I seem to be missing something here.
This Satcom-D is more or less equivalent to e.g. Astra1a? Yes? Just a) American and 8 years earlier?
Astra 1 had 16 transponders, which pretty much means 16 channels, no?
Nor, IIRC, did the early satellites have elaborate arrays of antennas to spot beam different programs to different locations.
No, your Satcom-D is a bit bigger than the Astra 1, I'd guess (can't be bothered to look up masses of available upper stages, etc., but the Titan IIIC had a 3tonne to GTO capability and Astra 1 was something like 1.8 tonnes (IIRC, I looked this up a day or two ago, but didn't have the time or energy or computer access to post a detailed post then). So, I don't suppose the Satcom-D can be MUCH bigger. Moreover, 8 years of satellite development would surely mean that your SatcomD would have to be more massive to provide the same services.
So, all in all, it LOOKS to me like you have WAY oversubscribed the available bandwidth.
Have I missed something?
1 way data transmission, like stock tickers? sure.
But 'internet' implies interactive. The early satellites just didn't have the bandwidth.
The first direct to home broadcast satellite iOTL seems to be Astra 1a, which had 16 transponders, each of which could handle 1 tv channel, or 960 (one way) phone links. If you devoted the entire satellite to internet service at dial-up speeds, you could get approximately <8000 people accessing the service at once (16 channels * 960 /2 the /2 because you need duplex).
That's going to be EXPENSIVE for dial-up data rates...
I seem to be missing something here.
This Satcom-D is more or less equivalent to e.g. Astra1a? Yes? Just a) American and 8 years earlier?
Astra 1 had 16 transponders, which pretty much means 16 channels, no?
Nor, IIRC, did the early satellites have elaborate arrays of antennas to spot beam different programs to different locations.
No, your Satcom-D is a bit bigger than the Astra 1, I'd guess (can't be bothered to look up masses of available upper stages, etc., but the Titan IIIC had a 3tonne to GTO capability and Astra 1 was something like 1.8 tonnes (IIRC, I looked this up a day or two ago, but didn't have the time or energy or computer access to post a detailed post then). So, I don't suppose the Satcom-D can be MUCH bigger. Moreover, 8 years of satellite development would surely mean that your SatcomD would have to be more massive to provide the same services.
So, all in all, it LOOKS to me like you have WAY oversubscribed the available bandwidth.
Have I missed something?
We are not experts; we ran this by Brainbin for the TV aspects, but we are certainly standing on much shakier ground here than in the planetary science posts (for example). If you could point us to sources...?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_1A
lists the 16 transponders.
from http://www.astronautix.com/mfrs/ses.htm
not sure where I got the 960 half-duplex voice/channel figure from, but I think that's correct. (It may have been from a Boeing (ex-Hughes) satellite's data)
The 3 tonne GTO figure for Titan IIIC I got from Astronautix....
Can you have DTH tv in 1980? Yes, I'm sure you can. But I'm pretty sure it's going to be limited to 16-24 channels at most (per satellite), which is going to put paid to individual local stations getting broadcast from orbit.
lists the 16 transponders.
from http://www.astronautix.com/mfrs/ses.htm
and
not sure where I got the 960 half-duplex voice/channel figure from, but I think that's correct. (It may have been from a Boeing (ex-Hughes) satellite's data)
The 3 tonne GTO figure for Titan IIIC I got from Astronautix....
Can you have DTH tv in 1980? Yes, I'm sure you can. But I'm pretty sure it's going to be limited to 16-24 channels at most (per satellite), which is going to put paid to individual local stations getting broadcast from orbit.
And Europe ?
there tested the first GEO communications satellites in 1970s with Symphonie-1 in 1974 and 2 in 1975
OTL this was launch by US rockets, so the French and Germans, got restriction by USA on commercial use of this "Test" Satellite
But in this TL ESA got working Europa 2 and Symphonie 1&2 make hell of good job:
Links between metropolitan France and its overseas departments for telephony and television via satellite.
Links between United Nations headquarters in New York and Geneva and the UN Blue Helmet squadrons in Jerusalem and Ismaïlia,
inaugurating the future communications mode VSAT
High-speed, bidirectional links between computers – a forerunner of transcontinental data communications and the Internet
Teleconferencing, telerehabilitation and telemedicine, notably between France and Quebec
So with successful tests and available Europa-2,
the "Consortium Industrial Franco-Allemande pour le satellite Symphonie" (CIFAS) goes for commercial use
could become the major European Com-Satellite Manufacturer, 30 year earlier as Astrium Satellites !
CIFAS provides the symphonie series for Société Européenne des Satellites (astra) and Eutelsat in 1980s
there tested the first GEO communications satellites in 1970s with Symphonie-1 in 1974 and 2 in 1975
OTL this was launch by US rockets, so the French and Germans, got restriction by USA on commercial use of this "Test" Satellite
But in this TL ESA got working Europa 2 and Symphonie 1&2 make hell of good job:
Links between metropolitan France and its overseas departments for telephony and television via satellite.
Links between United Nations headquarters in New York and Geneva and the UN Blue Helmet squadrons in Jerusalem and Ismaïlia,
inaugurating the future communications mode VSAT
High-speed, bidirectional links between computers – a forerunner of transcontinental data communications and the Internet
Teleconferencing, telerehabilitation and telemedicine, notably between France and Quebec
So with successful tests and available Europa-2,
the "Consortium Industrial Franco-Allemande pour le satellite Symphonie" (CIFAS) goes for commercial use
could become the major European Com-Satellite Manufacturer, 30 year earlier as Astrium Satellites !
CIFAS provides the symphonie series for Société Européenne des Satellites (astra) and Eutelsat in 1980s
Dathi,
We've spent the last half hour or so digging into this. First of all, I think Astronautix is not giving you the right data here. Even if 3,000 kg to GTO is correct (I get more like 4-4.5 from Schilling's), that's with the Transtage third stage, not the Centaur (SatComm is using the Titan IIIE, not the Titan IIIC) and gives it more like 6.8 tons to GTO, which turns into about 4 tons final mass in GEO once the satellite performs its 1500 m/s apogee kick. This means the Satcomm-D series can mass about 2.2 times what Astra did IOTL. A simple guess would then say that they could easily carry something like 36 transponders.
However, looking more at Astra, 36 may be conservative. I see it used an AS-4000 bus as the base spacecraft. That's a 1.0 ton bus being used as the base for a 1.8 ton final spacecraft, so all the application-specific hardware have to fit in the other 800 kg. Assuming this is all the transponders (which it wouldn't be) the upper limit on a single transponder's mass is 50 kg. Not that the bus was pretty solidly oversized--2.8 kW of power, for instance, but the transponders didn't eat even a third of that. SatComm can probably get away with an only slightly enlarged bus, but many, many more transponders. If the bus is 1500 kg, that leaves 2500 kg for the mission-specific equipment, which is 41 channels even if the transponders are 20% heavier than on Astra. If they mass the same, then SatComm can get away with 50 transponders. Average this all out, and I think 45 is reasonable.
Just as a thought, I also spot this, launched just 3 years after Astra: AnikE1 and E2, each carrying 56 channels despite a mass of only 3 metric tons. (16 Ku-band doing double-duty with two analog channels each, plus 24 C-band just doing one channel each). This reinforces my thought that a ~45 channel SatComm is doable about the time we're having this happen, and with 40+ channels they do have the spare bandwidth to spend 4 channels placating the local affiliates without compromising their ability to show some "premium" channels--very competitive with early basic cable. It'll take a second generation of Satellites to push that number into the 80-100 range, but that should be around by the late 80s.
We've spent the last half hour or so digging into this. First of all, I think Astronautix is not giving you the right data here. Even if 3,000 kg to GTO is correct (I get more like 4-4.5 from Schilling's), that's with the Transtage third stage, not the Centaur (SatComm is using the Titan IIIE, not the Titan IIIC) and gives it more like 6.8 tons to GTO, which turns into about 4 tons final mass in GEO once the satellite performs its 1500 m/s apogee kick. This means the Satcomm-D series can mass about 2.2 times what Astra did IOTL. A simple guess would then say that they could easily carry something like 36 transponders.
However, looking more at Astra, 36 may be conservative. I see it used an AS-4000 bus as the base spacecraft. That's a 1.0 ton bus being used as the base for a 1.8 ton final spacecraft, so all the application-specific hardware have to fit in the other 800 kg. Assuming this is all the transponders (which it wouldn't be) the upper limit on a single transponder's mass is 50 kg. Not that the bus was pretty solidly oversized--2.8 kW of power, for instance, but the transponders didn't eat even a third of that. SatComm can probably get away with an only slightly enlarged bus, but many, many more transponders. If the bus is 1500 kg, that leaves 2500 kg for the mission-specific equipment, which is 41 channels even if the transponders are 20% heavier than on Astra. If they mass the same, then SatComm can get away with 50 transponders. Average this all out, and I think 45 is reasonable.
Just as a thought, I also spot this, launched just 3 years after Astra: AnikE1 and E2, each carrying 56 channels despite a mass of only 3 metric tons. (16 Ku-band doing double-duty with two analog channels each, plus 24 C-band just doing one channel each). This reinforces my thought that a ~45 channel SatComm is doable about the time we're having this happen, and with 40+ channels they do have the spare bandwidth to spend 4 channels placating the local affiliates without compromising their ability to show some "premium" channels--very competitive with early basic cable. It'll take a second generation of Satellites to push that number into the 80-100 range, but that should be around by the late 80s.
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This is all true, and I have been thinking pretty hard about European commercial spaceflight. As I'm sure you're aware, France has always been a big supporter of "commercializing" European spaceflight (since the 1960s, at least, based on certain sources I've run across), but Britain has been more ambivalent about the whole idea of spaceflight. While Europa's success ITTL has been enough to keep Britain in as a major partner in ELDO and later ESA, this has the ironic effect of decreasing French influence and therefore interest in commercialization...
Certainly, I see Europe and European aerospace firms (including satellite builders) being more successful ITTL earlier, particularly without the Shuttle subsidies which led to that vehicle launching more commercial satellites than every other vehicle in the world combined up to January 1986. However, Hughes, RCA, and other American firms are still going to be strong competitors (saying much more would be spoiling, but trust me when I say there are going to be interesting things coming down the wire over the next two weeks that have a direct bearing on this issue), and conversely to their earlier success I see them as being less successful (relative to OTL) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. What with all the US firms not being caught with their pants down when Shuttle goes off.
Thus, I see a strong European commercial presence within Europe itself and in some overseas areas (those which for political reasons might not want to use American equipment, for example), but not a dominant one.
Titan iiie. Wow. That DOES allow for a lot bigger satellite!
Anik satellites werent DTH, although a saw a comment about VSAT (whats that, very small aperture terminal?) used with the Anik e's, so maybe that was a regulatory issue, not a technical one?
Nimiq satellites are the canadian direct broadcast sats.
Yep. IIRC, IOTL the ESA Commercial Launch Services only really took off at the end of the 1980's with the advent of Ariane 4 and the Tragedy of Challenger.
Here, even though they have a reliable launch vehicle earlier, with a cheaper Saturn 1C-now-MultiBody for NASA. The US is going to get a bigger piece of that particular pie if Basic Common Sense tells me right.
Just one of the many methods that keeps this TL within the correct side of Plausible. Things get gained, at the expense of other things.
how realistic would be this in ITTL?
France and Germany aerospace firms goes for PRIVATE European commercial spaceflight, after Britain in ESA say "no way"
with help of German and French government financing, a French-German consortium build Com-Satellite together a simple low cost rocket to launch into GEO
a Modular Launch rocket based on Diamant-2 hardware (in OTL the French-German study in 1973 this for a low cost Europa IIIE)
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I really have trouble seeing France or Germany investing in developing an entire parellel LV family outside of ESA. Government money going to that would be tantamount to saying that their money invested in ESA is being wasted, building such a separate parallel LV would risk getting the Brits annoyed, which endangers their participation in ESA. Overall, it's risky politically, and I can't see them being desperate enough to roll the dice on it.
Coming up with the capital without a government boost would be an even more uphill fight, and there's not really anything wrong with Europa as far as cost. Instead, Europa's main holdups as a commercial launcher are just the red tape associated with ESA's direct control of it--no Arianespace ITTL, at least not yet. This makes such a vehicle unlikely to happen, and what you'd be more likely to see would be pushes from France to reorganize ESA's LV operations to make Europa itself cheaper. Streamlining production and sales of what's already a decent rocket is cheaper than building a new one from scratch, after all. Perhaps in another TL.
I see no problem with european commercial LV family outside of ESA.
ESA is a scientific research organization, getting there budget form the members state Ministry of Science.
While the commercial variant get's financing by the French and German Ministry of economics.
and i mean they warranty financing for the European Banks, on the credits used for the R&D of LV and start up operation , the rest is for the consortium* that build satellites and the LV to get paying customers.
There realistic chance it's works in this TL, because the French and German will keep there Aerospace industry alive under british Aerospace dominant ESA.
Special the French, of course there will be tension between France & Germany with Britain in ESA and European community, about this and it will end in some sort of European compromise like always.
like reorganize ESA's LV operations to make Europa itself cheaper...
The low cost commercial european LV family in detail:
based on Diamant B and Coralie & Astris stage hardware, but use common Fuel N2O4/Aerozine 50 and modified Pressure feed Valois engine.
the standard module is 2.4 mø by 18 meter long with 4 Valois engine.
3 to 7 modules, as upper stage severs the core module and as third stage a Astris
also the option for core module with LOX/Hydrogen with a HM7 engine
*=a consortium form by Aérospatiale, Thomson-CSF, SAT, MBB, ERNO, AEG, Siemens AG.
Graphic Bump three
fictional front page of Advance AARDV Block II Study by Rockwell
fictional front page of Advance AARDV Block II Study by Rockwell
Part II: Post 17: Commercial Spaceflight of the 1980s
Well, I hope everyone's been having a good holiday so far. I know I've been enjoying my break and the chance to dig in on some writing again after a couple weeks of final papers and presentations eating all my time. Anyway, last week, we looked at the birth of commercial satellite television, this week we're looking at the vehicles to launch the next generation.
Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #17:
The first communications satellite, depending on your definition, was launched in 1958, with Project SCORE, 1960 with the Echo series, or 1962 with the first Telstar. For the first decade of spaceflight, they were an essentially governmental and experimental affair, with the only private involvement being in the construction of satellites, and then only for the Western world. Intelsat, an intergovernmental organization (in fact, its original name was "Inter-Governmental Organization") controlled international satellite communication, while only the Soviet Union had been building a domestic satellite network. It was not until the early 1970s, after the Syncom and Intelsat series of satellites demonstrated the viability of geosynchronous communications satellites, that commercial interest in them began to appear. After Canada built and launched the Anik series of satellites, designed to extend telecommunications to its thinly populated and barren north, so too did interest from other foreign nations with natural or financial barriers to telecommunications projects. A satellite was cheaper and more flexible than a submarine cable or a microwave repeater link, and far easier to put into place in many areas. For similar reasons, the military had been working on its own satellite communications network, although the utility of a satellite-based telemetry system, for communicating with satellites far away from any ground stations (such as spy satellites) offered its own attractions. Slowly, a small communications satellite industry was growing, spearheaded by the American firm Hughes.
However, there was one problem with satellite communications: launchers. Existing launchers were often unreliable, expensive, inflexible, overused by military and national concerns, or otherwise unsuited to the needs of satellite communication providers. The appearance of non-broadcast television was a complicating factor, as such outlets found satellites to be an efficient method of distributing their programs from a central studio to local cable distributors, as they generally had a much higher bandwidth than conventional microwave links and were capable of beaming multiple channels to a potentially huge number of ground stations simultaneously. At the same time, a number of firms had realized that private, intra-firm communications that had previously relied on conventional telephony, facsimile transmission, or similar processes, could be conducted more effectively, efficiently, and securely by satellite. Together, these were driving satellite demand even faster and higher, making the shortage of launchers increasingly critical to multiple businesses. A canny investor looking at the situation might very well wonder why he (or she, although few of the canny investors of those days were female) couldn't make a buck or two by developing a new method of launching satellites. Combine that with the layoffs which plagued the American aerospace industry throughout the 1970s, providing cheap, experienced, and often eager labor, and you have all the makings of a space launch boom.
Indeed, dozens of companies were founded and attempted to carve out a significant share of the launch market during this time. Almost all of them collapsed upon realizing there was a lot more to rocket science than just new, clever ideas; and even if it wasn't that, the recession of the early '90s put paid to most of the firms that had survived up to that point, leaving only a few scarred survivors. One of the most prominent failures was Gary Hudson's American Space Launch, Inc. A proponent of Single Stage To Orbit launch vehicles, he enthusiastically recapitulated ideas that had originated with Phil Bono in the 1960s that (according to fans) would lead to a revolution in space launch. Skeptics pointed to numerous technical difficulties in the concept, but in the end it was his own inability to either fund the firm himself or attract investment that doomed the company. Perhaps with the resources of NASA or Boeing behind him, or a substantial personal fortune, he would have succeeded, but as it was he went down as just one of the most well-known of the many failures of the era. By 1990, American Space Launch had completely collapsed, with Hudson becoming almost a messianic figure for a certain part of the space enthusiast community.
Another significant player, all the more so for being from perhaps less entrepreneurial Europe, was Lutz Kayser. As early as 1975, he had founded Orbital Transport und Raketen AG, usually just OTRAG, with (like Hudson) a revolutionary new approach to space launch. Unlike Hudson, rather than use a technologically advanced and capable system, such as SSTOs, he went with the simplest possible approach, clustering cheap pressure-fed modules to build satellite launch systems. While a technically feasible approach--indeed, American Launch Services, by far the most successful of the '80s insurgents, used a similar system except with retired Minuteman I stages instead of customized liquid modules--and far from lacking funding, OTRAG ended up collapsing as a result of Kayser's poor political decisions and the political landscape of 1970s Europe. Kayser's decision to test the rocket in Zaire and later in Libya awakened the opposition of many who had no desire to see two brutal African dictators gain long-distance rocket technology, while his status as a German citizen and OTRAG's foundation in Germany led to fears (which seem quaint and ludicrous today, but loomed large at the time) of Germany again threatening Europe with missile technology, leading the Soviet Union, Britain, and France to pressure Germany into removing its support for the project, causing OTRAG's effective collapse by the mid-1980s. More conspiracy-minded observers have also cited the difficulties then being experienced by Europa in garnering business, especially from outside Europe itself, in OTRAG’s failure. Hampered by a bureaucratic management and political disputes between ESA member states, especially Britain and France, the argument goes, Europa was never going to be an effective commercial launch vehicle the way some, mostly French, individuals desired. However, OTRAG, founded by an entrepreneur and not burdened by policies such as “geographic return” and governmental bureaucracy, posed a particular threat to dreams of Europan commercial success. Thus, France in particular, heavily invested in Europa’s success, organized a coalition of opposition to Kayser which eventually brought him down.
One of the few survivors of the era, American Launch Services, Inc. became the only insurgent to offer full-scale orbital launch services with its flagship vehicle series, Caravel. Named after the capable but relatively small vessels that served as the vanguard of European exploration during the 16th and 17th centuries, like its namesake Caravel was hoped to be the precursor to humanity's expansion into space, although less capable than its larger siblings. During the early 1970s, the Air Force's first-generation solid ICBM, the Minuteman I, had been phased out in favor of the Minuteman II and Minuteman III, but rather than being destroyed the solid rocket motors that powered the missile were put into storage. Influenced by Lutz Kayser, in 1979 ALS proposed to use these missiles, together perhaps with the solid rocket upper stages developed for the Delta in previous years, to launch payloads into space. A single vehicle or small cluster could be used for sounding rocket or microgravity research purposes, while a larger cluster, equipped with an upper stage, could launch satellites into orbit. After garnering the interest of NASA, newly interested in privatization during the Reagan years, ALS was able to begin testing its vehicle concept in the early 1980s. While the maximum payload size was not large--the largest Caravel variant could lift less than 3 tons into orbit--the small satellite market quickly proved to be dramatically underserved commercially. With the working out of Caravel’s bugs in the late 1980s, NASA quickly became a major customer, both for orbital and suborbital launches. Often, the microgravity environment on board an ALS rocket would be superior to that on board NASA's "Vomit Comet," with several minutes of continuous exposure being typical, while at the same time costing less. Similarly, the larger clusters filled a payload gap between NASA's very small Scout booster and the much larger and more expensive Delta 4000, allowing an innovative range of low-cost Explorer payloads to be flown which otherwise would never have seen the light of day. ALS also built the first commercial spaceport in the world, with their launch facilities on Matagorda Bay in Texas seeing multiple launches per year and becoming a favored launch site for other private launch concerns, eager to avoid the bureaucracy of Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg.
Undoubtedly, however, the most important player to enter the launch market in the 1980s was Lockheed. Coming off of the relative success of its L-1011 TriStar airliner, in the early 1980s Lockheed executives saw an even better potential market opening up in space launch. Unlike most of their competitors, their goal was nothing less than a full frontal assault on the major launch providers of the time, a mix between semi-governmental United States launches and haphazardly organized Europa flights. Their opportunity came when Martin, desperately (and ultimately unsuccessfully) attempting to beat off a hostile takeover attempt from Bendix Corporation, offered their entire Titan production line for sale. Seeing an opportunity to branch into the launch business, Lockheed snapped it up, quickly turning around and persuading the Air Force to allow them to use existing Titan facilities at Cape Canaveral for commercial services. The new Lockheed Astronautics division, a merger of the newly acquired Titan division and earlier Lockheed space enterprises, quickly set to with a will trying to find customers for Commercial Titan, and just as quickly found them. Unlike its main competitors, the Delta 4000, Atlas-Centaur, and Europa, Commercial Titan was only lightly burdened by government management, meaning that commercial customers found themselves first in line, not last as at McDonnell Douglas or when trying to persuade the Europa consortium to allocate a flight[1]. Furthermore, Lockheed Astronautics could offer a "complete package": order a satellite and its launch, and you only have to deal with one contractor, Lockheed itself. Titan for the launch vehicle, Agena for the upper stage and satellite bus, and the experience of Lockheed in managing most of America's spy satellites allowed them to offer a highly integrated and less expensive package than their competitors. Their low prices were also aided by the Air Force's own indirect subsidy to Lockheed, guaranteed due to the national security importance of Titan and Agena until the introduction of Saturn Multibody and the full retirement of the large spy satellites designed for the old booster[2]. Between low initial prices and good service, Lockheed quickly captured nearly half of the commercial launch market, with the remainder roughly evenly divided between Europa and the Delta 4000, and even began to challenge Hughes in the satellite development business. In 1989 it attempted to purchase Hughes--now the Space Division of Ford-Hughes Aircraft Corporation, a subsidiary of Ford since it had purchased Hughes from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute following Hughes' death[3]--but was blocked by regulators concerned about Lockheed dominating the satellite market. Nevertheless, Lockheed had gone from a nobody to a major operator in the launch business in less than ten years, along with growing an increasingly large and important satellite production line. If American Launch Services was the most important of the new corporations, then Lockheed was by far the most influential of the previously existing major aerospace firms by the end of the decade, at least in the space launch business.
[1]: No Arianespace here! The French want to reorganize the business on commercial lines (they did OTL), but the other major ESA members aren’t as interested in it, especially Britain, which has prevented it from actually happening. With the experience of several years of development, too, the business case for space launch looks more doubtful than IOTL, so the French are more invested in commercializing the existing program than in starting a new one. However, the attitude in Britain towards privatisation may be changing...
[2]: IOTL, recall, KH-9s and KH-11s were launched by Titan into the late 1980s despite the introduction of Shuttle, which was supposedly going to take care of those. Of course, that was largely because Shuttle could not lift those satellites into their desired orbits without the Vandenberg launch site, which was never used. Still, it would be prohibitively expensive to recertify satellites designed for Titan launch to Saturn launch, so the Titan has a few years left in it after the buyout taking care of older satellites.
[3]: OTL, Hughes was bought by GM, and Ford was one of the unsuccessful bidders (this means that GM was briefly the largest manufacturer of satellites in the world). Just a small butterfly showing up now.
Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #17:
The first communications satellite, depending on your definition, was launched in 1958, with Project SCORE, 1960 with the Echo series, or 1962 with the first Telstar. For the first decade of spaceflight, they were an essentially governmental and experimental affair, with the only private involvement being in the construction of satellites, and then only for the Western world. Intelsat, an intergovernmental organization (in fact, its original name was "Inter-Governmental Organization") controlled international satellite communication, while only the Soviet Union had been building a domestic satellite network. It was not until the early 1970s, after the Syncom and Intelsat series of satellites demonstrated the viability of geosynchronous communications satellites, that commercial interest in them began to appear. After Canada built and launched the Anik series of satellites, designed to extend telecommunications to its thinly populated and barren north, so too did interest from other foreign nations with natural or financial barriers to telecommunications projects. A satellite was cheaper and more flexible than a submarine cable or a microwave repeater link, and far easier to put into place in many areas. For similar reasons, the military had been working on its own satellite communications network, although the utility of a satellite-based telemetry system, for communicating with satellites far away from any ground stations (such as spy satellites) offered its own attractions. Slowly, a small communications satellite industry was growing, spearheaded by the American firm Hughes.
However, there was one problem with satellite communications: launchers. Existing launchers were often unreliable, expensive, inflexible, overused by military and national concerns, or otherwise unsuited to the needs of satellite communication providers. The appearance of non-broadcast television was a complicating factor, as such outlets found satellites to be an efficient method of distributing their programs from a central studio to local cable distributors, as they generally had a much higher bandwidth than conventional microwave links and were capable of beaming multiple channels to a potentially huge number of ground stations simultaneously. At the same time, a number of firms had realized that private, intra-firm communications that had previously relied on conventional telephony, facsimile transmission, or similar processes, could be conducted more effectively, efficiently, and securely by satellite. Together, these were driving satellite demand even faster and higher, making the shortage of launchers increasingly critical to multiple businesses. A canny investor looking at the situation might very well wonder why he (or she, although few of the canny investors of those days were female) couldn't make a buck or two by developing a new method of launching satellites. Combine that with the layoffs which plagued the American aerospace industry throughout the 1970s, providing cheap, experienced, and often eager labor, and you have all the makings of a space launch boom.
Indeed, dozens of companies were founded and attempted to carve out a significant share of the launch market during this time. Almost all of them collapsed upon realizing there was a lot more to rocket science than just new, clever ideas; and even if it wasn't that, the recession of the early '90s put paid to most of the firms that had survived up to that point, leaving only a few scarred survivors. One of the most prominent failures was Gary Hudson's American Space Launch, Inc. A proponent of Single Stage To Orbit launch vehicles, he enthusiastically recapitulated ideas that had originated with Phil Bono in the 1960s that (according to fans) would lead to a revolution in space launch. Skeptics pointed to numerous technical difficulties in the concept, but in the end it was his own inability to either fund the firm himself or attract investment that doomed the company. Perhaps with the resources of NASA or Boeing behind him, or a substantial personal fortune, he would have succeeded, but as it was he went down as just one of the most well-known of the many failures of the era. By 1990, American Space Launch had completely collapsed, with Hudson becoming almost a messianic figure for a certain part of the space enthusiast community.
Another significant player, all the more so for being from perhaps less entrepreneurial Europe, was Lutz Kayser. As early as 1975, he had founded Orbital Transport und Raketen AG, usually just OTRAG, with (like Hudson) a revolutionary new approach to space launch. Unlike Hudson, rather than use a technologically advanced and capable system, such as SSTOs, he went with the simplest possible approach, clustering cheap pressure-fed modules to build satellite launch systems. While a technically feasible approach--indeed, American Launch Services, by far the most successful of the '80s insurgents, used a similar system except with retired Minuteman I stages instead of customized liquid modules--and far from lacking funding, OTRAG ended up collapsing as a result of Kayser's poor political decisions and the political landscape of 1970s Europe. Kayser's decision to test the rocket in Zaire and later in Libya awakened the opposition of many who had no desire to see two brutal African dictators gain long-distance rocket technology, while his status as a German citizen and OTRAG's foundation in Germany led to fears (which seem quaint and ludicrous today, but loomed large at the time) of Germany again threatening Europe with missile technology, leading the Soviet Union, Britain, and France to pressure Germany into removing its support for the project, causing OTRAG's effective collapse by the mid-1980s. More conspiracy-minded observers have also cited the difficulties then being experienced by Europa in garnering business, especially from outside Europe itself, in OTRAG’s failure. Hampered by a bureaucratic management and political disputes between ESA member states, especially Britain and France, the argument goes, Europa was never going to be an effective commercial launch vehicle the way some, mostly French, individuals desired. However, OTRAG, founded by an entrepreneur and not burdened by policies such as “geographic return” and governmental bureaucracy, posed a particular threat to dreams of Europan commercial success. Thus, France in particular, heavily invested in Europa’s success, organized a coalition of opposition to Kayser which eventually brought him down.
One of the few survivors of the era, American Launch Services, Inc. became the only insurgent to offer full-scale orbital launch services with its flagship vehicle series, Caravel. Named after the capable but relatively small vessels that served as the vanguard of European exploration during the 16th and 17th centuries, like its namesake Caravel was hoped to be the precursor to humanity's expansion into space, although less capable than its larger siblings. During the early 1970s, the Air Force's first-generation solid ICBM, the Minuteman I, had been phased out in favor of the Minuteman II and Minuteman III, but rather than being destroyed the solid rocket motors that powered the missile were put into storage. Influenced by Lutz Kayser, in 1979 ALS proposed to use these missiles, together perhaps with the solid rocket upper stages developed for the Delta in previous years, to launch payloads into space. A single vehicle or small cluster could be used for sounding rocket or microgravity research purposes, while a larger cluster, equipped with an upper stage, could launch satellites into orbit. After garnering the interest of NASA, newly interested in privatization during the Reagan years, ALS was able to begin testing its vehicle concept in the early 1980s. While the maximum payload size was not large--the largest Caravel variant could lift less than 3 tons into orbit--the small satellite market quickly proved to be dramatically underserved commercially. With the working out of Caravel’s bugs in the late 1980s, NASA quickly became a major customer, both for orbital and suborbital launches. Often, the microgravity environment on board an ALS rocket would be superior to that on board NASA's "Vomit Comet," with several minutes of continuous exposure being typical, while at the same time costing less. Similarly, the larger clusters filled a payload gap between NASA's very small Scout booster and the much larger and more expensive Delta 4000, allowing an innovative range of low-cost Explorer payloads to be flown which otherwise would never have seen the light of day. ALS also built the first commercial spaceport in the world, with their launch facilities on Matagorda Bay in Texas seeing multiple launches per year and becoming a favored launch site for other private launch concerns, eager to avoid the bureaucracy of Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg.
Undoubtedly, however, the most important player to enter the launch market in the 1980s was Lockheed. Coming off of the relative success of its L-1011 TriStar airliner, in the early 1980s Lockheed executives saw an even better potential market opening up in space launch. Unlike most of their competitors, their goal was nothing less than a full frontal assault on the major launch providers of the time, a mix between semi-governmental United States launches and haphazardly organized Europa flights. Their opportunity came when Martin, desperately (and ultimately unsuccessfully) attempting to beat off a hostile takeover attempt from Bendix Corporation, offered their entire Titan production line for sale. Seeing an opportunity to branch into the launch business, Lockheed snapped it up, quickly turning around and persuading the Air Force to allow them to use existing Titan facilities at Cape Canaveral for commercial services. The new Lockheed Astronautics division, a merger of the newly acquired Titan division and earlier Lockheed space enterprises, quickly set to with a will trying to find customers for Commercial Titan, and just as quickly found them. Unlike its main competitors, the Delta 4000, Atlas-Centaur, and Europa, Commercial Titan was only lightly burdened by government management, meaning that commercial customers found themselves first in line, not last as at McDonnell Douglas or when trying to persuade the Europa consortium to allocate a flight[1]. Furthermore, Lockheed Astronautics could offer a "complete package": order a satellite and its launch, and you only have to deal with one contractor, Lockheed itself. Titan for the launch vehicle, Agena for the upper stage and satellite bus, and the experience of Lockheed in managing most of America's spy satellites allowed them to offer a highly integrated and less expensive package than their competitors. Their low prices were also aided by the Air Force's own indirect subsidy to Lockheed, guaranteed due to the national security importance of Titan and Agena until the introduction of Saturn Multibody and the full retirement of the large spy satellites designed for the old booster[2]. Between low initial prices and good service, Lockheed quickly captured nearly half of the commercial launch market, with the remainder roughly evenly divided between Europa and the Delta 4000, and even began to challenge Hughes in the satellite development business. In 1989 it attempted to purchase Hughes--now the Space Division of Ford-Hughes Aircraft Corporation, a subsidiary of Ford since it had purchased Hughes from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute following Hughes' death[3]--but was blocked by regulators concerned about Lockheed dominating the satellite market. Nevertheless, Lockheed had gone from a nobody to a major operator in the launch business in less than ten years, along with growing an increasingly large and important satellite production line. If American Launch Services was the most important of the new corporations, then Lockheed was by far the most influential of the previously existing major aerospace firms by the end of the decade, at least in the space launch business.
[1]: No Arianespace here! The French want to reorganize the business on commercial lines (they did OTL), but the other major ESA members aren’t as interested in it, especially Britain, which has prevented it from actually happening. With the experience of several years of development, too, the business case for space launch looks more doubtful than IOTL, so the French are more invested in commercializing the existing program than in starting a new one. However, the attitude in Britain towards privatisation may be changing...
[2]: IOTL, recall, KH-9s and KH-11s were launched by Titan into the late 1980s despite the introduction of Shuttle, which was supposedly going to take care of those. Of course, that was largely because Shuttle could not lift those satellites into their desired orbits without the Vandenberg launch site, which was never used. Still, it would be prohibitively expensive to recertify satellites designed for Titan launch to Saturn launch, so the Titan has a few years left in it after the buyout taking care of older satellites.
[3]: OTL, Hughes was bought by GM, and Ford was one of the unsuccessful bidders (this means that GM was briefly the largest manufacturer of satellites in the world). Just a small butterfly showing up now.
Lockheed Titans allowing them to become by the end of the 80's ITTL what Arianespace became in the 90's IOTL. With the Europa Series only garnering about 25%.
By this point in time, Thatcherism in the UK would be here to stay, so using Europa for extensive Commercial Launch Services would almost certainly be getting a good looking at by now.
And this is something I wasn't fully aware of. Just how many attempted Satellite Launch Service Companies fell by the wayside. No doubt on account of the costs and complexity of such an endeavour. One reason why so many of the Commercial Launch Operators IOTL have been needing Government Subsidies to Break Even IIRC. Whether it be by direct subsidy or inflated prices for their own payloads.
In fact. When you stop to look at things. It was Challenger IOTL that allowed Ariane 4 to really take off. Since the US needed longer to get fresh LVs ready and the USSR didn't collapse until later. Here, ITTL, with no such scenario. The US can really build on its fleet and really get going.
By this point in time, Thatcherism in the UK would be here to stay, so using Europa for extensive Commercial Launch Services would almost certainly be getting a good looking at by now.
And this is something I wasn't fully aware of. Just how many attempted Satellite Launch Service Companies fell by the wayside. No doubt on account of the costs and complexity of such an endeavour. One reason why so many of the Commercial Launch Operators IOTL have been needing Government Subsidies to Break Even IIRC. Whether it be by direct subsidy or inflated prices for their own payloads.
In fact. When you stop to look at things. It was Challenger IOTL that allowed Ariane 4 to really take off. Since the US needed longer to get fresh LVs ready and the USSR didn't collapse until later. Here, ITTL, with no such scenario. The US can really build on its fleet and really get going.
i have same notion on Bahamut-255 post.
some notes:
in 1980s Lockheed back in business after near bankruptcy in 1970s, start to step in Space business.
OTL they buy from General Dynamic, the Atlas-Centaur production-line , what let to the Atlas V.
Here they got Titan III with cheaper Agena upper stage, in comparison to Transstage or Centaur stage.
and also interesting option like Titan III with seven segment solid booster in two or four unit on Corestage.
the Graveyard of death Aerospace company is large, very large !
i'm very curious what Margaret Thatcher gonna do with ESA and it Space Program in this TL.
Because her policy of privatization and her opposition to proposals from the European Community.
and other side the French Government want to reorganize the ESA business on commercial lines.
i think this is begin of beautiful friendship between Thatcher and Mitterand
How long can American Launch Services operate ?
because sooner or later, they run out of Minuteman stages.
some notes:
in 1980s Lockheed back in business after near bankruptcy in 1970s, start to step in Space business.
OTL they buy from General Dynamic, the Atlas-Centaur production-line , what let to the Atlas V.
Here they got Titan III with cheaper Agena upper stage, in comparison to Transstage or Centaur stage.
and also interesting option like Titan III with seven segment solid booster in two or four unit on Corestage.
the Graveyard of death Aerospace company is large, very large !
i'm very curious what Margaret Thatcher gonna do with ESA and it Space Program in this TL.
Because her policy of privatization and her opposition to proposals from the European Community.
and other side the French Government want to reorganize the ESA business on commercial lines.
i think this is begin of beautiful friendship between Thatcher and Mitterand
How long can American Launch Services operate ?
because sooner or later, they run out of Minuteman stages.