clipped wings

Archibald

Banned
Whatif the shuttle, instead of being retired in 2011, never existed in the place - from 1971 ?


This is only a teaser for a much bigger alt-history of the space age... and beyond.


CLIPPED WINGS


March 15, 1972

"...we will fly the remaining Saturn IBs and try to restart the shuttle program, probably in the 80’s. " NASA administrator James Beggs declared.

“But what will the shuttle look like ?”

“At the time of its cancellation our baseline was the Saturn-Shuttle. The orbiter and its external tank topped a Saturn V first stage. The Shuttle Engine is probably dead in the water, but we have an alternate solution. General ?”

So that’s the reason General Bernard Schriever is there today.
What will the Air Force decide… ?

“Damn, we really hoped to fly military astronauts onboard the shuttle to deploy satellites. Every program I pushed in the past decade..."
Schriever continued
"...be it DynaSoar, Blue Gemini or the Manned Orbital Laboratory, all cancelled, aimed to put USAF pilots in orbit. Whatever happens, the space plane problem will remain unresolved in the next future. We lept backward by a decade; that DynaSoar, it might have made a useful testbed for the shuttle, but McNamara cancelled it in December 1963. This marked a serious setback for our strategic reconnaissance systems."

“Gary Power U-2 shot down over USSR in May 1960 meant than even our mach 3 Blackbirds or Oxcarts could no longer overfly the Soviet Union. After DynaSoar got canned I thus pushed for another suborbital spaceplane called ISINGLASS - mach 20, 400 000 ft, dropped from a B-52; pure rocket, no airbreathing engines. We developed a marvel called the XLR-129 with four time the performance of the J-2. Very high chamber pressure, you see; it was a leap forward. ISINGLASS did not lasted long, but we gave Pratt&Whitney enough money so that they ran the XLR-129 on the ground."

"Whatever, shuttle cancellation will force USAF to rely on Titan III for the next future. We will try to drop the Titan costs down by flying more missions. We could also reuse the large solid rocket motors if we parachute them in the ocean. It may save some money."

"As for Big Gemini - our opinion is that it is similar enough to the Manned Orbiting Laboratory that we will fly some military missions out of Vandenberg SLC-6. This pad is currently in mothball, finishing it for Big Gemini operations should be straightforward."

So that was their plan all along. Yes, the military really had little interest for the shuttle... and to think they ruined the program through their wish of delta wing for large crossrange, and huge payload bay. They didn't even fought its cancellation...
 
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I think people will see it a issed opportunity and think it would fulfill promise of reliable, reusable vehicle.
 
Given the general public's apathy towards space flight after the moon landings I think their attitude could have been, "Frankly my dear I don't give a damn!"
 

Archibald

Banned
"Admittedly, Big Gemini will never match some projected shuttle abilities - for example, it will never bring massive payloads back to Earth surface. Another, more subtle loss is the eventual possibility to fly ordinary citizens in space - which mean, low accelerations at both take-off and landing.

NASA dreams of a space airliner have essentially been dashed.

Winged spacecrafts, unlike capsules, provide lift during reentry, because they fly like airplanes. The more the lift, the more comfortable the re-entry, the more ordinary citizens can be flown in space... Apollo 7, for example, subjected its crew to three times the strength of gravity. The shuttle, however, would have cut that by fifty percent, a mere 1.5 G, so weak that crews could have stood on their feet during re-entry !"
Source: Flight International, March 1973
 

Archibald

Banned
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]1974[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]
Defense Ministry Dmitryi Ustinov sighed.
[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]"I'm sorry, Valentin. I can certainly remove Mishin; I can kill the lunar program; I can certainly help you. But the N-1 is harder to erase since the Americans are mothballing some of their Saturn Vs. If I make you head of TskBEM instead of Mishin, I'm affraid you'll have to keep the N-1 going. [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]You heard Keldysh arguments; his opinion is shared by Smirnov, and together they have direct access to old Brezhnev. Do you remember that american project, the space shuttle ? Do you you know their opinion about it ?"[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]"Tell me" Glushko was all rage. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]"Well, they couldn't figure how on Earth NASA economic case for the shuttle made sense. The damn economists they had hired - they planned, can you believe it ? 700 flights over the first twelve years of operations. That mounted to more than 20 000 tons in Earth orbit !" [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Glushko eyes were round. Ustinov pushed his tactical advantage. [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]"Then Keldysh heard that the shuttle would lift off from a military base in California, fly a single polar orbit and land at the same place. Keldysh slapped his forehead and came to the conclusion the shuttle was to be a nuclear bomber the polar orbit would take above Moscow without a warning, overwhelming our A35 anti-missile system. So we should need to build a carbon copy of it, for the sake of mutual assured detruction terror." [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Glushko rolled his eyes. [/FONT]
[FONT=Consolas, monospace][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]"[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]The shuttle a nuclear bomber ?[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]" he exclaimed.
"Who is Keldysh kidding ?
[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]the damn spaceplane was to seat on a fat tank crammed with cryogenic propellants that have to be refill all the time. The way I see it, the shuttle seating on that immense Apollo launch gantry would make a perfect target to any missile. Hell, with a bit of luck even a plain old Tupolev Tu-95 could blew it." Glushko laughed at the vision. [/FONT]
[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]"Oh, the military was no fool either. Marshal Grechko certainly dismissed the shuttle nuclear threat as bollocks, just like you did. In the end Grechko opinion just didn't mattered, however, since the campaign actually bypassed the military. Whatever you think of the argument, it finally reached Brezhnev." [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]"And how did Brezhnev reacted ?" [/FONT]
[FONT=Consolas, monospace][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]"We are not country bumpkins here. Let us make an effort and find the money[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, serif]. That what he said. Can you believe it ?" [/FONT][/FONT]
Glushko shook his head in disbelief.
"The space shuttle a nuclear bomber. It says a lot about Brezhnev shape after his stroke." He still couldn't believe what Ustinov had told him.

Note
Yes, that the OTL reason why the Soviets build Buran. The top soviet mathematician, Keldysh, come to that conclusion. Brezhnev words are OTL. The soviets spent 12 billion rubbles on Buran and Energia just for the wrong reasons.
 

Archibald

Banned
1976
The space shuttle was far from being dead. It was more like in life support or coma, with the hope of a resurrection, perhaps after 1980. Low-level contract studies had in fact never stopped, refining the future shuttle again and again.
Last year had brought two important changes.
On one hand, NASA had secured a space station; on the other hand, the Air Force had affirmed the Titan III would handle the heaviest satellites for the predictable future.
Accordingly, the space shuttle had been reduced in size and weight and crew. Now four astronauts would ferry 20 000 pounds of payload to space station Liberty, or perhaps to its backup twin and eventual successor everybody already called Destiny. The reduced crew would sat on ejector seats similar to those of the SR-71, assuring survival up to Mach 3.

With a decade to spent, NASA had plenty of time to refine the shuttle, giving contractors lots of contracts to study some aspects more pointedly. For example a team at Douglas had recently been tasked with assessing the problem of ferrying orbiters from their landing fields back to their home base of Cape Canaveral.
The lighter shuttle could have easily been hauled on the back of an airliner. But that solution was anything but practical: not all airports featured giant cranes strong enough to loft an orbiter. No, the best scenario would have the shuttle flying alone; a couple of F-101 turbofans, together with a kerosene tank in the payload bay, would do the trick. The orbiter blunt ass would be covered with an aerodynamic fairing.
Douglas five-volumes report to NASA featured a picture of the whole thing on the cover, a superb artwork done by legendary Robert McCall.

The orbiter had the turbofans hanging from a couple of underwing pylons very reminiscent of the Boeing 707 or Convair Hustler from the 50's. Together with the rear aerodynamic fairing, it made for an awesome-looking flying machine - if not very efficient. The low atmosphere being evidently not the orbiter home place, it would stuck to subsonic speeds and short hops, a mere 500 miles at best. Ferry flights across the United States promised to be a shore, although they might be familiarize astronauts with the beast cockpit.

If I were to sat at the controls, I would go full throttle and try a barrel roll. Open day at Edwards AFB, in the 80's: god, the look in the eyes of children watching an acrobatic shuttle orbiter barreling over Roger Dry Lake.
 

Archibald

Banned
here's something to be "pined" on the alt-culture thread.

A different James Bond movie...

"The 747 crew reported they prepared to launch, talking with the ground and the Gemini crew. After the section was depressurised the cargo doors opened at the 747 end. And then, suddenly, the Gemini crew went silent." The screen showed the cockpit and the 747 crew evident amazement and terror.
"We have evidence that the Moonraker parachute unexpectedly sprouted out of the cargo bay, biting the thin air and moving the missile out of the aircraft." Shouting in the radio had no result, and suddenly the 747 jolted in the air, evidently alleviated of the rocket 200 tons mass.
"Where is the fucking rocket ?" the pilot shouted. He eyed his terrified copilot
"It came right toward our nose !" the copilot screamed. And indeed a dart suddenly pierced the clouds slightly ahead of the Boeing.
A dart that trailed a huge pillar of flames, right on the 747 path.
"Nooooooooooo...." was the last thing heard on the ground as the rocket engines burned through the airliner cockpit, incinerating its crew and sending the 747 into a deadly spin.
Bond face showed no reaction at the awful conclusion of the movie. He just said with a tired look "Here we go again. Nasty villains hijacking rockets, capsules and the poor astronauts flying them. Why does this remind me of another villain twenty years ago ?"
Q nodded "Dr No, I presume. We have no proves that Drax ever met him... James, I want you to investigate Drax Industries, in California... you certainly heard that Hugo Drax made a fortune selling hundreds of its Moonraker rockets in many roles. Moonrakers regularly ferry NASA astronauts to the space station. Other Moonrakers stand as RAF and USAF nuclear-tipped missiles in underground and flying silos."
"Hell; yes, the flying silos. That 747 remind me of an adventure I had, at a casino, how was it called ?"
A nervous Q interrupted him
"No time for remembrance, 007."
"What did happened ?"
"We lost contact with an air launched Moonraker."
"How can they launch big rockets like that from aircrafts ?" Bond asked.
"Oh, that's not as difficult as it may seem at first glance. They just open the aircraft rear cargo door, then the rocket sprout a parachute that bite the air, and pull the booster out of the aircraft. After that it fell downward engine first, before another parachute straight it. After that they light the engines, and goes into orbit !"
"How astute."
"We had these information from the CIA; they rapidly recovered the aircraft flight registers. They have a special tracking system that immediately warn them of any hijacking attempt. You can imagine the mess if a nuclear tipped rocket fell into bad hands..."
"well, that what happened isn't it" Bond smiled.
"We think the Air Force was infiltrated. Someone evidently hide the hijackers into the Gemini capsule... The massive Boeing you see represents a new breed of 747s, heavilymodified for military purposes. That aircraft is essentially a flying missile silo; its flanks house a powerful Moonraker rocket. The idea is apparently that flying the missiles make them less vulnerable than burying them on the ground at a fixed location.
"Last week test, however, was different. The Moonraker in the cargo section was not nuclear-tipped; instead it carried a manned military spacecraft that consisted, fore to aft, of a small Gemini capsule bolted to a pressurised cylinder, a small space station that featured a powerful camera. Manoeuvre by the crew of three in the Gemini, that camera was to take very high resolution photos. The craft was to spend a month in orbit and snap pictures of the Soviet Union or China. That made these two countries evidently nervous, and what happened won't help."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96A0wb1Ov9k

 
Given the general public's apathy towards space flight after the moon landings I think their attitude could have been, "Frankly my dear I don't give a damn!"

Apathetic, really? Skylab and the first Shuttle launch were massive stories when I was a kid!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Archibald

Banned
(this post dedicated to the memory of Sally Ride, the first american woman in space, STS-7, April 1983. She lose her 18 month battle with pancreatic cancer yesterday. She was only 61.) :(

In her dream she felt how air started to bite at the ablative heatshield.

She had to perform a series of banks to carry some of this heat way - four of them, carefully spaced.

As she enjoyed the fiery inferno outside the fragile cockpit of her orbital X-24 lifting body, she thought about the defunct shuttle.


"It should have been like this except that I wouldn't be alone; we would be six or eight, and behind my back I would have had a big payload bay crammed with satellites brought back to Earth for refurbishment."
 
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