Eyes Turned Skywards

How long can American Launch Services operate ?
because sooner or later, they run out of Minuteman stages.

Quite a while. There were a lot of Minuteman Is, and there isn't a huge demand for their vehicles. And eventually Minuteman II/III and Peacekeeper stages will become available (look at Orbital Sciences; to a certain extent, ALS is modeled after them).

There's always the possibility of developing new vehicles using the cash they're earning, too...

On Europa being privatized: Hm, well, you might find [redacted] interesting ;) Trust me when I say we have a game plan for that.
 
Well, I hope everyone's been having a good holiday so far. I know I've been enjoying my break....
Good for you. I'm not even sure I get next Monday off work and to do so, I probably have to work 6 hours on Saturday.:(:mad: Especially mad since Friday night is my mother's birthday.

Ironically I've accumulated something like 120 hours or more of paid vacation time but with the new company taking over as of the first of this coming year, they'll convert all but 80 of it to money. I could have taken off weeks but I figured that would be the wrong thing to do in this time of transition. My esteemed coworkers seem to have reckoned otherwise and without them around I don't expect approval of my time off before the first of the year...:mad:

So happy holidays to all, from this employee of Scrooge and Marley!:rolleyes:
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....
When Bahamut had a free-for-all naming contest of sorts for his timeline's European space launch system I suggested the name Argosy and promptly fell in love with it, only to have it spurned and rejected for its almost but not quite twin "Argo.":( An "argosy" sounds like Argo but has no relationship really, except both are ships--"argosy" was a medieval Middle English mangling of "Ragusa" and thus refers to the workhorse cargo ships of the High Middle Ages and Renaissance, and by tradition to ships carrying fabled cargoes from faraway lands. I thought it was perfect for a program of workhorse orbital launchers for routine space enterprise--the right balance of adventure and sound business sense. I thought it would be ideal for a European program with a strong British involvement.

So, if ALS can hang in there and go on to a later, more capable generation--it wouldn't be perfect if they upgrade from Caravel to Argosy, since they aren't European. But I'll settle for what I can get.

Dunno about this solid-fuel all the way business though. I think I like the OTRAG tech better, always prefer liquid fuel which is throttleable.

Lately I've been charmed by the idea of using hydrogen peroxide oxidant with kerosene fuel in lieu of solids; you get similar ISP to solids but it's throttleable. Since the vastly higher proportion of the mix is the H2O2, I'm thinking that boosters like the Saturn Multibody Core could be adapted, by adding a ring of HTP/Ker engines around the F-1A and modest expansion of the kerosene tank, with the peroxide going in strap-on tanks in lieu of the solids, to replace the solids of the intermediate heavier launchers with these tanks in various numbers and sizes, and with a reserve of extra kerosene and peroxide, the reusable booster engines could enable the vertical landing and recovery of the booster first stage, analogous to the idea of a reusable Saturn V stage with the 5th central F-1 replaced with a cluster of smaller kerlox engines. I'd think with ker-peroxide's lower ISP comes lower temperatures and hence it would be easier both to make the engines reusable and throttleable, and the low ISP (in the ballpark of 250, about like solid fuel) is actually good for decent performance in atmosphere, which is where we'd need these engines.

Thus, a bog-standard and reusable booster stage, perhaps with variable sixed kerosene tanks but standard oxygen ones, and the HTP tanks go on the same mountings the solid boosters would have gone.
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,
That's a great big near 200 tonne aluminum and composite-bladed engine butterfly, isn't it? As I understand it, OTL the L-1011 was a pretty and quite competently engineered airplane (much better in my personal subjective opinion than a DC-10) but unfortunately it missed the boat in the marketplace, possibly due to delays and scandals and cost overruns (including the British government having to bail Rolls-Royce out of a financial jam when it proved difficult to make the new composite bladed engines pass all standard safety tests, notably the "frozen chicken into the intake" test to simulate bird strikes). The final product was a fine airplane but the last OTL Lockheed venture into the large-scale airliner market.

Here I guess things went better for Lockheed--maybe no 1970s international bribery scandal, maybe RR delivered the engine to spec with fewer delays and hitches, maybe the DC-10 got a worse reputation sooner?

Good, as I say I always thought it was a more elegant plane, what with that pretty S-curve tail intake to a centerline engine rather than the third engine being stuck in the middle of the tail like an ostrich that has swallowed a big bolt.:p

Apologies if anyone here worked for McDonnel Douglas at the time.
...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.
Oh, yuk, not Dragon's Blood again!

I can make my peace with it for long-term orbital and deep space rockets, i guess. It's as good as kerlox in ISP terms and the propellants aren't cryogenic, and the engines are somewhat simpler and easier to throttle I guess. And for the deep-space, distant final manuevering phase, the mass of propellant is orders of magnitude less than for launchers.

For launching, in conjunction with solid boosters?

Yuk.

So much for elegance.:(
....

[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...
People who have caught my act might guess accurately I'm no fan of Maggie or the Tories in general. If she was any good at all, shouldn't this have started changing in 1979?
[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.
And now a few more years, and a few more years after that, and before you know it the damn Dragon's Blood thing is as immortal as Dracula.

And to be fair, the OTL Russian Proton is still grinding out launch after launch on the same damn poison fuel. And with impressive-looking statistics too, if you look at certain readily available sources online.

Hell, maybe my uncle did not die early in vain?
 
Dunno about this solid-fuel all the way business though. I think I like the OTRAG tech better, always prefer liquid fuel which is throttleable.

OTRAG's booster units were unreasonably small (and weren't, technically, throttleable; an entire vehicle was "throttled" by turning off individual booster units). In any case, surplus rocket stages are almost always going to be cheaper than doing it yourself and Orbital (for one) has demonstrated some success with the pure solid approach IOTL.

That's a great big near 200 tonne aluminum and composite-bladed engine butterfly, isn't it? As I understand it, OTL the L-1011 was a pretty and quite competently engineered airplane (much better in my personal subjective opinion than a DC-10) but unfortunately it missed the boat in the marketplace, possibly due to delays and scandals and cost overruns (including the British government having to bail Rolls-Royce out of a financial jam when it proved difficult to make the new composite bladed engines pass all standard safety tests, notably the "frozen chicken into the intake" test to simulate bird strikes). The final product was a fine airplane but the last OTL Lockheed venture into the large-scale airliner market.

Here I guess things went better for Lockheed--maybe no 1970s international bribery scandal, maybe RR delivered the engine to spec with fewer delays and hitches, maybe the DC-10 got a worse reputation sooner?

Good, as I say I always thought it was a more elegant plane, what with that pretty S-curve tail intake to a centerline engine rather than the third engine being stuck in the middle of the tail like an ostrich that has swallowed a big bolt.:p

See, and here you win a No-Prize for asking the big question of the update! IOTL, the L-1011 was not particularly commercially successful, so why on Earth would Lockheed feel that its "relative success" merited expanding into commercial space launch?

Well...you'll see! Next week, actually! I promise that if you go back and read the timeline, the outcome will make sense...

People who have caught my act might guess accurately I'm no fan of Maggie or the Tories in general. If she was any good at all, shouldn't this have started changing in 1979?

Mmmm...not really. Space is a secondary concern for the Brits, even if they have a proper space agency ITTL, and even IOTL it took a while for her to get around to privatizing a lot of things. All will be revealed in Part III...

And now a few more years, and a few more years after that, and before you know it the damn Dragon's Blood thing is as immortal as Dracula.

And to be fair, the OTL Russian Proton is still grinding out launch after launch on the same damn poison fuel. And with impressive-looking statistics too, if you look at certain readily available sources online.

Hell, maybe my uncle did not die early in vain?

Well, be fair, the Titan didn't survive forever IOTL. And ITTL the Air Force isn't paying for upgrades to make it its heavy lifter after Shuttle crashed and burned (er...rather literally). Plus [redacted]. Unfortunately, I can't say much more without revealing spoilers :( But rest assured that in Part III things happen which may have a direct bearing on the lifetime of storable-fuel launch vehicles within the United States.
 
Just as ALS might parlay their economic success to develop a replacement for Minuteman boosters before they run out, Lockheed may be able to replace the hypergol core of Titan with something a bit less horrific. If their other enterprises are working well, Lockheed probably has more available capital for such an endeavor than ALS.

Perhaps Lockheed could go with something like an Atlas IV with a cluster of H-1 derivative engines? The H-1c on astronautix looked promising when I was considering a kerolox replacement for Titan IIIL.
 
See, and here you win a No-Prize for asking the big question of the update! IOTL, the L-1011 was not particularly commercially successful, so why on Earth would Lockheed feel that its "relative success" merited expanding into commercial space launch?

Well...you'll see! Next week, actually! I promise that if you go back and read the timeline, the outcome will make sense...

Ummm. Because the Lockheed L-1011 was a relative success ITTL? :p


Mmmm...not really. Space is a secondary concern for the Brits, even if they have a proper space agency ITTL, and even IOTL it took a while for her to get around to privatizing a lot of things. All will be revealed in Part III...

True. It only really took off in 1984, starting with British Telecom. Council House sales were more to negate bankruptcy than anything else - at least at the start. ITTL, with a good chunk of the UK Workforce in Europa construction, there's votes to be had by keeping with it, especially now that it's building up a good reputation. Good PR if they don't foul up.


Well, be fair, the Titan didn't survive forever IOTL. And ITTL the Air Force isn't paying for upgrades to make it its heavy lifter after Shuttle crashed and burned (er...rather literally). Plus [redacted]. Unfortunately, I can't say much more without revealing spoilers :( But rest assured that in Part III things happen which may have a direct bearing on the lifetime of storable-fuel launch vehicles within the United States.

IIRC, the Titan Series stopped for good in 2003 with the final Titan IVB launching a classified DoD payload.
 
Yes, but how????

(Come on, show some enthusiasm for the next update! Also, this next one has a significant long-term bearing on the future of the Titan)

I'll show it in 6 Days. :p

And besides. Being a relative success and being a commercial success are two entirely different things.

Perhaps NASA or DoD saw some merit in it and put it to use. Or perhaps there was some limited success commercially. Maybe even both. Whatever the combination, I'll wager that it allowed Lockheed to make at least some small profit on it, and convince them that Aerospace was worth the risks involved.

Although a less savage 2nd Oil Crisis would certainly help - not least with porfit margins - something tells me this is not the case ITTL.
 
All I'll say on the L-1011 front is that if you look at what the subcontractors are doing ITTL and compare to OTL, you might figure it out. Oh, and personal anecdote about the birdstrike testing:

I got to tour the GE Aviation engine test site at Peebles, OH, which is where they do the acceptance testing on all their large commercial engines, and all their integrated R&D testing (subcomponents can get tested elsewhere, but they bring them all together at Peebles to run them). The place is amazingly pretty, since other than the test site it's just about 7,000 acres of untouched woods and meadows they own due to noise emissions regulations (basically the more land they own, the louder they can be). While I was there, I got to see some of the test rigs, including the ingestion cannon. For the record, GE at least uses Canadian geese, not chickens, and while the ones I got to see were still flash-frozen for storage , they're de-frosted for testing. The 3" diameter hailstones, on the other hand (which go in the same cannon) on the other hand....

Fun place, and I stuck my name in for a co-op rotation there this summer. *fingers crossed*
 
Sorry I took so long to get back to you about this, Michel.

Skylab 5 mission patch
While I like the notion of tying the bicentennial star symbol into the mission, I think making it the only graphical element places a bit too much emphasis on it, and none on other mission elements like the Aardvark's first docking, and the end of the station's life. Perhaps something using an angled view of the station, (like the program patch) with the sun setting over the Earth and the bicentennial star in the same sort of position the sun is in the program patch?

Spacelab One launch patch
I'm not sure about the prominent position of the moon and Earth, which together seem to reduce the importance of the station as an element on its own patch. The dark blue space color seems a bit odd, compared to the black normally used there for obvious reasons, and the "pose" of the station is a bit...I dunno, rigid?

fictional front page of Advance AARDV Block II Study by Rockwell
While it's worth a chuckle, I'm not sure what else to do with it. I kind of like the "cartoon" style of Artie more. Can you do something with the same "muscle man" pose? I actually might have a use for a patch with that sort of thing in the update I'm working on right now, for the update after next.
 
I not Happy with Skylab 5 and Spacelab patch eider
but it was only thing i could make on short time with vector graphic.

Some NASA patch use dark blue background, to keep a contrast to Black on Spacecraft

The Aardvark Blok II front page was just for fun
but i can make a Mission patch out of it.
but it will take time until end january 2013 for new ones.
 
Matagorda Bay is the site of the commercial spaceport, eh?

I happen to live in Corpus Christi, which is about 60 miles (or so) from Matagorda Bay. This will benefit that area in the long run.
 
Part II: Post 18: And Now for Something Completely Different: The Lockheed L-1011 Aircraft
Another week, another update, this one on Christmas Day! (I swear we didn't plan it that way). I hope you all are having pleasant holidays; to allow e of pi to spend time with his family, I volunteered to take over posting today. So don't expect any more updates at 7:30 AM Central Standard :p

Today's post is a little bit of a break from rockets to delve into the aerospace industry, specifically the curious comment from the last post about the L-1011's relative success. A little bit of an interlude for Christmas Day.

1073 posts; 130,996 views

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #18

Lockheed has always had a troubled relationship with the airline industry, with a series of on-again, off-again starts marring what was, at times, a highly successful business for the California company. After the failure of their turboprop airliner, the L-188 Electra, due to safety problems and its unfortunate introduction just as jets were beginning to dominate the industry, the company once again chose to withdraw from the industry altogether. However, its depature was brief, as an entirely new opportunity was beginning to open up in the aircraft industry, widebody aircraft. With projections indicating a drastic increase in passenger-miles by the mid-1970s, interest in what was then generically called an "airbus" was high amongst aircraft executives, and Lockheed took the chance to try to break back into the commercial market with a new widebody design, the L-1011. Designed to the specifications of several major US airlines, the L-1011 would be a revolutionary aircraft, at the absolute forefront of aviation technology. Besides the advanced avionics, including one of the world's first autoland systems, and innovative design features, it would also use an innovative new engine designed by the British corporation Rolls-Royce, the RB.211, which would use a triple-spool design and carbon fiber fan blade to give unparalled performance. Unfortunately, such advanced technology meant equally large risks, which soon came back to haunt Lockheed and Rolls-Royce. In particular, the development of the RB.211 was enormously difficult for Rolls-Royce, with the entire engine project, but especially the extremely advanced carbon-fiber fan blade, straining their engineering capabilities to the limit. The company nearly fell into receivership due to the costs incurred while developing the engines, but fortunately bureaucrats overseeing Rolls-Royce's defense and space projects detected discrepancies in the firm's account-keeping, leading to a change in management and a massive government bailout for the company, with bankruptcy or nationalization only narrowly averted. Meanwhile, Lockheed was suffering its own issues as concurrent L-1011, C-5, and AH-56 development programs strained the firm's resources enormously. As with Rolls-Royce, Lockheed was forced to seek aid from the government. As a vital defense contractor, though, that aid was readily available, and development of the TriStar, as the L-1011 had become known, continued without interruption.

The prototype first took to the air in mid-1970, and the type was finally ready for full-scale production in mid-1971, just a few months behind its Long Beach rival in the trijet market. Immediately, a fierce competition emerged between McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed to sell their aircraft. Lockheed quickly scored successes in the projected "airbus" market, selling the L-1011 to a number of airlines both in the US and abroad interested in relatively short-range but high-capacity flights; however, weight problems and the protracted development of the RB.211 engine limited the aircraft's long-range capabilities, allowing Douglas' DC-10 to gain strength in that market, assisted by GE's development of a new, more powerful version of the CF6 used to power the aircraft. Lockheed and Rolls-Royce immediately responded with the Weight Improvement Program, which would lighten existing TriStars and implement a new -100 standard for future construction, a new L-1011-200 specially designed to maximize range, and the RB.211-350, with even greater thrust than the original. By mid 1973 this had borne fruit, with the first -200s rolling off the assembly line in a direct challenge to the DC-10-30. Once again, Lockheed had matched McDonnell Douglas blow-for-blow, although they had not established a decisive advantage; indeed, through the 1970s both companies intensively competed for the same market niche, cutting prices and increasing capabilities in a fine demonstration of the value of free markets to their customers. One month, Lockheed had won the coveted contract for a series of Japanese internal "airbuses"[1]; the next, McDonnell Douglas had won a major sale to Air France, supplementing their new Concordes and 747s for long-range transport. For the manufacturers, however, the news was not so bright, as there was only a limited pool of airlines willing to buy either craft, and their competitors, both the established Boeing and the new Airbus, were beginning to eat into that pool. At the same time, unlike their competitors, they did not enjoy dominance in other market sectors to support them, relying instead on military and governmental contracts that were beginning to feel increasingly limited for support. However, despite the economic downturn of the beginning of the decade and the oil crisis that followed it, both were enjoying the beginnings of commercial success for their flagship aircraft, with both the L-1011 and the DC-10 selling at a reasonably brisk rate. Although Lockheed did seize on the highly publicized safety issues of the DC-10 to promote the TriStar, with some success, McDonnell Douglas quickly recovered from the setback. By the end of the 1970s, if neither competitor was doing quite so well as they had hoped at the beginning of the decade, they at least were both staying afloat, and ready to start a new round of competition, even as Boeing and Airbus were doing their best to break both firms.

In this environment, Lockheed announced that it had begun work on its follow-ons to the L-1011: the 1011-600, with extensive avionics upgrades including a full glass cockpit and fly-by-wire[2], and the L-1012, a version with many of the same fuselage and wing structures but only two engines instead of the TriStar's three, positioned to compete with the Boeing 767 and 757, and with the Airbus A300 and A310. As with the original TriStar, the family would be technically ambitious, with Lockheed focusing on integrating the increasingly advanced and capable computer technology that had been developed over the 1970s into the aircraft. As with the TriStar, the autopilot would--theoretically--be entirely capable of flying the aircraft from takeoff to touchdown with no human intervention whatsoever. More than that, however, it would be able to constantly optimize the aircraft's position and throttle settings in flight, saving fuel and reducing wear and tear on the aircraft's components, while at the same time monitoring all of those components for failure and warning the flight crew or maintenance personnel as necessary, increasing the amount of time that the TriStar could spend in the air, making money, rather than sitting in a hanger, spending it. Most ambitiously, Lockheed hoped that a combination of fly-by-wire and glass cockpit would make flying the BiStar and TriStar virtually identical on the flight deck--to the point where both could be issued a single type certificate, for the purpose of pilot training. This would mean that pilots could easily be transferred from BiStar to TriStar service and back, without needing to spend an excessive amount of time training and maintaining their skills on one or the other aircraft, thus giving operators of both a significant operational advantage. Finally, the TriStar and BiStar would, for the first time, gain multiple engine options, including the popular General Electric CF6, and would see a number of other more minor upgrades. Lockheed also began studies on developing a freighter or combi version of the L-1011 to compete with the DC-10 in the transport business, which accelerated after the successful conversion of several retired TriStars to serve the Royal Air Force in the tanker/cargo transport role after the Falklands War. While several TriStar operators signed on to be launch customers of the -600 and the BiStar, sales to other airlines proved slow, not helped by the inability of the flight control software to make flying both aircraft quite as similar as Lockheed had originally hoped. However, as deliveries began, orders began gradually to pick up, helped by an improving economic situation, falling oil prices, and gradually increasing appreciation for the advanced features of the family in the airline business world. By the end of the decade, Lockheed was moving from strength to strength, enjoying success not only in its airliner division but also in its space and military businesses, and setting near-record income levels and profits.

In the meantime, McDonnell Douglas' airliner division was beginning to suffer badly from intense competition, with the Lockheed jets, the Boeing 767, and the Airbus A300 chipping away at its high-end DC-10, and the 737, A320, and a spectrum of newly-introduced regional jets competing with the DC-9 and its new MD-80 variant in the smaller and shorter-range market. Nevertheless, buoyed by a series of major military contracts and an improving general economy, the aerospace firm began work on the MD-11, a massively upgraded version of the company's flagship DC-10, together with further upgrades to the venerable but still competitive DC-9. Unfortunately for the firm, development suffered from a lack of clear vision among the corporation's higher-ups about the purpose of the upgrade--was it to reduce operating costs? Increase passenger comfort? Increase payload and range? All of those? None of those?--that led to repeated emphasis changes in the MD-11 development program, and repeated delays and budget overruns. By the time the MD-11's design finally stabilized, the L-1011-600 was beginning production, and several customers switched their orders to the Lockheed aircraft rather than continue to wait on McDonnell Douglas. By the time the MD-11 started production, manufacturers and operators of twinjets had persuaded international air safety bodies to adopt new rules for the operation of their aircraft over water. While in the past reliability concerns had limited those aircraft to remaining near the shore, in case of engine failure, modern engines had shown that they could be operated continuously for long periods of time with few operational issues, rendering the older rules anachronistic and obsolete. The result was a relaxation of what soon came to be called the ETOPS rules, allowing twinjets to travel up to 90 minutes away from the nearest emergency field. Although twinjets were still barred from many major transatlantic and transpacific routes as a result, the days of the trijet were clearly numbered, as their chief commercial justification had become their ability to fly long international routes that the twinjets could not, and for less money and wasted capacity than a 747. Twinjets, however, were cheaper still, and if they could fly the same routes as the trijets, then the question arose: What purpose did trijets have, after all? In such an environment, even more carriers chose to annul their orders of MD-11s and purchase L-1012s, 767s, or A300s instead. In the short term, the company was hanging in, as McDonnell had won several major military contracts, including the C-17 and F-15E projects, and its Delta 4000 was a linchpin of national space launch capability. However, by the late 1980s the pressure was clearly on as a harsh competitive environment continually weakened the firm's position, and McDonnell’s executives considered increasingly desperate measures to retain the company’s profitability.

[1]: This contract was won by the 747 OTL; therefore, the JAL Flight 123 crash is certainly butterflied.

[2]: AFAICT, Lockheed heavily pushed the state-of-the-art in avionics on the original L-1011. It is reasonable to assume that they would do so with continuing major models, and the early 1980s is juuust about as early as a glass cockpit and fly-by-wire could be implemented in civil aviation (see the MD-80, introduced in 1979; the A310, introduced 1982; and the 737-400/500/600 family, introduced 1984, OTL).
 
Unplanned, but these things happen.

So Lockheed is having some better luck with their airliners, and it would appear that there could end up being a Triopoly of Passenger Airliners - as opposed to the Boeing/Airbus Duopoly IOTL. But I suppose that that's gotta wait for Part III at the very earliest.

IIRC, Twinjets for Transatlantic Flights came after a long wait, only after it was proven beyond doubt that they had the required reliability rating. Proving that you are able to control it with just one engine would also be a major plus in my book. One thing about Jet Airliners, they must have billions of hours of flight to measure their worth with.

And it really sounds like McDonnell Douglas are really having it bad in that particular market, and may need to consider leaving if they wanna stay in business.

PS: And a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and E as well! :D
 
Unplanned, but these things happen.

So Lockheed is having some better luck with their airliners, and it would appear that there could end up being a Triopoly of Passenger Airliners - as opposed to the Boeing/Airbus Duopoly IOTL. But I suppose that that's gotta wait for Part III at the very earliest.

IIRC, Twinjets for Transatlantic Flights came after a long wait, only after it was proven beyond doubt that they had the required reliability rating. Proving that you are able to control it with just one engine would also be a major plus in my book. One thing about Jet Airliners, they must have billions of hours of flight to measure their worth with.

Yeah, pretty much. ETOPS was adopted in the 1980s as well OTL, there's no real reason to alter it, and that was the key to the demise of the trijets. Alas, because the L-1011, for one, was rather cool. I have some ideas about how they might stick around but...well, you'll see.

And it really sounds like McDonnell Douglas are really having it bad in that particular market, and may need to consider leaving if they wanna stay in business.

You'll see. We already have the consolidation of the '90s planned out. Given that the Soviets are going down the drain ITTL as well and, as you note, some businesses are getting much more challenging, there's no particular reason to think that it won't happen ITTL either. Of course, it will look different...but how, of course, is a secret ;)
 
Part II: Post 19: Galileo and the Giant, Exploration of Jupiter
Well, I hope everyone is having a good New Year! 2012 has been an amazing year for me, I've gotten to see a lot of things happen that I'd been waiting a long time for, both in my personal life, my professional career (well, to the extent that I can have one pre-graduation), and in the field of spaceflight. The pictures of Dragon berthing and the videos of Grasshopper...they give me chills, even on the tenth viewing. And next year...there's a bunch more where all that came from. But me rambling about my life isn't why you came to this thread, is it? Well, you're in luck, then, because it's that time again. When we last left the exploration of the Outer Planets, the four Voyager probes had completed their Grand Tour, flying by every major body in the outer solar system. However, a fly-by is only the beginning. To really learn in-depth, you have to get into orbit, and with that in mind we turn the focus of Eyes this week to the King of Planets, Jupiter.

Also, to briefly turn back to my ramblings before the post proper, a production update: work is now proceeding on both Part III and the couple of posts left to be written for Part II, to the extent that it's a bit of a minefield to navigate the Google Drive we use--I keep pulling up the documents for Part III when I want their Part II equivalents. That's just anecdotal, but things are coming along, and we should have a pretty smooth schedule through the end of this part, and we're hoping for a relatively short haitus. That last part will depend a lot, though, on how much we can power through over the rest of break. Anyway, without further digression...1076 replies, 132871 views

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #19

The exploration of the Jovian system was in no way completed by the Voyager missions. Even before the first Voyager climbed off the pad--indeed, before the first Mariner had been launched--the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ames Research Center had been studying the logical next step to the flyby missions of the Pioneers and Voyagers; an orbiter designed to survive for years in close proximity to Jupiter, touring the moons and dropping a probe into its atmosphere to directly explore it. Over time, the designs developed by these two centers merged into a single probe, built by both Ames and JPL, which was finally approved in 1976, just after the successful touchdown of Viking 1 on Mars and the consequent (though short-lived) burst of enthusiasm for planetary exploration. Along with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Kirchhoff comet probe, it would be a "cornerstone" mission of the 1980s, and would not coincidentally define the design of a new upper stage being developed by the Lewis Research Center to allow NASA to retire its Titan IIIE fleet from service. It had always been intended that the Titan IIIE be an interim vehicle, with a new version of the venerable Centaur being developed by the Lewis Research Center, responsible for the original Centaur design, to allow the Saturn IC to serve as both the primary crew and probe launch vehicle for the 1980s and beyond. However, through most of the 1970s advocates of the "Big Centaur" and "Little Centaur" had been carrying out a constant battle over which concept would better serve NASA's needs, with "Big Centaur" supporters pointing to improved performance and "Little Centaur" promoters favoring simpler development. The needs of Kirchhoff and Galileo were such that the "Little Centaur" could not possibly provide them, finally providing the momentum needed for "Big Centaur," or Centaur E (as it became known) to win out and begin development. With an increased hydrogen tank diameter, Centaur E would be capable of directly inserting Kirchhoff into a heliocentric orbit, and sending Galileo directly to Jupiter. In a historical irony, Centaur had nearly been cancelled due to Saturn; now, it would bring to its zenith Saturn's capability for launching interplanetary missions.

With launch vehicle defined and program approval, the Galileo team buckled down to work. A joint project of Ames and JPL, Galileo would be managed by the latter, although the former would be responsible for the particle and fields instruments and the planetary probe, due to their great experience with both in the Pioneer program. Galileo would take full advantage of the technology developed for the Pioneer 10/11 and Voyager missions, particularly in the realm of hardened electronics, necessary for survival in the Jovian environment, but also in more mundane areas such as the CCD imagers developed for Voyager-Uranus, significantly modified for greater radiation resilience and higher quality images for use aboard Galileo. The greatest technical difficulty encountered during development was the probe, which would have to survive an incredibly hostile entry environment, sometimes compared to entering the Earth's atmosphere directly through a nuclear fireball, although the orbiter's complex spin-despin bus design, together with its large instrument suite and the exceedingly hostile near-Jovian environment added their own difficulties. Despite this, the main problems faced by Galileo were all financial, as the Reagan administration attempted to cut planetary science budgets and forced a delay in launch, already behind due to development difficulties, from 1983 to 1984. Despite being "all-American" and therefore without significant international components unlike its main competitors for research dollars, its advanced state of development and the defense implications present in any spacecraft which could survive nuclear fireballs or Jupiter's intense radiation fields protected it against further budget cuts, and it was able to proceed to its new launch date on schedule. The first launch of the Saturn-Centaur in early March sent Galileo speeding out towards Jupiter, with no difficulties experienced in deploying the high-gain antenna and performing initial post launch activities. For the next three years, Galileo explored nothing but interplanetary space, doing little other than collecting particles and fields data in a little-explored region of the Solar System and conducting occasional engineering tests as it slowly climbed towards the king of the planets. At last, in mid-1987 events began to speed up as Galileo close in on Jupiter, releasing its probe some five months before encounter, then performing a maneuver to ensure it did not follow the probe into Jupiter's atmosphere. As it got closer and closer, it detected modulation of the solar wind by the increasingly nearby Jovian magnetosphere, then the planet's influence itself. At the same time, the level of detail its cameras could resolve on Jupiter reached and then exceeded the best images possible from ground-based or Earth-orbiting telescopes. Finally, it was Arrival Day.

Streaking in at 60 km/s, the probe impacted Jupiter south of its equator, slamming into the planet like a subcompact hitting a speeding semitrailer. At that, however, it was lucky, as the winds at its entry point were blowing away from it, reducing by nearly a fifth its effective entry velocity. Nevertheless, as it entered the atmosphere over half of the heat shield burned away and acceleration peaked at over 250g, enough to quickly kill anyone on board. As a robot, however, the probe stoically endured its sentence, ejecting its heat shield and deploying its parachute just under three minutes after first encountering the atmosphere. As its instruments began collecting data, they immediately noted the presence of a thick ammonia cloud deck. Although only a few minutes passed before the probe had passed through and out into clearer skies, soon afterwards it entered another thick cloud deck, this time composed of ammonium hydrosulfide. As it continued to descend, it collected data on the density, pressure, and temperature of the Jovian atmosphere, along with recording multiple powerful lightning strikes in the surrounding clouds, suggesting intense and highly active storms. Fortunately, the probe itself was not struck by lightning during the descent! Over twenty minutes after entering the atmosphere for the first time, the probe encountered the expected water cloud layer, the thickest and most active of all. In fact, the clouds through which the probe passed were so thick and active that initially many scientists seriously questioned standard models of Jovian formation, suggesting that the planet might have a massive, icy core from which the evidently high volatile content of the planet’s atmosphere might have been liberated by the planet's extreme heat. Imaging by Galileo and Earth-based telescopes of the probe's entry site, however, revealed that the probe had passed through a powerful storm, a "white spot" near a zone-belt boundary. Like dropping a probe into an Earthly hurricane or cyclone and then trying to extrapolate to the rest of the Earth's atmosphere, this would give a highly distorted picture of typical conditions and compositions in Jupiter's atmosphere, with the unusual Galileo probe results being nothing more than that, unusual. While the probe itself was descending, however, all this was far in the future, and it cleared the water cloud layer several minutes later. Through the now-clear skies it continued to fall for nearly half an hour more, before finally the rising temperature caused the radio transmitter on board to fail. Eventually, the probe melted, then vaporized from the increasingly high temperature of the interior, becoming one with the planet.

While all this was going on, the orbiter waited, patiently retransmitting everything the probe beamed back to Earth while its own tape recorder carried data from the moon flybys it had performed before the probe's entry into Jupiter. At last, once the probe ceased transmitting, the orbiter began preparations for its Jupiter orbital insertion burn, located near the bottom of Jupiter's gravity well and therefore perfectly positioned for using the Oberth effect to maximum effect. While diminutive compared to the F-1A that had driven it aloft, the engine propelling Galileo could and would burn for nearly an hour to complete its mission, slowing Galileo enough for Jupiter to capture it, allowing Galileo to finally begin its primary mission. Galileo would sling around the Jovian system, repeatedly visiting the outer three Galilean moons even while observing the planet itself and the environment around it. During these flybys, Galileo confirmed the impression of Voyager researchers that Europa might have a subsurface ocean, providing strong evidence that not only was that the case, but some mechanism coupling the ocean and surface existed to resmooth the surface, eliminating hints of impact craters and making Europa look nearly as resurfaced as Earth or Io. Besides this, Galileo made the surprising discovery that both Ganymede and Callisto, the outermost and seemingly least active of the Galilean bodies, also possessed subsurface oceans, although located far deeper within their crusts than Europa's. In addition, the interaction of Ganymede with the powerful Jovian magnetic field showed that it had a core of metal, similar to the Earth, capable of creating a magnetic field in its own right. As with the earlier Voyager missions, Galileo was showing that the icy moons of the outer solar system were far more active and dynamic bodies than had previously been suspected. The same was true of Jupiter, as high-resolution imagery and videos made by the orbiter showed a welter of fine atmospheric details impossible to make out in Voyager or Pioneer imagery. Especially in combination with Voyager results, Galileo was able to show that, like Earth's atmosphere, the visible layers of Jupiter undergo significant long-term and seasonal changes, with major variation in cloudtop wind speeds, temperature distribution, and the fine structure of even long-lived storms and weather features.

The second phase of Galileo's mission was the extended mission. Free of the constraints imposed by the primary phase, and with a bevy of preliminary results to guide them, scientists could choose the most interesting available targets for study. While many proposals were made during the primary mission and even the transit phase, in the end, there was only one choice: Fire and Ice (as NASA promoted it). Or rather, a series of flybys of Europa from a variety of angles and altitudes, designed to probe the many intriguing aspects of the moon's icy crust, followed by close flybys of volcanic Io to further characterize not only the moon itself but also the surrounding space. A series of radiation-induced faults prevented data return from several passes, and limited the operation of several instruments on others, but the spacecraft was able to work through them with the aid of its handlers back on Earth and return a great deal of information about Europa, including a considerable amount of data supporting the ocean hypothesis, data that seemed to constrain the thickness of the crust, and data about the deep interior of the moon, below the ocean. Additionally, the probe collected data about Jupiter's atmosphere, which when compared to Voyager data and earlier Galileo data allowed the first analyses of Jupiter's seasonal cycle, and observations of the other Galilean moons. Later in the first extended mission period, just prior to the planned Io flyby, it also dipped increasingly deep into the Jovian magnetic field, exploring regions closer and closer to the planet that had previously just been browsed while also making relatively close flybys of Callisto and Ganymede to assist in lowering its orbit so that it could pass by Io. Finally, during the two close flybys of Io, Galileo returned the first ultra-high resolution imagery of the moon's surface, confirming the existence of silicate lavas on Io and providing information on Io's magnetic field during the second, polar pass. Unfortunately, radiation damage caused further issues with Galileo's systems and it was unable to return all the planned data from this series of flybys either. Meanwhile, Galileo's instruments had been collecting vast amounts of data about the electromagnetic and particle environment around Jupiter, recording how the planet responded to variations in solar behavior, and thereby providing a unique and impossible to duplicate perspective on the Sun.

The most exciting and unfortunately the last phase of Galileo's mission came about by chance during early 1992. During routine engineering test imagery of the space around Jupiter, the probe detected an object showing a distinct coma in one of its starfields. Interested, the imaging team scheduled further imagery of roughly the same area of space, hoping to catch the comet again and begin orbital calculations. These observations duly confirmed the discovery, and the comet was recorded by the International Astronomical Union's Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams as Comet 1992d, then Comet Galileo. It was quickly realized that Comet Galileo was no ordinary comet. In particular, it seemed to be orbiting Jupiter, not the Sun, something which had been predicted but never before seen, and by itself enough to inspire curiosity about the object. Furthermore, it was calculated that in July the comet would make a very close pass to Jupiter, possibly within the planet's Roche limit. If this occurred, the comet might break up from the stresses, something never before observed. While certainly interested, the Galileo science team made only a secondary effort to observe the flyby, as it was much too late to significantly change the probe's orbital behavior to ensure optimal coverage. Nevertheless, the probe was able to image the comet's close pass to Jupiter and its subsequent fragmentation, along with the Hubble Space Telescope and a number of other Earth-based observatories. This, however, was just the beginning, for after the comet broke up during the close pass revised orbital calculations showed that it would not merely make a close flyby in 1994, but instead the remains of the body would plunge into Jupiter itself. This sent the scientific value from "unprecedented" to "incalculable," as Comet Galileo was so large that it might be centuries or millennia before another such event occurred. Besides that, the 1980s had seen a great deal of speculation on the importance of cometary and asteroid impacts on the history of the Solar System, most prominently the theory that a large body had hit the Earth 65 million years earlier and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Actually observing such an impact could help constrain such theories by providing data about what really happened during such impacts. Furthermore, it was possible that the comet fragments might punch holes in the upper atmosphere large enough for Galileo to collect data about lower atmospheric levels, previously only explored briefly by the Galileo probe. Altogether, whatever plans for the extended mission had existed prior to 1992 no longer mattered, with the utmost importance instead being that Galileo would be in position to watch the fragments as they impacted, something which would not be possible from any other platform in the solar system. When the time came in 1994, Galileo was ready, and provided a spectacular front-row seat not just to scientists, but to the entire world, which had become fascinated by the impending plunge into Jupiter. While some of the more extreme suggested outcomes did not occur, the observation of gigantic fireballs and huge, dusty scars easily visible from Earth and persisting for months in the Jovian atmosphere lent an ominous plausibility to tales of impactors devastating Earth and causing the collapse of global civilization. After completing the return of its impact data to Earth, Galileo's orbit was reshaped to intersect Jupiter itself on its next perijove, to avoid possibly contaminating Europa's global ocean with Terran organisms. In a fiery plunge into the atmosphere, it--very briefly--continued the scientific mission its own probe had carried out some eight years earlier, reporting on the conditions of Jupiter's upper atmosphere, near-Jovian magnetic and electric fields, and the charged particle environment very close to Jupiter until it finally failed in the heat and stresses of Jovian entry.
 
Wow. Two weeks, two posts, one comment. Brings me back to the early days of Part I. :p Anyway, bumped back to the front page so no one misses the post and thinks we took the week off or something.
 
And a Happy new Year to you as well E of Pi! :)

So it would seem that a Saturn-Centaur combination has finally been realised ITTL. And has made quite a debut by putting TTL's Galileo on a Direct TJI - whereas OTL Galileo needed to take flyby assists of Venus and Earth IIRC.

I note the fact that TTL's Galileo Jupiter Entry Probe entered a different part of the Jovian Atmosphere. A storm system as opposed to a Black Zone that resides between its many bands. As such, it is natural to realise that the information returned would be very different.

And it goes without saying that OTL's Shoemaker-Levy Comet is simply going by a different name ITTL, on account that the Galileo Orbiter has secured a lucky Front-Row Seat to what it has to offer. That is, one Hell of a Show to the observers!

And I do remember that about half the total mass of the Atmospheric Entry Probe was comprised of just the Heat Shield. Not surprising given the fact that it has to bleed off an enormous amount of kinetic energy as it dropped from many times Earth Escape Velocity to Subsonic in about two minutes ITTL and IOTL IIRC. 250G of sustained accelerative force at its peak - and yes, if what I remember is correct, you are supposed to refer to it as such, even if the effective velocity is decreasing - must be something that had never been done before insofar as Deep Space, and any, Probe are concerned. So I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they'd over-designed that part of the Probe to make certain it could survive.

Now, I must go and Nominate this Wonderful TL for a 2013 Turtledove Award! :D

EDIT: Nope E, I was just out for the day. New Year Party and such.
 
Great update. Will Galileo's success lead to an expansion of the Mariner Mark II program (which IOTL was limited, on the US side, to a redesigned Cassini)? Maybe a follow-up mission to Uranus or Neptune as well?

Or does that "though short lived" remark mean that interest and support die soon anyway?
 
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