So VOIR is much like Magellan, but with a circular orbit allowing gravimetric data? And keeping the name?
Love the word Cytherean. Maybe it's just because I have read lots of OLD SF....
Love the word Cytherean. Maybe it's just because I have read lots of OLD SF....
Why helium? On Earth the merit of using helium is avoiding the generally managable but still serious risk of fire with hydrogen. But Venus's mostly CO2 atmosphere is not reactive with hydrogen--it certainly contains trace but serious amounts of more reactive stuff, but nothing that will cause hydrogen to burn; those acids are a problem for any balloon, be it full of hydrogen or helium (or steam, or anything for that matter); a problem Soviet engineering obviously solved.
The percentage difference in lift between helium and hydrogen is fractional, just a matter of a few percent, especially in an atmosphere composed mostly of the quite heavy CO2 molecule; it's not a very compelling reason to favor hydrogen in itself, though it is a step in the right direction, allowing a slightly smaller balloon to do the job. (Or lift a tiny bit more mass on the same balloon). However when the flammability issue no longer is present hydrogen has every advantage over helium. It's cheaper. Containing hydrogen in liquid form through the long passage (months) from Earth to Venus is a challenge, tougher than for almost any other gas, but keeping helium liquid is one of the few, perhaps the only, substances harder to do that with. (I assume any balloon project will keep the balloon collapsed and folded until the probe has accomplished most of its aerobraking, so the lift gas has to be condensed too). Hydrogen will certainly leak through the balloon fabric, but again helium is an even slipperier substance, the balloon would last a little longer with hydrogen. Finally and perhaps most important for a space probe, the mass of hydrogen to fill a given volume at a given altitude is just half that of helium; every gram saved in balloon gas is a gram available for other payload. (And we are saving other grams because the thermal containment is less challenging, though still a big problem to be sure, and perhaps we can make the balloon fabric a bit lighter if it only has to contain hydrogen, not helium).
So I'm surprised they'd use helium.
Going in another direction, water vapor is quite inferior to either as a lift gas, and won't work at all in the cool upper atmosphere, but balloon probes to a moderately lower level, where temperatures and pressures are such that water is a vapor, can get more than half the lift out of a given volume from steam as they could get from either of the superior gases. And of course the problem of sending a load of water are trivial compared to keeping even hydrogen, let alone helium, liquid. To be sure it will cost a fair amount of payload mass in comparison to even helium, but this might be just the thing for the muscle-flexing Vulkan/Saturn Multibody duel period to consider trying--waste a bit of capability when after all, you have a lot, as a tradeoff for other simplifications. While the water vapor is both heavier and less effective, it will take longer to leak out.
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I also wonder what power source the balloon probe used. The orbiter could use either solar panels or radionuclide thermal generators; closer in to the Sun, in Venus orbit where the solar flux is I believe twice as strong as in Earth orbit, solar would be favored I'd think.
The balloon I guess would be pretty high up in the atmosphere, above the major cloud layer, and during the day sunlight, though somewhat attenuated, would do fine. For that matter I believe even on the surface there is quite a lot of diffuse light--in daytime. (In fact, if I am to believe information I got secondhand from some 1970s/80s science fiction by John Varley, sunlight is refracted right around the night side; on the surface the sun never actually is seen to set (if a clear image burns through the clouds that is--it might not in visible light) but instead seems to squat and get squashed on the horizon until it forms a ring, which then pools up to sunrise on the other side--so nighttime on the surface would be dimmer than daylight, but not pitch black. I've actually seen the moon behave a little bit like that on a night flight myself, so I certainly think it might be true on Venus--depends on the exact atmospheric densities I think. However the Eos balloon would be up too high to benefit from this eternal daylight!
) Anyway though a surface solar panel system would be suffering from the intense heat. And a radionuclide passive thermoelectric system would be pretty difficult to make work too, due to the "cold" end already being hot enough to melt many metals, so it isn't clear to me how Venus surface probes are powered--I could try to look it up for OTL but my browser is crashing on me right now!In the cool upper atmosphere though, solar power would be great--until the winds sweep the balloon over to the night side. Once it's there I suspect it would stay there since the upper atmospheric winds ought to be blowing from day side to night side, making their return to the day side via sinking down into the lower atmosphere and creeping back dayward (much denser gas moves the same mass flow at a much slower windspeed). The balloon can't follow that cycle so it will get trapped in the middle of the night hemisphere, drifting as the terminator slowly migrates.
So, I'm thinking that radionuclide thermoelectric is the way to go; in the cool upper atmosphere it will work well enough even in daylight with the radiators shaded by the balloon itself and with thermal convection cooling them better than radiation in space could; once it works over to the night side it should work superbly. Unless the endurance of the balloon is so low that chemical batteries will do; conceivably I suppose some kind of "air" breathing battery that reacts with the atmospheric acids might work.
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Finally, I wonder whether any of these probes, spanning as they do over a decade, went over to the method of aerobraking to achieve orbit. Obviously the landers did! I'm afraid I don't know whether we've done that by now for orbiters like VOIR OTL yet. But it seems like an attractive, if risky, way to shed about, I estimate, around 3000 meters/sec delta-V, in lieu of using rockets to achieve orbital insertion. It sounds like ITTL VOIR might have done that?
There's an atmosphere, might as well use it is my thinking! Of course it requires the whole probe to be shrouded in a shell on approach and to be finely controlled, with the light-speed lag by its own autopilot, for the narrow window.
And this kind of thing is one of several reasons, despite certain obvious benefits for Eastern Europeans, and arguably for the Russians themselves, I have very mixed feelings about the collapse of the Soviet Union and tend to like ATLs where it survives and gets better instead.
I rather like "Cytherian" myself, and would prefer to say "Venerian" rather than "Venusian" if it weren't for the obvious unfortunate associations.
"Aphroditian" isn't much better than "Venerian" for avoiding red faces and snickers and it doesn't roll off the tongue well either.
Wait, did I just write...
Sorry guys, work and other stresses still have me down, I still wanted to do a proper reply to the last post and have some questions about the vertical landing first stage landing concept too, but it's much too late tonight and my brain is starting to act like my overburdened browser!
Good night!
Hnau
Banned
I've been studying the exploration of Venus quite extensively in the last few weeks, so it was great to see e of pi devote an entire installment to it here! So Magellan launches 19 months earlier and... wow, I hadn't heard of the DZhVs yet. That's really interesting. So all of this is being paid with the funds that IOTL would have gone to the Buran?
There is some evidence of Venusquakes already, cool that they'd be able to get so much more data on them this early.
There is some evidence of Venusquakes already, cool that they'd be able to get so much more data on them this early.
Yep, except for Magellan (which is a pretty big exception; the US did most of the Venus mapping). The Venus science group in the United States seems to be perpetually disappointed--if you look at VEXAG, they've got all sorts of nifty ideas, they just never get funding. All Mars, Mars, Mars, I guess. Well, that and the fact that Venus is really tough.
More or less. I felt like throwing the Soviets a bone, and Venus is generally supposed to be geologically active nowadays, so finding Venusquakes seems reasonable. I mean, there are Moonquakes...
Well, yes, Magellan was the OTL cut-rate version of VOIR (as you clearly know from that last question!). This is pretty much Magellan but with two antennas and a circular orbit. They managed to get some gravimetric data out OTL in the later passes, but the elliptical orbit and the fact that they had only a single antenna (so they could do radar or gravity, but not both) made it harder.
You'd have to ask the French. My memory of Ulivi and Harland is, admittedly, a bit spotty by this point (I wrote this ages and ages ago), but I'm pretty sure that they were going to use helium. The later (French-built) Vega balloons did, for sure. Actually, balloon proposals for any planet or Titan aside from the gas giants will generally use helium (I've seen reports for Titan balloons from the early 1980s, for instance, as a follow-on to Cassini) or be solar Mongolfier. The only places where I can recall hydrogen balloons being the first choice are the gas giants, where you don't really have much of a choice. My guess would be the fact that there's lots of experience on Earth for helium balloons of this sort (weather balloons and the like), very little for hydrogen balloons let alone other types. Obviously it's safer to test things like inflation, as well. Solar Mongolfier appeals because it needs no inflation gases at all.
I also wonder what power source the balloon probe used. The orbiter could use either solar panels or radionuclide thermal generators; closer in to the Sun, in Venus orbit where the solar flux is I believe twice as strong as in Earth orbit, solar would be favored I'd think.
The balloon I guess would be pretty high up in the atmosphere, above the major cloud layer, and during the day sunlight, though somewhat attenuated, would do fine. For that matter I believe even on the surface there is quite a lot of diffuse light--in daytime. (In fact, if I am to believe information I got secondhand from some 1970s/80s science fiction by John Varley, sunlight is refracted right around the night side; on the surface the sun never actually is seen to set (if a clear image burns through the clouds that is--it might not in visible light) but instead seems to squat and get squashed on the horizon until it forms a ring, which then pools up to sunrise on the other side--so nighttime on the surface would be dimmer than daylight, but not pitch black. I've actually seen the moon behave a little bit like that on a night flight myself, so I certainly think it might be true on Venus--depends on the exact atmospheric densities I think. However the Eos balloon would be up too high to benefit from this eternal daylight!
In the cool upper atmosphere though, solar power would be great--until the winds sweep the balloon over to the night side. Once it's there I suspect it would stay there since the upper atmospheric winds ought to be blowing from day side to night side, making their return to the day side via sinking down into the lower atmosphere and creeping back dayward (much denser gas moves the same mass flow at a much slower windspeed). The balloon can't follow that cycle so it will get trapped in the middle of the night hemisphere, drifting as the terminator slowly migrates.
So, I'm thinking that radionuclide thermoelectric is the way to go; in the cool upper atmosphere it will work well enough even in daylight with the radiators shaded by the balloon itself and with thermal convection cooling them better than radiation in space could; once it works over to the night side it should work superbly. Unless the endurance of the balloon is so low that chemical batteries will do; conceivably I suppose some kind of "air" breathing battery that reacts with the atmospheric acids might work.
RTGs are probably it; the OTL Vega balloons, which were battery-powered, only lasted 46 hours, after all. Orbiter is overwhelmingly likely to be solar, Soviets decidedly favored that technology (mostly, admittedly, because they didn't do any deep-space probes).
You mean aerocapture. Aerobraking is something else--the use of atmospheric drag to change the shape of the orbit. The terms got damnably confused at some point, but they're quite different, particularly in that aerocapture requires the spacecraft to have an aerodynamic design and a heat shield, but aerobraking does not (eg., a number of Mars orbiters have aerobraked into their final orbit).
VOIR used neither technique; unlike Mars, which had an upper atmosphere extremely well characterized by the Mars Pioneer mission, Venus did not, so they decided not to risk the mission on an unproven technique under uncertain conditions. This did mean that it needed a lot of propellant for orbit circularization, but the Delta's a big rocket, it can handle it.
Well, it's not much more data...just some jags on a seismometer. Defenitive proof of existence, more or less, but very little data (not that mountains won't be made out of this particular molehill, of course).
The DZhVs information comes from Ulivi and Harland's excellent books on the history of robotic space exploration. Volumes 1 and 2, covering most things up to about 1997 or so (excepting Cassini...) are out, Volume 3 may or may not be out by now, I'm not sure.
Ah! Truth, you found some time to answer those, I was just going to shoot you a PM about them. For the rest of you, as you can now tell and as usual for the unmanned stuff, this is another post truth mostly wrote, so I wasn't looking forward to having to tackle the specific technical issues raised, hence my relative silence. Well, that and about 50 pages of papers I've written or edited since Tuesday. And pages to go until I sleep...
Boy, finals has me discombobulated. I haven't had classes since Thursday, and got mixed up: I was halfway through posting the update to be ahead of noon before I checked the date and realized it wasn't Tueday yet! Aren't you all glad I remembered, you might accidentally have gotten a post early!
Boy, finals has me discombobulated. I haven't had classes since Thursday, and got mixed up: I was halfway through posting the update to be ahead of noon before I checked the date and realized it wasn't Tueday yet! Aren't you all glad I remembered, you might accidentally have gotten a post early!
No! Dangit. You need a table of contents.
There's a table of contents on the wiki, which I updated for Part I and which Michel has been diligently been updating for Part II. Link in my sig.
yes i was so free, to complete parts of AH wiki
by way, e of pi check you AHF pm box there some patches and a title page illustration.
Boy, finals has me discombobulated. I haven't had classes since Thursday, and got mixed up: I was halfway through posting the update to be ahead of noon before I checked the date and realized it wasn't Tueday yet! Aren't you all glad I remembered, you might accidentally have gotten a post early!
Well I hope you remembered to save everything that you did have ready, to make the update a below five-minute job.
It usually is--pull up the google doc, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, writhe the little "it's that time again" intro, and submit. Edit in the view/reply standings at the end of that in white text for the records, then it's done.
Boy, finals has me discombobulated. I haven't had classes since Thursday, and got mixed up: I was halfway through posting the update to be ahead of noon before I checked the date and realized it wasn't Tueday yet! Aren't you all glad I remembered, you might accidentally have gotten a post early!
Ohh, that would have been so very, very wrong!
Waits impatiently for arbitrary update time...
Oh well, at least you don't leave us hanging for months or years like some timelines I could name.
Part II: Post 16: Satellites, Telecoms, and Television
Well, it's actually Tuesday, so it's that time once again. Last week, we reviewed the exploration of the mysterious world lurking beneath the gases of Venus. This week, we're turning to an even more bizarre world: television broadcasting. Truth is life and I would like to thank the Brainbin for his generous contributions to discussing the altered broadcasting landscape ITTL and for reviewing several drafts of this post. 1033 replies, 125845 views
Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #16
The idea of using communications satellites not merely to replace cable and microwave backbones in carrying signals across oceans and great expanses of land, but to replace conventional systems of distribution altogether by beaming signals directly from one location to another was developed soon after the concept of the communications satellite itself. The development of actual satellites during the late 1950s and early 1960s only intensified the conceptual development of these systems; although it was soon recognized that fully point-to-point communications were far beyond the then-current state-of-the-art, only a little development seemed necessary to use satellites in a system of national broadcasting, which development was quickly entered into by both the United States and the Soviet Union as a way of efficiently delivering communications worldwide. The launch of the American experimental satellite ATS-6 in 1974 and its subsequent success in beaming television programs directly to viewers ranging from Indians to Inuit was only the tipping point in this building trend towards the direct broadcast of television by satellite. Only weeks after the launch, by which time the success of the satellite was abundantly clear, the Radio Corporation of America's satellite division proposed that the second generation of Satcom satellites, expected about 1980 to replace the first generation satellites then being built, be used not just to support conventional broadcast television but also to directly beam television to subscriber's homes. Besides potentially being profitable in its own right, such a scheme could support RCA's subsidiary, the National Broadcasting Company, then in the midst of a severe ratings slide, which could be responsible for much of the system's programming. After mulling over the proposal, RCA's board of directors gave the go-ahead to the project in early 1975, deciding to abandon a decade's work on a promising but troubled video system[1] in the process.
As work on the second-generation satellites and the direct-broadcast system progressed, it became increasingly clear that the initial vision for the project was unworkable. The most serious issue was the basic design of the network itself. In the initial concept, the network would be a sort of NBC Premium, going above and beyond NBC's normal programming to deliver a wide variety of NBC-branded channels. There might be an NBC Kids channel, carrying child-oriented programming around the clock, an NBC News, carrying nothing but news programming, including in-depth reports on the underpinnings of current situations or constant coverage of important events, and so on and so forth, in whatever combinations could be dreamed up by NBC executives. The programming for these channels would be produced in a conventional way, either in-house by existing NBC assets (in the case of NBC News, for example) or by contracting outside production houses for some or all of the material, but the method of distribution would make this a decidedly novel asset in the television world. Not only could RCA profit from both monthly service fees and channel advertising, but by eliminating any need to support NBC's affiliates they would have a larger profit margin, despite expecting to sell satellite reception equipment at a loss. Unfortunately for NBC, however, the world was not standing still while RCA developed its satellite brand. By the mid-1970s, the first buddings of cable television were beginning to appear, with stations such as the Home Box Office and Ted Turner's WTCG, later WTBS, the first superstation and a milestone in increasing access to syndicated and rerun programs, achieving some degree of success on early cable networks. When NBC began pilot testing the proposed initial lineup of premium channels (using cable for distribution in most test areas), they were surprised to find that many people actually preferred these alternatives to NBC's channels, despite multiple attempts to draw viewers away from other channels via incentive packages, cutting advertising so far the channels were actually being run at a loss, and various publicity moves. Drawing in customers to the NBC-branded channels was so difficult, in fact, that it seemed doubtful that the satellite network could be very successful with only those available. As it evolved, the eventual lineup of the "basic" satellite package became remarkably similar to "basic" cable, featuring a similar channel lineup (with the large exception of NBC News, one of the few NBC channels without an established cable competitor), and additional "premium" channels available for an additional fee. While more expensive for RCA than NBC channels would have been, the additional customer volume would more than make up for increased costs, or so it was hoped.
Poor marketability was not the only challenge NBC Satellite faced from its design, however. In an entirely unsurprising reaction to the initial NBC Premium design, most affiliates responded with fury to RCA/NBC essentially proposing to make them irrelevant, especially as NBC's pilot testing of satellite systems revealed that most customers abandoned over-the-air television entirely with satellite or cable systems. Fearing for the viability of their businesses, the affiliates rapidly banded together into regional, then interstate, then national organizations, eventually joining forces to form the NBC Affiliates Association, or NAA. NAA stations complained to the FCC about their own parent's anticompetitive activities, then threatened to desert NBC en masse and form an entirely new network, tentatively termed the United Broadcasting Network, or UBN , if NBC continued to pursue its anti-affiliate policies. Faced with annihilation of its terrestrial unit (aside from the few stations it owned directly), NBC blinked, guaranteeing a slice of bandwidth for local affiliate stations on its satellites at the cost of eliminating a planned NBC channel. This deal, however effective it was at ensuring NBC's affiliate network would remain with NBC, only deepened NBC's woes as now ABC and CBS began to complain about RCA's business plans. Despite the presence of competitors who had also scented the possibility of new markets and new business generated through direct broadcast, RCA had far and away the most advanced project, and the one with the greatest corporate and financial backing. Faced with yet another significant threat, once again NBC's management attempted to neutralize it before it could become significant, this time suggesting to management at ABC and CBS that they meet with NBC's executives to try to avoid drawing in the FCC and develop an effective self-regulating regime. Over a week of "working vacation," the executives hammered out an agreement that eventually formed the basis for most later regulation of satellite and cable television providers. At the deal's heart was the notion of "carry one, carry all"; if a provider carried the local affiliate of any one of the networks in a given market, it would have to carry affiliates of all of the networks in that same market, along with the local PBS affiliate in a sop to notions of broadcasting "for the public good". Although this might remove two otherwise RCA-controlled channels from play, the threat of legal action or heavy regulation from the FCC led RCA to perceive the agreement as the lesser evil in their quest for direct broadcast success. The Vineyard Deal (named after Martha's Vineyard, where the executives met) led ABC and CBS to halt their action against RCA and NBC while awaiting the service's launch, even as it allowed RCA to finally focus completely on getting NBC Satellite on its feet.
The first satellite of the Satcom-D series launched in September 1980 aboard a Titan III, closing out Martin Marietta’s era of Titan commercial space launches as it headed for its designated east position, hovering just off of Brazil's coast to cover the country from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast [2]. The first regularly scheduled television program in the world delivered directly by satellite to the subscriber's home was the October 3rd, 1980 episode of Days of our Lives[3], broadcast on a local NBC affiliate, a surprisingly mundane yet perhaps inevitable beginning to the service. After all, soap operas had been one of the first programs to migrate from radio to television in the early 1950s. Nevertheless, growth was slow at first, with competition from cable operators and the tail end of stagflation and the long recession conspiring to keep customers from spending on expensive gadgets and entertainment services. However, due to the low operating costs of a satellite system compared to terrestrial cable or even terrestrial broadcasting, the system quickly began to show an operating profit for RCA, motivating them to further expand the network's viewership. Lower prices, channel selections tailored to the interests of particular regions, and above all else an improved array of channels to distribute all featured in their attempts to woo customers away from cable and terrestrial television. In the latter case, of particular importance was a deal signed by Warner-Amex Satellite Communications, Warner-Amex Cable Communications, and RCA in 1982, giving Warner-Amex the right to distribute certain NBC channels, particularly NBC News as a hedge against Ted Turner's new CNN, in exchange for allowing NBC Satellite to distribute certain Warner-Amex channels, such as Nickelodeon.
At first, this deal was of only slight importance to RCA, which saw viewership of NBC News and subscriptions to NBC Satellite rise modestly over the following year, perhaps as much from the sharp decline in oil prices and general economic recovery starting in 1982 as anything else. However, outside of the figures available to executive officers, a slow groundswell of interest was building in MTV, one of the channels obtained in the Warner-Amex deal. With the channel now being distributed nationwide, an increasing number of teenagers and young adults were incorporating the channel into group entertainment; in a similar fashion to video games a generation later, watching a few music videos was becoming de rigueur even for gatherings with a different ostensible purpose. The release of three extremely popular Michael Jackson music videos during 1983, culminating in the groundbreaking Thriller, merely moved this trend into national visibility. Suddenly, the audience was no longer content to merely watch a few videos with friends; instead, they wanted their MTV, and they wanted it now. Hitched to MTV's rocket, NBC Satellite quickly went from being modestly profitable to being one of the most valuable properties in RCA's portfolio, just as NBC itself turned around from its 1970s-era flailing to reestablish itself as one of the most successful networks in television, in the face of greater competition than it had faced a decade earlier.
[1]: This is SelectaVision, which OTL proved to be a disaster to the tune of more than half a billion dollars in losses for the company, and was a major factor in their collapse and subsequent acquisition in 1986 by General Electric, their erstwhile founder (RCA was a division of GE from 1919 to 1930, when it was spun off into an independent firm). This is why NBC is effectively 49% owned by GE at the present time. The Satcom is actually as OTL, more or less, except of course for the direct broadcast part.
[2]: Three satellites are planned for the Satcom-D (for direct) system; East, West, and on-orbit spare vehicles, similarly to NOAA's GOES weather satellites.
[3]: October 3rd, 1980 was a Friday, and did indeed see a broadcast of Days of Our Lives. At, I believe, 11:00 AM.
Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #16
The idea of using communications satellites not merely to replace cable and microwave backbones in carrying signals across oceans and great expanses of land, but to replace conventional systems of distribution altogether by beaming signals directly from one location to another was developed soon after the concept of the communications satellite itself. The development of actual satellites during the late 1950s and early 1960s only intensified the conceptual development of these systems; although it was soon recognized that fully point-to-point communications were far beyond the then-current state-of-the-art, only a little development seemed necessary to use satellites in a system of national broadcasting, which development was quickly entered into by both the United States and the Soviet Union as a way of efficiently delivering communications worldwide. The launch of the American experimental satellite ATS-6 in 1974 and its subsequent success in beaming television programs directly to viewers ranging from Indians to Inuit was only the tipping point in this building trend towards the direct broadcast of television by satellite. Only weeks after the launch, by which time the success of the satellite was abundantly clear, the Radio Corporation of America's satellite division proposed that the second generation of Satcom satellites, expected about 1980 to replace the first generation satellites then being built, be used not just to support conventional broadcast television but also to directly beam television to subscriber's homes. Besides potentially being profitable in its own right, such a scheme could support RCA's subsidiary, the National Broadcasting Company, then in the midst of a severe ratings slide, which could be responsible for much of the system's programming. After mulling over the proposal, RCA's board of directors gave the go-ahead to the project in early 1975, deciding to abandon a decade's work on a promising but troubled video system[1] in the process.
As work on the second-generation satellites and the direct-broadcast system progressed, it became increasingly clear that the initial vision for the project was unworkable. The most serious issue was the basic design of the network itself. In the initial concept, the network would be a sort of NBC Premium, going above and beyond NBC's normal programming to deliver a wide variety of NBC-branded channels. There might be an NBC Kids channel, carrying child-oriented programming around the clock, an NBC News, carrying nothing but news programming, including in-depth reports on the underpinnings of current situations or constant coverage of important events, and so on and so forth, in whatever combinations could be dreamed up by NBC executives. The programming for these channels would be produced in a conventional way, either in-house by existing NBC assets (in the case of NBC News, for example) or by contracting outside production houses for some or all of the material, but the method of distribution would make this a decidedly novel asset in the television world. Not only could RCA profit from both monthly service fees and channel advertising, but by eliminating any need to support NBC's affiliates they would have a larger profit margin, despite expecting to sell satellite reception equipment at a loss. Unfortunately for NBC, however, the world was not standing still while RCA developed its satellite brand. By the mid-1970s, the first buddings of cable television were beginning to appear, with stations such as the Home Box Office and Ted Turner's WTCG, later WTBS, the first superstation and a milestone in increasing access to syndicated and rerun programs, achieving some degree of success on early cable networks. When NBC began pilot testing the proposed initial lineup of premium channels (using cable for distribution in most test areas), they were surprised to find that many people actually preferred these alternatives to NBC's channels, despite multiple attempts to draw viewers away from other channels via incentive packages, cutting advertising so far the channels were actually being run at a loss, and various publicity moves. Drawing in customers to the NBC-branded channels was so difficult, in fact, that it seemed doubtful that the satellite network could be very successful with only those available. As it evolved, the eventual lineup of the "basic" satellite package became remarkably similar to "basic" cable, featuring a similar channel lineup (with the large exception of NBC News, one of the few NBC channels without an established cable competitor), and additional "premium" channels available for an additional fee. While more expensive for RCA than NBC channels would have been, the additional customer volume would more than make up for increased costs, or so it was hoped.
Poor marketability was not the only challenge NBC Satellite faced from its design, however. In an entirely unsurprising reaction to the initial NBC Premium design, most affiliates responded with fury to RCA/NBC essentially proposing to make them irrelevant, especially as NBC's pilot testing of satellite systems revealed that most customers abandoned over-the-air television entirely with satellite or cable systems. Fearing for the viability of their businesses, the affiliates rapidly banded together into regional, then interstate, then national organizations, eventually joining forces to form the NBC Affiliates Association, or NAA. NAA stations complained to the FCC about their own parent's anticompetitive activities, then threatened to desert NBC en masse and form an entirely new network, tentatively termed the United Broadcasting Network, or UBN , if NBC continued to pursue its anti-affiliate policies. Faced with annihilation of its terrestrial unit (aside from the few stations it owned directly), NBC blinked, guaranteeing a slice of bandwidth for local affiliate stations on its satellites at the cost of eliminating a planned NBC channel. This deal, however effective it was at ensuring NBC's affiliate network would remain with NBC, only deepened NBC's woes as now ABC and CBS began to complain about RCA's business plans. Despite the presence of competitors who had also scented the possibility of new markets and new business generated through direct broadcast, RCA had far and away the most advanced project, and the one with the greatest corporate and financial backing. Faced with yet another significant threat, once again NBC's management attempted to neutralize it before it could become significant, this time suggesting to management at ABC and CBS that they meet with NBC's executives to try to avoid drawing in the FCC and develop an effective self-regulating regime. Over a week of "working vacation," the executives hammered out an agreement that eventually formed the basis for most later regulation of satellite and cable television providers. At the deal's heart was the notion of "carry one, carry all"; if a provider carried the local affiliate of any one of the networks in a given market, it would have to carry affiliates of all of the networks in that same market, along with the local PBS affiliate in a sop to notions of broadcasting "for the public good". Although this might remove two otherwise RCA-controlled channels from play, the threat of legal action or heavy regulation from the FCC led RCA to perceive the agreement as the lesser evil in their quest for direct broadcast success. The Vineyard Deal (named after Martha's Vineyard, where the executives met) led ABC and CBS to halt their action against RCA and NBC while awaiting the service's launch, even as it allowed RCA to finally focus completely on getting NBC Satellite on its feet.
The first satellite of the Satcom-D series launched in September 1980 aboard a Titan III, closing out Martin Marietta’s era of Titan commercial space launches as it headed for its designated east position, hovering just off of Brazil's coast to cover the country from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast [2]. The first regularly scheduled television program in the world delivered directly by satellite to the subscriber's home was the October 3rd, 1980 episode of Days of our Lives[3], broadcast on a local NBC affiliate, a surprisingly mundane yet perhaps inevitable beginning to the service. After all, soap operas had been one of the first programs to migrate from radio to television in the early 1950s. Nevertheless, growth was slow at first, with competition from cable operators and the tail end of stagflation and the long recession conspiring to keep customers from spending on expensive gadgets and entertainment services. However, due to the low operating costs of a satellite system compared to terrestrial cable or even terrestrial broadcasting, the system quickly began to show an operating profit for RCA, motivating them to further expand the network's viewership. Lower prices, channel selections tailored to the interests of particular regions, and above all else an improved array of channels to distribute all featured in their attempts to woo customers away from cable and terrestrial television. In the latter case, of particular importance was a deal signed by Warner-Amex Satellite Communications, Warner-Amex Cable Communications, and RCA in 1982, giving Warner-Amex the right to distribute certain NBC channels, particularly NBC News as a hedge against Ted Turner's new CNN, in exchange for allowing NBC Satellite to distribute certain Warner-Amex channels, such as Nickelodeon.
At first, this deal was of only slight importance to RCA, which saw viewership of NBC News and subscriptions to NBC Satellite rise modestly over the following year, perhaps as much from the sharp decline in oil prices and general economic recovery starting in 1982 as anything else. However, outside of the figures available to executive officers, a slow groundswell of interest was building in MTV, one of the channels obtained in the Warner-Amex deal. With the channel now being distributed nationwide, an increasing number of teenagers and young adults were incorporating the channel into group entertainment; in a similar fashion to video games a generation later, watching a few music videos was becoming de rigueur even for gatherings with a different ostensible purpose. The release of three extremely popular Michael Jackson music videos during 1983, culminating in the groundbreaking Thriller, merely moved this trend into national visibility. Suddenly, the audience was no longer content to merely watch a few videos with friends; instead, they wanted their MTV, and they wanted it now. Hitched to MTV's rocket, NBC Satellite quickly went from being modestly profitable to being one of the most valuable properties in RCA's portfolio, just as NBC itself turned around from its 1970s-era flailing to reestablish itself as one of the most successful networks in television, in the face of greater competition than it had faced a decade earlier.
[1]: This is SelectaVision, which OTL proved to be a disaster to the tune of more than half a billion dollars in losses for the company, and was a major factor in their collapse and subsequent acquisition in 1986 by General Electric, their erstwhile founder (RCA was a division of GE from 1919 to 1930, when it was spun off into an independent firm). This is why NBC is effectively 49% owned by GE at the present time. The Satcom is actually as OTL, more or less, except of course for the direct broadcast part.
[2]: Three satellites are planned for the Satcom-D (for direct) system; East, West, and on-orbit spare vehicles, similarly to NOAA's GOES weather satellites.
[3]: October 3rd, 1980 was a Friday, and did indeed see a broadcast of Days of Our Lives. At, I believe, 11:00 AM.
MTV. Back in the days when they actually showed Music Videos.
As for getting the necessary satellites up to the required orbit - GEO unless I'm mistaken - this is where the ESA always had an advantage. Kourou. It's proximity to the Equator allowing larger payloads for a given LV.
But more to the point, usually going into a seven degree inclined GTO - as opposed to at least 28.5 degrees for a Canaveral Launch - meant using a little less propellant to get into the right orbit, and thus having a little more for its operational life.
Obviously, since IOTL, NASA got stuck with STS, OTL ESA had an even bigger advantage post-1986. So a good question would be - with respect to the fledgling Commercial Launch Services - how does it all play out ITTL?
As for getting the necessary satellites up to the required orbit - GEO unless I'm mistaken - this is where the ESA always had an advantage. Kourou. It's proximity to the Equator allowing larger payloads for a given LV.
But more to the point, usually going into a seven degree inclined GTO - as opposed to at least 28.5 degrees for a Canaveral Launch - meant using a little less propellant to get into the right orbit, and thus having a little more for its operational life.
Obviously, since IOTL, NASA got stuck with STS, OTL ESA had an even bigger advantage post-1986. So a good question would be - with respect to the fledgling Commercial Launch Services - how does it all play out ITTL?
You have asked exactly the right question, but you'll have to wait until next week to see what happens
Yep. Next week should be fun.You have asked exactly the right question, but you'll have to wait until next week to see what happens
Funny, about a month ago I read this blog post about MSNBC's brand identity. The gist is that it would make more sense for a news network emerging from NBC Nightly News to tack to the center and maintain brand neutrality. But they can't do that because that's the CNN market so they tack to the left. TTL they should be able to hold the center, and perhaps we'll see Turner try to make some changes at CNN.
I was fiddling around the other day with some friends on an idea for an early, comparatively low-tech satellite-powered internet. Stock tickers, the weather, headlines, all text-based stuff tied in with a hardware subscription service like this. Any chance we'll see something like that?
I was fiddling around the other day with some friends on an idea for an early, comparatively low-tech satellite-powered internet. Stock tickers, the weather, headlines, all text-based stuff tied in with a hardware subscription service like this. Any chance we'll see something like that?
Well, as it happens, we were looking for an expert in telecommunications to talk to about things. If that fits, you could PM us…