You'd think it was, but the Soviets have always been ones to stick to their guns on proven systems (plus their computers kind of sucked). In OTL, the first all-digital Soyuz that even approaches what you describe was flown on TMA-01M carrying the Expedition 25 ISS crew in 2010--the first major avionic overhaul they'd implemented in Soyuz in 30+ years. Not only did the Soviets never tinker with the craft IOTL, it took almost twenty years as just regular Russians before they bothered catching up to what the Americans did in Shuttle in the late 80s. Even Shuttle didn't receive a glass cockpit until the turn of the millennium. Aerospace is made up of two competing influences: a desire for new technology to enhance capabilities and increase efficiency, and a desire for proven, debugged hardware. That's turned up to 11 in spaceflight, and with avionics in particular, the influence of the latter over following the former impulse means that tech lags even behind the general aerospace state-of-the-art.
Red Star: A Soviet Lunar Landing
- Thread starter SpaceGeek
- Start date
Which is interesting watching Space-X because with Dragon they use fairly standard computers and have already gone through several generations of flight computers with Dragon and the Capsule is fairly new.
I did think it, a couple years ago, and you put forth solid objections which prevailed in your own TL, and I put in links to both my arguments and yours which people can look at if they don't remember. Here the waters aren't as muddied with my agenda to reduce the number of designated pilots, which may have been quite ill-conceived on my part anyway.
I think you need to acknowledge that perhaps in this time line, as a result of solid effort put in the Soviets have competencies they lagged at OTL. In particular, I think their computers clearly must not suck as much as OTL--perhaps in peculiar ways, they are ahead of the West in particular aspects of hardware and software development (with the West still holding leads in other aspects).
I suspect their devices tend to be larger, more designed to work as parts of a bigger centralized system--the spacecraft obviously must have an autonomous system but that is designed as one centralized piece, rather than having lots of independent subsystems more or less networked. If the Soviets are competitive in the field of personal computing, it would be via supplying citizens and administrative and design/construction bureaux with terminals that time-share on centralized systems--under KGB supervision, with lots of backdoors for police access. But they may be well on their way to becoming wizards at managing such systems, detecting and defeating viruses and other cyber-attacks, providing excellent information indexing services to their clients (a byproduct of a police state that denies the right of privacy--assuming one has competent police a number of problems that plague a more libertarian setup might be forestalled).
So that's all wild speculation on my part, but it isn't implausible anyway that specialized space and military hardware might come closer anyhow to Western standards--and withal, be designed to be more robust, with eyes turned both skyward for space applications, and toward a possible dark future of all-out nuclear war for military.
As you explained quite well some years ago at ETS, and further illustrated today with the example of OTL Russian conservatism. This is why I left open the suggestion that perhaps the Soviets will have some cause to regret their greater enthusiasm for the newest stuff ITTL, that might check their pell-mell progressivism.
I obviously like rooting for the Russians in this timeline and so hope no one actually dies as a result. I also figure this first iteration of the digitized Soyuz won't be the one to go haywire, since its first-generation virtualization would have indeed been introduced cautiously. But having succeeded this time, they might become less careful with future upgrades.
Skylab C, A Summary
The crew of Skylab 10, Robert L Crippen, Gordon Fullerton and Commander Fed Haise were just settling just settling in when their comrades, having finished their 90 day duration run undocked and departed from the Space Station on November 15th 1978. This came just a month after the previous first began working with them and showing them the ins and outs of Skylab C. The long term working experiences of six man crews (compared to the short term, three man crews during Apollo) would be critical for any prospective Mars mission in the future. However neither the crew nor NASA's eyes were on the Red Planet in the distance but instead the blue planet just below them.
Christmas came with a joyous bolt of energy and enthusiansm as if someone had sent billions of volts of electricity through the hearts of the men and women working on the project. Christmas in space was a periodic occurance (happening every now and then) that first began on December 24th 1967, the first time humans ventured beyond Earth to another world, Soviet L1-1 circumlunar flight with Alexei Leonov and Oleg Makarov. Suprisingly, on that precise date just a year later the Americans were witnessing themselves for the first time what only Russians could talk about previously as Apollo-8 orbited the Moon for the first time. Christmas in Low Earth Orbit and even on the Moon was and would continue to become more and more frequent as humanity's emerging place as a multi-planetary species and civilization began to assert itself.
During Skylab 4 NASA astronauts built a Christmas tree out of metal cans.
But for Fred Haise this wasn't a time for philosophising or contemplating humanity's future in the cosmos but instead for santa-claus, christmas carrols and christmas trees. The crew had all let their beards grow out over the coarse of the missions as many astronauts attested to the severe impracticalities shaving in space posed (which led to numorous quite hilarious proposals in the public to resolve such an issue). When Santa-claus undocked from the station and the new year rolled around the worklessness turned back to weightlessness study and earth study. After another two months this crew would land while another three crew had already taken their place.
The increasing traffic to Skylab C continued with more and more Titan IIIL2 launches bringing supplies and more crews of three to the station for research and study. With the exception of a short time between rotations (usually lasting a day or so) Skylab C was occupied by a crew of three continiously between July 1978 and August 1979 with overlaps of six-man operations. The seventh three man crew wasn't replaced as the others were, as the lifetime of the station began to close. The seventh and final three-man crew of Skylab C spent the next month performing last minute experiments and preparing the station for the unmanned remainder of it's life (as a pressurized free-flying platform and potential safehaven for astronauts). Finally, the last crew departed August 1979, 1 year 1 month 2 days and 7 hours after the first crew arrived.
The accomplishments of Skylab C can only be mesured by volumes upon volumes of discoveries. Ironically it was only by leaving the Earth we were better able to understand it. While the scientific discoveries numorous and publically availible in journals, the real focus of the entire program can best be summorized by the photographs it produced.
The crew of Skylab 10, Robert L Crippen, Gordon Fullerton and Commander Fed Haise were just settling just settling in when their comrades, having finished their 90 day duration run undocked and departed from the Space Station on November 15th 1978. This came just a month after the previous first began working with them and showing them the ins and outs of Skylab C. The long term working experiences of six man crews (compared to the short term, three man crews during Apollo) would be critical for any prospective Mars mission in the future. However neither the crew nor NASA's eyes were on the Red Planet in the distance but instead the blue planet just below them.
Christmas came with a joyous bolt of energy and enthusiansm as if someone had sent billions of volts of electricity through the hearts of the men and women working on the project. Christmas in space was a periodic occurance (happening every now and then) that first began on December 24th 1967, the first time humans ventured beyond Earth to another world, Soviet L1-1 circumlunar flight with Alexei Leonov and Oleg Makarov. Suprisingly, on that precise date just a year later the Americans were witnessing themselves for the first time what only Russians could talk about previously as Apollo-8 orbited the Moon for the first time. Christmas in Low Earth Orbit and even on the Moon was and would continue to become more and more frequent as humanity's emerging place as a multi-planetary species and civilization began to assert itself.
During Skylab 4 NASA astronauts built a Christmas tree out of metal cans.
But for Fred Haise this wasn't a time for philosophising or contemplating humanity's future in the cosmos but instead for santa-claus, christmas carrols and christmas trees. The crew had all let their beards grow out over the coarse of the missions as many astronauts attested to the severe impracticalities shaving in space posed (which led to numorous quite hilarious proposals in the public to resolve such an issue). When Santa-claus undocked from the station and the new year rolled around the worklessness turned back to weightlessness study and earth study. After another two months this crew would land while another three crew had already taken their place.
The increasing traffic to Skylab C continued with more and more Titan IIIL2 launches bringing supplies and more crews of three to the station for research and study. With the exception of a short time between rotations (usually lasting a day or so) Skylab C was occupied by a crew of three continiously between July 1978 and August 1979 with overlaps of six-man operations. The seventh three man crew wasn't replaced as the others were, as the lifetime of the station began to close. The seventh and final three-man crew of Skylab C spent the next month performing last minute experiments and preparing the station for the unmanned remainder of it's life (as a pressurized free-flying platform and potential safehaven for astronauts). Finally, the last crew departed August 1979, 1 year 1 month 2 days and 7 hours after the first crew arrived.
The accomplishments of Skylab C can only be mesured by volumes upon volumes of discoveries. Ironically it was only by leaving the Earth we were better able to understand it. While the scientific discoveries numorous and publically availible in journals, the real focus of the entire program can best be summorized by the photographs it produced.
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Skylab was design from begin as disposal space station !
Original Skylab was build for 150 operational days with reserve of 24 days ( so 174 days in total)
for food they had only for 140 days (Skylab 4 crew carry allot of energy bars in CSM as food resupply)
The Reaction Control System used also much fuel and Airlock dump allot of Skylab atmosphere into vacuum.
and as Skylab 4 crew leave the station, 2 of 3 gyroscope had failed and Reaction control system tanks were almost empty.
Skylab B was planned for four crews for a total year Mission time. after that to be drop in pacific
note on Eyes Turned Skywards, Spacelab
That is modified Skylab B resupply by unmanned CSM AARDVark that carry 8000 kg to Spacelab
while in Red Star the Skylab C ware visit by modified CSM were it Sim Bay hold Cargo container.
that around 1035kg~2070kg cargo
Since ITL re-supply was being done I was wondering if it was going to be used longer. As far as RCS system on Skylab in OTL. Over 50% of the RCS system was used up by keeping Skylab alive for the repairs to be done.
Such was the amount of manoeuvring required to maintain the delicate balance between enough power to keep it alive, and to keep the internal temperature low enough to keep a crew inside alive.
The Skylab Stations are built using the S-IVB which AFAIK were not originally intended to be used in such a manner, though it could be (and was) adapted to serve such a role.
ITTL, the Skylab Stations are modified with each successive step based on the experiences gained from the previous stations. Which means by Skylab D they will have worked out all the issues that arose, station-keeping propellant and atmosphere transfer is done with each visit, while food and equipment which can't be stored in and transferred from the SM easily can be held in the MM. While the airlock doesn't lose nearly as much as it used to.
OTL it was mainly Soviet/post Sov Russian experience that gave us a sense of the long-term problems that crop up when the same old orbiting structure is kept in operation year after year. Obviously the single Skylab-A launched and patched up after its wild ride to orbit, designed as it was for just a handful of missions and no more, didn't give the Americans much experience with the subtler ways an attempted space station succumbs to entropy until it is best simply scrapped; then of course there were no American space stations (or anyone else's besides the Russians); just visits to orbit in the Space Winnebego, with the STS fleet undergoing maintenance and upgrades on the ground for months between their launches, and the various cargo bay add-ons used once or maybe a few times then retired to be replaced with new ones. (I'm ignorant on that last one actually; were any Space Labs carried in the bay ever refurbished and reused, or was each one purpose-built for one mission?)
No, it is from the Russians that lessons are to be learned about what to do and what not to do if one intends to launch a structure into orbit to be used by human inhabitants over a very long period. Getting launch of supplies such as air and orbital maintenance propellant down to a routine based on experience of what levels are actually needed is a great step forward, clearly.
But what lessons have Americans begun to learn ITTL from their incrementally more ambitious Skylabs, about the orbital equivalents of termite infestations and dry rot and the other deteriorations Terran structures are prone to? Talking about this on other threads with other space experts some of them seem to think that there really can't be such a thing as a permanent space station, not until the scale of travel to orbit is many orders of magnitude more than can be expected in Space Ages such as we've had the last half-century--without both a much greater flow of supplies and people to handle them, and a permanent and comprehensive industrial infrastructure in orbit, inevitable breakdowns of equipment, infrastructure, even basic structure will accumulate and snowball to a rate that can't be patched with the sort of supplies and work-hours available with our current launch methods and budgets. Eventually the most clever station module will reach end of life when it is more advisable to just send up a new one, and trying to stretch the old ones beyond that point will turn them into deathtraps.
That would change with an exponentially increased human presence in orbit of course; eventually it would make sense to keep repairing, refurbishing, and incrementally upgrading an established structure, and build on it. But that apparently can't be done without spending tens or perhaps hundreds of times more money on launches, or lowering the price of individual launches by those sorts of magnitudes, which would require Buck Rogers types of new technologies--fusion powered rockets or more realistically perhaps (at least in the sense of being technologies that seem more predictably workable given what we know now), very large launch infrastructures such as tethers or Lofstrom Loops or the like.
I've yet to come up with a non-ASB type of POD that would encourage and justify those sorts of layouts of investment in building up orbital bases within our lifetimes; I've gotten at this before with the post about space science--for all we know there are legions of ATLs where such space cities already exist because of some scientific breakthrough or engineering trick stumbled upon by the same sorts of experiments we've actually orbited OTL, that happen to have shown the way to some particular product or set of them that can only be made in free fall, and yet is valuable enough to justify shipping the raw materials up and the products down--of course it would not be long after such an industry establishes itself on such a basis that expeditions to the Moon and near-Earth asteroids to bring in extraterrestrial resources would take place, and meanwhile even with no revolutions in the basic technology of rocketry whatsoever the price tag of launching a ton to orbit will start to come down quite a lot simply due to the greater volume of launch business being done. I'd guess for 10 times the money spent between 1950 and today we'd have accumulated 100 times the human-hours in orbit and have some nifty space stations or three in continual operation, along with a Moon base or three and some substantial BEO manned presence, if only as far as Phobos, Deimos, and the nearer asteroids--that guess is based on no analysis whatsoever of course, just a naive hunch.
Such an expansion would not require that space industry yield profits to pay for it, absolutely, but without the lure of such prospects being felt in corporate boardrooms, I don't see any plausible scenarios until we get into ASB territory to motivate that level of spending.
The sort of superpower rivalry that goes on here seems like a plausible enough means of sustaining efforts at least as great as OTL and perhaps two or three times as much cumulatively; same goes for arms races in space though I'd fear any timeline that goes in that direction (beyond the currently accepted degree of military and security observation and communication technology; I refer here to plans to base actual weapons systems in orbit or beyond, particularly weapons that go beyond threatening other space installations to point back at Earth) would go unstable and eventually the hardware gets used, triggering or even constituting Armageddon. If the powers keep weaponizing space to a surreptitious and marginal minimum though than militarizing space is limited and self-defeating; beyond a certain point the truce breaks down and we're back on the road to Ragnarok, or else the sensible way to stay in bounds is to shut down ostensibly military branches with space missions and sneak in a bit of it but no more in nominally civil missions--which will not get much military pork for funding.
So at some point I suppose mere superpower rivalry just makes a house of cards that will collapse eventually when one power or the other does, or anyway suffers some big setback, unless a third or more powers horn in the meantime. When the bubble bursts, the surviving infrastructure and political momentum might be enough to sustain a larger budget than OTL, but not orders of magnitude more.
I expect real life to become ASB at some point, as it often has OTL, and for some serendipitous discovery or some critical point reached to tip the balance toward escalating human presence in space-but that's just a hope I have, not founded on any logic except betting on the long-term trend of modern history.
No, it is from the Russians that lessons are to be learned about what to do and what not to do if one intends to launch a structure into orbit to be used by human inhabitants over a very long period. Getting launch of supplies such as air and orbital maintenance propellant down to a routine based on experience of what levels are actually needed is a great step forward, clearly.
But what lessons have Americans begun to learn ITTL from their incrementally more ambitious Skylabs, about the orbital equivalents of termite infestations and dry rot and the other deteriorations Terran structures are prone to? Talking about this on other threads with other space experts some of them seem to think that there really can't be such a thing as a permanent space station, not until the scale of travel to orbit is many orders of magnitude more than can be expected in Space Ages such as we've had the last half-century--without both a much greater flow of supplies and people to handle them, and a permanent and comprehensive industrial infrastructure in orbit, inevitable breakdowns of equipment, infrastructure, even basic structure will accumulate and snowball to a rate that can't be patched with the sort of supplies and work-hours available with our current launch methods and budgets. Eventually the most clever station module will reach end of life when it is more advisable to just send up a new one, and trying to stretch the old ones beyond that point will turn them into deathtraps.
That would change with an exponentially increased human presence in orbit of course; eventually it would make sense to keep repairing, refurbishing, and incrementally upgrading an established structure, and build on it. But that apparently can't be done without spending tens or perhaps hundreds of times more money on launches, or lowering the price of individual launches by those sorts of magnitudes, which would require Buck Rogers types of new technologies--fusion powered rockets or more realistically perhaps (at least in the sense of being technologies that seem more predictably workable given what we know now), very large launch infrastructures such as tethers or Lofstrom Loops or the like.
I've yet to come up with a non-ASB type of POD that would encourage and justify those sorts of layouts of investment in building up orbital bases within our lifetimes; I've gotten at this before with the post about space science--for all we know there are legions of ATLs where such space cities already exist because of some scientific breakthrough or engineering trick stumbled upon by the same sorts of experiments we've actually orbited OTL, that happen to have shown the way to some particular product or set of them that can only be made in free fall, and yet is valuable enough to justify shipping the raw materials up and the products down--of course it would not be long after such an industry establishes itself on such a basis that expeditions to the Moon and near-Earth asteroids to bring in extraterrestrial resources would take place, and meanwhile even with no revolutions in the basic technology of rocketry whatsoever the price tag of launching a ton to orbit will start to come down quite a lot simply due to the greater volume of launch business being done. I'd guess for 10 times the money spent between 1950 and today we'd have accumulated 100 times the human-hours in orbit and have some nifty space stations or three in continual operation, along with a Moon base or three and some substantial BEO manned presence, if only as far as Phobos, Deimos, and the nearer asteroids--that guess is based on no analysis whatsoever of course, just a naive hunch.
Such an expansion would not require that space industry yield profits to pay for it, absolutely, but without the lure of such prospects being felt in corporate boardrooms, I don't see any plausible scenarios until we get into ASB territory to motivate that level of spending.
The sort of superpower rivalry that goes on here seems like a plausible enough means of sustaining efforts at least as great as OTL and perhaps two or three times as much cumulatively; same goes for arms races in space though I'd fear any timeline that goes in that direction (beyond the currently accepted degree of military and security observation and communication technology; I refer here to plans to base actual weapons systems in orbit or beyond, particularly weapons that go beyond threatening other space installations to point back at Earth) would go unstable and eventually the hardware gets used, triggering or even constituting Armageddon. If the powers keep weaponizing space to a surreptitious and marginal minimum though than militarizing space is limited and self-defeating; beyond a certain point the truce breaks down and we're back on the road to Ragnarok, or else the sensible way to stay in bounds is to shut down ostensibly military branches with space missions and sneak in a bit of it but no more in nominally civil missions--which will not get much military pork for funding.
So at some point I suppose mere superpower rivalry just makes a house of cards that will collapse eventually when one power or the other does, or anyway suffers some big setback, unless a third or more powers horn in the meantime. When the bubble bursts, the surviving infrastructure and political momentum might be enough to sustain a larger budget than OTL, but not orders of magnitude more.
I expect real life to become ASB at some point, as it often has OTL, and for some serendipitous discovery or some critical point reached to tip the balance toward escalating human presence in space-but that's just a hope I have, not founded on any logic except betting on the long-term trend of modern history.
There were two or three species of modules used on Shuttle, the European Spacelab (which used two modules that could be flown either separately or together as a single long unit, and each saw many flights--see the full breakdown), the Astrotech Spacehab (designed for multiple uses, lost with Columbia on maiden mission), and the European MPLMs which carried pressurized cargo to ISS inside the Shuttle payload bay (three modules, two flown, both several times, Leonardo converted to PMM and retained on station).
I must say, I am very dubious that cold war rivalry could produce more of a space presence, and particularly not more military space presence. There is a good reason why we don't have much in the way of orbital weaponry: What has been tried and studied has for the most part been rather useless. So most of human presence in space is not there for prestige or military use. Most of it is for scientific and commercial use. And if you ask me, the keys to more successful space programs are to be found in fulfilling both of those needs in better ways.
fasquardon
fasquardon
I was trying to say this too, except I'm not as confident that space-based weapons must remain ineffective by their very nature--rather, it is the good sense of both sides in nuclear-era Great Power rivalries that restrains each military from putting up the effective ones. And that you have to realize that the same technologies that are so useful to peaceful enterprise on Earth are also highly valued by the militaries for providing their forces these same services. And historically it was generally military or other security agencies that got the earliest versions of the various applications of satellites up first--for surveillance, communications and navigation. The more ostensibly civil versions then went up after them and serve civil needs and purposes far better than the pioneering military versions ever could--but the military pioneers continue to benefit from them too.
Pure science is the exception to the military-first rule of course. But it doesn't yield revenues or dividends directly.
I hope I was clear enough that I don't think having space become a front of the military confrontation of the Cold War or other superpower competition will lead to anything good.
Over the course of Zarya-4's lifespan there were a grand total of six long duration spaceflight expeditions along with 10 short duration spaceflights. During this period a number of international cosmonauts flew as part of the "Interkosmos" program. Participating countries included Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Vietnam, Cuba, Mongolia, and Romania.
One of the major accomplishments of Zarya-4 was the ability to operate a space-station for longer periods of time (three full years) while extending crew durations to over six months by utilizing unmanned Soyuz (Progress) to re-supply the station with consumables such as oxygen, food and water. Before a permanent, modular space station could be built however the Soviet engineers and scientists involved still believe they required more experience. The solution to this dilemma was to upgrade and utilize a second station composed of two modules, Zarya-5 for even longer durations and push the technological envelop even further.
In the time expeditions to Zarya-4 were being carried out a modified version of the original Soyuz 7K-OK designated the Soyuz-T was successfully flown with and without cosmonauts. This updated the design. Redesign of the seats and pressure suits also allowed the Soviets to finally bridge a gap that had been apparent between the Americans and them, namely, crew size. While early flights of the Soyuz had sent three person crews (without pressure suits) this practice was cancelled after a cabin depressurization occurred during one flight (which thankfully was a two-person flight with pressure suits). After this incident two-person crews were flown as three cosmonauts couldn't fit in the tiny descent module and wear pressure suits. Now, with the redesigned seats and pressure suits, three cosmonauts could comfortably fit even while wearing pressure suits.
As the space race essentially ended with the close of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, both American and Soviet space policy planners devised their long-term futures. Rather than constant revolutionizing (as had occurred in the 60s and 70s) slow, gradual developments would proceed step by step in a logical and affordable manner. Both programs saw the need for a permanent manned space station and lunar outpost. However the superpower's plans differed from each other, the American's planetary program would focus on a few trailblazing "flagship" missions to the unknown while the Soviet plan emphasized the continuation of the highly successful Venera program in order to learn as much as possible about the already explored world of Venus. While the Americans specialized unmanned spacecraft the Soviets standardized them.
Will the presence of the N-1 have any knock-on effects on Soviet exploration of Mars? OTL there were plans for sample return missions from the red planet, but they always ran into the problem of finding a large enough launcher (Mars 4NM comes to mind), or automated docking. ITTL, that won't be a problem, and getting a sample of Martian soil back to Earth would be a major propaganda coup.
They actually did attempt that mission ITTL. Unfortunately, even if you had flown such a mission the odds of success were extremely low. The Russians are known to have a close to 100% failure rate on it's Mars probes.
If you look at one of the earlier posts it mentions the Mars Sample Return mission, it was a fully successful launch. But the hardware failed after TMI, as had happened on countless other missions IOTL. The Russians just weren't very good at the exploration of Mars. But they basically dominated the exploration of Venus.
If you look at one of the earlier posts it mentions the Mars Sample Return mission, it was a fully successful launch. But the hardware failed after TMI, as had happened on countless other missions IOTL. The Russians just weren't very good at the exploration of Mars. But they basically dominated the exploration of Venus.
Soviet failures to successfully reach Mars with a functional mission package are an infamous fact of OTL, whereas they have been more successful with probing Venus.
But ITTL you've asked us to believe they could make N-1 work, on a timeframe that actually beats Apollo to the Moon. And you've made a believer of me. To explain this, I've been assuming they are doing something different to be more successful--specifically devoting more consistent and disciplined effort toward making more reliable hardware.
It's hard to see just what objective facts about missions to Mars versus Venus should make the latter attainable for a relatively crude state of the art but not the former. It is true that Mars is farther away; furthermore because Venus is closer in toward the Sun and Mars farther out, transit times to the former are quicker--meaning, less time for things to go wrong. But I don't think the time frames are so far out of proportion that that's a sensible explanation all by itself, that Soviet hardware could survive reliably for one transit time and not the other, with any large difference in survival rates. The rigors of one launch are about the same as the other.
So it seems to me that Soviet failures vis Mars are a run of bad luck, and in an ATL where they could make missions such as their N-1 based lunar missions come off without a fatal hitch, they could make better space probes--some would be bound to get through to Mars I'd think.
Especially because, while the N-1 is not quite a match for the Saturn V, OTL we never used the Saturn V (or even 1B) for launching space probes, just Apollo mission hardware and Skylab. If JPL or Ames could have had a contract to make a Mars or Jupiter or Saturn probe to be launched from a Saturn V--well, that would have been a sight to see!
So if the Soviets do make an interplanetary probe launched from an N-1, it will far outmass any probe with a comparable mission ever launched OTL. Sheer mass is no guarantee of success-it might just be a more colossal failure.
But it gives margin for robust structures and for redundancy, and those ought to improve the odds of at least partial success.I suppose, if one power uses its biggest launcher to launch a mega-probe, the other will be pretty likely (well, far more likely than otherwise anyway) to match it with one from theirs. So an N-1 launched Mars probe might lead directly to an American probe lofted by a Saturn V upgrade, a mighty piece of technology indeed!
You've got the same dilemma here you have with envisioning the outcomes of orbital science in the space stations of course--you've got some margin to just recap what OTL space science has discovered, in a scrambled order perhaps. But at some point we have to imagine that a deep space probe or an orbital experiment will turn up something OTL has yet to discover--but what? Whatever we imagine will probably look silly and unsubtle compared to what real space science, when God willing we ever actually get around to it
, has in store.I don't think the Russians will suffer the same curse on Mars missions they did OTL, or anyway even if their success rate is somewhat less than American, it will be better than OTL--and both powers might be attempting more missions, on a grander scale, so that there will be Soviet successes to eclipse the failures rather than the unbroken record of frustration OTL. Objectively I suppose the longer transit time does put more of a toll on the quality of the probe design, but Soviets should be closer to US standards here.
Unless we suppose some hidden variable--such as the Great Galactic Ghoul--that upsets everyone's calculations (American missions have not enjoyed perfect luck either) and favors the Americans (we have nevertheless had pretty good success after all). OTL the discrepancy between Soviet and US quality control levels might explain it, and might not. If some of what has happened to the Russian missions is just random bad luck, then this timeline is a new roll of the dice.
the problem why soviet Mars probe went lost
from 18 launch probes, 9 failed it launch rocket
Mars 60A and 60B - the R-7 Molnija failed
Sputnik 22 and 24 - R-7 Molnija failed in parking orbit Mars probe relabel Sputnik
Kosmos 419 in parking orbit Block-D not restart.
Mars 96 in parking orbit Block-D not restart.
Phobos Grunt
The probes were wrongly design in construction, mission design and automatic launch sequence in orbit.
last one FAIL in orbit, do use of electronic not suitable for Space !
next to that no backup system for fail save modus.
for 9 other see for your self:
Mars 1 lost to RCS fuel do open valve, contact lost at 107 Millions km from earth
Mars 69A und Mars 69B (based on Venera probe) the proton rocket failed
Mars 2 and Mars 3, reach mars in wrong orbit lost of communication after 250 picture
it's landers are drop automatic before MArs 2/3 inject into Mars Orbit
Mars 2 Lander a timer was not reset, so it not activated the Parachute and lander crash into mars surface.
Mars 3 Lander get to ground, transmit for 90 second and stop working.
Mars 4-7 a small fleet launch by Protons
sadly the electronic on Orbiter and Lander was made from Transistoren 2T-312 with aluminum connector
those start to corrode already 4 months before launch ! failure in 2 years in time they reach Mars
Instead to replace the 2T-312, The politburo order the launch Mars orbiter and lander, they reach Mars and failed one after another.
Phobos 1/2
The probes were wrongly design to small communication antenna, RCS not in line of centre of gravity of probe.
Phobos 1 lost do wrong program code
Phobos 2 reach mars but got in problem with stability, the attempt to get in Phobos orbit the probe get lost.
from 18 launch probes, 9 failed it launch rocket
Mars 60A and 60B - the R-7 Molnija failed
Sputnik 22 and 24 - R-7 Molnija failed in parking orbit Mars probe relabel Sputnik
Kosmos 419 in parking orbit Block-D not restart.
Mars 96 in parking orbit Block-D not restart.
Phobos Grunt
The probes were wrongly design in construction, mission design and automatic launch sequence in orbit.
last one FAIL in orbit, do use of electronic not suitable for Space !
next to that no backup system for fail save modus.
for 9 other see for your self:
Mars 1 lost to RCS fuel do open valve, contact lost at 107 Millions km from earth
Mars 69A und Mars 69B (based on Venera probe) the proton rocket failed
Mars 2 and Mars 3, reach mars in wrong orbit lost of communication after 250 picture
it's landers are drop automatic before MArs 2/3 inject into Mars Orbit
Mars 2 Lander a timer was not reset, so it not activated the Parachute and lander crash into mars surface.
Mars 3 Lander get to ground, transmit for 90 second and stop working.
Mars 4-7 a small fleet launch by Protons
sadly the electronic on Orbiter and Lander was made from Transistoren 2T-312 with aluminum connector
those start to corrode already 4 months before launch ! failure in 2 years in time they reach Mars
Instead to replace the 2T-312, The politburo order the launch Mars orbiter and lander, they reach Mars and failed one after another.
Phobos 1/2
The probes were wrongly design to small communication antenna, RCS not in line of centre of gravity of probe.
Phobos 1 lost do wrong program code
Phobos 2 reach mars but got in problem with stability, the attempt to get in Phobos orbit the probe get lost.
Or, long story short, cheap and cruddy design augmented by cheap and cruddy quality control to achieve a near 100% failure rate. It's less that Soviet Mars probes got unlucky, really, than that their Venera probes seem to have gotten lucky. I really can't see that changing--these problems are endemic to Soviet industry as a whole and it'd take a lot morethan what's happened so far to sort that out. Really, I'm still wondering when they'll finally have a fatal incident on the Moon. They have catastrophic, deadly failures everywhere else...
Within NASA even in OTL there was alot of internal fighting for access to Saturn Vs. Even when the production run was still going, the production rate was limited. Every Saturn V that launches a Spacelab is a Saturn that can't launch a lunar mission, every Spacelab and lunar mission is a Saturn that can't launch a probe or an interplanetary manned flyby...
The Soviet program, I suspect, will see similar battles. I think the Soviets will have some advantage, because the N11 is their medium lift booster, and the military will be demanding N11s in some bulk. As a consequence, the marginal cost of expanding N1 production will be a little less than it would be otherwise. But the truth is that this more intense space race will mean that however much N1s the Soviets can produce, there will never be quite enough to satisfy everyone.
So I agree that the US or the Soviets using their best rocket to launch some heavyweight probes would be cool, but I am not sure that either would do so - at least not in the 70s. It's an awful lot of egg to put on one launch.
Now in the 80s, after both sides had more experience building and operating robot probes, there might be some receptivity for launching delux probes. Particularly since by the 80s I suspect both sides will be starting to accept that getting a man to the surface of mars is beyond their current reach...
fasquardon
The Soviet program, I suspect, will see similar battles. I think the Soviets will have some advantage, because the N11 is their medium lift booster, and the military will be demanding N11s in some bulk. As a consequence, the marginal cost of expanding N1 production will be a little less than it would be otherwise. But the truth is that this more intense space race will mean that however much N1s the Soviets can produce, there will never be quite enough to satisfy everyone.
So I agree that the US or the Soviets using their best rocket to launch some heavyweight probes would be cool, but I am not sure that either would do so - at least not in the 70s. It's an awful lot of egg to put on one launch.
Now in the 80s, after both sides had more experience building and operating robot probes, there might be some receptivity for launching delux probes. Particularly since by the 80s I suspect both sides will be starting to accept that getting a man to the surface of mars is beyond their current reach...
fasquardon