Eyes Turned Skywards

[e of pi]

Depending on your timezone, it may or may not be Wednesday, but I figured I'd make up for missing the last two weeks by posting a little early. This is sort of half of a two-part post, originally they were to be seperate but to partly make up for the slips, I'm going to finish that second part and post it as well later in the week. This first half lays out the history and goals of the ELVRP II, the other details the hardware that was submitted and the decision that was made.

Eyes Turned Skyward, Post #21

By the time the Delta 4000 made its first flight in 1980 from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 40, the ELVRP was more than its name indicated; it was nothing less than a whole-scale replacement of the way space launch, at least in the US military, was to be thought of and used. The Delta 4000 program had itself become just a small, if important, part of a vast project. In 1981, the entire project was about to become even vaster, as Ronald Reagan began the Strategic Defense Initiative program, popularly known as "Star Wars", which envisioned providing a massive shield against nuclear weapons for the US and her allies. Thus, ELVRP capabilities (in the sense of a standardized and flexible launch vehicle) would be needed more than ever, both for the vast constellation of satellites that would detect and manage the battle against Soviet nuclear warheads, and the planned fleet of space-based weapons to destroy them. There was just one catch: The ELVRP vehicles would not actually be able to launch some of those satellites. The large chemical laser satellites, in particular, were too heavy and too large for the maximum configuration of the Delta 4000 to accommodate, necessitating additional vehicle designs. For the future, the military would require a true heavy-lift vehicle. This, naturally, drew the attention of NASA even in the early planning stages.

Almost since it had been introduced, NASA had been searching for a vehicle to replace or augment the Saturn IC. On paper a terrific rocket, with relatively low cost and high payload, in practice it had a number of (admittedly minor) flaws. It had simply proved more expensive and more problematic than planned. Many in the agency, moreover, felt that the road not taken of a "space shuttle" capable of repeatedly flying back and forth to space, needing only a little maintenance between each mission, was far superior to the practice of throwing the booster away after each flight. However, NASA's replacement programs had always foundered on the issue of cost. It would cost billions of dollars to develop a replacement vehicle, and Congress simply would not shell out the money with the brand-new (relatively speaking) Saturn IC being produced. In this environment, the ELVRP offered an opportunity NASA simply could not pass up, especially with several companies proposing to build heavy-lift variants capable of lifting between 20 and 60 tons to LEO. Given the completion of the basic Spacelab goals and the never-quite-buried desire of NASA to return to its glory days of flying to the Moon, having a military-subsidized launch vehicle that could easily launch space station components for the post-Spacelab station which was in early definitional stages or even perhaps a Moon mission was a godsend. Naturally, NASA pushed to become a member of the ELVRP II program.

Just as naturally, the Air Force and NRO pushed back. The entire concept of the program, after all, was to reduce launch costs and increase launch rates. Man-rated vehicles tended to be more expensive and have less performance than non-man-rated vehicles, and NASA would require man-rating for a Saturn IC replacement. Further, NASA tended to be viewed negatively at the Air Force, full of pointy-headed scientists with little ability to manage projects effectively (ignoring both the many successful NASA projects, sometimes born out of the most highly-pointed NASA labs, and the many failed Air Force ones), and both organizations feared possibly significant impacts to their launch schedules (especially with the many expected SDI payloads) due to NASA demand for launchers. Nevertheless, advocacy by supporters (including so-called “space state” congressmen and groups like the NSO and the Selene Group) that NASA must have access to any new heavy lifter (not to mention the additional dollars and missions that NASA could bring to the table) slowly won out. In 1981, they were added to the program as an (admittedly junior) partner. NASA would, indeed, be allowed to procure the final vehicle, and to work with the Air Force on the requirements (including those of man-rating). However, these oversight abilities were limited, and this would play a role in the final vehicle selection.

 

[Brainbin]

Salutations, everyone! I am the Brainbin, and I'm the author of That Wacky Redhead, a timeline which e of pi has most generously plugged here on a number of occasions. To make a long story short, the subject matter of my TL inspired e of pi to contact me just over one month ago, and invite me to collaborate on this one. I was both flattered and tickled by the offer, and our continued discussions eventually resulted in this update (among other things). Consider it a look at the reality of TTL from a slightly different perspective. I consider it an honour to be affiliated with this timeline so, without further ado, allow me to present...

Eyes Turned Skyward, Interlude #1

The many successes of the space program naturally created a hunger in American audiences for entertainment that used the vast reaches of outer space as a setting, and as a backdrop for adventure. Hollywood producers attempted to feed this hunger with a wide array of television series, films, comic books, literature… all with mixed results.

Surprisingly, it was those works that predated the moon landings, and the further exploits of NASA, which seemed to resonate most strongly with people. 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968, was dismissed at the time as a slow, ponderous, and meaningless empty shell of special effects; however, the counter-culture had rediscovered the movie in the early 1970s and duly turned it into the epic drug trip. And in the intervening years, it was also beginning to accrue some serious critical appreciation.

Still, no other work of science fiction had captured the popular consciousness quite like Star Trek. An action-adventure-oriented program which nonetheless explored moral dilemmas through the use of allegory, the program ran for three seasons in the late 1960s, to low ratings. However, despite being a bottom-dweller in terms of overall viewers, it was one of the top-rated shows on the air in terms of valuable demographics – those viewers who were young, urban, educated, and affluent. Word-of-mouth was also superb, and it was this combination of factors that gave the show legs after its inevitable cancellation.

Star Trek became known as “the show that wouldn’t die”, as it took off in syndication despite having only produced and aired 79 episodes; the minimum standard was generally an even 100, so that episodes could be “stripped” (aired five times a week, once per weekday) and placed in a re-run cycle that prevented viewers from getting bored (20 weeks, or just under five full cycles in two years). But audiences seemed to have an insatiable appetite for Star Trek, with the appeal of the show proving surprisingly simple to elucidate: the warm, appealing characters, and the terrific chemistry among the actors portraying them; the clever, eminently quotable dialogue, which transcended the uneven plotting and repetitive storylines; and, perhaps most importantly, the optimistic tone, which promised a future free of not only disease and poverty, but one of racial harmony and a desire to solve problems peacefully.

The demand for new Star Trek only seemed to grow stronger, louder, and more urgent with time. The easiest and cheapest solution was a cartoon, produced by the notoriously shoddy and slapdash animation studio, Filmation. Star Trek (the animated series) began airing on NBC in 1973 – that network had been the very same one to run the original series, and cancel it in 1969, but their contrition was palpable… as were their declining ratings. But even so, the new show was relegated to a Saturday morning timeslot, and production was limited to 22 episodes at any rate; despite the surprisingly high quality relative to other programs in the same timeslot and medium, the animated series would ultimately function as nothing more than a quick fix. Audiences wanted their beloved characters, and their beloved ship, the USS Enterprise, back in the flesh. But by late 1974, as the first run of the animated series came to a close, new opportunities began to unveil themselves…

Ever since Lucille Ball had sold her production company, Desilu, to mogul Charles Bluhdorn in 1967, Star Trek had been the property of Paramount Television, a subsidiary of his conglomerate, Gulf+Western. Those in charge of Paramount were ambivalent about the success of the property, but as sure as money talks, they eventually began seeing dollar signs. Ideas for developing another Star Trek project were tabled as early as 1974, and in the end it was the space program that helped get new Star Trek off the ground. The Skylab missions were taking place at around this time, and the idea of making great discoveries in outer space couldn’t help but remind people of boldly going where no man has gone before. Initial discussions about making a full-length motion picture featuring the crew of the Enterprise – and possibly filmed in Britain with local technicians to save money – quickly foundered; it became clear that Star Trek would have to return in the familiar, hour-long, weekly format. [1] The form that the vehicle for its grand return would take, on the other hand, was still another question entirely…

Since the final collapse of the DuMont network in 1956, there had only been three commercial networks on the air in the United States: ABC, NBC, and CBS. Various outfits had attempted to launch the fabled “fourth network” over the years, but in all cases, even the grandest of these plans ultimately went nowhere. But that wasn’t enough to warn Paramount – which had the backing of a mega-conglomerate in Gulf+Western – away from throwing their own hat into the ring. When newly-promoted executive Barry Diller suggested the enterprise, Bluhdorn was willing to back the venture – but then, he had also been willing to buy Desilu, only learning after the fact how very expensive their productions were. And once again, Charlie was letting big ideas come before the bottom line.

Plans to develop what became known as the Paramount Television Service, or PMTS, endured for nearly two years, and it was quickly decided that a new Star Trek series would headline this hypothetical new network. Creator Gene Roddenberry, who had attempted to sell several other story ideas, but never got any further than a pilot movie, was brought back as showrunner. Fellow Star Trek scribes David Gerrold, John Meredyth Lucas, and D.C. Fontana, as well as producer and close Roddenberry confidant Robert H. Justman, all came on board to assist with development. As for the original cast, many of them had been profoundly typecast by the original series and were unable to branch out into other work – at least, nothing respectable. The sole exception was Leonard Nimoy, who had played breakout character Mr. Spock, and it was he who was the lone holdout against returning. Executives figured that this was merely a negotiating ploy; but to their surprise, he seemed to mean it – with his objections culminating in his 1975 autobiography, infamously entitled I Am Not Spock. From that point forward, it became clear that Nimoy would not be returning to the series – at least, not in any regular capacity.

Plans to launch PMTS continued apace, even in the face of a global recession, until sanity finally prevailed in early 1976. Plans for a new Star Trek series – tentatively titled Phase II – would continue, with Paramount deciding that perhaps selling the series into first-run syndication would be the ticket. Preliminary negotiations to do just that began in earnest shortly thereafter. By this time, the sets had been designed, the scripts had been written, and casting was underway. Many millions of dollars had already been sunk into this venture, and Bluhdorn was becoming anxious for some kind of return on his investment. To everyone’s surprise, the continuing exploits of NASA were what provided the catalyst…

The Viking 1 probe landed on Mars on that most patriotic of days: July 4, 1976, the bicentennial of American independence; and that was only the crowning achievement of a wide variety of public outreach efforts by NASA, which also included a live press conference held by the crew of Skylab 5. Images of the Martian landscape were transmitted over the next few days, and they immediately enraptured the world. To top the whole thing off, more than a few people noticed the eerie similarity to the surface of the planet Vulcan, as depicted in Star Trek. This massive surge of enthusiasm by the general public was enough to incite the executives at NBC – now the #3 network behind both the established CBS and the surging ABC – to contact Paramount, and offer both their money and a plum timeslot for the very same property that the old guard had so callously cast aside a mere seven years before. Primetime on a network sure beat off-hours on some unreachable UHF station, so Paramount acquiesced.

Star Trek: The New Voyages began airing on September 21, 1977 – a Wednesday – at 9:00 PM. [2] Plans to air the two-part season premiere, entitled “In Thy Image”, as a TV movie were scuttled by Bluhdorn himself; he knew that a full series pickup would then become conditional on this hypothetical telefilm’s ratings. He insisted on a full-season order, and NBC was desperate enough to accept his terms. (By this time, rumours of a network picking up the long-in-development series had leaked out into the trade papers, and from there into the gossip columns. And then the letters started coming in to Rockefeller Center by the truckload…)

In addition to virtually all of the old regulars, many of whom had been promoted (with James T. Kirk being offered a flag position, but declining so that he could remain in command of the Enterprise), three new regulars, all of whom were younger than the original cast (by now in their forties and fifties), were added: Executive Officer Willard Decker, the son of Commodore Matt Decker from the classic episode “The Doomsday Machine”; [3] Ilia, the new Navigator (Chekov had been transferred over to Security), and a Deltan who had peculiar sexual and empathic abilities; and Xon, the new Science Officer, replacing (as best he could) the absent character of Mr. Spock. Leonard Nimoy held firm in his refusal to return as a regular, but he did agree to appear on an infrequent basis; Spock was now seeking spiritual enlightenment on Vulcan, having left Starfleet after the completion of the original five-year mission. Without question, his absence was a powerful blow to the chemistry and camaraderie of the crew, and it was keenly felt on the set, and by the viewers at home.

In terms of plot, “In Thy Image” was very similar to the original series episode “The Changeling”. [4] A mysterious anomaly, apparently gifted with sentience, is en route to Earth, seeking its origins. Wreaking great havoc in its wake, this entity, which calls itself Veejur, is soon discovered to have originated as the Voyager XVIII space probe, launched from Earth as the last testament of a planet on the verge of a potentially apocalyptic conflict (whether this conflict is World War III, or the previously-mentioned Eugenics Wars, is never made entirely clear). Another memorable two-part episode from the first season was “Kitumba”, written by Lucas; it served as the first in-depth exploration of the society of those most enduring Star Trek enemies, the Klingons.

The storyline called for the Enterprise to have been refit, but the new exterior design was surprisingly conservative and highly reminiscent of the original. The interiors, however, were radically different: the style was more naturalistic and understated, in contrast to the garish colour schemes of the 1960s (which were, of course, intended to show off the then-new technology of colour television). Sickbay, engineering, and the recreation room all saw major overhauls. The iconic bridge set, however, was kept mostly intact… save for the connection to the new “Ready Room” set, which had been championed by Robert Justman, drawing on his own experiences in the U.S. Navy. [5] It functioned as an “office” for the Captain, away from the “front-line” atmosphere on the bridge. Though infrequently used at first, given Kirk’s zeal for directly commanding his crew and especially his beloved ship, the set eventually became the go-to location for one-on-one conversations between Kirk and his various advisors… away from the many eavesdropping bridge officers. This new set was also emblematic of the increased creature comforts on the refit Enterprise.

On the whole, the visual effects were excellent, and certainly put those of the original series to shame; but the stories were – with a few exceptions – considered about on par in terms of quality. The social commentary was mostly along the same lines – but what had been daring and bold for 1966 was already surprisingly mainstream in 1977; perhaps this was good news for society in general, but not for a show with such a trailblazing, progressive reputation. Critical opinion, though generally positive, hardly viewed The New Voyages as revolutionary or pioneering, in the same way that the original series had been.

Ratings, on the other hand, were gangbusters. The many loyal devotees, also known as “Trekkies”, watched the show in droves. More casual fans, along with curious onlookers, also decided to give the new Star Trek a chance; surprisingly, most of them returned the following week, and the week after that. Part of this was due to the serendipitous timing: Star Wars, released that summer, was the toast of Hollywood, and had rapidly become the highest-grossing film of all time. The hunger for more science-fiction and the hunger for more Star Trek, when taken together, seemed to have a geometric effect. The success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind made this even more apparent. The frequent breakthroughs in real-life space exploration were the icing on the cake, and indeed, the irresistible opportunity for the intrepid space explorers of both fact and fiction to come together resulted in many memorable photo opportunities which bolstered both sides during the show’s second season.

Perhaps the most famous of these was the attendance of most of the cast and crew at the launch of Spacelab 1, the station being sent into orbit on the very last of the Saturn V rockets (and, a few hours later, the launch of Spacelab 2, which held the crew that would man said station, on the first manned Saturn 1-C), in April of 1978, shortly after filming had wrapped on the show’s first season. Roddenberry himself was among those present, and was apparently tickled when one of the astronauts allegedly referred to him by his famous nickname, “The Great Bird of the Galaxy”. The crew of the Enterprise also interacted extensively with the crew at NASA throughout the planning stages of the Spacelab 4 mission, which launched in November of that same year; James “Scotty” Doohan made surprisingly frequent personal appearances in Houston: he visited a training mockup of the orbital station, the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, and, most importantly, Mission Control; he even joked that “on our show, Mission Control is on the ship.” In addition to Doohan’s many exploits, the run-up to the mission also saw the famous “Meeting of the Doctors”: DeForest “Dr. McCoy” Kelley personally met with Dr. William Thornston, an astronaut who would fly aboard Spacelab 4, and who in doing so would become the first M.D. in space. [6] In return, two astronauts, both of whom were from the new Astronaut Group 8, recruited in 1977, appeared on The New Voyages during its second season. Don Hunt, a pilot, was fittingly seen at the Helm in one episode, accepting the order by Captain Kirk to proceed at warp speed just before the end credits rolled. Peggy Barnes, a flight scientist, appeared with Scotty in Engineering, delivering a progress report to her superior officer. Both Hunt and Barnes were affirmed “Trekkies”, having watched the original series in their youth.

Despite the ratings success of the first two seasons of The New Voyages, both NBC and Paramount had many problems with the way that the show was being run. After the eight years that Star Trek had been off the air and despite his utter lack of success in that interim, Roddenberry seemed to be letting the legacy of the original series go to his head. The ideological bent of Star Trek was beginning to take on a dogmatic significance to him, and his difficult personality made him few friends among the higher-ups. He had wisely surrounded himself with his loyal acolytes, but this insulation tactic could only do so much. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the problem of budget overruns, and continuing delays in the production of new episodes. NBC was in no mood to cancel the program; it was still the top-rated show on the network, ahead of “Little House on the Prairie” and “CHiPs”, among their few other successes. It was eventually decided that Roddenberry would have to be quietly replaced, or, at the very least, installed into a cozy sinecure. And Paramount had just the right man lined up for the job…

Harve Bennett was an experienced television producer, and had worked on several genre programs (including the smash hit “The Six Million Dollar Man” and its spinoff “The Bionic Woman”) during his tenure with Universal Television. Only recently hired by Paramount, he was deemed the best possible candidate to take the reins of The New Voyages. He accepted the position, though like Fred Freiberger before him, he did not do so without facing considerable backlash. Roddenberry, eleven years before, had cast Star Trek aside for the sake of his ego; this time, Star Trek was casting him aside, and said ego did not take this well. He was given two new titles: Consulting Producer and Executive Creative Consultant [7]; neither of these yielded anywhere close to the influence held by his vacated position of Executive Producer. Justman, the Supervising Producer and Roddenberry’s closest ally, ended his involvement with the show in support of his friend – though publicly, his true motive was never revealed. [8] Fontana, Gerrold, and Lucas, on the other hand, all continued their involvement with The New Voyages throughout the remainder of its run.

The most memorable episode of the third season, marking the beginning of Bennett’s tenure as showrunner, was “Space Spores”. A sequel to the original series episode “Space Seed”, it resulted from Bennett’s exhaustive review of the original 79 episodes, culminating in its selection as the prime candidate for a sequel: it was open-ended, and it contained a captivating performance by Ricardo Montalban as Khan Noonien Singh, a genetic superman from a bygone age, flung centuries into the future. By this time, Montalban was starring as the enigmatic Mr. Roarke on the escapist anthology series, “Fantasy Island”. Luckily, and thanks to Bennett’s connections with series producer Aaron Spelling, all parties were able to come together and rearrange Montalban’s schedule so that he could return. In the interim, he studied his original performance as Khan from “Space Seed”, in hopes of recapturing its essence. Also returning was Madlyn Rhue, as Khan’s wife, the former Starfleet Lt. Marla McGivers. Rhue was in the early stages of multiple sclerosis, but she still had (limited) mobility, and with the help of creative camera angles, and plenty of surfaces and supports for her to lean on, they were able to disguise this fact within the episode proper. [9] The plot of the episode entailed outlying Federation outposts being attacked by an unknown enemy; the Enterprise, sent to investigate, tracks the raiders back to their planet of origin: Ceti Alpha V! It turns out that Khan and his followers, gifted with superhuman strength, intelligence, and ambition, have devoted all their efforts not to subduing their planet, but the universe; and already have a working aerospace industry to show for it. Khan invites Kirk to his ship, the two meeting face-to-face for the first time in several years. [10] Though Khan is a brilliant tactician, he lacks Kirk’s superior strategic mind, and is ultimately bested. Khan, growing tired of the “impure” and “diluted” Humans of the modern Federation (a nod to Roddenberry’s ideas of the post-modern human, and an ironic contrast to the notion of Khan and his followers as Homo Superior), decides to lead his followers deep into unexplored space, to find their own destiny, promising that one day he shall return.

For the most part, Bennett’s five-season run on the show was considered superior to Roddenberry’s tenure, though this was a hotly contested issue among the Star Trek fandom. Viewership numbers, though they remained solid throughout the show’s run, were never quite as high as they had been in the late 1970s, and after seven seasons, it was decided to bring the show to an end in 1984. By this time, NBC had staged a remarkable recovery, and The New Voyages was only becoming more and more expensive; even the frugal cost-cutting measures enacted by Bennett could only postpone the inevitable. NBC no longer needed Star Trek, and the sure bet of income headed Paramount’s way from selling their 154 episodes of The New Voyages into syndication was enough to hold them off from challenging the network. Even into the 1980s, the original series continued to be one of the most widely-syndicated programs on television; another Star Trek, with double the episode count of the first, was already beyond their wildest dreams in that regard.

So ended the run of Star Trek: The New Voyages. Attempts following the end of the series to spin the franchise off into movie instalments ultimately went nowhere, but the legacy of Star Trek continued to make its presence known in all fields of science and technology, in the annals of popular culture, and, most importantly, in its continuing influence on, and relationship with, the space program…

---

[1] This initial movie plan was indeed green-lit and became known as Planet of the Titans; it was abandoned and development on Phase II commenced shortly thereafter. Here it’s decided to get started with a TV series right away; this gives them a lot more time to beat the clock (that clock being the twin releases of Star Wars and then Close Encounters, which will undoubtedly convince the executives to go ahead with a movie release instead).

[2] Airing in this timeslot IOTL was a Western, of all things, called “The Oregon Trail” (not to be confused with the legendary edutainment game of the same name).

[3] This was mentioned in multiple sources but was never made explicitly clear IOTL in “canon” (i.e. the movie itself). ITTL, it is firmly established that he is living in the shadow of his “failed” father within the first few episodes, setting up the inevitable “return” of the Planet Killers (yes, that’s a plural) during the Bennett years.

[4] And to OTL Star Trek: the Motion Picture, of course.

[5] Justman championed this idea for the development of TNG; as he was not involved with the development of Phase II IOTL, the Captain’s Quarters doubled as a prototype ready room (as seen throughout the movies).

[6] These events happen largely in place of the legendary Space Shuttle Enterprise developments in 1976 IOTL.

[7] IOTL, Roddenberry was given the title of “Executive Consultant” in the wake of The Motion Picture. As ITTL, Bennett held all of the creative control, and Roddenberry’s influence was limited to a few completely ignored suggestions.

[8] This is the same reason that Justman left The Next Generation IOTL, as Roddenberry’s creative control weakened after repeated struggles with Paramount, and in particular their key lieutenant, Rick Berman. Publicly, he claimed no ulterior motive beyond retirement.

[9] Rhue, confined to a wheelchair by the early 1980s, was not brought back for The Wrath of Khan IOTL. In respect for her, Bennett did not recast the role. Obviously, her condition could easily be accommodated for by the plot of the movie, but perhaps those involved decided that it would be too “on the nose”. Rhue continued to act, despite her condition; as did her onscreen spouse, Montalban, who was also confined to a wheelchair in his later years.

[10] Famously, this did not happen in TWOK. And no, the number of years is never explicitly identified, though fandom estimates put it at seven (as opposed to the fifteen of OTL).

 

[e of pi]

All right! It's that time again to pop in and let you know that once again, work has somehow interfered with posting a new update on the usual Wednesday timeslot. However, this week it's good(ish) news for you! To avoid having to post this after I get off work, and thus rather late tomorrow, it's going up now, so it's early instead of late. Hope you all don't mind too much.
Eyes Turned Skyward Post #22:

NASA’s addition to the ELVRP II contract process only heightened the stakes of what was already a very competitive game. Many companies had put in contracts for ELVRP II, fearing that with Delta 4000 already slated to take care of a substantial portion of the military launch market and the ELVRP II now intended to fill almost all of the rest, a loss in the ELVRP II bidding could result in getting shut out of the only game in town. McDonnell Douglas was a notable exception, as the Delta 4000 program was consuming most of the company’s attention. In addition, already having won ELVRP I made winning ELVRP II less do-or-die, and thus they were less concerned with winning ELVRP II than with securing what they already had. Of the rest, two bids in particular stood out from the rest of the pack; Martin-Marietta and Boeing had put forward concepts that attracted significant DoD and NASA attention, building on history, lessons learned from ELVRP I, and the latest thinking in launch vehicle design.

Martin-Marietta had been hurt in ELVRP I by seeming to lack an understanding of the flexibility the Air Force wanted. Their ELVRP II proposal, drawing on a 1965 proposals for Titan III successor called the Titan 3L, gave the Air Force as many options as Martin’s engineers could dream up. The original 1965 plan had called for an enlarged 15-foot core stage, powered by four of the same LR-87 engines that powered the Titan III, combined with either two or four 7-segment solid rocket boosters. This gave the original concept the option of delivering either 35 or 45 tons to a 185 km orbit. In the revised ELVRP II version, Martin’s engineers went a step further, calling for the vehicle to be designed to also accept Titan III-derived 5-segment boosters, with two dummy segments to allow them to swap out in pairs for the 7-segment boosters. This allowed for a total of five configurations. By mixing and matching one or two pairs of solid rocket boosters, the same core could launch 18, 24, 35, 40, or 45 tons to a 185 km circular orbit.

Martin Marietta Titan-derived ELVRP II Proposal
​

Boeing, having been burned in ELVRP I with the clean-sheet nature of their Neptune proposal, drew upon their experience with Saturn 1C, as well as past studies on improving the Saturn 1B and the work of engineers of the ESA. Boeing proposed its initial design as a re-working of a Saturn evolution concept studied by Chrysler during studies in the heyday of the Apollo Applications Program, the INT-11. This proposed a 20-ft stretch of the Saturn 1B first stage and modifications to allow two pairs of Titan 7-segment solids to be attached. Boeing combined this concept with one of the concepts the ESA had considered for the Europa 3, which proposed redesigning the Blue Streak first stage to be able to hold two additional first stages as boosters, potentially giving nearly triple the capability while distributing construction costs across a greater number of common cores. Synthesizing these with the available Saturn 1C core, Boeing proposed to meet ELVRP II’s requirements of a 20-45 ton capacity by giving the Saturn 1C first stage a similar 20 ft stretch as the proposed INT-11, but with the capability to launch with 0, 2, or 4 Titan 7-segment solids, offering capabilities from 26 to 48 metric tons to orbit. Additionally, the ability to go for a triple-body “heavy” combined with a stretched SIVB-based third stage would offer a maximum payload of 77 tons—far beyond that of the Marietta proposal, and more than sufficient even for future stations using modules the size of Skylab or Spacelab. To emphasize the tremendous variability and versatility of their design, Boeing called their proposal Saturn Multibody.

Saturn 1C and Boeing's ELVRP II proposal, Saturn Multibody​

Each of these proposals offered advantages. The Boeing multicore rocket offered far greater maximum payload size than the Martin proposal, exceeding the requirements by more than 30%. It also used cleaner core-stage fuels (kerosene and liquid oxygen) as opposed to the toxic hypergolics characteristic of the Titan family. Additionally, much of the tooling created for Saturn 1C could be reused, reducing development time and cost. The Martin Titan-derived proposal could not offer this. However, the DoD felt greater (and perhaps misplaced) confidence in the Titan designers ability to meet schedule and cost goals, and Boeing’s additional development work for what they considered an unnecessary payload range (70+ tons) was initially a hard sell.

In the end, the decision came down to two factors. The first was the political game between the Air Force and NASA. NASA had an overall positive experience working with Boeing on the Saturn 1C, and the Boeing ELVRP proposal had advantages in payload and man-rating potential with its less-toxic fuels and use of already man-rated F1 engines. However, the Air Force had a long history with Martin and the Titan family, and for their purposes the greater flexibility of Martin’s design over their range of interest (20-45 tons) initially more than made up for its lower maximum payload mass, since there were few planned missions likely to use this upper limit in Air Force manifests. However, in the end, the Air Force changed its mind in a rapid turnaround. The reasons were heavily classified at the time, but what would emerge in time was that the United Sates was not the only nation developing new vehicles. Intelligence images from the Kazakh SSR showed that Soviet scientists were producing a rocket whose capability would exceed that of the Titan-derived Marietta proposal. Suddenly, the greater top range of the Boeing “Saturn Multibody” went from a useless luxury to a potential strategic necessity—whatever use the Soviets were planning for their large booster, the Americans wanted to be able to match.

Unaware of the precise reasons for the DoD’s change of heart but unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth, NASA began work to adapt their studies for a potential Spacelab follow-up station for the late 80s to the greater capability of the Saturn Multibody. However, within two years, Soviet announcements would force these plans to the forefront and kick the second space race into high gear.

 

[e of pi]

All right everyone. Thank you all for bearing with me on the delays to getting this and past posts up. I hope you'll all enjoy reading this as much as I've enjoyed working on it. This thread will shortly pass 25,000 views--it may already have done so by the time you read it, and I have no doubt that the discussion on this (which I expect to be...brisk) will also push us over 400 views. Even without that, we're already in the top-100 for all-time number of responses in the post-1900 forum (I believe the only spaceflight-focused TL currently in that list based on my scanning of it). The interest and response this has generated and continues to generate amazes me. Thank you all for continuing to drop by and read this, even with things like the three-week delay on the ELVRP II post. Anyway, that's about enough blather from me. Without further ado, I give you the long-anticipated Soviet Union update.

Eyes Turned Skyward, Post #23

By the end of 1972, the leadership of the Soviet Union had had enough of Vasiliy Mishin. While the Soviet Union had suffered through four consecutive failures of the N-1 moon rocket, the death of four cosmonauts in botched Soyuz flights, many failures of the Proton launch system, and, to top it off, the launch failure of DOS-2 (the replacement for Salyut 1) in the middle of the year, the United States had landed 12 men on the Moon, sent probes to Mars and Jupiter (though admittedly, Pioneer 10 hadn't actually reached Jupiter yet), and was charging ahead on its own space station program. The Soviet space program was clearly tottering under a vast problem of mismanagement and shoddy execution, and Mishin--the head of OKB-1 and heir to Korolev--was at the center of it. In an event Western historians writing in the '90s called "the silent coup," Mishin was ousted by the Soviet Ministry of General Machine Building (that is, the organization in charge of building ICBMs) and the Ministry of Defense (together in charge of the Soviet space program), and replaced by his and Korolev's rival during most of the 1960s, Valentin Glushko, then head of DB Energomash (formerly OKB-456). Glushko moved quickly to consolidate his position, merging Energomash and OKB-1 into a single, new organization, NPO Energia.

Almost immediately, the troubled N-1 program was canceled, although Glushko had no intention of letting the idea of heavy-lift stay dormant for long. He quickly began suggesting to the Ministry of Defense that his new, combined design bureau could design an entire suite of vehicles, called the RLA (Rocket Flight Apparatus), capable not only of heavy-lift but also of replacing the Soyuz and the troubled Proton using safe, clean kerolox (an important consideration following a major Proton launch failure in 1969 that nearly killed a large fraction of Soviet space management from toxic fumes). Furthermore, he could design engines that would match the American F-1 in performance, including thrust. Given that the Americans were on the verge of retiring the Saturn V, the Soviet Union could once again seize the propaganda high ground through this plan, possibly including flights to the Moon, giant space stations far exceeding the wildest dreams of Skylab or Spacelab designers, or even Mars flights, while at the same time cutting its overall launch costs. He also pointed out that his combined enterprise, responsible for tens of thousands of jobs, was severely underutilized; starting a new program would give his engineers and line workers something to do.

The military-space bureaucracy found these arguments persuasive, especially given Glushko's extensive contacts within it, but was skeptical of some of the details. For example, Glushko proposed developing an enormous 12.7 meganewton engine (for comparison, the workhorse F-1A provides a thrust of just 8.9 meganewtons) to serve as the first stage motor of the basic class of booster, with cut down versions (as it was a four-chamber design, similar to the engines used on all R-7 rockets since 1957) serving both as upper-stage engines and to boost smaller boosters. He claimed that he could finish the engine in 5-7 years, a timeframe the other designers considered incredible given the demanding technical specifications of the engine, his own previous unwillingness to work on large kerolox engines, and the sheer size of the engine. Similarly, the basic booster would be capable of lifting 30 tons into a sun-synchronous orbit, a 50% increase over the maximum payload Proton could launch into any orbit, and a capability that seemed superfluous and unnecessary to other designers and officials. Furthermore, interest in missions to the Moon or Mars was waning as the '70s went on; while they could serve as propaganda coups, they would be very expensive for such a gain and offered little practical value. Besides, the Americans were focusing on space stations, indicating at least what they thought was most important. That was certainly an area in which the Soviet Union could compete and development of which would in any case be necessary for long-duration Moon or Mars flights to be possible.

In the end, what emerged from Glushko's original proposal and the bureaucratic response was Vulkan. This would comprise a family of rockets that could fulfill a wide range of needs for the military and the space program. The centerpiece would be a new, high-technology, closed-cycle kerolox engine, the RD-150, with 7.9 meganewtons of thrust, which would power a new design core stage, and a smaller 2.0 meganewton derivative, the RD-160, powering an upper stage. Together, this basic combination, called just "Vulkan," could launch about 21 metric tons into LEO, slightly exceeding the performance of the Proton while avoiding its significant reliability and safety problems through the use of clean kerolox rather than dangerous Unsymmetrical Dimeythal Hydrazine (UDMH) and nitrogen tetroxide. The genius of the plan lay in the next step: the core stage did not have to be used alone, but could instead be clustered to form larger boosters. 3 core stages grouped together and equipped with the new upper stage could launch over 60 tons into orbit. This combination was termed "Vulkan-Herakles", and would be used to launch modules for a larger space station planned for the 1980s, along with possible later Moon and Mars missions. The largest variant of this basic vehicle clustered 5 stages, and could be used to launch nearly 100 tons into orbit, more if provided with a better upper stage, and was aptly termed "Vulkan-Atlas". Furthermore, the one-chamber RD-160 that served as the upper-stage engine on Vulkan had to potential to itself be used as a first-stage engine for a new type of small launcher, replacing the relatively complex R-7 with something simpler and (hopefully) cheaper, while further performance upgrades might be possible with upper stages using liquid hydrogen instead of kerosene as a propellant. However, in 1974, when the program officially began, any such developments would have to wait; the priority, as dictated by the bureaucracy, was getting Vulkan itself working, and only then turning towards other new developments. Even getting the approval for design work on Vulkan-Atlas approved was troublesome, though Glushko eventually prevailed by pointing out that the additional expense in development would be small, and mostly be a matter of proper design of the launch site to avoid future difficulties if and when the Soviet space program might require such a capability.

In addition to new boosters, the Soviet Union would gain a new type of crew launch system. For several years, Vladimir Chelomei had been working in secret on an alternative to Soyuz for transporting crews and supplies to and from his Almaz military space stations, called TKS. This TKS spacecraft was much larger and more capable than Soyuz, able to transport not only three cosmonauts to orbit and back but also a considerable quantity of supplies for the maintenance of long-duration space habitats. It could also function in a totally autonomous supply transport role--something that Soyuz completely lacked--and would be capable of returning cargo to Earth in that role as well, not just cosmonauts. Furthermore, its engines could reboost space stations to ensure they didn't slip back into Earth's atmosphere, something which would otherwise require troublesome and technologically risky in-flight refueling of the station itself. The only technical disadvantage was that it was much heavier than the Soyuz, and required a rocket with the power of the Proton or the Vulkan to fly into orbit, rather than being able to rely on the cheaper R-7. Politically, however, the origin of the TKS--Chelomei's OKB-52--made it seem like a doomed project from the start. Chelomei was hated by many within the Soviet military-space bureaucracy, particularly the powerful Secretary of the Central Committee for Defense and Space, Dmitri Ustinov, and faced opposition to nearly every single one of his programs. While he could count on some support from Minister of Defense Grechko, and therefore from the Minister of General Machine Building, Sergei Afanasyev, the fight seemed hopeless before it even started. Until he got some backing from an unexpected quarter--Glushko.

The reasons for Glushko's backing of Chelomei's TKS over his own bureau's Soyuz are obscure, but a great deal of speculation has taken place in the intervening decades. What is certain is that Glushko did not come out in favor of the TKS until his own proposals for Vulkan were approved and started. Perhaps some lingering affinity for Chelomei--who had sided with him in the great 1960s debate over kerolox versus storable propellants--caused Glushko to support giving him some work even as he set about trying to eliminate Chelomei's most visible space success. Perhaps he simply did not believe the Soyuz was a sufficiently capable craft for his dream of flights to the Moon and Mars. Perhaps the small size of the Soyuz compared to his planned booster series, almost tailor-made for crewed launch, persuaded him to support a program which could both fly quickly and actually use his new boosters to their full extent. Perhaps he thought that NPO Energia was not truly capable of managing the civilian space station program, the Soyuz program, the Vulkan program, and constructing existing boosters and motors at the same time. In the end, what mattered was that he had firmly come out in favor of Chelomei's spacecraft, and the opposition had collapsed in response, paving the way for TKS development to officially begin. Thus, by 1975 the future path of the Soviet space program was obvious; Glushko would develop the new Vulkan boosters, which would be used to launch a large space station (in a recycling that would prove confusing to later historians, this complex was called "MOK," for “Multi-module Orbital Complex,” similar to older concepts based around the N-1), itself to be resupplied and crewed via Chelomei's TKS, launched aboard Vulkans. It was a grand plan, worthy of the Soviet Union, and would demonstrate that the American’s successes in the moon race did not prove their superiority in all aspects of spaceflight. Now all that remained was to build and fly the hardware.

 

[e of pi]

Sorry for things running a little late today, work kept me over. Anyway, this week we're bringing Part 1 of Eyes Turned Skyward to a close, having covered roughly 1968-1982. We're nowhere near having a release date for Part II yet, but we're working on it--truth and I have been discussing the general path of manned space, and he's been churning out some truly impressive updates about unmanned exploration, particularly the planetary science missions. Anyway, enough self-congratulation and reminding people that we will return. On to the post!

Eyes Turned Skyward, Post #24


With their plans set and many of the competing interests in their space industry either shut out or shut down by Glushko’s expert political maneuvering, the Soviet space program made dramatic steps forward in the years following Glushko’s articulation of the grand vision of Vulkan and MOK. Having secured the support of key political backers for his plans to match and exceed American capabilities in spaceflight and reclaim the edge in space stations, Glushko could settle down to making his dramatic vision possible. Over the next six years, progress was swift. The new TKS spacecraft began unmanned operations to test its return capsule as early as 1976, just a year after the crystallization of Glushko’s vision. The need for the new Vulkan booster to replace the failure-prone Proton was underscored on the third test of TKS, in which the Proton booster failed during the launch of another pair of return capsules intended for further entry tests. One was destroyed in the explosion of the booster, but the other was carried away by the abort system, an impromptu demonstration of the function of the system. Despite the setback, the development of TKS continued on through ‘78 with automated flights to the new Salyut 6 station and continued testing of the critical entry systems, particularly the hatch through the vehicle’s heat shield.
Work on the multi-core Vulkan launch vehicle itself was also well underway. Construction of production facilities and pad infrastructure was proceeding at Baikonur, and the development work on the RD-150 and RD-160 engines was only slightly behind schedule. The first launch of the single-core Vulkan was thus still tentatively scheduled for mid-1981, with heavier variants to follow. However, this focus on crew hardware and launch vehicle development had come at a cost: the MOK base block was running behind. This totally new space station module, sized for the 61-ton capabilities of the Vulkan-Herakles, would offer nearly as much power and crew space as the American Skylab, and several variants were planned to serve as dedicated service modules, power modules, or laboratory spaces in the MOK station. To supplement these core spaces, subsidiary labs were planned based on the proven DOS configuration of Salyut, plus the spaces of its crew’s TKS spacecraft. However, the relatively clean-sheet nature of the new MOK core module design caused its development to slip, particularly compared to the TKS and Vulkan intended to serve it. It became clear by 1979 that, though the hardware to launch and supply the station might be ready by 1982, the station itself might not be ready until at least two years later.

The potential two-year delay backed Glushko into a corner, as he felt a strong need to create tangible progress to show his backers and avoid sharing Mishin’s fate. Thus, he decided to push forward those aspects of MOK operations that could be practiced without the actual MOK base block ready by the reworking of surplus Salyut hardware and some of the lower-development MOK components. While the crew capsules, launch vehicles, and station modules were largely new variations on old accomplishments, the construction of a modular structures and the operations of multi-module facilities was something that the Soviets had little experience with, while their American counterparts were already putting it into practice on Spacelab missions, as particularly driven home in the ASTP II flight of Soyuz 29. The observations of Rukavishnikov and Ryumin, particularly of their co-operation in removing the Docking Module from the station, gave valuable insight into American station operations but drove home the rapid progress the Americans had been able to make, and the gap that the Soviets would have to make up.

To shorten the delay between Vulkan’s introduction and the ability to begin making up this gap, a new station was developed to serve as a testbed for MOK techniques and multi-module design. Two DOS modules of the revised configuration intended as subsidiary modules for MOK were combined with a node also developed for MOK to form a three-module station, Salyut 7. The combined station would offer far more capability than any past Soviet station, with room for as many as six crew members to work long-term with the potential for more in surge operations around the time of crew rotations. The first module (DOS-6) could be ready in about three years, roughly when Vulkan was to enter service, and the DOS-7 module and node would be capable of following in short order. The splitting of attention would cause the schedules for MOK proper to slip even further, but Glushko convinced himself that the political benefits and experience gained by flying Salyut 7 would pay off in time.

Thus, in 1982, the Second Space Race was set to come to a boil, with human spaceflight making headlines for perhaps the first time since the launch of Spacelab and ASTP II. In rapid succession, Vulkan made several successful flights. On its maiden launch, it carried an unmanned TKS spacecraft on a resupply mission to Salyut 6 virtually identical to several previous Proton-launched missions, while less than two months later the second Vulkan launch carried the military communications satellite Cosmos 1366 into space, successfully expanding the Soviet fleet of military satellites. In addition to proving the high-energy Blok R upper stage used to inject the satellite into a transfer to geosynchronous orbit, this showed that the first success was no mere fluke and that Glushko had fulfilled his promise to produce a vehicle capable of completely replacing the Proton in Soviet service. Feeling confident, Soviet engineers proceeded with the launch of the DOS-6 module of Salyut 7 in November, following up with the first manned TKS flight, and the first manned flight to the new station, close to the end of the year. Soviet press played up the adaptability of Vulkan, and made constant reference to the family as the most modern and most capable vehicle in existence, a profound demonstration of the benefits of Soviet persistence and expertise. TKS was also compared favorably to Apollo, and the launch of Salyut 7 was portrayed as drawing even with the technical capabilities of the Western Spacelab, while “future missions” would once again reclaim the natural Soviet leadership in spaceflight and other fields.

The first Vulkan launches spurred a minor panic in an American public primed by resurgent international conflict in places from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and increasingly aggressive rhetoric from all sides of the Cold War. Just as the Soviets were seemingly beginning to catch up in other fields of high technology, so too in space their rapid achievements made a mockery of the lethargic American program, stuck in a rut since the mid-70s. To many, the parallels to the intercontinental ballistic missile crisis a generation earlier during Kennedy's election were clear. While the Air Force and NASA’s ELVRP II had been selecting a launcher, the Russians had been developing their own heavy lifter. Pundits spoke of a "space gap" and politicians eager to be viewed as hardline opponents of Soviet space aspirations grilled NASA and the Air Force on why this threat hadn't been seen and responded to earlier. The ultimately minor furor was capped by Reagan's directive that America would push forward in space on two fronts. First, he directed NASA to begin planning a large station to follow up on the successes of Skylab and Spacelab, with possible plans to return to the Moon in the post-1990 timeframe. Second, he announced a large increase in military spaceflight R&D spending, particularly on the Strategic Defense Initiative. Nicknamed “Star Wars” by critics, the plan was to make space a critical part of ensuring America’s safety.

Reagan’s challenges would have huge implications for Saturn Multibody. Suddenly, it wasn’t just another military development project, it was on the public stage as America’s response to the Vulkan and the enabler for both peaceful exploration in the form of NASA’s new station and national defense in the form of Reagan’s new SDI. Initially, some critics of ELVRP had stated that there simply could be no payloads to make Saturn Multibody affordable, that even the capacity of the medium versions would be far too large for any near-term payloads and thus it would end up just another expensive NASA-only launcher. With the launch of Vulkan, the criticisms turned to the time required in development, whether production would be able to keep up with demand, and whether everything that was needed to match the Russians could be launched in just 77 tons—after all, as the Russian press made clear, the upper limit for Vulkan was more than 30% greater. The stage was set for what some have dubbed the second space race. If the first space race was the race to gain access to space, this was to be the race to utilize it.

 

[e of pi]

Yet another technical appendix today, this time with some comparison images for the TL. First off is a comparison of the vehicles from this TL:

From left to right, Apollo Block II, Soyuz, Apollo Block III, the AARDV (Aardvark), Apollo Block III+, and finally TKS.

Next is a similar comparison of the competing stations from the early 80s.

From right to left: Spacelab in three configurations: ASTP II in '78, with Airlock Module replacing the Docking Module in roughly '79, and finally in its 1980 configuration with the ERM. Technically the ERM only dates it to post-October '79, but the Block III+ CSM indicates it's gotta be in at least 1980. The comes Salyut 7, and then for some scale and comparison, OTL Mir (well, sort of, it's a very rough model even by these standards).

 

[e of pi]

Well, it's a fine day here at the Lawnview Apartment Space Center in historic Dayton, OH. We're in a a nominal countdown to exiting our planned hold at 1200 local time, 1600 UTC. The update has undergone final proofing checks at T-1 hour, and final post preparations are underway including this introduction. I'm looking forward to getting things rolling again, and I'm hoping it'll all live up to the standards people have come to expect.

A few notes: First, I'd like to thank Brainbin for the guest posts he's contributed to both Part I and to Part II, and I'd also like to thank the readers and commentators on this thread for their assistance in making it what it is--several things in the TL owe their existence to reader feedback, and of course it's helped us focus on areas readers are interested in. I'll remind people that the wiki page (linked in my sig) contains a full list of all Part 1 posts, and some links to mission lists and vehicle specs (still a bit of a work in progress). With that aside, I'll just leave it to the update. This week: Eyes returns with a focus on Japan. Stand by...and we're go at startup!

Eyes Turned Skyward Part II, Post 1

With the advent of the Block III+ version of the Apollo capsule came new opportunities for NASA. While introduced in part due to pressure from the ESA over the small number of seats they were getting under the Spacelab/European Research Module program, it quickly became obvious that more than just placating European opinion was possible with the new design. Since the beginning of continuous habitation, "rotation" flights--that is, flights which carried a new team of astronauts up to replace a veteran crew--would launch a week or two in advance of their predecessor crew landing in order to get "hands-on" training and allow acclimatization to zero-g conditions without the stress of having to begin full-scale work immediately. However, this allowed an interesting opportunity, as astronauts launched with one crew do not necessarily have to land with another. Thus, a member of the old crew could stay aloft, gaining additional duration in space, while a member of the new crew could land with the older crew, experiencing a short duration flight of only a week or two. As the Soviets pressed forwards with duration records and space was increasingly seen again as a competitive field, this had the attraction of both allowing a US response and allowing the flight of less trained or experienced astronauts than the US and ESA programs had turned out, such as citizens of non-NATO allies or, perhaps, certain citizens of the US who would not normally be considered astronauts.

The State Department was the first to grasp the possible value of the program. While NASA had already started planning extra-long individual duration missions, they had not, understandably, thought of the potential diplomatic and propaganda value of launching people for short-term visits to Spacelab. The flight of Ulf Merbold and, earlier still, ASTP I and II had demonstrated to the State Department the possible value of space flights in diplomatic relations. While never a critical factor in even the most complex negotiation, the offer of a seat for a citizen of some country the US was negotiating with fit well into a long-standing language of compromises, concessions, and gifts, as a small additional tool in the State Department's belt. The first country to benefit from the soon-to-be-named Spaceflight Participation Program was Japan. At the time, Japan was becoming increasingly involved in Spacelab research, and there was a certain degree of feeling among Japanese researchers that a Japanese scientist ought to be launched to oversee their experiments or participate in Spacelab's research activity. Simultaneously, this was the beginning of the Japanese bubble, and Japanese industry was just beginning to be portrayed as the "next big thing" in the US, with attention increasingly being called to the lack of free trade between the two countries. NASA had already begun talks with NASDA about the possibility of a Japanese flight to the station when State Department negotiators, involved in ongoing discussions with Japan about the trade of advanced technologies in relation to the ongoing F-15J fighter project, offered to trade seats on several Spacelab flights in exchange for Japan giving up on the transfer of a few particularly sensitive technologies. Their Japanese counterparts, seeing that they were getting most of what they wanted plus an unexpected sweetener, agreed to the deal. This 1980 agreement marked the effective beginning of what would eventually become the Spaceflight Participation Program.

At the time, however, it was simply an unexpected acceleration on an already-fomenting plan to launch Japanese astronauts to Spacelab. In the agreed-on plan, Japan would have the opportunity to fly three astronauts to Spacelab, beginning with a short stay during a rotation overlap period tentatively marked for 1982. To prepare for this event, only two years in the future, Japan began an immediate program examining candidates to select their first class of astronauts. Over the next year, a pool of thousands of applicants was trimmed down to three, who then spent another 6 months in intensive training alongside NASA astronauts in Houston. Based on this final training, Japanese researcher Katsuyama Hideki was selected to fly in the “short stay” opportunity created by F. Story Musgrave’s double-rotation stay on Spacelab, overlapping from the September 1981 Spacelab 13 mission into the Spacelab 14 mission. The veteran space doctor had been selected to be the first extended duration astronaut on Spacelab, judged to be the most able to assess his overall condition as the mission went on. The flight went well overall, with Hideki spending the slightly-extended 10-day handover period checking Japanese experiment packages already in place on the station, setting up several additional packages for later Japanese astronauts, conducting press events with native Japanese media, and taking several images of the Home Islands. However, reactions to the flight in the United States were mixed.

The State Department viewed the flight and indeed the entire Japanese cooperation program as a valuable tool in securing alliances with both NATO and non-NATO allies, and was interested in continuing the program. NASA, however, was more interested in the possibility of flying Americans such as journalists or teachers to conduct outreach (or, some suggested, perhaps even some of the politicians in whose hands NASA’s funding rested), and while it was glad for the participation of the Japanese and the groundwork set for future cooperation on such projects as the long-studied Spacelab follow-up stations, it was interested in preserving the few slots that would be made available by the long-duration flight program for these alternate uses. Many astronauts, on the other hand, viewed the entire program as something of a stunt--while many were excited about the potential of the long-duration flight research, they also saw the short-duration flight slots as something that should go to existing astronauts. This view was particularly common among American scientist-astronauts, who were particularly hurt by the loss of “fifth-seat” slots, less common among the pilots who were guaranteed two slots on flights, and almost non-existent among the European astronaut corps, whose flight prospects were unchanged by the program and as international partners themselves could understand better the value of cooperation and (more cynically) political maneuvering.

The end result was a program that functioned, but truly satisfied no one except the biomedical community. The establishment of the Spaceflight Participant Program in 1982 called for eight slots to be made available over the next 5 years via multi-rotation stays on-station, with the exact timing and arrangements to be determined in accordance with the needs of the long-duration exposure study program. Two slots would be reserved for the remaining Japanese astronauts in accordance with the existing agreements, NASA would retain authority for dispersing three to American “spaceflight participants,” and State would have the authority for allocating the remaining three to major US allies. While the program details were sorted out, Hideki returned to Japan as a national hero, a living symbol of Japan’s rising star, both economically and technologically. NASDA requested the loan of his capsule, much as the capsules used on the flights of early ESA astronauts had been placed on long-term loan to museums in their home nations. Discussions were complicated by the fact that Hideki had returned to Earth in a different capsule than he had launched in, but in the end the landing capsule was available for display sooner and was officially transferred to Japanese control among much celebration in late 1982.

 

[e of pi]

Well, speaking of launch vehicles that aren't using Nitrogen Tetroxide and UDMH, anyone given any thought to what ESA might be up to ITTL with the kerolox Blue Streak-based Europa instead of the all-hypergol Arianes? Perhaps any interest in the direction of future ESA planning and development? If you are, you're in for a treat this week, as we pop from Japan to Europe for another international update. As a note, the LV specs for this update are now all added to the Eyes tech specs wiki page.

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II, Post #2

In 1982, the European Space Administration had recently celebrated several major milestones. First, the organization celebrated its tenth year of operations, and twenty years since the original 1962 conferences that began the formation ESRO and ELDO, its parent organizations. Second, the Europa launch vehicle family had celebrated its first decade of full operation (though the tenth anniversary of the first Europa-launched satellite had occurred two years prior). In that time, Europa 1, the four-stage Europa 2, and the booster-assisted Europa 2-TA had racked up dozens of successful launches with remarkably few failures after the declaration of full operational status in 1972. Similarly, many of science and telecommunication projects ESA had inherited from ESRO (some launched on the Europa launchers, some on American vehicles) had made spectacular strides, proving that Europe was on the cutting edge of space science and investigation of the practical benefits of spaceflight. Moreover, ESA was on the verge of taking several dramatic steps forward, building on its heritage to achieve ever greater successes and milestones in spaceflight.

The first of these improvements was the ongoing work on the Europa 3 vehicle and related developments derived from work on the project. The Blue Streak first stage had become the major limiting factor on further developments of the basic Europa rocket, both due to its thrust and its propellant loadout. Even the addition of the powerful solids used by the Europa-TA boosted the payload to low Earth orbit to just over two metric tons, and the addition of the boosters had required modifications to the Europa core to support the added thrust of the boosters. Thus, in 1979 ESA had authorized the development of a new vehicle which would both by itself push beyond Europa 1 and 2’s abilities, as well as opening up new development paths for future growth. This Europa 3 was a brand-new two-stage vehicle, with each of the new stages opening its own development path. The first was kerolox first stage named Griffin, which in many ways was a “fat Blue Streak.” It would be built in the UK by British Aerospace, the inheritor of the Blue Streak production line with the various consolidations of British aerospace companies in the late 1970s. The stage would have a 170 inch (4.31m) diameter, but the same height as Blue Streak, resulting in a fuel load double that of Blue Streak. To lift this fuel, it would use four of the sameRZ.2 engines that powered Blue Streak, with control being provided through one-axis gimballing of each engine.The second new stage was the French Aurore, a 4m-diameter hydrolox stage to be built by Aerospatiale using six Snecma HM-7B engines, with control provided by one-axis gimbaling of paired engines. The HM-7B was an improved version of the never-flown but extensively-tested HM-7, which had been under consideration for a hydrolox third stage for Europa 2-TA. The variant offered with improved chamber pressure and a slightly enlarged nozzle for better thrust and specific impulse. For launches to geostationary or other high-energy orbits, an additional German-built Astris third stage (already used on the Europa 1 and 2 vehicles) could be added, both increasing payload and critically providing re-start capability as the HM-7B was only designed to be ignited once.

Altogether, the booster would have a payload of over 7600 kg, with the Astris third stage allowing a payload to GTO of nearly 1800 kg. However, more impressive than the new vehicle itself was the potential evolutions and derivatives of the vehicle. The Griffin stage had been designed specifically to be compatible with the length of the Blue Streak, allowing a potential upgrade that would add Blue Streak strap-on boosters and add additional upper stages, boosting upper-end payloads as high as 18.4 metric tons to LEO--higher than the American Delta 4000, and nearly equivalent to the Saturn 1B, and allowing nearly 7,400 kg to be injected to a geosynchronous transfer orbit or other high-energy orbit. Further, the 4m diameter of the Aurore upper stage was intended to be (barely) compatible aerodynamically with the Blue Streak first stage of the Europa 1 and 2, allowing use of a half-length version with only three engines installed as an upper stage for Blue Streak. Such a Europa 2-HE (High Energy) could offer a payload of 3700 kg to LEO and 650 kg on to GTO, exceeding the capability of the Europa 2-TA while eliminating the expense and handling costs associated with the solid rocket boosters and several unique stages of Europa, mainly the French Coralie. While development of these derivative uses of Europa 3 hardware was intended to be deferred until after the 1985 flight date of the basic vehicle to fit within the limited ESA budget, exploration of applications to use this potential of Europa 3 and its future developments were well underway by ESA members even by 1982.

One of the most attractive of these applications was the one that justified the larger Griffin-based vehicles being explored: achieving, at long last, an independent European manned spaceflight ability. Though the driving issue of the Seat Wars had been settled by the introduction of the Block III+ Apollo and the offer of a permanent ESA slot on Spacelab (at least through 1983, at which point the 5-year agreement would be up for renewal), the undercurrents of emotion that had driven the conflict to such heights had not been resolved. Many within the European program still felt like their program’s accomplishments were marginalized by their dependence on American “charity” for crew access to their own research module on Spacelab. This wasn’t an unjustified view, as many in the American program viewed the European program as definitely pacing the American and Russian programs, rather than being true equals. However, the capabilities of future Griffin-based vehicles could allow Europe to develop its own independent manned capability, and thus approach future collaborations as true partnerships of equals. After all, the original Soyuz capsules of the Russian station program had massed less than Europa 3’s 7600 kg payload, and Salyut 1, the first Russian space station, had been approximately 18.4 metric tons according to Western estimates--roughly the same as the upper capacity of the Europa 3 variants under study. Even with the Europa 3 three years from flight and the variant many more out, this new empowerment colored the ongoing negotiations for the renewal of ESA’s agreements with NASA for flights to Spacelab and ESA’s level of involvement in the ongoing NASA studies on post-Spacelab space stations. In particular, ESA began to to explore the potential of bartering not simply hardware development for crew slots (as they had in the case of the original 5-year agreement, building the Spacelab European Research module in exchange for crew access on NASA Apollo capsules), but also offering cargo resupply or crew rotations to the station in exchange for the launch of any of their own modules that might exceed eventual Europa variant’s 18.6 mT capacity. As part of this, ESA studied several vehicle configurations in some depth, from traditional capsules to the more exotic designs like spaceplanes. Options were examined that ranged from bare-bones two-seat (or cramped three-seat) vehicles designed to fit on the basic Europa 3 to Apollo-scale capsules designed for the mid-range variants to more elaborate “shuttle” spaceplanes that might carry as many as five crew plus cargo in a payload pay and would using the full 18.6 metric ton maximum capacity of the Europa 3 family. While any implementation of such plans were also deferred until after the development of Europa 3 was completed, they were being very actively examined, and the long-awaited independent European access to space seemed only a matter of time. It had been a very active decade for ESA, and the future looked even brighter.

 

[e of pi]

All right, it's Tuesday again, and I think we all know what that means! Today, we're bringing you the first in a series of updates covering the unmanned side of space exploration, all of them provided by truth is life following extensive digging around on NTRS and other sources, and I think the results speak for themselves. Today's post is more of an overview, almost everything covered will get more fully developed in later updates.

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #3

In many ways, the Vulkan Panic of 1982-1983 saved the planetary exploration program, which had been under siege since the day of President Reagan's inauguration. Having campaigned on a program of fiscal austerity (aside from the military), Reagan was eager to start cutting "useless" programs from the budget, putting NASA on the spot. While cutting human spaceflight altogether was never seriously contemplated, and many of NASA's programs had too much practical value (or too invested a support base) to be at risk of death, the planetary exploration program was an entirely different matter. Planetary exploration, after all, has never offered many practical benefits, and with only two probes under development (the Galileo Jupiter orbiter and the CR/CF, later Kirchoff, comet mission), both at JPL, there was no real institutional support base outside of JPL itself for continued planetary exploration. Add the division of the planetary science community against itself, unlike the equally unpractical astronomical community, and it was no surprise that planetary science would be first to the chopping block in the event of cuts. The first shot across the bow of JPL was fired just weeks after Reagan's inauguration, when the OMB proposed broad cuts in the planetary exploration program for the upcoming FY 1982 budget. These would include the termination of the Pioneer Venus and Pioneer Mars extended missions; the abandonment of the Voyager extended missions (particularly for Voyagers 1 and 2, which had completed their primary Jupiter-Saturn flyby missions); no new planetary exploration starts for at least several years; and, last but certainly not least, the cancellation of one of the three major planetary development programs then under way, or in other words Galileo, Kirchoff, or the US component of the International Solar Polar mission (since Europe would presumably continue to supply the other component), which would involve a flyby of Jupiter to provide the boost into a very highly inclined solar orbit.

Planetary scientists responded with outrage to the proposals, particularly those which would cut operations funding to ongoing missions. However, the unwillingness of their professional bodies (the American Astronomical Society and the Division for Planetary Sciences of that organization) to become involved in politics and the employment of many planetary scientists at Ames or JPL blunted this outrage, which was dismissed as simply self-interested lobbying. Far more serious was the response of the California Congressional delegation, as all current and proposed planetary exploration missions originated either from Ames or JPL, both located in California, and both major Californian employers. The cuts proposed by the OMB, and their suggestions of follow-on cuts in later fiscal years, would be nearly tantamount to shutting down JPL (Ames was also highly involved in aeronautical work, and therefore would have come out better), at least after the Galileo and Kirchoff missions were launched and had completed their primary missions, something that delegates from both parties could wholeheartedly oppose. Given that Reagan had once been governor of California, this perhaps had a larger effect on him than might otherwise be expected, but it still would not have been enough to preserve the planetary exploration program without the intervention of Carl Sagan. As head of the National Space Organization, the largest space advocacy group in the world, he had a unique platform among proponents of planetary exploration for making his voice heard, and with the recent success of his miniseries "Cosmos," his voice would be loud indeed. After a special plea from Sagan to members of the organization, Congress and the White House were flooded with letters, telephone calls, and even telegrams supporting the planetary exploration program. As it became obvious that Congress would most likely counter any proposed cuts to NASA, the OMB grudgingly backed off from the proposal, although internally it still saw NASA and planetary exploration as major cutting targets in the FY 1983 or FY 1984 budgets.

Perhaps Sagan could have countered these proposals as well, despite becoming increasingly distant from the NSO's day-to-day activities and the decay of the fame afforded by "Cosmos"; in the event, he never had to, as the launch of Vulkan and the subsequent Soviet descriptions of its capabilities and purpose (to build a space station and perhaps enable future human lunar exploration) rekindled many of the old fires of the Space Race for a new era. Suddenly, space was no longer a distant and practically unimportant realm that could be neglected at will; instead, it was a battleground, a place where the Free World and the Soviet Menace could square off, the former proving once again its technical superiority over the latter. The net effect of all of this rhetoric was the total reversal of previous positions about NASA's funding, with the OMB proposing instead a substantial increase over the FY 1982 budget in FY 1983 rather than a substantial decrease. In fact, the single-year increase in NASA's budget was nearly unprecedented, at an almost 35% jump in real dollars funding compared to the FY 1981 or FY 1982 budgets. While the majority of the money would go towards new human spaceflight programs, particularly the development of a new space station to replace the aging Spacelab, a portion would go towards expanded scientific programs, including planetary exploration. As part of this expansion, a new mission, VOIR (for Venus Orbiting Imaging Radar) was proposed for a start in the FY 1983 budget. By putting a radar into Venus orbit, VOIR would be able to create a high-resolution (and partially stereo) map of virtually the entire surface of the planet, while a series of modifications and downscopes since the original conception of the probe had reduced its costs and development time to something manageable for JPL. This time, the NASA budget passed smoothly; while Congress slightly cut back on the increase of funding to NASA, to about a 20% increase in real dollars funding, they approved of President Reagan's start on what was now known as Space Station Freedom and of the continuation of planetary exploration at least into the 1990s.

The FY 1983 budget set a trend that continued well into the 1980s. Every year, the Soviets would do something that seemed possibly somewhat threatening in space, and every year the US would respond by further increasing the NASA budget, usually with a new planetary mission start included in the budget line. For the FY 1984 budget, the CIA's estimate that the Soviets would conduct a manned lunar landing by the mid 1990s spurred the approval of the Lunar Reconnaissance Pioneer; for FY 1985, the success of Mars 10 and 11 led to the approval of the Mars Reconnaissance Pioneer and the Mars Traverse Rovers; for FY 1986, the ongoing construction of Mir, the big new Soviet space station, allowed starting the Cassini Saturn System Mission; and, finally, in FY 1987, the start of work on the European Piazzi probe and the Soviet “Grand Tour” caused approval of the Near Earth Asteroid Pioneer. After FY 1987, NASA's budget stopped increasing so rapidly, as the agency was becoming saturated in terms of its technical and managerial capabilities, but it still peaked in 1989 at $12.5 billion then-year dollars, the largest budget ever for NASA in the post-lunar era up to that point. However, while this flood of money undoubtedly contributed to extending the Golden Age of space exploration through the 1980s, it also served to conceal many deficiencies in the entire planetary exploration program which would perhaps have been more obvious and therefore more easily rectified in more austere circumstances.

 

[e of pi]

All right, folks. Once more across the Pacific to check in again on the rest of Japan's space program. I'll be interested to see what people make of this update--this is sort of the last of the Freedom background material, setting the scene on which Freedom was planned. I'll also throw in my usual thanks for taking this to a jumbo-sized 747 comments and 76580 views, which still astounds me considering what this all started as.

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #4

The European space program wasn’t the only space program undergoing rapid growth during the decade prior to 1982. Japan was in the middle of a major surge in prosperity, and part of reinventing its national image had been the beginnings of a space program. The process began in 1969, when the 61st session of the national Diet passed laws approving the creation of a National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). The start was quick--the law was passed in June, and by October they had already established a headquarters and launch site at Tanegashima island, as well as additional subsidiary branches and tracking stations for orbital missions. However, their new national program would need a launcher, and that posed a challenge for Japan unlike the one posed to Europe. Where Europa had been able to build off the proven and capable Blue Streak for early vehicles in the family, Japan had no such independent missile program, and beginning one from scratch posed serious challenges. Thus, NASDA would also build its first vehicle off of a proven launcher, but not a native one. Japan’s first vehicle, as authorized in 1970, would be the N-1, a version of the American Delta rocket. Some assemblies (mostly those covered under arms control regulations) were produced by the original American suppliers, though other components produced in Japan to American specifications, and then integrated into a complete vehicle in Japan. The configuration was essentially a “Long Tank Thor” Delta with three Castor 2 solid rocket boosters, roughly duplicating the Delta M configuration. The plan was that Japan could move to producing more assemblies or entire stages natively, leveraging operational experience with the imported vehicle designs while still having a reliable vehicle available relatively quickly. By 1975, the project had come to fruition, with the N-1 beginning a seven-launch campaign from Tanegashima, which would last through 1982. Included in this were Japan’s first communication satellites, as well as probes to study the ionosphere. The program was reasonably successful, with only two failures--impressive compared to the early records of many other national space programs, and demonstrating the benefits of the Japanese plans to build on the experience of existing programs.

Even as the N-1 launch campaign was ongoing, work began in 1976 on the N-2, following on from N-1 with increased Japanese-built components and a full 9 solid rockets, allowing a payload of 2 tons to LEO or 730 kg to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). The plan was for the vehicle to be operational by 1981, at which point Japan would focus on its first complete upper stages to be paired with the existing Delta/Thor-based first stage. However, the American ELVRP I program threw a serious wrench into the works. As McDonnell-Douglas focused heavily on its Delta 4000 entrant in the competition, its interest in the older Thor-based Delta was declining. In particular, while McDonnell was willing to supply stages for N-2 under existing contract arrangements, future work would have to involve increased payments by Japan--either to support the Delta lines if McDonnell didn’t win the competition, or to preserve the Thor infrastructure in parallel with the Delta 4000 if (as it happened in 1978) McDonnell won. Japan was faced with a decision: pay the increased fees and continue along the Thor-based direction it had charted previously (which would be costly), move from focusing on native-built upper stages to a new Japanese lower stage (which would require abandoning or at least postponing the focus on upper stages that they had been building towards), or seizing the chance presented to them by the new Delta 4000. Deliberations and exploratory contract negotiations lasted almost three years, from 1978 to early 1981.

In the end, Japan decided to be ambitious, and move to a similarly license-built version of the Delta 4000, with a new Japanese-built upper stage replacing the American Centaur--perhaps motivated by the fact that they would have to spend substantially in any case and this option would offer more dramatic growth potential, perhaps due to the public support resulting from the upcoming flights of Japanese astronauts to the American Spacelab station, or perhaps some of both. Regardless of the motivation, the new vehicle--dubbed “H-1”--began development in 1981 with a planned entry into service in 1986. It will consist of the the new Delta 4000 first stage, with a Japanese-built hydrolox upper stage using natively designed-and-built engines. The roughly 6 ton capability of the vehicle will be sufficient for the Japanese to dual-launch some payloads that were being designed for the originally-planned improved Delta, and also enable larger and more capable satellites and perhaps even deep-space probes. The revised planning also called for an H-II vehicle to fly with a Japanese-built first stage by 1990, with a capability equalling or perhaps even exceeding the Delta 4000’s maximum 13 ton payload to LEO. If so, it would be another major success for the Japanese strategy, reaching near-parity with the basic launch capabilities of countries like the United States and the joint efforts of the European continent in just two short decades.

In addition to their launch vehicle development programs, NASDA was also working to build on its successes to expand its human spaceflight programs. The late 1981 flight of Katsuyama Hideki and the coming flights of two more astronauts to Spacelab seemed to show a natural path for increased Japanese participation in manned spaceflight. Thus, as NASA’s own studies were ongoing for post-Spacelab stations, NASDA also began examining the possibility of launching their own lab to such a station, perhaps on a NASA vehicle, and to negotiate a more long-standing agreement for seats, more like the European “fourth seat” on every Block III+ than the intermittent short-stays allowed by what would come to be the Spaceflight Participation Program. The established practice of barter would have Japan providing some hardware for the station that NASA desired in exchange for the launch of Japan’s own hardware. The question of what Japan might be able to provide was factored into NASA’s planning, much as NASA were factoring in European interest. However, the impetus provided by Vulkan would come to drive many of these plans rapidly from concepts to defined components and contracting.

 

[e of pi]

Post is going up a tad early this week, as I have a meeting at noon. This week, we once again return to the unmanned side of things, for trip way, way out there as we revisit the expanded Voyager program of this timeline.

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #5


The gas giants have long been bounteous sources of wonder and mystery for scientists, all the way back to Galileo's discovery of the four moons which bear his name orbiting Jupiter. As space launch became practical in the 1950s and 1960s, naturally thought turned, as with the terrestrial planets, to not just exploring them at a distance with a telescope, but to physically exploring them, sending emissaries, whether crewed or robotic, to physically explore these bodies, their surroundings, and their moons, and discover those things which could not be discovered from Earth. Fortunately for proponents of outer planet exploration, the 1960s saw not just the development of bigger and more powerful rockets than ever before, but also the discovery of gravitational assist, a technique which vastly increased the ease of reaching the giant planets. A simple flyby of Jupiter could send a probe speeding on to Saturn, reaching that world more quickly and with less effort (meaning a smaller, lower-cost launch vehicle) than was possible with even the best direct trajectories. Furthermore, as it emerged, a unique opportunity was present in the next decade; the possibility of launching a few probes to explore all the gas giants and tiny, distant, and strange Pluto far more quickly and easily than attempting to launch probes to each planet separately. The result was the Voyager program.

Major improvements on the preceding Pioneers, the Voyagers were at first just two probes designed to salvage the TOPS program, an ambitious effort by NASA to explore all the outer planets with a standard probe bus design (one which might later be adapted to other missions, such as giant planet orbiter or atmospheric probe deployment bus). Unfortunately for JPL, budget pressures linked to the development of Skylab/Spacelab, Block III Apollo, the Saturn IC, AARDvark, and the general budget drawdown in the wake of the Moon landings led to TOPS being canceled, the final blow being an effort by astronomers to ensure the survival of what would later be known as the Hubble Space Telescope. JPL quickly recovered with Voyager, billed as being 90% of TOPS science at 50% of the cost. As development neared completion on the major human space flight projects of the decade and budgets finally stabilized, JPL struck back at the demise of TOPS by convincing NASA and Congress to approve the Mariner Jupiter-Uranus mission, quickly rebilled Voyager-Uranus once the Voyager name itself had been adopted in early 1977. Launched in 1979, two years after the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn probes, officially these two probes were merely intended to explore Jupiter itself thus extending previous observations of Jupiter (critical for exploring how Jupiter's atmosphere changes over time, for instance), then proceed on to Uranus. However, it was not much of a secret that, as with their Jupiter-Saturn siblings, these probes were intended to fulfill the full Grand Tour mission, thereby exploring all four giant planets and Pluto.

Development of the Voyagers proceeded smoothly, albeit with increasingly large required budgets, through the first launches in late August and early September 1977. While Voyagers 1 and 2 encountered a number of issues, problems, and complications during and shortly after their launch, these all proved to be relatively minor and easily correctable, leading to some last-minute modifications to the two Voyager-Uranus probes then under construction. Otherwise, their cruise to Jupiter proved uneventful, with only a few interplanetary physics experiments and engineering tests of upgrades to the Deep Space Network needed to maximize scientific return from the missions breaking the monotony of the voyage. Finally, in early March 1979 Voyager 1 sped by the planet, greatly advancing the state of the art of Jovian science in the process. Among many other discoveries, such as the irregularity of Jupiter's atmosphere at the small scale, Voyager 1's flyby is particularly notable for dramatically confirming Io's vulcanism, already suspected from the moon's bizarre appearance and apparently fresh surface, in a navigation image taken a few days after its closest approach. During its flyby, Voyager 1 successfully "hit" the gravitational assist window, with Jupiter speeding the probe on towards Saturn and out of the Solar System altogether. As Voyager 1's encounter drew to a close with post-flyby observations of Jupiter during the rest of March, attention turned towards Voyager 2, closing in on the planet for a May flyby opportunity. While this did not allow such a good Jovian moon "tour" as had been afforded Voyager 1, nevertheless Voyager 2 was able to make a relatively close encounter with Europa, and more distant flybys of the other Galilean moons. Fortunately, Voyager 2 lived up to the standard set by its predecessor, and returned a remarkable amount of scientific data on not only Jupiter's moons but also Jupiter itself. Like Voyager 1, it successfully completed the gravity assist maneuver, proceeding on to Saturn for its next flyby.

Meanwhile on Earth, the Voyager-Uranus probes were undergoing assembly and testing prior to being moved to the launch site at Cape Canaveral for their October-November launch date. Using data from their older siblings currently in space, both had been upgraded, redesigned, and generally made even better than the originals. The most notable event of their launch was the first of NASA's anti-nuclear protests. While many previous satellites and probes, including Voyagers 1 and 2, had been launched with nuclear material onboard with little comment from either nearby Floridians or the wider US, the Three Mile Island accident earlier in the year had caused a large portion of the population to regard anything "nuclear" with fear and trepidation. Several dozen Floridians, together with a smaller number of out-of-staters, decided that the use of nuclear materials by the space program was worthy of protest, and converged on Cape Canaveral's gates beginning a few weeks before launch. Despite explanations by NASA public relations officials of both the necessity and safety of the RTGs used by the Voyagers, they continued their protest until launch, with a few being arrested attempting to cross the fence and physically prevent the launch of the probes. While rather minor overall, this incident did serve to underscore the movement away from the technological optimism of the 1950s and 1960s to the pessimism of the 1970s. As with their siblings, the initial cruise through interplanetary space proved uneventful, with the main scientific observations relating to the effects of the ongoing and unexpectedly intense solar maximum on interplanetary space through the asteroid belt.

By the beginning of the year, attention had turned to the first two Voyagers, then starting some work on their Saturn flyby opportunity. In November 1980 Voyager 1 finally reached the Saturn system. In addition to its observations of the planet itself and some of the other moons, it passed less than 10,000 km from Titan, revealing that the giant moon possessed a thick atmosphere, laced with virtually opaque hydrocarbon haze, although this flyby prevented it from continuing on to Pluto. Following this simultaneously exciting and disappointing discovery, talk of diverting Voyager 2 to do another close flyby of the moon almost immediately vanished, and instead it threaded the needle to continue on to Pluto during its flyby in March of the next year. Voyager 2 largely furthered the observations its sibling probe had conducted the previous year, returning additional scientific data about Saturn's winds, Titan's outer atmosphere, and many of Saturn's moons. Among the most well-known discoveries of the two probes was the presence of a large crater later named Herschel on the moon Mimas, making it appear similar to the Death Star of 1977's Star Wars.

However, by the time Voyager 2 wrapped up its post-Saturn flyby activities, attention was already turning towards Voyager 3, then approaching Jupiter for a June flyby, as the probe and its August followup Voyager 4 were perfectly positioned to take advantage of the discoveries made by their older counterparts. The orbital geometry of Jupiter and its moons during the 1981 flyby opportunities would allow extremely close flybys of Io and Europa, two of the most interesting moons of the system following the discoveries of Voyagers 1 and 2. With the Jupiter orbiter Galileo already well along in development, characterizing these objects and their environment was of great importance both scientifically and in mission planning. The Voyagers did not disappoint, returning stunning close-up images of the moons that greatly furthered the state of Io and Europa science. Io observations in particular allowed estimations of long-term volcanic activity on the moon, by comparing surface features found by Voyager 3 with those found by Voyagers 1 and 2, while Europa observations, combined with the obvious presence of significant tidal heating on its neighboring moon, led to the hypothesis that there might exist a liquid water ocean under the icy crust of the body. With the recent discovery of life dwelling around oceanic vents, never seeing sunlight and often not requiring oxygen, there were even a few suggestions, most notably by Carl Sagan, that there might somehow exist life on the moon, although most researchers, and certainly NASA after Viking, simply ignored the idea in public. Still, the ocean alone was interesting enough to start scientists considering a follow-up to Galileo dedicated primarily to Europa science, although as of yet such a probe was merely conceptual and of a low development priority.

With September came the first time since 1979 when no Voyager encounters were planned for the following year, as Voyager 4 wrapped up its observations of Jupiter. With Voyager 3 not reaching Uranus until 1986, a long period of digestion was in store for planetary scientists wrapped up in the questions raised by data from the Jupiter and Saturn flybys and preparing for the launch of Galileo in 1983. Heliophysicists and astronomers, however, seized the opportunity to take advantage of the unique vantage point offered by the Voyagers, especially Voyager 1, which would have no future planetary encounters at all. As some of the first probes to reach trans-Saturnian space, the Voyagers provided a great deal of information about this distant region of our own solar system, in the process disproving the hypothesis sometimes advanced in the 1970s that the heliopause might lie somewhere interior to Neptune, or perhaps Uranus or even Saturn. Additionally, the down period allowed the development of a number of software upgrades for the probes' computer systems, designed to maximize the data return from their future flybys (or, in the case of Voyager 1, maximize its future useful life). However, in general the five year period of downtime between Voyager 4's flyby of Jupiter and Voyager 3's flyby of Uranus was uneventful and quiet, with events closer to home stealing the spotlight from the little robots that could.

 

[e of pi]

Okay, everyone, sorry about this little slip to the right that resulted in missing the usual noon post time--today's been crazy busy for me. Anyway, as a reward, we've finally finished setting up the background for the various space agencies as they existed in 1982, so let's talk a little bit about NASA's pre-Vulkan station plans, and how those were altered in light of Vulkan panic. Next week will follow from this, covering contracting, international barter, and pretty pictures! I hope everyone will enjoy...748 replies 85549 views

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #6

NASA’s plans for the future had included post-Spacelab space stations for some time, but it was only after the launch of that station in 1978 that these plans came under serious review at NASA. President Carter was far less willing to spend money on the space program than his predecessors, and this was reflected in NASA’s budgets after 1977. Thus, future space projects remained for the moment mostly studies, focusing on the basic concepts and technologies required for further pursuing the space station program focus that had been in action since 1971. The lack of the heavy-lift abilities of the Saturn V was strongly felt, so the most major of the studies was focused on analysis of the modular techniques developed for Spacelab’s Airlock Module and European Research Module, and if these lessons could be applied to make do with the far smaller capabilities of Saturn IC. The study, commissioned in mid-1979, was to evaluate the results of the modular assembly of Spacelab and the launch of the European Research Module, and inform the NASA FY 1980 budget request. The report came to three main conclusions. The first was that modular assembly was promising, and that it had successfully enhanced the capabilities of Spacelab far beyond what Skylab or even the basic improved Orbital Workshop could have offered on their own. The new airlock had offered the chance to make more EVAs with less impact on operations elsewhere in the stack, and the additional lab space of the ERM more than made up for the added sleep stations in the Lab Annex’s converted LOX tank needed to bring the crew to a permanent five after the introduction of Block III+ .

However, there were also issues exposed with the concept of a highly modular space station. The most serious was the difficulty of on-orbit fitting out of modules and of moving large equipment between modules. Spacelab designers hadn’t entirely accounted for the need to remove, return, replace, or refit systems over the longer lifespan of the station, and the diameter restrictions of the Apollo-legacy probe and drogue docking mechanism meant that many systems couldn’t be moved between modules or from Aardvark supply vehicles into the station. This restriction also meant that much of the ERM’s equipment had to be launched with it, even items which could easily have waited for future missions if not for the hatch restrictions and lack of modularity. This requirement for additional equipment at launch meant that the total volume of the lab had to be compromised to meet launch mass restrictions on Saturn IC and with the Aardvark bus. Additionally, the directionality of the Apollo probe and drogue system placed restrictions on how a station could grow, or potentially be reconfigured, negating some of the potential advantages of modular construction.

Thus, while the first conclusion was that modular assembly of stations was possible with the roughly 19 ton module size imposed by Saturn IC and Aardvark bus limitations, the second and third recommendations of the 90-day study addressed the deficiencies of the current systems. The second recommendation was that any future modular station should be designed with more easily removable equipment, a modular equipment system that would ease fitting out on-orbit or refitting modules later in their service life. In order to increase the possible size of this modular system, the third recommendation was for the development of a new docking mechanism, one that would offer a larger transfer tunnel diameter than that of the Apollo probe and drogue.

Reflecting this, NASA’s FY 1980 budget request called for three developments under the heading of “Enabling Technology Development.” The first was for the development for a new docking system, which had been known in the Station Technology Report as the “Androgynous International Docking System” but became the “Common Androgynous Docking System” due to recent medical developments. This was to be derived from the APAS system developed by Soviet and American engineers for the ASTP I and II missions, though scaled up. The second was to form a working group with the intention of developing a Standard Modular Payload Rack, sized to fit AIDS/CADS. Finally, NASA requested funding for Marshall Spaceflight Center to commission several reports from industry, examining the optimal design and construction sequence for a station using available launch vehicles, assuming availability of the SMPR and CADS systems. The attempt to sell this as a low-budget method of preparing for the future, and ensuring optimal efficiency in spending once full planning authority was given was successful, and the money was appropriated by Congress in the 1980 budget, under the notional program name “Starlab”.

As part of this broader push into post-Spacelab technology studies that NASA was undertaking, several NASA centers, principally Johnson, undertook to study the then-present A7LB space suit design and determine both its shortcomings and possible avenues of improvement or replacement. These studies almost universally came to the conclusion that the A7LB, while a good suit, was simply not optimized for station work, with a design compromised by requirements that had been imposed during the 1960s and the lunar program, and which no longer made any sense. For example, the low pressure of the suit had been an advantage during the Apollo program, since hard suits could not be developed quickly enough for the lunar landing program and soft suits using 1960s technology quickly became impossibly inflexible and incapable of carrying out the wide range of motions needed to explore a lunar surface at pressures much above those actually used in the A7L. Since the Apollo spacecraft had had a nearly identical pure oxygen atmosphere, no operational constraints were caused by the spacesuit pressures. However, on Spacelab, with sea-level air, the suit required hours of prebreathing to prevent the bends, an obvious liability during emergencies and always a problem for scheduling spacewalks. Other shortcomings included the difficult and time-consuming nature of putting on the suit, even leaving aside pre-breathing, and its decided design for the male half of the species (although the B model had largely addressed that deficiency, some odd design relics remained).

As with the necessity of replacement, these studies also agreed on the basic form of what would replace the A7LB, another hybrid soft/hard suit similar in general concept. Although more radical suit proposals, such as full hard suits or the all-soft mechanical counter-pressure suit had appeared since the 1960s, offering enticing advantages over conventional suit designs, both of these concepts had equally serious shortcomings, and more importantly would require a considerable amount of development and luck to be put into service by the time the post-Spacelab station would be in space. Greater conservatism, however, did not mean less creativity, with the centers stretching their thinking to the limits in developing new suit concepts that balanced different operational demands and safety to form an effective package. Ames, the biggest center of hard suit development, put forth a proposal that was essentially a proto-hard suit, designed to pave the way for the full hard suit expected in the 1990s and utilizing many rigid components and design concepts that had informed Ames' many hard suit designs. By contrast, the more conservative Johnson put forth a suit which was essentially the A8L, building on the proven framework of the A7LB but with modestly increased pressure and improved design. However, with no post-Spacelab program yet approved the differences were largely academic, with neither proposal being in of itself compelling enough to start an entire suit design program.

As hardware and standards development began for CADS and SMPR, as well as auxiliary systems studies like space suits, Marshall’s Starlab series of space station architecture studies began. One study examined the potential for simply adding additional 20-ton modules on to Spacelab, as the ERM and Airlock Module had been added. Doing so would reduce the cost and complexity, and allow the overall program to move forward faster since basic power, life support, and habitation facilities would be available in Spacelab’s core module. However, there were also major negatives in the need to interface with power, data, and computer systems originally developed for Skylab in the mid-60s, and even if the new modules were attached via CADS-to-probe adaptors, the new modular racks wouldn’t be able to be moved into or through the core station. These limitations would severely hamstring any significant further station development based on Spacelab, and thus further investigation of that avenue was discontinued.

Most studies quickly converged on a single basic type of station, constructed out of relatively small modules, massing no more than about 20 tons with diameters similar the 5m of the ERM, which would be launched into space on top of the Saturn IC and flown to the station using AARDV propulsion modules, just as the ERM had been flown to Spacelab. Modules would serve specific purposes, with nodes to tie the station together and hold support systems, habitat modules to contain crew equipment and sleep stations, labs for experiments, and support modules for propulsion, power, or radiator systems. Some also included the first hints of the truss designs that would later show up in the Freedom development process, reasoning that removing the solar panels and radiators from the body of the station would reduce their vulnerability to plume impingement, and allow additional unpressurized experiments or equipment to be mounted to this added structural element. To help with moving elements around, several systems for robotic manipulators were examined.

These studies became the foundation upon which Space Station Freedom would be built when that project was begun in 1982. With the development of the Saturn Multibody, the potential maximum size of station modules was greatly increased, up to a maximum of 70 tons for an AARDV-delivered module. NASA’s initial plans assumed a crew of 15, with two large modules, one serving as a habitat and service module, the other serving as a laboratory. However, Congressional pushback on the initial budget numbers was clear: while matching the Soviet’s advancements was key, the initial design was a bridge too far. Instead, the design was downscoped from 15 personnel to just 10, and the required amount of lab space and electrical power was reduced to fit. These changes enabled the reference design to be reconfigured, with habitat and support roles still condensed to a single “service core” similar to the old Skylab and Spacelab Orbital Workshops, with lab spaces placed in smaller dedicated modules to be launched by Saturn M02 instead of a single larger module. A truss attached to the service core would house the station’s radiators and solar power systems, while a node would provide mounting points for the subsidiary labs and docking for resupply and crew rotation craft. As the Europeans expressed interest in continuing involvement with the American station program and the Japanese space program was rapidly maturing and beginning to work with planners on how they might be included in the new station, a second node was included to ensure that sufficient space would be available for any such contributions, without compromising the number of ports needed for resupply and crew rotation operations. Several arrangements of these general components were considered, but the familiar shape of what would become Freedom was fairly well established by the time President Reagan gave the agency notice that he intended to fast-track the new station and associated development. The name was indeed one of the last details to come together, as the original project name of Starlab was over-ruled by presidential authority in favor of the more public-relations-friendly Freedom.

 

[e of pi]

Hello, everyone! Sorry for the delay, today was another rather busy day for me. However, I hope that today will be worth it--we're focusing on Freedom some more this week, with a little extra on top. There's a whole raft of pictures to follow, so stay tuned in.

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #7

As the turn-of-the-decade post-Spacelab “Starlab” station definition studies transformed into the fully-authorized (and presidentially-renamed) Space Station Freedom, work moved from defining the role, scope, and basic design of the station to the design and construction of the actual hardware of the station. Thus, the messy business of contracting entered the situation, both in the United States and in the international horse trading that was the carefully-constructed barter that characterized international collaboration efforts between NASA and its counterparts in other nations. Within NASA, it seemed only natural that Marshall Spaceflight Center, with their experience in managing both Skylab and Spacelab, would take the lead in the program management at NASA. Once that belief became reality, it was also unsurprising that McDonnell-Douglas was quickly selected as the lead American contractor. Despite some not-entirely-unfounded allegations of contract irregularities, the simple fact was that Marshall trusted McDonnell and felt that their established working relationship from Skylab and Spacelab would be critical to meeting the Presidential directives to expedite Freedom development as much as practical within the budget levels set. However, while McDonnell staked out its claim on the core module of Freedom, the complex nature of the station meant that the job was too large for them to handle entirely on their own.

The American portion of the station would consist of six segments, breaking down into two pressurized modules, plus the components of the station’s large truss. The largest of these pressurized modules was the Habitation and Service Module (HSM), which would constitute the main core of the station. The HSM would be a 6.6m diameter module, which like the OWS modules of Skylab and Spacelab would be derived from Saturn upper-stage tankage. However, unlike the Skylab and Spacelab OWS which had been built as tankage and then converted, the Freedom HSM would be a purpose-built structure merely making use of tank toolings for the main barrel and domes. The purpose of the HSM was to be the hub of the station’s systems. It would house the stations’ main computers, attitude control thrusters and gyroscopes, life support systems and tankage, and the station’s main airlock. An axial CADS port at each end would provide for connections of other modules and vehicles. The exterior of the module would play host to the solar arrays and radiators that would supply “keep-alive” power for basic operations until the truss segments could be launched, and the forward end of the module would consist of a 3 meter diameter pressurized tunnel below the adaptor for the station’s truss. In addition to all of these systems, the module would also provide the main habitat segment of the station, providing a wardroom/galley and crew quarters for the station’s 10-person crew. With all this, it was no surprise that the HSM was to be the largest and most massive of the station’s modules, stretching the Saturn H03 to its limit. To avoid the risk of damage to the critical “keep-alive” solar arrays and radiators, not to mention the main truss attachment block, the entire module was to fly encapsulated within a large “widebody” 10 meter payload fairing.

The other American pressurized module would be the US lab module, a comparatively simple 5 meter-diameter 18.5 ton module. It would be provided with one axial CADS port, and was intended to be launched on a Saturn M02 with an AARDV bus being used as a tug to maneuver the lab to dock to the station. The 5 meter diameter was selected based on volume utilization studies that suggested that the new modular racks would result in more usable experiment volume in a module configured as a longer, smaller diameter tube with a single corridor (“Buck Rogers” or “aircraft”-style) previously used in the European Research Module than a shorter 6m-diameter module of equivalent mass using the stacked levels (“Heinlein” or “skyscraper” style) used in the Skylab and Spacelab OWS, as well as slated for use in the Freedom HSM. The lab module hull’s construction would be subcontracted to Rockwell, since they were building their own 5 meter tooling for other purposes, though the final fit-out and integration would remain the responsibility of McDonnell.

The final American component of the station would be the station’s solar array wings and radiators, housed on the station’s truss. The truss was designed to be flown in four parts--each side of the truss would consist of an inboard segment with radiators and solar arrays plus an additional supplementary outboard segment mounting additional solar arrays. The inboard segments (P1/S1) would be the longest single component of Space Station Freedom, at 27 meters long. The first section, taking up 17 meters of the overall span, would feature large radiators as well as mounting positions for exposed experiments. Next, a rotating joint would connect the radiator portion of the inboard truss to the section containing the first solar wing. Each wing segment would be 10 m long, and feature four “panes,” two on each side of the truss. Each pane would rotate on its attachment to the truss about the long axis, giving the station two-axis pointing to optimize solar power throughout a variety of orbital conditions. With a total length of 27 meters, the inboard truss segments would define the length of the widebody fairings for Saturn Multibody, just as the HSM had defined the diameter. The outboard section, massing 18.5 tons and carried to station by an AARDV tug launched on Saturn M02, would be similar to the inboard section’s solar wing segment, carrying another 4 panes, for a total of 16 on-station. With a length of 34 m and a width of 4.3 meters per pane, the total generating area of the station would be over 2300 square meters, generating over 300 kW of electricity. However, while this was perceived as sufficient for the station’s medium-term needs, long-term planning called for potential expansion of the station, and perhaps for the testing of other solar power generation systems such as solar thermal systems. In order to enable such future extension, the outboard truss segments were designed with an additional attachment points on their ends so that at some point in the future they could be used to attach additional segments if and when funding became available. As demand on McDonnell’s facilities and personnel would be very high given the scope of Space Station Freedom, McDonnell made the decision to subcontract the design of the solar alpha rotary joints and the 16 solar panes to Lockheed, while retaining work on the radiators and general truss design in-house.

In addition to the modules of the station itself, there were to be some attendant modifications to the American fleet of support craft. The venerable Apollo was first, with modifications being planned on the Block III+ Mission Module forward port to allow it to mount a CADS port instead of the old probe-and-drogue, though the probe-and-drogue would be retained for the connection between the Apollo capsule and the Mission Module as changing the forward end of the Apollo capsule to be of sufficient diameter to mount the new systems would be a significant technical investment. The AARDV bus (also the Apollo and Aardvark service module) was also to receive a refresh, with slightly increased maximum propellant capabilities and increased thruster control authority to allow it to steer the larger modules of the station, mainly the nearly 70-ton inboard truss segments. Some minor radar and computer system refreshes were also included as part of updating the spacecraft’s control routines, some of which were also to be included in the Aardvark and Apollo SM versions of the bus. However, Aardvark was to receive the largest updates--the new Aardvark would be a different craft in all but name. While it would still be an automated logistics craft using the same common AARDV bus as a service module, it would now feature a 5 meter diameter pressurized section instead of the older 4 meter version, intended to allow a slightly increased volume in a shorter overall length. This was necessary, given the largest change in the Aardvark Block II: a new 3 meter-long unpressurized payload bay inserted between the service module and the pressurized section. This bay was intended to allow easy launch of replacement components or experiments to the exposed facilities of the various laboratories of the station, as well as the disposal of obsolete exterior equipment. In the operations of Spacelab, inability to transport large exposed payloads had placed major restrictions on station science operations and ongoing upkeep and maintenance, and had been identified as a major deficiency of the original early-70s Aardvark design. While the most major modifications would have to wait until the new station launched, some of the computer modifications were intended to be incorporated into ongoing flights to Spacelab and planning was were developed to fly a probe-and-drogue version of the new Aardvark to Spacelab prior to the launch of the new station.

Of course, the American components wouldn’t be the only parts of the station. Indeed, the maze of the international barter agreements made the domestic American contracting seem almost transparent. For instance, by the time international partnership agreements were being hammered out in 1983, the Japanese space agency NASDA had been working with NASA for almost two years to negotiate a flight of a full Japanese laboratory to the station. According to the final agreement reached, the Japanese would be provided launch services for their lab as well as a crew slot on station (one crew slot amounts to a seat on every other rotation flight) to make us of it. In exchange, NASDA would provide a module for the station according to American needs, essentially trading the R&D costs on the module for the launch cost of its lab. The agreed-upon module was a large-diameter centrifuge laboratory. Such a centrifuge had been part of American station planning for years, having long been seen as critical to a better understanding of human and animal physiology and an enabler of long-term space flight, but had never come to fruition, always cut as “nice to have, but too expensive.” Through this trade, this capability could be developed for a minimal cost to the United States. Both the Centrifuge Gravity Lab and the Japanese laboratory module were planned to share the same 6 meter diameter, 4.8 meter long pressurized hull. With the volume allowed by the Saturn Multibody MO2’s launch capacity and the restrictions placed by the centrifuge module’s need, NASDA had decided this was the best balance of achieving a large diameter (enabling a larger centrifuge) while retaining a length suitable to actually working in the resulting modules. While the 6 meter diameter would slightly inconvenience operations, the shorter length would have a few major benefits. First, retention of the same hull design for the two modules would minimize the necessary Japanese investment in their portion of the station. Second, although the Japanese plans included an extensive exposed module, for vacuum experiments, the limited length of standard Saturn fairings meant that this would be difficult to fit on a standard 5 meter module.Thus, minimizing the length of the pressurized section helped pack the lab better into the fairings available and allowed more room for experiments the Japanese were interested in running--including some whose launch would only be possible thanks to the unpressurized cargo section of the Aardvark Block II, and which would thus break new ground in space research. In order to facilitate work on the large exposed pallet, the Japanese lab would feature a small airlock for experiments, as well as several viewports overlooking the “porch,” and a robot manipulator arm. The CGL would feature a single main piece of equipment: the main 5.5-meter-diameter rotor against the far end cone, which would allow room for multiple life-science packages to be onboard at once, either at the same or different gravity levels. The remainder of the module would be support equipment, such as systems to filter and feed water to animal experiments on the rotor, experiment supply stowage, and the shock absorbers and vibration dampers required to prevent any vibration caused by imbalances in the rotor from transmitting through the inter-module connections and disturbing microgravity experiments in other modules.

Like the Japanese, the Europeans had also been negotiating for an increased role in Freedom relative to their participation in Spacelab. In the nearly six years since the agreements for their participation in Spacelab were signed, ESA felt that their situation has changed significantly, and the lab they intend to build and the launch barter agreement reached reflected this. While the new lab would share the same 5 meter diameter Thales-built module hull, the new module was planned to have several advantages over the old Spacelab ERM. First, it would be slightly larger, allowing more experiments to be carried out at once. Second, due to the design of Freedom, it would not need to feature a docking port at both ends, with the free end of the module thus capped with a small exposed facility. Third, the American design already had a separate lab module, meaning that there would hopefully be fewer issues with overflow of American projects into the European module--something which had been forced on the ERM due to the inability to transfer some large experiments launched with ERM into the Spacelab OWS, either due to port diameter restrictions or space limitations in the LOX tank “lab annex” from the additional sleep stations used to bring the station to 5 crew. In exchange for the launch of the ERM, Europe agreed to finance the construction of the two node modules required to attach the various component modules together into a unified station and support various logistics spacecraft. Each node would have have two axial and four radial CADS ports, and connect to two subsidiary modules, leaving four open ports for logistics and crew rotation vehicles. While some questions were raised as the to the fairness of the deal (after all, the Japanese were only expected to build one module in exchange for their lab launch, while ESA was being expected to provide two), in fact it was a rather good deal. The identical nature of the nodes, their similarity in turn to the lab itself, and the relative simplicity of the design compared to the complexities of the centrifuge rotor, vibration damper, and experiment life support meant that ESA would end up spending less on the design and construction of their entire trio of modules than the Japanese would on just the research and design of the CGL alone. The degree of trust shown by NASA that the ESA could deliver such critical station components on time and on budget marked a significant advancement over the Seat Wars of just a few years previously, showing how far the American-European relationship had come, at least in spaceflight.

However, while the situation had improved, the attitudes on both sides of the Atlantic that lead to the Seat Wars were still not completely resolved, nor was a larger lab all that ESA wanted on the new station. The Europeans also wanted to renew their established one-seat-per-rotation deal with NASA, for two crew slots on Freedom at all times. While many in NASA had no significant issue with the deal (it was, after all, in some ways a a maintenance of the status quo in practice since Block III+ was introduced three years before and which was already to persist until the retirement of Spacelab), there was a faction that demanded additional contributions from ESA if if Europe would now expect NASA to launch and support two astronauts on orbit instead of just one--perhaps including assistance with the logistics load. Other groups of engineers and policy planners in Europe saw this as a perfect opportunity to push the European spacecraft and launch vehicle evolution programs that had been in planning since Europa 3 was approved. After all, the situation demonstrated clearly why it was critical that the Europeans have their own manned launch capability, but also provided a stepping stone to doing so--they could incrementally reach the capability by first developing a cargo craft to fulfill the American’s demands, while designing for future conversion into a crew vehicle.

The result was the European Minotaur program, a multi-role spacecraft designed to assist in meeting Freedom’s logistic needs, but with an eye to rapid conversion to manned flight in the future. For this reason, a simple cylindrical pressure hull like that of the American Aardvark was rejected. However, budget restrictions and schedule pressures eliminated consideration of more complex spaceplane or lifting body designs, despite some interest in “leapfrogging” the world (and especially NASA). The result was a fairly conventional vehicle design--a truncated conical capsule with a 20 degree sidewall angle, sloping to a 2-meter-diameter docking face with a single CADS port. The 4-meter diameter of the Aurore upper stage was used as a base diameter, which would offer a total pressurized volume of 16 cubic meters--almost double the volume of Apollo. Much like Apollo, the capsule would be supported by a service module, which would house power systems, maneuvering propellant, and thrusters. However, unlike the American Apollo, Minotaur ‘s designers planned to use solar arrays as opposed to batteries (like the Block III) or fuel cells (as on Block I and II Apollo) for power. Along with some structural design improvements, the end result was that Minotaur would mass 25% less for its size than even the latest Apollos. The resulting mass of 14,700 kg (including 3,500 kg of cargo), would allow the vehicle to fit on the planned Europa 42u launch vehicle. The selection of the 42u as the targeted launch vehicle was very deliberate, since it mandated the development of sufficient infrastructure for the entire Europa 4 family, while it also left open the potential of launching manned versions of Minotaur on the 44u, which could launch a similar sized vehicle plus a launch abort system. As with many ESA projects, the allocation of contracts for Minotaur was heavily idiosyncratic, reflecting the breakdown of funding for the agency, as well as national priorities for development. The capsule would be primarily designed and integrated in France, reflecting their status as primary partner, tied with the UK for funding, though some systems-level components will be produced in other ESA member nations. Similarly, the capsule’s service module would be produced in Germany, supposedly to take advantage of their experience building the hypergolic Astris stage for Europa. The reality had more to do with German politicians making noise that despite their funding level (tied with Italy for third at ~15%) they had so far not seen as much funding come back in the form of hardware contracts as France, Britain, or indeed Italy--whose Thales corporation benefitted from module development contracts for the ERM and looked set to gain even more from Freedom’s new European lab and nodes. Once completed, the Minotaur service module and pressurized module would be shipped to Korou for integration with each other and their Europa 42u launch vehicle. After missions to Spacelab, the capsules would be recovered in Australia and potentially sent back to France for refurbishment and reuse.

However, more than just the major space nations ended up involved in SSF. Canada had been seeing an increasing role in spaceflight, beginning from its participation in the Canadian-built, NASA-launched Alouette 1 and the ISIS series of ionospheric research satellites. Indeed, the first geosynchronous communications satellite (Anik A-1, launched in 1972) was a Canadian-led project. This close working relationship made Canada a natural for one of the Spaceflight Participation Program flights to Spacelab, and it also came into play in the contracting for Freedom. Equipping the station with robotic manipulators was a critical part of enabling the use of the various external pallets included in the design, and Canada was selected to provide this critical element. The system would be designed and built by the Canadian engineering firm MacDonald, Dettwiler, and Associates (MDA) of British Columbia and would consist of several components: two arms, a number of grapple fixtures, transport systems to allow the arms to move about on the outside of the station, and finally the Cupola, a combined robotics operation and Earth observation center. The cupola was not originally part of the Canadian robotics package; rather, the idea had been developed at NASA, with the original intent of including it in McDonnell’s prime contractor package. However, as the more critical modules of the station were traded and subcontracted to manage workloads, the Cupola slipped from one package to another--first to several different American contractors in series (at one point it was being studied simultaneously--and independently--by McDonnell and Lockheed), then the possibility of including it as part of the dealing for Europe or Japan was considered. However, the situation was roughly the same in both cases: the Cupola would be a relatively small module--too small to be a ripe prize for any of the contractors or major international partners, while its relatively non-critical status rendered it a low priority and continually put it at risk of budget cuts or outright cancellation. Finally, in 1984, NASA offered it to Canada, justifying it as being a critical link in the use of the station’s robotics, but more a result of increasing desperation to see work on the module begun in earnest. Canada seized the opportunity, taking the chance to extract a relatively good deal--three flights to the station during the first five years after the station achieved initial operational capacity (IOC, which was projected to be in 1989) with potential renewal after the specified period. While the inclusion in the robotics package technically made MDA the prime contractor on the cupola, they had limited experience in the pressure hull or systems design required for the module, since their experience lay more in the robotics system design that won them the robotics package in the first place. Thus, responsibility for the Cupola largely fell on the subcontractor MDA selected, deHavilland Canada. The robotics package would be spread out over several launches--the first arm would launch with the HSM, the second arm with Node 1, and the Cupola would launch with Node 2, then be transferred to the nadir (earth-facing) port of Node 1.

Altogether, in1984 work related to Freedom was underway on four continents, with module design and hardware construction proceeding roughly according to schedule. The projected launch of the first element of Freedom is intended to be the HSM, in 1987, with further launches following during 1988 and 1989 to allow the station to achieve initial operating capacity in 1989--although final completion was foreseen to potentially take until as late as 1990. At over 1300 cubic meters, Freedom was to be more than double the size of Spacelab, and the large truss and external facilities would result in a mass of nearly 350 tons. American engineers and their international partners were confident in their response to the challenge posed by the Soviet Salyut 7 and the Russian’s announce future plans for even larger stations.

 

[Brainbin]

Salutations, everyone! I am the Brainbin, and I come to you today with another interlude, exploring the popular culture in the world (and beyond!) of Eyes Turned Skywards. I’ve been graciously invited by e of pi and truth is life to continue picking up on some of the plot strands I began in my previous guest post, and to further contextualize one of the major themes of this part of the story within the sphere of popular culture. Therefore, without further delay, I now present to you…

Eyes Turned Skyward, Interlude #2

Vulkan Panic.

The term reflected an anxiety, even a fear, held by the American people with regards to being left behind (in technological terms) not felt with the same immediacy since the Sputnik Crisis a quarter-century before. In some ways, it proved the culmination of a long and varied series of events that had shaken American pride and optimism over the last several decades: race riots, campus unrest, unpopular and failed wars, sexual revolutions, assassinations, corruption, and recession, to name but a few. The space program had seemed to be their one saving grace, once they had firmly lapped the Soviets by the late 1960s. But even in this arena, they were again falling behind. The sheer hysteria of the halcyon Sputnik days, however, was replaced with a more subtle unease; and as with so many other cultural phenomena, it quickly percolated into mass media.

2001: A Space Odyssey had, by the early 1980s, become the most highly acclaimed science-fiction film of all time, and a sequel was obviously a desirable proposition. At the very least, attempts to clarify the many, many questions raised by the first film were a key factor in approving the production of a second. However, in contrast to the original novel and film, which had been written simultaneously in collaboration between Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, the second novel, entitled 2010: Odyssey Two, was written solely by Clarke; it had no input whatsoever from the director, who had since moved on to other projects. Clarke completed his sequel novel in 1982, greatly inspired by the events of Vulkan Panic, and the film adaptation was released two years later. It was given the more ostentatious subtitle The Year We Make Contact, and was directed by Peter Hyams, who had some experience with the science-fiction genre, though he lacked the undeniable gravitas of Kubrick (who declined to direct, or indeed have any involvement at all in the film – he would not direct another motion picture himself until the Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket, released in 1987).

2010 depicted both the Americans and the Soviets working to return to Jupiter, the terminus of 2001, to determine what became of the crew of the Discovery (in a none-too-subtle echo of the confusion felt by audiences at the climax of the prior film). An immediate roadblock for the Americans was that their technology had fallen several years behind that of the Soviets; thus, realpolitik necessitated an arrangement that would see both sides conduct the retrieval mission jointly. However, this tentative détente endured only long enough for the Soviet ship, Leonov, to arrive at the derelict Discovery; by this time, tensions were once again on the rise (due to ever-shifting relations on the ground – literally) and the American crewmen were ordered to commandeer the Discovery and return it to Earth; among the tasks that were completed in order to accomplish this was the reactivation of the iconic HAL 9000. However, there was no hope for smooth sailing, as the lone “surviving” crewman of the Discovery, Dave Bowman (now reincarnated as the Star Child) arrived to inform both crews that the strange, monolithic aliens were planning to convert Jupiter into another star within the Solar System, and the process of doing so would doom everyone in orbit unless they prepared an imminent escape. The crew of the Leonov was all set to do so, but Discovery lacked sufficient fuel, seemingly leaving the Americans to their fate… until the crew of the Leonov decided to rescue them, transcending the bitterness of the terrestrial rivalry between their overseers. [1] HAL, meanwhile, remained behind aboard the Discovery, agreeing to sacrifice himself so that the human crew could escape; his redemptive act earned him an eternity with Bowman in a higher plane of existence. This humanistic ending stood in stark contrast to the deterministic tone of the original film, and it appealed to both leftists (due to its positive portrayal of the Soviets) and rightists (due to its ominous warnings of American technological inferiority leaving them helpless against their enemies, should they choose not to extend such courtesy as the Soviets did in this film). Critical responses to 2010 were good, though they obviously paled in comparison to those for 2001; the sequel finished at #12 in the box office for 1984, with over $50 million, one spot higher than that year’s Best Picture winner, Amadeus. (It was also the top-grossing science-fiction film). [2]

Even the third and final installment of the Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi, was accused of plumbing the present-day sociopolitical situation for allegorical purposes. George Lucas vehemently denied this, but the parallels were obvious: the Empire, despite all of the setbacks it had faced in the previous two films, was successfully able to use its industrial base to create a second Death Star in a fraction of the time that it had taken to build the first; comparisons to the seemingly-indefatigable Soviet Union were obvious. The Rebels, meanwhile, continued to struggle to make headway against them, falling afoul of the Hutt syndicate (standing in for the international criminal underworld) in the process. Finally, the Empire became embroiled in a conflict based around a small, isolated, and seemingly backward planet whose natives were able to give them a run for their money and contribute to their embarrassing defeat; this was seen as so blatant a reference to Afghanistan that many critics denounced it as too obvious. It certainly didn’t help that the cute, teddy-bear “Ewok” characters wore turbans, leading to uncomfortable accusations of racist stereotyping on the part of Lucas. [3] Regardless of any underlying allegorical messages, the film was a smash success, finishing (as its two predecessors did) as the top-grossing picture of its year. Though perhaps not as satisfying as the original Star Wars, nor as ambitious as The Empire Strikes Back, it was a rousing conclusion to the Star Wars trilogy, the toyetic Ewoks proving the only real black mark on the franchise (other than the notorious Holiday Special of 1978, which even Lucas himself had emphatically disowned). He showed surprisingly little interest in continuing the franchise after 1983, which was likely due to his bitter divorce from his wife and business partner, Marcia; which, in turn, had greatly influenced the dark tone of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the film he was producing at the time. It would go on to spur the creation of the PG-13 rating in 1984.

And then there was Star Trek. And showrunner Harve Bennett had a problem. Ratings for Star Trek: The New Voyages (colloquially TNV), though still very good overall, were in decline; the novelty of the returning Enterprise crew had waned, the enthusiasm for American space exploration had hit the brick wall that was Vulkan Panic, and the momentary economic reprieve of the mid-1970s had fallen into a malaise, which had even defeated the incumbent President of the United States. From the soaring heights of being the #4 series overall, with a 28 rating (translating to over 20 million households tuning in), during the first season in 1977-78 (which was overseen by Gene Roddenberry), TNV was in its fourth season lucky to get a 20 rating (or 15 million households – a drop of over 25% from its debut), and barely clung to the bottom rungs of the Top 30 overall for 1980-81; even airing on NBC, the third-place network, might not have been enough for a reprieve, considering the sheer expense of keeping the show going. Bennett had slowed the rising costs, but he could not stop them entirely, and indeed each episode would cost over $1 million by the final season in 1983-84, making TNV the most expensive show on television (and the first to top seven figures on a consistent basis). [4] Their one ally in high places was NBC CEO Fred Silverman, who, for his part, had been working for another network in 1969, at the time that NBC had originally cancelled Star Trek; he therefore had obvious reservations about making the same mistake twice. Silverman’s tenure at NBC, however, was riddled with embarrassing failures, in marked contrast his sterling record at both CBS and later ABC; he eventually left the Peacock Network in 1981, to be replaced by Grant Tinker, who had a rather more intimate affiliation with Star Trek: he had been a network executive for NBC in 1964, and in that capacity had approved the original pilot and had overseen its development. And just as he and his superiors had done nearly two decades before, he gave the production team another chance to get things right.

Bennett repeated his tried-and-true strategy of combing the archives of what had retroactively come to be known as The Original Voyages, or TOV, for story ideas. He accomplished this in a number of ways, including re-introducing the classic trickster Harry Mudd as a recurring character. [5] However, he had grander, more ambitious ideas as well. Though he had judged “Space Seed” as the likeliest candidate for a sequel story, the first-runner-up had always been “The Doomsday Machine”, an episode featuring an automated robotic – and implacable – planet killer, built by an ancient race from another galaxy. The episode had forebodingly concluded with the possibility of other such planet killers roaming around the universe, an oddly disquieting coda to an otherwise triumphant conclusion. The episode’s original writer, science-fiction and alternate history scribe Norman Spinrad, was recruited to provide additional story ideas and plotlines that could be derived from a return (properly, a follow-up invasion) of these planet killers. [6] Having been vocally dissatisfied with the original model for the planet killer, he suggested that the lone automaton be a “prototype” model; its arrival about a decade ahead of the (much larger) fleet would justify its less advanced design. He collaborated with both D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold on finer story points. The central idea was to tap into the zeitgeist, and do what Star Trek had always done best: allegory, in order to present a more sophisticated response to Vulkan Panic. The three main powers of the galaxy – the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans – had always been fairly transparent representations of the three main Cold War powers: the Western Allies, the Soviet Union, and Red China. Already, writers had depicted tensions between the three sides to be rising, allegorizing the end of détente under President Ronald Reagan (and, belatedly, replicating the Sino-Soviet split; the Klingons and Romulans had only been depicted as erstwhile allies in TOV for entirely budgetary reasons). [7]

However, this new, greater power, capable of obliterating any of the three of them, could only be matched by their combined resources: the speed, agility, maneuverability, and durability of Federation designs; the efficiency and rate of production harnessing the Klingon industrial base; and the raw firepower and stealth capabilities available through the use of Romulan technology; all of these, when taken together, would prove the equal, perhaps even the superior, of the seemingly infinite array of planet killers. They would also prove highly effective at patching the respective weaknesses of all three sides: the inability of Federation vessels to avoid detection; the ineffectiveness of Klingon weaponry; and the prohibitive costs of Romulan losses. Thus, plans for a meeting of the minds between the three powers, and plans for formal co-operation, became the over-arcing plotline of the season. Prominently featured to this end, was Ambassador Sarek, Spock’s father who had first appeared in an episode of TOV, and who would represent the Federation in these crucial talks. He would feature in several other episodes of TNV, both before and after this season (appearing in about as many, all told, as Spock himself), but this would constitute his only major character arc. The conclusion was inevitable, but fulfilling nonetheless: a proper alliance was formed, and all three powers banded together to defeat the legion of planet killers, resulting in an “Era of Good Feelings” through the enactment of a permanent, tripartite peace treaty. [8] Meanwhile, this grand allegory was anchored by firm character development, particularly for the heretofore underutilized First Officer, Commander Will Decker. For the man who had discovered the original planet killer was his father, Commodore Matt Decker; he had faced it only to lose his entire crew and then, driven by a crazed passion to avenge them, very nearly lost the crew of the Enterprise as well. Unable to bear the agonizing guilt, he then hijacked a shuttle and flew into the great maw of the machine. Though his suicide would indirectly provide a solution for destroying the planet killer, his reputation was tarnished beyond repair; and his legacy was an albatross around the younger Decker wherever he went. The Doomsday War (as it was quickly labelled by fans) provided him with an opportunity to avenge his father, and escape his shadow at the same time – metafictionally speaking, it would allow him to stand out at last amongst his TOV-era crewmates. It was not easy taking the primary role for which the mostly-absent and widely-beloved Spock was so well-known, and indeed, Richard Hatch, who played the character, had publicly noted such fan resistance. But, to his credit, he soldiered on, and audience reception to Decker’s character arc was overwhelmingly positive; his redemption proved a rousing success. Indeed, “pulling a Decker” became a widespread term for rescuing an unpopular character in fandom.

The ratings recovery was modest, but undeniable. The fifth season of TNV – which contained the complete Doomsday War arc – finished at #21 overall, with over 16 million households tuning in; this was an increase of nearly one million over season four, when the show had ranked at only #26. Nevertheless, executives were extremely reluctant to allow Bennett to continue with such heavily arc-driven storylines; indeed, the concept met with as much criticism as praise, often derided as “ Dallas in Space” by its detractors. (In retrospect, perhaps a comparison to then-fledgling Dynasty, co-created by Bennett’s old boss Aaron Spelling, might have been more apt.) The following sixth season, at the network’s insistence, returned to a primarily episodic format. The groundbreaking Hill Street Blues would be allowed to carry on with story arcs, but the notion of a serialized Star Trek, or indeed any properly arc-based science-fiction series continued to be, perhaps, too much for certain people to accept. [9] So with the conclusion of the Doomsday War, the Enterprise was assigned to a long-term exploration mission in a remote region, far beyond Federation space. This kept them – literally and figuratively – away from Federation politics. Ratings overall held relatively stable with the previous, more ambitious fifth season, serving merely to delay the inevitable. Thus, when it came time to shoot the next – and ultimately the last – season, the writers were allowed some latitude in creating another over-arcing plotline, though it proved challenging to top the truly impressive Doomsday War storyline of two years before; eventually, the answer came when Bennett and his writers decided to spin an apparent weakness (being sent into an unexplored sector of space, far from Federation intrigues, the Klingons, and the Romulans) into an unexpected source of strength, because unknown space meant unknown enemies. And here, Bennett again went with his established tack of finding new story opportunities from events in previous episodes. Thus began the seventh and final season of TNV.

The region of space in which the Enterprise found itself was revealed, through the course of the season, to be dominated by a barbarous and prolific group of pirates known as the Elasi. [10] Reports indicated that they had, until very recently, been leaderless and bitterly divided into numerous infighting bands, before something – or someone – had brought them together. It was eventually made clear that the Elasi were, to a man, filthy and loutish brutes, barely capable of flying a ship, let alone forming any kind of organized society, and it soon became apparent that whoever had reformed the Elasi had been an outsider – but who could it have been? A season-long tease ensued, that would not be resolved until the grand finale. The Elasi, for their part, were actually introduced in the finale to the previous season; for though a full story arc had been out of the question, partial cliffhangers were deemed acceptable (as the legacy of Dallas had been a game-changer, derogatory nicknames aside). The crew of the Enterprise was tasked with opening formal diplomatic relations with the new, centralized leadership of the Elasi; it took most of the season for the crew to track down their power base (though not without a few scenic detours, of course). It did not help that they were running against the clock: it had already been decided that the ongoing mission of the Enterprise would not be extended past its presently scheduled end, and Kirk, who had deferred promotion to the Admiralty in order to assume command in the first place, now faced a difficult choice as to whether or not he would do the same again. On the one hand, he wasn’t getting any younger, and his remaining in a command position stymied the upward aspirations of those beneath him in the hierarchy, including his First Officer, Commander Decker. And certainly, if anyone in all of Starfleet was worthy of promotion, it was James T. Kirk, the most accomplished commanding officer in its history. But on the other hand, commanding a starship was undeniably that at which he excelled beyond all else. And it was what he loved above all else. The prospect of riding a desk for the rest of his career filled him with dread. This internal debate would define his character throughout the season. Stand-alone adventures were still quite common, and pursuit of the itinerant Elasi resulted in many “near-misses” and wild goose chases. In the episode immediately preceding the two-part feature length season (and series) finale, the Enterprise finally caught up with the Elasi “court”, and encountered its new leader.

It turned out to be none other Khan Noonien Singh, who was very much living up to his name as he continued to prove his incredible leadership and organizational skills, emerging as the leader of the Elasi; his cadre of Supermen formed the aristocracy of the society, which pillaged the resources and technologies of all who would dare challenge it (worlds willing to accept the sovereignty of Khan were permitted to remain completely autonomous, provided that they made regular tribute payments). Khan’s rise to power did not come without personal cost – his wife, the former Lt. Marla McGivers, was assassinated by Elasi dissidents, as she was unlike her fellow aristocrats, lacking both super-strength and intelligence. (The assassination of McGivers was driven by real life circumstances – Madlyn Rhue’s multiple sclerosis had resulted in her condition continuing to deteriorate; she was now confined to a wheelchair, and it was decided that incorporating this into her onscreen character would be too on-the-nose for anyone’s liking). [11] The death of her character gave Khan a more immediate drive, to create a lasting Empire in her memory, so that her death would not be in vain. The crew of the Enterprise, meanwhile, many of whom had known and served with McGivers, did their best to mourn her loss, and in doing so lament the choices that she had made that led to her death. Kirk, in particular, took the news of her passing very hard, for it was he who had given her the choice between following Khan to Ceti Alpha V and facing court-martial – a decision that would have ruined her Starfleet career, no doubt, but would almost certainly result in her having a much longer and more stable life.

Tentative negotiations ultimately went nowhere, and it became clear that conflict was inevitable. And in the ensuing battle, Kirk defeated Khan, this time once and for all; the Elasi, who were again rendered leaderless, immediately fractured, with Federation diplomats attempting to assist the now-beaten society. The Enterprise hobbled back to Earth, and Kirk, once again the Hero of the Federation, was even offered another command mission in lieu of promotion, in gratitude. He sought counsel from his closest friends before making his decision: in speaking with Decker, who was like a son to him, he decided that his First Officer had earned the chance to become Captain himself; he learned from Bones, his oldest friend, that the good Doctor was planning to accept a promotion of his own, to work in a research position at Starfleet Medical; and finally, he spoke to none other than perhaps his most trusted confidant, Mr. Spock, who had very positive memories of his time in Starfleet, and had perhaps the most fulfilling experiences of his life there; but he had also wished to broaden his horizons, to become a better person and to do more good. He then reminded Kirk that, as a flag officer, he could provide leadership and guidance for a great many throughout the galaxy, as opposed to the relative few under his personal authority as Captain of the Enterprise. Having taken all this advice to heart, Kirk therefore decided to decline the offer from Starfleet and accept promotion to Rear Admiral, knowing that his time in command had ended definitively, on a triumphant note. TNV ended with Kirk officially handing over command of the Enterprise to the newly-promoted Captain Willard Decker, with his last words being those of the new mission assigned to the ship – which was, naturally, nearly identical to the missions assigned in TOV, TAV, and TNV. The final shot was of the Enterprise, now under the command of Decker, departing from Earth for parts unknown. The grand finale, highly anticipated and heavily promoted, aired on May 23, 1984, and was a smash success, becoming the third-highest-rated telecast of the 1980s, with a 50.9 rating (indicating over 42.5 million households watching), and a 74 share (indicating an audience of 74% of all people watching television at that moment). [12] It was the exclamation mark to an otherwise lackluster season in terms of viewers, with the series just barely maintaining its berth in the Top 30 (though it was still enough to give TNV the distinction of having been one of the thirty most popular shows on the air throughout its run).

In contrast to the pessimism with regards to the space program as a result of Vulkan Panic, the ultimate tonic was a nostalgic reflection on days of yore: The Right Stuff, a popular film (adapted from the non-fiction book by Tom Wolfe) which told the story of the Mercury Seven. Inevitably emerging as the central character was John Glenn, who, as it happened, had since switched careers, having been a U.S. Senator for Ohio since 1974. At first, Glenn wasn’t sure what to make of the movie as it was in production, but he decided to accept an invitation to attend the premiere on October 16, 1983. Impressed by his heroic portrayal in the film by actor Ed Harris, he immediately embraced the picture, presciently seeing it as a potential career-booster. [13] Being an astronaut and therefore accustomed to very literally reaching toward the stars, he naturally had higher ambitions than being just one man in 100. He wanted to sit in the White House. He had been a Senator for almost two full terms by the time of the 1984 elections, so he was considered sufficiently experienced to seek higher office. It certainly helped that The Right Stuff was a substantial hit, finishing 19th at the Box Office for 1983, grossing over $35 million. [14] It was also nominated for nine Academy Awards, including a Best Actor nomination for Harris. [15] Sen. Glenn attended the 56th Academy Awards on April 9, 1984, as a guest of the cast and crew of the film, and received an ovation from the audience when he was singled out by host Johnny Carson. By this time, he was already competing in the Democratic Party primaries for President, and this would prove the ultimate, and very well-needed, late boost to his campaign.

Walter Mondale, who had been the Vice-President of the United States under Jimmy Carter, emerged very early on as frontrunner for the 1984 contest; his only real competition was Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, who was shown in the grind of campaigning to be something of a lightweight, and Rev. Jesse Jackson, who lacked political experience (beyond his advocacy for civil rights) and had little appeal beyond the African-American bloc of the Democratic Party (critically wounding his chances for the nomination after making anti-Semitic remarks). In choosing a running-mate, he weighed distinctiveness (in order to create a balanced ticket) against electability; he eventually selected Glenn, who had received the fourth-highest number of delegates in the nomination contest, performing well in debates against his rivals. [16] Glenn had a number of strengths: he was well-known by the American public, with his popular reputation revitalized by The Right Stuff, and he could plausibly attack incumbent President Ronald Reagan on one of his weaker foreign policy points: his lukewarm support for the space program, which looked very bad in the face of Vulkan Panic. A staunch anti-communist, Reagan had decisively ended the period of détente that had defined the 1970s, which had certainly helped to escalate the popular hysteria in the first place.

The Mondale/Glenn ticket had one advantage over the equally disastrous McGovern/Shriver ticket of a dozen years before; the bottom half of this ticket actively worked to mitigate the disastrous top half. But to no avail; Glenn was photogenic, moderate, and actively campaigned against Reagan on his one weak foreign policy plank, but he was also something of a stuffed shirt: interesting but not truly engaging. President Reagan, on the other hand, was extremely charismatic: one of his many nicknames was “the Great Communicator”. And his primary benefit was an extrinsic one: the economy, which had been somewhere between “bad” and “worse” for most of the past decade, was finally booming once again. Despite having a very strong foreign policy orientation, Reagan did not hesitate to take advantage of the American (and global) economic recovery for political purposes. He also gained from the drastic missteps of his opponent, Mondale, who famously promised to raise taxes (as part of a claim that Reagan would do the same, and was lying when he claimed otherwise; but only his own promise, divorced from its context or the attempted smear on his opponent, had any traction).

Reagan won very decisively in the popular vote, with the support of over 57% of the electorate. Mondale and Glenn, meanwhile, won only 42% of the vote. [17] The Electoral College tally was even more lopsided: Reagan won 49 states; Mondale, meanwhile, claimed only his home state of Minnesota (which he won by a mere half-percentage point), along with the District of Columbia, for a total of 13 electoral votes against the 525 accumulated by Reagan and Bush (the worst-ever showing for the Democratic Party in its long history – even McGovern had managed 17 against the 520 mustered by Richard Nixon). Mondale performed best in the Northeast and the Midwest, but came within five points of winning in only two other states: Rhode Island and Massachusetts. [18] Reagan enjoyed massive popularity, and would go on to define the 1980s as few Presidents before or since have defined their respective tenures. With regards to space travel and exploration, however, his legacy faced considerable dispute…

---

[1] IOTL, neither the Leonov nor the Discovery had sufficient fuel to escape the Jovian gravity well, necessitating both sides to pool their resources. The changed ending ITTL better reflects the palpable sense that the USA is being left behind at present (the early 1980s), and that the current gap will only widen as the years progress.

[2] 2010 finished at #17 IOTL, with a gross of about $40 million. It ranked second among pure science-fiction films, behind Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (at #9, with $76 million), which does not exist ITTL. For the purposes of the narrative, I’m treating Ghostbusters (IOTL #2, with $230 million) as a fantasy film rather than science-fiction. However, by (guest) authorial fiat, that movie will finish as the top-grossing film of 1984 ITTL, ahead of Beverly Hills Cop (which turned the trick IOTL, with $235 million).

[3] You will notice that Return of the Jedi has the exact same basic plot as IOTL. This is deliberate; the different sociopolitical situation of TTL has resulted in critics and analysts choosing to interpret the film in such a way as to make it relevant to their own world. This is a demonstration of the concept known as Death of the Author.

[4] What is traditionally regarded as the first series to break the $1-million-per-episode mark IOTL, Battlestar Galactica, actually did not do so consistently; the average was over $1 million, because certain episodes (particularly the pilot) inflated the overall budget. Though sources differ (because producers and executives tend to be secretive about budget figures), what appears to have been the first series to break $1 million per episode on a consistent basis IOTL was Miami Vice, in 1984-85.

[5] Harry Mudd was played by Roger C. Carmel, and has the distinction of being the only non-Starfleet character to appear in more than episode of the original Star Trek. IOTL, there were plans to reintroduce him to TNG, evading the prospect of his death by old age or misadventure by having him cryogenically frozen and discovered in this state by the crew of the Enterprise-D. Unfortunately, the high-living Carmel died of alcohol- and drug-induced heart problems (or he may have committed suicide; there is some dispute on the matter) in late 1986. The episode in which Mudd would have returned was then reworked into “The Neutral Zone”. ITTL, Carmel, by returning as Harry Mudd, becomes one of a handful of actors to appear in all three Star Trek series: TOV, TNV, and the cartoon (The Animated Voyages, or TAV).

[6] Spinrad, though he was dissatisfied with the finished product of “The Doomsday Machine” (he also wanted Robert Ryan as the Ahab figure of Commodore Decker, as opposed to William Windom, who landed the part and did a fantastic job in this editor’s not-so-humble opinion), was willing to contribute further to the franchise IOTL. A second script for the original series (“He Walked Among Us”) was discarded due to disputes between Spinrad and then-producer Gene L. Coon, but Spinrad did later contribute a spec script called “To Attain the All” to the development of Phase II IOTL (and ITTL – it became an episode of the first season of TNV).

[7] Those budgetary reasons being that they couldn’t afford more models for Romulan warbirds, so they had to reuse Klingon birds-of-prey instead.

[8] Thus fulfilling the Organian prediction of the Federation and the Klingons becoming “fast friends”, which is noted by Spock himself.

[9] The Sci-Fi Ghetto strikes again. But even so, do note that Hill Street Blues, popularly credited as the show that brought serialized story arcs to primetime (not counting soap operas) only premiered in 1981; they did not become dominant until the 2000s, before which time shows with standalone episodes continued to dominate (including within Star Trek; note that the decision by the makers of DS9 to write arc-based storylines met with considerable resistance on all sides IOTL).

[10] The Elasi space pirates are borrowed from two early 1990s PC adventure games: Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgment Rites. The latter of these features the final performance by the entire original cast, as an ensemble (as was the custom of the time, only the advanced CD-ROM versions featured voice acting). As those games were explicitly made to “bridge the gap” between the original series and the OTL movies, they will likely be very different games ITTL, if they exist at all.

[11] Though this has never been said explicitly, it is very likely that the same reasoning was applied with regards to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan IOTL.

[12] The TNV finale finished behind two broadcasts, both of which existed IOTL: the resolution to the famed “Who Shot J.R.?” cliffhanger on Dallas, airing on November 21, 1980, and receiving a 53.3 rating and a 76 share; and the “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” finale of M*A*S*H, airing on February 28, 1983, and receiving a 60.2 rating and a 77 share.

[13] Glenn did not attend the premiere IOTL; by the time he and his staff decided to emphasize his connection to the film, it was too late. In this more space-happy timeline, the original book written by Tom Wolfe in 1979 would likely be less critical in its portrayal of Glenn, described in the OTL version as a “zealous moralizer”. Therefore, he would have less reason to be suspicious of the film adaptation, and could embrace it from the beginning, to the benefit of his political career.

[14] The Right Stuff finished at #33 in the box office for the year 1983 IOTL, grossing $21 million.

[15] Ed Harris did not receive a Best Actor nomination for his role as John Glenn IOTL.

[16] Glenn also finished fourth IOTL - a far more distant fourth. He had also left the nomination contest by the time his home state of Ohio was in contention (on May 8, 1984), whereas ITTL, he is able to win his home state in a three-way race with Mondale and Hart (though he carries no other states).

[17] The OTL popular results were: 58.8% for Reagan, and 40.6% for Mondale.

[18] Glenn’s presence on the ticket improves the Democratic result in numerous Midwestern states, including his home state of Ohio; however, the Democrats perform slightly more poorly in the Northeast, which was the home region of Mondale’s OTL running-mate, Rep. Geraldine Ferraro.

 

[e of pi]

Yeesh. You duck into work on homework for a few hours and when you come up for air you've totally missed updating the thread. Boy is my face red. Actually, that's convenient, because this week and next, we're leaving the Earth behind for a bit, and headed a bit further out for another check in on unmanned missions. This week: Reds on Mars.

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #8

Mars, the Red Planet, has always engaged human curiosity and fascination with the sky to a greater extent than perhaps any other heavenly body. From its blood-red color in the sky to its strange behavior, looping back and forth through the sky seemingly capriciously, it has captivated human observers for thousands of years, though perhaps never as much in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The apparent discovery of canali, grooves...canals...on the surface of the planet led to a massive surge in public interest in the planet, with waves of popular science fiction following, all imagining a dying civilization building a huge network of channels to eke out a slightly longer existence. While scientists pulled away from such grandiose notions relatively quickly, the public retained such ideas well into the 1960s. Instead, scientists considered Mars to be a planet with a thinner atmosphere and cooler temperature than Earth, although still capable of supporting simple life, thus explaining the seasonal changes in Mars’ coloration as being caused by the growth and death of plants on the planet’s surface. Mars, as the nearest body that could support life, was therefore a prime target for exploration in the dawning space age. However, that exploration proved a huge disappointment, as flyby probes revealed a heavily cratered surface and an atmosphere not one-tenth as thick as Earth's, but one-one-hundredth, far too thin to support even simple lifeforms. Even after this disappointment, however, the Soviet program continued to try to explore Mars, sending orbiter-landers in 1969 and a set of four probes--two landers carried by flyby buses and two orbiters--in 1973. Unfortunately, both of these missions were largely unsuccessful. The 1969 landers both failed before returning any useful data from the surface, while one of the 1973 landers never even hit the planet, and the other returned only garbage data from its descent. The orbiters of both sets were more successful, returning imagery and other data from Mars, but were overshadowed by the American Mariner 9 and later Viking missions, both of which set a high bar to climb over.

Even after the mixed success at best of the Mars '73 campaign, however, the Reds were not quite done with the Red Planet. Despite the cancellation of the N-1 and the resulting abandonment of the advanced 4NM and 5NM probe designs which depended critically on the big booster's heavy lift capability, Lavochkin was undeterred, starting work on a set of smaller, lighter probes. This would allow them to be launched on Protons (or the RLA or Vulkan then under discussion by Glushko), then rendezvous in Earth orbit to form a complex just as large as the 4NM or 5NM probes, allowing them to carry out all the same missions without the need for Korolev’s booster. However, the engineers at Lavochkin design bureau soon came to their senses, and realized that the complex mission plan of the 5M sample return mission, or even the simpler 4M rover mission could not possibly be reliably performed by the Soviet Union without considerable prior development of all of the technology involved. Most important, considering the dismal success rate of past Soviet Mars missions, was demonstrating the ability to successfully soft-land payloads on Mars and successfully conduct orbital insertions, followed by the 4M rover flight and finally the actual 5M sample return mission. Thus, Lavochkin turned towards a more modest initial goal, developing a 5MV common bus design for Venus and Mars missions (based on the 4V-1 bus designed for the 1975 Venus launch opportunity) which could later be used for the 5M mission's orbital component. The first set of missions to use this bus design would be the Venera 11 and 12 missions for the 1978 launch window. While Venera 12's lander component suffered a number of issues, Venera 11's functioned well, and the buses for both missions performed to specification for the duration needed for the Mars orbital mission scheduled for the 1979 launch window. This final rehearsal cleared the path for Mars 8 and 9 to be launched, and they proceeded uneventfully into space atop Proton boosters when the time came. Upon arriving at Mars, Mars 8 was lost to a failure of the fuel tank pressurization system, but Mars 9 settled into orbit and began its scientific program. Complementing Pioneer Mars, it conducted spectroscopic studies of most of the planet, allowing the creation of the first mineralogical map of Mars when combined with Pioneer Mars data. Furthermore, it created the first high-resolution all-Soviet map of the planet, and exceeded its design lifetime, lasting for nearly 3 times the planned 90 days. Encouraged by the success of the mission, Soviet planetary scientists pushed for a considerably more complex and ambitious mission to follow it up at the 1984 Mars launch window.

This mission, Mars '84, would consist of two portions, an orbital segment based on the 5MV design and a lander segment resembling the small spherical landers of the Mars 2 and 3 missions, or the early Luna lander missions. While carrying a relatively limited suite of scientific instruments and with a short lifetime of perhaps 30 days, they would still be able to return the first Soviet scientific data of any value from the surface of Mars and prove Soviet capabilities for soft-landing payloads on Mars, vital for the complex 5M mission still in the back of many minds. The mission would also offer an opportunity to prove the new Blok R high-energy upper stage, in conjunction with the planetary injection capabilities of the Vulkan rocket, capabilities that were vital for the very ambitious Soviet Venus exploration program. Together, the combination was irresistible, and approval of the program was relatively quick. Development proceeded relatively smoothly, based on the Mars 8 and 10 missions, and the Mars '84 probes (soon publicly named Mars 10 and Mars 11) were launched on schedule and smoothly injected themselves into trans-Mars trajectories using the Blok R. The cruise period was uneventful, a welcome change from the constant trouble that had plagued most previous Soviet missions, and the two probes successfully completed their braking maneuver into Mars orbit. After a week long study period, Mars 10 dropped its probe onto the northern edge of Hellas Planitia, a vast impact basin in the southern hemisphere of Mars. Mars 11 followed up by dropping its lander onto the northern edge of Argyre Planitia, another large southern hemisphere impact basin nearly a third of the way around the planet from Hellas, a week later. Both landers returned considerable amounts of data, including imagery, from the surface, showing that the southern hemisphere basins, at least at the Mars 10 and 11 landing sites, were similar in many ways to the landing sites of the Viking probes in the northern hemisphere. When the landers expired, 26 and 32 days after landing respectively, the orbiters continued observing the planet, gathering more data, more observations, and more images of the planet below. After the completion of their one year mission, they finally expired from the exhaustion of their maneuvering propellants.

By this time, work was already well underway on the next Soviet Mars mission. While time constraints and the focus on the ambitious upcoming Venera and Gallei missions prevented launch during the 1986 launch window, during the 1988 window Mars 12 and 13 were successfully dispatched to the Red Planet atop Vulkan-Blok R rockets. After the Mars Surface Elements carried by each orbiter descended to the surface, each probe would rendezvous with Phobos, conducting in-depth studies of the body before perhaps attempting a soft landing on the body as a final stunt. As with many previous Soviet probes, Mars 12 and 13 carried a number of foreign instruments and experiments, including the Mars Surface Elements present on each probe, which had been designed and built by the European Space Agency (albeit with Soviet input from the Mars 10/11 design, and a Soviet-provided radioisotope thermal generator). Their transit to Mars proceeded uneventfully, proving the reliability of the new 6MV bus design, and both orbiters successfully braked into Mars orbit. The Mars 12 lander was released and touched down successfully in Ares Vallis, downstream of Aram Chaos and close to the planned landing site of Mars 7 a week before Mars 13 released its lander, targeted this time at the crater Alexsei Tolstoy, almost on the opposite side of the planet from the Mars 12 landing site. While performing a generally similar mission to the previous Mars 10 and 11 landers, investigating the geological and atmospheric characteristics of the planet, these would have a much longer surface lifetime than the earlier probes, having been designed to function for up to an Earth year and capable (if just) of communicating directly with Earth. It was hoped that the wide separation would allow comparisons to be made between events in the northern and southern hemispheres, particularly in terms of seismology and weather. In the event, both probes functioned well, successfully reaching Mars' surface and setting up communications shortly afterwards. This marked the first time a European probe had successfully landed on a planetary surface. While neither probe successfully completed the intended one-year mission (the Mars 12 lander ceased to function after 19 days due to a computer glitch, while the Mars 13 probe operated for 10 months before mysteriously shutting down during a local dust storm), they marked the first modest step by the ESA into planetary surface exploration, and demonstrated that it could be completely independent of NASA, a constant latent tension after the Seat Wars.

After dropping off their surface elements, both orbiters maneuvered to intercept Phobos, first imaging the moon from long range then closing in over the course of several months. During this process, Mars 13 suddenly failed while in an intermediate observation orbit, probably due to a computer error, although Mars 12 soldiered on, drawing ever closer to the moon. Finally, after six months of careful approach, it made a soft landing on Phobos in early September 1989, becoming the first human object ever to touch down on another planet's moon. While it survived only a few days on Phobos before conditions became inhospitable for the spacecraft (designed as it was to operate in free space, not on the ground), it still marked another remarkable first for the Soviet space program. Even while it was about to touch down, however, Lavochkin engineers were hard at work on the next step for Soviet Mars exploration, which would consist of a dedicated Phobos-oriented mission, with a lander (Fobos-Grunt) specifically designed to function on Phobos for weeks or months. This would launch hopefully in 1994, to be followed up in 1998 by a Phobos sample return mission. Such a mission would prove many of the techniques needed for a Mars sample return mission, the ultimate in Soviet as well as American Mars science, which could hopefully be launched sometime in the first decade of the next century. Unfortunately, just as Mars 12 touched down political events began to spiral out of control for the Soviet Union, and it quickly became impossible for the Union, or later Russia, to make further forward progress alone.

As an interesting aside, the crater Alexsei Tolstoy, targeted by the Mars 13 lander, is named after two important Russian authors (both related to the famous Leo Tolstoy). The later of the two writers was an important Soviet sympathizer and author who, after leaving Russia as a White emigre during the Civil War, later returned to the Soviet Union in the 1920s. There, he wrote a number of novels, among which was the science-fiction novel Aelita. Its depiction of a Red revolution on the Red Planet perhaps owed more to Lowell and Wells than contemporary astronomy, but proved highly influential to the later Soviet space program. In addition to spawning an important black-and-white silent film, one of the first feature-length science-fiction films and possessed of a unique constructivist design sense, the novel gave its name to a series of Soviet human Mars expedition proposals in the 1960s and early 1970s. The fact that 1989 was also (roughly) the 65th anniversary of the film Aelita’s release was perhaps coincidence, given official Soviet ambivalence towards the film.

 

[e of pi]

So, this week we once again turn our sights to the Red Planet, this time a little less Red in our focus, to look in detail at American exploration of Mars, with Pioneer Mars, the Mars Reconnaissance Pioneer, and the Mars Traverse Rovers. This one goes a bit further into the future of the TL than most of our updates have, so I may be limited in what clarification I can provide without spoiling other aspects of the timeline.

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #9

Although the Soviets were the most active in exploring Mars, the American space program had certainly not abandoned the planet. Even after the disappointing biological results of Viking, there were still many interesting geological, meteorological, climatological, and geophysical questions that could be asked about the terrestrial planets, and Mars remained in many ways the ideal planet (aside from Earth) to study those questions. After all, it lacked the hellish surface conditions or opaque atmosphere of Venus, and was far easier to reach than Mercury. Therefore, even as the Viking probes were touching down at Tritonis Lacus and Utopia Planitia, and the orbiters were settling into their routine, NASA was planning further missions. Among the leading candidates for launch at the next feasible opportunity was the so-called "Viking '79" mission. This would recycle much of the hardware designed and built for Viking, particularly remaining flight spares on Earth, to perform an even more ambitious mission such as delivering the first rovers to another planet or following up the hoped-for discovery of life at one or the other Viking sites. Even further in the future, Viking hardware derivatives might be used to conduct increasingly ambitious missions, leading up to a sample return in the late 1980s or early 1990s. However, with the non-discovery of life at the Viking 1 and 2 landing sites the public lost interest in expensive Viking-class missions, and the idea of a Viking '79--or a Viking '81, or a Viking '84--receded farther and farther into the distance. The final blow was dealt by Voyager-Uranus, whose approval came at just the moment that funding for a Viking '79 mission needed to start. Combined with the subsequent approval of the Galileo Jupiter orbiter and then the Kirchoff Halley flyby/comet rendezvous probe, it was obvious that another mission of the size and complexity of Viking could not be flown until perhaps the late 1980s.

Into the breach stepped the Ames Research Center. Like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory long involved in planetary exploration, Ames had previously proposed to use a derivative of their Pioneer Venus orbiter design to study Mars, mostly focusing on aeronomy--the study of the upper atmosphere--and spectroscopic imaging of the surface. Now these proposals were revived as a low-cost method to continue NASA's study of Mars. Such an orbiter would be cheap, perhaps $100-150 million, and could explore many interesting questions left unanswered by Viking. Approval of the "Pioneer Mars" mission was relatively speedy, although a planned second orbiter carrying penetrators, hard landing probes which could conduct a number of surface studies, was dropped due to cost and schedule concerns. The Pioneer Mars orbiter, unlike its Cytherean counterpart, would be a lone traveler to Mars. While it was a secondary priority at Ames during the preparation of its Cytherean siblings, once they launched in 1978 preparations stepped into high gear, and Pioneer Mars was launched by an Atlas-Centaur in 1979 for its date with the Red Planet. Once it reached Mars, it settled into a highly elliptical orbit, dipping down to just one hundred kilometers off the surface before popping back up to over thirty thousand kilometers altitude. Such an elongated orbit allowed it to skim the atmosphere relatively deeply, allowing measurements of its properties which would otherwise be impossible. At the same time, it allowed the spectroscopes carried by the probe to observe the planet from a close vantage point, giving them a better view of the planet than had heretofore been achieved. After an Earth year of this atmosphere-surfing, during which the probe burned a great deal of propellant and suffered significant changes to its orbit, Pioneer Mars executed a long burn to bring it to a higher Martian orbit, where it would not reenter until long after any microbes that might have survived the sterilization process it had undergone would die of old age and starvation. Even from this vantage point, though, it could continue to perform useful scientific observations, and so it did until finally running out of propellant and becoming uncontrollable in the late 1980s, a few years before its older sibling at Venus. After Pioneer Mars, there was a long gap in American Mars exploration. While the Vikings continued to operate for a few more years, and Pioneer Mars kept faithfully sending data, the focus had turned towards other bodies, away from the Red Planet. But Mars would not be so easily and quietly abandoned, and the faint echo of his war that sounded from the challenger of Vulkan rekindled NASA's interest in the planet. After the Vulkan launch, anything the Soviets did in space seemed threatening, and the dispatch of two probes in 1983 to Mars was no exception. Shortly after they arrived in early 1984, President Reagan proposed to add a pair of new missions, the Mars Reconnaissance Pioneer from Ames and the Mars Traverse Rovers from JPL to the list of scheduled American planetary missions, for launch in perhaps 1990. Congress approved the missions without debate when they came up for consideration, and the next pair of American Mars missions began to roll forward.

The first, the Mars Reconnaissance Pioneer, was in many ways the more straightforward of the pair. Designed to further the studies of the Viking orbiters and Pioneer Mars, MRP would conduct in-depth studies of the Martian atmosphere and weather systems for an entire Martian year, hopefully improving Earth's knowledge of Martian seasonality. Additionally, it would carry a suite of spectrometers to further refine the compositional data provided by the Pioneer Mars and Mars 9 missions, and a laser altimeter to refine height estimates provided by the radar altimeter aboard Pioneer Mars. The cameras intended to map weather features could also be used to obtain medium to high resolution imagery of planetary surface, giving the MRP a broad range of scientific objectives. Development proceeded smoothly; in truth, so far as any planetary exploration development program can be simple and straightforward, this was it. Many of the instruments that would be flown by the MRP had been pioneered by earlier planetary flights, or by Earth orbital missions, and could be had virtually off the shelf. While accommodations would need to be made for the unique target and environmental conditions, adapting existing instrument designs was still cheaper and easier than building them from scratch. Thus, the MRP proceeded to its 1990 launch date with little trouble, riding a Delta 4000 into orbit and then on to Mars. When it reached Mars, it undertook a completely novel technique to reach its planned low-altitude circular mapping orbit (itself a departure from the norm for most previous planetary missions). Rather than use its on-board rocket to perform a series of burns to circularize its orbit, the MRP would instead make a series of very low passes through the atmosphere, just over the 100 kilometers of Mars Pioneer. This would slowly drain energy from the probe and lower its maximum orbital altitude, saving hundreds of kilograms of propellant that would otherwise be needed. The extremely well-characterized nature of Mars' upper atmosphere, and Pioneer Mars' own inadvertent demonstration of the technique, was a key factor behind the approval by NASA administration of the otherwise risky aerobraking maneuver. After months of these low passes, the MRP finally settled into its final mapping orbit, beginning its intensive scientific investigation of the planet. Over months, then years of work, the MRP slowly built on, and occasionally demolished, the view of Mars that had been created by previous mission to the planet. In addition to a vast array of high-resolution imagery, the MRP also produced a highly detailed global spectroscopic map, a topographic map surpassing that of any other planet in the Solar System, and produced the first view of the entire yearly weather cycle of a planet besides Earth.

The Mars Traverse Rovers were altogether the more ambitious of the two responses to the Soviet Mars challenge. The surface counterpart to the MRP's orbiter, the mission would deliver, as the name indicates, a pair of rovers designed by JPL to the surface of Mars for a long-duration (perhaps one Earth year long) traverse of the Martian surface in conjunction with each other. Besides the obvious scientific returns that could be had by having a mobile imaging and scientific platform, the rovers would also serve as an engineering test for larger and more complex rovers, which could either serve as useful mobile platforms in their own right or be used to undertake the Holy Grail of Mars science, the Mars Sample Return mission both NASA and the Soviets had been chasing for many years. More complex and novel than the MRP, the Mars Traverse Rovers were plagued with issues from the start of the program. Even the question of how they would be propelled--wheels, tank-treads, or a complex multi-legged walking system were all serious contenders--was not resolved until a year into the project, with the simple and proven wheels coming out on top. While the original proposal used a heavily-modified Viking lander as essentially a sort of mothership for the pair of rovers, complete with its own suite of scientific instruments, constant weight and cost growth forced the capabilities of the lander to shrink in tandem, until it was little more than a delivery platform. Already, the problems encountered in designing rovers of this size and capability to operate in an alien environment, with no experience at JPL to temper the design process, had led to the launch date slipping to 1992 from the original estimate of 1990. The program continued in much the same vein right up to its launch date, constantly encountering problems and constantly finding a way around them, although in the process the launch slipped again, now to 1994. Finally the launch window arrived, and the rovers, tucked safely under their lander, itself encased inside an aeroshell for direct Mars entry, were dispatched on their way by another Delta 4000.

Targeted at the mouth of Ares Vallis, a vast water-carved channel on Mars that had long been fingered as an interesting site for Mars exploration, the Mars Traverse Rovers--now named Independence and Liberty from an elementary-school essay contest organized by the increasingly PR-conscious NASA--reached Mars in September 1995. After an anxious descent through the Martian atmosphere, the two rovers touched down safely only a dozen kilometers off target, with preparations for deployment starting almost immediately after touchdown. While the deployment of Independence proceeded smoothly, that of Liberty failed during the last step--lowering the rover to the surface of Mars from its resting place underneath the lander. Inspection by Independence showed that a locking pin, supposed to be removed prior to launch, had accidentally been left in place, preventing the rover's release. Several attempts to use Independence to remove the pin failed, and it was eventually decided to abandon Liberty in place, converting it to a "stationary scientific platform" with those instruments that could be productively used while the rover was hanging under the lander bus powered on. Meanwhile, Independence would continue with the primary mission, an attempt to make its way up Ares Vallis while studying the geological properties of the soil and rocks along its path. So thorough were JPL scientists in doing so, in fact, that a month after departing Independence could still view its lander on the horizon, having taken the time to inspect not only a large number of rocks but also a series of trenches dug by its own wheels in the Martian soil during its slow and meandering journey. This pattern of slow but scientifically productive movement continued for years as the rover made its way around the mouth of Ares Vallis, usually moving during the day and collecting spectroscopic and soil properties data at night, when optical navigation was impossible. Liberty continued to return barometric and temperature data from the landing site, although its own cameras were largely unusable and its other instruments hung uselessly far from the soil and rocks they were meant to investigate.

Independence was only finally done in by its wheel motors; while the RTG power source could potentially provide power for decades, as with the Voyagers and Pioneers venturing out into interstellar space, other components were not so durable. First, some 23 months after landing, nearly a whole Martian year, the motor on the right rear wheel failed. While easy enough to work around, as the remaining wheels had more than enough power to continue moving the vehicle--indeed, the slight increase in available power compensated the slight decrease from the RTG so far experienced--it was nevertheless a herald of things to come. Almost three years after that, another wheel failed, this time the left center. The resulting asymmetry made the rover difficult to control, slowing its movement to almost zero as controllers laboriously repositioned it after each short traverse. The rover's will to continue must have left it at this point, for only six months later a final wheel motor--the one on the left rear wheel--stopped operating. With three wheel motors out of commission, the rover could no longer move, and like its sibling before it would live out its days as a stationary scientific platform, albeit capable of inspecting not only the weather but also the rocks and soil around it. As with Liberty, this continued until demands on the Deep Space Network from a new generation of probes forced NASA to shut down some of the less productive older vehicles still operational. While a difficult decision to make, both Independence and Liberty were commanded to power down in October 2003. Perhaps some future expedition, whether by robots or humans, will find the vehicles and be able to power them back on; their RTGs will continue providing usable amounts of energy into the 2020s. However, despite their early demise, the rovers were spectacularly successful, returning even more scientific data than the Vikings, and from a much more diverse area.

 

[e of pi]

All right, well, it's that time again, and we're halting in our sojourn through the solar system to look a bit more into the operational side of things, as there's been a fair bit happening between the lines of other posts. So, this week, it's getting a roundup: Delta 4000, Spacelab ops, Salyut 7, and a bit more!

P.S. As a production update, this post marks roughly 1/3 of the way through Part II, and the status of the buffer compared to our production rate is such that it's looking like we'll be able to follow through without any gaps until the end of the planned Part II content. The timeline as it stands (including post already on here) total a bit over 45,000 words (not counting the Brainbin's cultural interlude), and we've got maybe another 14,000 left to go. 890 replies, 107566 views

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #10:

Though ELVRP I had ended up overshadowed by the focus on the ELVRP II program that would supplement it for large payload, the Delta 4000 rocket contracted under the former was in many ways more critical to the Department of Defense and NASA. The payload range it served--between 6 and 12 tons--was quite common on both organizations' manifests, thanks to the Titan family which had previously filled that role. Thus, it was a major milestone for the DoD when the first Delta 4000 took flight in April of 1980 after almost a year of schedule slips and launch delays, not to mention cost overruns and all the myriad failures that can be expected with a new acquisition contract and a new vehicle. As the Centaur upper stage burned out, dumping the demonstration payload (a mass simulator) into a highly elliptical orbit similar to transfer orbits used on geostationary launches, putting an end to a completely nominal mission, many within the DoD and NASA breathed a sigh of relief, even as the focus shifted to operational tempo and the preparations for the backlog of payload Delta had begun to build up in the interim, thanks to both payloads had been either designed with Delta 4000 specifically in mind or that had been held from Titan launches in hopes of a reduced launch cost aboard Delta 4000.

As some of this focus was spent in a round of minor procedural improvements and pad infrastructure modifications intended to smooth bumps encountered during the first flight’s launch delays, the first operational launch would have to wait until July. The payload was a NASA orbital communications satellite, TDRSS-A, part of a new constellation of communications satellites located at geostationary, and intended to allow easy contact among crews in orbit, either in free-flying Apollo capsules or aboard Spacelab or future stations, and the control centers on the ground. The Tracking and Data Relay System allowed the closing of many of the Apollo-era world-spanning communications ground stations, while also offering an increase in the bandwidth available for both up and downlink of data and telemetry. Beyond the effects of this on the station’s experiments and operations, it was also used for both crew entertainment (in the form of uploading recordings of sports events and other media) and for NASA press events and outreach. The kind of live ground-to-orbit television interviews that had been considered technically challenging to arrange for the Skylab 5 bicentennial commemoration was now much less so, and NASA’s press office put the capability to use, with it becoming common for one or two days a month to feature astronauts being made available for interviews with national or hometown press.

Of course, NASA’s payloads were never intended to be the bread-and-butter of Delta 4000, a fact that the remainder of 1980 would demonstrate. Before the end of the year, four more Delta 4000s launches would be carried out, two from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, and two from Vandenberg Air Force Base. All were Department of Defense classified payloads, including KH-8 and KH-9 reconnaissance satellites, a Chalet-series signals intelligence satellite, and SDS, a near-real-time relay satellite intended as support for low-altitude photographic intelligence satellites. In its first year of operations, Delta 4000 had begun to prove that it could handles the tasks it was designed for, but its operational tempo remained to be proven in 1981.

Delta 4000 wasn’t the only vehicle earning its keep in 1980, however. Saturn 1C was continuing its support for Spacelab operations, remarkable mostly in their routine. Since the launch of the station in 1978, there had been on average five flights per year between crew rotation, Aardvark resupply vehicles and the launch of the Airlock Module and European Research Module on their AARDV buses, with vehicle production ongoing in annual 5-unit blocks. This record of solid, if unheralded, service continued in 1980 first with the rotation flight of Spacelab 8 in January, then with Spacelab 9, the first flight of the Block III+ Apollo. The three-person test crew launched from Kennedy Space Center in May, led by veteran Spacelab astronaut Robert Crippen, with Donald Hunt as pilot and the first UK astronaut, Nigel Wood, filling the third seat. After their successful flight to orbit, the flight crew detached the Apollo Command and Service Module from the booster, then transposed and docked with the Mission Module that had been safely contained within the booster payload adapter. After an hour or so of checking hoses and ducts, the crew in orbit confirmed with the ground personnel that the capsule checked out, and they proceeded to dock with Spacelab two days later. The skill of Crippen and Hunt proved the worries over the camera-and-radar-based docking controls unnecessary with a flawless rendezvous and docking, and the crew’s remaining mission was mostly defined by the day-to-day mundanity of station operations, broken only by the August arrival of an Aardvark resupply vehicle, and the associated cargo transfers and orbit-raising operations.

The Spacelab 10 mission in September would be the first 5-person crew, but was notable on several fronts. First was the flight of the first of the Class of ‘77 rookies, Don Hunt, as command module pilot. The second was a minor incident relating to the diet of the ESA astronaut along for the stay on-orbit, Frenchman Jean-Loup Chrètien. Chrètien had insisted on French-provided menu items to be included in the mission’s food stocks, and had sampled them aboard the Apollo during the transit to station. To the rest of the crew’s displeasure, the garlic proved more than the capsule’s air filters could handle, and lingered throughout the remaining day of the transit to the station. Once there, the smell continued to fade and even began to seep into the station’s air system before the crew was able to resolve the problem by completely flushing the capsule. However, due to complaints by (4/5ths of) the crew, not to mention the cost that would potentially be involved if an entire station-load of garlic-saturated air had to be dumped and replaced from the reserve supplies, Chrètien was restricted by American ground control and his fellow crewmates from consuming certain other garlic-laden menu items he had been sent up with. Third was their participation in setting two spaceflight records--first, their 5-person crew set a record for most persons launched in one flight, and on-station they would help set, then surpass the record for number of crew occupying a station, first with the 8 members of the combined Spacelab 9 and 10 crews during the first overlap period, then the 10 total members of the combination 10 and 11 crews in the last week of Spacelab 10’s time on-station.

Future 5-person Block III+ flight would fall into a rhythm of 3-per-year launches, nominal station rotations, and recoveries, beset with only minor issues at worst--the most serious being a thruster failure and minor leak in the Spacelab 13 capsule during the last week on-station, which showed signs of potentially cutting short the expedition although the ability of the crew was never seriously endangered. In the end, the faulty thruster was cut out of the loop, a work-around sufficient to last through the handover period into Spacelab 14 and through the return to Earth. With their Apollo-era cadre of veterans continuing to retire, and the glut of rookies created by the class of ‘77 beginning to abate, NASA thus also began to once again recruit regular class of astronauts, indicating that they would begin recruitment with a goal to induct a new class of 15 astronauts every other year to meet the increased slots available on Spacelab, split roughly evenly between pilot candidates and flight scientist candidates. Percentages of women and minority applicants began to increase in each class, particularly the former following the Spacelab 15 flight of Peggy Barnes as Flight Scientist on Spacelab 11 in January 1981--the first non-Russian woman to fly in space, and the first to perform a spacewalk as part of tending the exposed experiments on the OWS and ERM. For ESA, whose initial class of just 7 astronauts were all due to fly by the end of 1981, the need was even greater, and they thus also began recruiting with a target induction of 6 astronauts in similarly biennial classes, with the first beginning training in 1980. Unlike NASA, ESA did not distinguish between astronauts intended as pilots and those intended for mission specialist roles, but they also made no secret of the fact that pilot experience was a factor considered by their selection rubric, and roughly ⅓ of each class was made of capable pilots--a lingering remnant of the Seat Wars, and one indicative of the desire to see European astronauts flying their own spacecraft which would eventually drive the Minotaur program.

1981 was more of the same for NASA, with the major milestones for human spaceflight being the historic mission of Peggy Barnes, and the beginning of an eight-month-long double-rotation flight for Dr. Story Musgrave, the first in series of very-long-duration flights intended to test human physiological reactions that might occur on future explorations beyond Earth orbit, either for Mars missions or lunar bases. Dr. Musgrave would launch in September, and stay through May 1982. Unmanned missions were also fairly routine--Delta 4000 racked up successful flights for all 7 manifested payloads, in spite of minor slips. The Voyager probes once again captured public attention with various flybys during the year, but generally the Apollo-era capturing of the imagination had been dulled by a nearly unbroken stream of successes and apparent dominance in spaceflight. However, with the new year would come the first launches of Vulkan when the eyes of the world would once again turn skyward.

The first Vulkan test launches had little effect on the day-to-day operations of the American and ESA spaceflight programs. The first two launches, of an unmanned TKS spacecraft to Salyut 6 and a military comsat to geosynchronous orbit, respectively, were more about proving the vehicle’s operational status. It would be the third and fourth flights, which launched Salyut 7’s first DOS core module and the first crew to the station, respectively, that would be more significant. First of all, the first Salyut 7 crew was also the first manned TKS mission--just as the final Salyut 6 crew, when they returned to Earth, would be the last to do so in the venerable Soyuz capsule. Comparisons were natural between TKS and Apollo, and the systems in retrospect were surprisingly equal. Apollo Block III+ offered a higher crew capacity, and thus fewer launches required for crew rotation every year. However, TKS actually offered its crew more volume in the Functional Cargo Block compared to Apollo’s Mission Module (particularly per-person, due to the same disparity in crew capacity). Additionally, the TKS system made use of a heat shield hatch to direct connect the VA capsule with the FGB’s volume, and thus lacked the mission-critical transposition and docking event Apollo required to pick up the MM from within the Saturn 1C interstage. Furthermore, while the TKS in unmanned cargo mode offered less payload than the American Aardvark, it was much more common with the manned TKS than Apollo was with Aardvark, thus reducing operational costs somewhat.

This rough evenness was also true of the two competing stations, at least once the DOS-8 core was launched to complete station assembly in February 1983, and the station’s crew was expanded to the full six. While the core volume of Spacelab was greater, this advantage was reduced (though not outweighed) by Russian procedures that kept many crew habitation functions in the FGB modules of their individual TKS spacecraft, thus reserving a higher percentage of Salyut 7’s volume for experimental activities. Similarly, while Spacelab offered more capable laboratory facilities (the somewhat jury-rigged nature of Salyut 7, intended as a bridge to more capable stations showed somewhat in its lab fittings and power availability), Salyut 7’s greater crew size made more oversight available for any given task. Salyut 7 settled into a rough routine in 1983, as the Soviets adapted to the capabilities of their new station and capsules, working out the changes from their smaller previous Salyut stations, and incorporating knowledge into the ongoing construction of the MOK core modules for their large space station. As if seeking to out-do the American space program even in platitudes, the Soviets announced that their large station would bear the name “Mir,” a reference to traditional peasant communes (though the name was often translated in Western press as meaning “peace” or “world”).

On the ground, though, American operations were breaking routine as the ripples of ELVRP II began to be felt. Though the causes are more often attributed to Vulkan Panic and the new Space Station Freedom program, many of the changes were already anticipated as the result of ELVRP II, and had been under planning since that contract was awarded in 1981--almost a year before the first launch of Vulkan. It was thus understood that transitioning ground support equipment and manufacturing infrastructure to support Saturn Multibody would be more challenging than the transition to Saturn 1C had been. Though the changes were smaller than they had been in making ready to support Spacelab with Saturn 1C, they had to be made without compromising the ability to support continuing Spacelab operations. In manufacturing, this was solved by contracting Boeing to roughly double Saturn 1C production from 1983 to 1985, in order to create a stockpile of launch vehicles which could be used to bridge the gap during which the Michoud assembly facility would have to be stood down to prepare for Multibody’s construction. Extensive focus was placed on using this production increase to study opportunities to streamline production, as well as on the necessary plans to manage the transition of VAB support equipment from Saturn 1C to Multibody without breaking Spacelab’s operational tempo.

Thus, at the end of 1983, the orbital situation was two parallel, roughly equal stations, supported by roughly equivalent spacecraft, with both the Soviets and Americans working on future even-larger stations. Vulkan was proving its worth, with a launch rate exceeding that of Saturn 1C and Delta 4000 combined (largely because it filled a role equivalent to both), and the period that has been occasionally referred to as a second Space Race was underway.

 

[e of pi]

All right, well, I know I could use something to take my mind off of things today, so how about some space probes? This week, we're once again jaunting to the outer solar system, to check in again on those far flung travelers, the Voyager probes. While truth is life wrote this update, I'd like to personally dedicate it to someone special it's reminded me of every time I've re-read it during the editing process--she knows who she is. Other than that, I hope everyone enjoys reading this as much as I did.

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #11

As Voyager 3 sped past Uranus in late March 1986, its instruments revealed a planet very different from Jupiter or Saturn. Besides its famously strange polar orientation, which at the time of Voyager 3's encounter had the planet's north pole aimed straight at the Sun, Uranus also had an extremely unusual magnetic field orientation, best represented as a dipole (similar to an ordinary bar magnet, although far larger both in physical scope and magnetic strength) that was both tilted heavily to the spin axis and offset from the center of the planet, as if someone had been trying to jam a magnet into the center of the planet but had settled for getting it "close". All known planetary magnetic fields were either remnant magnetization, emerging from materials on the surface which had been magnetized in some previous era and then "locked-in" the field strength and orientation as the native magnetic field withered away, or generated from currents and flow in hot, metallic liquid cores, neither of which could explain the strange orientation and positioning of the Uranian magnetic field. Theorists were forced to come up with a third model, where a vast conductive shell, like a huge, hot ocean girdling the planet, generated the magnetic field from its internal movements. Being much farther away from the center than a liquid core would be, this would not necessarily generate a field along the spin axis or centered on the planet's physical center. The other great mystery of Uranus that Voyager 3 first revealed was its temperature, far far lower than the other giant planets. Indeed, not only was Uranus less than 60 Kelvin at the cloud tops, so cold that under the same conditions Earth's atmosphere would condense and fall as rain, but it also radiated only about as much heat back into space as it received from the Sun, a surprising result and (as Voyager 4 later proved) different from all of the other giant planets. Nevertheless, Uranus maintained a belted circulation pattern, high wind speeds, and other evidence of atmospheric dynamism, although the sense that the planet was the "odd man out" was easy to understand and hard to shake. Voyager 4's passage in late May 1987 only added further evidence to this impression, as it was found that the planet's magnetic field had massively altered itself between the flybys, changing its orientation and position. This, too, could be explained by the conductive shell model, but it was just one more way that the Solar System's seventh planet set itself apart from the rest. The moons of Uranus proved just as interesting, or perhaps more so, than the planet itself. Besides discovering a number of new moons, Voyagers 3 and 4 showed that even the relatively small moons of Uranus had as dynamic a history as those orbiting Jupiter or Saturn. Not just tiny, cratered balls of ice and rock, they displayed evidence of fantastic geological activity, from faults and rifts of Ariel and Titania to the fantastic jumbled terrain, "racetracks," cliffs, and rifts of Miranda, a moon so unusual that some theorists proposed that it might actually have been shattered in the distant past. However, none of the moons seemed as active as Europa or Io had proved to be or Titan probably was; instead, while showing the signs of geological activity, they seemed to have quieted after some major past event, perhaps related to whatever it was that had knocked Uranus on its side.

After flying by Uranus, Voyager 3 turned towards its next encounter, with Neptune. Unfortunately, it was not to be, as the aging spacecraft became increasingly troubled and cantankerous. Despite long-life upgrades performed on the second block of Voyager spacecraft by JPL engineers, and despite the constant nursing the mission team had been giving all of the Voyagers, several months after the Uranus encounter Voyager 3's primary radio transmitter failed completely after several periods of trouble. A few days later, the backup transmitter followed the primary into the grave, and Voyager 3's mission was over. While commands could still be sent, and presumably would be interpreted and executed, the transmitter failure meant that that results would forever be unavailable to Earth. Officially, the mission didn't end until the end of 1986, as the DSN continued to listen for any indication that the muting was merely temporary, but in reality this was merely a close-out period as the Voyager 3 team was dispersed to other projects and the bureaucratic formalities that attend the end of any project that has lasted over a decade were addressed. In the meantime, additional care and attention were focused on the last of the Voyagers to make planetary flybys, Voyager 2 with its Pluto encounter in 1988 and Voyager 4 with a Uranus encounter in 1987 and a Neptune encounter in 1990. Voyager 1, meanwhile, continued climbing away from the Sun and the ecliptic plane, probing deeper and deeper into space as it caught up with Pioneers 10 and 11. Having completed the highlights of its mission, it had settled into a kind of slumber, largely focusing on particle and fields data in deep space.

In June 1988, Voyager 2, which had last encountered a planet seven years previously, began final approach to Pluto. Despite being smaller and closer to the Sun at the time than Neptune, which Voyager 4 was two years away from reaching, this second-to-last encounter of the Voyager program excited more attention and excitement than any other except perhaps the first flybys of Jupiter and Saturn. Possibly because Pluto was discovered by a (living) American astronomer in an American observatory, a media frenzy slowly built over the month prior to the encounter. When Voyager 2 finally began its main flyby activities in mid July, the campus of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had become a circus, almost with more reporters and photographers than scientists and engineers. They would not be disappointed; although the great distance of Voyager from the Sun necessitated extreme measures to return photographs, and despite a relatively unfavorable flyby geometry, over a dozen high-quality images of the "double planet" Pluto-Charon were returned, revealing an astonishing range of geological activity for two bodies so cold and distant from the Sun. Unmistakable evidence of cryovolcanic activity was glimpsed on both objects, perhaps explaining the fantastically varied terrain of Pluto, transitioning in a few dozen kilometers from coal-dark to sparkling ice, and scarred with evidence of other geological activity, perhaps related to its unusual pole orientation and 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune. Charon was at once less and more varied than its sister body, showing little of the marked contrast that Pluto did, yet it too showed significant surface variations, with small outcrops of exotic ice types punctuating vast crater-scarred plains of water ice. Both Pluto and Charon possessed tenuous atmospheres, further evidence of cryovolcanic behavior and likely originating from their approach towards perihelion and the Sun during the previous several decades. Moreover, perturbations to Voyager 2’s trajectory through the system showed that there must be several other bodies orbiting Pluto, an astonishing find given how few objects seemed to orbit at such a distance from the Sun, and therefore how unlikely it was for even two, let alone four or five (as seemed possible) bodies to simply find each other, let alone form a planetary system. As Voyager 2 departed the Pluto system, it snapped a final, and quickly world-famous, photograph of the two worlds cradled in each other's arms. While lacking the poignant value of "Blue Marble" or "Earthrise," it nevertheless possessed an austere and magnificent beauty that made it a brief media sensation. After that, Voyager 2 turned towards its new mission of deep-space exploration, traveling towards the frontiers of the Solar System and interstellar space.

At last, in June 1990 Voyager 4 began its final approach to Neptune, the most distant planet from the Sun at that time. The last of the Voyagers to reach a planetary target, Voyager 4 encountered a media circus almost on the scale of Voyager 2's almost exactly two years earlier, as its imagery slowly began to match and then exceed the best photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope taken over the previous several years. As with Uranus, Neptune proved to be different in many ways from the inner two gas giants, with the same type of unusual magnetic field orientation and a significant axial tilt not present in Jupiter or Saturn. However, it also significantly differed from its sibling planet, proving to be slightly warmer despite lying much farther from the Sun, and as might be expected radiating a considerably greater amount of energy from its interior. Along with this, its atmosphere proved much more visibly active, with banding and cloud structures easily detectable and even a few large "spot" structures present on the planet's disk. Triton, the planet's largest moon, yielded its own surprises. Already unusual due to its retrograde orbit, it proved to be cryovolcanic, like Charon and Pluto, with massive geysers of gas and dust erupting from the south polar ice cap. Triton also gave glimpses of other unusual geological activity not duplicated on any other known world, such as its unusual cantaloupe terrain and thin atmosphere, the home of auroras from charged particles trapped in Neptune's magnetic field. Voyager 4 also discovered several new moons not previously detected even by the Hubble Space Telescope and confirmed that the planet's rings were continuous structures, not mere arcs and clumps of material which had failed to condense into a proper moon. Its encounter passed, Voyager 4 then followed its brethren in speeding out into interstellar space, leaving behind the results of perhaps the greatest voyage of discovery ever conducted.

 

[e of pi]

Well, it's that time again. Last week, we followed the Voyager probes as they made their final flybys of the outer systems planets (and Pluto, whose status I see spurs some debate even among our commentators) then proceeded past into the deep dark. While one mission was ending, though, others were beginning, and this week we're focusing on a couple of those, this time on the comet explorations of the 1980s.947 replies 114528 views

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post #12

Asteroids and comets--what astronomers term "primitive bodies" due to their low rates of chemical and thermal modification relative to larger bodies--have long fascinated and sometimes terrified human observers. Nevertheless, in the first half of the 20th century they did not attract much regard from professional astronomers, being viewed more as irritating interruptions to observations of distant stars and galaxies than highly interesting objects in their own right. As with the rest of the Sun's offspring, that began to change with the advent of spaceflight. Now offered the chance not merely to observe them through a telescope's lens but to actually visit these "vermin," if only via robotic emissaries, astronomers gained a certain level of regard for the objects. Slowly, proposals to send probes to not just the planets but also these flying mountains or dirty snowballs were developed. The most well-known of the targets proposed was undoubtedly Halley's Comet, the famously clockwork object whose passages near the Sun had been recorded for centuries. In a fortuitous coincidence, the practical development of spaceflight had occurred roughly halfway through Halley's 76-year orbit, some thirty years before its second passage during the 20th century. This offered plenty of time to think about and develop the methods by which a probe could be dispatched to study it, the brightest and most active of the periodic comets. The early concepts were almost invariably rendezvous missions, in which either a Jupiter swingby or a low-thrust propulsion system (both ion propulsion and, briefly, a solar sail were considered) would allow a probe to slowly meet with Halley and stay nearby for months or even years, intensively observing the coma and nucleus throughout its closest passage to the Sun. However, while certainly scientifically attractive, the Halley mission suffered from the long lead time needed to conduct the mission, since it needed to be launched no later than 1982 to successfully rendezvous; high costs (estimated to be comparable to Viking, Voyager, or Galileo); and a surplus of competing projects, particularly the expensive Voyager and Galileo missions to the outer planets. Therefore, when budgetary approval was not obtained for the probe in the FY 1979 budget, the entire mission plan had to be abandoned.

Nevertheless, American scientists had not given up on Halley; trajectory analysis showed that an electrically propelled spacecraft launched in 1985 could make a flyby of Halley that November and then go on to rendezvous with another comet, with Encke and Tempel 2 being the most seriously considered candidates. Such a spacecraft would be lower cost than the Halley rendezvous probe, as it would demand a much shorter endurance and would need to venture much less far out from the Sun, and could carry a small "nucleus probe" to more closely explore the vicinity of Halley's nucleus while the main spacecraft stayed at a safe (and dust-free) distance. A lack of interest by American scientists, together with long-standing European involvement in cometary science and the high interest at the time for "international" missions, led this parasite probe, named "Newton," being supplied by the European Space Agency rather than NASA itself. Attempts to convince Japan to supply a distant "tail probe" were unfortunately less successful, as it would not be possible to accommodate a tail probe as well as a nucleus probe aboard the primary spacecraft, and political constraints required both that Japan launch any such probe itself and that it make an encounter after perihelion[1]. Unfortunately, the Comet Rendezvous/Comet Flyby spacecraft had to encounter Halley before perihelion for the rendezvous, and the purpose of a tail probe was lost if it flew through the comet at a different time than the main spacecraft. The Japanese would therefore launch a pair of probes, virtually identical in all respects, to make a distant encounter with the comet at the best post-perihelion opportunity. In this, they would have good company from the Soviet Union, which planned to send a pair of "Gallei" probes to make a close flyby of Halley, although not as close as Newton. As a result, a regular flotilla of probes was forming to visit the comet, representing all of the major space-faring countries except China. Despite this, and despite the hot Cold War rhetoric passing between the United States and the Soviet Union, Halley exploration was leading to a burst of international cooperation, at least for Halley exploration. Data from the US and European probes would be passed to the Soviets, who would use the refined ephemerides generated by CR/CF and intense observations from telescopes around the world (including Hubble) to more precisely target their own probes. The results of the probes would also be widely shared, giving a more detailed image of how Halley changed over time than would be possible from ground instruments alone. Altogether, the international effort engendered by Halley would give an unprecedented level of data on how comets changed both over time and over their surface.

However, Halley would not be the first comet encountered by a space probe, nor would either the Americans or the Soviets gain that distinction. Instead, a European probe, Helios-Encke, would win the race, in so doing also setting the first European first of the space age, however little noted it may have been. The outgrowth of the highly successful German-American Helios solar observation program, Helios-Encke was originally an effort to extend the observations of Helios 1 and 2 by using spare Helios C hardware to launch another probe in the late 1970s or early 1980s during the next solar maximum, ensuring optimal coverage of what was expected to be an important moment for heliophysics. Shortly after this original proposal was made, trajectory planners noted that if launched in August 1980 the probe would be able to make a close encounter with the periodic comet Encke that December; in fact, it would be possible to shape the probe's subsequent orbit to encounter Encke again in 1984 (if the probe had not failed from its close solar passages by that time). To return useful data from the encounter would require significant modifications to the existing Helios C hardware, driving up costs, which led NASA to reject proposals of collaboration with Germany on the mission in favor of spending on more crucial planetary and human programs. However, the European Space Research Organisation found the mission scientifically attractive enough to be worth pursuing, and began funding for development in 1974, shortly before it transformed into the ESA. With ESRO involvement, NASA agreed to procure the Titan IIIE needed to launch the Helios spacecraft in 1975, in exchange for ESRO producing a set of experimental equipment for Spacelab. While modification of the Helios C hardware proved more expensive and time-consuming than expected, the significant time margin available ensured that technical delays did not significantly affect the launch date, just as cost overruns were dismissed as the product of inexperience. The tenth and final Titan IIIE hurtled into the air from Cape Canaveral carrying Helios-Encke along with it August 1980. Although not as complex or active as Halley, Encke still provided a number of surprises to the scientists behind Helios-Encke that December, showing a body which was at once less and more active than anticipated. Less surprisingly, it provided a resounding yes for the long-favored "dirty snowball" model of comets, although its data seemed to indicate that the proper description would be more "icy dirtball" instead, with relatively high levels of rocky compounds and materials detected. Despite several scars, Helios-Encke survived its passage, surprising some scientists who had expected intense dust fluxes to shatter the spacecraft, score its imaging systems into uselessness, or otherwise disable it. In fact, the spacecraft was in such good condition that there was no trouble approving the second flyby, and after occupying itself observing the Sun in conjunction with a growing fleet of Earth-orbiting spacecraft Helios-Encke had its second date with the comet in late March 1984. This time, Helios penetrated much deeper into the cometary coma, into regions where Encke was not so gentle. Buffeted by increasingly intense particle fluxes, Helios-Encke returned considerable amounts of data about how the comet had changed since its last perihelion before being blown away by dust grains too large and energetic for its particle shielding to block.

Thus, by 1985, European scientists had gained not just theoretical but actual practical knowledge of the dynamics of comet encounters and the conditions near cometary nuclei. Their Newton was, as a result, perhaps the proportionately best-equipped spacecraft of the entire flotilla, sporting thick protective armor against Halley's expected much more intense gas and dust jets, along with a suite of instruments based on those developed for Helios-Encke. Its parent, now named "Kirchhoff" after the wide-ranging 19th century German physicist responsible not only for the eponymous circuit laws but also for important research into solar radiation, was lifted into the heavens by a Saturn-Centaur in late July 1985, to the sounds of cheering later in the day as normal functioning of the crucial ion drive was confirmed. Four months later and just two weeks before meeting Halley, continuous thrusting had driven Kirchoff to the point where it could release Newton, before adjusting its course to pass well sunward of the energetically active comet. For now, Kirchhoff would only observe its cometary partner at a distance, waiting for the probe to close in and begin its survey. Two hours before closest encounter, a timer that had been counting down since Newton departed Earth finally reached zero, fully activating the scientific payload. Although several of the lower-power experiments had been intermittently collecting data since separation, and key systems such as the communications antennas beaming data to Kirchhoff and Earth had been checked out, most of the probe's systems had been powered down since launch, waiting for just this moment. As the probe streaked in towards the errant comet, it encountered an increasing storm of cometary gas and dust, sleeting against the multilayered shields intended to armor it against the sort of damage Helios-Encke had taken. All the while, it was furiously collecting and beaming back every possible scrap of data about its environment, detecting not only the rate and size of dust impacts, but also the composition of the gas and dust surrounding the probe and the electrical and magnetic behavior of that gas and dust. By far the most sophisticated instrument on board, however, was the camera, able to take stable and unblurred photographs of objects moving, like the comet's nucleus, at an astounding 60 kilometers per second--or 135,000 miles per hour--relative to the camera itself, with a resolution of several hundred meters[3]. As the probe streaked by just under 1000 kilometers from the comet's nucleus[4], this camera took a single complete high-resolution image of the nucleus, and part of a second, revealing details only a few hundred meters across. Much like Encke, this photo revealed a craggy and coal-black surface to the potato-shaped rock, with jets of gas and dust erupting from numerous locations, showing that even in their diversity comets are much alike and further supporting the theory of a common origin in the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud. As with Helios-Encke before it, however, Newton would not emerge intact from its cometary partner, as it encountered a particularly dense stream of cometary material just twenty minutes after closest approach, perhaps directly emanating from one of the jets seen on the nucleus. The frequency and size of impacts rapidly increased under the stream's influence before all telemetry abruptly cut off, probably the result of a particularly large and energetic fragment hitting the probe. Although it had not been given good odds to survive Halley, the premature destruction of the probe nevertheless saddened the team members who had spent years developing and building the little vehicle.

However dramatic Newton's flyby may have been, though, it was only the first member of the Halley Armada to reach the comet. By early March of the next year, the Japanese and Soviet members of the Halley armada were closing in on the comet. While the Japanese, undertaking their first deep-space mission, cautiously aimed their probes at a distant flyby, providing more prestige and engineering feedback than scientific value, the Soviets had ambitiously chosen to aim at a near flyby; not quite so near as Newton, but still close enough to pose significant risk to their Gallei probes. The first flashed by a few days after the Japanese probes made their closest approach, passing about 10,000 kilometers from the nucleus and showing (among other things) that the coma environment had changed significantly from Newton's encounter the previous year. A week later, Gallei 2, relying on updated navigational data from its sister probe dove into the coma, passing less than 5000 kilometers from the nucleus. Like Newton, it photographed the comet's core, showing that it had significantly changed from the earlier encounter. Although matching surface features was admittedly difficult, it appeared that many of the jets and vents previously detected by Newton were no longer active, and there was some evidence of other surface changes as well. Unlike Newton, however, Gallei managed to survive its encounter with Halley, successfully passing through the coma and beyond, back into interplanetary space. After three further weeks of increasingly distant observations, both Gallei probes were shut down to divert resources to preparations for the Mars 12/13 mission scheduled for 1988. Both Japanese probes continued to operate for several months, but although using gravity assists to divert one or the other to new targets was suggested, excessive propellant consumption and a feeling that the pair had limited scientific value led to them also being shut down by the end of the year. Only Kirchhoff remained, slowly adjusting its orbit farther and farther away from Earth's.

[1] This is to avoid scaring the fish. No, this is not a joke; OTL, until 2010 (!) launches from Tanegashima were restricted to only certain months of the year on behalf of the local fishing lobby. This constraint prevented Japan from launching its probes to the pre-perihelion opportunity OTL and forced them to use the post-perihelion opportunity[2]. Since Japanese politics have not significantly departed from OTL in TTL...

[2] An object which is moving in a highly elliptical and inclined orbit, like Halley, will offer two minimum-energy flyby opportunities during its close passage around its central body, one for each time it passes through the plane of the ecliptic. One will therefore proceed and the other follow periapsis (as can be seen if you picture the geometry and think about it a little). IOTL, all the flybys were conducted at the post-perihelion opportunity. The Japanese were constrained by politics, the Soviets by the position of Venus, and the Europeans by the presence of the Vegas (their data was used to refine the ephemerides used for Giotto's navigation), although the post-perihelion opportunity did require a slightly smaller delta-V than the pre-perihelion opportunity. Here, however, the geometry of the Tempel 2 rendezvous restricts the US flyby to the pre-perihelion opportunity, and with Newton clinging to Kirchoff that meant the Europeans must go along. The Japanese are restricted by the same politics, and the Soviets choose the later opportunity to avoid being compared to the Europeans and Americans as much as possible (European instruments or no). Plus, that allows some more interesting science than everyone going by simultaneously would.

[3] I actually mathematically worked out what this camera could do; it could resolve, accurately, the weapons mounted on an F-15E flying by at Mach 5 and an altitude of 9000 feet (well, obviously not an actual F-15E, but something the same rough size--the F-15E would appear to be about the size of Halley's Comet at 1000 kilometers). In fact, most US aircraft weapons are quite a bit larger than the resolution goal! The minimum size of viewed objects would be closer to a baseball or cricket bat, but strike aircraft don't typically carry those mounted on the outside.

[4] This is actually rather farther away from the nucleus than Giotto OTL managed; it benefited from the Vegas getting very nearby and transmitting updated ephemerides a few days earlier, as noted in [2]. ITTL, although capable Kirchhoff is never coming closer than 130,000 kilometers to Halley (the Vegas reached about 9000), and in any case releases the probe (which has no real method of correcting its trajectory) around two weeks before encounter, further limiting the possible accuracy. Nevertheless, this is towards the edge of the 3-sigma dispersion ellipse estimated at the start of the project, so it's still not a great performance.

Also, you may wonder whether the International Comet Probe (aka ISEE-3) exists ITTL. Well, as ISEE-3 it does, but as ICE...not so much. With a flagship-class comet mission coming down the line, even the relatively cheap ICE proposal would just be such an obvious waste of money that Farquhar would probably not even propose it in the first place.

 

[e of pi]

Well, it's that time once again. Last week, we dealt with the various international flotilla of probes head to Halley's Comet. This year, we're turning to something equal international, but perhaps less desirable: global thermonuclear war, or perhaps more specifically the question of defending against it. That's right, this week we're talking about Star Wars. Hang on, I'm being informed by our culture desk that...oh, I see, different Star Wars? Ah. Well then. On with the show anyway!

P.S. Production update: buffer is now complete through the end of the year, with 57,000 words currently written in total for Part II. 5 posts remain to be completed, and we are now beginning to simultaneously work on elements to complete Part II and start Part III. In fact, my reward to myself for finishing the post that's queued up for next week was getting to write a post for Part III following up on something revealed in this post. 947 replies, 117616 views

Eyes Turned Skyward, Part II: Post 13

Since the Soviets had developed their own nuclear capability and ICBMs in the 1960s, the dominating doctrine in the field of nuclear weapons deployment had been one of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD. Under the tenants of MAD, while it was possible to launch a strike sufficient to destroy an enemy, the Soviet and American’s respective bombers, missile silos, and missile submarines created a nuclear trident, which would be able to react to an attack if one were started and respond in-kind before the attack struck home, meaning that any attempt to destroy the enemy would lead to one’s own destruction. Therefore, the most important role for nuclear forces was to maintain that “second-strike” capability, while at the same time preventing accidental use of nuclear weapons, ensuring that any attempt on the part of the enemy to attack would be suicidal. However, many in the military viewed this doctrine negatively, as it was based on the assumption that nuclear weapons were impossible to intercept and their damage had to be accepted as part of a stalemate, both assumptions that chafed for minds more used to an interplay of offense and defense, in which neither had an absolute upper hand. Thus, studies aimed at methods for intercepting ICBMs--the most intractable, so far as defense was concerned, of the trident--in-flight had been under study since the late 50s, mostly focusing on anti-ballistic missiles to intercept during descent. However, new technical developments in the late 70s--mainly new variants of the laser--had created a new possibility that suggested a new doctrine, this time one of strategic defense.

The new weapon, the X-ray laser, was a pet project of Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, though it was actually developed at Livermore National Labs in 1977 through 1980. The lab’s O-group had, through several revisions, demonstrated that a proper focusing crystal (actually a metal rod) could be “pumped” with the X-rays created by the energy release of a nuclear detonation to create a high-power laser. The “Dauphin” test in November 1980 had proved that the concept was potentially viable, and a further series of tests was planned under the name “Excalibur” to refine the concept. Compared to more conventional directed energy weapons, like chemical lasers, bomb-pumped lasers had two benefits stemming from their extremely high power density. First, they packed enough energy that the dwell time required to destroy a target such as a launching ICBM would be very short--perhaps as small as ten seconds. Second, their light weight made them potentially ideally suited to mounting on space-borne platforms, which could provide constant coverage over Soviet launch sites. By intercepting the missiles during launch, the benefits of multiple independent re-entry vehicles could be neutralized, and thus it was potentially possible for a constellation of laser satellites to be built which could intercept any Soviet nuclear strike. The idea had tremendous appeal for Teller, who had long promoted alternative uses of nuclear technologies, such as for excavation of entire harbors or canals, and he became a strong advocate of the project.

President Ronald Reagan had also been dissatisfied by the doctrine of MAD, and found the notion that, while individual missiles and re-entry vehicles could be tracked all the way to their targets, they were unstoppable in-flight to be unbelievable. Besides that, he had a strong personal antipathy to the notion of nuclear war and its apocalyptic consequences. Thus, he directed his advisors to investigate options for a new doctrine, using technologies like the X-ray laser, as well as a variety of more conventional weapons, to render ICBMs and their warheads vulnerable in-flight. For the first year of his Presidency, this activity largely confined itself to studying the range of ABM weapons that had been researched or developed since the development of the ballistic missile itself, searching for a system or systems that could actually protect the US against nuclear attack, and perhaps it would have remained there had it not been for the development of Vulkan and the consequent light it shone on all types of space activity.

Vulkan’s appearance led to a wholesale reevaluation of not only civilian but also military space programs and priorities. Although the development of a rocket with similar capabilities had been suspected through the NRO’s observations of Baikonur Cosmodrome, observations which played a significant role in the decision to adopt the Saturn Multibody for ELVRP II, satellites could only provide generalities, not the detailed technical information available from watching launches. And what those launches revealed was a set of vehicles that in many ways seemed to exceed present Soviet needs, indeed to go far beyond them. What could, intelligence analysts wondered, induce the Soviets to spend so much treasure and effort on building such a capable system?

The obvious answer would be expanding Soviet military capabilities in orbit, and as a result of research undertaken since the middle of Carter’s term, nuclear war experts in the government thought that they had a good idea of what, exactly, those military capabilities would be: anti-ballistic missile weapons. In particular, Vulkan would be ideal for launching “Excalibur”-type platforms into orbits covering US ICBM fields, and its larger variants could lift some of the heavier, more conventional weapons to provide further defense capabilities. Vulkan could also theoretically be used to launch “hardened” satellite platforms to fulfill existing Soviet missions through a combination of improving Soviet technology (reducing the weight of payloads) and increased lift weight, together compensating for additional protection against American anti-satellite attacks. Although emplacing nuclear weapons in orbit was and remains illegal under the Outer Space Treaty, and any ABM system capable of protecting an entire nation ipso facto violates the ABM Treaty, both sides had routinely violated solemn international agreements during the Cold War, and for objects much less impressive and potentially valuable than a functional missile shield. The only possible US counter, according to this line of analysis, would be its own missile defense program—a vastly expanded form of the lackadaisical efforts up to that point, with a clear mission: protecting the US against Soviet attack. The fact that most of the systems that had been proposed for missile defense also offered opportunities for attacking enemy satellites, often with far more efficacy than in the defense role, surely played a further factor in this particular reasoning, which quickly became received wisdom within the US intelligence and defense establishments.

In May 1982, just three months after the first Vulkan launch and well within the Vulkan Panic, President Reagan chose to address a speech to the nation “on the national defense”. In the course of this speech, he outlined the two policies which, so far as space was concerned, would define his Presidency. First, he sought to allay concerns that the Soviet Union was overtaking the United States in space technology, both by pointing towards ongoing and significant American achievements in space, and by announcing the development of Space Station Freedom, a much larger and more capable space station than either Spacelab or Salyut 7 (or, as matters would unfold, the MOK that was then being developed behind the Iron Curtain). Second, he pointed towards the fact that space could not only threaten but shield the United States; far from being a Communist menace, it could be made the protector of liberty. As such, he announced that he would start a program to permanently end the menace of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles used to carry them, the Strategic Defense Initiative. Although he spoke only in generalities, he made clear the potential of advanced technology and spaceflight to render the nation completely safe against nuclear weapons, a cause the President passionately believed in.

While responses to the speech were mixed—by the November midterm elections, the Vulkan Panic had ebbed somewhat, and Republicans took a drubbing based on their handling of the economy—this nevertheless marked the beginning of an enormous R&D program which, in essence, had two parts, at least so far as the space-based components were concerned. First were the actual weapons platforms and their supporting infrastructure in space. Besides the weapons themselves, observation satellites, communications platforms, and command-and-control posts would need to be developed and built, all capable of working together largely autonomously to defeat what, in a full-scale nuclear war, could be thousands or tens of thousands of Soviet missiles and warheads, a formidable task even without the additional complications of having to develop the weapons from scratch. These systems would also all need to be maintained in space, a further item of significant difficulty (and a secret motivation behind Freedom). Second were the methods of launching these platforms and satellites into space. Although ELVRP had developed a pair of vehicles in many ways much advanced over their predecessors, it had neither been intended nor capable of developing vehicles with the kind of capabilities that early analyses indicated were necessary for SDI. To avoid incurring massive expenditures merely on launches, costs would need to be brought down significantly, ten-fold or more, while capacities would need to remain similar, since the larger chemical laser satellites and possibly the Excalibur platforms would need large vehicles, similar to the solid boosted Saturns or even the Saturn Heavy for launch.

Four approaches for space-based ABM weapons were identified in the full-scale review of the “defense problem,” intended to synthesize all existing information about ballistic missile defense into a single strategic outline of what, exactly, SDI would need to do to achieve its mission as being probably the most worthy of significant attention. The first was Excalibur’s bomb-pumped lasers, which despite some disappointing test results still seemed to offer the most overall promise. Although vulnerable, like all space-based weapons, to ground attack, and blocked by the atmosphere (a problem if the Soviets developed rapidly burning ICBMs that could complete their rocket boost without entering space), the Excalibur concept still offered the most overall capability of any of the space-based weapons studied, and the possibility of use as a ground-based intercept weapon, perhaps based on modified SLBMs. The second were lasers, possibly the most conventional of the directed energy weapons discussed. Whether based in space or using mirrors in space to redirect US-based beams towards Soviet missiles, these shared the problems of vulnerability to anti-satellite attack and targeting common to most space-based weapons, while adding the issues of heat and power output for the space-based version and atmospheric interference for the ground-based variant. The third type of weapon, the particle beam, envisioned basing large particle accelerators in space, firing hydrogen atoms at very high speed at enemy ICBMs. Although probably not capable of physically destroying ICBMs like Excalibur or the conventional lasers, the radiation produced by energetic protons impacting ballistic missiles could damage or destroy the sensitive electronic components needed for the missile and its weapons to properly function. However, like Excalibur’s x-ray lasers, particle beams could easily be blocked by the atmosphere, and it would be difficult to confirm that target missiles were actually destroyed or disabled. Finally, there were kinetic energy weapons, essentially masses strapped onto rockets and fired at enemy missiles. The oldest and best developed approach, these suffered from limited velocities, and consequently limited range. Although methods could be developed of partially overcoming this limitation, these would have their own drawbacks, mainly increasing the cost and complexity of the interceptor. Together with the necessary targeting, communications, and control satellites, these four weapon types absorbed the vast majority of SDI research funding, as without some functional method of missile intercept all the rest would be useless.

As for the launch cost problem, three possible approaches quickly became apparent. The first and conceptually the simplest would be to just improve existing launch vehicles—a sort of ELVUP, building on the success of ELVRP I and II. However, it seemed doubtful that merely modifying existing vehicles would lead to the sorts of large cost savings necessary, and this approach received relatively little attention from SDI. The second approach, which proposed the development of a highly reusable vehicle much like the Shuttle briefly mooted in the late 1960s before the direction of NASA efforts into space stations, was far more popular among members of the SDI team. While less simple, it was also a conceptually obvious approach for improving launches. Intuitively, the launcher is a complex, expensive vehicle, and launcher manufacture absorbs most of the cost of a space launch. By not expending the launchers as if they were artillery shells, but reusing them as if they were airplanes, great cost savings could theoretically be had. Advocates liked to describe the disposable approach as similar to building a 747 (or other jetliner) at the airport for each flight, then scrapping it at the destination. The third and final approach was perhaps the most interesting, proposing instead the construction of extremely cheap disposable launch vehicles as the way to go. By using cheap, easy to store fuels, large thrust-to-weight ratios, and mass production or well-proven building techniques (depending on which advocate you talked to), this could achieve the same cost reductions as the second approach without requiring an extensive and expensive R&D program, or exotic and difficult engineering techniques.

As the most overall promising of the three from a theoretical standpoint, the second approach received the lion’s share of the funding allocated for SDI space launch research. This was further divided into two programs, the X-30, which (based on a flawed calculation) envisioned the development of a scramjet-rocket hybrid aircraft that could takeoff from a normal runway and fly into space with an acceptable cargo, and the X-40, based on Phil Bono and Gary Hudson’s work over the previous two decades, which instead envisioned a purely rocket-powered vehicle that would take off and land vertically. While X-30 work focused on materials science, to produce the light and strong materials needed to make the approach work, the X-40 focused mostly on showing that a pure rocket vehicle could actually fly, maneuver, and land. To this end, proposals were solicited for a test program consisting of two subscale prototype vehicles, able to be flown regularly to test control and operational procedures for a vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) reusable launch vehicle. Grumman, which had been slowly recovering from its financial near-disasters of the 1970s, managed to leverage its heritage as a DoD contractor and the developer of the Lunar Module during Apollo into a winning proposal.

The X-40 was designed around four RL-10 hydrogen/oxygen engines, with control to be provided through a combination of engine gimbal, gasous oxygen/gaseous hydrogen thrusters, and aerodynamic control surfaces. To ensure the rugged qualities the program called for and mitigate the amount of technical development required, the Grumman engineering team selected conventional aluminum structures, instead of the advanced composites being researched for the X-30. Additionally, in the same tradition which had lead to Grumman being dubbed the “Ironworks” during WWII, the X-40 (internally nicknamed the “Starcat” by Grumman engineers) was also designed with robust margins and an eye towards ease of ground handling, even at the expense of additional weight--many senior Grumman engineers recalled the operational headaches of leaks and welding created by the need to trim weight from the fuel systems on the lunar module, and (given the relatively low delta-v required of the X-40 vehicles) sought to avoid such headaches on the X-40. Thus, after two years years of design and development, construction of the first spaceframe began at their Bethpage, Long Island facility in 1987. By 1990, while the X-30 program (which many had regarded as more promising in 1984) continued to encounter setbacks with the proposed scramjet engines and advanced materials, leaving it stalled at basic design, the first Grumman X-40 was being prepared for transport from Bethpage to White Sands to begin flight testing.