DBWI: What if the DynaSoar had been cancelled?

Isn't that pretty much what the shuttle was, a big, expensive, complex launch basket?


"DBWI" in a thread title means "Double-Blind What If," that is, you are writing as if what is depicted in the scenario is reality, and that's the perspective you would write from. (Sigh. I feel so pedantic.)

so, remember that the default perspective/point-of-view of someone posting in a thread is to adopt that of someone "inside" the scenario/timeline/"world" as it unrolls/is revealed.


this means that if you are going to say something um...


basically, if you say anything that isn't "playing in character" from the POV of being in the depicted world/timeline/scenario (gosh I feel like a freaking geek),

remember to add, "ooc" for "out of character" preceding the text in such posts.


for example,

OOC: Hey, Fred, your concept is marvelous, and, by the way, your "Maximum Leader" seems like a combination of John Corzine and Elizabeth Taylor! How droll!

IC: Naturally, we must overthrow Maximum Leader, and then feed her entrails to her Royal Turtles. Then I would be able to laugh as in old days.



I think there's a FAQ or three around the site that'll explain this much more clearly.
 
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Back to the TL. While it is certainly true that France, Germany and Great Britain have created their own analogues to the Dyna-Soar, we also live in a world wherein China, Russia, and possibly North Korea have the capability to launch their versions of Dyna-Soar. Any thoughts?
 
I don't see what's so bad about the Russians having a Dyna-Soar analog- we did give them some of the old X-20 technology after the fall of the USSR and when they asked us for help with their space program.

Also, if North Korea tried something with the Chinese X-20 copy they have and one of their nukes, a Russian SSp-23 or US Nike-Titan ABM/ASaM site could take it out before it could do it's attack run. The Nike-Titan is a very good heavy SAM system with it's ability to be switched to perform anti-aircraft, anti-ballistic missile, or anti-satellite roles, with fragmentation or nuclear warheads. Mobile units can only carry one missile, but it's still got very good accuracy, and Patriots can give it cover.

I do love how they have improved the static Nike sites so much since the Nike Hercules. Missiles get to the launch deck far quicker, SPY-1 radar on site, and excellent crew quarters, for the more remote sites. Those SPY-1 radars can burn stuff real easy when pointed at the ground. My launch crew once tried our own redneck fishing with the AEGIS radar while doing some adjustments, since our site is close to a lake. Pointed it at the lake, then turned it off and headed down. There was quite a few fish on the surface. We found several dead animals in the woods too. Most of it we weren't going to eat........didn't know what they had.

 
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NASA staggers on...

Of course one other thing about the DynaSoar is that is broke the monopoly on manned space flight that NASA (remember them?) had. Once DOD had its own ticket, some of the more ambitious aerospace firms started sniffing around as well. OK, their early efforts weren't too impressive, but by the late 70s and early 80s, there were real alternatives to the government for getting people into space. Without DynaSoar and its follow-ons, just exactly how would manned spaceflight have continued after Apollo wound down? After all, NASA really had no ideas other than repeating Apollo over and over again, and the Nixon administration had less than no interesting in providing any further funding for manned space flight unless the military was going to sign on.

If there had been no DynaSoar, then NASA might have been able to monopolize manned spaceflight well into the 80s or even longer. The various administrators at NASA had a well-known skill in protecting their bureaucratic turf, and the various aerospace firms would have been devastated by the post-Apollo wind-down in the early 70s. Given the empire building that NASA was famous for, we could have easily gotten pushed into some sort of ridiculous one-size-fits-all reusable system (I believe that was what was in vogue at the time, though even more idiotic concepts were being discussed), and spent decades running up a blind alley.
 
Of course one other thing about the DynaSoar is that is broke the monopoly on manned space flight that NASA (remember them?) had. Once DOD had its own ticket, some of the more ambitious aerospace firms started sniffing around as well. OK, their early efforts weren't too impressive, but by the late 70s and early 80s, there were real alternatives to the government for getting people into space. Without DynaSoar and its follow-ons, just exactly how would manned spaceflight have continued after Apollo wound down? After all, NASA really had no ideas other than repeating Apollo over and over again, and the Nixon administration had less than no interesting in providing any further funding for manned space flight unless the military was going to sign on.

If there had been no DynaSoar, then NASA might have been able to monopolize manned spaceflight well into the 80s or even longer. The various administrators at NASA had a well-known skill in protecting their bureaucratic turf, and the various aerospace firms would have been devastated by the post-Apollo wind-down in the early 70s. Given the empire building that NASA was famous for, we could have easily gotten pushed into some sort of ridiculous one-size-fits-all reusable system (I believe that was what was in vogue at the time, though even more idiotic concepts were being discussed), and spent decades running up a blind alley.
OOC: This contradicts earlier posts. I had already established that NASA learned a lot of from the Air Force on Dyna-Soar, and it led to increased cooperation between the two, and the building of an Energia style Space Transport System
 
I don't see what's so bad about the Russians having a Dyna-Soar analog- we did give them some of the old X-20 technology after the fall of the USSR and when they asked us for help with their space program.

Also, if North Korea tried something with the Chinese X-20 copy they have and one of their nukes, a Russian SSp-23 or US Nike-Titan ABM/ASaM site could take it out before it could do it's attack run. The Nike-Titan is a very good heavy SAM system with it's ability to be switched to perform anti-aircraft, anti-ballistic missile, or anti-satellite roles, with fragmentation or nuclear warheads. Mobile units can only carry one missile, but it's still got very good accuracy, and Patriots can give it cover.

I do love how they have improved the static Nike sites so much since the Nike Hercules. Missiles get to the launch deck far quicker, SPY-1 radar on site, and excellent crew quarters, for the more remote sites. Those SPY-1 radars can burn stuff real easy when pointed at the ground. My launch crew once tried our own redneck fishing with the AEGIS radar while doing some adjustments, since our site is close to a lake. Pointed it at the lake, then turned it off and headed down. There was quite a few fish on the surface. We found several dead animals in the woods too. Most of it we weren't going to eat........didn't know what they had.

But the problem is that there are quite a few copies that are entering into the hands of some dangerous people. I certainly remember in 1986-1989, there was even talk that the Libyans were trying to get their hands on a French copy of the Dyna-Soar. In 1995, there was also the case of the Aum Shirinkyo using one purchased from Russia to attack cities on the American West Coast...

The terrorists organizations are not stupid, nor do they exist in a pre-Industrial Revolution state. Many of them are educated in the United States or Western Europe. Some are even home-grown nutjobs. Imagine one of them using a Dyna-Soar to deliver a weapon into the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. or Wall Street in New York... There won't be enough time to react...
 
OOC: This contradicts earlier posts. I had already established that NASA learned a lot of from the Air Force on Dyna-Soar, and it led to increased cooperation between the two, and the building of an Energia style Space Transport System

OOC: I wasn't aware that prior comments locked an observation as 'canon'...seems inconsistent with other comments in this thread.

In any event, just because NASA survives, doesn't mean it remains relevant in manned spaceflight as anything other than a technology consultant, and a bad one at that. One can always assume an functional NASA still happily launching planetary probes (not that they were particularly good at that, but still they are better than the competition) well into the 1990s. Dream on regarding Energia...
 
OOC: I think there's too much emphasis on the X-20 as a weapon here. The X-20's payload was VERY small. Big enough to carry perhaps a single mid-60s nuke, yes (I haven't checked the numbers, but I'm pretty sure I'm right), but that's about all. As I've read the X-20 material that's available (I've got a book about it, but it's at the office and I'm working from home today ...), having a cross-range capable "orbital bomber" was one very long-term rationale for the program, but only one, and was viewed as a very long-term development goal. ISR was a much-much more real and present "benefit" touted for the X-20. But, really, the X-20 was seen as an R&D project to just push the envelope out from the next stage after the X-15. Anyway, that's my perception ...
 

Commissar

Banned
OOC: I think there's too much emphasis on the X-20 as a weapon here. The X-20's payload was VERY small. Big enough to carry perhaps a single mid-60s nuke, yes (I haven't checked the numbers, but I'm pretty sure I'm right), but that's about all. As I've read the X-20 material that's available (I've got a book about it, but it's at the office and I'm working from home today ...), having a cross-range capable "orbital bomber" was one very long-term rationale for the program, but only one, and was viewed as a very long-term development goal. ISR was a much-much more real and present "benefit" touted for the X-20. But, really, the X-20 was seen as an R&D project to just push the envelope out from the next stage after the X-15. Anyway, that's my perception ...

OOC: Well of course as a conventional bomber it would have been useless outside of show, but as a nuclear bomber, very useful for quickly hitting high priority targets in a multi-layered nuclear response.

A true successor...

IC: But enough with the Dynosoar, its main purpose as we all know was as a test bed for the bigger B-4 Dragon Nuclear Bomber, and the C-9 Hacker (Who came up with that nickname?!) Transport, a SSTO design capable of lifting 200 Tons into space in one go.

Hey isn't one of our members a loadmaster for one of those brutes. Maybe he can tell us where the Hacker nickname came from and his experience on flight runs.
 

Cook

Banned
IC: But enough with the Dynosoar, its main purpose as we all know was as a test bed for the bigger B-4 Dragon Nuclear Bomber, and the C-9 Hacker (Who came up with that nickname?!) Transport, a SSTO design capable of lifting 200 Tons into space in one go.
Bloody waste money the lot of them; they should have built the Seadragon instead.
 

Commissar

Banned
I mean Robert Traux’s Seadragon: Two stage, sea launched rocket that would have put 550 tonnes into orbit in a single shot.

Which was made obsolete by the NOVA which put the 1,200 Ton ISS into Orbit.

Nothing can beat NOVA. Unless you are Perry the Platypus and deflect Dr. Doofenshmirtz's shrinkinator beam at it. ;)
 
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