David Portree's continuing Apollo

Archibald

Banned
President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a NASA supporter (in 1958, as Senate Majority Leader, he had been instrumental in its creation), predicted Apollo’s premature end. In 1967, Congress slashed to just $122 million the $450 million he requested to start the Apollo Applications Program (AAP). AAP – which would rapidly shrink to become the Skylab Program – had been intended to exploit Apollo hardware and operational experience to accomplish new lunar and Earth-orbital missions. As news of the deep cuts in his AAP request reached the White House, Johnson mused that, “the way the American people are, now that they have all this capability, instead of taking advantage of it, they’ll probably just piss it all away.”

What if Johnson had got it wrong? What if, somehow, Americans cared more about space exploration and so sought to wring from their $24-billion Apollo investment everything they could?

The Soviet Union for many years numbered its Soyuz missions consecutively regardless of changes in spacecraft purpose and design. If Apollo had been allowed to survive and thrive, perhaps the United States would have adopted a similar numbering policy, ultimately yielding impressively high alphanumeric mission designation numbers. What follows is an unabashed exercise in alternate history speculation (and, above all, shameless wishful thinking). It is based on actual NASA and contractor plans and is written as though the events it recounts actually occurred.

A word of caution: in order to simplify an already complex timeline, I have ignored the possibility of accidents. Spaceflight is risky, yet in this alternate history all missions occur exactly as planned. The likelihood that every mission described below would come off as planned, with no mishaps or outright disasters, would in fact be very small.

1971-1972

Because no one sought to kill Apollo, NASA boss Paine felt no urge to trade away two Apollo missions in the vain hope that Nixon would support his plans for a large Earth-orbital space station. This meant that Apollo 15 remained H-4. The first J mission (J-1) was Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 was J-2.

Apollo Earth-orbital space station flights began in late 1971. Apollo 18 was the unmanned launch of the first two-stage Saturn V bearing a temporary Earth-orbiting space station. In keeping with NASA’s old penchant for program names from Greek and Roman mythology, the station was dubbed Olympus 1. The Olympus name had a heritage in the world of space station planning going back to the early 1960s.​

Image credit: NASA/D. S. F. Portree
The Apollo-derived Olympus station resembled the Skylab Orbital Workshop of our timeline, but lacked its side-mounted Apollo Telescope Mount and “windwill” solar arrays. It also included more internal decks.

Within days, Apollo 19, the first K-class Earth-orbital CSM, lifted off on a Saturn IB from Launch Complex 34 bound for Olympus 1 with three astronauts on board. K-class CSMs included batteries in place of fuel cells, an electricity umbilical for linking to the Olympus station power system, a retractable main engine bell to make more room in the S-IVB shroud, extra storage compartments in the Command Module (CM) capsule, an option to install up to two extra crew couches, a pair of small steerable dish antennas in place of lunar Apollo’s large four-dish system, and smaller main-engine propellant tanks. It also included modifications that enabled it to remain semi-dormant attached to an Olympus station for up to six months (for example, heaters to prevent fluids from freezing in its tanks and propellant lines).

Apollo 19 remained docked to Olympus 1’s axial (“front”) docking port while its crew worked on board the station for 28 days – twice as long as any U.S. space mission before it. They returned to Earth on Christmas Eve 1971. The Apollo 20 (K-2) crew, launched on 23 January 1972, subsequently demolished Apollo 19’s new record by living on board Olympus 1 for 56 days.

Apollo 21 (I-1), a Saturn V-launched mission to lunar polar orbit, marked the start of a new phase of Apollo lunar exploration. Two astronauts orbited the moon for 28 days in a CSM with an attached Lunar Observation Module (LOM) in place of an LM. From mid-March to mid-April 1972, the astronauts charted the moon’s surface in great detail to enable scientists and engineers to select future Apollo landing sites and traverse routes.

Apollo 22 (K-3), launched in June 1972, delivered a three-man crew to Olympus 1 for a 112-day stay, doubling Apollo 20’s stay-time. Ninety days into their mission, the two-man Apollo 23 (K-4) CSM docked at Olympus 1’s single radial (“side”) docking port for 10 days. One of the Apollo 23 astronauts was a medical doctor; he conducted health evaluations of the Apollo 22 astronauts. If any member of the Apollo 22 crew had been found to be unhealthy, then all would have returned to Earth in either their own CSM or with the Apollo 23 crew in its CSM, which included three spare couches (the empty Science Pilot couch and two couches located against the Apollo 23 CM’s aft bulkhead).

As it turned out, the Apollo 22 astronauts were in good shape and high spirits, so NASA authorized continuation of their mission to its full planned duration. Before returning to Earth, the Apollo 22 crew used their CSM’s main engine to boost Olympus 1 to a higher orbit, postponing its reentry by up to 10 years.

NASA referred to the Apollo 22 astronauts as the third Olympus 1 resident crew and the Apollo 23 astronauts as the first Olympus 1 visitor crew. The full alphanumeric designations for Apollos 22 and 23 were O-1/K-3/R3 and O-1/K-4/V1, respectively. Most people did not pay attention to those designations, however, being satisfied to call the missions by their Apollo numbers.

NASA ordered 15 Saturn V rockets for the Apollo Program. In 1968, NASA Deputy Administrator for Manned Space Flight George Mueller asked NASA Administrator James Webb for permission to order more Saturn V rockets for AAP. With budgets for post-Apollo space programs already under fierce attack, Webb rejected Mueller’s request.

In our alternate timeline, Webb’s answer was different. Apollo 24 (J-3) (October 1972) used the last Saturn V of the original Apollo buy. This fact aroused only passing interest, however, since in our alternate timeline no one ever seriously considered halting the Saturn V assembly lines. Apollo 25 (J-4) launched atop the first new-buy Saturn V, the 16th Saturn V to be built.

Two months after the Apollo 24 LM ascent stage lifted off from the lunar surface, the Apollo 25 LM landed about a kilometer away from the derelict Apollo 24 LM descent stage. The Apollo LM descent engine kicked up potentially damaging dust during landing, so the Apollo 25 astronauts inspected Apollo 24’s descent stage, LRV, and ALSEP experiments to determine whether a one-kilometer landing separation distance was adequate.

The Apollo 25 crew carried out other technology experiments. They deployed an experimental solar array designed to withstand the cold of the two-week lunar night and a small battery-driven remote-controlled rover. Controllers on Earth drove the small rover several hundred meters in preparation for longer remote-controlled traverses to come.

1973

Apollo 26 (O-2) (January 1973) was the Saturn V launch of the Olympus 2 space station. It lifted off from Pad 39C, a new Complex 39 launch pad north of the existing 39A and 39B pads at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida. 39C was designed for both Saturn V and Saturn IB launches, putting NASA on track to retiring the Complex 34 Saturn IB pad located south of Kennedy Space Center, within the boundaries of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Soon after Olympus 2 reached orbit, the last Saturn IB to use Complex 34 launched Apollo 27 (O-2/K-5/R1). Its epic mission: to stretch the world spaceflight endurance record to 224 days. Over the course of the Apollo 27 mission, NASA launched four unmanned Saturn IB rockets with Centaur upper stages. Though not given Apollo numbers, the flights are often referred to unofficially as Apollo GEO A, Apollo GEO B, Apollo GEO C, and Apollo GEO D. Two lifted off from Pad 39C and two from newly upgraded Pad 39A.

Each boosted into geostationary orbit one Radio/TV Relay Satellite (RTRS); three operational satellites and a spare. Olympus 2 thus became the first space station capable of uninterrupted voice, data, and TV contact with Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and Payload Control at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The Saturn IB-launched Apollo 28 CSM lifted off from Pad 39C 45 days into the Apollo 27 crew’s stint on board Olympus 2. The six-day, three-person mission, designated O-2/K-6/V1, included the first female U.S. astronaut. Apollo 29 (O-2/K-7/V2), another six-day, three-person mission, reached Olympus 2 110 days into the Apollo 27 mission. It included the first non-American to fly on a U.S. spacecraft.

Apollo 30 (O-2/K-8/V3), a 10-day, two-person mission nearly identical to Apollo 23, reached Olympus 2 190 days into the Apollo 27 mission. The Apollo 27 astronauts proved to be in good health, so NASA authorized them to continue their mission to its full planned duration. The Apollo 30 crew returned to Earth in Apollo 27’s CSM, leaving behind their fresh CSM for the long-duration astronauts. The Apollo 27 crew used the Apollo 30 CSM’s main engine to boost Olympus 2 to a higher orbit with an estimated lifetime of more than a decade.

Just before the Apollo 27 crew ended their record-setting stay in space in July 1973 – a record that would hold for more than a decade – the unmanned Apollo 31 Saturn V launched a pair of modified RTRS satellites (one operational and one spare) into a loose orbit around the quasi-stable Earth-moon L2 point, 33,000 miles beyond the moon. When NASA launched Apollo 34 (J-5) (September 1973) to the moon’s Farside hemisphere, out of sight of Earth, the satellites provided continuous radio, data, and TV communication with both the CSM while it orbited over the Farside hemisphere and the LM parked on the Farside surface.

The Apollo 32 (O-3) Saturn V launched Olympus 3 – intended to be the first “long-life” space station – from Pad 39A (December 1973). Olympus 3 included three equally spaced radial docking ports, expanded solar arrays, an uprated life support system, a “greenhouse” plant growth chamber, improved internal lighting, an observation cupola, and guest living quarters.

1974

The next month, the three-man Apollo 33 (O-3/K-9/R1) crew lifted off from Pad 39C to begin a 180-stay on board. Starting with Apollo 33, 180 days became the standard duration for Olympus station missions. The Apollo 27 crew had remained on board Olympus 2 for 224 days so that NASA could have in place a “cushion” of biomedical knowledge in the event that a 180-day mission had to be extended; for example, if a resident crew’s CSM proved faulty when time came to return to Earth and a rescue mission had to be mounted.

Apollo 34 (J-5) (February 1974) was, as indicated above, the first piloted mission to the moon’s hidden Farside. The last of the J-class lunar landing missions, its crew included the first woman on the moon.

Olympus 3 could support visiting crews for longer periods, permitting Apollo 35 (O-3/K-10/V1) to be the first three-person, 10-day visitor mission. It delivered the first Cargo Carrier (CC-1) to Olympus 3 60 days into the Apollo 33 mission. Drum-shaped CC-1 rode to orbit inside the segmented shroud between the top of the Saturn IB’s S-IVB second stage and the bottom of the Apollo 35 CSM’s engine bell.

After S-IVB shutdown, the Apollo 35 crew separated their CSM from the shroud, which peeled back in four parts and separated from the stage. They then turned their CSM end-for-end to dock with CC-1’s “outboard” docking port and detached the carrier from the S-IVB.

Image credit: NASA/D. S. F. Portree The Apollo 35 CSM docked with one of Olympus 3’s three radial ports using CC-1’s “inboard” docking port. Its crew then entered the station through CC-1’s meter-wide central tunnel. When their visit with the Apollo 33 crew drew to an end, they undocked their CSM from CC-1, leaving the carrier attached to Olympus 3 so that it could serve as a “pantry” or “walk-in closet.”

Apollo 36 (O-3/K-11/V2) was another 10-day, three-person visitor mission to Olympus 3. Its crew included an African-American mission Commander who had flown first as Command Module Pilot on Apollo 24. The Apollo 36 CSM docked with CC-1’s outboard port 120 days into Apollo 33. When time came to return to Earth, they undocked CC-1’s inboard port from Olympus 3. Following their deorbit burn, they undocked their CSM from CC-1’s outboard port and performed a small separation maneuver. CC-1, packed with trash, burned up in Earth’s atmosphere, and the Apollo 36 CM capsule splashed down in the Pacific.

The Apollo 33 resident crew undocked from Olympus 3 and returned to Earth, and two weeks later the Apollo 37 (O-3/K-12/R2) CSM arrived with Olympus 3’s second resident crew and, on its nose, a hefty telescope module. The crew gingerly docked the telescope module to the radial port on the side of Olympus 3 opposite the radial port used for Cargo Carriers, then undocked their CSM from the telescope module’s outboard port and redocked with Olympus 3’s axial port. Olympus 3 thus became the world’s first multi-modular space station.

Attention then shifted back to the lunar track of the on-going Apollo Program. Apollo 38 (L-1A) (August 1974) saw an unmanned uprated Saturn V-B rocket launch directly to the lunar surface an LM-derived Lunar Cargo Carrier (LCC-1) bearing a nuclear-powered Dual-Mode Lunar Rover (DMLR). The piloted Apollo 40 (L-1B) mission saw the first Augmented CSM (ACSM) and the first Augmented Lunar Module (ALM) launched to lunar orbit on a Saturn V-B. The Apollo 40 ACSM remained in continuous contact with Earth over the moon’s Farside hemisphere through the RTRS satellites at Earth-moon L2.

The ALM descended to a landing within about a kilometer of LCC-1. The astronauts deployed the DMLR and drove it on five traverses during their one-week stay on the moon. They then reconfigured it for Earth-guided operation. After the DMLR retreated to a safe distance under Earth control, the Apollo 40 ALM ascent stage ignited to return the crew to the orbiting ACSM and, subsequently, to Earth.

In October 1974, a month after the Apollo 40 astronauts left the moon, DMLR then began a 500-kilometer overland trek to the next planned Apollo landing site. As it moved slowly over the rugged surface, it imaged its surroundings, took magnetometer readings, and occasionally stopped to collect an intriguing rock or scoop of dirt. A pair of spotlights permitted limited lunar night-time driving. Assuming that the DMLR reaches its goal, the next ALM crew, set to land next to a pre-landed LCC in July 1976, will retrieve its samples for return to Earth, reconfigure it for astronaut driving, use it to explore their landing site, and then reconfigure it again for Earth-guided operation.

Image credit: NASA
Sandwiched between Apollo 38 and Apollo 40 was Saturn IB-launched Apollo 39 (O-3/K-13/V3), a routine 10-day visitor mission to Olympus 3 bearing Cargo Carrier-2. Apollo 39 docked CC-2’s inboard port with one of Olympus 3’s two unoccupied radial docking ports.

1975

The Apollo 41 (O-3/K-14/R3) CSM docked with the third Olympus 3 radial port bearing the station’s third resident crew in early January 1975. The start of their mission overlapped the end of the Apollo 37 resident crew’s 180-day stay in space. The handover in marked the start of Olympus 3’s continuous occupation, which lasted until the station was safely deorbited in July 1979.

Apollo 42 (O-3/K-15/V4), another 10-day visitor mission to Olympus 3, docked at the CC-2 outboard port in March 1975 and, when they returned to Earth, deorbited CC-2 over the Pacific Ocean. Apollo 43 (O-3/K-16/V5) in May 1975, was the second 10-day mission to visit the Apollo 41 resident crew.

Apollo 44 (0-3/K-16/R4) docked with Olympus 3 on 19 December 1975. On their way to Olympus 3, they performed a rendezvous with Olympus 1 to assess its condition. Apollo 41's return to Earth on 31 December 1975 rounded out NASA's 1975 piloted spaceflight schedule.

On our alternate timeline, NASA’s Apollo-based piloted space program is hitting its stride. Earth-orbital operations are becoming routine; lunar-surface operations are continuing to evolve and advance.

On our own timeline, Apollo has drawn to its ill-considered close. Apollo would attract general public notice twice before the first Space Shuttle flight in April 1981: in September 1977, when funding cuts compelled NASA to shut off the science instruments the six Apollo lunar landing crews left behind on the moon; and in July 1979, when Skylab reentered Earth’s atmosphere less than a week ahead of Apollo 11’s 10th anniversary, pelting Australia with debris.
 

Archibald

Banned
Post Scriptum: I have forwarded links to this board various amazing space timelines to MR. Portree. I send him links to Eyes Turned Skywards; Kolyma's shadow; Brovane Journey of the Saturn; SpaceGeek and Michel Van space TLs; and my own Columbia rescue TL.
 
In Scott Lowther's Up Ship blog, look up "How to get from 1968 to 2001". It is in various parts and is a great ATL on space exploration leading up to the events in the film 2001.
 
In Scott Lowther's Up Ship blog, look up "How to get from 1968 to 2001". It is in various parts and is a great ATL on space exploration leading up to the events in the film 2001.

Very interesting read.

And he really did it. After Saturn and Neptune rocket booster, he created the Uranus rocket!
 

Archibald

Banned
Hmmm... NO.
Lowther history is a piece of sh*t marred by his paranoid, far-right wing tendencies
Please lets focuse here on Mr Portree story... thank you
 
Portree's alt-history Apollo program is great fun to read, and dream about (how wonderful much of this would be) ...but he never makes clear what the point of departure is, or how it might come about plausibly. The answer seems to be: "Richard Nixon and a solid congressional majority in both houses suddenly decided to keep spending limitless cash on Apollo for years to come."

But the problem was that public support for NASA was drying up even before Apollo 11. The steadily dropping funding levels from FY 1967 onward reflect that political reality.
 
Portree's alt-history Apollo program is great fun to read, and dream about (how wonderful much of this would be) ...but he never makes clear what the point of departure is, or how it might come about plausibly. The answer seems to be: "Richard Nixon and a solid congressional majority in both houses suddenly decided to keep spending limitless cash on Apollo for years to come."

But the problem was that public support for NASA was drying up even before Apollo 11. The steadily dropping funding levels from FY 1967 onward reflect that political reality.

And that is fairly freeking. It's like the initial interest of those projects falled in between cracs and, we will all pay the price for it. Not enough that the original message was clear, we're loosing to much time in cost evaluation rather than completing the goal of pre-posting detectors in our solar system
of any activity out of the predictables. Gerard.
 
Hmmm... NO.
Lowther history is a piece of sh*t marred by his paranoid, far-right wing tendencies
Please lets focuse here on Mr Portree story... thank you

Yeah, sure. And you're a Trotzkyist.

Come on - Ur..anus rocket! The program name, NASA would surely not choose if all other planets, greek gods, mythological figures, virtues and american cities were used up.
 
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Archibald

Banned
Yeah, sure. And you're a Trotzkyist.

Come on - Ur..anus rocket! The program name, NASA would surely not choose if all other planets, greek gods, mythological figures, virtues and american cities were used up.

My ass. I've been following Scott Lowther on various blogs and forums for a long time, and I stand to my point. This story is a vehicle for his extremists views. But that's not the object of the discussion here.

As for the Uranus rocket, I suggest we name it Urrectum, to end that lame joke once and for all.
 
Hi all! I saw this a couple days ago, but it took a while for me to think of something constructive to say. The key question is, how do we get an ATL where developments are close enough to OTL that the Apollo program and its Saturn rockets are essentially the same as OTL, but funding for NASA's manned program is not cut down to the same levels as OTL once success at the Moon landing seems reasonably well assured. By no means do I think Portree's scenario demands "infinite funding;" NASA's budget at its mid-60s peak was tiny compared to the Department of Defense, and there is considerable room between OTL levels and that peak. Sustaining the mid-60s peak is unrealistic barring ASB scenarios (discovery of alien artifacts littered around the potentially accessible near Solar System is my standard go-to for "how can the space program pull out all the stops?)

If we want to work within the OTL 1970s and later budgets, there is no room for keeping any Saturn V's in inventory. Or conceivably they might be used, but it would mean launching a single mission every other year or so; there would be no way to keep the entire experienced team of technicians and engineers on staff just for these sporadic missions. On OTL budgets, Eyes Turned Skyward is the reasonable level of activity we could expect, meaning operations around a few launches a year within the capability of the Saturn 1C, only moderately upgraded from the 1B. That sustained some key Saturn technology, notably the next iteration of the two engines used. But Portree is clearly talking about a program where Saturn V's are being launched, at least once a year, maybe twice or three times; therefore something has to have diverged so that funding is available on a scale greater than OTL, if not necessarily on the ambitious scale NASA was asking for and assuming they'd have after Apollo's success.

It sure would be nice to butterfly away the Vietnam war; no matter what Lowther seems to think (being apparently unable to process the concept of a liberal Democrat who is also pro-space) LBJ certainly had a lot invested in Apollo and I see no reason why he'd be hostile to NASA rolling on afterward; he did after all lobby to get the manned space operations center based in Texas. Change the mid-to-late sixties so Vietnam is a back-page story somehow and one would expect that between the 1960s economic boom and federal largesse being available for Great Society and the space program, with no war to suck up the funds and darken the political skies, he'd be a shoo-in for reelection in 1968. (Then, I'd fear, the economy would start to stagnate and collapse before 1972; I believe that since I think capitalist boom and bust cycles are a deep feature, that indeed the very boom, as it entered a feverish phase, was evidence a crisis would soon emerge. In such a setting continued NASA funding on a larger scale than OTL might be short-lived, indeed it might plummet lower than OTL.:eek:)

But I don't think Vietnam can be butterflied away; like the capitalist business cycle, that crisis was embedded too deeply in the circumstances any US president would face in the latter half of the Sixties; the only way to avoid the quagmire IMHO would be to avoid being drawn in at all, and that would be tantamount to handing all of former French Indochina (and perhaps even Thailand) over to some kind of Communist regime or other. Perhaps if some visionary American politicians could have properly foreseen how messy and costly and demoralizing it would get they might have toughed out the criticism for "losing Vietnam" but it would likely be so fatal to any political career (at least one aiming for the Oval Office) that even with such foresight such a leader might prefer to take their chances trying to see if they can manage their way to a surviving, US-allied Saigon regime. Lacking uncanny ASB foresight I think we can assume any American president would be sucked into the southeast Asian vortex, and once there I don't think there is any way to guarantee the survival of any South Vietnamese regime without massive intervention sustained for decades--and that intervention would take on a necessarily ugly and brutal form.

So, even if someone can show a way it all ends eventually in glory and a grateful, stable and democratic South Vietnam (along with Cambodia and Laos avoiding communist takeover too) there is no way to avoid the money drain; lives and treasure are going to South Vietnam and not guaranteed at all to come back.

We need a motive to sustain space funding on a greater than OTL scale even in the face of a costly war, shaky and turbulent US domestic politics, and the coming slow-motion crash of stagflation.

The least ASB factor I can think to vary is the degree of Soviet competition. Essentially I think the "Red Star" timeline is the answer Portree is looking for. If the Soviet Union can sustain a stronger challenge, so that as 1969 nears US intelligence is not at all sure they won't land at least one cosmonaut on the Moon and return them alive to Earth before the American program can do that much, then I suspect that the Cold War competition will bring enough Congressmen and Senators on side of sustaining a large program after the initial moon landings. I don't know if it is necessary to go as far as the authors of that TL did and actually have a cosmonaut beat the Apollo 11 astronauts to the surface and return alive just weeks before that American mission could be launched. The more I think about it though the more I think yes, maybe it is. Because the Soviets were coming from behind really, and could not have beat the Americans to the Moon with missions comparable in capability to what the Apollo landers could do; therefore if they come in second, they'd both have lost the race and clearly be second best in what they bring to the Moon as well, and the "well, we won, so that's a wrap" attitude that lay behind the deep cuts to NASA OTL would still be in play in the USA. Since the Soviet landers, at least before 1970, would necessarily be marginal and inferior, they do have to be first past the post to change the dynamic.

I think Red Star got it right; with the Russians snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, the American response would be to stay in the game and up the stakes.
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We could therefore see an extension of the use of Saturn V's, since they are already on the shelf and there is no time to be lost waiting for the Godot of an allegedly better, reusable launcher. But I don't think the dream of a reusable Shuttle type system would die--rather it would be put on a developmental timetable, and perhaps developed incrementally from Saturn tech. The idea would be that eventually, by the 1980s perhaps, a more economical launch system would be developed, but meanwhile essential milestones in the long marathon Cold War Space Race would be met with the disposable rockets while the superior successor is being developed methodically. It would be rational to start, not with a spaceplane, still less one that supposedly should carry all payloads to orbit, but with developing return and reuse for the massive first stage. If a reusable flyback booster can be made, it could be used to launch all kinds of payloads, saving and reusing the most expensive single component. In parallel developing a space bus upper stage, starting with one launched by a Saturn V second stage boosted by either the old disposable first stage or a flyback reused one, would proceed on another track. Meanwhile similar upgrades and development of the Saturn 1B type vehicle, on about 1/5 the mass scale of the Saturn V, would also be going on.

With such hardware in the pipeline, I could see a space station track wherein 100 ton modules are launched every year; at first as Skylab type limited lifespan free-flying stations, in succession, then a phase where the modules are aggregated into an ever-growing (but aging!) single station, one designed to be less of a lab in space and more an orbital operations center, the planned jumping off point for missions to the Moon--and beyond.
 
Hello Shevek,

The least ASB factor I can think to vary is the degree of Soviet competition.

That does seem to be the majority consensus every time this kind of question comes up....

It helps that the Soviet leadership didn't have to respond to political pressures in the same way that American administrations do.
 
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