[Applause]
A fine fate for LM-13. [wipes a tear from his eye]
*Joins in the applause*
[Applause]
A fine fate for LM-13. [wipes a tear from his eye]
Thank you both. For the record, the launch vehicle here is SA-513, which OTL was used for Skylab. SA-514 is to be used with Skylab, with the final remaining Saturn V (SA-515) retained for use as a backup Skylab (as with OTL, it is the source for the S-IV used for Skylab B).
It will. Seeing as e of pi has stated earlier that N1-7L (The fourth one) will occur as OTL. By being self-destructed just 6 seconds prior to Block A shutdown.
So the question I have for now is: How much of the N1 tech base can be re-used? Seeing as the fourth failure was one of the two biggest reasons for killing it off - the second not even existing ITTL.
I understand that just one month before that ill-fated flight, the upgraded engines for the N1 - the NK-33, NK-43, and NK-39 - had been fully tested and verified, and were actually excellent engines, albiet a little too late to be able to make any difference.
Guess we'll find out soon enough though, seeing as it looks as if the Bones of this TL are already there, and are simply having the Meat put on them.
Edit: It's interesting that you actively avoid a common trait of these types of ATLs. Where usually the N1-7L is allowed to successfully reach stable LEO, breathing new life into the project. And allowing the N1F series to not only enter production, but work. I'm guessing you don't want this to happen seeing as there's no real mission for it with the wind-down of Lunar Apollo. 80+ Tonne Space Stations and Heavy Interplanetary Probes aren't gonna be launched enough to justify the system IMHO.
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Actually, 18 of the first 20 posts are fully written and the other two are at least started. This weekly post rate is intended to allow Truth and me time to work on part II while part I is being posted. It hasn't been working out so well, since our schedules are both busier than anticipated and we've been unable to keep to a one-post-per week writing schedule (that is, we're depleting the buffer faster than we're expanding it), so that schedule may be reviewed.
Just as an informal poll, would people prefer to get ETS more often up until buffer depletion, followed by a period "off" while we worked ahead to finish enough of part II, or the current rate, but with less (or possibly no) gap between part I and part II?
It's partly about the plausibility--without an American program to be challenging, Truth and I don't think the moon would be a high priority for Russia (it really wasn't heavily pursued even OTL, certainly not relative to the American effort). There's only limited political benefit of going to the moon after the Americans have stopped, so the N1 doesn't get the chance to prove itself and is cancelled. Some of the tech may find its way into other Russian rockets, we'll have to see, won't we?
Anyway, like I said in another earlier post, we only had a certain amount of magic "make-this-rocket-not-fail" fluid, and it was used up elsewhere. I'm kind of disappointed no one's even speculated about where, there's been plenty of hints.
I'm going out on a limb and guessing Viking 1. OTL its landing had to be moved back to 20 July. TTL it lands on its original intended date of the Bicentennial.
Failing that, you used the juice on the two extra outer system probes (the Jupiter-Uranus flybys).
Well, Viking works because it was targeted towards Tritonis Lacus as its primary site, rather than the Chryse intersection. That was actually the prime backup landing site, and has been mooted as the main landing site for a number of later probes--the landing site selection process is fluid enough that we thought we could justify moving that around. The extra Voyagers were proposed IOTL but not flown, of course; here, without Shuttle sucking up extra money (there are the Saturn IC, AARDVark, and Block III developments, but even combined those are cheaper and less draining than Shuttle), those plans go forwards. Still reduced, but like OTL JPL can work them back to where they want them to be once flush budgets are here again.
No, the "this rocket doesn't fail" juice is being used somewhere else entirely...
Personally, I feel it's best to follow the original schedule until about update 10-12 to help build up the interest. After that, you should be able to risk slowing down to avoid loss of buffer material.
Looks like I guessed right then. Anyways, I always had one serious gripe concerning the N1 anyway. Even had they been able to make it work, it was an already obsolete design, with little to zero growth capability. At least the UR-700 and R-56 had that option, though obviously they have even less chance of being in service than the N1 ITTL.It's partly about the plausibility--without an American program to be challenging, Truth and I don't think the moon would be a high priority for Russia (it really wasn't heavily pursued even OTL, certainly not relative to the American effort). There's only limited political benefit of going to the moon after the Americans have stopped, so the N1 doesn't get the chance to prove itself and is cancelled. Some of the tech may find its way into other Russian rockets, we'll have to see, won't we?
I already noted the mention of a Manned Mars Mission in the very first post. Likely made possible by the free up resources, the need for a place to go to justify manned spaceflight, and the lack of STS to consume the budget - even if it's lower in the 70s as a result of no STS. So I'm betting that manned flight to the Red Planet is gonna happen. Just please, whatever you do. NO OPPOSITION CLASS FLIGHTS!! It would bankrupt the entirety of this TL, I guarantee.
And as I've noted elsewhere on this site, 'Battlestar Galactica' type ships will do you no good. They're not only far too expensive to justify, they're often low capability missions, and therefore low value, and therefore low worth. And low value missions might as well be no mission IMHO.
Edit:
If the last two paragraphs seem rather rude, then I apologise. And I am certain that you can avoid the points raised in them, so long as a Zubrin-type(s) character is there. But what I really want to see is a series of Manned Mars Missions, not a one-shot.
Also, you already mentioned that the ESA's commercial launch system is gonna fail. So far as I can tell, this is down to the fact that NASA already has one up and running, which resulted in the comercial launch market developing earlier than OTL. One reason it took until the late 80s OTL is that that was how long it took for a reliable, low-cost means means to be established with the Ariane 2 & 3, followed by the Ariane 4. Which makes me wonder, what will be the ESA's main purpose ITTL? One reason the Ariane rockets were developed at all OTL was for Independant European Launch Capability. If that still exists ITTL, then for what purpose? If not, I'll have to conclude that some of the make-work juice used by NASA ITTL was taken from ESA.
PS: What's the status of NERVA? There's been little to no mention of it so far.
Staying tuned.
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Well, the other option would be to speed up the post rate, something like twice a week instead of weekly, so that we stop falling down to page 3 between updates. This would exhaust our buffer twice as fast, but if would allow us to build up more momentum while we were posting, and maybe make getting people's interest back later easier. The debate is basically between "stay the same, may be some gap between part I and part II" "update less often with no gap," or "update update less often, but with a gap almost assured after post 20, lasting a few months."
As a matter of fact, I did not say that the European launch system would be a commercial failure, I just said it wouldn't be Ariane. AndyC guessed it, Ariane is never developed in this TL because they get Europa working instead. This has a side benefit in that it stops the UK from dropping out of ELDO, and then sticking around even once ELDO is reorganized along with ESRO into ESA. While I think you'll see why there was no "make-work" juice left over for N1 after we saved the Europa program, I think our method is fairly plausible.
*shrug* It hasn't been mentioned because it's been largely unimportant. Much like OTL, it's cancelled prior to the start of the main portion of this TL. With a focus on LEO stations for at least the next decade, it wasn't seen as a priority. Nuclear power systems may see more effort in the near term of this TL, but nuclear rockets will not.
Ah. That is going to take a lot of make-work juice then. And I'm quite positive you know exactly what I'm referring to. Should be interesting to see how the upgrade programme on Europa turns out, though I got two guesses on that department.
It...took some doing, I'll admit. However, it was needed to keep the UK in the game, which has implications for the ESA, and Truth and I don't think the way we have it go down is on the wrong side of the plausible/ASB line. The first post covering Europa is Post 9.
Well, I, for one, would rather us post smoothly and regularly. The best way to keep interest high between posts is of course to make them interesting enough that people want to talk about what's going on in them
Post 6: Skylab Launch and Recovery
Well, speaking of posting schedules, it's Wednesday again. And with that, inevitable as congressional pork, comes a new update to Eyes Turned Skywards. This week, Skylab's launch brings with it the start of NASA's new station-focused direction. There's just one or two teeny-weeny little issues...
Eyes Turned Skywards, Post #6:
As Polaris lifted off from Hyginus to join Windjammer in orbit and return Apollo 18’s crew safely to Earth, all eyes at NASA moved towards Skylab. Scheduled to fly in late 1973, the fabrication of the primary unit, Skylab A, and the backup unit, Skylab B, was proceeding smoothly. As the launch date approached, tension and pressure mounted, as this launch was seen as the make-or-break moment for NASA. Having strongly committed themselves to space station development, some within the agency feared that a launch failure could destroy the agency's human spaceflight division. The station would launch on a modified version of the Saturn V vehicle, with the Skylab station replacing the third stage of the full Saturn V. Nominally, the station would begin deployment ten minutes after launch, with the Apollo Telescope mount deploying first, then the station’s solar arrays. However, it became clear very quickly that the launch had been anything but normal.
The first indication was a slight spike in the g-meter, recording any unusual accelerations of the vehicle, about 45 seconds after launch, right as the Saturn V was passing through Mach 1. Fifteen seconds later, Houston received indications that the micrometeroid/solar shield had prematurely deployed, although the full significance of this would not become apparent for some time. It was not until 41 minutes after launch, when the great wing-like solar arrays on each side of the station were to deploy and begin providing electricity to the station’s systems that controllers on the ground realized anything was wrong; they did not deploy when the commands were first sent, nor did they deploy the second or third times. Further, the internal and external temperatures of the station continued climbing and climbing, far beyond what they should have been. It was then that NASA realized the awful truth: the telemetry from the vehicle during launch hadn’t just been noise in the circuits. It had been the vital shield departing the station, tearing off one of the solar arrays and jamming the other. Without the shield, and without at least one working solar array, the station would be utterly useless--this, just after NASA had staked its future, all, on the success of the station program.
The 10 days that followed are, in many ways, NASA’s finest hour. While the effort surrounding the recovery of Apollo 13 is often put ahead of it, some of (if not the) finest engineering activity of the entire agency’s history took place during the rush to save Skylab. The first challenge was simply to ensure the station, if a method was devised to repair it, would be in shape to be repaired. High temperatures could spoil the prepackaged foods, cause dangerous gasses to be emitted by the fittings, or cause equipment to fail. The maneuvering necessary to prevent this could deplete so much of the vital gas used to control the station that it would be impossible to dock with it or point the solar camera--the most prominent experiment on the station--at the Sun. Heroic efforts on the part of the engineers and physicists responsible for controlling the station allowed the preservation of the station’s function during the time it took for NASA to invent a solution for the greater problems.
These solutions, especially to the non-existent solar shield, were the second challenge NASA faced. Dozens of ideas on how to replace the shield were invented, trialed, and reviewed; three were selected, and two ultimately flown. Jack Kinzler, a high school graduate who was chief of the Technical Services Division at the Johnson Space Center* in Houston, invented the most important of those solutions, a “parasol” which would be deployed on the first mission. It was designed to pack up tightly and be deployed through a scientific airlock in the habitat section, then self-deploy using telescoping fiberglass rods. While it was ultimately too fragile to serve permanently, it was light and simple enough to easily be deployed on the first mission, serving as a stopgap for a more permanent solution to be deployed.
The jammed solar panel also posed significant problems to the station’s future functionality. Without it functioning properly, many experiments on board the station would not be able to get enough power to work, and the astronauts themselves would only barely be able to live on the station. The station would be virtually worthless, even if the shield were fixed. Compounding the problem was that pre-flight analysis had concluded that the lack of handrails and other necessary devices around the solar arrays meant that astronauts could not reach them, and therefore could not repair them in the event of a problem. After several days on intense brainstorming, the engineers responsible at Marshall had developed a possible solution, requiring a so-called “stand-up EVA” from the Command Module, circumventing the lack of handholds. Finally, solutions had been found to all of the problems facing Skylab; now, it was up to the astronauts of the first Skylab crew, the veteran Pete Conrad and the rookies Paul Weitz and Joseph Kerwin to actually put those solutions into place.
*edited Oct 5, 2011 from "then-Manned Spaceflight Center"[/I]
Eyes Turned Skywards, Post #6:
As Polaris lifted off from Hyginus to join Windjammer in orbit and return Apollo 18’s crew safely to Earth, all eyes at NASA moved towards Skylab. Scheduled to fly in late 1973, the fabrication of the primary unit, Skylab A, and the backup unit, Skylab B, was proceeding smoothly. As the launch date approached, tension and pressure mounted, as this launch was seen as the make-or-break moment for NASA. Having strongly committed themselves to space station development, some within the agency feared that a launch failure could destroy the agency's human spaceflight division. The station would launch on a modified version of the Saturn V vehicle, with the Skylab station replacing the third stage of the full Saturn V. Nominally, the station would begin deployment ten minutes after launch, with the Apollo Telescope mount deploying first, then the station’s solar arrays. However, it became clear very quickly that the launch had been anything but normal.
The first indication was a slight spike in the g-meter, recording any unusual accelerations of the vehicle, about 45 seconds after launch, right as the Saturn V was passing through Mach 1. Fifteen seconds later, Houston received indications that the micrometeroid/solar shield had prematurely deployed, although the full significance of this would not become apparent for some time. It was not until 41 minutes after launch, when the great wing-like solar arrays on each side of the station were to deploy and begin providing electricity to the station’s systems that controllers on the ground realized anything was wrong; they did not deploy when the commands were first sent, nor did they deploy the second or third times. Further, the internal and external temperatures of the station continued climbing and climbing, far beyond what they should have been. It was then that NASA realized the awful truth: the telemetry from the vehicle during launch hadn’t just been noise in the circuits. It had been the vital shield departing the station, tearing off one of the solar arrays and jamming the other. Without the shield, and without at least one working solar array, the station would be utterly useless--this, just after NASA had staked its future, all, on the success of the station program.
The 10 days that followed are, in many ways, NASA’s finest hour. While the effort surrounding the recovery of Apollo 13 is often put ahead of it, some of (if not the) finest engineering activity of the entire agency’s history took place during the rush to save Skylab. The first challenge was simply to ensure the station, if a method was devised to repair it, would be in shape to be repaired. High temperatures could spoil the prepackaged foods, cause dangerous gasses to be emitted by the fittings, or cause equipment to fail. The maneuvering necessary to prevent this could deplete so much of the vital gas used to control the station that it would be impossible to dock with it or point the solar camera--the most prominent experiment on the station--at the Sun. Heroic efforts on the part of the engineers and physicists responsible for controlling the station allowed the preservation of the station’s function during the time it took for NASA to invent a solution for the greater problems.
These solutions, especially to the non-existent solar shield, were the second challenge NASA faced. Dozens of ideas on how to replace the shield were invented, trialed, and reviewed; three were selected, and two ultimately flown. Jack Kinzler, a high school graduate who was chief of the Technical Services Division at the Johnson Space Center* in Houston, invented the most important of those solutions, a “parasol” which would be deployed on the first mission. It was designed to pack up tightly and be deployed through a scientific airlock in the habitat section, then self-deploy using telescoping fiberglass rods. While it was ultimately too fragile to serve permanently, it was light and simple enough to easily be deployed on the first mission, serving as a stopgap for a more permanent solution to be deployed.
The jammed solar panel also posed significant problems to the station’s future functionality. Without it functioning properly, many experiments on board the station would not be able to get enough power to work, and the astronauts themselves would only barely be able to live on the station. The station would be virtually worthless, even if the shield were fixed. Compounding the problem was that pre-flight analysis had concluded that the lack of handrails and other necessary devices around the solar arrays meant that astronauts could not reach them, and therefore could not repair them in the event of a problem. After several days on intense brainstorming, the engineers responsible at Marshall had developed a possible solution, requiring a so-called “stand-up EVA” from the Command Module, circumventing the lack of handholds. Finally, solutions had been found to all of the problems facing Skylab; now, it was up to the astronauts of the first Skylab crew, the veteran Pete Conrad and the rookies Paul Weitz and Joseph Kerwin to actually put those solutions into place.
*edited Oct 5, 2011 from "then-Manned Spaceflight Center"[/I]
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Bump back to the first page. To make sure there's something worthwhile here, I'll say that I really liked this update--Truth did the writing and research for it, and it's a great summary of the Skylab accident and solutions, something which we did not extensive . A lot of this is as OTL, so there's some real history of amazing engineering to be learned.
From what I remember of Skylab OTL (watching on TV as it happened, I was eight at the time, and reading later) this is pretty much exactly what happened. Would you care to highlight the butterflies? I'm sure there are some!
IIRC the ATL, there are definite plans for a second spacelab to be launched soon. But they are running out of Saturn boosters--the new models and the automated "Aardvark" were meant to operate with it if I remember correctly. Is the second lab waiting on a new run of construction of a big booster of modified design or is there one more Saturn V of the Apollo vintage held in reserve?
Would it be one of the ones that OTL went to become a museum display piece?
And have political storm clouds already blown up to cast that venture in shadow? OTL, IIRC, the mishap with the lost solar panel and sun shield didn't have any bearing on the delay (decades long!) before another (partially!) American station went up; the decision had already been made to postpone anything beyond Skylab (except Apollo-Soyuz, to use up the last Saturn 1B I guess) until the Shuttle was operational. Here then the next station is a major divergence, but I can see that it might be put in some jeopardy by this accident. I hope not of course!
IIRC the ATL, there are definite plans for a second spacelab to be launched soon. But they are running out of Saturn boosters--the new models and the automated "Aardvark" were meant to operate with it if I remember correctly. Is the second lab waiting on a new run of construction of a big booster of modified design or is there one more Saturn V of the Apollo vintage held in reserve?
Would it be one of the ones that OTL went to become a museum display piece?
And have political storm clouds already blown up to cast that venture in shadow? OTL, IIRC, the mishap with the lost solar panel and sun shield didn't have any bearing on the delay (decades long!) before another (partially!) American station went up; the decision had already been made to postpone anything beyond Skylab (except Apollo-Soyuz, to use up the last Saturn 1B I guess) until the Shuttle was operational. Here then the next station is a major divergence, but I can see that it might be put in some jeopardy by this accident. I hope not of course!
Oh, and will Apollo 18 have turned up some lunar discovery that draws interest in planning a new round of moon missions in the medium term, like before 1980? They found evidence of lava flows but what else (presumably not horror movie monsters) might they have found? Evidence of water that turns eyes toward the poles--say, an unmanned lander-rover probe if it's far too ambitious to send another manned mission?
By the way, since we have yet to send any more people to Luna OTL since Apollo 17, and have not had any geologists roving around with hammers, have we managed to somehow come up with good evidence of Lunar lava flows consistent with what Apollo 18 finds in the alt-timeline, or is this a speculative extrapolation that is not yet ruled out but also not proven OTL?
I know we left a number of seismology instruments at the various Apollo landing sites, and there have been orbiting probes which have presumably taken some very close looks. Would these have provided the lava evidence to us, eventually?
) might they have found? Evidence of water that turns eyes toward the poles--say, an unmanned lander-rover probe if it's far too ambitious to send another manned mission?By the way, since we have yet to send any more people to Luna OTL since Apollo 17, and have not had any geologists roving around with hammers, have we managed to somehow come up with good evidence of Lunar lava flows consistent with what Apollo 18 finds in the alt-timeline, or is this a speculative extrapolation that is not yet ruled out but also not proven OTL?
I know we left a number of seismology instruments at the various Apollo landing sites, and there have been orbiting probes which have presumably taken some very close looks. Would these have provided the lava evidence to us, eventually?
The main one so far is the timing, it's delayed about six months from the OTL launch date. Unfortunately for them, this has little effect on the causes of the accident, so this is almost entirely OTL. There are some differences to come in Skylab, just none yet.
No. OTL, there were two reserve Saturn V boosters. Apollo 18 used up one (well, actually, it used the Skylab one and Skylab used one of the two that were excess OTL) and the follow-up station is associated with the other. The planned station is based around the Skylab-B backup unit, which OTL makes its home in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. If Skylab fails beyond repair, then Skylab-B would launch. Otherwise, it will be retained and modified to incorporate lessons learned and launched as a follow-up.
As I said, yes. The Smithsonian will have to take one of the engineering/training mockups that went to other museums IOTL instead of the Skylab B unit it has OTL. This incidentally means that there isn't one to be left moldering in a parking lot in Huntville for years like happened OTL (I hate seeing engineering hardware mistreated).
It's in jeopardy because they've made a very strong commitment and really have no backup plans other than "try again with Skylab-B." Imagine a similar situation if the Space Shuttle had failed on its first flight: it might not kill manned flight, but it'd make a gap of years before a new plan was picked and put into action.
So far, NASA's next plan has always been in the works while the current one is being put into action with a logical link: Mercury was being flown out while Geminii was being finished, the Apollo planning and testing was happening during late Geminii, then Skylab uses Apollo hardware and Apollo-derived hardware and was in planning during Apollo as part of the Apollo Applications Program. A gap of the type between ASTP and Shuttle OTL has not happened in the world of Eyes Turned Skywards (at least not to the current moment in the timeline). So, yeah, there is some program jeopardy if this totally fails--the US could end up with no space capability at all and at a loss as to how to replace it. Imagine how terrible that would be!
Unfortunately...not on 18. And it'll be a while before eyes in the US turn back to the moon. Unmanned lunar missions like LRO, LCROSS, or the proposed sample return missions may happen earlier, but not for a decade or two--the unmanned people are very focused on Mars and the Outer System at this point in time.Oh, and will Apollo 18 have turned up some lunar discovery that draws interest in planning a new round of moon missions in the medium term, like before 1980? They found evidence of lava flows but what else (presumably not horror movie monsters
Speculative extrapolation, but fairly reasonable ones. Skylights into potential lava tubes have been found OTL by LRO imagery in the past few years, but the size of the underlying caverns is unmapped--the cameras would need to somehow get down into the hole to measure much more than depth to the bottom.
As I noted, some data has come to light in OTL since LRO entered orbit, but nothing conclusive. For that matter, they still don't have anything conclusive either, just much better basis for speculation.
