Hm. As I remember, space station modules were what constrained the diameter of the cargo bay, but the overwhelming majority of all space station needs could be seen to with the medium length cargo bay they considered, and the bulk could be seen to with the shortest cargo bay considered. The real thing that constrained the length was spy satellites, and that length was more of a "nice to have" for space station payloads.
Who cares about the payload it carries since it's ONLY supposed to ferry crew and a small amount of supplies to an orbiting space stationSee it's how you look at it, using the assumptions and bias' of the day it's clear the Shuttle was going to be IT for the imediate future. Given how hostile Congress was to the NASA budget too many changes or delays meant a very real and great danger of the programg being pushed to the tomorrow that never comes or worse having no money to continue manned space flight! (Priorities you remember) Get it now, get a design that meets the "requirements" and get it flying and the future will take care of itself...
I'm not sure that NASA were even wrong about manned space flight being at risk. And given how much safe deeper exploration of the Solar System needed more experience of humans in space (and still needs more experience, especially operating beyond the Van Allan belts) I'd say continuing with manned space flight has been worthwhile, even if the OTL course was probably far from ideal.
Sure, but the mini-shuttles that were being discussed would have likely been payloads, rather than rockets, which results in a much more flexible launch system that can be more efficiently utilized.
A slightly cheaper mini-shuttle wouldn't be that big a change, but if the launch system for that mini shuttle means there is no Titan IV débâcle, well, that's a whole mess of money that the DoD can spend on other things and a more stable launch market since there's been no lurch towards shuttle-compliance and then a lurch away from it as in OTL. More US companies buy launches from US launch providers, including Atlas and Delta launches since the mini-shuttle would need to be a more specialized beast and thus there'd be no drive to consolidate all US launches on that one vehicle.
A smaller shuttle could also have been launched more often, and as mentioned before, a really big problem with OTL's shuttle was that it launched so seldom so the fixed costs of pad maintenance (which NASA charged to the biggest program, so during the shuttle years the shuttle program), mission control maintenance, program management, propellant management etc. etc. were spread over only a few launches.
If the carrier rocket is being launched from the Cape with commercial satellites, even though the actual mini shuttles are unlikely to see much more use than OTL's shuttle (that is, it's hard to see the manned program sending many more people up, though even 1 more manned launch in a year would make a big difference to cost-effectiveness), that'll make a big difference to cost per launch and thus perceived success of the program.
Sure, but there's a big difference to a space race of the Soviet kind, where the focus is on bread and butter military needs and occasionally using the hardware developed for that to grab the odd headline and to push forward blue-sky science and a space race of the Apollo program kind where the focus is square on grabbing headlines and proving superiority, with a secondary focus on blue-sky science.
While the Soviets did make a token effort to join the moon race once they realized the Americans were serious, they spent a pittance on it - it was quite clearly not a priority for them the way it was in the late 70s and the 80s to match the US "orbital bomber" (as they thought the space shuttle was, since their engineers could do the math and knew fine well that the shuttle could never deliver the civilian benefits the US claimed the US was building it for).
Hm. It really depends on what's been happening during the 70s. I see three possibilities:
1) Space Station first, manned spaceflight continues without interruption with Apollo/Skylab program hardware and gradually being upgraded/replaced with new components designed over the 70s and 80s. Not a bad way to go, but likely it leads to a less ambitious shuttle being started in the early 80s. There are some benefits, some drawbacks. A space station program would certainly allow NASA to retain and even advance some of the experience and technology that would help with a shuttle, and there would be some improvements in general technology. For example, the glue for the shuttle's tiles came late in the 70s, and the delay did require some emergency funding from the Carter presidency. With a later shuttle design, glue technology will be better meaning that delay is likely avoided. Further, metallurgy will be a bit better, composite technology a bit better, computer technology enormously better... But it's hard to see NASA getting the funding it did for OTL's shuttle, NASA itself will probably have had to shrink, valuable people with experience from the Apollo era will have retired or moved to new careers. The shuttle that comes out of this mix of advantages and disadvantages might be better for the kind of program Congress has proven willing to maintain in the long run, but whatever advantages this shuttle would have over that of OTL, technology won't be a big part of it.
2) Space probe first, Nixon takes Apollo 13 worse and/or is more impressed by the probe lobby, the US manned program is allowed to atrophy to something below even the Soviets. NASA gets loads of valuable blue-sky science done, but pretty near none of it is applicable to the shuttle and the agency loses most of the institutional experience from the Apollo era. Honestly, I would doubt that we'd even get a mini-shuttle in such a TL. Either way, the loss of capacity in the manned program would more than outweigh the gain from new technology.
3) The US eats the humiliation and lets its space program wither over the 70s with an OTL level of commitment to probes and a sub-Soviet manned program. Basically as (2), but without the windfall of science a serious set of probe programs would provide.
Of course, if the shuttle were put off until the 80s, if Reagan gets in, we are likely to see something like OTL's Star Wars burst of funding in the late 80s and the early 90s. Now, a shuttle that was started in the early 80s would be too far along to make serious design changes to in the late 80s, but such a shuttle program could see "blue" vehicles being built for the USAF and additional vehicles built for NASA. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on the exact infrastructure chosen and what kind of program Congress are willing to fund in the 90s.
If the shuttle started development as part of the Star Wars rush, well, I'm not sure if a shuttle would really be interesting to the people wanting to build orbital cannons. Reagan was not much of a space cadet and even if such a late shuttle could get better funded as part of expanding US space capabilities, it likely would have to be designed much more around USAF desires, which could result in a shuttle even more burdened by capabilities it doesn't need, because whatever happens, the laws of physics say Star Wars is a dead end, which means NASA will get lumped with the vehicles as the USAF eventually exits the program.
Well, the problem is, even if a super low-cost to orbit system would create demand, that will take time, which means the US government needs to be interested in subsidizing a vastly over-capable infrastructure for as long as it takes for enough customers to appear.
Not only do people need to design payloads, raise money for those payloads, buy insurance for those payloads, they also need confidence in the reliability of the infrastructure and the reliability of the US government's commitment to keeping that infrastructure going. You're also talking about companies needing to train up their own astronauts and their own mission control people so that they can do this construction and R&D work in orbit and coordinate their people.
Now, the US government did play a huge role in creating a commercial satellite market, so it's not like Congress was unwilling to spend money to help create the market, but, well, there wasn't the willingness to spend a few hundred million (in 1970 USD) to make the shuttle vastly more capable and there wasn't the willingness to build a shuttle fleet that was optimal in terms of economies of scale.
There certainly wasn't the willingness to spend the billions it would take to make private crystal and pharmaceutical R&D possible or the hundreds of billions it would take to make SPS economical. Especially since after the first prototype SPS, further SPSs really need Lunar industrialization to be economical, which means the US has effectively committed itself to spending a % or two of GDP on a Lunar colony for a generation or two.
The X-20 Dyna Soar was a dead end. They weren't anywhere near their aims for the test vehicle, and a vehicle that could actually do anything useful was even deeper in fantasy land.
The wings had some utility, since it meant the underside of the orbiter experienced radically less heating/unit area. And of course, wings allow runway landing, which vastly simplifies recovery.
And I am not sure that a space helicopter or hopper type lander would have been practical before the 90s...
And even in the 90s, the space-helicopter concept scaled badly (I consider it a great tragedy that Scaled Composites abandoned their very promising work on the smaller version of the Roton, and tried to build an over-sized version). They are for sure super interesting and I think the concept will be very useful down the road, but in the 1970s, for even a vehicle as small as the smallest mini-shuttles considered, let alone the 80 tonne monster that is the OTL orbiter, I don't think it would at all be a good path.
The special effects did not exist to fake a moon landing until this century, not to mention, people were tracking the Apollo missions with telescopes. If they tried this, everyone with a basic education on the subject or with decent amateur radio or amateure astronomy skills would be able to see glaring signs of fakery and the Soviets would have an absolute field day.
fasquardon
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