Recent content by prolemasses

Hell yeah

Haven't heard of that one, what's the premise?

What if Rome fell in 1897?

Awesome TL! The little details like MER being launched by Shuttle and Buran being stuck in Wisconsin are great. I love this Shuttle-II design, it feels so grounded while still being a significant improvement. Though it doesn't seem like the Shuttle TPS vulnerability was meaningfully addressed...

Aha! My hunch that it would be a Challenger survives TL was right! Super excited, it's a fantastically interesting plausible premise in the best possible hands.

Excited! Subscribed!

Worth noting that without the RD-170s irl requirement for 10 reuses development of the equivalent engine for Vulkan probably proceeds smoother. IIRC reuse was a major hangup, not just the advanced combustion cycle and high thrust.

I believe Vulkan here is closer to a slightly larger Zenit. Something like the RLA family. No hydrolox core and the Zenit type stage is the main rocket, not a booster. Booster recovery via parachutes is possible, but I'd think they'd have other focuses with Baikal and Zvezda ongoing.

It was explicitly noted in the ESA update that everyone at the agency recognizes that they have no shot at flying people to the Moon on their own soon. They know that funding wise they're not quite up there with the superpowers. They are focusing on gaining manned access to orbit. Their attempt...

Like others have said, I think some kind of international lunar base using the Moon Town EZA seems likely following the collapse of the USSR. Only issue I forsee is that the base module is explicitly mentioned as being powered by the exact same type of nuclear reactor as Zarya 3. In the...

Thanks for the clarification! Sounds like no more Spacelab missions to Skylab, I bet the Europeans will love that. I would be surprised if the plans for 8 crew survive the 90s, that would be a lot of extra flights on the manifest, and with post-Cold War budget cuts NASA will probably want to...

I believe the Freedom capsule has been explicitly described as smaller than Apollo though, so a Skylab Rescue configuration would likely be too cramped. Irl when NASA was studying ACRV designs for space station freedom, they figured that a sick or injured crew member that needed an emergency...

BTW, I'm curious as to the normal crew sizes on each station. Based on the size of the Freedom capsule and in the interest of allowing crew rotations with a single Shuttle flight, I'd imagine Skylab probably has just three permanent crew, with more during Shuttle visits, but is Zarya intended to...

Damn these never disappoint. Skylab looks so cool as a blend between the Apollo and Shuttle/ISS eras. Love the yellowing from solar exposure.

Hey, the original Commercial Crew Dream Chaser design got away without a service module! I really hope this means Hermes does indeed fly in some form here. Would be cool to see a TL where ESA develops an independent crew capability that's not just a glorified lifeboat for an American station.