Alternate Mundane NASA's

On the issue of Shuttle versus Saturn INT-20, wouldn't a benefit of the later be the fact that you already had the infrastructure to make it? All the components are the same as the Saturn V, except for that middle section which is removed (and perhaps fewer engines). With the shuttle, you have to engineer and construct that new space plane series from the ground floor. There may be a difference if it's the Saturn-Shuttle proposal, but you'd still need to construct that new space plane.
 
WI Proxmire and Walter Mondale are voted out in the late 60s? How would this also affect space flight?
 
WI Proxmire and Walter Mondale are voted out in the late 60s? How would this also affect space flight?

Wouldn't that help NASA by removing those two major opponents to the expansion the space program and the expanded status of the Apollo era space program? For example, I have read something from an excerpt of one of the astronaut's biographies (I can't recall who) that not only did Proxmire act instrumentally in killing the Apollo program, but that he also had all the instruments and machinery that were part of production for that program destroyed so that America couldn't restart later it even if they wanted to; a policy of razing the city and salting the earth, if you will.

I'm not sure of the effect of that realistically on a similar space program and global situation alongside of it, however. The global situation being where the United States mired itself in Vietnam, which became costly, and President Johnson initiated his Great Society, which was also a focus of government funding, and meanwhile in the space race, and the Russians had been beaten to the selected target of the whole venture, I don't know if the whole thing would not have gone as it did go (or at least have had the same chance to). The Space program was the thing that could be cut between the two key interests of prosecuting the war in Vietnam and maintaining the domestic programs of the Great Society, especially given that the goal of the space race as set up in the early 1960s, landing men on the Moon, had been accomplished.
There could certainly be a different post-Moon race space program compared to the way it went in the OTL. Certainly the "salt the earth" action taken by the Satan of Space William Proxmire, if that is true, could be prevented by the scenario you set up where he loses an election. But given the situation of history as it happened (Vietnam and the Great Society competing for funding and the Space Race won by America) I don't believe you can avoid major cuts from that former Apollo age glory, and hence you get a mundane NASA thereafter.
 
Last edited:

Archibald

Banned
Apollo was certainly a fat, tempting target for cost cutters. As of 1966 Apollo ate 4% of the federal budget; within ten years it was cut to less than 1% (where it still stands today).
Look at this page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

Wouldn't that slower American program mean the Soviets could still have a shot at the Moon (given in the OTL that they didn't take US efforts seriously until too late, and by then it was too late given a very tight timetable and numerous failures), thereby pushing the US out of any laxity when it would become apparent the USSR was going to land a man on the Moon in the 70s or whenever it would be? A slow American program that eases along seems like it'd benefit the Soviets.
Something essential within the soviet space program is that after Voskhod and Gemini (1965) the race was over for them.
The Soviet shot first with Sputnik, Gagarin and Leonov; first satellite, first man in space, first spacewalker. After that and the american reaction (Apollo !) they lost the initiative. And they lost the Moon.
The only way for them to have re-take the initiative would have been going to Mars - and that would have bankrupted USSR.

After 1965, the Soviet space program is just reacting to what NASA does.
For example in 69-72 the Soviet had "contigency options" ready to counter any possible option NASA was to chose. The Soviet had Mars, Moon, and space station plans (Aelita, L3M, MKBS).
What they didn't have was a shuttle option, because they felt that option was the less likely. Reading the shuttle economic studies they laughed loud - this is crazy. Surely, they can't be serious.
Buran was hastily pulled out in 1976 as a straightforward copy of the american shuttle, performance and capability included - and only because Keldysh had convinced Brezhnev the shuttle was a possible nuclear bomber able to sneak between the SA-2 and A-135 that defended Moscow from a nuclear attack from the sky...

As for VP Mondale, in my own space TL (200 000 words and 540 pages, darn) I had him replaced by John Glenn. Doesn't change a lot of things in the Carter presidency nor in the world, except for the space program.
In fact I have Mondale and Proxmire as "useful idiots" in 1972-73; by killing the shuttle, they ensure a much better, more balanced space program. It was a part of the TL that was delightful to write.
 
Last edited:
This is about a Mundane NASA,
fit a Saturn V in this ?
let remind, it was President Johnson who stopped the Saturn rocket production in june 1967.
And as Apollo 11 land on the moon, the program was so good as dead...

is there Alternative ?
there were proposal to cluster Titan III solid booster 3 to 7 and put a S-IVB stage on top.
other ideas was to use Titan III M/F for launching Apollo CSM

Titan IIIM was launch vehicle for Manned Orbital Laboratory, Official a USAF space Station, in realty a NRO Manned Spy sat.
a civilan version of Titan IIIM (the F version) and MOL was proposed to NASA, by Manufactures Martin and Douglas.
in 1968 MOL was canceled and all work stop.

But what if MOL and Titan IIIM are transferred to NASA in 1968 ?
NASA would end up with cheap launch vehicle and mini Space Station adaptable to it Mission.
of course at first NASA will not be happy with this "mite" and proposed Big Skylab and bigger 50 man Space Base with Shuttle
but thanks to the Satan's of Space: William Proxmire & Walter Mondale, Those plans will vaporize
now NASA will be happy to have MOL on a Titan IIIM...
 

Archibald

Banned
The NRO just declassified a document which for the first time mention important details about the MOL, kind of "flight program".
The MOL was to fly in mid-1973, six missions spanning over a year or so, up to 1975. That was the plan.
Reading that, it occured to me that, had the MOL continued (in a shuttle world) continuing flights past 1975 could have filled the "shuttle gap" that extended from ASTP to April 12, 1981...
 
But what if MOL and Titan IIIM are transferred to NASA in 1968 ?
NASA would end up with cheap launch vehicle and mini Space Station adaptable to it Mission.
of course at first NASA will not be happy with this "mite" and proposed Big Skylab and bigger 50 man Space Base with Shuttle
but thanks to the Satan's of Space: William Proxmire & Walter Mondale, Those plans will vaporize
now NASA will be happy to have MOL on a Titan IIIM...
But would it be cheap? The latest versions of OTL's Titans ran about as much as a shuttle launch ($400M, IIRC).
 
But would it be cheap? The latest versions of OTL's Titans ran about as much as a shuttle launch ($400M, IIRC).

yep the Titan IV was very expensive $250–350 million, depending on payload.
but on cost the Titan IIIM is much cheaper as a Saturn IB

Saturn IB launch cost US$ 305.6 million in 2012, payload 21000 kg.
Titan IIIM launch cost US$ 160.3 million in 2012, payload 17000 kg.
 
A slow,but progressive evolution step by step,with adeguate funds:
1970-1976-Apollo 13-19, Skylab 1-4 ,ASTP mission
1978-A full reusable space shuttle (two stage to orbit)
1981-A space station
1984-Space tugs for high orbits
1990-Space tugs for moon
2000-A moon base.
2005-A new Shuttle (two stage to orbit)
 

Archibald

Banned
The Titan IV was extremely expensive because - go figure - they designed brand new large solid rocket motors (the Hercules SRMUs) which cost a fortune and flew... on the Titan IVB only. 18 flights.
Before the Titan IV the earlier Titan were not that expensive, notably the non-solid variants. Which, had there be no space shuttle, have become an american answer to Ariane 1 - 4. The Titan would have been perfect for the job.
It would have been quite easy. Takes Voyager / Viking Titan IIIE - Centaur. Scrap the large solids, keep the core with the Centaur. And there you are, an american Ariane 1...
 
A slow,but progressive evolution step by step,with adeguate funds:
1970-1976-Apollo 13-19, Skylab 1-4 ,ASTP mission
1978-A full reusable space shuttle (two stage to orbit)
1981-A space station
1984-Space tugs for high orbits
1990-Space tugs for moon
2000-A moon base.
2005-A new Shuttle (two stage to orbit)

nice but This thread, however asks the opposite a mundane NASA.

Apollo 13-18, Skylab 1-4, ASTP could work.
After that NASA need new hardware, but Space Shuttle R&D is expensive, very expensive.
it could use new build Apollo CSM on Titan IIIC or IIIM, or Demilitarized MOL or BIG Gemini
the last is variant of Gemini beef up to 3.91 mø plus cargo module, 15590 kg mass
Big_Gemini.png
 
nice but This thread, however asks the opposite a mundane NASA.
Yeah, I think I'm messing with your guy's brains by asking for a mundane NASA, because replies keep coming in about the grand space program AH 99% of the time loves to create.
 
Yeah, I think I'm messing with your guy's brains by asking for a mundane NASA, because replies keep coming in about the grand space program AH 99% of the time loves to create.

Well, not surprising given the interbreeding between science fiction and alternate history. Anyways, I think there are really three kinds of mundane NASA, two that diverge about 1970 and one that diverges about 1957, at least among the ones that have NASA in any recognizable form. There are of course a lot of timelines where, say, nuclear war in 1962 rather reduces any appetite for space exploration, or where both the Nazis and the Soviets were so devastated by World War II that the Cold War was totally averted, or where pre-WWII or even pre-WWI power dynamics keep going long enough that there's something like a multipolar space race, or where in some other way NASA was destroyed or rendered unrecognizable, but those aren't as interesting.

The two that diverge about 1970 are basically OTL-type NASA and ETS-type NASA. That is, on the one hand you have a NASA that develops Shuttle, and on the other one that develops stations. How they do it gives birth to a range of interesting timelines, but is in principle irrelevant to the classification of timelines. In either case, NASA gets locked into working on whatever they choose for a long while and quite likely will allow important skills and capabilities to degrade, if only for the lack of funding most likely available in the 1970s. You can read our timeline or an actual history book to get some feeling about how these turn out.

The third is closer to Polish Eagle's Scenario 2, one where the space race and Kennedy's pledge to go to the Moon are averted altogether (mostly by the US being a bit luckier and the Soviets a bit less early on). I don't think it was as avoidable as he thinks by 1961, and I am less pessimistic about the likelihood of maintained orbital presence than he is (if only because the Soviets are not likely to give up on military space stations and the like until later, and that will surely convince Congress to respond), but in general I think that's a good outline. Not as much interest in human spaceflight, a token maintained presence in a small space station for pure prestige reasons but little real interest in exploration. Possibly more interest in robotic exploration, or possibly less; in either case, there would be less motivation to support possible HSF targets (ie., Mars). Quite possibly science fiction would be even more influenced by the various -punk strains than it actually is, with more focus on future Earths without any real spaceflight; alternatively, given that science fiction actually developed in an environment where space flight was impossible, science fiction might go really hard for expansive space futures. Or both; certainly the classical authors will be pushing for the latter by the 1970s and 1980s, and the new generations will probably end up split.

Of course, the best alternate mundane NASA is one where spaceflight developed gradually out of sounding rockets, and NACA got put in charge of US scientific satellite programs--think Vanguard, Explorer, HEAO, etc., not Voyager or Mariner and certainly not Mercury or Apollo. It's basically a totally boring science agency with the public profile of NOAA or the NSF.
 
Yeah, I think I'm messing with your guy's brains by asking for a mundane NASA, because replies keep coming in about the grand space program AH 99% of the time loves to create.

Let me take a stab at this. A more mundane NASA will emphasize unmanned over manned operations but still try to find a role for man in space. I would see more cooperation with USAF on a variety of space plane experiments with a shutle viewed as a long range goal not an immediate need. As for the unmanned operations might we see a NASA that actually nurtures OTRAG?
 
Top