Eyes Turned Skywards

I Googled "Peggy Barnes;" "Peggy Barnes NASA;" "Peggy Barnes astronaut" to see if she is some OTL person I should know about but don't. The only relevant cites that show up on the first pages of the searches are of course links to this very update right here on this thread.

She could of course be an OTL person who doesn't use the last name "Barnes" it being an ATL married name, or her maiden name when OTL she goes by a married name. Or she never gets cited as "Peggy" OTL.

So I did more searches with the name "Margaret." I doubt it can be Margaret Rhea Seddon since Seddon is her maiden name though I suppose ITTL she might have married some guy named Barnes and adopted his name professionally. Seddon is of the right generation though. However she is a physician, whereas this Peggy Barnes spacewalked to tend exposed experiments, so we'd have to butterfly her choice of profession as well as personal life.

If Seddon is in the ATL program, I guess the astronaut corps has to get used to there being a number of "Peggys" around!

And Peggy Barnes, I conclude, is a woman of no fame at least none connected to the space program OTL.

As it happens, OTL both Sally Ride and Margaret Seddon joined NASA at the same time, in 1978. Here, with none of the hiatus in manned (ahem, human) spaceflight that happened OTL I suppose the recruitment was...

Well, I don't have to guess, do I? The good authors have had the grace to include a table of contents in the form of post summaries here; I infer that Peggy Barnes was one of the "Twenty Freaking New Guys!" of Post 14--which I note was posted nearly 12 Freaking Months Ago!:p I can be forgiven I think for forgetting, and again profusely and seriously thank the authors for giving us this index.

The post says the open application period was announced in 1977 and doesn't say how long it ran; since this is very close to the time Ride and Seddon joined up, I am torn between guessing whether either or both of them were edged out in the competition (I'm going to go out on a limb here:rolleyes: and guess NASA didn't select as many as 10 women out of the 20 astronaut candidates selected; 5 would be fantastically many I fear:(), chose not to enroll for whatever reason, or even are butterflied away completely ITTL (car accidents and the like).

This makes me sad because viewing Ride's life in retrospect we were damn lucky to have her in NASA. I never heard of Seddon particularly before but I'm damn protective of all the women who have managed to break this particular glass ceiling, of whatever nationality.

Well, there was that one who went nuts back in '07 or '07 and got involved in a scandal straight out of the most lurid tabloid involving attempted kidnapping and God knows what else. Even her, I'm more sad about than contemptuous of.

So, Peggy Barnes I hope is up to Sally Ride type standards anyway.

The post says Barnes is the first non-Russian woman to orbit; it doesn't say whether the Soviets rushed another female cosmonaut up to try to rack up a score of 2 before her mission as OTL. But Soyuz T-7 which included Svetlana Savitskaya did not fly until August 1982 OTL; to beat Barnes for second woman in space, they'd have had to fit one in earlier. I guess they could have ITTL since they are more active in space too (or are they? Are they just keeping the same pace pretty much as OTL, at least until Vulkan/TKS missions start operating?)

Anyway OTL the Soviets and later Russians I think didn't manage the degree of gender balance the American program eventually did. This list shows 45 women who have gone to orbit in an STS at least once (counting those lost on their first mission, in Challenger and Columbia) versus about 10 total in Soviet/Russian craft and one Chinese woman in a Shenzhou to date. (It's exactly 8 women who only ever went up in a Soyuz or in Tereshkova's case of course a Vostok; I lost count of whether it was 2 or more American women astronauts who have also flown in a Soyuz--there's one American woman astronaut who has only ever flown in the Soyuz but I believe that she's in the US program, it's just that we aren't sending up any more Shuttles!:eek:)

Well, I'm having a hard time determining just what portion of the 528 people who have gone into space to date were launched by the Soviet/Russian programs versus the US, but I'd guess overall about a third at least were Russian-launched, so on the whole the US program seems to take gender equity a bit more seriously.

Also, looking at the list of women in space, we sent a whole lot of them up before the Challenger disaster; I'm guessing that in the late 70s while ramping up for STS NASA recruited a lot more than 20 astronauts rather than their having firmly reserved half the seats for women. Overall it looks like it was somewhere between 1 in 8 to one in 6 for the American program.

So, with the added capability of the Apollo III+ and the same social forces at work on this ATL program as were in play in the 80s and after OTL, I'm guessing that future Apollo missions with at least one woman aboard will become more common than those with none.

And that we'll be hearing more from Peggy Barnes, though not until several other women astronauts (some of them from other nations) have had their turn.

Still hoping to hear from Sally Ride as well...

Is there a fingers crossed emoticon? There should be.
 
A whole lot more than a "bit;" I've been waiting for Apollo Block III+ to fly since February!:D
Sheesh, Shevek, it's like you've been working on this set of comments that long! Might take a bit to get through these all, but I'll do my best.

Wow, 12 tons. That's presumably to LEO. Still, that's not bad at all. Did anyone give any consideration to developing a man-rated version, to serve as a means of quickly launching a rescue capsule to give crews stranded in orbit an alternative means of reentry in case something went wrong with their Apollo CM?
It's to LEO, yeah. That's barely enough to carry an Apollo Bk III CM empty, but with the integration to the launcher you might end up out of margin. An easier backup is provided by doing what they did in Skylab and the late Shuttle program--you simply start stacking the second crew LV a bit ahead of time as a matter of procedure, and thus it's just about ready if you have a need. Most failures of Apollo would leave them stranded at Spacelab, so there's less urgency in rescue than Shuttle--more like the 20-day window Skylab Rescue was built around than the maximum 2-weeks Shuttle had on-orbit. In theory they could rate Delta 4000 and get the engineering work required to demonstrate a stripped-down Block III on it as an unmanned rescue capability, but while that's cheaper if they end up needing it, it's more expensive in the short term--and it's a rather low-odds case. And that's using a lightly-modified Apollo--if it's gotta be substantially different, then that's even worse.

By 1986 I suppose there will be a redundant constellation of TDRSS up and operational for over half a decade already; perhaps a second generation will go up on Multibodies?
Yeah, it'll be fully operational by 1984ish, well in time for supporting Spacelab, much less Freedom.

Huh. I'd have thought, especially for the first mission, that the MM would be equipped with a porthole and orbital maneuvering controls for a pilot to manage the docking with direct eyeball observation of the target.
We went back and forth on this and looked at several options--camera, periscope, second set of controls, mix of the above. Ultimately, we're going with no second set of controls, not even on the first flight. Primary control station remains in the CM, though a porthole is provided in the MM for a crewperson to act as a spotter (so there's the CDR and CMP in the CM, and a third acting as the spotter). They've been docking Aardvarks under similar control with radar and camera feeds for a while, so they've got a good history for it--the difference is that the controller is aboard the vehicle that's docking. The spotter provides sufficient guidance to back away safely if the camera and radar both fritz out--again, pretty low-probability. My justification for this is Shuttle--the crew docked from control stations on the cockpit, while the actually docking collar was in the payload bay--an offset of many feet, and thus most of it was by camera and radar.

Say the CM gets holed by a meteor while the ship is in free flight, or something blows in the SM a la Apollo 13 but this time the explosion is forceful enough to rupture the CM's atmospheric containment, and they have to scramble into the MM and dog the hatch to survive. This is where the ability to launch an alternate CM sufficient to land them safely would come in handy! Assuming that is, that the MM has some maneuvering ability, or at least a control set that in a pinch could be switched to remote-control the emergency rescue craft to dock with the MM...
The MM has no independent attitude control thrusters, it's just a can with a docking port on each end. It doesn't even have it's own air circulation--it just connects to the CM's system with flex ducts (and provides storage for some additional spare scrubber cartridges). Much like Soyuz, there's no ability at all to operate from the MM only.

I find it odd that problems of this type have to wait until a French astronaut is involved; there's plenty of Americans who appreciate quite a lot of garlic for instance!

Is it just that the French astronaut is the first to assert his right to have food he actually likes versus bland, guaranteed safe but no fun NASA food the mostly-military American astronauts stoically endured as a legacy of the Space Race?
The NASA food isn't "bland" (in fact, starting with Skylab it's pretty good), but it is pretty heavily tested. The French food Chrètien (and the French ESA contingent) insist on is less so, and being provided by ESA is allowed to make a bit of an end run around procedure. The lingering smell isn't enough to seriously threaten crew safety or anything--it's just a large annoyance to the crew, and somebody in NASA's food prep department takes the chance to put in a "So there! Told you so!" to the people who bypassed procedure on the matter to simplify some diplomacy, and the end result is that future ESA-provided food gets to get vetted "properly" by NASA instead of just by ESA. Just a little inter-agency skirmishing, as much within NASA as with ESA.

I was wondering what happened to Sally Ride here, but of course this is years before her OTL STS flight, so presumably she's younger than Barnes who has seniority, and of course various butterflies might have diverted Ride from the space program completely.
Ride was a member of the 1978 class OTL, here she's thus a bit too young for the '77 class. She might have a shot at one of the seats in '79's class, but I'm inclined to minimize the number of OTL individuals--makes it easier to avoid offending anyone if they're fictional. You'll note I've stopped doing full flight-by-flight crew lists, and for much the same reason--it's a pain to keep a proper rotation that takes into account for when individuals might retire in the changed circumstances, plus seniority, plus past flights, plus the need to get rookies seasoned (but hoepfully not with garlic!), and the end value-add to the TL isn't much more than the occasional, "Hey, it's that guy!" The fictional characters inserted on the rosters of the class of '77 and that I can insert into future characters have fewer such issues.

Nope, just the potentially mission-killing possibility the dang hatch will compromise the TPS and fry the lot of them on reentry!:eek:

I've noticed the authors here are pretty sanguine a heat shield hatch can be made foolproof. Common sense suggests to me such a hatch would be a plug in the shield which, during reentry, would be firmly sealed by the pressure of reentry itself, and I'm certainly willing to countenance them!
Basically, yeah, it's a plug and pressed firmly sealed during entry. Note that they tested the heck out of it OTL and ITTL (9 unmanned VA capsules were successfully tested to orbit and back OTL, it's about the same ITTL before they fly one manned). Americans also used heat shield hatches on the Gemini test for MOL, and (of course) the landing gear and propellant-feed hatches on Shuttle. It's really not a huge deal--it takes work and risk minimization in design, but it's very doable.

I presume the crew rides up in the Merkur capsule, all sealed up in spacesuits, and in case of abort the emergency escape system pulls just the Merkur loose and away from the possible explosion?
Yes.

And of course this being a Soviet design, the Merkur is probably quite Spartan, not as light as Western engineers would make a Western version of the capsule to do exactly the same thing, but Western designers would burden the capsule with many bells and whistles the Soviets omit, thus it's a light capsule overall and the emergency escape system is therefore lighter.
It's pretty light as they go, yeah. About 4-5 tons, plus another 2 or so tons for the escape system. Certainly it benefits also from the main life support and habitation being in the FGB--though it's really cramming its crew in tight, the VA isn't much more spacious on its own than a Soyuz re-entry module.

Still, is there any risk of catastrophe lurking in the form of a hatch that isn't quite closed right but without the crew being able to tell this is the case?
It's not completely risk-free, but I think the concern they showed to testing it shows they were aware of the danger, and it's likely to be pretty well-checked and designed to be able to tell if it's not properly closed.

I don't know, if the West (well, just NASA and maybe DoD) is procuring lots of Aardvarks, and the lack of commonality between it and Apollo is due to it being engineered to take advantage of maximizing cargo delivery while not having to be at all man-rated, shouldn't the volume of Aardvark production and the inherent cheapness of an unmanned mission offset this Soviet advantage quite a lot?
Aardvarks's unmanned, but it uses the same basic SM as Apollo, and a lot of it has the same tolerances on the structure and avionics. On the other hand, it's also got just enough differences that it's definitely a separate vehicle--stuff like the (unique) pressurized module tooling. And the total flight rate for Aardvark is only about 1, maybe 2 per year, so it's not like they're being cranked out in vast numbers. Whereas an FGB cargo spacecraft is a standard TKS spacecraft, minus the Merkur, plus a couple additional avionics boxes. It's not as great a transport because of that, less mass-efficient, but it's got much more in common with TKS.
 
I've been looking at the timeline's Wiki page on the spacecraft for more evidence of just what a Delta 4000 or a Vulkan can do. I suppose all the question marks in the Vulkan data indicate to some extent anyway the sort of veil of ignorance Western intelligence agencies would be trying to pierce to get specifics. (Yes, I know they also reflect the authors' own indecision as to these specifics--diameters for instance was IIRC a hot topic of debate. Whereas even if the Western agencies can't get good human intelligence, the first time the Soviets launch a Vulkan surveillance satellites ought to get a good estimate of their diameters at least, if they hadn't already got that from observing prior ground operations. But even a precise knowledge of its linear dimensions won't answer all questions about its mass and precise capabilities!)

The Delta 4000, unless it has been elaborated further in posts after the cited Post 16, is also vague, I guess in part because it isn't one fixed design but a whole family that can, with variable numbers and sizes of solid boosters, be tailored to many different payloads in a broad range.

I'm guessing the 12 tons to orbit figure is with the maximum sizes and numbers of solid boosters, and perhaps a tailored extra-large upper stage too.

I still like my standby rescue CM idea though. I look askance at solids being used on manned launches (and aside from that rendering our whole OTL manned program post-Apollo questionable, I rather suspect the authors will at some point make me face it anyway, with manned solid-boosted intermediate Multibody launches) but of course the rescue CM isn't launched manned. (It can't be, if the mission it needs to rescue already has five people stranded in orbit, there's no room for a sixth person to be returned). So a whole battery of solids on its launcher is just fine. Either it works or it fails.

Given the slim diameter of a Delta OTL, perching an Apollo CM type capsule on top of it would obviously be a bit problematic, but that's the sort of problem that got solved for its awkwardly sized unmanned payloads OTL with the wacky-looking Q-tip or "hammerhead" type fairings as shown for the H03 Heavy in the Multibody illustration.

As for the potentials of a Vulkan multibody heavy, with up to 5 cores (I remember being jeered at for suggesting that for the Saturn Multibody)--well, the Kremlin sure would like to keep the West guessing about that, wouldn't they?:D

It will presumably take the Soviets time to work their way up to a 5-core launch; I gather the launches we've already heard tell of as of the end of 1981 were Vulkan Standards, which we are told can put 21 metric tonnes into orbit (a high inclination orbit suitable for Soviet-launched missions).

Right, this Wikipedia page (for some reason the page dedicated to just what the West wrongly called "Merkur," the VA command module plus OMS, gives more info about the complete ship) gives 21,600 kg as the mass of an all-up TKS at launch (only 17,600 in orbit though, 2500 of that was the escape system, not sure where the rest of it went). So Vulkan Standard can do the job of orbiting a TKS with a bit to spare it would seem. (To a higher orbit perhaps).

So in this timeline did the Soviet authorities actually give the VA component the name "Merkur?"

Anyway I forget if we've already been told the Soviet Union collapses on schedule more or less. (I rather hope not, if that's not already decided--but wait, no, a couple posts back we're told it puts paid to the Soviet plans for Mars exploration so--drat.:( Foiled again!) OK in that case I rather doubt they ever do get around to the 5-core version.

Then again maybe rushing into it has some connection to just how and why and when the USSR crumbles in this timeline!:p
 
I Googled "Peggy Barnes;" "Peggy Barnes NASA;" "Peggy Barnes astronaut" to see if she is some OTL person I should know about but don't. The only relevant cites that show up on the first pages of the searches are of course links to this very update right here on this thread.
Peggy Barnes and Don Hunt (both, I'll note, completely fictional creations) were introduced in the Brainbin's culture-focused interlude back in Part I, where they (as Trekkies) got the chance to cameo on Star Trek: The New Voyages. Note that they are the only members of Group 8 (the '77 class) to be mentioned by name in this update.

Well, I don't have to guess, do I? The good authors have had the grace to include a table of contents in the form of post summaries here; I infer that Peggy Barnes was one of the "Twenty Freaking New Guys!" of Post 14--which I note was posted nearly 12 Freaking Months Ago!:p I can be forgiven I think for forgetting, and again profusely and seriously thank the authors for giving us this index.
I started it, and the tech details page, but Michel's been doing a lot of the upkeep--it's a wiki, the log-in's the same as the main forum. If you see something you'd like to add or clean up, feel free to.

The post says the open application period was announced in 1977 and doesn't say how long it ran; since this is very close to the time Ride and Seddon joined up, I am torn between guessing whether either or both of them were edged out in the competition (I'm going to go out on a limb here:rolleyes: and guess NASA didn't select as many as 10 women out of the 20 astronaut candidates selected; 5 would be fantastically many I fear:(), chose not to enroll for whatever reason, or even are butterflied away completely ITTL (car accidents and the like).
I'm reluctant to speak as to whether either made the cut ITTL specifically, though I guess I'm persuadable. They'd be more likely to be Group 9 (class of '79). The thing to recall is that NASA's only got 4 seats on a Block II+ since one's allocated to ESA (who, I'll note, took until 1985 to get around to adding any women to their corps, and of nearly 30 astronauts, only three have been women), and of those four, two are pilots (CDR, CMP).

Those pilot slots have requirements for experience that would tend to favor men--after all, until the late 80s and 90s, millitary practice with their own woman pilots stood in the way of getting the kind of resume that they'd need to gain admission to the pilot corps. See OTL, where the first woman to pilot a Shuttle was Eileen Collins, admitted in '92, flew in '95. Even if the gender split on the science corps is exactly 50-50, which it won't be for a while, the overall corps is thus likely to be at maximum 1 in 4 well into the mid-90s.
 
....

I'm reluctant to speak as to whether either made the cut ITTL specifically, though I guess I'm persuadable. They'd be more likely to be Group 9 (class of '79).
Everything I posted last night was before I saw your first reply.

I think your decision to move toward an increasing number of completely fictional people is a very good idea; I was operating under the assumption of the astronaut corps being essentially as OTL except for a bit of butterflying; instead in the special case of individuals who get special credit or blame in this timeline the rule is now, they're fictional. Which is different from saying it's butterflied; names and faces and roles have been shifted and blurred to protect the innocent as they say.

On that principle I withdraw all special pleading and uncross my fingers and abjure all requests for specific people of OTL as astronauts.

Obviously when it comes to stunts like launching politicians into space, a different principle applies; same goes for space tourists. Even if they are different people than in OTL, they're in the same "public figure" category before they become astronauts and we could reasonably recognize such people.
The thing to recall is that NASA's only got 4 seats on a Block II+ since one's allocated to ESA (who, I'll note, took until 1985 to get around to adding any women to their corps, and of nearly 30 astronauts, only three have been women), and of those four, two are pilots (CDR, CMP).

Those pilot slots have requirements for experience that would tend to favor men--after all, until the late 80s and 90s, millitary practice with their own woman pilots stood in the way of getting the kind of resume that they'd need to gain admission to the pilot corps. See OTL, where the first woman to pilot a Shuttle was Eileen Collins, admitted in '92, flew in '95.
I did think about that some more and then got even more pessimistic, since I only started noticing the female pilots when I got farther down the list than Collins; until you corrected me here I'd have said we didn't start having female STS pilots until the 2000s and no women mission commanders until quite late in the last decade. I fear I'm still right about that last one.
Even if the gender split on the science corps is exactly 50-50, which it won't be for a while, the overall corps is thus likely to be at maximum 1 in 4 well into the mid-90s.

Ah, but that's not bad compared to my seat-of-the-pants guess of one in six for OTL, averaging the decades together. But note that it would have to be worse than one in eight--meaning just one other woman besides Barnes is in the Class of '77--to lower the expected number of US women on a given launch below .5, in other words, every other flight or so. And that I used weasel words saying it would approach such statistics "soon," not specifying the time scale. One in four of the 20 selected in '77 being female gives 5, which when I wrote my earlier replies seemed wildly optimistic. But OTL NASA had six women astronauts in the early STS years. OTOH none of them were pilots whereas the total launched complement of an STS was supposed to be 8, with none in particular reserved for anyone not in NASA.

So perhaps 3, maybe 4 women in the class of '77? But with the balance improving as time goes on, now NASA is admitting new astronauts every couple of years.

If we are going to approach OTL performance in this matter, flights with no women whatsoever will indeed become rare and flights with two will not be unheard of. I appreciate that the "seat wars" plus reserving 2 of 5 total seats for a category that women have a tough time having their qualifications recognized in will tend to depress the numbers somewhat. But vice versa, I could foresee a dynamic at work where when the Europeans do get around to allocating their one seat to a women, they prefer that one of the 4 Americans going up with her also be female. In fact NASA itself might prefer to double up. So we'd get an unexpectedly high number of 2 or more woman missions, which would tend to raise the number of all-male missions.

Also, if the timeline is to extend to the early 2010s, I suppose NASA will eventually have a post Apollo Block III+ type spacecraft toward the end (unless something bad happens and NASA is limping along on minimal priority and credibility and it is up to someone else to develop the next generation). By the time women were admitted to the charmed circle of pilot-astronaut in NASA OTL, ITTL the Apollo series may finally be retired and the women will be among the first pilots of something newer.

I am not saying the idea of a woman being allowed to pilot or even command an Apollo Block III+ mission is outrageous, but if that does ever happen, it will either be because NASA sticks to this type of craft a long long long time, or because they actually pull ahead of OTL in gender equity as well as other things.

If they do that I will be quite pleased to see it!
 
Peggy Barnes and Don Hunt (both, I'll note, completely fictional creations) were introduced in the Brainbin's culture-focused interlude back in Part I, where they (as Trekkies) got the chance to cameo on Star Trek: The New Voyages. Note that they are the only members of Group 8 (the '77 class) to be mentioned by name in this update.
And, in fact, "Peggy Barnes" was not her original name, since e of pi used a random name generator: the original female astronaut was called "Susan Weaver"; however, in looking her up, I found that she shared a (real) name with a well-known genre actress, which could have been a fun in-joke, but we ultimately decided against it; and "Peggy Barnes" (which, as you note, Shevek, doesn't match up with anyone who has achieved notoriety IOTL) was chosen instead.
 
I've been looking at the timeline's Wiki page on the spacecraft for more evidence of just what a Delta 4000 or a Vulkan can do. I suppose all the question marks in the Vulkan data indicate to some extent anyway the sort of veil of ignorance Western intelligence agencies would be trying to pierce to get specifics.
Actually, it represents that I didn't feel like taking the time to create the kind of detailed component specifications for Vulkan or Delta 4000 that we did for Saturn Multibody and Saturn 1C. With Vulkan being an entirely new LV, I'm content to say "the specs are such that it provides 22 tons to orbit single core, 60ish tons to orbit multi-core." Ditto for Delta 4000, basically. The specs are such that it has the stated performance, and maybe at some point I will fill in detailed mass breakdowns to fit those values, but for the moment, I didn't think they were critical.

I still like my standby rescue CM idea though. I look askance at solids being used on manned launches (and aside from that rendering our whole OTL manned program post-Apollo questionable, I rather suspect the authors will at some point make me face it anyway, with manned solid-boosted intermediate Multibody launches) but of course the rescue CM isn't launched manned. (It can't be, if the mission it needs to rescue already has five people stranded in orbit, there's no room for a sixth person to be returned). So a whole battery of solids on its launcher is just fine. Either it works or it fails.
Well, the downside is that Apollo-on-Delta-4000 is an entirely separate supply chain--worse, it then couples the availability of rescue CMs to the status of the Delta 4000 pads, constraining both programs. The procedure I believe they're apt to use instead is to plan that in an emergency, they can simply expedite the preparation of the next Saturn 1C and Apollo. The worst case, where they need it right after the launch of the last one, could potentially be as little as a week or two which is to just plan that in an emergency, they can get the new one ready faster, by going to additional shifts. So instead of a need for an entire parallel system, you just use the system you already have. If you end up needing to fly it, the difference in cost may be a hundred million or so, but you've paid several times that savings to develop the capability in the first place. Unless you expect to need to actually fly such missions very, very often (say, >0.5/year, maybe), I can't see it being worth it in the end. Even and in that case it's probably better to spend the money fixing the issues that you think make it apt to fail so often, or simply replace it entirely. NASA has no such expecations for Apollo to fail that often, anyway.
So in this timeline did the Soviet authorities actually give the VA component the name "Merkur?"
Nope, that's my bad. Corrected the post to "VA," since it's canon, but leaving it that way in my previous comments--I'll be more careful about that in the future.[/QUOTE]
 
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Well, the downside is that Apollo-on-Delta-4000 is an entirely separate supply chain--worse, it then couples the availability of rescue CMs to the status of the Delta 4000 pads, constraining both programs. The procedure I believe they're apt to use instead is to plan that in an emergency, they can simply expedite the preparation of the next Saturn 1C and Apollo. The worst case, where they need it right after the launch of the last one, could potentially be as little as a week or two which is to just plan that in an emergency, they can get the new one ready faster, by going to additional shifts. So instead of a need for an entire parallel system, you just use the system you already have. If you end up needing to fly it, the difference in cost may be $a hundred million or so, but you've paid several times that savings to develop the capability in the first place. Unless you expect to need to actually fly such missions very, very often (say, >0.5/year, maybe), I can't see it being worth it in the end. Even and in that case it's probably better to spend the money fixing the issues that you think make it apt to fail so often, or simply replace it entirely. NASA has no such expecations for Apollo to fail that often, anyway.

Looking at the OTL record, NASA has had roughly one fatal/near fatal accident per decade (Apollo 1, Apollo 13, Challenger and Columbia), so I would be surprised if there weren't at least one such emergency in the Eighties - especially as there are more manned flights ITTL compared to OTL. Even the best procedures can't defeat Murphy's Law all of the time.

Cheers,
Nigel.
 
Looking at the OTL record, NASA has had roughly one fatal/near fatal accident per decade (Apollo 1, Apollo 13, Challenger and Columbia), so I would be surprised if there weren't at least one such emergency in the Eighties - especially as there are more manned flights ITTL compared to OTL. Even the best procedures can't defeat Murphy's Law all of the time.

Cheers,
Nigel.

Though I suspect that they'd be in better shape to deal with it.

The Saturn IC and Saturn MultiBody should have Abort Options for 100% of the Ascent-to-Orbit phase - as opposed to STS and Saturn V which had no such ability for the first 123-155 seconds of Powered Flight.

In orbit, it would mainly be journeys to and from SpaceHab and later Freedom, where they can go to and wait out for a rescue craft to come later.

In short, they should be much better prepared for such scenarios if and/or when they develop. The only part they can't do much about is re-entry, since checking the Heat Shield in Orbit wouldn't be practical. So I suspect they'd simply redouble their efforts on Terra Firma, well before launch for that one bit.
 
Though I suspect that they'd be in better shape to deal with it.

The Saturn IC and Saturn MultiBody should have Abort Options for 100% of the Ascent-to-Orbit phase - as opposed to STS and Saturn V which had no such ability for the first 123-155 seconds of Powered Flight.

In orbit, it would mainly be journeys to and from SpaceHab and later Freedom, where they can go to and wait out for a rescue craft to come later.

In short, they should be much better prepared for such scenarios if and/or when they develop. The only part they can't do much about is re-entry, since checking the Heat Shield in Orbit wouldn't be practical. So I suspect they'd simply redouble their efforts on Terra Firma, well before launch for that one bit.

I don't doubt it. I'm just pessimistic enough to think that sometime in the Eighties there's going to be a situation where these procedures are going to be put to use.

Cheers,
Nigel.
 
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The Saturn IC and Saturn MultiBody should have Abort Options for 100% of the Ascent-to-Orbit phase - as opposed to STS and Saturn V:)confused:) which had no such ability for the first 123-155 seconds of Powered Flight.
Um, what? Apollos on manned Saturn V launches had exactly the same abort options that they had on Saturn 1B launches--all versions of Apollo, including both editions of Block III in this timeline, had escape towers on top of the CM. The one for Saturn V launches was I believe bigger (either that or the standard was sized for Saturn V, being oversized for Saturn 1B missions) to give it more thrust and a longer burn to pull it farther away from the worst-case explosions predicted, which would be bigger for a Saturn V failure. (I'm not sure they could actually raise the thrust relative to what was needed for a 1B launch since the accelerations pushed the limit of human survival, all they could do I guess was make the burn last longer and hope the bigger bang hadn't killed the crew in the interim).

Perhaps you are thinking of Gemini launches on Titan; the Gemini capsules indeed omitted the escape tower, relying instead on ejection seats for the astronauts in the early phases of boost. And perhaps separating the capsule from a failing rocket and using the Transstage, the Gemini's equivalent of the Service Module, to boost it away?

Which by the way was the abort mode that would take over from using the escape tower in the course of a Saturn V (or 1B) launch; shortly after first stage burnout and second stage ignition, a routine launch procedure would eject the escape tower (uncovering the CM, formerly under a shroud) and a subsequent failure of the second or third stages that required capsule separation would be done by firing the SM. The danger from a sudden explosion was much less by then both because the upper stages massed a whole lot less than the first stages and because by then they'd be largely out of the lower atmosphere and the concussion from a rapid fuel/oxidizer explosion would be far weaker. Finally they'd be going at high Mach factors by then whereas a shock wave would propagate relative to the stationary atmosphere--they'd already be outrunning the wave front then.

We went over a lot of this when the authors unveiled the whole Block III+ program back last winter, and there was discussion of the escape tower and how it was slimmed down from a Block II tower designed for Saturn V launches, because the explosion danger is reduced on the 1C. Presumably they retain the tower a bit longer since the Block III SM is much reduced from the Lunar mission version.

The new addition of the Mission Module with Block III+ is irrelevant to this discussion since it rides up to orbit stacked behind the CSM and the abort system saves only the CM and what is needed for it to escape and return to Earth safely.

And as with STS, at some point in the ascent these kinds of aborts to landing are no longer necessary or preferred; abort to orbit becomes an option and then the preferred one.

Of course Soyuz and ITTL TKS, which we were told is essentially as designed OTL, have their own versions of the nose escape towers. I gather the Soyuz version is handicapped by having to lift the orbital module as well as the landing capsule because of the way it is stacked; TKS solves that problem by putting its VS capsule on top a la Apollo; I gather the FGB is not equipped with nearly the amount of thrust even a slimmed down Block III Apollo would have from its SM so the tower remains almost to final launch stage burnout.
In orbit, it would mainly be journeys to and from SpaceHab and later Freedom, where they can go to and wait out for a rescue craft to come later.

In short, they should be much better prepared for such scenarios if and/or when they develop. The only part they can't do much about is re-entry, since checking the Heat Shield in Orbit wouldn't be practical. So I suspect they'd simply redouble their efforts on Terra Firma, well before launch for that one bit.

Fortunately the heat shield of an Apollo CM (the primary one on the bottom anyway) is nicely protected from most mishaps by being mated to the SM. The exception being of course hazards caused by the failure of the SM itself, as on Apollo 13. In the case of orbital missions, mostly shuttling to an established larger space station as you describe, even that contingency is covered by the possibility of just staying in orbit until a later launch can send up an intact CM. With a suitably large manned space station, it might be possible to detach a suspect CM from a damaged SM, inspect the shield using spacewalking astronauts or remote controlled robots, conceivably even patch damage to it, then throw the orbital equivalent of a tarp over it and wait for Earth to send up a special launch of only a new SM, designed to be remotely controlled to moor to the station and there be attached to the CM. Of course in such a case it wouldn't cost much more to simply send up a brand-new complete Block III+ and leave the suspect CM in orbit tied to the station, as a monument, and perhaps someday useful scrap.

Again there's the dilemma I pointed out with my notion of a rescue CSM on a Delta launcher; you shouldn't send up even one astronaut in a rescue launch of this type, because you need seats for all 5 stranded astronauts from the failed mission.

Thus, if this is a solution, we have to have developed the art of mixing automated control and remote control of an unmanned free-flying craft to the point that either Mission Control or the orbiting astronauts can remotely pilot it to a rendezvous with the station or directly to the stricken craft.

Which given that even with 5 seats the Seat War still simmers, would raise the question again in the timeline, or anyway it does with me--do we really need two pilot-astronauts, or could we get by, on these so-very-routine-and-short taxi flights to a known space station, with just one pilot, thus freeing up another seat? If we can't, then a rescue CM has to be extra-large, to accommodate 6 or even seven people returning in it. Or it will take two launches, in each of which two pilots ride up alone and take down, on the first mission, three of the crew of the damaged craft, and then the second one takes down the other two. Possibly using the third seat to take up some caretaker, up to three, to be left in orbit at the station without a return capsule.

Or we could devote one light Saturn 1C launch, or perhaps standard mass, to sending up an unmanned or undermanned Block III+ CM to be docked to the station and mothballed there as the backup return system. If such a reserve lifeboat CSM could be designed to stay reliable after years of being shut down then I guess the stranded astronauts could get back to Earth shortly after they limp their way to the station.

If we then rounded out the picture with a sort of orbital tugboat with grappler arms that can support a small crew (One or two) and have the delta-V to reach a totally stricken craft in any orbit the 1C or Multibody could put a manned Apollo, then even a catastrophe such as I luridly mentioned, where the CM is wrecked and the crew must take refuge in the MM, would not be fatal since someone would go out from the station and fetch them back to it, where their backup return craft awaits for them.

Except of course that the MM described in response to my speculations is really barebones, without even its own built-in long term air supplies, let alone even the most rudimentary maneuvering capability. Such a thing is little more than an annex to the CM, basically a porch!

I've looked over the first 5 posts, which take us from the 1968 POD to the first flown mission, Apollo 18, that is in addition to OTL, and nowhere in there is the story of Apollo 13 given even a passing mention. It would be possible to butterfly the crew of 13 (easily--the OTL crew replaced Shephard's, and of course Swigert was swapped in at the last minute due to the measles false alarm) and have Lovell successfully landing on the Moon on 14 as planned. If NASA had some spare SM's handy, it is possible even that purely by accident the damaged SM that OTL was attached to Odyessy (or whatever its prime crew would have named it) was switched over for an undamaged one and that particular SM never flew. It's even possible that someone had a "fridge moment" and wondered if the unorthodox method used in draining the oxygen tanks after the ground test that OTL fried the oxy tanks' interior wiring merited a careful second look, and even that a light bulb goes off over someone's head that the design specs of those tank wiring and thermostatic equipment didn't allow for the high voltages the ground tests used, and deduces that the thermal controls might not be reliable, and scrubs that SM for a destructive inspection--revealing that indeed the tanks were now useless and dangerous.

But such a sequence of fortunate events would make a big disruption in the launch schedule as all the SM's have to be torn open and new tanks installed. OTL though all the SMs were vulnerable only Odyssey's was actually damaged because only it had the other problem of a mismatch of its drain pipe to the frame that required the unconventional "boil it out" method after the ground test, and that's what nearly killed the OTL crew. The other SMs were in fact safe despite the design flaw, unless some other contingency might overheat the oxy tanks on the ground or in flight.

So since all the other missions are mentioned by number and seem to have gone much as OTL, I have to assume that the bad SM did go up on 13 and whether it was Lovell's crew or Shephard's who had to deal with it, the tanks did blow and the whole nail-biting saga of Apollo 13 did happen much as OTL. If it went even a little bit worse they'd all be dead; I don't see that it was likely it would go better, so pretty much the same story.

Now by the time the Block III+ is being developed, that exciting drama is all in the past by a decade or so, but I'd think it would have still taught NASA some lessons. One of them is that if you have the luxury of having a second mission module, that thing can make the difference between life and death.

I'd think then that the desire to minimize the overhead mass and volume of the MM to focus on crew space, lab equipment, and supplies would be offset a bit by the philosophy that the MM's life support systems at least should compliment rather than drain the CM's. There should be oxygen stored there at least to meet the demands of the crew expected to be occupying it during the planned mission; there should be emergency supplies of food and water, a separate power system (designed, after the hair-raising dilemmas of having to power down Odyssey, to serve to power the essential CM functions as well as MM demands).

In addition to that--I recognize that adding on a backup orbital maneuvering system is going too far and that an accident ruining the CSM's main engine capabilities would simply strand them in orbit but not on an imminent collision course with Earth as with a failing Lunar mission. However giving it some minimal reaction control capability, designed to normally be subordinated to CM commands to make the combined MM-CM-SM orbital stack an integrated spacecraft with maneuvering thrusters at both ends, seems like a good and not too costly idea to me as well. In case the MM winds up serving as an orbital lifeboat, it would be good for the castaways to be able to assist their rescuers and one can imagine contingencies where it is stricken in an orbit very near the space station, thus low delta-V might serve to get it back to the station under its own power, or meet a rescue tugboat halfway.

The alternative, to minimize the MM to a shell that is just a pressurized place to park and use equipment, and to give extra elbow room and sleeping space to crews (and why do they need that, unless we recognize that even a routine taxi trip to the station is going to take significant time, time in which something bad can happen) puts all NASA's eggs in the CSM basket. Presumably lessons were learned from Apollo 13 and the CSM systems are safer and more reliable; the simple fact that a Block III+ SM is so very much smaller than a Block II means there is less to go wrong and even catastrophes have less punch.

But it's hard for me to accept NASA would not plan in at least some lifeboat capability into the MM, if only to buy time for the crew to be saved by a later launch from Earth. Unless perhaps by some stroke of luck, 13 was not stricken, it completed its mission nominally.

But then there are some important lessons NASA was not taught so forcefully, and I rather think that adds point to NCW8's pessimism:

I don't doubt it. I'm just pessimistic enough to think that sometime in the Eighties there's going to be a situation where these procedures are going to be put to use.

Cheers,
Nigel.

Now if something does indeed go scarily wrong on a Block III+ mission, one of the beauties and glories of the whole Block III+ concept is, wonders can be achieved by simply redesigning the MM.:D
 
The core problem with designing the MM with its own fully-redundant oxygen, power, and maneuvering control systems is the critical mass limit imposed by the Saturn 1C. With that vehicle flown and proven, Block III+ is essentially designed to eat the margin reserved against under-performance to leverage capacity for a bit of extra cargo and 2 more crew. Thus, the total mass available for the MM is tightly constrained to about 3,750 kg--and that's fully loaded. The basic structural shell is easily 2,500 kg and that's probably being a bit optimistic. The docking equipment adds another hundred or so, so that leaves about 1,000 kg for whatever else is going in there. If NASA works at it, they could probably cram in a separate OMS, plus enough power, communications, life support, and such to keep a crew going for...oh, a couple days into that 1,000 kg, but it'd mean sacrificing any payload at all to get it. In effect, rather than the MM being the annex of habitable volume and payload storage it's envisioned as, you'd have to turn it into little more than a lifeboat. And to actually make that worthwhile, you have to have the rescue mission ready to go on the pad, because you've then got to get that stricken crew's assistance to orbit inside that window.

Such a setup only has useful application in the case where the SM catastrophically fails in such a way that the integrity of the heat shield is in doubt or the CM pressure volume is compromised, because otherwise the CM has sufficient battery life and independent maneuvering controls to get down on its own. That's a rather specific scenario--basically the only thing to do it would be a tank blowing in the SM, either oxygen like on 13 (which happens as OTL in Eyes, it just has received so much attention IOTL we didn't focus on it and figured everyone could fill in the details themselves), fuel, or oxidizer. Since that's so specific, it's easier to solve at the root in the redesign of the SM for Block III, by first redesigning the tanks themselves to reduce the odds of failure, then by designing the tanks and surrounding bays such that they will direct any failure's energy outwards (blowing out the side panels as 13 did) rather than inwards (where it would pose a threat to the CM and heat shield). This doesn't solve every contingency where a fully independent MM lifeboat might be useful--but I think it cover almost all of them, and those cases themselves are fairly low-odds cases anyway. I suspect that's enough for NASA to convince themselves it's not worth losing their entire payload margin on a fully independent MM. Right call? Maybe. We'll have to see how the TL plays out, won't we?
 
Um, what? Apollos on manned Saturn V launches had exactly the same abort options that they had on Saturn 1B launches--all versions of Apollo, including both editions of Block III in this timeline, had escape towers on top of the CM. The one for Saturn V launches was I believe bigger (either that or the standard was sized for Saturn V, being oversized for Saturn 1B missions) to give it more thrust and a longer burn to pull it farther away from the worst-case explosions predicted, which would be bigger for a Saturn V failure. (I'm not sure they could actually raise the thrust relative to what was needed for a 1B launch since the accelerations pushed the limit of human survival, all they could do I guess was make the burn last longer and hope the bigger bang hadn't killed the crew in the interim).

The Saturn V would normally use an automated LAS for catastrophic failure of the Launch Vehicle - say an engine blows. The problem was it needed two seconds from detection of failure to activation of the Abort Rocket. Simulations and calculations showed that a 1st stage engine failure could destroy the whole LV within 1.5 seconds. In short. Not good.

A moot point though, when you stop to think about it. Saturn V production has long since ceased, both IOTL and ITTL. In any case, there is absolutely no way that they'd ever perform a Manned Lunar Mission in the same manner as in the Apollo Programme. All the problems and near-misses - whether it be needing a pen to activate the LM Ascent Stage in Apollo 11 or Apollo 13 in general - would keep them from even considering it.
 
The core problem with designing the MM with its own fully-redundant oxygen, power, and maneuvering control systems is the critical mass limit imposed by the Saturn 1C. With that vehicle flown and proven, Block III+ is essentially designed to eat the margin reserved against under-performance to leverage capacity for a bit of extra cargo and 2 more crew. Thus, the total mass available for the MM is tightly constrained to about 3,750 kg--and that's fully loaded. The basic structural shell is easily 2,500 kg and that's probably being a bit optimistic. The docking equipment adds another hundred or so, so that leaves about 1,000 kg for whatever else is going in there.
Ah. I stand most humbly corrected then.:eek: I should indeed be thinking of the Saturn 1C version of the MM as a screened porch then! As such it is very useful, but a separate spaceship it is not and cannot be; point taken.
If NASA works at it, they could probably cram in a separate OMS, plus enough power, communications, life support, and such to keep a crew going for...oh, a couple days into that 1,000 kg, but it'd mean sacrificing any payload at all to get it. In effect, rather than the MM being the annex of habitable volume and payload storage it's envisioned as, you'd have to turn it into little more than a lifeboat. And to actually make that worthwhile, you have to have the rescue mission ready to go on the pad, because you've then got to get that stricken crew's assistance to orbit inside that window.
Now on the other hand, first of all the MM's mission is primarily to increase the habitability of the Block III+ craft, to enable raising the complement from 3 to 5. There's no point in increasing the human habitable volume beyond what 5 people need because you can't put a sixth or more people into the CM for reentry (or abort-survivable launch). Granting that on Saturn 1C launches that one tonne margin (which you've implicitly warned, might be less if 2.5 tonnes is indeed too optimistic for the basic structure) is much too small to even consider giving it any orbital maneuvering capability whatsoever, I would think that the tonne's main "payload" priority is precisely enhancing life support; raising the ability of the launch to import more supplies or equipment to the space station destination is secondary, because we have the Aardvark for such purposes. But for mission purposes that tonne will mainly need to be consumables for the crew--including oxygen and CO2-absorbing capacity to be sure, but also water, food, and specialized mission equipment. And clothes for that matter!

But second, the Saturn Multibody M02 is at hand soon. Looking at the charts, it seems it increases payload to the more ambitious orbits desired by about 9 metric tons.

Now, adding even the "mere" 3.75 tonnes of the 1C-launchable MM has another effect--it raises the total mass the SM has to push around in orbital space by quite a large percentage. I suppose that this still falls within the safety margin of the established standard Block III SM capabilities. But if we want to add still more to a Multibody Apollo launch, we have to start splitting the surplus between the MM and upgrades to the SM, in the form of larger propellant tanks and perhaps somewhat upgraded engines.

Say we take seven tonnes as the design marginal benefit of using an M02 for the launcher, holding the other 2 in reserve. And bearing in mind going over to the Block III+ already degraded the package's orbital maneuvering range, we make 4 of the 7 available to the SM rather than the MM.

We're still almost doubling the mass available for the MM then. I appreciate the desire to make that all "payload," but suggest that at that point, bearing in mind that Aardvark launches using M02 will also have their payloads raised, a good part of it should still be prioritized for raising the habitability of the MM as a lifeboat.

I have to admit that also putting in significant orbital maneuvering abilities is not only a sacrifice of payload but also compromises the MM as a lifeboat as much as it enhances it; engines and worst of all the propellant storage right there in the MM itself are an additional hazard! Leaving that out of it lets us focus on how much of an extra 3 tonnes the M02 launcher gives us there we want to go to raising the interior volume, how much to devote to the sort of payload you've been thinking of, and how much to enhancing life support which is a kind of payload itself.

I'd think an even split is reasonable; the MM standard for M02 launches should add a tonne to the basic structure, and a tonne to upgrading its life support so that 5 people can indeed stay alive there for a 2 week emergency survival contingency, and double the nominal "Payload" from one tonne to two. Meanwhile we've added 4 tonnes, mostly of propellant, to the SM.

Actually then a Block III+ for flight on even the smallest Multibody is a significantly different sort of craft than for a 1C; the MM should be significantly larger, as would the SM be; only the CM is completely the same.

Perhaps then when it comes to M02 launches, NASA will dub this Block IV already?
....
Such a setup only has useful application in the case where the SM catastrophically fails in such a way that the integrity of the heat shield is in doubt or the CM pressure volume is compromised, because otherwise the CM has sufficient battery life and independent maneuvering controls to get down on its own. That's a rather specific scenario--basically the only thing to do it would be a tank blowing in the SM, either oxygen like on 13 (which happens as OTL in Eyes, it just has received so much attention IOTL we didn't focus on it and figured everyone could fill in the details themselves), fuel, or oxidizer. Since that's so specific, it's easier to solve at the root in the redesign of the SM for Block III, by first redesigning the tanks themselves to reduce the odds of failure, then by designing the tanks and surrounding bays such that they will direct any failure's energy outwards (blowing out the side panels as 13 did) rather than inwards (where it would pose a threat to the CM and heat shield). This doesn't solve every contingency where a fully independent MM lifeboat might be useful--but I think it cover almost all of them, and those cases themselves are fairly low-odds cases anyway. I suspect that's enough for NASA to convince themselves it's not worth losing their entire payload margin on a fully independent MM. Right call? Maybe. We'll have to see how the TL plays out, won't we?

Heh heh heh!

These are good arguments, and thanks for making it clear that Apollo 13 did indeed go as OTL, I assume that means right down to the crew composition--not that that matters here.

If what's up your sleeve does indeed call some of this choice into question--well you've convinced me they don't have a whole lot of choice as long as they use Saturn 1C for the launcher. Whereas if some accident in space does make them regret not putting more safety margin into the MM--by then the M02 should be coming on line. Redesigning the MM's to be bigger and with more basic life support reserves (which I should point out, can be usefully consumed during a nominal mission after all) while also upgrading the SM for these increased masses both strike me as fairly simple modifications of the basic concept and layout of both modules--essentially stretches.

The Saturn V would normally use an automated LAS for catastrophic failure of the Launch Vehicle - say an engine blows. The problem was it needed two seconds from detection of failure to activation of the Abort Rocket. Simulations and calculations showed that a 1st stage engine failure could destroy the whole LV within 1.5 seconds. In short. Not good. ...

Yes, I never was sure that the various abort contingencies were ever capable of covering every possible contingency--thanks for this clarification.

Still even on a Saturn V, they had much better coverage than on any STS launch ever!:eek:
 
Part II: Post 11: Voyagers Visit the Outer Planets
All right, well, I know I could use something to take my mind off of things today, so how about some space probes? This week, we're once again jaunting to the outer solar system, to check in again on those far flung travelers, the Voyager probes. While truth is life wrote this update, I'd like to personally dedicate it to someone special it's reminded me of every time I've re-read it during the editing process--she knows who she is. Other than that, I hope everyone enjoys reading this as much as I did. :)

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #11

As Voyager 3 sped past Uranus in late March 1986, its instruments revealed a planet very different from Jupiter or Saturn. Besides its famously strange polar orientation, which at the time of Voyager 3's encounter had the planet's north pole aimed straight at the Sun, Uranus also had an extremely unusual magnetic field orientation, best represented as a dipole (similar to an ordinary bar magnet, although far larger both in physical scope and magnetic strength) that was both tilted heavily to the spin axis and offset from the center of the planet, as if someone had been trying to jam a magnet into the center of the planet but had settled for getting it "close". All known planetary magnetic fields were either remnant magnetization, emerging from materials on the surface which had been magnetized in some previous era and then "locked-in" the field strength and orientation as the native magnetic field withered away, or generated from currents and flow in hot, metallic liquid cores, neither of which could explain the strange orientation and positioning of the Uranian magnetic field. Theorists were forced to come up with a third model, where a vast conductive shell, like a huge, hot ocean girdling the planet, generated the magnetic field from its internal movements. Being much farther away from the center than a liquid core would be, this would not necessarily generate a field along the spin axis or centered on the planet's physical center. The other great mystery of Uranus that Voyager 3 first revealed was its temperature, far far lower than the other giant planets. Indeed, not only was Uranus less than 60 Kelvin at the cloud tops, so cold that under the same conditions Earth's atmosphere would condense and fall as rain, but it also radiated only about as much heat back into space as it received from the Sun, a surprising result and (as Voyager 4 later proved) different from all of the other giant planets. Nevertheless, Uranus maintained a belted circulation pattern, high wind speeds, and other evidence of atmospheric dynamism, although the sense that the planet was the "odd man out" was easy to understand and hard to shake. Voyager 4's passage in late May 1987 only added further evidence to this impression, as it was found that the planet's magnetic field had massively altered itself between the flybys, changing its orientation and position. This, too, could be explained by the conductive shell model, but it was just one more way that the Solar System's seventh planet set itself apart from the rest. The moons of Uranus proved just as interesting, or perhaps more so, than the planet itself. Besides discovering a number of new moons, Voyagers 3 and 4 showed that even the relatively small moons of Uranus had as dynamic a history as those orbiting Jupiter or Saturn. Not just tiny, cratered balls of ice and rock, they displayed evidence of fantastic geological activity, from faults and rifts of Ariel and Titania to the fantastic jumbled terrain, "racetracks," cliffs, and rifts of Miranda, a moon so unusual that some theorists proposed that it might actually have been shattered in the distant past. However, none of the moons seemed as active as Europa or Io had proved to be or Titan probably was; instead, while showing the signs of geological activity, they seemed to have quieted after some major past event, perhaps related to whatever it was that had knocked Uranus on its side.

After flying by Uranus, Voyager 3 turned towards its next encounter, with Neptune. Unfortunately, it was not to be, as the aging spacecraft became increasingly troubled and cantankerous. Despite long-life upgrades performed on the second block of Voyager spacecraft by JPL engineers, and despite the constant nursing the mission team had been giving all of the Voyagers, several months after the Uranus encounter Voyager 3's primary radio transmitter failed completely after several periods of trouble. A few days later, the backup transmitter followed the primary into the grave, and Voyager 3's mission was over. While commands could still be sent, and presumably would be interpreted and executed, the transmitter failure meant that that results would forever be unavailable to Earth. Officially, the mission didn't end until the end of 1986, as the DSN continued to listen for any indication that the muting was merely temporary, but in reality this was merely a close-out period as the Voyager 3 team was dispersed to other projects and the bureaucratic formalities that attend the end of any project that has lasted over a decade were addressed. In the meantime, additional care and attention were focused on the last of the Voyagers to make planetary flybys, Voyager 2 with its Pluto encounter in 1988 and Voyager 4 with a Uranus encounter in 1987 and a Neptune encounter in 1990. Voyager 1, meanwhile, continued climbing away from the Sun and the ecliptic plane, probing deeper and deeper into space as it caught up with Pioneers 10 and 11. Having completed the highlights of its mission, it had settled into a kind of slumber, largely focusing on particle and fields data in deep space.

In June 1988, Voyager 2, which had last encountered a planet seven years previously, began final approach to Pluto. Despite being smaller and closer to the Sun at the time than Neptune, which Voyager 4 was two years away from reaching, this second-to-last encounter of the Voyager program excited more attention and excitement than any other except perhaps the first flybys of Jupiter and Saturn. Possibly because Pluto was discovered by a (living) American astronomer in an American observatory, a media frenzy slowly built over the month prior to the encounter. When Voyager 2 finally began its main flyby activities in mid July, the campus of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had become a circus, almost with more reporters and photographers than scientists and engineers. They would not be disappointed; although the great distance of Voyager from the Sun necessitated extreme measures to return photographs, and despite a relatively unfavorable flyby geometry, over a dozen high-quality images of the "double planet" Pluto-Charon were returned, revealing an astonishing range of geological activity for two bodies so cold and distant from the Sun. Unmistakable evidence of cryovolcanic activity was glimpsed on both objects, perhaps explaining the fantastically varied terrain of Pluto, transitioning in a few dozen kilometers from coal-dark to sparkling ice, and scarred with evidence of other geological activity, perhaps related to its unusual pole orientation and 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune. Charon was at once less and more varied than its sister body, showing little of the marked contrast that Pluto did, yet it too showed significant surface variations, with small outcrops of exotic ice types punctuating vast crater-scarred plains of water ice. Both Pluto and Charon possessed tenuous atmospheres, further evidence of cryovolcanic behavior and likely originating from their approach towards perihelion and the Sun during the previous several decades. Moreover, perturbations to Voyager 2’s trajectory through the system showed that there must be several other bodies orbiting Pluto, an astonishing find given how few objects seemed to orbit at such a distance from the Sun, and therefore how unlikely it was for even two, let alone four or five (as seemed possible) bodies to simply find each other, let alone form a planetary system. As Voyager 2 departed the Pluto system, it snapped a final, and quickly world-famous, photograph of the two worlds cradled in each other's arms. While lacking the poignant value of "Blue Marble" or "Earthrise," it nevertheless possessed an austere and magnificent beauty that made it a brief media sensation. After that, Voyager 2 turned towards its new mission of deep-space exploration, traveling towards the frontiers of the Solar System and interstellar space.

At last, in June 1990 Voyager 4 began its final approach to Neptune, the most distant planet from the Sun at that time. The last of the Voyagers to reach a planetary target, Voyager 4 encountered a media circus almost on the scale of Voyager 2's almost exactly two years earlier, as its imagery slowly began to match and then exceed the best photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope taken over the previous several years. As with Uranus, Neptune proved to be different in many ways from the inner two gas giants, with the same type of unusual magnetic field orientation and a significant axial tilt not present in Jupiter or Saturn. However, it also significantly differed from its sibling planet, proving to be slightly warmer despite lying much farther from the Sun, and as might be expected radiating a considerably greater amount of energy from its interior. Along with this, its atmosphere proved much more visibly active, with banding and cloud structures easily detectable and even a few large "spot" structures present on the planet's disk. Triton, the planet's largest moon, yielded its own surprises. Already unusual due to its retrograde orbit, it proved to be cryovolcanic, like Charon and Pluto, with massive geysers of gas and dust erupting from the south polar ice cap. Triton also gave glimpses of other unusual geological activity not duplicated on any other known world, such as its unusual cantaloupe terrain and thin atmosphere, the home of auroras from charged particles trapped in Neptune's magnetic field. Voyager 4 also discovered several new moons not previously detected even by the Hubble Space Telescope and confirmed that the planet's rings were continuous structures, not mere arcs and clumps of material which had failed to condense into a proper moon. Its encounter passed, Voyager 4 then followed its brethren in speeding out into interstellar space, leaving behind the results of perhaps the greatest voyage of discovery ever conducted.
 
Ah yes. The other Outer Planets. Ice Giants Uranus (re-pronounced Yura-Nus by certain media reporters to avoid embarrassment), and Neptune. As well as Pluto/Charon.

Uranus must have come as a surprise, with its extreme axial tilt, unusual colouring and bizarre magnetic activity. With its own largest Moon providing evidence to a violent past event. All of which could receive confirmation when Voyager 4 turned up for Take 2. :)

Shame that Voyager 3 had to perish though. Although given how long they've been operating for, its inevitable that at least one of them would give up the go somewhere, sooner or later. But at least 4 gets to finish the job.

The Pluto/Charon Flyby would be the pinnacle of it though, seeing that its discoverer - Clyde Tombaugh - is still alive at this point, and could be first in line to view the images of the Planet he discovered. Which would make for fantastic PR for NASA.

The geological activity part was a little confusing at first though, but then, IOTL, we've yet to see it up close. And even though Pluto and Charon are in a Locked Orbit around each other - the barycentre being above the surface of Pluto, therefore it's considered a Double-Planet - it may not be circular, which would make at least some tidal flexing of the innards of the both of them possible, to drive such activity, a possibility.

And finally, Neptune. Considered a - very - Distant Sister to Earth on account of its blue colouring and weather patterns that can produce white 'clouds' on occasion. Although I don't think the 2,000 kmph winds would be all that welcoming! :p

With the only retrograde-orbiting large moon of any of the planets, Triton, which alone indicates that satellite capture is possible - even though it's falling down the Netunian Gravity Well - that is the right term, right? - as a direct result.

And that is one hell of a way for their story to close! Now may they slumber as they traverse the Kuiper Regions of the Solar System.
 
i wish NASA would send Cassini like orbiter to Uranus and Neptune

on Voyager 2 encounter Pluto
the post says that fly by data show present of more bodies around Pluto-Charon.
however already in approach to Pluto, Voyager 2 camera must see the other 5 moons clearly
 
on Voyager 2 encounter Pluto
the post says that fly by data show present of more bodies around Pluto-Charon.
however already in approach to Pluto, Voyager 2 camera must see the other 5 moons clearly
We talked about this extensively behind the scenes, I made the points you did. The points that truth is life made to me is that while they might be able to get decent imagery from the probe, they'd need to know where to look--and this is long before we had the kinds of imagery of Pluto that we have today through extensively-processed late-generation Hubble images. As a result, until Voyager flies by and they see the perturbations in the orbital data, they don't know where to look--and by then it's too late. It also saves us from having to guess too much about what those might be like--truth is life was already speculating about the surface of Pluto and Charon and we felt that was enough for one post. :)
 
We talked about this extensively behind the scenes, I made the points you did. The points that truth is life made to me is that while they might be able to get decent imagery from the probe, they'd need to know where to look--and this is long before we had the kinds of imagery of Pluto that we have today through extensively-processed late-generation Hubble images. As a result, until Voyager flies by and they see the perturbations in the orbital data, they don't know where to look--and by then it's too late. It also saves us from having to guess too much about what those might be like--truth is life was already speculating about the surface of Pluto and Charon and we felt that was enough for one post. :)

Presumably the discovery of Charon went pretty much as OTL. Now that astronomers know they're there, they should be able to find the other moons using Hubble.

Will the earlier discovery of these moons cause the Dwarf Planet debate to happen sooner ITTL ? Pluto's redesignation as a dwarf planet could happen in Tombaugh's life time - I wonder how he'll react to that.

Cheers,
Nigel.
 
Presumably the discovery of Charon went pretty much as OTL. Now that astronomers know they're there, they should be able to find the other moons using Hubble.
Should be able to, yeah, with enough observations. One flyby doesn't give quite enough data to precisely pinpoint such small bodies, but it indicates there are some and gives some ideas of where to look.

Will the earlier discovery of these moons cause the Dwarf Planet debate to happen sooner ITTL ? Pluto's re-designation as a dwarf planet could happen in Tombaugh's life time - I wonder how he'll react to that.
Pluto's other moons weren't found until later for a good reason--they're freaking tiny, about 200 km maximum (low end estimates for some are more like a couple dozen km). As such, they're not issues for the classification of planets--not in the way Charon, Ceres, and the Pluto-sized (and larger!) objects out in the Kuiper Belt are. Like with the discovery of the moons, we've discussed the status of Pluto a fair bit in preparations for Part III. Given that having Sagan and Tombaugh on-hand for any change in status would be useful if we want to explain it well to the public, and their deaths within a year of each other in the late 90s are pretty butterfly-proof, if it's going to be an issue earlier than OTL, the early to mid 90s are the moment. However, to do that, more of the Kuiper Belt objects that challenged Pluto's classification need to be found earlier, and many were with ground-based scopes using upgrades made in the early-00s. That's difficult timing.

I suppose it's worth a bit of a reader poll: how do you all feel about Pluto's planetary status? Is it a travesty it was stripped? Does the reclassification make sense in general, but Pluto should be excepted due to "historical value" or something? Should it never have been considered a planet the first place? And however you feel, how important is it to you?
 
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