Eyes Turned Skywards

[nixonshead]

Morning all,
A wealth of options to chose from for this week's illustration! Alas, time pressures mean I could only select one, so as this timeline started with a space station decision, I've decided to continue down that path and present Freedom's successor. Here is Discovery at US Core Complete (after just three construction launches!).

 

[Linkwerk]

Gorgeous as usual!

Discovery has a truss section? From the description, I thought it was something more like two skylabs docked together, with antenna, radiators, etc. attached directly to the module.

Even with the truss....it looks like what, 4-5 launches to assemble the thing? Very slimmed down.

One last question, though: what is that large ring on what looks to be the core module? Was that node launched up "sideways" or is that some sort of attachment point for, what, a Pegasus?

 

[nixonshead]

Gorgeous as usual!

Discovery has a truss section? From the description, I thought it was something more like two skylabs docked together, with antenna, radiators, etc. attached directly to the module.

Even with the truss....it looks like what, 4-5 launches to assemble the thing? Very slimmed down.

One last question, though: what is that large ring on what looks to be the core module? Was that node launched up "sideways" or is that some sort of attachment point for, what, a Pegasus?

Well spotted - that ring is the key! The central Service Module to which it's attached was the first launched, fitted sideways under a 10m widebody fairing. The truss sections fold upwards above the service module, allowing it (with the aid of some sliding deployments for the solar arrays) to fit under the widebody fairing with the module. The lab module is the one closest to us in the image, and goes up in a pretty standard way with an AARDV tug. The hab fits on the other end and inflates. It takes over orbit control duties from the service module. Future expansions will add extra sections on each end of the truss and lab modules are added to the ports on the lab, but for this "core complete" version, 3 launches only. (Well, maybe 4. I'm not sure which launch the robot arm would go up on, it might have come up separately)

I may well try to do an assembly GIF like the one I did for Freedom, time permitting.

 

[ryhs]

Great work, nixonshead, Discovery looks fantastic!
So, do these modules have any specific names, like modules of american segment of ISS? Are any european or japanese modules planned? How big crew does the station support?
What about Mir-II? Is it handled only by russian cosmonauts aside from tourists, or are some slots in crew rotation reserved to the participating commercial partners? I also hope to see MOK-2 finally fly into the sky in the final post, or at least out of year-per-year slipping rate.
Also, would you make a new "Spacecraft Evolution" render adding all the shiny new space stations to it? Maybe even the Armstrong base...

 

[torten]

Will you continuing these for a time after the TL is complete Nixonshead?

By the way, I have been following the timeline with great enthusiasm and I have enjoyed the artwork very much.

 

[Raptor831]

Amen to that.

I've really enjoyed this timeline. It works because the authors have really done their homework - and, of course, the superb artwork of Nixon.

What I've most enjoyed about this TL is the interest it's sparked of OTLs history. Because of all of that well-done homework, it feels very real. I've caught myself thinking about some events in this TL as actual history and have to correct myself.

And I'd totally be on board with some continuing renders, nixonshead. As a visual person, seeing those fleshes out the story so well for me.

 

[Shevek23]

Knowing we're down to the last post next Friday tells us what we're up against with Discovery. This is the core of Discovery, its beginning. It will presumably last a decade, maybe two, and have stuff added to it that is beyond the scope of the TL. Perhaps if a Mars expedition it will be launched from Discovery--or perhaps it must wait for Discovery's successor, or another station built in parallel but some distance off designed for the exclusive purpose of being a spaceport for interplanetary craft. We're up against the end and beyond this point it is all up to our diverse imaginations I guess.

As the very first visitor to this thread who posted anything (check it out--"&postcount=2") I will miss it quite a lot.

I distracted myself a bit by actually reading my next post, which I have to admit I have considerable trouble following myself. It's easy to see why the authors have moved toward a rather acerbic relationship with me. I think we all have learned a lot about how orbital trajectories work in the past four years and (for a little while longer) counting. Now I'd never pose the question I was trying to then the way I did then; a lot of what I thought was just plain wrong. To this day I continue being wrong, but hopefully in a more sophisticated and still provocative way.

And the first one is not much either--I was just being snarky how the ATL people of our day are wringing their hands and whining over not having the Shuttle.

And even now I remain unconvinced that the Shuttle Decision was a fatal error we could not have recovered from more creatively earlier--using STS evolved tech such as the SSMEs in more creative ways to greatly multiply the capabilities without going backward on the premise of reuse. Before this thread I thought the "Shuttle was a mistake" faction was pretty silly and I was being snarky in two directions at once. I wish I'd been more prophetic of what a great TL this was going to be, but anyway they got my attention and I stuck around.

And the ATL 2015 the authors foresaw then does not look nearly as good as the one they evolved by long, grinding hard work. The commitment to ongoing and expanding human presence in space, based on more economical reusable systems only now at the end coming on line, in great competitive diversity, looks quite Utopian compared to our current impasse, where the single deepest-pocketed space power does not actually have a manned launcher of its own operational at the moment and has not had for many years now. And the one that does have a manned spacecraft is limping along on a broken economy and essentially the same rocket and spaceship they hammered the bugs out of around 1970. Oops, forgot the Chinese--theirs is modest upgrade of the Russian craft, launched on an ungodly hypergolic rocket that Chelomei would have sniffed at in the '60s as simple and unambitious. We Americans of OTL are hardly in a position to sniff though. I can hope that in a year, or two, we'll be flying manned Dragons to ISS on Falcons, but it all remains to be seen, doesn't it. And what will we do to replace ISS, which is reaching a lifetime where we have to expect it to start falling apart pretty soon, if Mir's experience is any guide? How can we add more to it if we want to, or start over? Elon Musk may have some answers on the drawing board, and by the time he can sell it and get it built, there might be a British SSTO that is every cool thing anyone imagined able to bring up about half what a Shuttle once could, hopefully at an order of magnitude lower cost. But Skylon remains to be seen too, and is being developed in a pretty lean economic environment it might not survive. If HMG is true to form, they'll pull the plug on Reaction Motors just as it is finally ready to fly.

I have to respect the authors' reasoning in refusing to push their TL past the OTL present, since they'd have to write a considerably softer version of science fiction to imagine just what might be coming next and just what our OTL anemic programs will discover in deep space that might astound and amaze us. They'd have to take partisan guessing as to what is the best approach for the next things into places where there is no hard knowledge to guide them.

It is the rigorous engineering work that is the charm of the TL and they'd lose that pushing on.

But we all wish they could press on anyway.

I think I have to credit them also with "turning my eyes skyward" on this site. Before ETS came along I didn't see much point in most of the space ATLs here; they all seemed to be lost in a dubious void of wild speculation. I say "seemed to;" surely some of them were pretty solid but it was hard separating wheat from chaff at a glance. Now we have a benchmark for such quality.

I'd be happy enough to see ATLs that go different ways, but I want them to feel as solid as this one always did. I often wanted the authors to go different ways (and may never forgive Joss Whedon being killed off before having a chance to start BtVS--it might be OK if he couldn't finish it...) but whatever they went with, I could believe in, as solid cut metal that was going to work and that, if we had a mind to, we could make and use today.

Now it is up to our own wild and untrained (or in some cases, trained, and we're all more knowledgeable for what the authors have shared) imaginations to take us on from here.

You'll have to imagine those modules yourself, ryhs!

I'm hoping there's room to tack on an inflatable rotating human hab somewhere.

Or a honking massive aquarium, to experiment with aquatic life adapting to free fall, and maybe coming to be a part of the air recycling and even orbital-sustainable waste reprocessing and diet. It would be massive because of all the water of course. But maybe now they can contemplate shipping it up?

(Be a while before it can come from extraterrestrial sources, even yet. OTL there is a scheme to go out and capture a small asteroid and bring it back to LEO in a 5 year timespan or so, but I don't see that working with a comet fragment--too much delta-V. Same goes for an asteroid so far out it has lots of ice, plus the trip would be even longer in years than a comet capture mission.

Don't tell me they bring it up from the Moon--I suspect Lunar ice is a bit too scarce and precious to use for making aquariums in LEO--on a Moonbase strikes me as perfectly fine though.

But maybe they bring down oxygen from the Moon, and just have to rocket up the hydrogen?)

 

[Athelstane]

I may well try to do an assembly GIF like the one I did for Freedom, time permitting.

I'm looking forward to it.

Would sure love to see the new Armstrong base rendered, too, but you've done yeoman work already, Nixon.

 

[Athelstane]

Shevek,

And even now I remain unconvinced that the Shuttle Decision was a fatal error we could not have recovered from more creatively earlier

I don't know if it was inevitably fatal so much as "very costly." And I don't just mean in terms of lives or dollars, but in opportunity costs. Some of those costs are sketched out in this timeline.

Some creativity later in the STS program could have salvaged something out of it, like an SDLV. The fact that this never happened may be telling, however.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

And even now I remain unconvinced that the Shuttle Decision was a fatal error we could not have recovered from more creatively earlier--using STS evolved tech such as the SSMEs in more creative ways to greatly multiply the capabilities without going backward on the premise of reuse. Before this thread I thought the "Shuttle was a mistake" faction was pretty silly and I was being snarky in two directions at once. I wish I'd been more prophetic of what a great TL this was going to be, but anyway they got my attention and I stuck around.

Except the Shuttle was so blasted expensive to fly that there was little to no money left for developing follow-ons, Shuttle based or no.

Add the fact that the POLITICAL investment in the Shuttle meant that the Government mandated it be the only launcher - even for missions it made no sense to use it for.

Add also the fact that NASA refused to face reality, and assumed that the 'money from the sky' levels of funding were going to return some day, which meant that e.g. improvements could wait 'until the funding improved'.

In an alternate world with a sane Congress (belongs in ASB forum, no doubt) and a sane NASA (ditto), yes, the Shuttle could have led somewhere useful. But in the world we live in? It was a big mistake.

I'm hoping there's room to tack on an inflatable rotating human hab somewhere.

Or a honking massive aquarium, to experiment with aquatic life adapting to free fall, and maybe coming to be a part of the air recycling and even orbital-sustainable waste reprocessing and diet. It would be massive because of all the water of course. But maybe now they can contemplate shipping it up?

(Be a while before it can come from extraterrestrial sources, even yet. OTL there is a scheme to go out and capture a small asteroid and bring it back to LEO in a 5 year timespan or so, but I don't see that working with a comet fragment--too much delta-V. Same goes for an asteroid so far out it has lots of ice, plus the trip would be even longer in years than a comet capture mission.

Don't tell me they bring it up from the Moon--I suspect Lunar ice is a bit too scarce and precious to use for making aquariums in LEO--on a Moonbase strikes me as perfectly fine though.

But maybe they bring down oxygen from the Moon, and just have to rocket up the hydrogen?)

Hear, hear!!

 

[Shevek23]

Shevek,...I don't know if it was inevitably fatal so much as "very costly." And I don't just mean in terms of lives or dollars, but in opportunity costs. Some of those costs are sketched out in this timeline.

Some creativity later in the STS program could have salvaged something out of it, like an SDLV. The fact that this never happened may be telling, however.

I propose detaching the engines and putting each one in some kind of shell or capsule from which it can operate thrusting the assembly up, then upon achieving orbit orbit once around to reenter west of its launch site. This would bring them each down, separately, over the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific west of California in the case of a Vandenberg launch. Depending on the "capsule" design, they might splash down in the ocean to be recovered, or if they have gliding range and maneuverability fly to runways, perhaps all the way back to the launch site, ideally. One notion I had was making scaled-down Orbiter-shaped hulls; for reasons of mass balance during reentry this only works with a single engine per module or with three in one--one engine must be drawn forward in a tunnel (more or less corresponding to the Orbiter cargo bay area) to shift the center of mass forward enough. It would be tricky and inelegant to do with two engines.

Payload of whatever sort goes on the nose of the propellant tank.

Replace the two SRB with three, each 2/3 scale.

Now the whole arrangement can be very symmetrical around the axis; we have three SRBs at 120 degrees apart, three SSMEs placed evenly between them; thrust at launch is symmetrical about the axis and remains so after the SRBs stage off, with payload dead center on the axis up on top. I figure the symmetry has to help offset any weight penalty for reinforcing the tnks to push the payload.

After a launch, you get the three SSMEs back within a few hours, to begin their refurbishment cycle, regardless of the duration of the orbital mission.

The cargo is the major part of the payload mass up top; some of it is structural mass of a more or less standard orbital bus design that holds various amounts of tankage and engines, carrying the actual cargo where it needs to go from a very low standard launch orbit. A manned mission might replace this with an integrated spaceplane along HL-20/Dreamchaser design with an integral abort system that pulls the whole thing off and may be adaptable for routine mission use as Dreamcatcher hopes to accomplish with a hybrid solid/liquid engine. Or we might have a capsule based system like Big Gemini, with the crew crammed into a relatively tiny launch/entry/control capsule but moving into larger habitable spaces between these phases, or some mixed/matched combination.

It was one of the authors of this thread who pointed out, STS placed masses comparable to what the Saturn V did into orbit. The problem was some 80 tons of that was "overhead" in the form of the fully recoverable Orbiter, for every mission regardless of purpose. If the mass of the engine modules combined can be got below 50 tons (say 15 each) and the overhead involved in putting the cargo on the nose and fairing it over can be minimized, the actual cargo payload of a standard launch can be doubled, maybe tripled or more, while the overall mass on the pad stays the same.

Also, one would have the option of designing a smaller system around a smaller tank using two SSME modules and two of the downsized SRBs; I think for some missions, especially manned ones, the mission mass available from a standard launch would be embarrassingly high. With another reduction of the SRBs we might even return to the original STS geometry (with payload either on top still, or in a pannier just ahead of the single engine module) and use one SSME, with two half-sized SRBs, 1/3 the size of the originals, flanking.

The latter geometry might even return to the integrated engine/spaceplane concept, but right-sized for a manned mission.

We might keep up the charade of "reusing" the SRBs but I think most of us here agree this was silly; if we switched over to liquid boosters it might be more worthwhile to make them fly back and be recovered and reused somehow.

For ATL, I'd suggest that either the Challenger disaster or an earlier SRB failure leads to a reevaluation and it is recognized that the turnaround periods predicted were far too optimistic, therefore the system should be redesigned to get more out of one launch. And to simplify the issues of crew return by lightening the elements that need to be recovered from orbit, including separating the engines from crew. Lightening the crew return vehicle also makes a more comprehensive and realistic range of abort scenarios feasible. And of course a key idea is decoupling human crew from missions that don't require them completely.

The scheme has some resemblance to Energia, except that key elements such as the SSMEs remain recoverable and reusable.

It also is conceptually the same as Shuttle C, which did not originally inspire me since I knew little about it. One thing I've never seen and would like to see is some detailed description or illustration of the capsule system Shuttle C proposed to use to recover a pair of SSMEs in. The fact that Shuttle C was going to use just two engines for unmanned cargo missions suggests to me that perhaps the third engine was there in STS mainly as redundancy for manned flights--it must surely have raised total payload but perhaps not by a lot, considering its own weight.

Anyway Shuttle C was going to retain the basic geometry of the standard STS with its highly asymmetric thrusts, that I've tried to get away from.

I might point out that while this could be an ATL of the 1980s or '90s, I don't see any reason why we can't do it today if it seems like a good idea. We've got SSMEs stockpiled to be used just once more; these could prove the system and then we could make new ones with the benefit of the highest technologies we have today, and do STS right--unmanned or manned flexibly as the mission requires, benefiting from recovered expensive engines with many missions of service in them, flexible ranges of launch sizes, good abort options for crew, and much higher payloads than STS delivered, using familiar processes. We might even have Elon Musk design good flyback boosters for it!

So that's what I meant. Just developing Shuttle C would have been most helpful.

It also occurred to me that the fuel tank might also be recoverable to Earth (in addition to often considered options of using a spent tank as structure in orbit). The area to be protected is high, but the mass is low once the fuel is gone. It might even make sense to leave the engines attached to the tank and reenter bottom-down. The TPS would cut into the payload mass available but the entire launch craft, minus its boosters, returns, very possibly to a vertical rocket-braked landing right to its launch site, as an integrated whole--it would be a question of whether being able to reuse tankage as well as engines and skip integration steps would realize savings offsetting the depleted payload value.

Such a rocket would begin to resemble the SSTO "million pound payload" designs of Bono and others in the 60s of course.

 

[e of pi]

Great work, nixonshead, Discovery looks fantastic!
(1) So, do these modules have any specific names, like modules of american segment of ISS? (2) Are any european or japanese modules planned? (3) How big crew does the station support?

(4) What about Mir-II? Is it handled only by russian cosmonauts aside from tourists, or are some slots in crew rotation reserved to the participating commercial partners? (5) I also hope to see MOK-2 finally fly into the sky in the final post, or at least out of year-per-year slipping rate.
(6) Also, would you make a new "Spacecraft Evolution" render adding all the shiny new space stations to it? Maybe even the Armstrong base...

1) Yes, but we sort of exhausted all our name stocks with TTL's Freedom and all the moon missions, so you'll just have to imagine NASA's Public Affairs Office plumbing new ground for them instead of me telling you.
2) Yes, they are. You'll see there's five ports for semi-permanent extension modules on the lab core: two each nadir and zenith, plus one axial currently held by an Apollo in this image. Some of these would be flown by American Saturn IIs, others would be flown to orbit (and occasionally returned for refit) by the soon-to-be-operational 30-ton European Aquila RLV, and European are certainly on the list. I'm not sure if the Japanese plan is for a new lab, or to just move Kibo from Freedom.
3) The plan is variable levels of crew depending on the number and types of expansion modules, but up to 15 can be comfortably accommodated, more if some of the expansion modules included life support boosts--the hab's certainly big enough for that many crew quarters and crew spaces.
4) There's some commercial partner slots. The difference between a space tourist and a commercial partner I suppose being if you do anything of value while you're up...
5) I'd like to say it too, but the record of the OTL Nauka module makes me hesitate--and Nauka sat in a closet for less time. Sadly, for the moment I think MOK will stay waiting and the longer it does, the less likely it becomes to actually fly...
6) That's on Nixonhead's agenda I think, along with a few other final comparison images and an image for the finale. It's a wonder where he finds the time, given the fantastic work he also puts in on his own Kolyma's Shadow, which is coming back from break and which you should definitely check out if you've enjoyed Eyes. It seems unfair that he should be both such a good artist and writer, but he's proven it to be the case, and we've very much enjoyed working with him over the years.

I distracted myself a bit by actually reading my next post, which I have to admit I have considerable trouble following myself. It's easy to see why the authors have moved toward a rather acerbic relationship with me. I think we all have learned a lot about how orbital trajectories work in the past four years and (for a little while longer) counting.

I dunno if "acerbic" is the right word...maybe "indulgent"? You always do have good questions, if somewhat...awkwardly phrased for addressing them.

I'm hoping there's room to tack on an inflatable rotating human hab somewhere.

There might be, I'd like to imagine it. We'd have to speculate what NASA might do...

Or a honking massive aquarium, to experiment with aquatic life adapting to free fall, and maybe coming to be a part of the air recycling and even orbital-sustainable waste reprocessing and diet. It would be massive because of all the water of course. But maybe now they can contemplate shipping it up?...Don't tell me they bring it up from the Moon--I suspect Lunar ice is a bit too scarce and precious to use for making aquariums in LEO--on a Moonbase strikes me as perfectly fine though.

Well, once again, maybe--a "big" aquarium is perhaps a challenge, though even ISS has had fishbowl-sized ones. Much larger than that and it'd need a module to itself, which is a challenge to fund and launch. As far as sourcing, launching from Earth is certainly one way, while I wouldn't write off the moon--we're going with the sort of "wet poles" moon that seems suggested by the last couple decades of OTL data, and thus Armstrong should be in proximity to rather a bounty of water in various craters.

 

[e of pi]

I just have to re-state that this is far and away the coolest and most plausible space TL I've ever read.

I think I'll go to the corner and cry, I don't want this TL to end, its integral to my Friday ritual, but what a way to go out, if only von Braun could see this. Another in a series of space stations, a moon base, launch services that are almost easy and cheep, definitely the place to be if you like looking upwards. I wonder how Bronson is getting along here, is there a Virgin Galactic making efforts towards space tourism?

Amen to that.

I've really enjoyed this timeline. It works because the authors have really done their homework - and, of course, the superb artwork of Nixon.

By the way, I have been following the timeline with great enthusiasm and I have enjoyed the artwork very much.

What I've most enjoyed about this TL is the interest it's sparked of OTLs history. Because of all of that well-done homework, it feels very real. I've caught myself thinking about some events in this TL as actual history and have to correct myself.

Knowing we're down to the last post next Friday tells us what we're up against with Discovery. This is the core of Discovery, its beginning. It will presumably last a decade, maybe two, and have stuff added to it that is beyond the scope of the TL. Perhaps if a Mars expedition it will be launched from Discovery--or perhaps it must wait for Discovery's successor, or another station built in parallel but some distance off designed for the exclusive purpose of being a spaceport for interplanetary craft. We're up against the end and beyond this point it is all up to our diverse imaginations I guess.

As the very first visitor to this thread who posted anything (check it out--"&postcount=2") I will miss it quite a lot.

On behalf of Workable Goblin, myself, and our collaborators and guest writers like Brainbin and Nixonshead, thank you very much for the kind words. It seems so strange that we're down to one final post, and even more strange having this last post in particular up--this operations update was the last post I wrote and (because I was writing slower than Workable Goblin was on his probe stuff) the final post of the timeline to be drafted. Next week's update will be a bit more of a finale proper, and a reflection from Workable Goblin and myself about what this timeline has been. I hope you'll enjoy it, and we've got some topics of discussion once it's up that I hope you'll indulge us on. In the meantime, thank you again for reading--you're what have motivated us to push the level of detail and research in this TL higher, and to keep things as plausible as week felt we could.

 

[Shevek23]

Except the Shuttle was so blasted expensive to fly that there was little to no money left for developing follow-ons, Shuttle based or no.

I just replied to Athelstane with a technical reshuffling of STS elements that would not greatly lower the cost of a launch cycle (though I think it would do that too, a little bit) but double or more the effective payload a launch could place in orbit--this would represent a halving of cost per kg.

If the lowered cost then led to more natural and enthusiastic usage of NASA's launch capacity, many of the costs were fixed and would be amortized over somewhat more frequent launches (though nowhere near as frequent as the boosters hoped for) each lifting a lot more payload, so the per kg cost overall would come down further. Again not to the Utopian levels the Shuttle decisionmakers sold themselves on, but much more reasonable prices.

Add the fact that the POLITICAL investment in the Shuttle meant that the Government mandated it be the only launcher - even for missions it made no sense to use it for.

My Cunning Plan is meant to address that too, somewhat--no sending up human crew on missions that don't need them for one thing. My suggestion also holds out the prospect of launches of variable size, with three, two or possibly even one SSME being used. I didn't go to the bad place of getting grandiose with making bigger than standard STS derived launchers with four or more, but that dark path is just sitting there waiting for someone to go down it...hee hee hee! Maybe in an ATL--or future--where these notions of mine (freely borrowed of course) do seem to work out, the funding for such giants would be there?

From a libertarian point of view it is objectionable for the government to mandate its citizens to use the official state space bus, I guess. But as someone who was around as a young adult in the 1980s, I don't recall any Space Cops actively stopping entrepreneurs from attempting to develop their own allegedly more economical launch systems, or taking their business to the French or Russians. Maybe the latter, and OTRAG certainly had its political legal problems--but those seem more a matter of its leader's amazingly poor choices (and very dubious engineering claims) than the sinister workings of a NASA mafia determined to keep its turf.

Space launch is bloody expensive--and going down memory lane on this this thread I've seen more radical but potentially revolutionary notions for really cutting the cost, such as launch loops, rather swiftly dismissed.

We have space capability in the first place because governments decided to blow taxpayer money on it. On one hand it is not clear to me we all pay a fair money price for the huge range of benefits we get now from orbital technology, not to mention "spinoffs" which are more dubiously the product of space industry as such--one might suppose "spinoff" technologies might have been developed on their own merits for non-space use. But there is no doubt their development was catalyzed by government space programs. Maybe the market is recovering the revenues the owners of orbiting spacecraft "should" earn under capitalism, maybe it isn't. I certainly suspect that if the governments involved had received their fair share for their investments (which is to say, our investments, as taxpaying citizens) their balance sheets would be rather blacker, and perhaps knowing this stream of ATL revenue did come from space investment they'd invest more there. I rather suspect it all comes out in the wash; private parties receive money revenues, public entities recover little or nothing tangible to show for their huge investments but their citizens benefit more than enough to balance the real books--probably in proportion to how rich they are too. So I, being poor, have my pittance of tax extortions more than compensated, and the world's billionaires owe a good portion of their wealth to their share of those same taxes. (When they pay them. Otherwise they get the benefits for free).

I don't see anything standing in the way of a smart businessman who wants to do space better and cheaper and earn a fortune doing so--except for the simple fact that space is risky and expensive and all these John Galt types would much rather the governments hold the door open for them first (so they can slam in the "useless eaters'" faces later, presumably).

Add also the fact that NASA refused to face reality, and assumed that the 'money from the sky' levels of funding were going to return some day, which meant that e.g. improvements could wait 'until the funding improved'.

In an alternate world with a sane Congress (belongs in ASB forum, no doubt) and a sane NASA (ditto), yes, the Shuttle could have led somewhere useful. But in the world we live in? It was a big mistake...

But not apparently a technical mistake, and not irredeemable. It was a failure of political will pure and simple. If we take the perspective that the space flight we've had is a frivolous (though vital!) gift of flaky government vision, we haven't had such a terrible ride OTL. If STS was run as a costly boondoggle--who is to say that the same funds would have been there for a more efficient approach? The total amount of money spent could, this TL teaches us, have bought us more, but perhaps in a world where it yields more benefit for all, it would yield less immediate benefit for a critical few--and those few, not the many, determine how much is spent on these discretionary things. Maintaining the existing launch practices and crews and corporate contracts of OTL was a sure thing for constituencies; to improve them while not threatening that revenue flow for those people here and now would mean higher overall spending; the only way to develop the cheaper, more efficient methods of tomorrow without spending more today is to put people on the unemployment line today.

Or not making silly, egregious errors in the first place that set up a vastly inefficient system.

But our authors have acknowledged--it really seemed like a good idea to everybody at the time! Around 1970 lots of people who would come to regret it were on board with the Shuttle decision; it seemed to make common sense that a reusable system would save money and leverage limited space exploration dollars to do more. Therefore the authors took advantage of a narrow passage in NASA's history to block this seemingly shining and golden path, for the moment, and took them down a different road. Same people, same Congress, same or similar Presidents, same NASA bureaucracy and same corporations--who stumbled down a different path with no more foresight than OTL.

It is our hindsight that tells us where they went wrong OTL, and I don't think clear hindsight says reusable space launch is inherently stupid. It says we did it wrong.

You may be right though--perhaps the economics of different modes of launch are just very very sensitive to scale. My wacky scheme of a more efficient STS-based launcher for the late 80s and beyond probably depends crucially on a certain scale of operations being realized and the hope that that scale will be surpassed for even better economics. On a lesser scale--and that scale is determined by what results politicians are willing to put up funding to achieve (not, note, how much they are willing to pay--but what goals do they want to see reached and mean it)--nonreusable rockets will win out every time. On a larger scale, we probably need sky hooks or launch loops or something like that. If our politicians were hell-bent on colonizing the Moon with as many millions of people as they could ship up, you bet we'd have launch loop technology working right now!

Given the limited degree of space adventure and scientific exploration our leadership was interested in pushing, we clearly could have done more for less with nonreusable rockets. Given the miracle fix I've come up with for STS--it would be too costly and Utopian on one scale, too meagre and inadequate on another, and odds are our society or any viable competitor would not find it "just right."

 

[Bahamut-255]

Well, I'm not sure what I can add that hasn't been said already, but here's an attempt.

I've loved this TL since I first noticed it way, way back when Part I was still less than halfway through, and it never really left throughout the years. That's a little over 4 years now since the beginning, and if anything, it's only gotten better over time.

And to repeat myself. It's how it feels as if it were something that really could have happened, like it really is a part of history, that makes me like this so much.

To E of Pi, Workable Goblin, Nixonshead, and Brainbin. Great Work!

 

[Shevek23]

...I wouldn't write off the moon--we're going with the sort of "wet poles" moon that seems suggested by the last couple decades of OTL data, and thus Armstrong should be in proximity to rather a bounty of water in various craters.

I've got great faith in the ability of human beings to waste with amazing frivolity though. However much water there is there, I worry we'll blow it off really really amazingly fast. So I'm mentally frugal with Lunar hydrogen. If it is going into a permanent structure or a deep space ecosystem of some kind, great. I'm afraid we'll blow it all away as propellant though.

Earth has lots of hydrogen, just inconveniently located.

I want a launch loop! Or something better, like a spinning tether that rides on supersonic shockwaves toward its pole and can launch things at any azimuth--a launch loop's fixed azimuth troubles me.

I'm not sure what the established name is for that notion of putting belts around Earth, running faster than orbital speed so they are really rigid hoops under tension, and then hanging short skyhooks from them to haul stuff up and boost up to orbital speeds using these hoops as maglevs--really a sort of launch loop with global circumference. That's what I really like, more than a skyhook. I don't like the way a skyhook is an obstacle to freely orbiting craft; a system of these world-girdling hoops would be at low altitudes leaving space above them clear.

There's the idea that if you tether one of these to a point on the Earth's surface at higher latitudes than the equator, that the tension caused by the orbital plane of the hoop materials staying the same while Earth rotates will apply the very torque the hoop needs to change its orbital plane--thus, we could have loops following Great Circles at all inclinations and latitudes, being drawn around with the Earth's rotation, so they form an extra-atmospheric maglev great circle highway system that could surpass SSTs and be nearly as good as ballistic travel, but much more efficient. And if some of the links should break, the materials, spinning around at greater than orbital speed and perhaps at above escape velocity, would tend to scatter upward, not come crashing down.

If we had stuff like that, the water would not be a problem. Sigh.

 

[Michel Van]

It's sad that Eyes Turned Skywards ends.
i had allot of fun with discussions and making Artwork for this TL

yes, i will finish the Europa III picture. once i got the time

Eyes Turned Skywards has allot of Open ends in TL, like 1960s French Rockets history what let to Black Diamant Rocket.
I hope there space here for post the story and others.

 

[Kirk Kerman]

yes, i will finish the Europa III picture. once i got the time

Still waiting...!

 

[Athelstane]

Perhaps I missed it

But how is deorbiting of Freedom going to be handled, and when? Will any modules or components be reused on Discovery? Will it happen before or after Discovery begins to be assembled?

I'm sure that if it's deorbited, it will end up littering the ocean floor of the South Pacific. But that's a very big piece of hardware to plunge into the atmosphere. It would be considerably more spectacular than Mir's deorbit was.

 

[Bahamut-255]

But how is deorbiting of Freedom going to be handled, and when? Will any modules or components be reused on Discovery? Will it happen before or after Discovery begins to be assembled?

Based on what I've read, the timing is such that if they want to keep anything from Freedom, they'd have a small window where they could, though given the age of those modules, I do have doubts they'd keep much of Freedom that way.

I'm sure that if it's deorbited, it will end up littering the ocean floor of the South Pacific. But that's a very big piece of hardware to plunge into the atmosphere. It would be considerably more spectacular than Mir's deorbit was.

That would be a sight to see...