Can I just say: this TL is incredible and reading it has been so fascinating and informative. The vision put forward here is pretty close to my own "ideal" might-have-been space program and the pragmatism and breadth of knowledge of the TL writers really shows. EDIT: It's also got TKS, my favorite space almost-been in service, so big ups just for that!
Now, to comment on the story: I really hope that 70% complete MOK segment in storage gets finished in the 1990's and schwaked onto Freedom to create an ATL mega-ISS.
Now, to comment on the story: I really hope that 70% complete MOK segment in storage gets finished in the 1990's and schwaked onto Freedom to create an ATL mega-ISS.
TKS was practically a Mini-Station unto itself, which made it quite useful for TTL's Salyut 7 which could be all Labs and testing of some of the MOK's systems, while still having a reliable habitation for the visiting crews. In fact, Mir ITTL has no living quarters and relies on TKS to provide such facilities.
As for the 1990's Russia ITTL, it's unlikely that the 2nd MOK Module will be launched in that decade, and there's almost no way it's gonna reach Freedom.
ITTL, Freedom is already nearly complete, needing just a very few more pieces to be added, while it orbits at an inclination of 28.5 degrees. Payloads from Baikonur Cosmodrone are launched into a 51.6 degree orbit to keep the LVs from overflying Chinese Airspace.
IOTL, Specktr, Priroda, and Zvezda - TKS Derived Modules - were in storage for up to a decade-and-a-half before being launched. In fact, Zvezda was first built in the 1980's and is still working today! More than 25 years later! The same could happen with the 2nd MOK Module here, ITTL.
But the US will still need to come up with a means of keeping the Russian Space Engineers working ITTL. One possible means is to provide funding for another one or two TKS modules - perhaps with solar panels of their own to keep the power supply good - of which at least one is a proper Habitation Module for visiting Apollo Block IVs. This would be a method of keeping them busy doing "useful" work and not selling their services to "less friendly" nations.
As for the 1990's Russia ITTL, it's unlikely that the 2nd MOK Module will be launched in that decade, and there's almost no way it's gonna reach Freedom.
Roscosmos will be hard pressed just to keep Mir alive on a skeleton crew. The only real argument it will have to make to Yeltsin is prestige.
I think it will be harder for NASA to justify to Congress funding for a Russian space station, a station we don't even need or use (unlike OTL Mir or ISS), especially with leaner budgets in the 90's. If we're to hire Russian engineers, we might as well hire them directly.
Roscosmos will be hard pressed just to keep Mir alive on a skeleton crew. The only real argument it will have to make to Yeltsin is prestige.
I think it will be harder for NASA to justify to Congress funding for a Russian space station, a station we don't even need or use (unlike OTL Mir or ISS), especially with leaner budgets in the 90's. If we're to hire Russian engineers, we might as well hire them directly.
This remark struck me as quite wrong and unfair and thus derailed my reading farther in the post for some days, let alone responding.
It would be quite in place as a description of the attitudes of the stereotypical Lunar Society member as described below; growing up in a rather right-wing military family stationed in the Deep South during the Carter years, and reading a lot of the LS type point of view by people like Jerry Pournelle during those years, I might have agreed at the time myself--but I was in junior high and starting high school at the time.
Carter was most certainly not just a peanut farmer; among other things he'd served in the USN as an engineering officer aboard nuclear submarines. In fact in checking with Wikipedia to make sure I hadn't got that wrong, I learned some interesting things I'd never known before which in this context I think are worth repeating:
There are many things President Carter can be criticized about--and not just from a right-wing point of view either--but the sort of cheap shot that derailed me is characteristic of people who are going into the discussion determined to oppose him for political reasons having nothing to do with what he actually did, a mode of discourse I'm sure we're all familiar with. To have the authors include it as a simple statement of fact in their editorial voice was most dismaying!
Put it this way; if Jimmy Carter were really to blame for the stagnation of US space efforts in our timeline, you'd have made the POD someone else getting elected in 1976. You didn't; quite rightly the POD is earlier, in the early Nixon administration. If there were no manned US spaceflights during the Carter years, it was because of decisions made half a decade before Carter was elected, to commit to developing the STS--which Carter sustained. Meanwhile of course quite a lot of developments in unmanned space operations went forward, military, scientific and commercial.
In your own timeline, actually, Carter gets the glory of continued US manned space missions. It is not my impression that Carter was hostile to such and I'd think in a timeline where manned operations were happening he'd be sure to take some credit for them and reaffirm the US commitment to expanding space operations in a way that had more political resonance.
I do recall that in much earlier posts, you showed how the Reagan administration, when it came in, had in the person of David Stockman and his acolytes rather the appearance of a barbarian horde determined to raze NASA's deep space science missions to the ground. That has solid historical support!
I distinctly remember the atmosphere of hope, in 1980 and '81 or so, that with a conservative clearing of the temple of overbloated and unvisionary Big Government we'd enter a Golden Age of rip-roaring free enterprise that would include glorious activities in space including permanent colonization, of orbital stations, the Moon, and eventually beyond.
Oddly enough though, that isn't what happened, either OTL or in this timeline. That's realism.
The rest of the post, quite properly as it is about popular attitudes, does recap the debate and feelings of OTL pretty well.
I'm less sure that something different wouldn't have happened ITTL, though, with the US government continuing manned operations in a sustained series of space stations. There would be more grounds for hopes and confidence that the gradual NASA program would indeed slowly but surely lead to ongoing expansions, continued explorations, eventually a permanent human presence in orbit and beyond.
Therefore, while I'm quite sure the libertarian far right would rant against the sinister influence of government and bureaucracy, they would not seem, as OTL, as much to be the only camp to join if one had, um, Eyes Turned Skyward. A respectable moderate movement in favor of sustaining and if politically possible, incrementing the existing NASA program would also be viable, and would attract more support from people who were rather repelled by the other political baggage that comes along with the Lunar Society's "Cowboys in Space!" agenda.
To be sure, the New Right in the USA was very much in the cards and in the air; the LS types would be quite robust, on a political roll. And one reason for that is that their approach resonates very strongly with deep American myths; this is how and why Reagan, and other right-wing Republicans, got the Presidency and later control of the legislature as well.
But having gotten the White House, and for the next 2 years control of the Senate as well, OTL at any rate the Republicans did more dismantling of NASA than upgrading it.
That was well and good according to the message Pournelle and company had been putting out; kick the weak and parasitic bureaucrats out, and let Real Men (TM) have at it and the results would be spectacular!
But the cavalry of these Real Men (TM) space cowboys has yet to appear on the horizon to sally forth and conquer space, and I think a lot of people who were charmed by the vision were chilled by the reality. I know I was; the first concrete result of the new Reagan agenda I saw was notices at the public library (which I haunted) that due to funding cuts hours and services were going to be curtailed. Similarly had I know that Stockman and company were out to shut down the scientific operations at JPL, I would not have taken that as a sign of progress. Across the board, it soon became obvious that there is such a thing as infrastructure and it needs to be maintained, that not everything worth doing (or even vital) yields a profit, that declaring the system of public/private cooperation that had evolved over a century and coincided with American power at its height null and void and tearing it apart would not automatically lead to a renaissance. It's stuff like that that turned a person like myself raised as a moderate conservative into a far-left-wing radical.
ITTL, when the Privateers started their raiding, someone like my young college-aged self would have somewhere else to go, I think, than the Lunar Society. And LS people would include people of less fanatical views, who would be heard. Perhaps LS would not split, perhaps it would be polarized and the more moderate types would move on to the other organizations and redefine them as the voice of the vision of more space but with less radicalism!
And that movement might have traction with the US public, because part of what is attractive about the LS vision is just plain doing something in space. Americans, and I gather people in the world in general, are interested in space activities, as a spectator sport to be sure. When these are manned, the interest sharpens, but people do get excited about Mars probes and Jupiter flybys and so on.
What a moderate space society might do is bring it home to enough politicians, in either party, that their constituency does like to see stuff happening in space, whether it is done by some private company or their government or someone else's government doesn't matter--but if it is done by their own government, knowing that their representative helped make it happen might count for some points in the next election.
Given that the general political landscape remains pretty much as OTL, I'd think that in the Carter years the moderate lobby would not be very strong and the LS types would indeed steal the thunder, because the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and rhetorical spectacle is cheap.
But with the coming of Reagan's slash and burn approach to the institutions that had in fact been the ones providing the public with its orbital eye candy, I'd think the moderate wing would rally and have some influence on the nature of the gradual Democratic rebound. As late as 1985 Reaganite right-wingers seemed unstoppable but by the election of 1986, something like balance was returning to US government.
You have Space Moderates of course--the NSO. What I'm saying here is, by 1982 or so, the NSO might, after a period of being pulled into an LS type agenda, rebound as an active camp of a positive but alternate vision of the way forward in space, one that can accumulate rather more influence and voice than you credit it with, to balance the LS frame with another. As the 80s progress, support of space operations might not, in this time line be as much exclusively right-wing turf as it was OTL, and the enthusiasm the more liberal space supporters bring might rebound on liberalism in general, which was badly in need of a positive vision in the '80s!
Mondale's track record of hostility to space programs might bring dismay to the space moderates--but then again, they might be strong enough, by 1984, to force the man to recant and pledge support--much as I'm sure Carter would have in this timeline. Or perhaps Mondale would be butterflied away from the Democratic nomination in the first place--in favor of whom, I would not be able to say, Gary Hart maybe--or John Glenn? Whoever got it, I imagine they'd still get trounced handily by Reagan in '84, but there might have been less of a sense of angst, a total absence of agenda, that the Democratic party suffered from in those wilderness years.
Space moderates might help the Democrats recover a coherent, positive vision of what they stand for--basically New Deal/Great Society ***IN SPACE!*** For the idea that a society that works for everyone asks some sacrifices of everyone, but enables everyone to accomplish great things together that they could never do on their own.
Obviously OTL the extremist budget-cutting agenda that Stockman believed he had been given a mandate to carry out was not fully supported; Reagan himself would of course have capitalized on any rising moderate space movement and co-opted quite a few of the moderates back into the somewhat moderated Lunar Society type circles by reaffirming his support of the existing space programs and holding out hopes for more--including of course Freedom Station. The moderates would not all want to revive the Democrats.
But some would, and by colonizing both parties, I think the net of general public support for a serious space program would be thrown wider and dredge in a broader and more solid base for it. Every politician would soon understand that a certain level of commitment to space was quite as important as sustaining the military; the space budget at a much lower level of course, but both in their places equally untouchable.
If space moderates really could change the Democratic nomination for President in 1984, I guess that would be the first really large mega-butterfly the timeline has developed, and broad political events would become less predictably parallel to OTL after that. If Democrats, returning to power in the Senate and increasing strength in the House, and in state governments, do have a more coherent vision of a New Deal for the 21st Century, and bolstering space operations is a small but important part of that, I can believe they might put forward a candidate in 1988 who might win.
That would of course butterfly the Clinton Administration, as I think Clinton would not be ready yet. Exactly what other events it might also butterfly depends on one's take on the causes of major events of the 1990s. We already know nothing butterflies the collapse of the USSR, and this makes sense given the deep structural issues the Soviet Union had.
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A palette-cleansing post:
First, thanks also for the sequence depicting what it takes to produce the imagery that is so distinctive in this timeline. It was educational and more important, we get to see more pix!
The mood I was in after writing my previous, I went looking for the opening credits to Enterprise, which were by far the best part of that whole show. Enjoy if you like, I know I do. What I love is how it integrates space travel into the general thrust of human development, and grounds us on Earth as we reach for the sky. I only regret they didn't put in some Russian/Soviet imagery, we owe them that! (I'm Shevek17 at YouTube since evidently Shevek23 and many variants thereof are taken...I wonder by whom saying what?) The theme pretty much illustrates what I mean by what I called "the space moderates" who might more aptly be called "space liberals."
First, thanks also for the sequence depicting what it takes to produce the imagery that is so distinctive in this timeline. It was educational and more important, we get to see more pix!
The mood I was in after writing my previous, I went looking for the opening credits to Enterprise, which were by far the best part of that whole show.
Enjoy if you like, I know I do. What I love is how it integrates space travel into the general thrust of human development, and grounds us on Earth as we reach for the sky. I only regret they didn't put in some Russian/Soviet imagery, we owe them that! (I'm Shevek17 at YouTube since evidently Shevek23 and many variants thereof are taken...I wonder by whom saying what?) The theme pretty much illustrates what I mean by what I called "the space moderates" who might more aptly be called "space liberals."
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Some palette-cleansing posts:
First, thanks also for the sequence depicting what it takes to produce the imagery that is so distinctive in this timeline. It was educational and more important, we get to see more pix!
Thanks, Shevek, as you can see I do put a lot of work into those images, and I'm glad everyone likes them as much I enjoyed working on them--and we're seeing what we can do to continue with that into Part III.Believe it or don't, but I happen to agree: "Faith of the Heart" is one of my favorite things from Enterprise, back when my whole family used to gather around for TV night and watch it--basically, before the Xindi arc. It's a great sequence, though it's debatable if it's quite right for a Star Trek show. Still, good stuff.The mood I was in after writing my previous, I went looking for the opening credits to Enterprise, which were by far the best part of that whole show.
I'm actually aware of this (I was the one who wrote this particular post), but it's not really relevant that he was a nuclear engineer in context; he really did have little interest in the space program, and he was a peanut farmer. He was a lot of other things too, of course, otherwise he wouldn't have been elected President, but most of them aren't relevant.
Also, I'm not writing from an entirely out of universe perspective; you may take this as some indication of what position the narrator is taking vis-a-vis the Carter administration's support (or lack thereof) for space exploration).
There are many things President Carter can be criticized about--and not just from a right-wing point of view either--but the sort of cheap shot that derailed me is characteristic of people who are going into the discussion determined to oppose him for political reasons having nothing to do with what he actually did, a mode of discourse I'm sure we're all familiar with. To have the authors include it as a simple statement of fact in their editorial voice was most dismaying!
Put it this way; if Jimmy Carter were really to blame for the stagnation of US space efforts in our timeline, you'd have made the POD someone else getting elected in 1976. You didn't; quite rightly the POD is earlier, in the early Nixon administration. If there were no manned US spaceflights during the Carter years, it was because of decisions made half a decade before Carter was elected, to commit to developing the STS--which Carter sustained. Meanwhile of course quite a lot of developments in unmanned space operations went forward, military, scientific and commercial.
In your own timeline, actually, Carter gets the glory of continued US manned space missions. It is not my impression that Carter was hostile to such and I'd think in a timeline where manned operations were happening he'd be sure to take some credit for them and reaffirm the US commitment to expanding space operations in a way that had more political resonance.
Carter wasn't hostile to space, particularly (although Mondale had been), but he wasn't really friendly, either. Really, by 1977 the Space Shuttle was much too far along to be cancelled, so the fact that it wasn't doesn't speak very much about him. Mostly, he was, as the post said, indifferent; he didn't really consider it of much interest AFAICT, unlike Kennedy, Johnson, or Nixon. (Admittedly, Kennedy only considered it of interest because of Cold War shenanigans, but...interest is interest)
Well, that's what the National Space Organization is for. It moves somewhat rightwards during the course of the decade, but it remains very much the organization for those who mostly want to see NASA do more. It's just that by 1988, for example, this mostly means NASA NASA NASA (and a little commercial) whereas in 1982 under Sagan's leadership it would have meant joint US-Soviet efforts with some European and Japanese involvement. The Lunar Society is basically the OTL L-5 Society, and as such is about a twelveth the size of the National Space Organization (which is basically the Planetary Society plus the National Space Institute). As IOTL, however, the Lunar Society is more influential than its numbers suggest. And as I point out, while the leadership of the Lunar Society, in particular, might be rather libertarian, the rank-and-file is more mainstream and strongly overlaps with the more activist side of the NSO. You'll see what their reaction is to NASA's bombshells is shortly, and trust me it isn't to burn NASA HQ to the ground.
There are a few really libertarian organizations kicking around for the Rick Tumlinsons of the world, but they aren't nearly as important.
Also, it's not just that the US has been operating a sustained humans in space program through most of the decade (to a certain extent that was the case IOTL, after all), but there's actually a commercial space launch industry now, which arguably doesn't actually exist today in the United States. That's a huge boost to commercial proponents and libertarians.
As I pointed out, this is not the case in Eyes; by 1988/1989, Lockheed and ALS are doing fairly roaring launch business, RCA is rolling in dough from NBC Satellite, Ford-Hughes is dominating the satellite market...looking at it from that perspective, commercial is doing wonderfully. All NASA has is a dinky ten year old station and the beginnings of a new one; so what? And of course if most of these people probably do vote Republican, they probably don't agree completely with dismantling NASA.
Again, the National Space Organization. It's got ~120,000 members to the Lunar Society's ~10,000. It really is pretty big and influential...it's just that it's less vocal and proportionally less influential than the Lunar Society.
Think about it this way: Look at how influential Gerard K. O'Neill and the L-5 Society was OTL. Now compare that to the National Space Institute. There's a big difference, because the former were more motivated. Even the Planetary Society, I would say, which was huge membership-wise, might not have been quite so influential as L-5 in the long run!
You have Space Moderates of course--the NSO. What I'm saying here is, by 1982 or so, the NSO might, after a period of being pulled into an LS type agenda, rebound as an active camp of a positive but alternate vision of the way forward in space, one that can accumulate rather more influence and voice than you credit it with, to balance the LS frame with another. As the 80s progress, support of space operations might not, in this time line be as much exclusively right-wing turf as it was OTL, and the enthusiasm the more liberal space supporters bring might rebound on liberalism in general, which was badly in need of a positive vision in the '80s!
Mondale's track record of hostility to space programs might bring dismay to the space moderates--but then again, they might be strong enough, by 1984, to force the man to recant and pledge support--much as I'm sure Carter would have in this timeline. Or perhaps Mondale would be butterflied away from the Democratic nomination in the first place--in favor of whom, I would not be able to say, Gary Hart maybe--or John Glenn? Whoever got it, I imagine they'd still get trounced handily by Reagan in '84, but there might have been less of a sense of angst, a total absence of agenda, that the Democratic party suffered from in those wilderness years.
This was covered in Brainbin's Interlude 2 (down at the end). Mondale was indeed nominated, but Glen was the VP candidate instead of Ferraro.
You're also somewhat discounting the effect of the Vulkan Panic, which recall is really important in Eyes. That strongly pushes towards a more militarized and Reagan-esque (in terms of his rhetoric, less his actions) viewpoint on space, which is pretty much what the NSO's rightwards slide is. By 1989, the NSO isn't advocating colonization or burning NASA to the ground or anything like that; if anything, it's actually advocating a larger NASA than it was in 1982-ish. It's just that it pretty much wants a very active US-centric program with some commercial elements to really show off what the US can do and, of course, expand into space.
Carter wasn't hostile to space, particularly (although Mondale had been), but he wasn't really friendly, either. Really, by 1977 the Space Shuttle was much too far along to be cancelled, so the fact that it wasn't doesn't speak very much about him. Mostly, he was, as the post said, indifferent; he didn't really consider it of much interest AFAICT, unlike Kennedy, Johnson, or Nixon.
I think that's the most balanced and fair way to assess Carter.
Truthfully, as much as it pains me to say it, Johnson remains the most vigorous advocate for space exploration we have had.
I think that's the most balanced and fair way to assess Carter.
Truthfully, as much as it pains me to say it, Johnson remains the most vigorous advocate for space exploration we have had.
or he could do it like Nixon, "sorry i have don terribly things as President, please forgive me".
And it work, in 1980s and 1990s he became again a respectable politician.
but John Glenn as President in 1992, who gonna fly as oldest astronaut in space on October 1998 ?
ohh i got better idea: the headlines of 1998, "FROMER PRESIDENT JOHN GLENN FLY AGAIN INTO SPACE !"
It helped that he never really went back into Politics AFAIK.
Is it even gonna happen ITTL? Maybe, maybe not. But it would be aboard Space Station Freedom, most likely. Where there should be better - if still basic - medical facilities than what you could have on STS IOTL.
Part II: Post 27: Beginnings of the Chinese Space Program
Good afternoon! As the end of Part II gets ever-closer, we're starting to set the stage for some of the threads we'll be following up on in Part III. This week, we turn our attention to a player in the space field whose impact during the timeline so far has been limited, but who will be coming into their own in Part III: China. 1232 replies, 152115 views
Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #27
The history of China's spaceflight program is a long and sordid tale, soaked with political intrigue to at least as great a degree as the Soviet Union's. In many ways, it is also a tale that recapitulates China's modern history in miniature; first, dependence on the West, in this case the Soviet Union, to make up for technological deficiencies that have accumulated over a long period of time; then, after a conflict, development of native Chinese capabilities; then, a demonstration of those capabilities that surprises the world, accustomed to China's backwardness. By the mid-1950s, it was obvious to China's political leadership that development of ballistic missiles would be necessary and important for China's security, principally against the United States but also (as Sino-Soviet relations waned) against their traditional enemy Russia, in conjunction with a nuclear weapons development program. The withdrawal of Soviet support in 1960, prior to having received most of the planned examples of Soviet ballistic missile technology, severely affected the Chinese program, forcing them to nearly start from scratch. Nevertheless, by the late 1960s it was clear to the engineers and scientists responsible for China's missiles that China would shortly have a proper ICBM, had already developed several effective types of SRBM and IRBM, and (after detonating its first nuclear weapon in 1964) would therefore possess an adequate deterrent soon. While work still remained to be done, of course, the immediate pressure was no longer so large, and it was possible to begin thinking about doing something other than pell-mell pushing for China to be sufficiently secured against attack.
As with aerospace engineers everywhere, those involved with the program were dreamers, and thoughts soon turned towards using the newly-developed missiles in a space program. One was already underway, of course, spurred by the demonstrated capabilities of Soviet and American satellites over the past decade and the strategic value of satellite capabilities for China, but the dream went much further, involving an expansive project of Chinese expansion into space, starting with a modest human spaceflight program: Shuguang, "Dawn" in Mandarin Chinese. Modeled closely after the US Gemini program, Shuguang was supposed to be able to fly a pair of astronauts into space by the mid-1970s, serving as a base upon which China could expand and construct a program to rival that of the United States or the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for those involved, the Cultural Revolution began shortly after Shuguang itself, greatly upsetting the program's progress as promising young students abandoned their studies, prominent scientists were arrested and imprisoned, and, to top it all off, Lin Biao, a top Party official who had been a close political ally of senior space program figures, fell from grace after an alleged attempt to carry out a coup d'etat against Mao's government. Combined with an understandable feeling on the part of most of China's political leadership that economic growth and national security were more important concerns than space stunts, Shuguang had ignominiously perished by 1972, long before any hardware was built. Nevertheless, the seeds of a later program were planted by Shuguang, and the related development of the FSW spy satellites provided experience in recovering ballistic capsules that would prove invaluable to the task of recovering crewed capsules.
By 1982, a decade after the failure of their last attempt, the Chinese astronautical community was again ready to push for a human spaceflight program, while after the stabilization which followed the death of Mao and a decade of economic growth, Chinese political leadership was finally ready to listen[1]. In the view of many senior political leaders, China needed to make a quantum leap from merely having a fantastic heavy industrial base and solid agricultural capabilities to being a world leader in advanced scientific research and technology development. Putting a Chinese cosmonaut into space with Chinese technology before the next century would help spur many of those developments, and more importantly would be a very visible demonstration to the world that the Chinese had, indeed, caught up with the West in terms of high technology. Like the Soviet and American programs, the Chinese chose to design a capsule for their first outing, although like those earlier programs there were a wide variety of more exotic proposals considered, including several spaceplane designs and fully reusable launch vehicles. Based on an upscaled version of the capsule design developed for their FSW spy satellite program, Project 827 would accommodate up to three cosmonauts during their ride to orbit. As with the Soviet and American capsule designs, once in space their cosmonauts could use a larger orbital module. Due to weight constraints forced by the relatively small boosters available to the Chinese program, however, Project 827 was designed significantly differently than Apollo or TKS, hearkening back to the economical design of the Soyuz. Consideration was given to both nautical and terrestrial modes of recovery, but in the end cost concerns, the presence of large uninhabited areas in the People’s Republic and the usual authoritarian desire for information control led them to select a land-landing mode for the capsule. When the basic capability of China to orbit cosmonauts was demonstrated, a space station would be constructed, which Project 827 and derivatives could easily service in orbit for perhaps a several year mission. In all respects, it was a deeply conventional program which tackled the Soviet and American space challenges head-on, attempting to show that China could match them on their own turf.
Human space flight was not the only aspect of the ambitious new space program that Chinese planners were developing, either. While China had abandoned the Shuguang program in 1972, that hardly meant that they were abandoning spaceflight. The skills and techniques developed in the unmanned program over the past decade could be leveraged for a wide range of goals, not only enhancing Chinese national security but also economic development and scientific research. Earth observation satellites similar to Landsat or GOES, communications networks including the possibility of directly broadcasting Chinese television to the entire country similar to the Soviet Orbita or American NBC Satellite systems, even (perhaps) a navigation satellite system similar to the American NAVSTAR-GPS or Soviet GLONASS could be built over the next decade or two. Besides these systems, of great practical but only moderate scientific value, China could launch a program of astronomical satellites, including a series of solar observatories, backed up by geophysical probes designed to explore Earth’s surrounding space. In the farther future, it might be possible to launch Chinese probes to the Moon, near-Earth asteroids and comets, Mars, Venus, even Mercury or asteroids in the main belt. At the very least, the coming program would allow the development of many of the key technologies and capabilities needed to engage in such missions.
Finally, such a new space program deserved new boosters and rockets to launch the satellites, probes, and capsules it would involve. Like most other spacefaring nations, China’s first space launch vehicles had been based on ballistic missiles, meaning they used less efficient and extremely toxic but easily storable propellants. While of obvious benefits to ballistic missiles, which needed to be ready at a moment’s notice to deliver their deadly payloads, this design decision was problematic for space launch vehicles, making every failure a potential catastrophe and greatly complicating pad operations, besides decreasing performance compared to other propellant options. The third and final element of their space development program would involve the design and introduction of a second-generation space launch system, using the same cheap and powerful liquid oxygen and kerosene that the United States, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency, and Japan used for their space launch vehicles, assisted by solids derived from planned developments in ballistic missiles. Initial research into the capable but challenging pair of hydrogen and oxygen would also commence, with an eye towards possible future use in high-orbit or beyond Earth orbit spacecraft. Altogether, in the view of Chinese aerospace experts during the early 1980s, China had a golden opportunity to move from being on the fringes of space exploration and space activity to being right at the center, with technologies and capabilities on par with any other country in the world.
However, although spaceflight was a highly visible marker of China's technical prowess to the world, advances in civil, computational, defense, and other technology areas had far more immediate practical value, as well as the possibility for impressive advances that could be trumpeted as evidence of China's technological capabilities. Given this reality, senior Chinese leaders were reluctant to give full-scale support to aerospace engineers and planners in their ambitions, and chose instead to pursue a more modest program. Development of a manned spacecraft would begin, but under a relaxed schedule where the first human flights would not take place until after 1995, over a decade after program start. Once operational and tested by a series of orbital flights, a series of small test space stations would be built, followed by a larger modular complex conceptually similar to but smaller than the American Freedom or Soviet MOK, showing that China was just as capable as other countries in space. The robotic program would be scaled back to focus on immediate needs, such as land-use imagery, meteorology, and communications, with no emphasis placed on scientific or planetary exploration probes until much later. Finally, development of new boosters would focus on basic R&D such as the development of small scale kerosene-oxygen or hydrogen-oxygen engines on the one hand, and incremental improvements to existing boosters on the other. Any development of an advanced, high-capacity booster would be delayed until the 21st century. Although less ambitious than the original proposals, the final strategic plan for the Chinese space program adopted in 1985 still contained enough advancements to make any Chinese space enthusiast happy, promising a future of Chinese space accomplishments.
[1]: This is the big change; I’m operating under the assumption that IOTL there really was a 1978 spaceflight program which was cancelled and later replaced by the present Chinese human spaceflight program. That did not occur ITTL, and instead something like Project 921 rolled around a few years earlier. With shuttles less...well, “topical,” finalizing the design on something like Shenzhou did not take as long. Of course, China still isn’t in a particular hurry, but there may be opportunities opening up shortly...
Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #27
The history of China's spaceflight program is a long and sordid tale, soaked with political intrigue to at least as great a degree as the Soviet Union's. In many ways, it is also a tale that recapitulates China's modern history in miniature; first, dependence on the West, in this case the Soviet Union, to make up for technological deficiencies that have accumulated over a long period of time; then, after a conflict, development of native Chinese capabilities; then, a demonstration of those capabilities that surprises the world, accustomed to China's backwardness. By the mid-1950s, it was obvious to China's political leadership that development of ballistic missiles would be necessary and important for China's security, principally against the United States but also (as Sino-Soviet relations waned) against their traditional enemy Russia, in conjunction with a nuclear weapons development program. The withdrawal of Soviet support in 1960, prior to having received most of the planned examples of Soviet ballistic missile technology, severely affected the Chinese program, forcing them to nearly start from scratch. Nevertheless, by the late 1960s it was clear to the engineers and scientists responsible for China's missiles that China would shortly have a proper ICBM, had already developed several effective types of SRBM and IRBM, and (after detonating its first nuclear weapon in 1964) would therefore possess an adequate deterrent soon. While work still remained to be done, of course, the immediate pressure was no longer so large, and it was possible to begin thinking about doing something other than pell-mell pushing for China to be sufficiently secured against attack.
As with aerospace engineers everywhere, those involved with the program were dreamers, and thoughts soon turned towards using the newly-developed missiles in a space program. One was already underway, of course, spurred by the demonstrated capabilities of Soviet and American satellites over the past decade and the strategic value of satellite capabilities for China, but the dream went much further, involving an expansive project of Chinese expansion into space, starting with a modest human spaceflight program: Shuguang, "Dawn" in Mandarin Chinese. Modeled closely after the US Gemini program, Shuguang was supposed to be able to fly a pair of astronauts into space by the mid-1970s, serving as a base upon which China could expand and construct a program to rival that of the United States or the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for those involved, the Cultural Revolution began shortly after Shuguang itself, greatly upsetting the program's progress as promising young students abandoned their studies, prominent scientists were arrested and imprisoned, and, to top it all off, Lin Biao, a top Party official who had been a close political ally of senior space program figures, fell from grace after an alleged attempt to carry out a coup d'etat against Mao's government. Combined with an understandable feeling on the part of most of China's political leadership that economic growth and national security were more important concerns than space stunts, Shuguang had ignominiously perished by 1972, long before any hardware was built. Nevertheless, the seeds of a later program were planted by Shuguang, and the related development of the FSW spy satellites provided experience in recovering ballistic capsules that would prove invaluable to the task of recovering crewed capsules.
By 1982, a decade after the failure of their last attempt, the Chinese astronautical community was again ready to push for a human spaceflight program, while after the stabilization which followed the death of Mao and a decade of economic growth, Chinese political leadership was finally ready to listen[1]. In the view of many senior political leaders, China needed to make a quantum leap from merely having a fantastic heavy industrial base and solid agricultural capabilities to being a world leader in advanced scientific research and technology development. Putting a Chinese cosmonaut into space with Chinese technology before the next century would help spur many of those developments, and more importantly would be a very visible demonstration to the world that the Chinese had, indeed, caught up with the West in terms of high technology. Like the Soviet and American programs, the Chinese chose to design a capsule for their first outing, although like those earlier programs there were a wide variety of more exotic proposals considered, including several spaceplane designs and fully reusable launch vehicles. Based on an upscaled version of the capsule design developed for their FSW spy satellite program, Project 827 would accommodate up to three cosmonauts during their ride to orbit. As with the Soviet and American capsule designs, once in space their cosmonauts could use a larger orbital module. Due to weight constraints forced by the relatively small boosters available to the Chinese program, however, Project 827 was designed significantly differently than Apollo or TKS, hearkening back to the economical design of the Soyuz. Consideration was given to both nautical and terrestrial modes of recovery, but in the end cost concerns, the presence of large uninhabited areas in the People’s Republic and the usual authoritarian desire for information control led them to select a land-landing mode for the capsule. When the basic capability of China to orbit cosmonauts was demonstrated, a space station would be constructed, which Project 827 and derivatives could easily service in orbit for perhaps a several year mission. In all respects, it was a deeply conventional program which tackled the Soviet and American space challenges head-on, attempting to show that China could match them on their own turf.
Human space flight was not the only aspect of the ambitious new space program that Chinese planners were developing, either. While China had abandoned the Shuguang program in 1972, that hardly meant that they were abandoning spaceflight. The skills and techniques developed in the unmanned program over the past decade could be leveraged for a wide range of goals, not only enhancing Chinese national security but also economic development and scientific research. Earth observation satellites similar to Landsat or GOES, communications networks including the possibility of directly broadcasting Chinese television to the entire country similar to the Soviet Orbita or American NBC Satellite systems, even (perhaps) a navigation satellite system similar to the American NAVSTAR-GPS or Soviet GLONASS could be built over the next decade or two. Besides these systems, of great practical but only moderate scientific value, China could launch a program of astronomical satellites, including a series of solar observatories, backed up by geophysical probes designed to explore Earth’s surrounding space. In the farther future, it might be possible to launch Chinese probes to the Moon, near-Earth asteroids and comets, Mars, Venus, even Mercury or asteroids in the main belt. At the very least, the coming program would allow the development of many of the key technologies and capabilities needed to engage in such missions.
Finally, such a new space program deserved new boosters and rockets to launch the satellites, probes, and capsules it would involve. Like most other spacefaring nations, China’s first space launch vehicles had been based on ballistic missiles, meaning they used less efficient and extremely toxic but easily storable propellants. While of obvious benefits to ballistic missiles, which needed to be ready at a moment’s notice to deliver their deadly payloads, this design decision was problematic for space launch vehicles, making every failure a potential catastrophe and greatly complicating pad operations, besides decreasing performance compared to other propellant options. The third and final element of their space development program would involve the design and introduction of a second-generation space launch system, using the same cheap and powerful liquid oxygen and kerosene that the United States, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency, and Japan used for their space launch vehicles, assisted by solids derived from planned developments in ballistic missiles. Initial research into the capable but challenging pair of hydrogen and oxygen would also commence, with an eye towards possible future use in high-orbit or beyond Earth orbit spacecraft. Altogether, in the view of Chinese aerospace experts during the early 1980s, China had a golden opportunity to move from being on the fringes of space exploration and space activity to being right at the center, with technologies and capabilities on par with any other country in the world.
However, although spaceflight was a highly visible marker of China's technical prowess to the world, advances in civil, computational, defense, and other technology areas had far more immediate practical value, as well as the possibility for impressive advances that could be trumpeted as evidence of China's technological capabilities. Given this reality, senior Chinese leaders were reluctant to give full-scale support to aerospace engineers and planners in their ambitions, and chose instead to pursue a more modest program. Development of a manned spacecraft would begin, but under a relaxed schedule where the first human flights would not take place until after 1995, over a decade after program start. Once operational and tested by a series of orbital flights, a series of small test space stations would be built, followed by a larger modular complex conceptually similar to but smaller than the American Freedom or Soviet MOK, showing that China was just as capable as other countries in space. The robotic program would be scaled back to focus on immediate needs, such as land-use imagery, meteorology, and communications, with no emphasis placed on scientific or planetary exploration probes until much later. Finally, development of new boosters would focus on basic R&D such as the development of small scale kerosene-oxygen or hydrogen-oxygen engines on the one hand, and incremental improvements to existing boosters on the other. Any development of an advanced, high-capacity booster would be delayed until the 21st century. Although less ambitious than the original proposals, the final strategic plan for the Chinese space program adopted in 1985 still contained enough advancements to make any Chinese space enthusiast happy, promising a future of Chinese space accomplishments.
[1]: This is the big change; I’m operating under the assumption that IOTL there really was a 1978 spaceflight program which was cancelled and later replaced by the present Chinese human spaceflight program. That did not occur ITTL, and instead something like Project 921 rolled around a few years earlier. With shuttles less...well, “topical,” finalizing the design on something like Shenzhou did not take as long. Of course, China still isn’t in a particular hurry, but there may be opportunities opening up shortly...
From the sounds of things, TTL's Shenzhou equivalent could be ready for Manned Flight up to 10 years earlier than IOTL - though I would say 5 years would be a better estimate.
From the looks of things, they are also interested in the development of LOX/Kerosene Rocket Engines to replace the N2O4/UDMH ones they'd be using about now IIRC. Though favouring incremental improvements over the existing LVs they have over developing an all-new version seems to indicate that a LOX/Kerosene variant of this would form the most likely Manned LV for them ITTL. While TTL's equivalent of these are having to wait their turn. Assuming that this is the planned case you have.
You seem to have captured the Chinese Philosophy quite well though. Gradualism seems to be the way they do things AFAIK.
Of course, while TTL's ESA does have its Minotaur Programme in development - which I remember was designed with the ability to quickly adapt it into a Manned Spacecraft - German Reunification costs, combined with the collapsed USSR have put a massive dent in those plans. So I really do wonder who'll be Nation No.3 to performed Manned Spaceflight. ESA or China? At this moment in time, I'm tentatively placing even odds on them.
From the looks of things, they are also interested in the development of LOX/Kerosene Rocket Engines to replace the N2O4/UDMH ones they'd be using about now IIRC. Though favouring incremental improvements over the existing LVs they have over developing an all-new version seems to indicate that a LOX/Kerosene variant of this would form the most likely Manned LV for them ITTL. While TTL's equivalent of these are having to wait their turn. Assuming that this is the planned case you have.
You seem to have captured the Chinese Philosophy quite well though. Gradualism seems to be the way they do things AFAIK.
Of course, while TTL's ESA does have its Minotaur Programme in development - which I remember was designed with the ability to quickly adapt it into a Manned Spacecraft - German Reunification costs, combined with the collapsed USSR have put a massive dent in those plans. So I really do wonder who'll be Nation No.3 to performed Manned Spaceflight. ESA or China? At this moment in time, I'm tentatively placing even odds on them.
The Fanhui Shi Weixing ("Recoverable Satellite") were basically the early Chinese spy sats. A ~2 ton recoverable capsule carrying camera gear that would spend a couple days on-orbit then come down. Started in the early 70s, first launched in the mid-70s, suggested to have some relationship to the cancelled Shuguang program. They haven't been mentioned much before because they're pretty primitive--they flew in the same period as the American KH-9 Hexagon and then the KH-11.
B the way, you maybe note that Project 827 didn't get a more prosaic name in this update--we had trouble coming up with anything other Shenzhou and wanted to see if anyone could help. Think you have what it take to name a Chinese manned spacecraft? Give us your suggestions, best one gets to be canon for Part III.
Well there is Shuguang as you've already stated. You could keep Shenzhou if you really have problems. And here's a few others - Chinese Phonetic with Translation:
Kāishǐ - Start
Límíng - Dawn (Though Wikipedia thinks that Shuguang means Dawn as well)
Jìnbù - Progress
Gōnghuì - Union
Shénlóng - Divine Dragon
I'd say that's a good starting point.
Not a bad list. We're trying to pick something distinct from just the OTL Shenzhou because this capsule isn't identical to Shenzhou, just similar. Anyone else want to get in on this, or are you going to let Bahamut win this by default?