AHC: Put humans on Mars by this year

Nuclear powered engines were deemed to be potential weapons for treaty purposes. Either this never gets adopted, or a later treaty reverses this policy.

How about... Instead of the ISS the advanced space powers in the late 90s agree on a common mars mission and that part of the treaties gets cut out with mutual agreement?

Works for me. :-D

No, "Nuclear Engines" like NERVA and DUMBO were NOT considered weapons and were and are exempted from such treaties. Nuclear power reactors are also exempt which is why the USSR tended to use them a lot.

Now let me be clear, (I swear I'd written this before but it bears repeating) Orion (boom-boom) pulse units ARE nuclear weapons. They are designed and built just like them the only differences it they are designed to project a majority of their force and generated plasma, (hence why they are designated "External Pulsed Plasma Propulsion" units or EP3: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20000097368.pdf) in one direction. They are nuclear shape charges but make no mistake in order to produce them on the scale needed for even ONE (1) Orion type ship you have to throw ANY possibility of nuclear weapons control and likely proliferation limitation out the window!

While the pulse units are not 'good' nuclear weapons you will still need to streamline and expand what amounts to the ability to make dozens of nuclear weapons a year to into the ability to make THOUSANDS of nuclear weapons a year! Think about that for a second. You need hundreds of pulse unit to get from Earth into orbit, close to a thousand to get to the Moon and likely a couple of thousand to get to Mars, etc. And so you are making thousands of pulse units per year. Thousands of nuclear weapons and how do you ensure that ALL of those are going to space? Even more so keep in mind that Orion, despite what those working on it may have wished, was essentially getting military (Air Force) support in the hope of using it to put Orion Battleships (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2714/1) with hundreds of actual nuclear weapons onboard into Cis-Lunar space as a deterrent system.

And since there would be no way of keeping THAT a secret the USSR would have no choice to do the same.. Or worse strike before it became available. And like I said, kiss ANY hope of limiting nuclear weapons goodbye since you HAVE to put into place a system that can make a thousand warheads per year for years on end...

Kennedy was horrified at the concept all right and with good reason! (Now if I can ever get the point where I finish writing "Mac and Orion"... but frankly I can't see my way past the obvious 'cliffhanger' since even if McNamara justifies it to Kennedy, then Kennedy is still going to have to make the 'political' decision and it doesn't seem to me that opening the Solar System will be worth the cost it may entail)

I love me some Orion goodness but once you take a step back and look at the times and places I'm not seeing anyone capable of making that decision given the circumstances... Now if you have a killer rock coming your way the circumstances are obviously changed...

Randy
 
earlier antibiotics, like in the 1920s

And these days, I’m liking the theory that WWI was hard to avoid, but WWII relatively easy, even given T of V.

So, larger population means larger economy, and we take it from there! :)

Contrary to conventional wisdom war (Cold or Hot) is very good for some technological advancements and very bad for others.

For rocketry and eventually space flight that was one of the advancements national conflict was good for. The lack of it at the peer level the past few decades is why we are not on Mars now.

If Germany, the USSR and the US didn’t toss down super sized checks for imagined military necessity we likely wouldn’t have made it to the moon yet.
 
Keep the NERVA program going in the 60's while Apollo is on, but drop the reusable idea. Without that, its a high thrust low weight rocket that is ideal for shipping heavy stuff out of LEO.
With that available, a Mars option is a lot more feasible.
Of course, you still have a lot of issues that need to be sorted by long term space station testing, but you have the basis for a much more powerful rocket, with shorter transit times and all the advantages that brings.
 
You will need America in permanent fear, that SPECTRE will rain death on us from orbit, to get that funding.https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/james-bond-a-space-odyssey.464203/#post-18706968

Scott's not wrong really but the tech wasn't really there yet. Close, after all we had things proposed like the Saturn Applications Single Stage To Orbit, (SASSTO, http://www.astronautix.com/s/sassto.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_SASSTO) which arguably could 'fit' the bill. Especially if one isn't wedded to the idea of SSTO as Bird One was not. (TSTO's are vastly easier to produce and make work) But vertical accuracy in landing to that degree wasn't quite there yet.

Still I ran with the idea if anyone wants to take a look :)

Now I'll also toss out another idea of how/why since one thing we KNOW motivates people is fear. Suppose that Project Icarus, (https://www.wired.com/2012/03/mit-saves-the-world-project-icarus-1967/) really had to happen and it happened a bit earlier BEFORE there are any Saturn-Vs to save the day? Frankly it would seem we're screwed but really there WAS a way but as I pointed out above, doing so changes everything and if not done carefully NOT in a good way.

"Orion Shall Rise!"

The Earth is doomed. We have a couple of years, maybe a decade but by the dawning of the 70s the human race is doomed to extinction. (No, it's not disco! Granted that's bad but its only metaphorically an extinction level event.. Mostly) Something big and bad is headed out way and we have a means to take it out but it requires a crash program to build and utilize Orion drive spacecraft and to do so the two main super-powers must agree to cooperate and share knowledge and capability.

Of course they won't, not as things stand because to do so would change the very balance and nature of power in the late 20th Century. Both super-powers are at risk of loosing their status and the nuclear genie would be loosed forever to just about anyone. So doom actually may be the 'better' option since someone might survive to carry on. But maybe there is a way, maybe a compromise can be reached. Because in the end, at the very heart of the matter the drive for survival may allow a compromise that looks quite tempting in the short run. Stasis. We, the US and USSR agree to freeze the world situation as it is today. to divide the world into spheres of influence and agree neither to provoke military or ideological conflict or to attempt to change that status-quo. In doing so we will re-make the UN into an effective world government run by the two super-powers as a condominium* but appearing to be a multi-national organization. We will the turn our political-military-industrial complex's to the task of not only riding the Earth of this threat but ensuring that not only does it never happen again but that mankind will never face such a threat of annihilation again.

But once the threat is gone reality rears its ugly head. Venus is a hell-world of pressure and heat. Survivable in places but not open to extensive colonization. Similarly Mars is less than hoped for. Man can live there surrounded by heavy technology and constant effort. And really nothing better is out there. At least in this Solar System. Maintaining the Status quo requires that a lot of things have to be changed. Holding back technological and social advancement would end up being some of those thing. But there's still hope. Maybe someone can invent an interstellar drive or magical force field before things get too bad... Maybe... ;)

Randy
*=No points if you got this far and didn't see where I was going with this :)
 
Top