Earth.
The idea made of a lot of sense, and Rockwell had done their best to try and secure their lifeboat.
After the shuttle debacle Rockwell top management had made a 180 degree turn. They had been once an enthusiastic supporter of the Shuttle and a faithfull ally to NASA Johnson space center quest for that program. But the shuttle had been canned and in the ensuing "capsule race" McDonnell Douglas Big Gemini had beaten Rockwell Apollo. The company space division had in turn decided to bet everything on an Apollo lifeboat rather than a shuttle revival, for a simple reason: Apollo was already flying when the shuttle was at best a plywood mockup.
On their own dime, they had modified two Apollos that been leftover by cancelled lunar landings. They had gone as far as loaning a C-130 Hercules to parachute down an Apollo modified for land landings. The test had happened at Edwards AFB in June 1975, with perfect success. The other capsule had had its internal systems and layout totally reworked with up-to-date systems.
Alas, the very idea of an Apollo lifeboat had a big, lethal default. To Carter and Congress, it looked as if NASA was trying to keep a couple of manned ships running in parallel - Helios and Apollo, a no-choice that might cost the taxpayer an arm and a leg. So the NASA budget for the fiscal year 1980 made no mention of the lifeboat, and that was a shame.
The Johnson Space Center, for its part, pushed hard for the Shuttle II. Their argument was it would fly cheaply and it would fly frequently, and only with a reusable vehicle could NASA solve Liberty crew rotation issues. Carter however had no love at all for a shuttle revival. There was no lack of advisors to remind him how the shuttle program had exploded into Nixon face. As for Johnson, they worried about the contractors lack of support for the Shuttle II - Rockwell being an example of that trend. The scar left by cancellation of the shuttle was long to heal.
200 miles above Earth – the OPSEK-Mir space complex.
Since 1976 and Glushko offensive the OPSEK-Mir orbital complex had endured many twists and turns. This day of July 1979, the crew of DOS-5 / Salyut 5 welcomed the twin module, DOS-6. However they wouldn't dock face-to-face as initially planned.
Early 1977 Glushko had added a twist to make Mir mor useful to the coming MKBS. Stuck between the two Salyut hulls was a 50 feet long truss with a 10 feet wide pressurised tunnel running along it so that the astronauts could transfer from one Salyut to the other. The whole thing had the shape of a dumbell.
Then, both Salyuts fired their aft thrusters and the 50 tons OPSEK-Mir started to spin, providing limited artificial gravity to the three-man crew. The rotation would have to be stopped every time a couple of Soyuz or TKS would come and dock to the dumbell ends. The TKS with its large supply of propellants could fire its own thrusters to spun the whole complex – with a pair of 20 tons TKS it would weight 90 tons. For the sake of symmetry manned spaceships docked at the ends of the Salyuts would have to be similar – it was either two Soyuz or two TKS, but not a mix of the two, or a single ship.
The future MKBS was to feature a very similar artificial gravity system; Glushko's last two Almaz hulls OPS-3 and OPS-4 were to be attached to a long thruss and the whole thing would be spun around the MKBS long axis, providing different level of gravity according to the spin rate. It would be possible to simulate the Moon or Mars.
I Updated the TL Wiki http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php?id=timelines:explorers_ad_astra