Dreams of Atomic Midshipmen

[Juumanistra]

The 50's really were a golden rocket age that's hard to find info on, and the potential for the Space Age going down another path is undeniable. Sure, Sea Dragon probably would never have been built... but what about a 25-30 Tonne Excalibur with Gas Generator engines?

Sea-launch is one of those issues that never fails to start an argument with space enthusiasts. I used to be very much of the opinion that sea-launching was brilliant, but as I've had to really get into the weeds, I've found I've been downplaying the problems it has. Things like payload integration: You can build your rocket to hang out in a rolling saltwater environment while you prep for launch, but you can't do that nearly so easily for your manned vehicle or satellite, for example. Not insurmountable problems, but things that add weight to doing things on dry land.

But there's still plenty of hay to be made from the fact that, for the Navy, needing to operate recovery ships is a feature and not a bug.

Or the GE Apollo getting chosen and started a few years earlier?

With the lenticular re-entry vehicle, for maximum Fifties vibes?

Needless to say, American Soyuz has been on the menu. Then off the menu. Then back on. And is currently off the menu again, probably for good, but you never know until you actually get there. I admit that I am a fan of convergent or symmetrical space programs, where American and Soviet hardware ends up being basically the same conceptually -- in this case Soyuz -- and that it's just a Known Fact™ in universe that this is what happens with space programs. But I think I've already hit my convergence quota in a TL that's not built around it.

I think that cryptic aside means a betting pool is in order, about what will be convergent that was not IOTL.

Or Gerald Bull getting a propellant launch contract in the early 70s?

Stop reading my notes, dagnabbit.

This would be a reference to Nathaniel Bowditch, an American sailor and author of The New American Practical Navigator, a publication still kept in print by the US Government.

Suffice to say, any Naval Officer would know what the reference was.

Incidentally, a fictionalized biography of Bowditch would be published in 1955, it's a great read if you have a few hours to kill.

Oh, I know who Nathaniel Bowditch is. And it's a fairly obvious reference, in-universe, to name a project that's working on satellite navigation after the patron saint of American nautical navigation. The mystery is why it's Project BOWDITCH versus Project Bowditch, when there is no official acronym of what BOWDITCH means. It's a slight riff on the very true -- and at times confusing -- practice in some older documents where they will capitalize project names for emphasis, while also using acronyms in the same document, leading one to always wonder whether something that's capitalized like that is in fact an acronym.

 

[Obi wan Kenobi]

Stop reading my notes, dagnabbit.

It's your fault for collecting so many talented engineers who never got their day in the sun. Can't blame me for spotting the odd one out!

Needless to say, American Soyuz has been on the menu. Then off the menu. Then back on. And is currently off the menu again, probably for good, but you never know until you actually get there. I admit that I am a fan of convergent or symmetrical space programs, where American and Soviet hardware ends up being basically the same conceptually -- in this case Soyuz -- and that it's just a Known Fact™ in universe that this is what happens with space programs. But I think I've already hit my convergence quota in a TL that's not built around it.

Fair enough.

(Pity, the idea showed up OTL in a context where it had zero chance of happening. And it's rather close to what the Atlas/Manhattan could lift right out of the gate)

Oh, I know who Nathaniel Bowditch is. And it's a fairly obvious reference, in-universe, to name a project that's working on satellite navigation after the patron saint of American nautical navigation. The mystery is why it's Project BOWDITCH versus Project Bowditch, when there is no official acronym of what BOWDITCH means. It's a slight riff on the very true -- and at times confusing -- practice in some older documents where they will capitalize project names for emphasis, while also using acronyms in the same document, leading one to always wonder whether something that's capitalized like that is in fact an acronym.

That makes sense. I'll bet it was a Capitalization (pretty sure they were using it the way we use italics today) and it just stuck. BOWDITCH is a bit too rich for pre-NASA acronyms.

 

[Nell_Lucifer]

Needless to say, American Soyuz has been on the menu. Then off the menu. Then back on. And is currently off the menu again, probably for good, but you never know until you actually get there. I admit that I am a fan of convergent or symmetrical space programs, where American and Soviet hardware ends up being basically the same conceptually -- in this case Soyuz -- and that it's just a Known Fact™ in universe that this is what happens with space programs. But I think I've already hit my convergence quota in a TL that's not built around it.

I think that cryptic aside means a betting pool is in order, about what will be convergent that was not IOTL.

Umm... like Sever? Or Pentaborane/Ammonium-Fluorine fuels?

 

[Juumanistra]

It's your fault for collecting so many talented engineers who never got their day in the sun. Can't blame me for spotting the odd one out!

I've still got that TLIAD idea in my head where Frank Parsons doesn't blow himself up, with things ultimately ending up with him and Bull in Israel building a gun-based space program. (How else is Mossad going to launch its mind control satellites?) The Solid Fuel Whisperer tends to get left out of alternative history, because he died so early that keeping him tends to introduce an enormous diversity of potential changes, while simultaneously there's not a whole lot he can do if he survives without even more monumental changes to the surrounding context. Ironically, what he actually wanted to do -- flee to Israel and then start designing missiles again -- works surprisingly well to focus the aspiring allohistorical writer by removing a good deal of pathway divergence and the analysis-paralysis it causes.

Bull just tends to get no love because HARP actually reaching maturity isn't sexy. 50 pounds of payload from Martlet 4 is just not a lot to work with, though it could generate some impressive economies of scale were it used to loft, say, storable remass. But those impressive economies of scale break down a bit when you realize that you're at 40 launches per ton of payload to orbit with a gun whose barrel life, when new, was 290 rounds. So you're looking at 7 tons to orbit per barrel at best, while the barrels themselves are not in production any longer. There are ways to fix those problems: Barrel lengthening -- doubling it -- would've yielded a decent percentage payload increase and IOTL they were already looking at hydrazine/N2O4 liquid-fueled stages instead of the solid-fueled ones, which would've improved things considerably. New guns with new barrels -- optimized for launch work -- could be designed and built, but that's going to drive up costs considerably and even then you're never going to have a sexy headline payload figure. So it's hardly surprising the idea doesn't turn up much.