How early could we get interplanetary spaceflight?

Evan wrote:
With a PoD after 1900, how early could we get large-scale interplanetary spaceflight? Supposing people generally supported it, what sort of scientific discoveries and technological development are necessary for it to be technologically and economically doable? And how can we get that public support?

The idea of rocket-powered spaceflight has been around since at least the mid-1800's, and Goddard did his experiments in the 1920's. With that, it's possible to just design the metals better and stack them taller, as America and Russia both did. If you do enough, that could get us to Mars... but not on an economically sustainable basis, so it'd probably be a prestige project like the OTL moonflights.

With a PoD after 1900, is there some way to break beyond that?

I can’t recall the name but there was a thread that pointed out that as far back as the late 1890s there were people who were seriously ‘considering’ forms and functions of space travel and not in a Jules Verne sense either. (IIRC the W/I was if a certain South American scientist had done more practical and less theoretical work)

M79 wrote:
Please define, 'large-scale interplanetary transport'? Tourists at $1000/lb? Functional if not self-sufficient bases/colonies on another planet with routine service between them...?

Evan wrote:
This, or at least routine expeditions (like the annual fishing trips to Newfoundland even when there wasn't permanent European settlement.)

Ah and there’s the rub actually. Unlike the pre-Columbian visits to North America for fishing “Space” is hard to get to and arguably offers nothing significant as a ‘return’ on investment. That first step, (Earth’s surface-to-orbit) is a doozy in terms of energy and effort and it’s just not really ‘worth’ if past a very small initial scale until the late 40s. And arguably still a questionable 'value' beyond certain Earth oriented niches even then.

Falk wrote:
Go full Orion

Oh I love me some Orion, yes I do :)

But…

Keep in mind Orion has never had any “technical” reason it couldn’t fly, only political ones. And not the ones most people think of either. You could get around the “Partial Test Ban Treaty” if you wanted to as the “pulse-units” are not “weapons” by design and their use falls under the “non-weapons experimentation” exception should the US, (and at the time USSR) agree. But while they were not ‘weapons’ there was no getting around the fact that their construction and design WERE based on weapons research and the ‘difference’ wasn’t all that clear in some cases. Specifically “Casba-Howitzer” was a highly modified “pulse-unit” that could generate a Directed-Energy-Weapon (DEW) event out to several million miles.

“Worse” in any case was in order to power the Orion you had to have a nuclear weapons industry that could produce THOUSANDS of ‘pulse-units’ per year! That the same capacity could not be turned at a moment’s notice to producing similar amounts of nuclear weapons was lost on no one at the time. Again you’d need a VERY good reason to throw away any future control or limitations ability on nuclear weapons, (a pulse unit is a very bad weapon but it IS a nuclear bomb none the less) and proliferation will be unstoppable due to the width and depth of the ‘industry’ involved.

Orion is quite possibly the ‘best’ drive out there if we ever need a way to save our bacon from an extra-Terrestrial “Extinction Level” event but it’s very much a Djinn with all the original tale implies.

Anaxagoras wrote:
It's frankly almost beyond belief that men landed on the Moon a mere sixty-six years after the first airplane flight.

GeographyDude wrote:
to me that shows power of healthy feedback between theory and practice

Legofan4 wrote:
And being in a giant dick waving contest between the two largest powers on the planet. Which is honestly the only reason we rushed to get to the Moon.

OTL it was a BIT more complex than Legofan4 makes it out to be but in general Anaxagoras is correct and that’s how people thought of it right up until Sputnik went up. Even then had things been ‘closer’ the pace would have been slower if for no other reason than to allow infrastructure and economics to be built into the system whereas they were not OTL. Had the US not been panicked into starting the Moon Race by Soviet space spectacles the first Moon landing might not have been until the late 80s if even now. That the US could go from no manned space experience, (1960) to landing men on the Moon and bringing them back (1969) in less than 10 years showed as long as cost was no limit you could throw money at a problem till it was solved which arguably we knew from the Manhattan Project.

However, unlike the Manhattan Project which created from scratch not only a weapon but the research, design, and industrial support capability to build them on a regular basis the “Space Program” never considered or worked on building a sustainable or long-term system. The ‘goal’ was the one and only focus and anything not directly related to that single goal was shelved or forgotten. And on the other side the entire program was mainly an ‘off-shoot’ sidelight of the main military mission to build more capable ICBM’s. It rapidly became a low priority ‘prestige’ project once it was demonstrated that it had little or no military value.

Dathi THorfinnson wrote:
And then a gap about that long with no one landing on the moon. If someone had written that in the 50s, say, it would have been considered totally ASB!

Oddly enough there were several pieces of fiction which had humans going to the Moon and then “stopping” but yes they mostly included some superior ‘alien’ force issuing a “cease and desist” order backed by world annihilating weapons :)

But keep in mind the way we DID it was by far considered the most unlikely method and with the least likely reason as well. And pretty much none of our hardware or organization that we used to go to the Moon in under a decade were affordable or sustainable once that single goal was reached. THAT might very well have been considered ASB but you could make an argument that once done then ‘we’ would go back and do it right. Which is what was supposed to happen with the Shuttle et-al.

To review, this is how it was SUPPOSED to happen:

First there would be primitive satellites launched into space/orbit. You need to have some sort of electronics for most satellite utility but frankly optical tracking of an object in orbit gives you a lot of science even with no on-board instruments. It doesn’t take much to realize that once you have an object in orbit with a known schedule of fly-overs that under the right conditions and with a powerful enough transmitter you can reflect radio waves, (and technically with a mirror you could reflect light signals too) over the horizon which has commercial and military uses. So arguably you could put up a ‘useful’ satellite in the 1920s if you’ve got the rockets. As electronics develop you can outfit the satellites with more sophisticated instruments and capability but getting it back down is going to remain a large challenge because your basic knowledge of the atmosphere, high speed aerodynamics and reentry dynamics is so very primitive.

And your control and guidance systems for the rocket itself are not there till late in the 1940s (WWII) without which you can’t guide your payload into a predictable orbit in the first place. Quite obviously there’s a known ‘computer/autopilot’ system available though: Humans!

But the capacity to launch a human vastly increases the size of the rocket needed and it wasn’t known until we did it how a human would react to and in space. Still you’d want to have figured out how to get a small satellite back intact before you throw a human into space. And initially you’d put a human into space in a very limited manner relying more on physics than human control because as noted you don’t know how he will react. (Essential Vostok and Mercury were this step OTL, with limited or no human control over the flight) Once you do know you can start designing a more capable spacecraft but this is going to require a more capable and larger launch vehicle and you soon run into cost issues.

So the next step is to reduce the cost of putting men and satellites into space. Ultra-cheap mass launchers, reusable spacecraft, dirt-cheap expendable rockets, the “how” matters less than the end cost per pound on orbit. It is going to be important down the road as future plans depend on what kind of payload it is and how it’s used but first and foremost you need reliable, cost-effective access to orbit above all other considerations. Why? Because no one expected or assumed that some ‘government’ was going to throw piles of money at some short-sighted, near-term “program” with no planned follow on or long-term plan. The “government” was interested in “space” for specific reasons most of which initially had little applicability outside those government interests. Once commercialization began those parameters expanded somewhat but very quickly it became clear that the ONE aspect that neither possible ‘investor’ needed or planned was manned operations.

People are useful when electronics are primitive or don’t exits but very rapidly they become a cost driver that tends to price themselves out of the market. But still, if you have economic access to orbit and it’s built around or uses a manned system then you are at least halfway to the goal. (Personally I’d give extra points to a system that can either be manned or unmanned if for no other reason than operationally “payload” that would normally go to crew and support systems can then be allocated to extra capacity)

Access would be followed originally by the building of a manned space station in orbit. As initially proposed, back when electronics were rare and/or of low lifetimes, this would be manned so as to support a staff to maintain and operate all the various intended roles the station would fulfill. As time has gone on the majority of these roles currently can be filled by automation vastly cheaper and easier than doing so with people. Still one of the roles the space station can and would still be able to perform is a way-station in orbit from which further distant flights could depart from and return to.

Now as a slight digression I’ll note that while all this is being built up it was not inconceivable or unexpected that man might make some ‘side-trips’ such as around or perhaps a small landing on the Moon with the inherent capability in hand. For rather obvious reasons, (which OTL turned out to be not so obvious of course) these were given a low probability simply because what such expeditions could do when compared to more fully planned and outfitted adventures could do would be minuscule. A half dozen visits to several isolated spots with about as many people, a few pounds of samples, a few experiments left behind, all at great expense wasn’t seen as a viable option. Unless you had no choice :) No one imagined a desperate cause given national priority with almost unlimited funding aimed at a single goal with no thought of what came next or the future. It was all about building up capability to go anywhere, at any time so that all roads lay open before mankind.

A moments glory or endless opportunity, choose wisely…

Once you have economic access to orbit and some infrastructure on-orbit to support further operations you can build up spacecraft, satellites and other useful items on-orbit which greatly enhances your capability as you don’t need to use expensive and limited “large” launch vehicles. Putting people on the Moon, Mars, around Venus or into the asteroids becomes cheaper by an order of magnitude, especially if you can find a way to profit from the adventure. The hardest part about reconciling what was ‘supposed’ to happen with what has in fact happened OTL is the simple fact that OTL space operations have been accomplished in a VERY different manner than was planned and at this point ‘habit’ is ingrained enough that stepping “backwards” to find a more sustainable level is almost impossible. Not physically or even operationally but mentally and emotionally.

What we’ve done to date is very often seen as THE way to do things and this tends to lead to the self-supporting or circular logical argument that it is therefore the RIGHT way to do things. Going to the Moon requires a large program with very expensive and multiple levels of involvement and support. Satellites are expensive and can neither be serviced nor upgraded since the cost of doing so is larger than simply sending up another. And so on but in truth the vast amount of options that are opened up with economic access and orbital infrastructure are always going to be the better option. The problem is that building up either takes time and effort which when compared to the more ‘near-term’ realized “quick-and-dirty” methods such as huge launchers and massive payloads are always going to be less appealing. Even more so when you have clear evidence with the latter being a historical example while the former has been ‘disproven’ to be viable with a less than credible example. (Shuttle)

Earth orbit is not just “half way to anywhere” though it is that certainly, it represents overcoming about 90% of the inherent energy burden of getting things off Earth and a place where skills, techniques and operations can be learned and practiced that are applicable anywhere beyond that point. The key to an earlier or even modern version of interplanetary flight is there and always has been but to apply it requires certain technologies and capability. It also takes a certain “vision” and support that was lacking OTL and sadly in many who we consider ‘key’ people in development.

Take Goddard for example. He was offered a large sum of private money to continue and expand his experiments. He refused because it would have opened his work to others, (arguably many of whom could have vastly improved his work and had knowledge and experience themselves that would have been of great value) both for sharing and possibly stealing of his patents. He’d been publicly ridiculed for some of his more outspoken ideas but beyond some general experimentation he felt almost all his work was actually theoretical rather than practical. (He also had an aversion to ‘government’ money due to bad experiences during WWI but did not hesitate when the government called him back in WWII)

THE problem is that the interest in general was NOT there for the obvious reasons that no one saw ‘space’ as the solution to any suspected ‘problem’ which changed after WWII. Keep in mind the “billions” (current money) spent on the V2 and other rocket research in Germany pre-WWII was aimed at finding a way around the Versailles Treaty on artillery and one could argue the majority of the money was in fact wasted with little to show for it. (The majority of actual 'practical' rocket projects with actual military utility were pretty much 'side-bars' to Von Braun's work but which do we remember?)

Randy
 
Expat wrote:
Does anyone feel up to making a list of technical problems that need to be solved before this can happen?

1) Materials science. While you can make some pretty good rockets with steel and other pre-WWII materials you are limited and handicapped by what you DON’T know about high-speeds and altitudes. Advanced aluminum and stainless steels will get you a good way, maybe even into orbit, but not down again. (The problem with Titanium wasn’t really processing or even working with it but that it wasn’t readily available till the late 70s on a wide scale)

2) Aerodynamics at low and high speeds (Aeronautically “supersonic” was under study prior to WWII but wasn’t seen as a ‘current’ issue. Here we need to not only look at supersonic but hypersonic speeds which wasn’t even on the table at the time) Frankly no one thought of what happened to a vehicle at high supersonic or hypersonic speeds and you’re going to trash a lot of experimental hardware till you figure it out and up until the development of CFD modelling (and even after as it’s not perfect) the only way TO test is to build something and launch it.

3) Guidance and Control. You had some rudiment work done but you needed a much better control loop the higher and faster your vehicle goes. Radio control is possible by the late 20s but limited range and reliability. A human pilot is always an option but keeping them alive and in control is not that straight forward.

4) Keep in mind that until the late 20s they had not yet actually gotten a clear idea of what the Earth’s atmosphere was like nor how deep and what the layers were. Part of the appeal of Goddards “rockets” was they could cheaply reach the attitudes needed for such studies but it was mostly guess work to that point

5) Propellant research. Kerosene was known along with some other fuels and LOX had been isolated and used. Hydrogen Peroxide was known and available. Hydrogen was known but only in theory as a propellant as making it liquid was difficult and handling a nightmare.

6) Life support and systems protection. High altitude balloon flights in the 30s gave some clues but there’s a difference between operations in a vacuum and high altitude. Protecting both humans and supporting systems turned out to be different than originally assumed.

I’ll point out that even if you have a “John Smith” to wipe out the political and social aspects the main problem still boils down to what is in ‘it’ for the average person to wish to support such an endeavor. Sadly this even applies to the efforts of a dictator like “Julius Smith” because to be at all self-sustaining, (what happens when Mr. Smith dies and that singular support is no longer there?) it has to have broader appeal than a single person.

But barring all that and purely from the technical point of view I’d say you could have orbital flight with all the right ‘pieces’ in place by the early 40s. Not ‘good’ or even consistent mind you but plausible. It may take another decade to get consistent on both going up in one piece and coming down in a survivable fashion. (Really what we didn’t know we needed to know is a killer in more ways than one) Beyond the political and financial issues is the basic question of why do we need/want to go? “Because it is there” actually only works on a very limited and specific basis and isn't going to be enough 'incentive' to push major development.

Randy
 
Probably only partly pertinent to rockets, but Whittle had a number of problems developing his jets. Things like only 1 person in Britain being able to check his theoretical work, and him discounting the work due to a mistake in the maths. Or having to make a bet with the welder so he'd try to weld the turbine blades made of a new alloy.

I imagine similar problems would occur with early rockets.
 
I recall reports that the V-2 from WWII could have been given the range to hit New York, but the control accuracy was so limited that the Germans never tried it. After Sputnik launched the space race, an American rocket was filmed as it collapsed on the launch pad. The consensus here seems to be that space programs take so many elements of technology that it would be difficult to bump up the progress by much more than a decade or so. Just as it is amazing that the first moon landing came only 66 years after the first airplane, consider the landing came only 12 years after Sputnik.
 
Riain wrote:
Probably only partly pertinent to rockets, but Whittle had a number of problems developing his jets. Things like only 1 person in Britain being able to check his theoretical work, and him discounting the work due to a mistake in the math. Or having to make a bet with the welder so he'd try to weld the turbine blades made of a new alloy.

I imagine similar problems would occur with early rockets.

In part yes as materials get tougher and more expensive to work with as power and efficiency increase. As noted add in fears of “patent theft” or stealing data/ideas/concepts was another hindrance often exacerbated by conflicting personalities. And when those latter are then institutionalized through work groups or career fields, (Jet folks don’t talk to rocket folks who don’t talk to Scramjet folks who don’t talk to jet folks…) you can get all sorts of “interesting” effects. Especially when you have a “world renown expert” on the subject who will entertain no opinion but his own and by default therefore declares something “cannot be done” and lo it is considered so. It’s called a “Paper Virus” and it can and has tainted research areas for decades at a time. It is even worse when its neither intentional nor malicious but a product of focus and research that finds AN answer but no one realizes it is an important answer.

Real world example:

You may have heard of a concept launch vehicle called the Skylon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)

Part of its biggest problem getting funding and/or support has been that many consider its engines new and untested. Many “assume” that it requires Scramjets to operate and many think it lacks a rocket engine so has to use additional stages to reach orbit. The sad fact is 90% of the process was researched and tested in the United States between the mid-50s and early-60s under the “Aerospaceplane” project. (http://www.astronautix.com/a/aerospaceplane.html)

The problem was that last “10%” in combining the ideas because due to several bias’ that went into the program multiple discoveries went un-noticed or ignored. For example the ‘deep-cooling’ effect was immediately noted and people not directly working on the Aerospaceplane air-breathing propulsion remarked that It could make the air dense enough to be pumped much like liquid oxidizer in a rocket engine. Those working on the rocket engines only noted that the air was not in fact ‘liquid’ and concluded that it could not work in a rocket engine because those used “liquid” propellants even though the people working on actual Liquid Oxygen/Liquid Hydrogen engines who were NOT working on Aerospaceplane in fact knew that the injectors worked bests with at least one input stream being a gas and better if both were. Instead Aerospaceplane insisted on making liquid air, separating the nitrogen and oxygen and storing the later in tanks that would then be pumped into the rocket engines. Meanwhile outside the program routine tests were done with gaseous oxygen and various fuels but since LOX ‘stored’ more compact and everyone knew you needed LOX in a rocket engine…

Meanwhile Aerospaceplane was requiring huge amounts of LH2 to make the air liquid to process it and feed it into the huge internal tanks, and the amount was going up as they planned on flying around at speeds between Mach 6 to Mach 10 inside the atmosphere while ‘collecting’ LOX. So when several sub-contractors, pretty much on their own initiative, did some tests and noted several things that did not match the given assumptions such as:
“Deep Cooled” air could be pumped by turbocompressor and could be fed into a rocket combustion chamber
In fact ANY air-breathing system greatly benefits from densified air input including turbojets and ramjets both of which were planned for Aerospaceplane
This used far less LH2 to accomplish which meant less waste and less LH2 needed to be carried (You used even less LH2 if you weren’t trying to cool the air from speeds in excess of Mach 6 to a liquid form)

But the people working on Aerospaceplane disregarded the sub-contractors and only took away the information they specifically requested or required and ignored the rest. Aerospaceplane as it was toward the end of the program was so compromised and in efficient that designers were having to take more and more extreme measures to try and keep it viable. (The article mentions plans for air-to-air refueling since a single Aerospaceplane couldn’t carry the needed LH2… So they’d meet and refuel at Mach-6 inside the atmosphere…) While it’s true that a lot of basic research was needed to make Aerospaceplane viable in the end it was the assumptions and bias’s towards which the design was driven that truly ended up being unreachable. And really THOSE were almost all driven NOT by technical or scientific requirements but by personalities and outlooks of the people who were themselves driving the project.

Never mind that companies like Mardquart had a working combined cycle turbojet/ramjet/rocket engine, it does not have a “Scramjet” (Supersonic Combustion Ramjet) engine which the ‘experts’ have decided will work best over Mach-7. (Never mind subsonic combustion ramjets work just fine at those speeds already) Never mind that a two-stage optimized design can be cheaper and just as reusable we insist the only a single stage to orbit design be the focus. Never mind that deep cooled air will solve many of our high speed flight issues, if it is not “liquid” then you can’t put it through a ‘liquid rocket engine’ they say to the JET designers while simply telling the rocket designers to keep working on hydrolox engines.

And this entire ‘process’ was revisited again for the “National Aero-Space Plane” (NASP) project which took decades of advancing technology and proceeded to set the bar and requirements even further out of reach.

A wonderful book tells the tale of both projects called “Facing the Heat Barrier: A history of hypersonic flight”
https://history.nasa.gov/sp4232-part1.pdf
https://history.nasa.gov/sp4232-part2.pdf

Somewhat obviously had similar amounts of attention and financing been lavished on the Aerospaceplane as had been given to Apollo we would no doubt have a reasonably (for certain values of the term, it’s a government project after all :) ) economic Earth to Orbit transport capable of fairly routine trips to and from orbit on a semi-regular schedule. Especially if given a time-limit to accomplish the task and someone in charge to reign in the more esoteric “theories” that were pursued since getting them working was “only” an “engineering” problem after all…

In essence we’d have a working two-stage to orbit vehicle using an air-breathing carrier stage to take a rocket powered stage to somewhere around Mach-3 to Mach-5 and 100,000ft. (Imagining an advanced XB-70 as a carrier with intake cooling and leading edge heat pipes to an onboard LH2 storage tank instead of bomb-bays) On the back where the Orbital Vehicle rides is rather benign, (delta’s like the XB-70 ‘cruise’ slightly nose up so the shockwaves and heating travel over the aft fuselage and wing surface) and would be a one or two stage launch vehicle optimized for orbital flight. Probably not ‘winged’ but certainly some form of lifting body booster since even at 100,000ft there is significant ‘atmosphere’ at speeds over Mach 3 so you want lift to help the separation of the vehicles. (Note the MR-71 and D-21 accident was directly due to a guidance control fault that commanded the drone to ‘dive’ into the mothership. Adding a backup guidance computer was done later but by then the drones were being drop launched from sub-sonic aircraft with massive solid boosters instead)

The Mothership engages in a shallow parabolic arc where the Orbiter detaches at the top of the arc and lights its rockets pulling up to around 70 degrees heading towards orbit while the Mothership returns home to prepare for another run.

And that’s on the LARGE side of things, we can go smaller as well. Imagine a B-58 sized mothership with an underslung two stage orbital rocket. It too has been modified to carry a ‘deep-cooling’ system but we’ll use simple water for this one. (Won’t cool the air as deep but has mass and density advantages) By injecting the water into the intake as fine spray the engine thrust is effectively doubled while the possible Mach limit, (driven by the turbine temperature) is increased by at least a factor of (2) two. In addition reaction controls on the wing tips and tail would be added and a rocket motor (similar in form to the NF-104: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_NF-104A) added to the tail so they unit can perform an high AoA climb. Slung below the fuselage is the rocket powered orbital vehicle. Since this model does not require lift for positive separation it can forgo any fancy aerodynamics and can be further optimized for cost effectiveness. (If we can remove the nose wheel by making ‘quad’ outrigger gear similar to WK-1/2 even better) Similar to the above mission profile the mothership takes off and climbs to 35,000ft where it engage the Mass-Injection Pre-Compressor Cooling (MIPCC) system and accelerates to a speed somewhere between Mach-3/4 and 100,000ft where it then lights off the aft engine and pulls up to about a 70% AoA to the local horizon and before the speed bleeds off too much the orbital portion is launched.

All this was doable with late 1950s early 1960s technology, all of this was KNOWN to work though (again) the main barriers tended to be who knew what and who talked to whom and who simply assumed they knew what they needed to know.

Mark E. wrote:
I recall reports that the V-2 from WWII could have been given the range to hit New York, but the control accuracy was so limited that the Germans never tried it.

Yes the V2 could have hit New York as long as it was launched from somewhere within 200 miles or 320 kilometers of the city. About the only plausible way to do so was delivery by submarine in a towed canister into the heart of the worlds most active anti-submarine zone. Since ‘accuracy’ greatly depended on knowing where the missile STARTS from and navigation at sea could have errors that amounted to dozens if not hundreds of miles your impact point is then off by that much even before you have to contend with things like wind or wave action on the launch.

The OTHER way they could hit New York, (and the one with the most work done) was to build a bigger V2 and mount the V2 on top of it to get the needed range. In fact the A4 (actual designation of the V2 missile) was to mounted on a missile twice as big known as the A9 but that would actually only allow the V2 to continue to hit England from Germany itself. In order to hit the USA they needed to add another stage called the A10 which would have been half again the size of the A9 or about three times the size of the A4. Now eventually Von Braun planned on pitching ANOTHER stage called the A11 which would allow the vehicle to put a small payload into Earth orbit. (There was an A12 suggested to boost that payload to around 10 metric tons but it was very much theoretical)

Guidance was still a serious issue though. In addition to winds at the ground and aloft at altitude each time the rocket staged some error would be introduced that might throw the warhead hundreds of miles off course.

The only plausible answers to find some way to guide the missile in flight, (radio corrections were suggested from surfaced submarines in the Atlantic, but again any inaccuracy by the sub on its position means the corrections are off by that margin of error. And the sub has to transmit a sequence of codes back and forth over a few seconds to a few minutes which will bring an allied response right to their doorstep. Second of course you could put a human in the missile and have him guide the missile to the target. (Vaguely hoping he’d bail out prior to impact but doubtful he could or would considering the situation) And that assumes either the missile, warhead or man actually survive the flight and as Germany learned during the war the rest of the world shortly after that was not as simple or straightforward as it seemed at the time.

In order to increase the range of the A4 the Germans initially tried putting swept wings on the missile to give it some ‘glide’ range from the top of the ballistic arc. They managed one semi-successful flight, (the missile seems to have reentered and started a hypersonic glide only to have one wing fail somewhere around Mach-4. A complete redesign was needed, (what emerged was what is often used to illustrate the A9 as a “boost-glide” rocket with a nose-to-tail body fin) and what emerged as far as could be told with limited testing and time MIGHT work. But time ran out.

But heating from reentry at intercontinental distances was badly under-estimated. Keeping the pilot alive and functional was questionable given the knowledge base at the time at best.

After Sputnik launched the space race, an American rocket was filmed as it collapsed on the launch pad.

Actually it lifted off the pad but failed and fell back but that’s a nit. Considering the PRIOR two test vehicles had flown the first stage trajectory just fine there was good expectations this one would go all the way to orbit. No such luck.

The consensus here seems to be that space programs take so many elements of technology that it would be difficult to bump up the progress by much more than a decade or so. Just as it is amazing that the first moon landing came only 66 years after the first airplane, consider the landing came only 12 years after Sputnik.

What you don’t know can and will kill you as they say. And reading the history it’s pretty clear that a vast majority of people before the late 30s were wholly ignorant of conditions in space let alone even a few miles above the Earth. Beyond that conditions and what was needed to keep someone alive and functional was rudimentary at best until the late-20s and 30s and even that turned out to be mostly wrong beyond very high altitude flight. You had to get into space to find out what it was like which only came about OTL in the late 40s. Could you have it earlier? Yes but before the mid-20 is doubtful due to materials science so probably no earlier than the mid-30s.

Randy
 
Even with start of Rocket technology in 1920s under Oberth, Goddard and Korolev get full funding for building rockets for scientific and military application.
you need Political support for a Space Race, and i mean support of a program take decades of time.
See how the Apollo Program was deal by Capitol Hill and White House, it got stab in back by president Johnson before Apollo 11, since Soviet never landed Cosmonaut on Moon, Nixon don't care for another Space Race next to Vietnam War...

Also is solar system not Attractive, Moon is airless desert, Venus surface is Hell, Mars a dust ball, Jupiter magnetic field is deadly, Titan is deadly cold.
I believe hat one of Planets had better livings conditions (on Venus or Mars) there would be Space Race in 1950s~1960s to get there first.
 
Michel Van wrote:
Even with start of Rocket technology in 1920s under Oberth, Goddard and Korolev get full funding for building rockets for scientific and military application.
you need Political support for a Space Race, and i mean support of a program take decades of time.

This is very much true. While some can be done on a small scale to really get anywhere requires a lot of money and resources. This usually means a government and wealthy and technical one that has been given a good solid reason to support the effort.

See how the Apollo Program was deal by Capitol Hill and White House, it got stab in back by president Johnson before Apollo 11, since Soviet never landed Cosmonaut on Moon, Nixon don't care for another Space Race next to Vietnam War...

Actually Johnson fought Congress tooth and nail to keep the Apollo Applications Program and as much Apollo level funding as possible but Congress had decided that NASA was “out-of-control” after the Apollo-1 fire. The vetoed funding for a second run of Saturn-V’s and Apollo capsules and reduced AAP to just Skylab. Hence Johnson’s comment “The fools are going to throw it all away!” but as the choice had been funding for his “Great Society” programs OR NASA… Nixon as we’ve seen from the research was complex but really his decision to remove the “space program” from priority status and make it equal to other government programs was making official what had been done to Apollo since 1965. The main problem was (and arguably still is) NASA has no idea how to operate on any level below that of an “Apollo-like” program and had to be forced to change which they have never actually managed to do. Despite ups and downs in overall support the plain truth is no one in Congress or the various Administrations has all that much actual interest in “space” beyond a narrow range of applications. It is the money spent on Earth that is the primary focus and any hardware or capability that gets built is purely a bonus

Again this isn’t unusual as the personal and social investment in space has always been pretty low even at the height of the Space Race.

Also is solar system not Attractive, Moon is airless desert, Venus surface is Hell, Mars a dust ball, Jupiter magnetic field is deadly, Titan is deadly cold.
I believe that one of Planets had better livings conditions (on Venus or Mars) there would be Space Race in 1950s~1960s to get there first.

Well some people are attracted to Mars, (a Venus man myself :) ) and the other planets but if you’re talking a larger general interest I suspect you’re right. Though how much real effect once the ‘goal’ was reached is questionable. Interest yes, but continuing to support large, expensive interplanetary expeditions over other, closer priorities may mean highs-and-lows of public interest all the same with similar effect on support and financing.

You of course get a bigger and longer lasting ‘spike’ if the planet is habitable enough that the ‘average’ person could imagine themselves giving up everything they know and going to live there. But while a lot of the upfront costs of such an activity are reduced, (“habitable” in the sense that you need minimal or no protective equipment to survive on the planet) the TOTAL costs, of which a major part is going to be transportation has to be extremely low.

Randy
 

I recall at least one or two similar threads on places like the "NewMars" forums with the premise more generally "What Tech level could a (Planet, usually Mars but the Moon was one too) colony fall or reduce itself to and survive?" Vic-Tech is usually about the lowest with some anachronisms but GETTING there is usually so out of any possible 'price' range you probably would get only a couple of missions in a century.

Randy
 
I’ll point out that even if you have a “John Smith” to wipe out the political and social aspects the main problem still boils down to what is in ‘it’ for the average person to wish to support such an endeavor. Sadly this even applies to the efforts of a dictator like “Julius Smith” because to be at all self-sustaining, (what happens when Mr. Smith dies and that singular support is no longer there?) it has to have broader appeal than a single person.

But barring all that and purely from the technical point of view I’d say you could have orbital flight with all the right ‘pieces’ in place by the early 40s. Not ‘good’ or even consistent mind you but plausible. It may take another decade to get consistent on both going up in one piece and coming down in a survivable fashion. (Really what we didn’t know we needed to know is a killer in more ways than one) Beyond the political and financial issues is the basic question of why do we need/want to go? “Because it is there” actually only works on a very limited and specific basis and isn't going to be enough 'incentive' to push major development.

Randy

Some very good posts in this thread, I am intrigued.
Regarding the economic portion, you mention the problem with a typical person or even a typical dictator. What about someone, and maybe this goes along with the dictator lines, but a person who founds something like SpaceX but on a smaller basis.

For instance, Howard Hughes did not have nearly the money of an Elon Musk, but if you combine the two somehow, could we get around the problem of some of the economics by helping him make some really extravagant stuff? Granted, he would need to hire the people to test it, Musk in many ways is standing on the shoulders of giants who already did much of the work, but would he have some of the advantages Julius Smith does not because he would at least be using all his own money?
 
Well some people are attracted to Mars, (a Venus man myself :) ) and the other planets but if you’re talking a larger general interest I suspect you’re right. Though how much real effect once the ‘goal’ was reached is questionable. Interest yes, but continuing to support large, expensive interplanetary expeditions over other, closer priorities may mean highs-and-lows of public interest all the same with similar effect on support and financing.

You of course get a bigger and longer lasting ‘spike’ if the planet is habitable enough that the ‘average’ person could imagine themselves giving up everything they know and going to live there. But while a lot of the upfront costs of such an activity are reduced, (“habitable” in the sense that you need minimal or no protective equipment to survive on the planet) the TOTAL costs, of which a major part is going to be transportation has to be extremely low.

Randy

Earth orbit is where we might as well start and end. The solar constant in space, about 1.3 kW/m2 might as well be all we can get, given that energy is filtered through whatever space solar panels we have and then to whatever rectennas we have on Earth. Perhaps the US, Canada, or USSR might justify the cost and issue of this as necessary for certain Arctic settlements--the USSR has the advantage of being able to disregard civilian concern (and to some degree economics) and use space solar power to power whatever remote Siberian mines they feel like. Even in capitalist countries, nuclear power subsidies were a thing, so why not space solar to help stimulate space?

Stimulating interest in Venus would be great, since you have over twice the solar energy and an atmosphere where you can walk around with nothing but a HAZMAT suit. The airships of Venus seem a bit nicer than huddling in a Mars base, and even on the surface of Venus--basically a deep ocean base with a lot more heat and corrosion--you have the satisfaction of colonising hell (with the heat, brimstone, etc., Venus might as well be the classical Christian hell!), which might as well weigh heavy amongst some groups.

But overall, Venus might need a discovery of life in the atmosphere. Some scientists have pointed out reasons why extremophiles which have evolved on Venus still exist, and have pointed to characteristics of Venus's atmosphere as evidence. Now imagine if the Soviets detect this "evidence" (OTL Venera didn't have the capability, but a "false positive" might happen) and end up promoting it. Maybe the USSR would make a "Venus airship" to follow up on their "discovery of extraterrestrial life". Given the Soviet success on Venus--it's interesting how the USSR and Russia did so many missions to Venus compared to other countries (and given Venus's potential compared to Mars, perhpas it almost seems like some secret ancient Soviet knowledge forgotten to foolish Western capitalists), there's certainly more to explore there. I'm sure if the theory of extremophiles in Venus's atmosphere as proposed by some scientists is advanced in that era, and the USSR builds an airship which tests the hypothesis, then NASA will certainly have to follow with something. Can't let the commies monopolise the Morning/Evening Star.
 
This was a bit longer than I'd intended so be warned:
TLDR version: Even a Dictator has a financial officer to keep track of the money so you have to plan ahead and be VERY careful in setting up a way to fund and support a viable space program.

DTF955Baseballfan wrote:
Some very good posts in this thread, I am intrigued.

Of course you are! After all “I” am writing my thoughts here and everyone is interested in those… (And who doesn’t need a good load of fertilizer every once in a while amIrightorwhat? :) )

Seriously glad we’ve caught your attention.

Regarding the economic portion, you mention the problem with a typical person or even a typical dictator. What about someone, and maybe this goes along with the dictator lines, but a person who founds something like SpaceX but on a smaller basis.

For instance, Howard Hughes did not have nearly the money of an Elon Musk, but if you combine the two somehow, could we get around the problem of some of the economics by helping him make some really extravagant stuff? Granted, he would need to hire the people to test it, Musk in many ways is standing on the shoulders of giants who already did much of the work, but would he have some of the advantages Julius Smith does not because he would at least be using all his own money?

To be honest while it seems I gave the ‘charismatic leader with loads of money’ a short-shrift my actual point was that those paths are very much dependent on a broad base of support even though it LOOKS like you have one (1) person pushing it all. Hughes and Musk could and did get away with some massive projects that will probably never have a significant return of investment. Those are carried by projects that do or they die out. Musk (as he once noted) is perfectly willing to spend himself into the poorhouse to get what he wants BUT he’d rather not if he can avoid it. Similarly Hughes undertook some expensive ‘failures’ of projects but none of them were ever simply money-pits from the start. He had a ‘good’ reason to himself as to why he would pursue them and usually if he did fail it was enough that something came out of it be it experience, reputation or a different project.

Similarly Musk plans on going to Mars but as the constant evolution of the ITS/BFR shows he’s not going to totally ignore the profit motive which is necessary to support the work of doing so. Musk has his bias’s and assumptions as I’ve noted but he’s not immune from being dragged kicking and screaming back to reality if it comes to that. In some ways yes doing it with “your” money had advantages in others not so much since it’s a limited thing that will eventually run out. (Hence SpaceX has to keep coming back to making a profit because the moment they don’t the bigger plans come apart)

Now as I said even a ‘dictator’ or absolute ruler would end up having to build broad ‘agency’ (in organizational terms) to implement a space program whether it be military, civil, or industrial I nature in general it would specifically have to include representation from all three to function and be effective. But the kicker is how its funded and supported.

If by a grant or commission from the “top” then should anything happen to that “top” everything falls apart. Funding from a tax or income base means someone (and likely not just the top) will have a say in expenditures. Examples would be President and Congress or Prime Minister and Exchequer. Even dictators have financial officers :) And so on. What you really need rather than a large segment of the populations support really is that a large segment of the population simply does not have any major objection to the expenditures or activities.

OTL the majority of people can be ‘interested’ in space and activities there and enjoy the benefits of having things like communications and weather satellites available but that in no way translates to a broad or deep support of human or large science activities. If asked to actually pay money direct towards such they would balk having obvious and logical (to them at least) larger and different priorities for those expenditures*. The other issue is there is no direct mechanism through which those how feel themselves to be ‘space’ advocates can in fact directly contribute money or resources to such activities.

When/if SpaceX is ever a publicly available and tradeable stock you will have many Space Advocates flock to purchase shares but I’ve not doubt it will be far from all of them that do so. Why? Because Musk is not “doing” it right and they want their money and resources to go to the “right” activity. At last count there were something like a dozen active and twice that semi-or-inactive groups proposing various projects. All have their supporters and detractors of which the former can’t see why everyone doesn’t want what they want and the latter can’t understand why the others don’t want what they want.

Ideally you would have an organization or entity which was tasked with “opening up” space travel, exploration and exploitation. Such an entity would have a budget AND, (important point here) full control over how and where it is spent only having oversight in a general way from outside but a VERY sharp focus on wasteful spending or corruption. Doable really there are thousands of “Non-Governmental-Organizations” such as this for just as many causes which deal with billions of dollars in cash-flow each year. A problem is that similar to the above you often have a dozen such NGO’s per subject matter that offer different ways or biases’ for supporting the activity along with reasons you should only support THEIR way of doing it. At issue of course is because of those ways and biases the money flow is very often dependent on those receiving it meeting certain standards and practices that might in fact hamper the effectiveness in reaching the desired goal.

As another example when/if SpaceX goes public I fully expect the Mars Society will buy shares. They would not do so with Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic as neither meets their ‘criteria’ of focusing on Mars though quite obviously you could argue Blue Origin’s overall goal is a stepping stone on that path. Mars now, Mars forever and if you are not focused on that and that alone you don’t get our money because you’re doing it “wrong”. Period.

So again ideally you want an NGO or Government Agency that has the above task but is neither given a stated or implied method of doing so but to fund general work and decided on one or more, (and more is actually always better when talking transportation) methods to fund further. Further the Organization does not itself define or limit the methods and means they only providing funding and general guidance. They then proceed to pour pretty much their entire budget down a “rat-hole” until it either fills up or produces results. Space has never been good at offering realistic ways to make a profit or given a good return-on-investment. (Specifically in the ‘standard’ sense of a payback of at least the initial investment within ten years or less) So money goes in and arguable little comes back out except in dribs and drams. Occasionally you may get a surge but in general if you have a return at all it is very small and usability outside takes even more time and effort.

(Note NASA had an entire department devoted to categorizing and popularizing these “spinoffs” from space flight. The last update I can find is 2008 but here’s a JPL one with “20” things we got from space exploration! Which sounds great except they are specifically taking them in context of their USE in space not that they needed to be developed FOR space. In fact over the years the only actual example I could ever find was Teflon coating which WAS specifically developed for and from a space flight program and then spread from there)

This does not happen OTL. NGO’s and GO’s alike are beholden to some portion of the public which has its own bias’ and assumptions on how things are to be done which therefore colors and effects their funding and support given those organizations. Another OTL example is that when polled a large majority of people think NASA gets over 10% of the whole US GDP. Actually at its highest it didn’t top 5% and since has always been below 1% and in fact has been below 0.5% of the GDP almost steadily. Yet it is listed as one of the most likely budgets to be cut, not raised, in any fiscal spending year. Why? People see it spend a “lot” of money, (they drop numbers like 5, 6, 10 billion dollars all over the place, that none of this is ever actually spent is beside the point) and therefore assume it has more than that by a large margin and politicians in the US do nothing to discourage this line of thought. (The in fact actively discourage discouraging as it were :) )

Now proving the rule that there is nothing new ever and only uses that haven’t been thought of or tried before, my “optimum” solution is based on something Robert Heinlein wrote. (“Farmer in the Sky” IIRC) In that book an international public/private organization which was very wealthy due to investing in various ‘hot’ technologies and industrial process had a problem. They were set up to allow a certain margin of ‘profit’ with any overage being directed back into research and development and investment in newer technologies and methods. But they’d made so really good choices and had an embarrassment of riches. In fact they needed to pretty much ‘dump’ money somehow or face a crisis. Meanwhile the Space Race was ongoing but focused on one-upping each other on a national basis with no thought or planning for long term effect. (This may sound familiar :) ) Governments therefore were seen dumping millions of dollars into a project to turn around and allow it to wither once they were back in the “lead” only to panic and turn on the spigot again when they fell behind. (A pretty accurate description of how the US reacts to just about any crisis actually) So this “Foundation” sets up a subsidiary which is generally tasked with finding and advancing “the utility and applications” of space and space travel with the intent of dumping money down the rat-hole till the ‘profits’ are back to a reasonable level.

So initially in order to increase the “utility” of space it is decided to aim at reducing the cost of access which they do by setting up an organization which funds research and development of advanced but economic surface to orbit travel. OK, but since that reduces the cost for things like communications and other satellites THAT company is now making a huge profit which is not helping get rid of that previous surplus. What about going to the Moon? Surely that won’t be profitable…

Spoiler, it is. By the time of the story the Foundation is throwing money at all sorts of ‘un-profitable’ ventures which, like the stories colonization of Ganymede, has enough material and social benefits that a general portion of the population considers it safe and affordable enough to choose to leave Earth to colonize a moon of Jupiter. Spoiler alert: The Foundation is STILL not getting rid of money fast enough, though no one is ever going to ‘call’ them on the issue they can’t change or amend the original charter. There’s a lesson there I think. So by this time they are getting desperate and they are beginning construction of a STL Starship and throwing money at FTL research. (Finally something that can’t make a profit… Hehe)

To boil it down to the very basics to ‘get’ what the OP wants you need a program that is not beholden to a government, public or investors and therefore can’t be forced to make choices based on outside influence but at the same time has a very clear but general mandate to get certain things done. And it is given, without strings, enough resources and other support to actually achieve the goals it sets.

You can in fact get a similar result from any source but the overall requirement is that once set the resources and support do not change other than possible by means of a feedback-loop. OTL NASA (as an example) initially planned and began work on Mercury and Apollo with a budget of around 0.1% of the US GDP. With that budget they had started design and construction on Mercury and began studies on Apollo as an orbital vehicle with some Lunar utility. They had developed the Saturn-1 booster, (one might argue the ARPA did that but NASA steadied the budget and support and got it launched in less than two years which was several years earlier that ARPA was assuming) which was more capable than any known Russian booster and would firmly put the US in the leading payload to orbit category. And then the Russian’s launched Gagarin and the US panicked. At least the leadership did, and it is announced that NASA now has a specific and direct goal of landing a man on the Moon and bringing him back in less than 10 years. Funding and support go through the roof and the new meme is waste anything but time and within 8 years NASAs share of the GDP is almost 5%... And dropping. That wasn’t sustainable and both the public and politicians began to demand and get cuts but NASA’s careful and conservative plan had already been destroyed and in the process NASA lost the ability to think conservative and careful and could only pine for a return of the lost “Program of Record” glory days.

Again a lesson to be had there.
Steady funding and support with a well laid out plan and conservative decisions may not get you to the Moon in less than a decade but it is far more likely to get you affordable and efficient surface to orbit transportation which as the saying goes IS half way to anywhere...

Randy
 
Metalinvader wrote:
Earth orbit is where we might as well start and end.

That’s probably truer than you might think because one very salient point is the question “Do we need humans?”

Arguably you CAN have “interplanetary transport” with robots but I’m doubting that was the OP’s intent. Mine either, but keep in mind “we” are not a major “group” in modern society no matter what we tend to think AND “wishing” does not in fact make reality do things your way :)

The solar constant in space, about 1.3 kW/m2 might as well be all we can get, given that energy is filtered through whatever space solar panels we have and then to whatever rectennas we have on Earth. Perhaps the US, Canada, or USSR might justify the cost and issue of this as necessary for certain Arctic settlements--the USSR has the advantage of being able to disregard civilian concern (and to some degree economics) and use space solar power to power whatever remote Siberian mines they feel like. Even in capitalist countries, nuclear power subsidies were a thing, so why not space solar to help stimulate space?

Chicken/Egg issue since to get affordable Space Solar Power you need cheap and “easy” access for a lot of materials. If you have that it is cheaper and easier to manufacture the Solar Power components on Earth and ship them into space which elevates a lot of the needed infrastructure and resources you’d need to place to build them in space. But on the gripping hand with cheap access and Earth based manufacturing and processing you will get smaller less economic SPS’s and therefore the price per kilowatt will be higher than if you invest the money in nuclear or other power sources. So why invest in SPS at all? (Trust me this is one of my early inspirations and I’ve been trying for decades to find a viable reason to bring it back. I’m not alone and we’re not gaining ground either :( ) Worse in some ways it actually argues against involving humans in any of the process off-Earth.

One epiphany I’ve had is that when it comes down to it while you really don’t NEED humans involved there are some distinct advantages to having them around. (At least until we get a viable and prolific AI working) But the ‘reasoning’ tends to be circular in that you do actually usually need a good reason to have humans around BEFORE you send any up. My epiphany was if you can and do send humans up, and assuming you can do so on an affordable and regular basis then all you need to do is reverse the question. Do you need humans involved? I’m already up here what do you need me to do? Instead. Part of what drew me so well to The Millennial Project was the fact that it was based on putting humans in space to work BECAUSE they were already there rather than sending them up to put them to work.

Stimulating interest in Venus would be great, since you have over twice the solar energy and an atmosphere where you can walk around with nothing but a HAZMAT suit. The airships of Venus seem a bit nicer than huddling in a Mars base, and even on the surface of Venus--basically a deep ocean base with a lot more heat and corrosion--you have the satisfaction of colonizing hell (with the heat, brimstone, etc., Venus might as well be the classical Christian hell!), which might as well weigh heavy amongst some groups.

Popularity wise Venus got the short end of the stick even before we knew what was under the clouds. I mean Mars had ancient canals and cities older than mankind. Venus was millions of years behind us with dinosaurs and huge swamps that bred disease and rot with oceans full of teeth and death.

I’d call foul but it goes to far back and to deep. And yes in fact I have seen some posts on some forums where Mars IS heaven and Venus IS hell and the poster was NOT kidding…

But overall, Venus might need a discovery of life in the atmosphere. Some scientists have pointed out reasons why extremophiles which have evolved on Venus still exist, and have pointed to characteristics of Venus's atmosphere as evidence. Now imagine if the Soviets detect this "evidence" (OTL Venera didn't have the capability, but a "false positive" might happen) and end up promoting it. Maybe the USSR would make a "Venus airship" to follow up on their "discovery of extraterrestrial life". Given the Soviet success on Venus--it's interesting how the USSR and Russia did so many missions to Venus compared to other countries (and given Venus's potential compared to Mars, perhaps it almost seems like some secret ancient Soviet knowledge forgotten to foolish Western capitalists), there's certainly more to explore there. I'm sure if the theory of extremophiles in Venus's atmosphere as proposed by some scientists is advanced in that era, and the USSR builds an airship which tests the hypothesis, then NASA will certainly have to follow with something. Can't let the commies monopolize the Morning/Evening Star.

It is actually not at all surprising that Russia went to Venus more than Mars and I’ve pointed it out in another thread :) It is why Venus not Mars would in any logical world be the “breadbasket” of the Asteroid belt and beyond. Venus is twice as easy to get to and you get twice as many opportunities a “year” to do so due to Venus and Earth’s orbits. Russia has had a serious fascination with Mars since the late 19th century, in some ways more so than the US or anyone else. But Mars is further and harder to get to so quite logically in order to try and keep making ‘firsts’ with the launch vehicles and technology they had the Soviet’s went inward towards the sun rather than outwards towards the stars. (That btw is another common ‘analogy’ for Space Exploration; Outward is progress so Mars is ‘obviously’ a proper goal whereas Inward means admitting defeat so Venus is not a good goal. Besides there are only two planets inside Earth’s orbit and twice that outside so simple numbers makes that point, or so the argument goes :) )

Arguably finding life early might help but I'm very much afraid it would go the other way in reality. OTL getting false or real positives has already brought up calls to leave Mars alone and only land robots. They aren't loud currently but they have been off and on for the last couple of decades. Like the Moon Treaty in the 70s/80s these issues are not really about 'protecting exo-life' or 'securing the world resource heritage in space' but about finding or making an excuse to slow or stop human exploration off-Earth. As often about "good" reasons (use the money spent on space to make Earth better, or such) as "bad" (political control over space and/or space travel by regulation) the main issue is to keep humans out of space for a reason. And again arguably the point is that most humans don't in fact want to go, visit of live in space anyway so since it's not a major issue arranging to bar humans from space is actually frighteningly easy if it ever got organized. Lucky for us "they" are about as organized as the Space Cadets are :)

Yes the US would follow the Soviets as long as it was robots, humans not so much because of the cost. Which is why neither side tried it OTL. But a robotic airship/aerostat probe is doable and had been proposed numerous times. I'll note the proposal that got the most interest, (most of it opposition by people who didn't want the focus taken away from Mars mind you :) ) was the manned HAVOC, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Altitude_Venus_Operational_Concept) mission specifically because it was manned. I'll take this opportunity, (you poor fool you ;) ) to point out a concept "I" had which I called "Green Dragon" before I knew that someone proposed that as an Earth orbital greenhouse idea:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33413.0;all

It's of course based on the Mars "Red Dragon" using a Dragon-1 capsule as a basis but Venus is "Green" (associated color are in fact Red and Green of which the former is irrevocably tied to Mars so...) to Mar's "Red" and being a floater based probe to gather specific data on Venus. There was a spate of Venus interest several years ago that generated some internet interest;
(some examples)
http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=52534
https://selenianboondocks.com/2013/12/random-thoughts-inspiration-venus/, (check "Venus" subjects on that blog he's got some good details)
https://yellowdragonblog.com/
And such but the point was once you got past "you'll die crushed and burned by the heat and pressure of the surface I don't care if you aren't landing it will just be worse and you should just support/go-to Mars and be happy and safe" objections the information really does show Venus is actually as good as Mars if not better in some ways. But it never last probably because once everyone hears about the next Mars probe no one cares anymore.

Elon's initial goal and idea was to put a robotic greenhouse on Mars and put "live" video of it on the internet to generate interest and opinions about going there. Instead he ended up starting a company to make orbital access cheaper and then morphed to going to Mars with the technology. Not a 'bad' outcome really but I have to wonder what a sunset above the clouds of Venus would look like framing a rose grown hydroponically in filtered Venus air...

Randy
 
For example on "rationale for an advanced space program", who the heck puts an habitable planet at the near-side of an asteroid belt for Squad's sake? ;D
KSP WTF.jpg
 
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