2001 Space Station V - can it be done by 2001?

And if so what does the world look like?
I think that it's do-able, but by the time the 2001 book and movie came out, it was already too late.

To make it happen, you would need a much stronger Soviet space program, to keep up the pressure on the United States. First, someone high up in the SU government needs to knock some heads together, and drastically cut back the duplicated effort and infighting between the design bureaus. Saving Sergei Korolev from his botched operation would help a lot. Very important, I think, would be for the Kremlin to realize years earlier that the Americans were serious about the moon shot, and put serious resources into building and properly testing their own big rocket. Result: a down-to-the-wire Moon Race, with neither side willing to back down regardless of who scores the first landing.

NASA funding had been declining since the mid-60's, with Congress planning to go to the moon (first), then quit. "Webb's Giant", the Soviet N1 moon rocket, comes as a nasty surprise. The Saturn V production lines reopen to build a few more, but work also accelerates on a reusable version, the "Flyback F1" booster and simplified cheaper upper stages. A shuttle is built, but it is the original concept: a small passenger and light-cargo support vehicle for a space station. With the push to get more mass into orbit, the economics of rocketry bites hard. So engineers convince Congress to fund an electromagnetic catapault across Florida; essentially it is a giant reusable launch stage, firing expendable and reusable upper stages toward orbit.
 
I think that it's do-able, but by the time the 2001 book and movie came out, it was already too late.

To make it happen, you would need a much stronger Soviet space program, to keep up the pressure on the United States. First, someone high up in the SU government needs to knock some heads together, and drastically cut back the duplicated effort and infighting between the design bureaus. Saving Sergei Korolev from his botched operation would help a lot. Very important, I think, would be for the Kremlin to realize years earlier that the Americans were serious about the moon shot, and put serious resources into building and properly testing their own big rocket. Result: a down-to-the-wire Moon Race, with neither side willing to back down regardless of who scores the first landing.

NASA funding had been declining since the mid-60's, with Congress planning to go to the moon (first), then quit. "Webb's Giant", the Soviet N1 moon rocket, comes as a nasty surprise. The Saturn V production lines reopen to build a few more, but work also accelerates on a reusable version, the "Flyback F1" booster and simplified cheaper upper stages. A shuttle is built, but it is the original concept: a small passenger and light-cargo support vehicle for a space station. With the push to get more mass into orbit, the economics of rocketry bites hard. So engineers convince Congress to fund an electromagnetic catapault across Florida; essentially it is a giant reusable launch stage, firing expendable and reusable upper stages toward orbit.

Supposing Korolev lived and maybe Gottlieb stuck around to facilitate N-1 functionality? Maybe the N-3 as well?
 
Well, no, you need to build with what you've got. I'm trying to not push a POD back before the 1960's. Clarke's novel had the catapult launcher, and mentioned that Saturn V's (long retired by 2001) had seen use through the 70's to loft the early space infrastructure. So you start with the existing hardware, and update to improved versions (simplified and/or reusable) to cut costs. Costs are still substantial, so you jump to an entirely new approach, catapult launching, to really bring down the price. The catapult can't boost the big single pieces that a Saturn V could, but with on-orbit assembly at existing space stations, you don't need to fly fully-assembled units.
 
In the decade before Apollo 11, the US had barely been able the get Sheppard up in a suborbital flight. Things looked to be moving fast, and then it all ground to an halt in 1972.

I fully expected something like Station 5 to be overhead in 2001, over 30 years in the future.

I didn't expect to have a phone with more computing power than all the computers on Earth in 35 years, when in 1974 My computer access was a 110 baud Teletype talking to a DEC PDP8/A, with a whopping 4k of Core RAM
 
I seem to remember reading a thread or blog-post a few years back called "The Road to 2001" and the general and the consensus was pretty much as above. It's doable, but probably requires a WWII-era POD or earlier.

The books actually give us a fair bit of info on that front. The Soviet union is obviously still a going concern, as is the cold war. The Communist sphere of influence comprises pretty much all of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, while "the West" has the Americas, Western Europe, and North Africa. It's mentioned Asia is kind of a mess with Japan and a few British colonial holdouts like Singapore and Hong Kong stuck in something of an armed stand-off with a presumably Chinese-lead Maoist coalition. while both South America and the Middle East appear to be doing a bit better than OTL with big multinational infrastructure projects occurring in both. (Massive solar farms in both the Sahara and Arabian deserts, and a super-highway linking Argentina and Alaska). The US invested heavily in Nuclear power in the mid century and by the time of the books its providing upwards of 90% of the US energy needs. the bulk of your planes trains and automobiles are electric with fossil fuels being seen as quaint. NASA's nuclear rocket program actually flies and is considered the progenitor of all "modern spacecraft". Space is heavily militarized with the US, USSR, China, France, Germany, and Japan, all having their own surveillance and orbital defense satellites.
 
I seem to remember reading a thread or blog-post a few years back called "The Road to 2001" and the general and the consensus was pretty much as above. It's doable, but probably requires a WWII-era POD or earlier.

The books actually give us a fair bit of info on that front. The Soviet union is obviously still a going concern, as is the cold war. The Communist sphere of influence comprises pretty much all of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, while "the West" has the Americas, Western Europe, and North Africa. It's mentioned Asia is kind of a mess with Japan and a few British colonial holdouts like Singapore and Hong Kong stuck in something of an armed stand-off with a presumably Chinese-lead Maoist coalition. while both South America and the Middle East appear to be doing a bit better than OTL with big multinational infrastructure projects occurring in both. (Massive solar farms in both the Sahara and Arabian deserts, and a super-highway linking Argentina and Alaska). The US invested heavily in Nuclear power in the mid century and by the time of the books its providing upwards of 90% of the US energy needs. the bulk of your planes trains and automobiles are electric with fossil fuels being seen as quaint. NASA's nuclear rocket program actually flies and is considered the progenitor of all "modern spacecraft". Space is heavily militarized with the US, USSR, China, France, Germany, and Japan, all having their own surveillance and orbital defense satellites.
Do you recall where the Road to 2001 thread is at?
 
Per the book, Pan Am's space clipper was the top of a 3-stage vehicle. First was the catapult launcher. Second was a winged booster that dropped off just short of orbit, and flew back to the launch site. The Orion III had relatively small engines and fuel supply to carry its passengers and/or cargo to Station V. Basically a much sleeker version of the Space Shuttle, but not burdened with the big main engines which stayed with the flyback booster. It's closer in concept to the Soviet Buran shuttle, but with a flying booster stage instead of an expendable Energiya.
 
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There was a mod for the Orbiter Space Flight Simulator called "World of 2001," with a wiki page describing the alternate history.

A key part of the technological optimism of 2001 is routine, cheap access to space. Clearly, their shuttle program turned out entirely differently from ours.

Here, the success of Apollo in the 1960's was followed by lunar bases and 50-man space stations, both American and Soviet, in the 1970's. These culminated in Mars missions in the early 1980's. All were launched by large expendable launch vehicles; Saturn V, Neptune, and N-1. Development of a reusable shuttle proceeded, but later, by which time we were all a bit smarter and better-looking. Full employment of the Apollo team was not a goal of the shuttle program; they were busy doing other things like going to Mars. This had beneficial effects on a lot of architecture choices, especially the decision to leave shuttle operation to third parties, rather than making it a space-agency monopoly.

Development of the spaceplane proceeded in two stages. The first stage was to develop the orbiter, which would get to orbit by staging a drop tank. The Lockheed Starclipper was taken as a design starting point, though the final configuration of the Orion II/III was different in many details. The Titov V was not; it unabashedly shows its origins as the borrowed Starclipper.

By the end of the 1980's, it became significantly cheaper to launch supplies in small pieces on the shuttles than to launch on Saturns, or even the economy-size Neptunes purchased in bulk. First propellant, and later, as orbital assembly became a going concern, structural elements, were brought up routinely in small daily (and later, hourly) flights rather than big monthly ones. Space stations and moon bases and the Mars base were not abandoned; they were expanded.

The market for shipments to orbit well-established, it was time to bring costs down another increment. The Orion IV and Titov B boosters were developed, and passenger service became cheap enough to be afforded by thousands, then millions. An orbiting hotel was built.

The USSR passed into the hands of pragmatic leaders, communist by name but with capitalist reforms. Ideological competition between the superpowers lessened, though did not end entirely. The two superpowers did cooperate to try to lessen other powers' access to space; this was almost completely unsuccessful. The Chinese built space stations and moon expeditions; the British built a moon base.

Thirty-eight declared nuclear powers flexed their muscles, and for reasons not fully explored or explained, at least six of them placed nuclear weapons in orbit. (By the time of 2010, this was apparently illegal by treaty, but violated anyway. What the advantage is of putting your nukes where it takes longer to use them and anyone can tamper with them, nobody can explain. We're faithful to the canon anyway.)

Today, the drop tank versions continue in service for some missions. While riding a reusable booster is clearly cheaper, boosters are scarce resources, closely scheduled. The drop tank allows missions, particularly military ones, to proceed without tight schedules in advance. It is the ONLY practical way to place a military spaceplane on alert, ready for launch but at an indeterminate time.
 
Start with Megaroc. Keep the US and USSR interested in humans in space. Have one or the other to for EOR for the lunar landing. Let the Soviets win the race for the moon but the conflict continue. Kill Proxmire.
 
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