60s/70s in Space: What was Really Plausible?

As for suborbital refueling - sure enough, it has never been tried. Clapp noted that yes, it might be tricky, for cryogenics such as liquid oxygen. However H2O2 is not cryogenic, making things easier.

It is a very intriguing idea.

No, it just tends to explode if it isn't treated right...

So NASA's best bet is no JFK to jump the gun?

In my feeling, yes, although the issue is substantially more complicated than merely "no JFK". The real problem is the "Space Race" mentality, so, somewhat counter intuitively, the best way to help out the American program is to hobble the Soviet one (sorry Soviets, you just don't have the resources for an awesome long-run program). Otherwise, there will still be pressure on Nixon or LBJ (who, note, was probably the one President who truly, honestly, completely adored the space program) or whoever to start a big space program to beat the Russians, and under the circumstances Apollo quickly becomes evident as the most logical choice in that area. Doable and impressive, if expensive.

I am slowly developing an idea along those lines besides working on ETS (and my day job, of course).
 
So NASA's best bet is no JFK to jump the gun?

I don't think it is that simple. Kennedy only echoed collective thoughts of USA, IMHO. Both adversaries locked themselves in stupid pissing contest aimed at the moon because it was there, it was measurable and achievable. Had Kennedy not issued challenge, another president would. Do not forget he won elections in signifacant part using Ike's perceived weakness in the issue of Space Race. It was really popular back then.
 
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Perhaps the easiest way to do it would be to militarize space. Suppose the Russians get a bit trigger happy after sputnik and decide to shoot for perhaps orbital launched nukes or maybe something like the "rods from god." Needless to say, the standard American response is to act like an insecure teenager and overcompensate and we suddenly have a "killsat gap" the response is American weapons satellites, then Russian ones at higher orbits designed to shoot down the American ones, then space stations, then possible moon bases, etc.

Even if the Russians only have a token presence in space, it doesn't really matter. All we need is for the Americans to perceive that "the Russians are coming!" and the defense industry to massage that insecurity and congress and the pentagon will spend billions on various ambitious projects. And as we have seen IOTL is that even the end of the Cold War won't really kill the American appetite for overly expensive weapon systems.
 
Fortunately for us, this system appeared hugely impractical. To be useful as a strike weapon the satellite missile would need to be in LEO, to minimize transit time. In order to have a non stop coverage of the enemy territory you would need to launch a constellation of satellites and costs of this effort to launch and then maintain it would be staggering. Their orbits would be a known and totally predictable, so the enemy could shoot them down.

In the end both opponents came to the conclusion it is more cost-beneficial to go for ICBMs and SSBNs. Same capability, more money saved for other items.
 
Spot on.

Emperor Norton I

The NASA top historians, like John Logsdon call that the Von Braun paradigm.

In the 50's Von Braun defined the future of the space program as follow

Step 1
An cheap space transportation system to Earth orbit

Step 2
A space station

Step 3
The first two steps supporting Moon and Mars landings...

Thanks to Kennedy, Step 3 (what you calls the golden age) was literally propelled to the frontline... without Step 1 and Step 2 to support it. As a result it collapsed.

It is as simple as that. Kennedy had NASA put the cart before the horse.

After Apollo, quite simply NASA returned to the Step 1 and Step 2 it had skipped in 1961.

Step 2 was the space shuttle

Step 3 is the ISS.

Disagree.

Neither the space shuttle nor the ISS are what was envisioned in 1959. The former is not a cost-effective transport system, and the latter is not a base for space exploration.

E of Pi said it right--it's all about motivation. Space travel is totally doable given money spent on the project. It is also not economically self-sustaining. But neither is the military. We do it anyway.

The Space Race was a side effect of the missile race. For the Space Race to continue with the same intensity with which it started, there has to be motivation. The Soviets making it to the moon could have done it.
 
One people landed on the moon, the space race was "over" and NASA became an expensive prestige project that would not have another big prestige payoff.

While the costs of Vietnam was certainly a factor, when NASA's big ambitions failed, Vietnam was no longer happening. The real killer was the desire for increased social spending, and many people were uncomfortable explaining why expensive NASA projects were being supported when there was still so much urban poverty.

NASA had a limited model. After Apollo, it really needed strategic thinking on how space exploration could continue. What should have happened was:

1) A strategy to determine how private space exploration/enterprises could happen.

2) Identifying key technologies to develop and encouraging them through X Prizes.

3) Keeping Skylab in orbit.

4) Changing emphasis from "more, faster" to "cheaper, smaller" in terms of satellites, etc.

5) Not relying solely on the Shuttle, but keeping ongoing rockets until the Shuttle proved it would be cheaper.

A less ambitious program would be more sustanable, and probably lead to more cumulative success in the long term.
 
Fortunately for us, this system appeared hugely impractical. To be useful as a strike weapon the satellite missile would need to be in LEO, to minimize transit time. In order to have a non stop coverage of the enemy territory you would need to launch a constellation of satellites and costs of this effort to launch and then maintain it would be staggering. Their orbits would be a known and totally predictable, so the enemy could shoot them down.

In the end both opponents came to the conclusion it is more cost-beneficial to go for ICBMs and SSBNs. Same capability, more money saved for other items.

The Soviets, however, actually did develop and deploy orbital nuclear weaponry, and in fact are the only country in the world known to have done so (don't be fooled by the "fractional" bit, these were full-on orbital bombs). The practice was banned by SALT II, although the development of early warning satellites had reduced their value compared to, say, SSBNs.
 
My opinion on a few things that messed up the space program:


  • It was a civilian organization undertaking rather than military undertaking. I understand the symbolism of peace in space and all that to keep the military from being the forefront leader in space, but the fact is that Utopian thought doesn't match the reality. America will spend ungodly amounts on defense, and the military always has a massive budget. NASA gets budget cuts. The Defense Department cries foul with cuts to things it doesn't even require.
  • It was driven to its greatest heights by a competition rather than on the merits of what it was doing (even though every school child was told it was for science, and that's a nice sentiment until the Soviets stop competing, at which point everyone apparently got bored of that science). That competition proved not to be enduring, given that the Soviets gave up with the Moon.
  • Kennedy tasked America with going to the moon, which did indeed propel the space program and all the nice science and innovation that went behind it. However, it also upset natural development which was LEO, followed by creation of space stations with maybe a permanent space station, and then using those to go between the Earth and to the Moon, and worlds beyond. Without a permanent space station, there's no anchor keeping us to space, and no object to aid in more easily getting things between the Earth and the Moon.
  • After Vietnam and economic hiccups, the US was not as economically willing to commit to space initiatives, which lead Nixon to approve the shuttle and cut out the rest, even though the shuttle proved to not be cheap.
After all of that, though, I think what undid the space program most was just the cuts post-Vietnam. We could have continued Apollo, and focused at the same time on making a space station to aid Apollo and an intermediary craft to get to that station (a Saturn variant, most likely). Even though we skipped steps 1 and 2 to do 3, we could have done 1 and 2 while 3 was ongoing until we had all of them. I think the rest of the list would just be nitpicking in that event.


While the costs of Vietnam was certainly a factor, when NASA's big ambitions failed, Vietnam was no longer happening. The real killer was the desire for increased social spending, and many people were uncomfortable explaining why expensive NASA projects were being supported when there was still so much urban poverty.
Vietnam was still happening. And after it was done after '73 ('75 when the South fell), the US still had to deal with the economic negativity it caused which still lingered. NASA's budget today is actually very meager in comparison to other things; there is actually a popular thought that like a fourth of spending goes to NASA, which is not true. NASA's budget for an entire year is the Defense Department's budget for just a month. And I do believe I've read that with all the money spent on the shuttle in it's day, you could have simply continued Apollo missions for the same cost.
 
One people landed on the moon, the space race was "over" and NASA became an expensive prestige project that would not have another big prestige payoff.

While the costs of Vietnam was certainly a factor, when NASA's big ambitions failed, Vietnam was no longer happening. The real killer was the desire for increased social spending, and many people were uncomfortable explaining why expensive NASA projects were being supported when there was still so much urban poverty.

Excuse me? In 1969 Vietnam wasn't happening? In 1970, 1971 Vietnam wasn't happening? Last time I checked, the US didn't pull out of Vietnam until 1973, a year after NASA had irrevocably committed itself to Shuttle.

NASA had a limited model. After Apollo, it really needed strategic thinking on how space exploration could continue. What should have happened was:

It did attempt to develop strategic thinking on how space exploration could continue. However, a combination of overly idealistic administrators, a budgetary iron bind imposed by a hostile Congress, and excessive ambition on NASA's part meant that all that strategic thinking was completely abandoned. But they certainly did try to think through the future.

1) A strategy to determine how private space exploration/enterprises could happen.

2) Identifying key technologies to develop and encouraging them through X Prizes.

This is just not realistic for the late 1960s and early 1970s. Space needed to be much more mature and developed for people to really get started on privatizing it; starting that process at this point is putting the cart before the horse. It's like saying that Britain, in the 1800s, should have created a modern fiat money/central bank system. Well, maybe, but the theoretical sophistication and financial experience that led to the creation of the modern system in the twentieth century just isn't there yet, and there are insuperable cultural and mental barriers towards that direction in play.

Similarly here. COMSAT, the government funded corporation in charge of communications satellites was founded just a few years earlier. Intelsat is still the only real player in the international biz, and it's under the control of a group of governments. The French and Germans are working on Symphonie, yeah, but again, that's a group of governments. Transit is the most sophisticated navigation system in the world (and again, governmental). So on and so forth. Privatization would be like having Leo X go, "Yeah, you know this German cat Luther? Pretty great guy, man. We ought to do what he's talking about." Only there's not even a Luther yet, it would be Leo X kicking off the Reformation of his own will.

3) Keeping Skylab in orbit.

Although Skylab was pretty, there were multiple significant obstacles to continued use. First and foremost, it simply had not been designed for continued use and servicing, being more of a very large version of the Tiangong or (early) Salyut stations that was launched with all the equipment and supplies it would need already aboard and installed. By the end of the program, it was doubtful whether it could support more than a month or so of further occupancy, and certain critical systems like the trash airlock were showing alarming indications of failure.

Second, it had a drastically different internal pressure than the Shuttle, meaning that it would be difficult (although far from impossible) for people to go from one to the other. While not unsolvable, it was an issue that would, of course, not arise in any new space station program (which could--and did, of course--resolve the first problem as well).

Third, as I noted above it was simply getting worn out by the end of the program. While not outright to the point of failure, a number of critical systems were reaching their design lifetimes or showing problems (again, the trash airlock is a perfect example), and most of these critical systems were not designed for on-orbit repair or replacement. That's not to mention how many of its systems were a decade or more behind the time--'60s era technology, compared to the Shuttle's '70s era equipment (and upgrades to bring them into the '80s and beyond).

4) Changing emphasis from "more, faster" to "cheaper, smaller" in terms of satellites, etc.

This actually doesn't make any sense. People do keep introducing (relatively) small sats (it's happened in the '60s, '80s, '90s...), but inevitably it turns out that bigger, more expensive satellites are more economical for a lot of things. Not everything of course, there is value in small sats, but generally costs scale up less rapidly than benefits for larger satellites (up to a point) and there are things small satellites just can't do, like direct home television broadcast. Besides, at this point there aren't really any smallsat launchers, which renders the whole exercise much less practical because you have to spend more or less the same amount of money regardless of satellite weight, as long as it's less than the maximum weight your vehicle can lift.

5) Not relying solely on the Shuttle, but keeping ongoing rockets until the Shuttle proved it would be cheaper.

But if you don't rely solely on Shuttle, it won't be cheaper, in the long or short run. They knew this perfectly well, it's still true today (in that reusable designs generally need high flight rates on the order of "all the satellites" to be economically superior to expendables), and that's why they got rid of all the competition.

A less ambitious program would be more sustanable, and probably lead to more cumulative success in the long term.

Agreed, but that lack of ambition needs to start in the '50s, not the '70s. By the '70s, it's probably too late (ETS notwithstanding) to stop the Shuttle train, and that is probably going to end up somewhere near OTL at best (you might get marginal improvements by shrinking NASA budgets even more and having them develop a "glider" crew transport shuttle that's little more than a big lifting body Apollo. But it's not going to be a big improvement in economics or anything). And the combination of invested infrastructure and high development costs is going to make it difficult for the US to move beyond Shuttle, particularly if it's much like the OTL form.

Disagree.

Neither the space shuttle nor the ISS are what was envisioned in 1959. The former is not a cost-effective transport system, and the latter is not a base for space exploration.

E of Pi said it right--it's all about motivation. Space travel is totally doable given money spent on the project. It is also not economically self-sustaining. But neither is the military. We do it anyway.

The Space Race was a side effect of the missile race. For the Space Race to continue with the same intensity with which it started, there has to be motivation. The Soviets making it to the moon could have done it.

The Space Shuttle is not a cost-effective transportation system because the technology and conceptual thinking of the 1960s and 1970s could not actually result in a cost-effective reusable launch vehicle. It was certainly intended to be, to some extent, the conceptual replacement for von Braun's shuttlecraft (although originally with Saturn Vs for heavy lift because already developed) Similarly with the ISS--that, at least, could (and can) technologically have been a jumping-off point, but of course funding issues prevented it. Nevertheless, there have been a lot of plans to use the ISS for further exploration--even today, there's the Exploration Platform concept which would leverage the ISS both directly and indirectly.
 
And I do believe I've read that with all the money spent on the shuttle in it's day, you could have simply continued Apollo missions for the same cost.

That was the Griffin analysis, which I understand to have understated the cost of Apollo missions (I can't find a source right ATM, Google is polluted with Constellation-related stuff). You may have been able to do one Apollo lunar flight a year or every other year, though, and you certainly could have had a relatively aggressive station program (cough, points at sig, coughs).
 
I think that the -Apollo program had be livable political, if Soviet manage manned Moon landing or US-Vietnam war never happened

there many pod for that:
like Vladimir Chelomei UR-700 is taken and not N1 rocket by Sergei Korolev

or China end there civil war in 1949 in two separate states : People's Republic of North China and the Republic of south China
last is governed by the anticommunist Kuomintang, they invade Tibet and north Vietnam durning 1950s
so the 1960s the USA have no US-Vietnam war like in OTL and more money on Space program, in theory ...
 
A big problem with things like Lunar Bases and such is that their resupply would be very costly and this would consequently limit the amount of stuff that could be done on the Moon.

The peaks of permanent sunlight of Lunar southpole were not find until quite recently I believe. So powering up a moon base right after Apollo would involve nuclear power, which is frankly overkill for such a small installation and has its own set of issues as well.

The lack of volatile elements like hydrogen and oxygen is also another problem on the moon. Sure you could use regolith to get some of that, but that would be rather cumbersome and unwieldy.

Mars offers far better possibilities for permanent basing, provided that you manage to get there first. The carbon dioxide from Martian atmopshere could be used alongside water to make rocket fuels and other volatiles. Something which would lead to near self sufficiency down the line.

A possible approach to lower launch costs could be to use big dump boosters like the Sea Dragon or ROMBUS.

Something which could spur further "racing" could be a three way space race like what I am planning to have in my TL.
 
The lack of volatile elements like hydrogen and oxygen is also another problem on the moon. Sure you could use regolith to get some of that, but that would be rather cumbersome and unwieldy.

maybe a lucky early find of lunar water would help?
 
WI the SU pulls a China without the detente and the Cold War becames something purely empires struggling with a new space race?

Its almost ASB but I can imagine a SU/China mission to Mars just for d*ck waving ...
 
The peaks of permanent sunlight of Lunar southpole were not find until quite recently I believe. So powering up a moon base right after Apollo would involve nuclear power, which is frankly overkill for such a small installation and has its own set of issues as well.
While specific ones were only recently surveyed, their existence as a class was predicted in the 1800s--surveying for them would be a key thing before setting up any lunar base. Luckily many of them(being polar) are also located near "cold traps" that are the likliest sites for lunar water ice. Which sort of addresses your second point. And while nukes do have their own issues, they can be made fairly small--check out SNAP-10, which made 500 W from a 290 kg package, or the Soviet TOPAZ which made 6 kW from about 1000 kg (SNAP's size was more of a proof-of-concept, TOPAZ was more headed towards an operational system).

A possible approach to lower launch costs could be to use big dump boosters like the Sea Dragon or ROMBUS.
There's "big dumb boosters" and then there's "laughably huge stupid ideas." Calling for an engine with a combustion chamber the size of my dorm room leads me to firmly stick Sea Dragon into the latter--plus, 500 mT? If it was smaller, more like 40-70 tons, it'd be a lot more useful, and the point of the concept is more about the techniques than the specific size, something that a lot of people casually interested in space loose track of. It's not the size that makes it cheap, rather it's the construction and design, which could just as easily be smaller.
 
Jumping in for giggles

In government programs- you have three factors- what's technically possible, what's financially posssbile, and what's politically possible being the key constraints.

Developing the tech is the least of your problems. The key is having enough resources and political will to keep going until you achieve something.
Project Apollo IMO did exactly what it was supposed to do- land Americans on the Moon and bring them home safely, except in Apollo 1 and 13's cases.
Planetary probes were cheap but scientifically effective so they'd get funded without too much fuss, but the great what next post-Apollo was what haunted NASA in 1972. There was no political will to do anything challenging, there were money constraints due to Vietnam War hangover.

IMO separating NASA from the USAF was a political fig leaf to foreign public opinion that proved fatal to its political relevance in DC.
Butterfly the Outer Space treaty of 1965 and NASA becomes the skunk works for the USAF, developing and launching the recon and maybe orbital weaponry assets as well as infrastructure to support permanent installations in space.

Another development is don't let LBJ go nuts in 1964 with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution declaring war without really declaring war, committing far more resources to what IMO was a horrible waste of lives, money, and time.

If Nam never escalates, there's money for the next stage after Apollo.
Also, political will exists to take and keep the high ground.
I agree with e of pi and truthislife re: the technical and political issues.

Dunois's got a point re: Mars as a better way station but even if you Project Manhattan'd NASA with a quarter of the defense budget for a decade, you wouldn't get a Mars base until maybe 1990 at best.

A permanent Moon base with 20-30 people was definitely doable by 1980.
Could we do a lot better with v2.0? Sure.
Same for a permanent ISS.

As far as I'm concerned nuke plants present very little problem on Luna.
If a reactor loses it, just make sure it's separated enough not to contaminate the living modules. If it's a MSR thorium reactor- then really, making sure it's an entirely sealed system waste or meltdowns shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Disposal of waste is a lot simpler. You bury it 100m away after vitrifying it in a solar furnace preferably with robots.
I mean, seriously, are you worried about alpha or beta particle contamination of the environment vs constant exposure to cosmic rays? :rolleyes:

I'm NOT saying you'd have O'Neill or if you like, Tsiolkovsky self-sustaining colonies by 1980, but the heavy-lift capacity and other factors (lunar mining and mass-drivers to send stuff to orbit might get moving enough to be possible by 2000 but you'd need an order of magnitude more funding for twenty years to get to that point.

Keep in mind, with far more robust space competition between the USA and USSR, the USSR could economically implode even earlier, roughly 1980.
Of course, would the US be a lot more interested in looting the wreckage and salvaging Proton rockets or Buryat shuttles or anything else? YMMV.
 
There's "big dumb boosters" and then there's "laughably huge stupid ideas." Calling for an engine with a combustion chamber the size of my dorm room leads me to firmly stick Sea Dragon into the latter--plus, 500 mT? If it was smaller, more like 40-70 tons, it'd be a lot more useful, and the point of the concept is more about the techniques than the specific size, something that a lot of people casually interested in space loose track of. It's not the size that makes it cheap, rather it's the construction and design, which could just as easily be smaller.

I don't disagree with your counter-argument here, in fact I was about to point it out in my post but did not in the end.

The argument that "uses would be found" for the massive amount of lift capacity provided by these things can certainly be made. But frankly said uses would requires decades of development themselves, especially if we think about space based solar power and other similar things.

In a nutshell going on the moon with a Sea Dragon would be like Columbus going to America with a Malaccamax container ship but without any prior knowledge of what might be found there.
It would be overkill more simply put.

Now some of the technologies imagined for ROMBUS have found their way into the DC-X programme I believe, which would be far better for today's needs.

As far as I'm concerned nuke plants present very little problem on Luna.
If a reactor loses it, just make sure it's separated enough not to contaminate the living modules. If it's a MSR thorium reactor- then really, making sure it's an entirely sealed system waste or meltdowns shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Disposal of waste is a lot simpler. You bury it 100m away after vitrifying it in a solar furnace preferably with robots.
I mean, seriously, are you worried about alpha or beta particle contamination of the environment vs constant exposure to cosmic rays? :rolleyes:

Its more the weight constraints which are problematic to me regarding nuclear power in space or on the Moon. There is also the fact that using conventional nuclear power for only a few kW seems like a waste to me, as solar panels can do the job better.

Nuclear power would be far more interesting to use if the station required something like a few megawatts of energy in my opinion, say to power mass drivers for example.

On Mars though, nuclear power would be the ideal source for water splitting and making methane and plastics out of CO2 with in situ resource utilisation.
The greenhouses and fishponds would also require a lot of power as well.
 
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