Poor Yuri Gagarin - he goes from the first human in space to “that time the Soviets accidentally killed someone on launch”.
Our Fair Country: The Commonwealth of New England
- Thread starter CosmicAsh
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It is! The reason why it's more advanced is because you have the three superpowers attempting to one up each other. Consider the following national mindsets:
Britain: Britain rules the waves, and she always shall. British seapower is unchallenged and she maintains the lifeblood of international commerce. This must extend, naturally, to the skies above. Britain shall rule the waves and daresay shall rule the skies as well.
Soviet Union: The power of socialist science is unmatched on this planet. The USSR will reach farther, faster, and better than all other space programs to demonstrate the technological superiority of the Soviet Union over the capitalist west.
United States: The United States is the world's premier world power. The USA has won this not through war, but technological and economic advancements. The United States has only once recently gone to war (Japan in the 1940s) and been involved in minor Caribbean conflicts since, but has shown her military is capable and unchallenged. America must spread beyond Earth to show that her might can never be challenged, at home, abroad, or in the skies.
Indeed! With the failure of the United States' manned moon program (after being defeated by the British and the Soviets), resources were instantly shifted into beyond the moon, which resulted in a manned Venus fly-by and the Mars landing. These did not come cheap. Overall, the United States spent around a trillion dollars for these two programs, which led to severe underfunding of other space exploration activities. However, the United States is the only country to ever land on Mars, though the Soviets have a plan in the future to do so (the Soviet Mars program was cancelled over funding concerns and America's clear lead).
Britain and the Soviet Union were in a race to the moon, with the Americans closely behind. Several issues with the Soviet program led the British to be able to land first.
Awesome!! You really put your heart into it.
That Pioneer program is very interesting, that strategy of going to venus to then go to mars is bold, but that makes sense, since they would already have Long deep space mission knowledge from venus and unmanned mars landing, also nice to see that the IRL curse that prevent non american vehicles to succesfully land and operate on mars is lifted. How thorough were the manned explorations of venus and mars? Was the Pioneer 6 fly by repeated? Did a mission enter venus or mars orbit before Pioneer 14? How many manned mars missions were there and did they put a base, or was each mission self contained?
Thank you!!
Venus was a simple observational mission, the astronauts had several hours to make visual inspections, took pictures, and used scientific instruments to collect data, as well as dropping several probes that would crash into the planets atmosphere. Venus was always seen with less interest within the space community, so it wasn't until 1993 that a stable orbit was achieved around Venus for a long-term mission. Pioneer 6 (with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins) was the first and only manned flyby of Venus. Mariner 4 in 1971 was the first to orbit Mars.
There was only a single Mars mission. The Jupiter rockets built for the Mars shot were only used a few times. Three launches to assemble the craft in orbit, One launch to bring the crew and propulsion system up, and then two final launches to begin the assembly of Space Station Freedom. 1998 was the last launch of the Jupiter rocket system, which sent up the North Carolina section of Space Station Freedom. The last configuration of the Jupiter had 155,000kg to LEO, which was the most until the SLS was able to launch 164,000kg to LEO in 2019.
The CanNEn manned space program was a result of not only Canada's exit from the Commonwealth, but also from the UK's declining launch schedule and soaring costs. Both countries view the program as a means of providing good paying jobs, and investments to maintain their edge in technological advancements. Currently, here's the launch systems operational; in decreasing payload to LEO:
United States: Space Launch System
Soviet Union: Soyuz PTS-4
United Kingdom: Valiant Rocket System (VRS)
CanNEn: CNEOLV (Canada New England Orbital Launch Vehicle)
Fokker: Fokker LS 23
None of the powers listed have undertaken any notable beyond LEO missions of any type. Brazil sent a probe to the moon (which failed); Japan attempted an observation of Venus (stuck in LEO after malfunction); and China's rockets keep exploded on take off. None of these have attempted a manned mission.
Israel is believed to have orbital capabilities, but it's not tested. Korea does not have an ongoing orbital-capable rocket program ongoing, but they do have numerous suborbital sounding rockets.
Funding was kept *extremely* low for Indian space missions, as the country has often found itself whinging from famine to famine and experiencing internal unrest. More focus was placed on primary schools than weather satellites, let alone an orbital launch vehicle (which development is underway of at the moment).
The Soviet Union has had a permanent population on the Lunar Surface since Mir 29 landed at Zvezda 2 in December of 1999. Most (near 80%) of the Soviet's space budget is allocated towards the Zvezda program, with plans currently ramping up for Zvezda 3 (2027), a station at the Lunar South Pole. Zvezda 2 only recently obtained a new habitation module (2016) and is slated to have a new science centre landed soon (2022).
The CGASA is currently involved heavily in the maintenance of Space Station Freedom. While the United States is the technical "first among equals" of the station, both the United Kingdom and Germany have invested more heavily into it, and the current crew (of 9) only contains two Americans, the rest are British and German.
The Soviet Lunar Base (along with their entire Lunar program) is considered a top state secret (even today), and the identities of the people overseeing the mission on a technical level are still concealed. As such, travel to Zvezda 2 is strictly prohibited for any non-Cosmonaut. However, the Cosmonauts who have landed on the moon came from many different Republics within the USSR, and some now-independent countries as well; they are as follows:
Russian SFSR: 59
Ukrainian SSR: 21
Armenian SSR: 7
Byelorussian SSR: 4
Georgian SSR: 2
Azerbaijan SSR: 1
Latvian SSR: 1
Kazakh SSR: 1
Turkmen SSR: 1
There have been no British Lunar Landings since 1978. The moon, for scientific purposes, has been dominated by the Soviet Union.
Currently, there's plans (if the U.S. Congress will fund it) for a manned mission back to Mars to establish a Martian base there. The Soviet Union also has a Martian landing program in development (but it might have been cancelled when it was announced there would be a larger footprint for Zvezda 3).
There are no Nuclear thermal rockets in operation, nor was there ever.
Ionic propulsion is common on satellites. There is no HiPEP being used at all currently.
Only Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) are used as sources of nuclear power. Zvezda 2 has several, and several more as backup emergency power.
Britain used an analogous system to the IRL Apollo Program. I spoke on the Pioneer launches above.
There are no reusable or partially reusable launch vehicles. NASA had an experimental design for one, but it was scrapped in favour of the Jupiter rocket system for Martian missions. It never passed any significant design stages other than concepts.
The American moon landing project was scrapped after it became apparent they would not get there, at the very least before the Soviet Union. The technology was immediately brought to try and do a manned Venus fly-by. After the success of this mission, the Moon no longer seemed like the most useful application of the time and resources of NASA's best. Instead, money was dumped into the Martian landing that suppressed all other NASA projects. Generally, the Martian mission is looked back on as a waste of resources. While there was breathtaking advancements made in technology, a lot could have been done for cheaper on the Lunar surface. NASA's budget in the years after was slashed, and it has taken them two decades to get together the lunar base program.
It is a quite sad twist to his historical saga...
Thanks for answering the questions!
Kinda sad that the soviet kept the Zvezda base secret and limited to soviet citizen, i had hoped they would at least accept other Soviet Pact countries astronaut... I wish there had been an Angolan or Kurd on the moon...
Hopefully they accept to send experiments made in cooperation with non comunist countries.
RTGs to power a moon base that isn't located on the poles, interesting, although it would become entirely impractical if it needs more than ~100 kW of power, although a mix of RTG and Li-Ion batteries charged during the lunar day could work i guess.
If The Super-heavy SLS is the only american vehcile capable of sending human to space, no way they use such an oversized vehicle (and expensive) to send crew to Freedom, so i guess american astronauts fly on the VRS and CNEOLV-Yankee Clipper, if this is the case i wonder if the american are currently trying to get a cheaper crewed vehicle to launch human to freedom, like the current Commercial Crew Development program.
No problem!! I always love answering questions and I hope people would ask more! If I ever skip them or miss them, it's not intentional!! I promise, anyone who wants to ask anything (even if you already asked it and I didn't see it), please feel free to ask again!
The Soviet space program has been, in general, much more closed than our reality. Mostly based on the still lingering paranoia that pervades the Soviet scientific community from the harsh Stalinist/Suslov years.
There is, in fact, some scientific data shared between the Soviet Union and other countries. There's a special section of Zvezda 2 for foreign experiments (done so they cant spy on the Soviets), and all transmissions are through the Soviet's equipment from these experiments.
The RTGs work in conjunction with solar panels. The base does have a sizable solar array, but battery technology frankly sucked for a bit so RTGs have been used to ensure complete power at all times. Some of the RTG heat is also used in the base's heating system.
Currently, there is no scaled-down version of the SLS for crew-only missions. American Astronauts currently travel to and from Freedom onboard VRS rockets, which make up the bulk of launches. This is part of the reason why there are so few Americans on the station. Currently, NASA has some funding for a new section of Freedom, which is set to be launched using the SLS round about 2028 or so. The planned addition will expand the station's habitable footprint by 15%.
There are companies in America attempting to emulate Fokker, but as of yet, none have flown any missions.
Pioneer 14 had five members in total.
Mission Commander: Sidney Gutierrez
Lander Pilot: Curtis Brown (First man on Mars)
CSM Pilot: Kathryn Thornton
Payload Specialist: Susan Helms
Payload Specialist: Michael Foale
The 2004 treaties which ended the Cold War carved out exemptions for current claims (eg, the USSR has sovereignty over Zvezda 2, which is the only extant claim) but other than that you are not allowed to claim territory in outer space.
Doing something that reminds us that he's a waffling bonehead who sees the world as a great big joke.
"I'm going down the ladder now. Working my way down. With this step I bring forth the culmination of a planet's efforts, to advance the knowledge of all mankind, to be an ambassador for science and peace."
Boris Johnson is the Liberal Shadow Minister for Housing and Pensions.
Also, you said that the Cold War ended in 2004. Did that have something to do with the Flight Blackout crisis? Generally, what information do we have on the USSR, @Kanan ?
I think the USSR is the next country you should focus on...
I think the USSR is the next country you should focus on...
I just looked at the democracy index map again, and Albania is really authoritarian. Not quite as bad as Israel or South Africa, but still very authoritarian. Is it ruled by Hoxha's cronies? Or even, like North Korea in OTL, by a son or grandson of Enver Hoxha?
I know that the 1952 flag of Germany is the flag of the British/Commonwealth Mandate, but what team won that World Cup? A "native" German national team? A military-based team? A team enriched with Commonwealth players?
Ooo I hope we see a new election soon!
Also I have to ask, did Jeff Jacoby write those editorials to his son Caleb ITTL, I just realized he was a columnist
Also I have to ask, did Jeff Jacoby write those editorials to his son Caleb ITTL, I just realized he was a columnist
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