DBWI: What if the DynaSoar had been cancelled?
- Thread starter Mysterion
- Start date
Well, both the Air Force and NASA learned a whole lot from DynaSoar, particularly the larger DS-III. That experience played directly into the Space Transport System's design.
Centrally, they learned that reusable space-plane orbiters wouldn't significantly reduce launch prices, especially for heavy payloads. It was good for people, bad for cargo. With that in mind, they designed the STS to have a modular booster, able to either piggyback a disposable cargopod for heavy lifts or a shuttle for sat captures and personnel transit. (OOC: Like OTL's Energia).
In particular, they learned that it wouldn't cut it to have disposable boosters and reusable orbiters. Which is why the later blocks of the STS boosters were capable of flyback.
Centrally, they learned that reusable space-plane orbiters wouldn't significantly reduce launch prices, especially for heavy payloads. It was good for people, bad for cargo. With that in mind, they designed the STS to have a modular booster, able to either piggyback a disposable cargopod for heavy lifts or a shuttle for sat captures and personnel transit. (OOC: Like OTL's Energia).
In particular, they learned that it wouldn't cut it to have disposable boosters and reusable orbiters. Which is why the later blocks of the STS boosters were capable of flyback.
When I first saw the title I read it as "WI the Dinah Shore Show had been cancelled". I have some fond memories of watching that show as a child on Sunday nights right after Bonanza with my parents and baby brother. I also remember running around singing the theme song, "See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet" ad nauzeaum. The quintessential variety show; thankfully it stayed on the air through the early 70s.
Considering how the USAF Dyna-Soar program became a source of protest during the Vietnam War for the sub-orbital bombing raids, Florida would have certainly seen fewer of the student riots at Cape Canaveral and Fort Lauderdale during the 1960s and 1970s....
Those were really just propaganda exercises and saber rattling against the Soviets. Using the Dyna-Soar to deliver sub-orbital conventional munitions was a ridiculous waste of resources. It was a signal to the Soviets that we weren't going to take the Outer Space weapons treaty seriously
Precisely. Why use an orbital booster to put a spaceplane up and risk a man's life to deliver a warhead, when you can use that same booster to deliver five warheads without risking a pilot?!
As for whether Project Apollo would succeed by 1968 rather than 1970, I don't think so. While NASA benefited from Dyna-Soar, the USAF funded most of it. At most, some more talented engineers might stay with the S-IC Program at Boeing (the Saturn first stage) rather than move to DynaSoar. But the S-IC was never a source of problems for the program; rather, the CSM was, from the start, a bloody lemon.
Commissar
Banned
"Raises eyebrows"
The Dyno can maneuver. The MRV can't as it is on a tight Ballistic trajectory which allows ABM defenses to to plot its course and hit the bus before it deploys its warheads and destroy them all in one shot.
I don't see how anyone can be questioning the merit of the Dynosaur after the Pegasus incident of 1970. It is not remarkable that Moryak IX was followed by an S-21 Cerberus; it was standing American policy to shadow Soviet flights, especially in the wake of the Soviet lunar landing in October 1969. What was remarkable is that Cosmonaut Pisarov, mission commander on the Soviet ship, would broadcast his distress in the clear when his capsule lost cabin pressure. What was absolutely fortuitous was that Artemis XII was set to launch that week, and an S-23 Pegasus was ready and standing by to rescue the Artemis crew in the event of an abort.
The value of the detente following Col. Armstrong's much-ballyhooed rescue of the two Soviet spacemen can hardly be overstated. It is hard to imagine that the joint Soviet (now Russian)/American lunar base would have been possible without it.
The value of the detente following Col. Armstrong's much-ballyhooed rescue of the two Soviet spacemen can hardly be overstated. It is hard to imagine that the joint Soviet (now Russian)/American lunar base would have been possible without it.
But the effect on the political landscape can't be understated. Just consider how the presidential elections have been altered with Florida being considered a "safe Democratic" state since 1972. With the 1980s you had the "sanctuary cities" established in Miami, Pensacola, and Fort Lauderdale.
Florida is only a safe Democratic state because of the state's huge population of old people and a certain wing of the Republican Part that keeps threatening to mess with Social Security. And the sanctuary cities were established because of pressure from the large Cuban and Latino population to keep immigrations from Latin America safe. Take those two issues out, and Florida is a socially conservative state, even with all the new liberals moving in in South Florida.
Dynasoar can only maneuver slightly on reentry- it was based on a flying wing, for goodness' sake! If you're looking for something that can maneuver in an actual way and is fast, you could just use a hypersonic bomber with a scramjet...
Cook
Banned
X-20 was a simple evolutionary step on from the X-15 while a hypersonic scramjet still can’t be done. It would be like the RAF cancelling the contract for the Spitfire in 1938 because someone showed them his ideas for a Harrier Jet.
That maybe true but it has certainly made the "Republican Southern strategy" under Nixon, a lot less effective than it could have been. Just consider that almost every Democratic President since 1972 has also been able to use NASA and the USAF to receive money for pork barrel products.....
Nixon was a genius in how he handled that and the aftermath.
It's incredible how one vehicle could be such a profoundly dramatic force both in war and in peace.
But before we congratulate Nixon on his political abilities, remember that Nixon was responsible for the deployment of the Dyna-Soar weapons over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Even to this day, most of the nations of Southeast Asia have a very strained relationship with the United States.
Also the deployment of the Dyna-Soar throughout the 1980s over Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia served to strain U.S./ Middle East served only to fuel anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiment in the region. And we have still yet to see the deployment of the solar-power satellites that were promised since the 1960s...
Commissar
Banned
Altering course in orbit, moving up and down in space, is not maneuvering?
ICBMs can't do that.
Also Flying Wings are quite maneuverable, especially at higher altitudes where lift is everything. Fighter jocks know not to piss off our flying wing bombers in exercises as they'll run them over and chase them.
Actually, IIRC, the third X-20 flight demonstrated significant orbital PLANE change with skip-gliding and reboost. But the original X-20 had so little on-board Delta-V that major orbital ALTITUDE changes were beyond it.
At any rate, there seems to be little question that the decision to go ahead with the X-20 program was a major turning point in the US space program, for the reasons pointed out above: by providing a contrast to what the Saturn Ib and Saturn V and their later derivatives could do, it demonstrated that putting things into space and putting people into space require very different kinds of systems.
Without the Dyna-Soar program, we might have wasted decades and tens of billions of dollars by putting all of our eggs into one big launch basket. Once the Apollo Phase One program was finished after Apollo 16, given the pressure to reduce NASA's budget, it's possible the agency would have pushed for another Big Program for political reasons.
At any rate, there seems to be little question that the decision to go ahead with the X-20 program was a major turning point in the US space program, for the reasons pointed out above: by providing a contrast to what the Saturn Ib and Saturn V and their later derivatives could do, it demonstrated that putting things into space and putting people into space require very different kinds of systems.
Without the Dyna-Soar program, we might have wasted decades and tens of billions of dollars by putting all of our eggs into one big launch basket. Once the Apollo Phase One program was finished after Apollo 16, given the pressure to reduce NASA's budget, it's possible the agency would have pushed for another Big Program for political reasons.
Isn't that pretty much what the shuttle was, a big, expensive, complex launch basket?
He does that. Created a fair bit of fuss in a thread on the ASB forum.... I was playing the game. Now you've gone and ruined it!