AHC: Proton wank

So, I've been reading my way through this discussion on what would happen if NASA had kept flying the Saturn 1B. Most of the thread is filled with creative ways in which the Saturn 1B might have been upgraded.

Now, the Soviets actually kept flying their equivalent to the Saturn 1B - indeed, despite attempts to switch to better and newer rockets for the last 40 years, the Proton still flies. It has also barely been upgraded. Though not for lack of proposals, some of them quite extreme.

Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to propose the most extraordinary space program you think plausible that would use the Proton as its main rocket and what the Proton rocket might turn into if the Soviets really start to tinker with the machine?

fasquardon
 

Archibald

Banned
The Proton can certainly do a lot of missions, even without a LH2 upper stage. So you want a lot of Proton ? OTL it launched a lot of unmanned probes, so let's try manned spaceflight.

With two Proton (upgraded with the KVRD LH2 stage) you can return to the Moon surface, although margins would be very tight. https://www.google.fr/?client=firefox-b#q="early+lunar+access"

With four Protons you could go to Mars but not to the surface - Sun-Mars L1, 1 million km away, from which astronauts could drive rovers on Mars surface
https://www.google.fr/#hl=fr&q="zubrin""athena""proton"

Third option would be asteroid landings - you could do that with two or three Protons, for the closest Near Earth Object.
 
Top