alternatehistory.com

July 21 1979

Darn, can't imagine Walter Mondale posing with astronauts The photo surely would made history. Alan Shepard, John Glenn; Borman, Lovell and Anders beside the complete Apollo 11 crew. Nothing less than the first American into space; the first to orbit the Earth; the first crew to orbit the Moon; and the first crew to land on the Moon.

The unique gathering celebrated ten years since mankind first landing on the Moon.

William Anders was chairman of the Space Council, a body that had survived against all odds. The space policy body had survived Nixon and Agnew, then found in ally with Gerald Ford - didn't the senator helped creating NASA in 1958, together with the Space Council itself ? The council had also survived into the Carter administration, although it had been a close call.


(Flashback to July 4, 1976, day of the United States Bicentenary.)

That day Helios 2 had been NASA own contribution to the Bicentenary, marking he symbolic assumption that manned spaceflight would continue, even at low level.
Helios 1 had been an unmanned orbital test, so Young and Slayton had a lot of pressure on their shoulders. The mission was essentially a shakedown of NASA new manned ship, a short three day sortie.

More ambitious schemes had been drawn, such as flying an Apollo to geosynchronous orbit – as proposed by Kraft Ehricke. Or another joint flight with the Soviets, or a last mission to Skylab A.

The Soviet were not ready yet for a second joint flight, the space station was too far in the future, while Skylab was much too degraded to be of any usefulness.
Deke Slayton was happy to be up there, for his second flight in space. Down in Houston the capcom was busy, with the crew having a lot of contact with famous people that day - President Ford of course, and many others, all with the same boring questions.

Suddendly, however, a guest get out the pack. The voice was familiar to Slayton.

"John ? is that you ?" It was John Glenn, on his way to the Democrat convention, once a competitor to Mo Udall and Jimmy Carter and now on the VP ticket with Carter.

"Hello, Deke ! How is the view from there ?"

"Wonderful." By god, John, I certainly know how you feel at this very moment.Earth-bound, talking to an astronaut colleague enjoying microgravity up there...

Both men had been Mercury seven. Both had been grounded, Glenn, because he was an icon, Slayton, because of a minor health problem.

Down on the ground, John Glenn turned toward its audience with a large smile. It was definitively a good day - he had met again that Wainwright journalist that published his exploits in Time Magazine in the days he was not grounded.

Within eight days, Glenn would keynote to the Democratic convention. A good speech would influence Carter positively - it was that speech he would test that day, and that Wainwright had reviewed with mixed feelings.

Twenty minutes later, John Glenn had to agree that something was wrong with the speech. For all its fans there today looked bored. He had to talk to Wainwright, and in a hurry.

Wainwright was evidentely appaled. Within a couple minutes, he had seen a complete Glenn transformation from good to worse - from the space hero to the boring politician. He couldn't believe his ears. If he speaks that tone in the coming months, Mondale and Carter and whatever Republican nominee will have a field day against Glenn.

Wainwright reworked Glenn speech just in time for the Democratic convention a week later at the Madison Square Garden. Playing his stature of space hero, Glenn spoke about the belaguered space program and aircraft industries, about the job losts with the SST and space shuttle, viciously attacking Nixon and Ford industrial policies. That angered, passionate speech was welcomed by Democrats willing to fight after the Agnew and Watergate successive scandals. Very ironically in the end the shuttle fiasco had been a torn in Mondale side, if only because all the jobs lost in Florida and California and elsewhere. Mondale had pushed his anti- NASA crusade too far, to unproductive political results.

Last but not least, Glenn presence on Carter ticket made carter victory easier at a crucial moment. Ford being Ford, and Carter being Carter, the 1976 campaign had been complete with gooves and blunders. To Ford, there was no Soviet domination of eastern Europe. Carter, meanwhile, had been interwived by Playboy, recognizing he had lusted for others woman than his wife, although only "in his heart." For christians and feminists, extramarrital lust, even virtual, was too much to endure, and lusty Jimmy got alienated. What tipped the vote in the end was the fate of Vietnam opponents and refugees, Carter pardon outsmarting Ford amnesty.

The running mates had been no better - veteran Robert Dole had warily stated that war fought under democrat presidents were usually more lethals. Glenn, himself a veteran pilot of the WWII Pacific theather and Korean War, blasted him easily, noting that criticism was totally unfair. That found a favourable echos along spectators of the debate.

On a more serious note, Carter easily carried most of the South, yet victories were narrower in large Northern states such as New York and Pennsylvania. The states that ultimately secured Carter's victory were Wisconsin and Ohio. Had Ford won these states and all other states he carried, he would have won the presidency. That's where Glenn proved most useful: as the very Senator of Ohio, he markedly tipped the balance there, making Carter overall victory easier.

What mattered to NASA, in the end, was that a former astronaut ended as chairman of the Space Council. It took all of Glenn charisma and statute of national hero to balance Carter total lack of enthusiast for the space program.

But it worked.

There had been no real gap in manned access to space, Helios rapidly taking over only months after the Apollo - Soyuz flight. Since then NASA budget had remained steady, a good $3.4 billion each year. The space station was well underway, and they had a robust, if not glamourous, orbital space transportation system. Although a far cry from the long gone space shuttle, the Helios / Agena duo worked pretty well. The scientists were under control, happy as they were with large astronomical observatories and a decent number of planetary missions. Some of them even recognized the space station as a valuable endeavour, and that was paramount...

Vice President John Glenn paid a vibrant hommage to defunct Von Braun in June 1977. He discretely made NASA path toward the space station easier, although he could not rise the space agency overall budget, not against his president will.
He at least tried to build a decent commemoration of the lunar landings tenth anniversary, although, again, he could not push for a bold space initiative, not against Carter will. At least he was more receptive to space matters than Mondale would have been.

There had been rumours that Glenn might fly into space again.

NASA flying the vice-president in space would be some awesome Public Relation coup Slayton though dryly. There were rumours of a guest astronaut program; Glenn, Gerard O'Neill were possible candidates, and also that strange, red-capped French ocenanographer, Cousteau (amazingly, a good friend of past deputy administrator George Low, a distant, secretive man ). The astronaut office however was pretty reluctant for moral reasons (space flight remained a dangerous business) and also because, although Big Gemini was much more comfortable than the old Apollos, Titan III-M was a pretty brutish launch vehicle. The space shuttle (either the cancelled one or a new vehicle) would have made things different Slayton believed.

Not all was rosy for NASA, however, even with Glenn as the Vice President. Despite Glenn best efforts Carter had cancelled the Apollo lifeboat, to Rockwell despair. It had been one hell of bitter debate.

From the issue of that debate depended, altogether, astronaut safety and NASA answer to the Soviet flight duration records aboard their Salyuts. Skylab-3 84 days flight duration record had long been broken. Within three years the Soviets had pushed the boundaries from 96 to 175 days, obviously with 200 days in mind.

Fortunately Enterprise allowed NASA to enter the race with the Soviets. In June 1978 exploiting a gap in the Salyut crew sequence the American space agency had staged a major propaganda coup - the first flight to break the symbolic 100 days barrier. Unfortunately the Soviets had lost no time for an answer; at the end of 1978 they had pushed the limit to 150 days.

That July 21, 1979 the record was on the brink of being broken again - Vladimir Lyakhov and Valery Ryumin had already spent 145 days in orbit and where not to come back until August or beyond.

The Soviets rapid progresses had taken NASA by surprise, with their flights soon exceeding Big Gemini certified flight duration in space. Bluntly, the ship had not been build to spent more than two or three months in space, even docked to a space station. The 100 day mission had clearly shown that past that time some components started to degrade dangerously.

So NASA remained stuck with three options.

The agency could try to extend Big Gemini on-orbit duration; or try to accelerate the crew rotations to six per year, one every two months, with all the risks it entailed. The Titan III was a beast, with all his toxic propellants and those two large firecrackers strapped to its sides, and the Air Force pressure to keep its birds. Worse, six rotations per year would not even be enough to significantly lower Martin Marietta production costs: the company had already warned the treshold was at eighteen Titan III a year, with the unmanned missions included of course. So far the best NASA could hope for was ten.

The third solution was to have a dedicated lifeboat, and Rockwell screamed for Apollo. The capsule would be launched unmanned, and provided with the Agena LIDAR so that it could automatically approach and dock. If a problem ever happened to either Liberty or Helios, the astronauts would just jump into their Apollo and return Earth.

The idea made of a lot of sense, and Rockwell had done their best to try and secure their lifeboat.

After the shuttle debacle Rockwell top management had made a 180 degree turn. They had been once an enthusiastic supporter of the Shuttle and a faithfull ally to NASA Johnson space center quest for that program. But the shuttle had been canned and in the ensuing "capsule race" McDonnell Douglas Big Gemini had beaten Rockwell Apollo. The company space division had in turn decided to bet everything on an Apollo lifeboat rather than a shuttle revival, for a simple reason: Apollo was already flying when the shuttle was at best a plywood mockup.

On their own dime, they had modified two Apollos that been leftover by cancelled lunar landings. They had gone as far as loaning a C-130 Hercules to parachute down an Apollo modified for land landings. The test had happened at Edwards AFB in June 1975, with perfect success. The other capsule had had its internal systems and layout totally reworked with up-to-date systems.

Alas, the very idea of an Apollo lifeboat had a big, lethal default. To Carter and Congress, it looked as if NASA was trying to keep a couple of manned ships running in parallel - Helios and Apollo, a no-choice that might cost the taxpayer an arm and a leg. So the NASA budget for the fiscal year 1980 made no mention of the lifeboat, and that was a shame.

The Johnson Space Center, for its part, pushed hard for the Shuttle II. Their argument was it would fly cheaply and it would fly frequently, and only with a reusable vehicle could NASA solve Liberty crew rotation issues. Carter however had no love at all for a shuttle revival. There was no lack of advisors to remind him how the shuttle program had exploded into Nixon face. As for Johnson, they worried about the contractors lack of support for the Shuttle II - Rockwell being an example of that trend. The scar left by cancellation of the shuttle was long to heal.

200 miles above Earth – the OPSEK-Mir space complex.

Since 1976 and Glushko offensive the OPSEK-Mir orbital complex had endured many twists and turns. This day of July 1979, the crew of DOS-5 / Salyut 5 welcomed the twin module, DOS-6. However they wouldn't dock face-to-face as initially planned.

Early 1977 Glushko had added a twist to make Mir mor useful to the coming MKBS. Stuck between the two Salyut hulls was a 50 feet long truss with a 10 feet wide pressurised tunnel running along it so that the astronauts could transfer from one Salyut to the other. The whole thing had the shape of a dumbell.

Then, both Salyuts fired their aft thrusters and the 50 tons OPSEK-Mir started to spin, providing limited artificial gravity to the three-man crew. The rotation would have to be stopped every time a couple of Soyuz or TKS would come and dock to the dumbell ends. The TKS with its large supply of propellants could fire its own thrusters to spun the whole complex – with a pair of 20 tons TKS it would weight 90 tons. For the sake of symmetry manned spaceships docked at the ends of the Salyuts would have to be similar – it was either two Soyuz or two TKS, but not a mix of the two, or a single ship.

The future MKBS was to feature a very similar artificial gravity system; Glushko's last two Almaz hulls OPS-3 and OPS-4 were to be attached to a long thruss and the whole thing would be spun around the MKBS long axis, providing different level of gravity according to the spin rate. It would be possible to simulate the Moon or Mars.