AHC/WI: An American "Soyuz"

(I have a depth of ignorance which may become evident. Regardless of my ignorance, I will bumble towards what I think is a reasonable overall thought.)

The Soyuz has been the rocket and and spacecraft of the Russians going on almost 50 years, and I believe the date it will be replaced is 2020. That seems to show an operational thought in the Russian space program of emphasis on reliability and sticking with what works, while refining what has worked.

The American space program has never really had something comparable, and certainly does not at the moment. The closest would probably be the Space Shuttle, which was in use for 30 years (though it also had a knack of malfunctioning and exploding, so it wasn't that reliable of a workhorse vehicle).
Mercury, Gemini and Apollo/Saturn each lasted only a few years. I do know of plans to utilize those programs for multipurpose goals and to expand on them and perhaps make them dedicated vehicles, such as MOL, Blue Gemini, Big Gemini, the proposal to use Gemini to land on the Moon, the Saturn MLV, etc. The problem for Gemini and Mercury was, concerning utilizing them for different things like MOL, funding and NASA and the government not wanting to do those projects or canceling them. Concerning anything that might utilize Gemini as a dedicated vehicle and to land on the Moon, the problem was that Apollo/Saturn was the planned moon lander and future NASA vehicle, Gemini was viewed as simply the test bed for it and the bridge to it, and that plan never changed. And the problem for Apollo and Saturn was that when it came into being and NASA was extrapolating on it as the base for the (foreseeable) future of all space exploration, the public largely saw its mission as complete since the Moon race was won and the government cut funding and all future Saturn rocket and Apollo capsule production was cancelled and the program was cancelled.
That's where the Shuttle came in: a Low-Earth-Orbit vehicle intended as a support for the Saturn rockets, which ended up being the basis of the manned space program. And it became that because, to paraphrase Nixon, it's not good for morale for Americans to see out of work astronauts.

The challenge here is to make an American analogue to the Soyuz come into being: something that's used for decades and decades, refined and improved but always existing as the foundation of the manned space program. And what if that happened?
 
The Soyuz did have a lot of incidents over its long life, I think even the first flight killed the cosmonaut.

I think the best option for the US in hindsight would have been to keep the Saturn/Apollo going with continual updates like the Soyuz. However much of Soyuz' success came from having a continuing job to do, unlike the space shuttle. If Nasa had launched Skylab B in the mid 70s for the shuttle to use it would be now hailed as a great success.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Titan-Gemini was the American Soyuz. An alternative would be the Saturn I and potentially Saturn IB design. I know they are both heavy weight vehicles, but the US only built light launchers and heavy launchers until the 1980s. For a launcher used relatively unchanged to the present day the Atlas rocket could be used, and perhaps smaller versions could even become the first single stage to orbit rockets. The Atlas is a 1.5 stage because it is a triple design that ejects 2 of its engines, leaving a single sustainer engine to delivery the vehicle to orbit.
 
Gemini was inferior to Soyuz in 1 key aspect, it couldn't transfer crew from one space craft to another without a spacewalk. Both Soyuz and Apollo could do this which is why I consider the Apollo the American version of the Soyuz, the fact that it is vastly more capable is a side benefit.
 
actually NASA miss this chance TWICE !

back in Apollo program NASA ordered several proposal by the US Industry what let to NAA/rockwell Apollo CSM
but one of the Competitors General Electric presented a US version of Soyuz: the Apollo D-2 in 1961
Apollo_D-2_Diagrams.jpg


the second chance NASA had was in 2004
with Crew Exploration Vehicle aka ORION aka Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle aka Exploration Flight Test
The Northrop Grumman Corp. ,Boeing Co., Transhab, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Andrews presented Soyuz type Spacecraft.
in 2006 NASA selected Northrop Grumman Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. for further CEV development work.
but a change in administration of NASA hit the program hard, the mission module was drop and CEV became ORION
 

Archibald

Banned
As Michel said - General Electric entry for Apollo (1960) looks so similar to Soyuz (which did not appeared until 1966 or so) that there is an unfounded rumour the Soviet raided General Electric at some point. :D

The original Apollo (in the 1959-1960 era) was much lighter and simpler, closer from Gemini in fact. First and foremost a low Earth orbit ship with a possible upgrade to a cislunar flight... later.

Let's suppose JFK never starts the Moon race, May 1961.
An immediate casulaty is Gemini - Mercury mark II never exists.
NASA would have moved from Mercury to Block I Apollo without intermediate step. In turn the block I Apollo would have been much simpler since not build for the Moon but for Earth orbit duties.

Mercury > Gemini > Block I Apollo > Block II Apollo
becomes
Mercury > block I Apollo

Manned circumlunar flight is the ultimate manned mission consistent with our planned booster capability, that is, with the Saturn vehicle. Before circumlunar missions are attempted, earth-orbital flights will be required for spacecraft evaluation for crew training, and for the development of operational techniques. In conjunction with, or in addition to these qualification flights, the spacecraft can be used in an Earth orbit as a laboratory for scientific measurements or technological developments in space. In order to achieve this multiplicity of missions it may be desirable to employ the so-called “modular concept" in the design of the advanced manned spacecraft - a vehicle made of building blocks, or modules. Basically, the spacecraft is conceived to consist of three modules: a command center module, a propulsion module, and a mission module."
This is quote from a 1960 NASA document; the last line pretty much describes, well, a Soyuz !

Then Apollo may last for decades - as happened with Soyuz, plus Orion shape is still that of Apollo, closing the shuttle parenthesis.
 
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The Apollo capsule/Saturn could easily have become an American Soyuz. Another option to the over-engineered and over-complicated shuttle would have been the earlier USAF's DynaSoar, a much smaller and less complicated reusable space plane intended to be launched by Titan booster. To this day, I still see the DynaSoar's cancellation the biggest missed opportunity in the US manned space program
 
One missed opportunity for a NASA Soyuz equivalent came in the form of Big Gemini. A Gemini-derived Manned Spacecraft that could carry as much crew as OTL's STS (9), and be at least as capable - sans the re-usability part.

Big_Gemini.png

One possible configuration of Big Gemini

As for Soyuz. While it has become the most dependable and reliable Manned Spacecraft AFAIK, it did suffer severe reliability issues in its infancy. With Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11 both ending with Loss Of Crew, with a number of near-misses over the years. In short, even with a Soyuz equivalent for NASA, Murphy's Law is still going to bite sooner or later.
 

Thande

Donor
The Apollo capsule/Saturn could easily have become an American Soyuz.

Apollo was too expensive for what it was, and NASA struggled to find a launcher appropriate for orbital missions--if the Shuttle had not been favoured, they would have built the Saturn II for the purpose, but in OTL they were forced to use the Saturn IB for Skylab missions etc which was way too much buck for the bang. The point about Soyuz is that it's relatively cheap and the rocket doesn't lift more than it has to. The closest thing the US ever had to Soyuz, as noted above, was Gemini.

A modern Soyuz launch is thought to cost the Russians about 80 million US dollars. The US has never had anything in that ballpark. The Skylab Apollo launches cost over 200 million dollars in 1970s money, which is about four times that in modern dollars.
 
The Apollo capsule/Saturn could easily have become an American Soyuz. Another option to the over-engineered and over-complicated shuttle would have been the earlier USAF's DynaSoar, a much smaller and less complicated reusable space plane intended to be launched by Titan booster. To this day, I still see the DynaSoar's cancellation the biggest missed opportunity in the US manned space program

Well there is a TL right here that shows such a thing happening. Eyes Turned Skywards. The first page dealing with it is here.
 

Archibald

Banned
Apollo was too expensive for what it was, and NASA struggled to find a launcher appropriate for orbital missions--if the Shuttle had not been favoured, they would have built the Saturn II for the purpose, but in OTL they were forced to use the Saturn IB for Skylab missions etc which was way too much buck for the bang. The point about Soyuz is that it's relatively cheap and the rocket doesn't lift more than it has to. The closest thing the US ever had to Soyuz, as noted above, was Gemini.

A modern Soyuz launch is thought to cost the Russians about 80 million US dollars. The US has never had anything in that ballpark. The Skylab Apollo launches cost over 200 million dollars in 1970s money, which is about four times that in modern dollars.

Good point. The Apollo as we knew it was overweight for LEO job (30 tons with the full complement of propellant, so much the Skylab vehicle flew with their tanks empty)
because it had designed first and foremost as a lunar ship. Now the original, 1960 design was a different matter...

Of all the non lethal soyuz near-miss, Soyuz 5 was (by far) the most frightening with the damn thing re-entering in the wrong direction
 
Soyuz rockets - the us used variants of the Thor/delta family until recently. In fact NASA is planning on using a Delta 2 to launch one more space craft yet. The Delta 4 doesnt count, as all it shares is the name.

Similarly, Atlas and Titan rockets existed for a long time.

As others have pointed out, the us suffered from designing a craft specifically for a moon mission, which was over engineered for leo.

The Soviets also did a LOT of repuroposing. Several of there satellites were based on Soyuz hardware, as is the progress freighter.

The us designed a fancy new design for every project, not quite, but too close, and didnt even fly most of the manned experiments...
 
For an American Soyuz, you need an American Vostok

Original Atlas development hinged on the estimated weight of the H-Bomb, so Convair had plans for a heavy warhead and a light with related rockets for both: a 5 engine cluster of 440000 pounds, and a 3 engine cluster of 250000 pounds

PoD: General Dynamics pushes the Atlas to what it could have been, 'Big' Atlas, with Four staged Boosters in place of two, and Centaur 2nd Stage to stay in the launch business



By Time Atlas is out of the ICBM game, it's still in the heavy lift game in the mid '60s, and Man-Rated, keeps building the cheap,efficient Big Atlas at Kearny Mesa, able to put near 20 tons to LEO

 

Dirk_Pitt

Banned
The problem is that during the '60s the government, due to the general popularity of space at the time, practically gave NASA a blank check and said "Get us to the Moon, you smart peoples!". That's the problem with spending someone else's money, you end up with an over-engineered piece of crap that'll only last until the job is done. That job was landing on the moon. Mission complete, time take your ball and go home.

We completed the mission several times in fact. Miracle we even did that.

Avoid JFK's stupid comment about landing on the moon by the end of the decade and you've got a shot at something sustainable, an astronomically small shot. You've a bigger shot at getting me with a peashooter whilst I'm standing at the opposite side of the universe:eek:.

Yes, I have an extremely low opinion of Government, so sue me!
 
The problem with a Soyuz program analogue is that in the early 1950s a key breakthrough in american nuclear weapon design greatly reduced the payload requirement of the earliest ICBMs. So Atlas and Titan I programs were designed for smaller bombs than the first Soviet ICBMs namely the R-7.

The early american ICBMs were doomed to obsolescence as follow-on rockets were designed to carry heavier payload (reconnaissance at first and later commercial) but but NASA went on a parallel track with it manned rocket development (The Saturns).

But the Saturns were designed for a beat the Soviet crash program so were not economical for operational use. And by the time Apollo wound down a combination of Not Built by NASA, the space program as a jobs program, etc meant the military and commercial rockets were not considered for use by NASA.

In contrast the R-7 with a second stage more than met the need for a human spaceflight program revolving around capsules. So kept on getting used well after its Atlas and Titan I ceased to be used. Since the economics of maintain a launch site and building chemical rockets benefits by large quantity of the same or similar rockets further entrenched the R-7 continued use by Russia.

While used only as a ferry, the Soyuz design it actually among the best for human space flight. Weight can be kept down as only the items needed for reentry and recovery need to be kept inside the capsule. The orbital module and service module can be sent up in a variety of configurations depending on the mission.

If you want a American Soyuz type program, your best best is two fold.

1) Delay the technological breakthrough of the Tellar-Ulam design for Thermonuclear weapons. This will force the original American rockets to design for the higher payload requirement of the original Hydrogen Bomb Design.

2) Have the GE proposal with a three module spacecraft win the Apollo Capsule contract.

Likely this will mean a delayed lunar landing possibly an aborted space race due to the United State being able to match any Soviet feat due to having rockets with similar payload.

It will also make it more likely that the US Air Force will have some type of manned space program devoted to earth photography and sensing. And it will likely be abandoned after a half-dozen to dozen missions when fully automated reconniassence satellites are developed.

It could also mean that while a 60's race to the moon is still born, a low key 70s version could result. Both nations would likely continue some form of human spaceflight, and by the 70s come up with an incremental program for a lunar orbital program, and then a short crash program to develop a lander.
 
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