Yep. I know that NASA funded additional Mir modules. The ESA is out, as is China (China realistically doesn't have the resources to fund Mir ITTL). However, just flying resupply missions to a skeleton crew might just be possible, and they might also defray costs by opening up vulkan to the global satellite launch market, like OTL. Of course, the biggest variants are out, but the core will be useful. That, and cheap (but, of course, launch costs aren't everything in the satellite launch market)
Yep. I know that NASA funded additional Mir modules. The ESA is out, as is China (China realistically doesn't have the resources to fund Mir ITTL). However, just flying resupply missions to a skeleton crew might just be possible, and they might also defray costs by opening up vulkan to the global satellite launch market, like OTL. Of course, the biggest variants are out, but the core will be useful. That, and cheap (but, of course, launch costs aren't everything in the satellite launch market)
That seems about right.
And with that, we've reached 1,000 posts on Eyes Turned Skywards.
I thought the authors have made it clearer than just mentioning the collapse of the Berlin Wall that the USSR does indeed go belly-up roughly on schedule. I thought it was in the post about Soviet planetary probe missions, or the commentary shortly after.
I have much more I'd like to say on the current post but I can't afford much AH time tonight. Maybe tomorrow if I'm lucky, or Friday or Saturday.
I have much more I'd like to say on the current post but I can't afford much AH time tonight. Maybe tomorrow if I'm lucky, or Friday or Saturday.
Thanks! They're fun to mess about with. Note that both stations are fully modular in the model--I'll be able to show the assembly of each one as it progresses.
Never explicitely, I was holding off for this post to officially introduce Mir's layout.
Freedom: 1180 cubic meters, fully assembled, not counting logistics craft. Launch mass of the components is 334 metric tons, but on-orbit equipment additions (lab experiments, food stores, spare equipment, that sort of thing) will add another 30-60 tons. When it's got several logistics craft attached, it'll approach a 450-ton total stack mass. 2300 square meters of solar arrays, producing 325 kW. Crew of 10, rotated in expeditions of 5 by Block IV Apollo.
Mir: 1000 cubic meters in the permanent station modules, which together mass 204 tons at launch, but which will rise to maybe 225-250 once fully in-use on orbit. However, recall that, like on Salyut 7, they're using the FGB of their TKS crew spacecraft for habitat spaces. That's an extra 45 cubic meters per craft on-station. Total stack is about 1325 cubic meters if they ever get up to the designed 6 docked TKS. 2200 square meters of panel provide about 280 kW (their panels are a bit less efficient). It's planned for a maximum of 12 crew, rotated in groups of 3. Whether it'll ever hit that...we'll see, won't we?
Before anyone asks and for the sake of fairness, with its own full logistics craft complement, Freedom gets up into the neighborhood of 1400 cubic meters.
One arm will fly with Node 1--second piece to fly. Not entirely sure which module to stick the other arm with on the way up. I've got until January to decide, that'll be the next update on station construction.
Pretty decent, I figure. The 80s were pretty good for them OTL. Maybe a third stage that doesn't light here, an exploding second stage there, but nothing too newsworthy. I mean, this is Russia in the mid-80s. Glastnos isn't much of a thing yet, and there's no glory in rockets blowing up. No crew, no problem.
It's not, it's actually smaller. Salyut 7's core modules make up only about 180 cubic meters. Add the three TKS (2 crew, 1 cargo) commonly on-station, and they have about 315, compared to OTL Mir's 350. But it's a transitional station, covering for delays in Mir and letting them get in some additional testing on hardware and techniques before that station flies.
So we have! Thank you all for reading and for joining in the discussion, we'd never have gotten here without your interest and support.
Hello e of pi,
Thanks for the answers. Much obliged.
So, let's see here...
OTL: International Space Station (Assembly: 1998-2011)
Mass: 449 metric tons (990,000 lbs)
Habitable volume: 837 cubic meters
Crew: 6
Assembly launches: 40+
TTL: Freedom (Assembly 1987-1991)
Mass: 364-394 metric tons
Habitable Volume: 1180 cubic meters
Crew: 10
Assembly launches: 11
Where do I sign up for this reality again?
It's planned for a maximum of 12 crew, rotated in groups of 3. Whether it'll ever hit that...we'll see, won't we?
Why do I get the feeling that that second MOK module ain't gonna make it into orbit?
Thanks for the answers. Much obliged.
So, let's see here...
OTL: International Space Station (Assembly: 1998-2011)
Mass: 449 metric tons (990,000 lbs)
Habitable volume: 837 cubic meters
Crew: 6
Assembly launches: 40+
TTL: Freedom (Assembly 1987-1991)
Mass: 364-394 metric tons
Habitable Volume: 1180 cubic meters
Crew: 10
Assembly launches: 11
Where do I sign up for this reality again?
It's planned for a maximum of 12 crew, rotated in groups of 3. Whether it'll ever hit that...we'll see, won't we?
Why do I get the feeling that that second MOK module ain't gonna make it into orbit?
That, or it going up buran style, as the last payload on a dying program
Hello e of pi,
Thanks for the answers. Much obliged.
So, let's see here...
OTL: International Space Station (Assembly: 1998-2011)
Mass: 449 metric tons (990,000 lbs)
Habitable volume: 837 cubic meters
Crew: 6
Assembly launches: 40+
TTL: Freedom (Assembly 1987-1991)
Mass: 364-394 metric tons
Habitable Volume: 1180 cubic meters
Crew: 10
Assembly launches: 11
Where do I sign up for this reality again?
Fair point. TTL's Freedom is well ahead of what we've got here with ISS.
Same reason I do. Because things in TTL's USSR are still gonna tank in spectacular fashion. I foresee just one MOK Module, plus 3-4 of the smaller Labs. And this could prove problematic. IOTL, one reason for getting the Priroda Lab up to Mir - if I got the name of the module right - was so it's four solar panels could provide much-needed power to the power-starved station.
Hello Bahamut,
Fair point. TTL's Freedom is well ahead of what we've got here with ISS.
Amazing what the U.S. and Russia can accomplish without the massive money sinks of STS and Buran.
Same reason I do. Because things in TTL's USSR are still gonna tank in spectacular fashion. I foresee just one MOK Module, plus 3-4 of the smaller Labs. And this could prove problematic. IOTL, one reason for getting the Priroda Lab up to Mir - if I got the name of the module right - was so it's four solar panels could provide much-needed power to the power-starved station.
True, although the MOK mounted solar arrays for this Mir look to be quite a bit larger (even granting that Soviet solar cells were less efficient), and therefore presumably provide more juice. But I don't know what the authors have planned for the second MOK module to provide.
Fair point. TTL's Freedom is well ahead of what we've got here with ISS.
Amazing what the U.S. and Russia can accomplish without the massive money sinks of STS and Buran.
Same reason I do. Because things in TTL's USSR are still gonna tank in spectacular fashion. I foresee just one MOK Module, plus 3-4 of the smaller Labs. And this could prove problematic. IOTL, one reason for getting the Priroda Lab up to Mir - if I got the name of the module right - was so it's four solar panels could provide much-needed power to the power-starved station.
True, although the MOK mounted solar arrays for this Mir look to be quite a bit larger (even granting that Soviet solar cells were less efficient), and therefore presumably provide more juice. But I don't know what the authors have planned for the second MOK module to provide.
Well E has already stated that the 2,200 m3 of Solar Panels on TTL's Mir will provide about 280 KW of electrical power. Without the second MOK, they would only have 1,100 m3 and 140 KW. That means they could well need all of it to provide enough power for the projected lifetime of the station if they want to power everything - Solar Panels do decay and lose efficiency over time, but E and Truth would know a lot more about that.
In short. All four Labs + No second MOK = they're Screwed, IMHO.
True - the panels are much larger than the tiny arrays on the Mir of our timeline, but then they have a much bigger station to power, too.
Perhaps they'll only get a couple labs up. Otherwise, they'll have to power some systems down. Perhaps they could shut down and seal off some of the labs. Either way, it will be a bear for ROSCOSMOS to keep that thing running even on a skeleton crew.
My guess is that they only get token NASA and ESA help in the way of a few experiments and whatnot, and are forced to troll the developing world for partners. And they won't get much.
Mir OTL basically never had more than 30 kW on tap at once. It was kind of nuts. Even with one MOK and all four labs, there'd be 60% more power available per cubic meter than Mir even had OTL. With both MOK cores, it'd have 2.5x the W/m^3 that Mir ever had.
Their timeline for launch is MOK-1 in 1987, with the DOS labs following over the next year, then MOK-2 in 1989. Glushko may not live to see his station completed, but the Soviet Union should--if barely.
I guess they have to hope that the schedule doesn't get pushed back much...
What happens to Salyut 7 and Spacelab once the construction of these behemoths begins? I assumed they'd both be shut down and deorbited first. If so, how much of a lag time is each nation (and ESA) willing to live with between stations?
If I had to guess, I'd say they'd like to keep the older stations up until the new ones are ready to begin their work. Not complete, just able to be of use. It all depends on their state of health and the available budget.
IOTL, Salyut 7 and Mir were in orbit at the same time for a while, and was once visited by the same crew in a single mission. Though at that point, Salyut 7 had just about packed in.
I think they did have plans to recover it using Buran. Of course, those became pipe dreams once the USSR went belly up. However, depending on size, it might be possible to merge both ITTL Salyut 7 and Mir, depending on their orbital inclinations.
I can't remember, but is Freedom (hopefully) in a 24degree Florida orbit rather than a 50+Baikonur one? I'm thinking I was told differently, but a quick look back a few pages doesn't say, and if Reagan is doing this in an anti-Soviet panic, making it easier for the Soviets to visit isn't going to be a high priority, I wouldn't think.Hello e of pi,
Thanks for the answers. Much obliged.
So, let's see here...
OTL: International Space Station (Assembly: 1998-2011)
Mass: 449 metric tons (990,000 lbs)
Habitable volume: 837 cubic meters
Crew: 6
Assembly launches: 40+
TTL: Freedom (Assembly 1987-1991)
Mass: 364-394 metric tons
Habitable Volume: 1180 cubic meters
Crew: 10
Assembly launches: 11
Where do I sign up for this reality again?
It's planned for a maximum of 12 crew, rotated in groups of 3. Whether it'll ever hit that...we'll see, won't we?
Why do I get the feeling that that second MOK module ain't gonna make it into orbit?
That would make the station perceptibly better / easier to supply, right there.
As fascinating as all this discussion of the space stations is, and while I must admit that I love the idea of their future use as much as anyone, I feel obliged to point out that the post also features references to a number of pioneering astronauts, including the first Canadian in space! Bill Anderchuk... he must be from the Prairies
Like OTL Freedom was supposed to be, TTL Freedom is in a 28.5 degree orbit.
Actually, the 51.6 degree orbit has significant advantages in terms of allowing resupply, mostly insofar as it lets pretty much anyone (not just ISS partner countries, but also India, China, private firms with launch sites at, eg., Wallops, etc.) be involved with the station. The disadvantage to Kennedy launches of the 51.6 orbit is smaller than the disadvantage to high-latitude launch sites of the 28.5 degree orbit.
As I said, though, in Eyes the 28.5 degree orbit is being chosen, since Soviet/Chinese access is obviously not a priority and remote sensing from the station isn't, either (that's why Skylab had such an inclined orbit, for example).
Does seem likely, doesn't it.As fascinating as all this discussion of the space stations is, and while I must admit that I love the idea of their future use as much as anyone, I feel obliged to point out that the post also features references to a number of pioneering astronauts, including the first Canadian in space! Bill Anderchuk... he must be from the Prairies
Part II: Post 15: Unmanned Exploration of Venus
Well, we left off last time with a crew successfully escaping from a cloud of hot, caustic gasses. So, speaking of places containing high temperatures and inhospitable to human life, who's up for some checking in on Venus? (Alternate awkward segue: "So, speaking of things that almost kill you, how about that finals season?") 1018 replies, 123460 views
Eyes Turned Skywards, Part II: Post #15
Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love, is perhaps most famous as the closest thing the Solar System has to classical depictions of Hell. With a surface temperature of over 450 degrees Celsius, hot enough that lead would melt and flow like water, and a surface pressure of over 90 atmospheres, similar to the pressure at a depth of one kilometer in Earth's oceans, it is easy to see why this is the popular depiction of the planet: hot, inhospitable, and thoroughly unpleasant. And yet, at the same time Venus retains some of her traditional allure. The planet remains the largest terrestrial planet aside from the Earth, and in many respects is very Earth-like, even more so than Mars. Furthermore, Venus is relatively easy for space probes to reach, with frequent windows and short flight times augmenting relatively low trans-Cytherean[1] delta-V costs. Thus, even after early Mariner and Venera flights, together with ground observations of the surface by radar, scientific interest in the planet continued, strengthened even despite the harsh surface conditions. While the United States quickly lost interest in the planet, the Soviet Union saw both an opportunity--somewhere they could compete without the Americans getting in the way--and an easier target than Mars, which was quickly becoming notorious for swallowing up space probes, especially Soviet ones. Through the 1960s and 1970s the Soviets took active advantage of this opportunity, dispatching probes at nearly every launch window and racking up an impressive list of firsts on the way. These were not, however, mere stunts, but filled a valuable scientific role, providing reams of data about the atmospheric conditions of Venus, the pressure gradient of the air, and the temperature at various altitudes.
By the late 1970s, however, the Soviets had moved on from the relatively simple atmospheric penetrators and orbital probes that they had previously been launching, ambitiously aiming to land probes just as sophisticated as any American Mars probe on Venus' surface, returning far more data about surface conditions and particularly the material composition and surface properties of Venus. The first of these new probes were Veneras 9 and 10, launched during the 1975 window. While outshadowed by the contemporary Viking program to Mars, they returned the first images of the surface of Venus, and proved an entirely new and considerably more complex probe design for future use, a design which would go on to be used for the remainder of the Soviet space program. Following them up in 1978, and in parallel with the American Pioneer Venus mission, were Veneras 11 and 12. Besides testing a series of new instruments on the surface, instruments which would also return data useful to planned future probes, the probes would also use the new 5MV bus design for support during cruise flight and to relay data from the surface probes back to Earth. Besides this vital function, the flyby probes would also provide important engineering test data for the 5MV design prior to its use for a pair of Mars missions the next year. Unfortunately, Veneras 11 and 12 did not go to plan. While the flyby segment performed well, and assisted in research into the phenomenon of gamma-ray bursts, both of the landers had issues with the newly-installed sample-collection drill intended to provide the first in-situ look into Cytherean surface composition. They also had problems with the lens caps on the panoramic cameras intended to provide a view of the Cytherean surface; on Venera 12, both caps failed to eject, while on Venera 11 one of them did. However, the other instruments functioned as planned, and overall the missions were a great success.
At the same time the Veneras touched down on Venus, though, the Lavochkin bureau, in conjunction with the French space agency CNES, was already preparing for a more ambitious mission to launch in the 1981 window. This time, a modified 5MV bus would deliver a 600 kg balloon designed by the French to the Cytherean atmosphere, while another Soviet spacecraft would place itself in orbit about the planet. In a similar fashion to an earlier French experiment on Earth, the Eole satellite, this orbiter would track the movement of the balloon, gathering data about wind motion in addition to the usual gamma-ray burst tracking, ultraviolet imagery of the atmosphere, and information from the balloon's own suite of scientific equipment. The entire project was named "Eos," a reference to the predecessor Eole and an ancient Greek term for Venus as seen at dawn, "Eòsforos". Underway since 1972, even increasing French involvement in the reconstruction of ELDO/ESRO into the ESA did not halt their work on the probe, and after the success of Veneras 11 and 12 Lavochkin could finally devote its full attention to the project. Together, development proceeded well, and the last Protons to serve a Soviet planetary probe hurled them skywards in late October and early November 1981. The Eos balloon successfully deployed following atmospheric entry, marking yet another first for the Soviet Venus program--the first balloon (or, indeed, atmospheric vehicle of any type aside from simple penetrator probes) ever deployed on another planet. Almost at the same time, the Venera 13 orbiter successfully concluded its own orbital insertion burn, sliding into a 24-hour highly elliptical orbit to begin its own measurements of Venus and its periodic polling of the Eos balloon. The balloon continued to operate for over a month before the slow loss of buoyancy from tiny helium leaks brought it to too low an altitude to survive, providing a significant amount of data about the high-altitude atmosphere at a variety of locations in the process. The orbiter, like Pioneer Venus before it, continued to return scientific data long past its primary mission.
By this time, however, NASA was already thinking of making a return to Venus. In the 1970s, JPL had been involved in a mission using a then-novel technology, synthetic aperture radar, to study not another planet but instead Earth's own surface, through a satellite mission and a series of aircraft flights with a test radar installed. The scientists involved became interested in using the technology on planetary missions, and Venus was the obvious target due to its eternally opaque cloud cover preventing other wavelengths from penetrating the atmosphere. Such a mission would be able to surpass not only previous radar-carrying probes, such as the Pioneer Venus Orbiter, but also the ground-based sites that had been imaging the planet since the 1960s. The Venus Orbiting Imaging Radar, or VOIR, probe which grew out of this involvement promised to be a beauty of a scientific mission. In addition to the imaging radar, VOIR would carry a radar altimeter and an entire suite of instruments to study the Cytherean atmosphere. Furthermore, due to the low, circular orbit needed for imaging and the continuous return of scientific data to Earth, it would be able to provide gravimetric data about Venus' interior, further assisting geophysicists in understanding Cytherean surface structures and the internal properties of the planet. Unfortunately, VOIR did not exist in a vacuum. By the time it had been written up in a formal proposal and submitted for funding, it had strong competition in the form of the Kirchhoff cometary mission. The exploitation of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to encounter Comet Halley perhaps proved decisive for the latter, as it won the support of President Carter and then Congress during planning for FY 1980, while VOIR was left out in the cold. Even while VOIR's supporters regrouped, President Reagan's election led to a hostile climate for planetary exploration, and given that JPL was fighting to keep current projects alive it was not even submitted for the 1982 budget. The launch of Vulkan and the subsequent demand for more space exploration ensured that VOIR would be given another chance, however, and development was quickly approved in the 1983 budget.
By this time, VOIR had gone through several rounds of redesign to reduce costs, consistently fingered as the number one problem with the concept. The scientific suite had been pared back to just the radar imager, the radar altimeter, and the gravitimetric experiments, while as many instruments and components as possible were spares from previous or ongoing missions. So many parts were leftovers from other missions, in fact, that VOIR earned the joking title "The Flying Scrapheap," not only from others in the laboratory but even from the project team itself. Nevertheless, the probe was ready to fly by the expected 1988 Venus launch window, and it duly departed for the planet atop a Delta 4000 during March. Its transit towards Venus proved uneventful, and it settled into orbit around the planet only a few months later. Several more months were consumed in slowly lowering and circularizing the orbit, as well as trimming it into the proper polar plane. Once these orbital maneuvers were complete, data collection could finally begin. And what a collection it would be! A constant stream of data raced back from the orbiter to Earth, coalescing on powerful computers into detailed maps of the surface, revealing previously invisible features of all sizes. Besides mere imagery, a topographic map could be compiled from the data returned by the radar altimeter and stereo images created by the main radar, allowing not just flat maps but a three-dimensional visualization. Finally, very precise tracking of the carrier wave used by the communications signal allowed tracing out tiny fluctuations in the Cytherean gravitational field that could reveal the presence of subsurface features otherwise invisible, such as masses of magma. In short, VOIR was rapidly returning more data about Venus' surface than existed about Earth's, swaddled beneath near-global oceans of opaque seawater, and nearly as much about its near-surface interior. The resulting massive data sets would occupy scientists for years as they intensively studied it to unlock the secrets of the Cytherean interior.
The mere presence of NASA did not mean that the Soviets had given up on Venus, however, nor was VOIR was the last word in Cytherean exploration. Instead, they had merely taken a brief hiatus, before launching their final and most ambitious Venus exploration project: DZhVs, an abbreviation for "Long-term Surface Station". Intended to survive for the incredible duration of 30 days on the surface, work on DZhVs had been underway since the mid-1970s as the only practical way to achieve seismometry on Venus, given the alternative of deploying explosives to the planet. Advancements in high-temperature electronics for drilling, highly insulative materials such as aerogel, and high-capacity heat sinks made such a mission seem practical, though not easy. Due to this difficulty, the Soviets chose not to simply leap to their goal, jumping straight from the one to two hours of previous probes to a duration over 600 times as great. Instead, they would proceed by steps; first, a one-day probe to prove many of the basic techniques and technologies, then a 14-day probe to requalify them for an even longer duration, and finally the full 30-day probe, beneficiary of several more years of technological development and refinement. By late 1985, engineers and scientists at Lavochkin were confident that the DZhVs-1 was ready, and Venera 14 and 15 leapt towards Venus aboard Vulkan rockets late in 1986. The new 6MV bus design on both probes performed exactly as its designers desired, and both probes successfully landed later that year. For the first hour and a half, as their busses remained above the horizons and could serve as data relays, they intensively explored their surroundings, taking the first color photographs of Venus and carrying out several chemical and material analyses of the surrounding surface. After the relay link broke, however, the probes switched to their limited high-temperature instrument suites, beaming the resulting data directly back to Earth. Venera 14 continued to operate in this fashion for over 12 hours before collapsing to the heat, while Venera 15 did so for an astonishing 28 hours, shattering previous Soviet surface survival records. Among other things, data collected during the extended phase definitively proved the existence of "Venusquakes," validating the underlying reason for the DZhVs development. Unfortunately, this proved to be the last gasp of the Soviet Venus exploration program. While technically amazing, political and economic events far outside of the scope of planetary exploration would prove its downfall, with the DZhVs-14 missions first postponed twice, then canceled with the hardware over three-quarters complete. While the newly formed Russian Federation and the Confederation of Independent States attempted to find outside funding for the mission, other countries were either uninterested in Venus exploration, unable to believe the probes would work, or unwilling to put up the tens of millions of dollars that would be needed to complete and launch them. The hardware for Venera 17 and 18 slowly rotted away at Lavochkin, preoccupied with international (and therefore funded) projects over ambitious but unfunded dreams.
[1]: This is a somewhat obsolete semi-poetic term filling the same role as the (now) more common Venusian. Its use here is purely a matter of personal preference.
Eyes Turned Skywards, Part II: Post #15
Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love, is perhaps most famous as the closest thing the Solar System has to classical depictions of Hell. With a surface temperature of over 450 degrees Celsius, hot enough that lead would melt and flow like water, and a surface pressure of over 90 atmospheres, similar to the pressure at a depth of one kilometer in Earth's oceans, it is easy to see why this is the popular depiction of the planet: hot, inhospitable, and thoroughly unpleasant. And yet, at the same time Venus retains some of her traditional allure. The planet remains the largest terrestrial planet aside from the Earth, and in many respects is very Earth-like, even more so than Mars. Furthermore, Venus is relatively easy for space probes to reach, with frequent windows and short flight times augmenting relatively low trans-Cytherean[1] delta-V costs. Thus, even after early Mariner and Venera flights, together with ground observations of the surface by radar, scientific interest in the planet continued, strengthened even despite the harsh surface conditions. While the United States quickly lost interest in the planet, the Soviet Union saw both an opportunity--somewhere they could compete without the Americans getting in the way--and an easier target than Mars, which was quickly becoming notorious for swallowing up space probes, especially Soviet ones. Through the 1960s and 1970s the Soviets took active advantage of this opportunity, dispatching probes at nearly every launch window and racking up an impressive list of firsts on the way. These were not, however, mere stunts, but filled a valuable scientific role, providing reams of data about the atmospheric conditions of Venus, the pressure gradient of the air, and the temperature at various altitudes.
By the late 1970s, however, the Soviets had moved on from the relatively simple atmospheric penetrators and orbital probes that they had previously been launching, ambitiously aiming to land probes just as sophisticated as any American Mars probe on Venus' surface, returning far more data about surface conditions and particularly the material composition and surface properties of Venus. The first of these new probes were Veneras 9 and 10, launched during the 1975 window. While outshadowed by the contemporary Viking program to Mars, they returned the first images of the surface of Venus, and proved an entirely new and considerably more complex probe design for future use, a design which would go on to be used for the remainder of the Soviet space program. Following them up in 1978, and in parallel with the American Pioneer Venus mission, were Veneras 11 and 12. Besides testing a series of new instruments on the surface, instruments which would also return data useful to planned future probes, the probes would also use the new 5MV bus design for support during cruise flight and to relay data from the surface probes back to Earth. Besides this vital function, the flyby probes would also provide important engineering test data for the 5MV design prior to its use for a pair of Mars missions the next year. Unfortunately, Veneras 11 and 12 did not go to plan. While the flyby segment performed well, and assisted in research into the phenomenon of gamma-ray bursts, both of the landers had issues with the newly-installed sample-collection drill intended to provide the first in-situ look into Cytherean surface composition. They also had problems with the lens caps on the panoramic cameras intended to provide a view of the Cytherean surface; on Venera 12, both caps failed to eject, while on Venera 11 one of them did. However, the other instruments functioned as planned, and overall the missions were a great success.
At the same time the Veneras touched down on Venus, though, the Lavochkin bureau, in conjunction with the French space agency CNES, was already preparing for a more ambitious mission to launch in the 1981 window. This time, a modified 5MV bus would deliver a 600 kg balloon designed by the French to the Cytherean atmosphere, while another Soviet spacecraft would place itself in orbit about the planet. In a similar fashion to an earlier French experiment on Earth, the Eole satellite, this orbiter would track the movement of the balloon, gathering data about wind motion in addition to the usual gamma-ray burst tracking, ultraviolet imagery of the atmosphere, and information from the balloon's own suite of scientific equipment. The entire project was named "Eos," a reference to the predecessor Eole and an ancient Greek term for Venus as seen at dawn, "Eòsforos". Underway since 1972, even increasing French involvement in the reconstruction of ELDO/ESRO into the ESA did not halt their work on the probe, and after the success of Veneras 11 and 12 Lavochkin could finally devote its full attention to the project. Together, development proceeded well, and the last Protons to serve a Soviet planetary probe hurled them skywards in late October and early November 1981. The Eos balloon successfully deployed following atmospheric entry, marking yet another first for the Soviet Venus program--the first balloon (or, indeed, atmospheric vehicle of any type aside from simple penetrator probes) ever deployed on another planet. Almost at the same time, the Venera 13 orbiter successfully concluded its own orbital insertion burn, sliding into a 24-hour highly elliptical orbit to begin its own measurements of Venus and its periodic polling of the Eos balloon. The balloon continued to operate for over a month before the slow loss of buoyancy from tiny helium leaks brought it to too low an altitude to survive, providing a significant amount of data about the high-altitude atmosphere at a variety of locations in the process. The orbiter, like Pioneer Venus before it, continued to return scientific data long past its primary mission.
By this time, however, NASA was already thinking of making a return to Venus. In the 1970s, JPL had been involved in a mission using a then-novel technology, synthetic aperture radar, to study not another planet but instead Earth's own surface, through a satellite mission and a series of aircraft flights with a test radar installed. The scientists involved became interested in using the technology on planetary missions, and Venus was the obvious target due to its eternally opaque cloud cover preventing other wavelengths from penetrating the atmosphere. Such a mission would be able to surpass not only previous radar-carrying probes, such as the Pioneer Venus Orbiter, but also the ground-based sites that had been imaging the planet since the 1960s. The Venus Orbiting Imaging Radar, or VOIR, probe which grew out of this involvement promised to be a beauty of a scientific mission. In addition to the imaging radar, VOIR would carry a radar altimeter and an entire suite of instruments to study the Cytherean atmosphere. Furthermore, due to the low, circular orbit needed for imaging and the continuous return of scientific data to Earth, it would be able to provide gravimetric data about Venus' interior, further assisting geophysicists in understanding Cytherean surface structures and the internal properties of the planet. Unfortunately, VOIR did not exist in a vacuum. By the time it had been written up in a formal proposal and submitted for funding, it had strong competition in the form of the Kirchhoff cometary mission. The exploitation of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to encounter Comet Halley perhaps proved decisive for the latter, as it won the support of President Carter and then Congress during planning for FY 1980, while VOIR was left out in the cold. Even while VOIR's supporters regrouped, President Reagan's election led to a hostile climate for planetary exploration, and given that JPL was fighting to keep current projects alive it was not even submitted for the 1982 budget. The launch of Vulkan and the subsequent demand for more space exploration ensured that VOIR would be given another chance, however, and development was quickly approved in the 1983 budget.
By this time, VOIR had gone through several rounds of redesign to reduce costs, consistently fingered as the number one problem with the concept. The scientific suite had been pared back to just the radar imager, the radar altimeter, and the gravitimetric experiments, while as many instruments and components as possible were spares from previous or ongoing missions. So many parts were leftovers from other missions, in fact, that VOIR earned the joking title "The Flying Scrapheap," not only from others in the laboratory but even from the project team itself. Nevertheless, the probe was ready to fly by the expected 1988 Venus launch window, and it duly departed for the planet atop a Delta 4000 during March. Its transit towards Venus proved uneventful, and it settled into orbit around the planet only a few months later. Several more months were consumed in slowly lowering and circularizing the orbit, as well as trimming it into the proper polar plane. Once these orbital maneuvers were complete, data collection could finally begin. And what a collection it would be! A constant stream of data raced back from the orbiter to Earth, coalescing on powerful computers into detailed maps of the surface, revealing previously invisible features of all sizes. Besides mere imagery, a topographic map could be compiled from the data returned by the radar altimeter and stereo images created by the main radar, allowing not just flat maps but a three-dimensional visualization. Finally, very precise tracking of the carrier wave used by the communications signal allowed tracing out tiny fluctuations in the Cytherean gravitational field that could reveal the presence of subsurface features otherwise invisible, such as masses of magma. In short, VOIR was rapidly returning more data about Venus' surface than existed about Earth's, swaddled beneath near-global oceans of opaque seawater, and nearly as much about its near-surface interior. The resulting massive data sets would occupy scientists for years as they intensively studied it to unlock the secrets of the Cytherean interior.
The mere presence of NASA did not mean that the Soviets had given up on Venus, however, nor was VOIR was the last word in Cytherean exploration. Instead, they had merely taken a brief hiatus, before launching their final and most ambitious Venus exploration project: DZhVs, an abbreviation for "Long-term Surface Station". Intended to survive for the incredible duration of 30 days on the surface, work on DZhVs had been underway since the mid-1970s as the only practical way to achieve seismometry on Venus, given the alternative of deploying explosives to the planet. Advancements in high-temperature electronics for drilling, highly insulative materials such as aerogel, and high-capacity heat sinks made such a mission seem practical, though not easy. Due to this difficulty, the Soviets chose not to simply leap to their goal, jumping straight from the one to two hours of previous probes to a duration over 600 times as great. Instead, they would proceed by steps; first, a one-day probe to prove many of the basic techniques and technologies, then a 14-day probe to requalify them for an even longer duration, and finally the full 30-day probe, beneficiary of several more years of technological development and refinement. By late 1985, engineers and scientists at Lavochkin were confident that the DZhVs-1 was ready, and Venera 14 and 15 leapt towards Venus aboard Vulkan rockets late in 1986. The new 6MV bus design on both probes performed exactly as its designers desired, and both probes successfully landed later that year. For the first hour and a half, as their busses remained above the horizons and could serve as data relays, they intensively explored their surroundings, taking the first color photographs of Venus and carrying out several chemical and material analyses of the surrounding surface. After the relay link broke, however, the probes switched to their limited high-temperature instrument suites, beaming the resulting data directly back to Earth. Venera 14 continued to operate in this fashion for over 12 hours before collapsing to the heat, while Venera 15 did so for an astonishing 28 hours, shattering previous Soviet surface survival records. Among other things, data collected during the extended phase definitively proved the existence of "Venusquakes," validating the underlying reason for the DZhVs development. Unfortunately, this proved to be the last gasp of the Soviet Venus exploration program. While technically amazing, political and economic events far outside of the scope of planetary exploration would prove its downfall, with the DZhVs-14 missions first postponed twice, then canceled with the hardware over three-quarters complete. While the newly formed Russian Federation and the Confederation of Independent States attempted to find outside funding for the mission, other countries were either uninterested in Venus exploration, unable to believe the probes would work, or unwilling to put up the tens of millions of dollars that would be needed to complete and launch them. The hardware for Venera 17 and 18 slowly rotted away at Lavochkin, preoccupied with international (and therefore funded) projects over ambitious but unfunded dreams.
[1]: This is a somewhat obsolete semi-poetic term filling the same role as the (now) more common Venusian. Its use here is purely a matter of personal preference.
Venus. And no! I'm not referring to that Bananarama song. I refer to the "Evil" Twin of Earth - obviously.
Even in OTL, the USSR had far more success with the probes they sent to this planet than Mars. being that they were the only ones to get a surface probe to land there at all IOTL - and ITTL - to date.
It would appear that they're gaining far more experience here, while the Vulkan Panic sends NASA back earlier, allowing them to get all there own info far earlier than IOTL. Nothing like a good enemy to get yourself moving, huh?
And the use of the floating balloon for Venus. Looks to me like nearly all the Venus-Firsts came from just the one Nation. Providing information of the conditions of the upper cloud regions where the temperatures and pressures are a lot more Earth-like - that is, 1 Bar and 0 degrees C.
Though IIRC, early probes had trouble getting to the surface before their batteries ran dry, never mind the temperatures and pressures crushing and melting them. Since the surface pressure on Venus is such that you have to cut loose any and all parachute braking systems to accelerate the descent back up to a few MPH.
Amazing, what you can do when you don't have a 105-123 Tonne Taxi sucking up to 50% of your funding. I'm looking at you, Columbia, Atlantis, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour, and Buran.
Would I be correct in the conclusion that you arrived at the discovery of Venus-Quakes ITTL on account of the info that exists IOTL on top of some educated guesswork?
Even in OTL, the USSR had far more success with the probes they sent to this planet than Mars. being that they were the only ones to get a surface probe to land there at all IOTL - and ITTL - to date.
It would appear that they're gaining far more experience here, while the Vulkan Panic sends NASA back earlier, allowing them to get all there own info far earlier than IOTL. Nothing like a good enemy to get yourself moving, huh?
And the use of the floating balloon for Venus. Looks to me like nearly all the Venus-Firsts came from just the one Nation. Providing information of the conditions of the upper cloud regions where the temperatures and pressures are a lot more Earth-like - that is, 1 Bar and 0 degrees C.
Though IIRC, early probes had trouble getting to the surface before their batteries ran dry, never mind the temperatures and pressures crushing and melting them. Since the surface pressure on Venus is such that you have to cut loose any and all parachute braking systems to accelerate the descent back up to a few MPH.
Amazing, what you can do when you don't have a 105-123 Tonne Taxi sucking up to 50% of your funding. I'm looking at you, Columbia, Atlantis, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour, and Buran.
Would I be correct in the conclusion that you arrived at the discovery of Venus-Quakes ITTL on account of the info that exists IOTL on top of some educated guesswork?
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