But are they committed to a TAOS shuttle or maybe they are going to do the STS Right Side Up?
A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster
- Thread starter nixonshead
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But are they committed to a TAOS shuttle or maybe they are going to do the STS Right Side Up?
Maybe a different Shuttle design, like the original North American Rockwell one if the US government gives NASA more money. But money or money not, I feel like the N1 flying here is enough to make an STS with an optional shuttle exist.
I'm fairly certain a "Phase A" fully reusable Shuttle won't be happening here. It requires a separate massive PoD, probably before the actual PoD of Salyut not happening to get the funding required and this tl is clearly focused on the Soviets, so some sort of TAOS is unfortunately still likely, but it would be cool to have the Right Side Up STS and a functioning N1 exist in the same universe.
Great update, it lives up to the Nixonshead attention to detail and plausibility that I loved in your previous timelines. Now I'm wishing for more than two updates a week. I really hope the N1 makes it to the Moon. Maybe the fact that as of this moment, in the real world, there is an honest to goodness Moon Rocket on Launch Complex 39 once again is an omen of things to come.
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I'm looking through The Space Shuttle Decision again. If you can justify a 4 billion dollar budget, you could go with pressure-fed Shuttle. Or for another 500 million, Saturn-Shuttle.
But even if you go for TAOS you can still go for Shuttle-C with its nearly 80-ton payload to LEO capability.
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That's the most likely outcome. I mean, they started thinking about how they could use Shuttle to build a SHLV basically as soon as they started building Shuttle, and having the N1 still around will do nothing to discourage that.
Hmm, I don't see N1 flying being enough to justify a pressure-fed or Saturn shuttle, so I feel like Shuttle will end up being quite similar to OTL. I'll also note that the most obvious way for the US to spend more on the Shuttle is if the Soviets are going to build a moonbase. But in the TL we can see that they don't have any plans for that by 1972, and they kept their plans secret.
I am excited though, for the post lunar program also. Plenty of questions there...
I am excited though, for the post lunar program also. Plenty of questions there...
With a Soviet Union having, or having the potential for a manned lunar capability, I see no way that the United States would "abandon the moon". Having won the original race, there is now time to re-think the entire lunar program and put it on a more sustainable basis. Perhaps a shuttle, both manned and cargo, which could service the Earth Orbit Rendezvous solution. Is it too early to contemplate a nuclear trans-stage?
I don't think a Soviet lunar mission in the late 70's in isolation is going to trigger a return to the moon for NASA who can plausibly say been there done that, what will motivate NASA to change direction from OTL is the Soviets heading for a "first" like sending a manned mission beyond lunar orbit.
But doesn't THIS TL contemplate not just a Soviet lunar capability, but as series of lunar missions starting in the mid-70s? In fact, if they want to do a "first", what better than establish the first lunar base by 1980?
You say that like a little thing like fiscal sustainability is going to prevent the determined space cadet from obtaining Barmingrad.
The thing is that it's not yet clear what their goals are--they're playing that pretty close to their chests so far. How the US will react once they do properly find out, in a few years when they're pretty committed to Shuttle and Saturn is well and truly dead and buried...well, that's very much part of the interest of this timeline!
Some interesting speculation 
. Without going into spoilers, here are a few things to consider when speculating on butterflies to the US shuttle design:
. Without going into spoilers, here are a few things to consider when speculating on butterflies to the US shuttle design:- ITTL, N1-7L’s launch and official Soviet acknowledgement of N-1 happens in June 1972. (OTL, the failed launch was a little later, 23rd November 1972.)
- As we saw in the Presidential Daily Brief from May 1970 at the head of Post 2, the CIA and the President (and, almost certainly, through them the leadership of NASA) had been aware of N-1’s ongoing development for several years. They had no reason to think the Soviets would abandon the N-1.
- The Space Shuttle programme was approved with a Presidential announcement on 5th January 1972.
- NASA released the Phase C/D contract Request for Proposals on 15th March 1972. This RfP specified that:
NASA said:
- i.e. The TAOS approach with the basic OTL shuttle configuration of orbiter, ET and SRBs was already fixed before the TTL public revelation of N-1. All four received bids reflected this, based heavily on Mashall’s MSC-040C orbiter concept.
- The Phase C/D contract was awarded to Rockwell on 26th July 1972. ITTL, that’s just over a month after N1-7L’s launch - not enough time (or reason) for NASA to make any radical changes.
A shame that the OTL Shuttle design will likely be preserved. I always cherish the opportunity for another variation of that famous Decision. In general, I'm curious why TTL is going with a rather last-minute PoD when it comes to salvaging the N1. There is of course the far more conventional option of having Korolev survive his unfortunate OTL death. But I suppose there's also something unique about an N1 timeline where the Shuttle still goes ahead as planned. In any case, I'm very interested to see where this goes!
I think part of the reason for that (at least part of the reason I was so excited about this concept and encouraged @nixonshead to write it) was because it's not the conventional option. That "conventional" story arc of dueling moon programs with the Soviets somehow landing first, or a close second, has been explored before from Red Star to 2001: A Space Time Odyssey to For All Mankind to timelines which are still being written and posted today. Heck, I've even outlined my own take on one! Sound of Thunder is something less conventional, which is also interesting because when you start cracking open Challenge to Apollo by Siddiqi and reading details, it becomes apparent that "Korolev lives" isn't the cure-all it's commonly condensed to be, neither to schedule nor to the technical aspects of the N1-L3 mission profile. The N1-L3 plan as not as simple as "Apollo, but smaller and on N1," given a varying but always-present number of additional launches for backup return vehicles and landing beacons, and of course the LK lacks many of the reserves against problems that the Apollo system had such as extended hover time, a second crew member to assist if something went wrong, and the payload capability for extended stays on the surface.
With that horse thoroughly addressed, the OTL Shuttle plus a renewed N1 and lunar program--which, as @nixonshead notes the timing works out for given approval dates--offers something unique and interesting. Introducing a radically different Shuttle plan in 1972 with radical impacts on the American program early on would harm some of the purity of the butterfly chain from the N1 surviving past 1974, and make the effects less interesting to follow. Or at least I think so, having seen what's to come.
I, incidentally, have not seen what's to come, but I concur with @e of pi that this approach is more interesting precisely because it sets up a contrast between the Russian program, plodding along with the N1 (I seriously doubt Glushko will be able to get support to switch to Energia at this stage, though there's always the possibility of a "Buran" equivalent pace the purported military uses of the Shuttle) and the U.S. program going with Shuttle. They're rather different programs, that aren't (at this point) aiming at doing quite the same things, and certainly aren't aiming at doing them the same way.
Well, @e of pi kinda spoiled it a bit so now I know a little of what's to come.
That said, this will be something to see. IIRC when the Soviet Engineers took a good look at OTLs Shuttle, they very quickly realised that the claimed Economy Figures utterly failed to add up, feeding into the Paranoia that there just had to be some Secret Military Purpose behind it - of which Yuri Andropov was an Architect of AFAIK - that led to the decision that whatever this Military Use was, it was absolutely essential that they be able to match it.
And something that @Workable Goblin brought up. Vasily Mishin & Valentin Glushko. Seeing that IOTL, it was the failure of the N1, the Salyut 1/Soyuz 11 (very public) Disaster, and Soyuz 1 - amongst other failures - plus Mishin's own Alcoholism (that he'd become reliant on to handle the sheer pressure he was under) that resulted in his ousting in favour of Glushko (though he was actually Second Choice if I remember that right), there's a very obvious question here of what happens to the various Soviet Design Bureaus? And the ones leading them?
That said, this will be something to see. IIRC when the Soviet Engineers took a good look at OTLs Shuttle, they very quickly realised that the claimed Economy Figures utterly failed to add up, feeding into the Paranoia that there just had to be some Secret Military Purpose behind it - of which Yuri Andropov was an Architect of AFAIK - that led to the decision that whatever this Military Use was, it was absolutely essential that they be able to match it.
And something that @Workable Goblin brought up. Vasily Mishin & Valentin Glushko. Seeing that IOTL, it was the failure of the N1, the Salyut 1/Soyuz 11 (very public) Disaster, and Soyuz 1 - amongst other failures - plus Mishin's own Alcoholism (that he'd become reliant on to handle the sheer pressure he was under) that resulted in his ousting in favour of Glushko (though he was actually Second Choice if I remember that right), there's a very obvious question here of what happens to the various Soviet Design Bureaus? And the ones leading them?