Never doubt the power of a
LEVIATHAN Rising: An Alternative Space Age
- Thread starter Juumanistra
- Start date
Looking back I need to read closer as I misread most of that. Yes an ISP of 900 is close to NTR but it's way low for something like an MET which is supposed to be about twice that or better. But hey it's using water which is crazy available in space so...
Randy
Good stuff... ::::sigh:::: I can't draw worth anything, can't do much with paint or art programs and even KSP doesn't like me it seems. I tried to gen up a copy of the Air Force "1960-SLS A" booster and my solids for some reason were 'jiggly' rocking back and forth on the pad even with struts. (Flight was interesting as well with two flights having the booster take off and leaving the core stage on the pad and once having them rip off the core stage when they were released.... Ya maybe a good thing I don't design rockets for a living
)Randy
Awesome! Glad you like. To be clear, I'm quite poor at photoshopping as well; these are untouched ingame screenshots. Having written the realism mods for Kerbal, I'm fairly good at getting them to do what I want.
SLS A-series, you say? Funny you should mention that.Good stuff... ::::sigh:::: I can't draw worth anything, can't do much with paint or art programs and even KSP doesn't like me it seems. I tried to gen up a copy of the Air Force "1960-SLS A" booster and my solids for some reason were 'jiggly' rocking back and forth on the pad even with struts. (Flight was interesting as well with two flights having the booster take off and leaving the core stage on the pad and once having them rip off the core stage when they were released.... Ya maybe a good thing I don't design rockets for a living
Chapter 9: That’s So MAVEN [February 1955]
Chapter 9: That’s So MAVEN
1955 would produce two seminal works from the Department of Rocketry: Military Applications in Vacuum Environments (MAVEN) and A Program for Intermediate-term Space Missions (PRISM). Initiated on the same day in February 1955, they would – when taken together -- represent an expansive vision not only of a genuinely achievable space program for the Navy, but also for the United States as a whole. Unfortunately, it would be decades before they could be read together by anyone not possessing a security clearance, as it would not be until the 21st Century that MAVEN would be declassified even in a highly redacted form.
MAVEN’s grand ambition was to develop an operational vision for the United States Navy in orbital spaces within the “achievable” future. If the First LEVIATHAN Report had been the fever-dreams of what could be, MAVEN sought to answer what will be, and how to start building the intellectual framework necessary to get there and deal with the problems posed by it. As Captain Heinlein wished to produce a serious review of the space as an operational environment and begin to lay the foundations of for a Navy doctrine when operating there. But MAVEN faced a surprisingly philosophical challenge: How does the blind man, having finished groping the elephant, in fact describe it? Where does a project like MAVEN’s even begin, when so much is unknown about the Sea of Stars and the United States was still years away from being able to place even the smallest of payloads into orbit?
The answer offered by Heinlein, as MAVEN’s chair, was that of the engineer (or hot-rodder, for that matter): Even the most daunting of tasks can usually be solved by realizing they are just great chains of many simple tasks linked together sequentially. The place to begin, therefore, is defining one’s purpose and terms. Much of which had previously been accomplished by the First LEVIATHAN Report and IRONS, for all the former’s fancifulness and the latter’s dry bureaucratic categorization, they had together sown, nurtured, shaped, and honed over the past three years a common set of assumptions about how man would move into space in the coming years. That emergent worldview assumed that:
But, MAVEN concluded, there was also a second facet to protecting the Navy’s satellites: What happens to a satellite after it’s attacked, as it cannot be guaranteed that any attack can be prevented, no matter what capabilities the Navy’s spaceships might have. It is possible that satellites might, depending upon their wounds, be capable of repair and restoration to functionality: While everything might be built as lightly as possible, MAVEN reasoned, anti-satellite weaponry would also be similarly hobbled due to also being subject to the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation. Beyond potential sustainment in wartime, an on-orbit ability to maintain and repair satellites offered significant opportunities in non-wartime scenarios to enhance the usable life and simplify the design of Navy satellites. To fulfill that kind of satellite sustainment mission, however, the Navy would need a space station and an astro-tug capable of, if necessary, hauling satellites to and from the station.
Mission #6 was in many ways the mirror-image of Mission #1, protecting everything else in orbit that was not the Navy’s. The needs of non-Navy satellites were the same as defending the Navy’s own satellites, and a vessel capable of satisfying Mission #1 would also satisfy that dimension of Mission #6 as well. The same applied for the Navy’s sustainment capabilities, as it could reasonably be expected that the Navy would be responsible for sustainment of the other services’ satellites. But there was also a subtle difference with Mission #6’s context: Baked into it was the assumed need to, from time to time, conduct the orbital equivalent of gunboat diplomacy. As, driven by their assumptions of spacecraft design, the MAVEN team was of the opinion that the threat of force in an orbital setting could prove to be more effective than its actual use. A space station may require blockading or an attempt orbit-change contested, for example, in which the desire is a coercive showing of the flag, with a proverbial shot across the bow, rather than an actual shot fired in anger. Such operations could also need to be conducted in orbits which placed the gunboat out of line-of-sight of both terrestrial and orbital communications sources, necessitating the ability for a spacecraft capable “cruising” and operating away from its home base for extended periods of time.
But Mission #6 was not merely one of protection. It was also one concerned with safety. What MAVEN considered this to mean was that there would need to be provisioning in orbit for when things invariably went wrong. Machines break down for innumerable reasons and the more complex the machine, such as most spacecraft, the more places and ways there are for things to fail. There will inevitably be accidents, as well, with resultant injuries and potentially life-threatening scenarios. And, just as on the most distant of terrestrial seas, the remoteness of space guarantees that help from the “mainland” – at the bottom of the gravity well – is unlikely to arrive in time to be of assistance.
This would mandate the development of two things: 1) An on-orbit “rescue” capability with which to respond rapidly to requests for humanitarian, mechanical, and technical assistance; and 2) a “workshop of last resort” where the emergency needs of both people and machines could be tended in a controlled and stable environment. These, MAVEN anticipated, would be mandated by American cultural sensibilities: A liberal republic would not continence – at least for long – sending astronauts into the blackness of space without hope of assistance if imperiled. And, once that “hope of assistance” was established, it would prove impossible to restrict access to its services only to Americans, as the enlightened self-interest of spacefarers would drive the adoption, formally or informally, of a spaceborne version of the Mariner’s Code. The capabilities to satisfy these requirements could, thankfully, be provided in the course of accomplishing other Missions: A space station built for the sustainment of the Navy’s satellites could easily provide “workshop of last resort” capabilities, while MAVEN’s patrolling gunboats had the capabilities to respond to on-orbit emergencies.
But it was in Mission #5 that MAVEN found what it believed to be the most important mission the Navy could undertake in orbit. Not that the other identified Missions were not important – and with special reservations regarding Mission #2 – but they made certain assumptions about spaceflight that could easily turn out incorrect or, even worse, in good-faith be handed off to other services. (As disgusting an idea of an Air Force-emblazoned atomic rocket might be, “shoot the things with missiles” was something which MAVEN would concede can reasonably be said to be within the Air Force’s institutional wheelhouse.) The creation and sustainment of an orderly orbital operating environment, however, was conceptually no different than the Navy’s core mission of guaranteeing freedom of navigation on the terrestrial seas.
The picture of the future which MAVEN worked off was in desperate need of someone to perform “air-traffic controller” duties. (As that might be considered a concession to the Air Force, however, MAVEN’s chosen term was “harbormaster” duties.) The most basic building block of these capabilities would be the detection and tracking of orbital objects, for which the development and establishment of terrestrial-based capabilities would be critical. As would their deployment through-out the American sphere of influence, to maximize the width and breadth of the sky being observed at any given time. Such could also be augmented by the deployment of sensors in orbit, be it at a space station which served as the logistical hub of the Navy’s orbital presence or at other, discrete satellites and/or space stations, depending upon the precise needs and technological capabilities available.
But MAVEN also envisioned something much greater. As what was dangerous about the situation in orbit was that so many of the anticipated satellites were not easily identifiable at range. This would require the Navy develop a satellite inspection capability, capable of deploying rapidly, approaching an unidentified satellite, and determining who it belonged to, what its role was, and what capabilities it provided. There were two possible ways to rapidly deploy such a satellite inspection capability, either by boosting it up from Earth or retaining the ability to do such inspections on-orbit. As MAVEN’s work already called for significant on-orbit assets, logic dictated that on-orbit inspection capabilities were a superior option. While those capabilities might be constituted within one of the gunboats MAVEN anticipated requiring, it was believed they would be finite in number and that there would likely be higher-priority missions for that limited pool of ships. It would in any event likely prove uneconomical as well. The sea-going analogy MAVEN settled on to illustrate the point was that a light cruiser did not pull aside every ship that was subjected to a customs inspection.
Something smaller -- an “astro-launch” – would be required. Operating for limited times and deployed from a gunboat or space station, the astro-launch would be capable of approaching a satellites and conducting whatever investigation of it was necessary. Because of the need to potentially physically inspect a satellite, the astro-launch would be crewed with an inspection team. And because of the potentiality of inspecting less-than-friendly satellites and/or space stations, the inspection team would include several “space Marines”.
Such “space Marines” were key to the other side of the satellite inspection coin, which was referred to within MAVEN as “interdiction”. As inspections would, invariably, find things that they should not, things which would require a more muscular response. The development of the “space Marine” – an infantryman trained for shipboard and extravehicular activities – would provide the Navy with a capability to deal with crewed orbital structures that did not involve blowing – or threatening to blow – holes in pressurized compartments. There was an additional interdiction tool which would be required, however, as interdicted satellites could require reorbiting in the process of being disposed of. The astro-tug necessary for the Navy’s satellite sustainment requirements would be sufficient for that task, which would need to operated in tandem off gunboats with the astro-launch to provide a fully deployable satellite inspection and interdiction capability.
There was one final component to MAVEN’s vision of the Navy as the “harbormaster” of near-Earth orbital space. One of the most important duties of a harbormaster is ensuring navigational safety, especially by mitigating and removing navigational hazards. Any orbiting body is a potential navigation hazard, as every object is traveling at incredible velocity relative to every other object and a collision between objects at those speeds, even of the lightest sort, would involve massive transfers of kinetic energy. (“Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space,” it would be rightfully rued.) What determines the hazardousness of an orbital object is control: If the object is under the guidance of someone or something capable of synchronizing its motion with other orbital objects, it’s perfectly safe. If it’s uncontrolled, then the object is a bullet whirling around the planet awaiting the moment when it gets to ruin someone’s day.
In a world of even moderate satellite traffic density, it would inevitable that some would become uncontrolled. While it is eminently possible that such might be due to enemy action, the far more likely probably would be simple mechanical failure: Space is a harsh environment, after all, quality control – like all human endeavors – can be a very uneven thing. There would be a need, therefore, to respond to those situations and remedy the navigational hazard, including kicking the satellite down into the atmosphere or reorbiting it to a place where it did not constitute a risk to other co-orbital entities. The toolkits afforded by the gunboat, astro-launch, and astro-tug as previously defined would, MAVEN felt, be sufficient for this role as well.
Missions #3 and #4, meanwhile, had been easily envisioned prior to even the formal start of defining the scenario MAVEN was working in. As the team worked its way through the internal logic of their circumstances, however, the “shooty bits” of their conceived-of mandate turned out to be most anticlimactic of all the proposed Missions, as almost all of the needed capabilities were established to complete other Missions. The only significant additional requirements, MAVEN felt, was that the gunboat possess a weapon with stand-off capabilities and sophisticated enough avionics to allow the detection, tracking, and accurate firing-on of moving targets in orbit. This would mean the gunboat, in all likelihood, would require two weapons: One for engaging non-moving (or ascending) targets and a one for engaging maneuver-capable on-orbit targets.
As MAVEN’s work matured and specific capabilities were identified as needed, the ultimate hope of the team’s work began to come into focus: The construction of an actual doctrine for the Navy’s operating in near-Earth orbit. Given the massive number of unknowns and “it will just work” assumptions which had been made, it was impossible to discuss such in any significant detail. But the contours were there and important in any discussion of funding the vision which MAVEN had been putting together. As at the end of the day, the mission drives procurement and determination of that mission is very firmly a political decision. One which the elected branches usually require having beaten into their heads in order to appreciate. What MAVEN foresaw for the Navy in space was an evolution into a primarily paramilitary force, performing what at least one member of the team derided – with a Southern drawl – as “revenuer duties”. Which might well have been a bit too on the nose, with MAVEN’s discussion of kerolox propellant depots.
The elephant in the room for MAVEN remained what it had identified as Mission #2. The question of strategic nuclear weaponry in their work had cropped up early and often, especially given the Navy’s palpable interest in boom-sats. At first it had been easy enough to push the question aside, because of the amount of other work to be done and other subjects which needed investigated. But it did not stop the issue from looming ever larger on the horizon, until it could no longer be ignored. Fatefully, Captain Heinlein determined that the issue “will be addressed with all of the vigor and forthrightness as any other issue which MAVEN took up”. While the epithet which usually follows that quote -- “and a pox on the Navy for getting exactly what it wants” – is likely apocryphal, it would not be an inaccurate reflection of MAVEN’s assessment.
For MAVEN came to the conclusion that there was no role for the Navy in the operation of strategic nuclear weapons in any orbital space. As practical matters, the design and construction of boom-sats posed significant challenges to a maturing spaceflight program and risked warping such in unpredictable ways by mandating development of specific hardware suitable for a very specific mission. Boom-sats also would consume scarce launchers and funding to deploy, while incurring significant recurring payload requirements that would further divert scarce launchers and funding at a time when the nation’s space endeavors should be bent to establishing a permanent and sustainable orbital presence. They further still represented immense technological risk, given the number of nascent technologies required to bring them to fruition. But lastly – and most damningly – was the simple fact that they were not an effective strategic deterrent: As their orbits were known and they would not for many years possess the ability to maneuver, they could be shot down by Soviet-launched rockets. To say nothing if the Soviets built their own version of MAVEN’s gunboat, which would be able to obliterate American boom-sats with ease. In the professional opinion of the Department of Rocketry, should the Navy wish to expand its nuclear deterrent, pursuit of a submarine-launched ballistic missile or a successor to the Regulus cruise missile offered significantly greater utility at astronomically lower costs than a boom-sat.
Having made a technical assessment, MAVEN could have ceased its discussion of boom-sats and moved on. But, certainly in the spirit of poxing the Navy, it continued to a wider discussion of strategic nuclear weapons in space, finding their deployment in any form to be counterproductive to the nation’s national security interests. There was a reason that the boomer concept from the First LEVIATHAN Report had faded into non-existence by MAVEN: It, like the boom-sat, was an impractical tool with which to deliver strategic payloads and was something whose existence would guarantee a financially ruinous orbital arms race that, on net, would do more significantly more harm than good. One of the virtues of space was that it was virgin soil whose harsh nature encouraged cooperation: That cooperation was encouraged would not guarantee such and MAVEN had no doubt some level of armaments would be required in space. But they ought to be conventional and appropriate for the modern-day equivalent of the Navy’s old anti-Barbary pirate patrols, for that is essentially what the Navy’s mission should be. To simply presume nuclearization of the Sea of Stars was inevitable would squander an opportunity, as the Soviets faced the same set of operational challenges as the United States and with the same set of incentives to not cast the first stone on this issue.
Having issued its condemnation of the deployment of orbital strategic nuclear weaponry, MAVEN concluded with its recommendations for what should be undertaken to establish the Navy’s presence in space and conduct the missions which MAVEN had defined:
And, as it just so happened, Burke concurred the Navy’s nuclear future was in ballistic missiles, not boom-sats
*=*=*=*=*
Author's Notes
Welp, this is the longest entry to date in the TL, at least that's threadmarked. And it's only half of the space manifesto stuff. Even worse, it's not the report that gets turned into Halfway to Everywhere, either. But there is method to my madness! As one of the massive questions that's been hanging over the TL is: "How does the Navy reasonably keep a seat at the space policy table?" As Ike hated the idea of the uniformed services militarizing space and there was really no subsequent change OTL from future administrations. To say nothing of the risk of the Navy just becoming like the USAF OTL and cackling maniacally over (sub-)orbital atomic annihilation. (LeMay's "where's the bomb bay?" comment when shown Dyna-Soar might be apocryphal, but it gained currency because it is so easy for it to be true.) So we finally get that question gets tackled, with the author showing his work, and Robert Heinlein's answer to it is for the Navy to be something between the Orbit Guard and that most Heinleinian of rocketpunk tropes, the Patrol. Which should surprise absolutely no one, given my love affair with metafictional rhyming. Whether it's a good is another question entirely, as is the question of whether anyone will pay for any of it. But Robert Heinlein's superpower has been revealed! And it's a vision for space that is uncannily modern. Which is intentional, but I think a man of Heinlein's intellect and imagination -- and those who he'd surround himself with professionally -- could get there and, even if none of it were implemented immediately, the existence of the vision itself would unleash a torrent of butterflies.
And if you're not satisfied with a lot of world-building, PRISM and Halfway to Everywhere are coming. Which will scratch your itch for alt-Mercury/Gemini/Apollo and your desire to know the answer to the question of "what would the Integrated Program Plan look like if it were drafted in 1958, but with significantly less starting ambition and no Peak Apollo hubris?" And then it might -- might -- just be to the point where the political branches have to make decisions about funding things. At which point the realspace cadeting atomic midshipping can begin.
Also: Happy New Year everyone. Been a hoot building this with all of you. May we be blessed enough to keep being able to do it in 2022.
1955 would produce two seminal works from the Department of Rocketry: Military Applications in Vacuum Environments (MAVEN) and A Program for Intermediate-term Space Missions (PRISM). Initiated on the same day in February 1955, they would – when taken together -- represent an expansive vision not only of a genuinely achievable space program for the Navy, but also for the United States as a whole. Unfortunately, it would be decades before they could be read together by anyone not possessing a security clearance, as it would not be until the 21st Century that MAVEN would be declassified even in a highly redacted form.
MAVEN’s grand ambition was to develop an operational vision for the United States Navy in orbital spaces within the “achievable” future. If the First LEVIATHAN Report had been the fever-dreams of what could be, MAVEN sought to answer what will be, and how to start building the intellectual framework necessary to get there and deal with the problems posed by it. As Captain Heinlein wished to produce a serious review of the space as an operational environment and begin to lay the foundations of for a Navy doctrine when operating there. But MAVEN faced a surprisingly philosophical challenge: How does the blind man, having finished groping the elephant, in fact describe it? Where does a project like MAVEN’s even begin, when so much is unknown about the Sea of Stars and the United States was still years away from being able to place even the smallest of payloads into orbit?
The answer offered by Heinlein, as MAVEN’s chair, was that of the engineer (or hot-rodder, for that matter): Even the most daunting of tasks can usually be solved by realizing they are just great chains of many simple tasks linked together sequentially. The place to begin, therefore, is defining one’s purpose and terms. Much of which had previously been accomplished by the First LEVIATHAN Report and IRONS, for all the former’s fancifulness and the latter’s dry bureaucratic categorization, they had together sown, nurtured, shaped, and honed over the past three years a common set of assumptions about how man would move into space in the coming years. That emergent worldview assumed that:
- As orbit-capable rockets are developed, satellites will be deployed and as the capabilities of those rockets improves, so will the sophistication and capabilities of satellites. Satellites will be used for myriad military purposes, including communication, intelligence-gathering (ELINT/SIGINT), meteorology, navigation, reconnaissance (photo- and radio-observation), and strategic bombardment. Each service will require its own satellites, both due to their own unique missions and traditional inter-service rivalries.
- As rocket payloads increase, in relatively short order it will be possible to launch “space stations”, which are simply manned satellites. Space stations will able to perform all tasks which satellites perform, but are unlikely to, for because Every Gram Counts, space stations will only be used for purposes which satellites are unfit to perform. They will also act as logistical hubs of their orbits and as a natural staging point for spaceborne activities.
- As rocket payloads increase, space infrastructure will be constructed to further reduce the cost and complexity of launching space missions. The consensus example of what space infrastructure would look like is a “propellant depot” containing large amounts of reaction mass (and potentially oxidizer), to allow missions to be launched and fueled in-orbit rather than needing to haul that up the gravity well from Earth’s surface.
- As the Space Age properly begins, space traffic will swiftly increase and near-Earth orbits will become crowded. (At least as crowded as a place as vast as space can be.) Ground-launched rockets will ferry crew and supplies to space stations; “orbiters” will transport men and cargo on space stations to and from places in similar orbits; “tugs” will haul payloads between orbits; and “descenders” will return crews and cargos from orbital locations back to Earth.
- Civilian orbital activity is inevitable and is crucial to the long-term sustainability of orbital operations. Most man-made structures in orbit will therefore be dual-purpose, with non-military satellites, space stations, and orbital craft possessing similar capabilities in most instances to military ones.
- Because Every Gram Counts, orbiting objects will be built to the thinnest tolerances permitted by their task or mission and will always be built in such a manner, barring a paradigm-shifting breakthrough in launching technology or materials science.
- While space has no horizon, the nature of basic orbital mechanics and the limitations of existing technology will render tracking objects in near-Earth orbits a not-insubstantial task for the predictable future. It will also make the reliable identification of them from meaningful distances immensely difficult.
- All developments of space policy will organically evolve from existing national and international antecedents and analogues. While space may not in fact be an ocean, the laws of the sea are most likely to inform the creation of the laws of space.
- Operate all satellites necessary to undertake the Navy’s terrestrial missions.
- Prevent the United States from being bombarded from orbit.
- Engage and neutralize non-friendly maneuvering orbital objects.
- Engage and neutralize non-friendly non-maneuvering objects.
- Establish and maintain an orderly orbital operating environment.
- Guarantee the safety and security of the orbital property of the United States and its citizens.
But, MAVEN concluded, there was also a second facet to protecting the Navy’s satellites: What happens to a satellite after it’s attacked, as it cannot be guaranteed that any attack can be prevented, no matter what capabilities the Navy’s spaceships might have. It is possible that satellites might, depending upon their wounds, be capable of repair and restoration to functionality: While everything might be built as lightly as possible, MAVEN reasoned, anti-satellite weaponry would also be similarly hobbled due to also being subject to the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation. Beyond potential sustainment in wartime, an on-orbit ability to maintain and repair satellites offered significant opportunities in non-wartime scenarios to enhance the usable life and simplify the design of Navy satellites. To fulfill that kind of satellite sustainment mission, however, the Navy would need a space station and an astro-tug capable of, if necessary, hauling satellites to and from the station.
Mission #6 was in many ways the mirror-image of Mission #1, protecting everything else in orbit that was not the Navy’s. The needs of non-Navy satellites were the same as defending the Navy’s own satellites, and a vessel capable of satisfying Mission #1 would also satisfy that dimension of Mission #6 as well. The same applied for the Navy’s sustainment capabilities, as it could reasonably be expected that the Navy would be responsible for sustainment of the other services’ satellites. But there was also a subtle difference with Mission #6’s context: Baked into it was the assumed need to, from time to time, conduct the orbital equivalent of gunboat diplomacy. As, driven by their assumptions of spacecraft design, the MAVEN team was of the opinion that the threat of force in an orbital setting could prove to be more effective than its actual use. A space station may require blockading or an attempt orbit-change contested, for example, in which the desire is a coercive showing of the flag, with a proverbial shot across the bow, rather than an actual shot fired in anger. Such operations could also need to be conducted in orbits which placed the gunboat out of line-of-sight of both terrestrial and orbital communications sources, necessitating the ability for a spacecraft capable “cruising” and operating away from its home base for extended periods of time.
But Mission #6 was not merely one of protection. It was also one concerned with safety. What MAVEN considered this to mean was that there would need to be provisioning in orbit for when things invariably went wrong. Machines break down for innumerable reasons and the more complex the machine, such as most spacecraft, the more places and ways there are for things to fail. There will inevitably be accidents, as well, with resultant injuries and potentially life-threatening scenarios. And, just as on the most distant of terrestrial seas, the remoteness of space guarantees that help from the “mainland” – at the bottom of the gravity well – is unlikely to arrive in time to be of assistance.
This would mandate the development of two things: 1) An on-orbit “rescue” capability with which to respond rapidly to requests for humanitarian, mechanical, and technical assistance; and 2) a “workshop of last resort” where the emergency needs of both people and machines could be tended in a controlled and stable environment. These, MAVEN anticipated, would be mandated by American cultural sensibilities: A liberal republic would not continence – at least for long – sending astronauts into the blackness of space without hope of assistance if imperiled. And, once that “hope of assistance” was established, it would prove impossible to restrict access to its services only to Americans, as the enlightened self-interest of spacefarers would drive the adoption, formally or informally, of a spaceborne version of the Mariner’s Code. The capabilities to satisfy these requirements could, thankfully, be provided in the course of accomplishing other Missions: A space station built for the sustainment of the Navy’s satellites could easily provide “workshop of last resort” capabilities, while MAVEN’s patrolling gunboats had the capabilities to respond to on-orbit emergencies.
But it was in Mission #5 that MAVEN found what it believed to be the most important mission the Navy could undertake in orbit. Not that the other identified Missions were not important – and with special reservations regarding Mission #2 – but they made certain assumptions about spaceflight that could easily turn out incorrect or, even worse, in good-faith be handed off to other services. (As disgusting an idea of an Air Force-emblazoned atomic rocket might be, “shoot the things with missiles” was something which MAVEN would concede can reasonably be said to be within the Air Force’s institutional wheelhouse.) The creation and sustainment of an orderly orbital operating environment, however, was conceptually no different than the Navy’s core mission of guaranteeing freedom of navigation on the terrestrial seas.
The picture of the future which MAVEN worked off was in desperate need of someone to perform “air-traffic controller” duties. (As that might be considered a concession to the Air Force, however, MAVEN’s chosen term was “harbormaster” duties.) The most basic building block of these capabilities would be the detection and tracking of orbital objects, for which the development and establishment of terrestrial-based capabilities would be critical. As would their deployment through-out the American sphere of influence, to maximize the width and breadth of the sky being observed at any given time. Such could also be augmented by the deployment of sensors in orbit, be it at a space station which served as the logistical hub of the Navy’s orbital presence or at other, discrete satellites and/or space stations, depending upon the precise needs and technological capabilities available.
But MAVEN also envisioned something much greater. As what was dangerous about the situation in orbit was that so many of the anticipated satellites were not easily identifiable at range. This would require the Navy develop a satellite inspection capability, capable of deploying rapidly, approaching an unidentified satellite, and determining who it belonged to, what its role was, and what capabilities it provided. There were two possible ways to rapidly deploy such a satellite inspection capability, either by boosting it up from Earth or retaining the ability to do such inspections on-orbit. As MAVEN’s work already called for significant on-orbit assets, logic dictated that on-orbit inspection capabilities were a superior option. While those capabilities might be constituted within one of the gunboats MAVEN anticipated requiring, it was believed they would be finite in number and that there would likely be higher-priority missions for that limited pool of ships. It would in any event likely prove uneconomical as well. The sea-going analogy MAVEN settled on to illustrate the point was that a light cruiser did not pull aside every ship that was subjected to a customs inspection.
Something smaller -- an “astro-launch” – would be required. Operating for limited times and deployed from a gunboat or space station, the astro-launch would be capable of approaching a satellites and conducting whatever investigation of it was necessary. Because of the need to potentially physically inspect a satellite, the astro-launch would be crewed with an inspection team. And because of the potentiality of inspecting less-than-friendly satellites and/or space stations, the inspection team would include several “space Marines”.
Such “space Marines” were key to the other side of the satellite inspection coin, which was referred to within MAVEN as “interdiction”. As inspections would, invariably, find things that they should not, things which would require a more muscular response. The development of the “space Marine” – an infantryman trained for shipboard and extravehicular activities – would provide the Navy with a capability to deal with crewed orbital structures that did not involve blowing – or threatening to blow – holes in pressurized compartments. There was an additional interdiction tool which would be required, however, as interdicted satellites could require reorbiting in the process of being disposed of. The astro-tug necessary for the Navy’s satellite sustainment requirements would be sufficient for that task, which would need to operated in tandem off gunboats with the astro-launch to provide a fully deployable satellite inspection and interdiction capability.
There was one final component to MAVEN’s vision of the Navy as the “harbormaster” of near-Earth orbital space. One of the most important duties of a harbormaster is ensuring navigational safety, especially by mitigating and removing navigational hazards. Any orbiting body is a potential navigation hazard, as every object is traveling at incredible velocity relative to every other object and a collision between objects at those speeds, even of the lightest sort, would involve massive transfers of kinetic energy. (“Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space,” it would be rightfully rued.) What determines the hazardousness of an orbital object is control: If the object is under the guidance of someone or something capable of synchronizing its motion with other orbital objects, it’s perfectly safe. If it’s uncontrolled, then the object is a bullet whirling around the planet awaiting the moment when it gets to ruin someone’s day.
In a world of even moderate satellite traffic density, it would inevitable that some would become uncontrolled. While it is eminently possible that such might be due to enemy action, the far more likely probably would be simple mechanical failure: Space is a harsh environment, after all, quality control – like all human endeavors – can be a very uneven thing. There would be a need, therefore, to respond to those situations and remedy the navigational hazard, including kicking the satellite down into the atmosphere or reorbiting it to a place where it did not constitute a risk to other co-orbital entities. The toolkits afforded by the gunboat, astro-launch, and astro-tug as previously defined would, MAVEN felt, be sufficient for this role as well.
Missions #3 and #4, meanwhile, had been easily envisioned prior to even the formal start of defining the scenario MAVEN was working in. As the team worked its way through the internal logic of their circumstances, however, the “shooty bits” of their conceived-of mandate turned out to be most anticlimactic of all the proposed Missions, as almost all of the needed capabilities were established to complete other Missions. The only significant additional requirements, MAVEN felt, was that the gunboat possess a weapon with stand-off capabilities and sophisticated enough avionics to allow the detection, tracking, and accurate firing-on of moving targets in orbit. This would mean the gunboat, in all likelihood, would require two weapons: One for engaging non-moving (or ascending) targets and a one for engaging maneuver-capable on-orbit targets.
As MAVEN’s work matured and specific capabilities were identified as needed, the ultimate hope of the team’s work began to come into focus: The construction of an actual doctrine for the Navy’s operating in near-Earth orbit. Given the massive number of unknowns and “it will just work” assumptions which had been made, it was impossible to discuss such in any significant detail. But the contours were there and important in any discussion of funding the vision which MAVEN had been putting together. As at the end of the day, the mission drives procurement and determination of that mission is very firmly a political decision. One which the elected branches usually require having beaten into their heads in order to appreciate. What MAVEN foresaw for the Navy in space was an evolution into a primarily paramilitary force, performing what at least one member of the team derided – with a Southern drawl – as “revenuer duties”. Which might well have been a bit too on the nose, with MAVEN’s discussion of kerolox propellant depots.
The elephant in the room for MAVEN remained what it had identified as Mission #2. The question of strategic nuclear weaponry in their work had cropped up early and often, especially given the Navy’s palpable interest in boom-sats. At first it had been easy enough to push the question aside, because of the amount of other work to be done and other subjects which needed investigated. But it did not stop the issue from looming ever larger on the horizon, until it could no longer be ignored. Fatefully, Captain Heinlein determined that the issue “will be addressed with all of the vigor and forthrightness as any other issue which MAVEN took up”. While the epithet which usually follows that quote -- “and a pox on the Navy for getting exactly what it wants” – is likely apocryphal, it would not be an inaccurate reflection of MAVEN’s assessment.
For MAVEN came to the conclusion that there was no role for the Navy in the operation of strategic nuclear weapons in any orbital space. As practical matters, the design and construction of boom-sats posed significant challenges to a maturing spaceflight program and risked warping such in unpredictable ways by mandating development of specific hardware suitable for a very specific mission. Boom-sats also would consume scarce launchers and funding to deploy, while incurring significant recurring payload requirements that would further divert scarce launchers and funding at a time when the nation’s space endeavors should be bent to establishing a permanent and sustainable orbital presence. They further still represented immense technological risk, given the number of nascent technologies required to bring them to fruition. But lastly – and most damningly – was the simple fact that they were not an effective strategic deterrent: As their orbits were known and they would not for many years possess the ability to maneuver, they could be shot down by Soviet-launched rockets. To say nothing if the Soviets built their own version of MAVEN’s gunboat, which would be able to obliterate American boom-sats with ease. In the professional opinion of the Department of Rocketry, should the Navy wish to expand its nuclear deterrent, pursuit of a submarine-launched ballistic missile or a successor to the Regulus cruise missile offered significantly greater utility at astronomically lower costs than a boom-sat.
Having made a technical assessment, MAVEN could have ceased its discussion of boom-sats and moved on. But, certainly in the spirit of poxing the Navy, it continued to a wider discussion of strategic nuclear weapons in space, finding their deployment in any form to be counterproductive to the nation’s national security interests. There was a reason that the boomer concept from the First LEVIATHAN Report had faded into non-existence by MAVEN: It, like the boom-sat, was an impractical tool with which to deliver strategic payloads and was something whose existence would guarantee a financially ruinous orbital arms race that, on net, would do more significantly more harm than good. One of the virtues of space was that it was virgin soil whose harsh nature encouraged cooperation: That cooperation was encouraged would not guarantee such and MAVEN had no doubt some level of armaments would be required in space. But they ought to be conventional and appropriate for the modern-day equivalent of the Navy’s old anti-Barbary pirate patrols, for that is essentially what the Navy’s mission should be. To simply presume nuclearization of the Sea of Stars was inevitable would squander an opportunity, as the Soviets faced the same set of operational challenges as the United States and with the same set of incentives to not cast the first stone on this issue.
Having issued its condemnation of the deployment of orbital strategic nuclear weaponry, MAVEN concluded with its recommendations for what should be undertaken to establish the Navy’s presence in space and conduct the missions which MAVEN had defined:
- Design and deploy a Naval Space Station capable of satisfying the need for an orbital base of operations from which to conduct all missions detailed in MAVEN.
- Design and deploy a spacecraft capable of performing Patrol, Inspection, Rescue, and Navigational Hazard Abatement (PIRANHA) missions and all other “gunboat” tasks detailed in MAVEN.
- Design or adapt and deploy a spacecraft capable of performing Satellite Interception and Interdiction (SAINT) missions and all other “astro-launch” tasks detailed in MAVEN.
- Design or adapt and deploy a spacecraft capable of performing all “astro-tug” tasks detailed in MAVEN.
- Develop a comprehensive plan for the implementation of all recommendations and fix a date-certain for the completion of the same. With reasonable allowances for technological development and changing political situations, that date should be after January 1, 1968 and prior to December 31, 1970.
- Foster research in industry to promote reusability and long-term flight economics in the next-generation of boosters that will deploy the Naval Space Station, PIRANHA, and comparably-sized PRISM-derived payloads.
- Create and participate in a Space Procurement Task Force with other space-facing agencies to coordinate programmatic design, identify areas of potential co-development, promulgate uniform standards where appropriate, and foster economies of scale in the launching industry.
And, as it just so happened, Burke concurred the Navy’s nuclear future was in ballistic missiles, not boom-sats
*=*=*=*=*
Author's Notes
Welp, this is the longest entry to date in the TL, at least that's threadmarked. And it's only half of the space manifesto stuff. Even worse, it's not the report that gets turned into Halfway to Everywhere, either. But there is method to my madness! As one of the massive questions that's been hanging over the TL is: "How does the Navy reasonably keep a seat at the space policy table?" As Ike hated the idea of the uniformed services militarizing space and there was really no subsequent change OTL from future administrations. To say nothing of the risk of the Navy just becoming like the USAF OTL and cackling maniacally over (sub-)orbital atomic annihilation. (LeMay's "where's the bomb bay?" comment when shown Dyna-Soar might be apocryphal, but it gained currency because it is so easy for it to be true.) So we finally get that question gets tackled, with the author showing his work, and Robert Heinlein's answer to it is for the Navy to be something between the Orbit Guard and that most Heinleinian of rocketpunk tropes, the Patrol. Which should surprise absolutely no one, given my love affair with metafictional rhyming. Whether it's a good is another question entirely, as is the question of whether anyone will pay for any of it. But Robert Heinlein's superpower has been revealed! And it's a vision for space that is uncannily modern. Which is intentional, but I think a man of Heinlein's intellect and imagination -- and those who he'd surround himself with professionally -- could get there and, even if none of it were implemented immediately, the existence of the vision itself would unleash a torrent of butterflies.
And if you're not satisfied with a lot of world-building, PRISM and Halfway to Everywhere are coming. Which will scratch your itch for alt-Mercury/Gemini/Apollo and your desire to know the answer to the question of "what would the Integrated Program Plan look like if it were drafted in 1958, but with significantly less starting ambition and no Peak Apollo hubris?" And then it might -- might -- just be to the point where the political branches have to make decisions about funding things. At which point the real
Also: Happy New Year everyone. Been a hoot building this with all of you. May we be blessed enough to keep being able to do it in 2022.
In some ways it's very modern, but in other ways it's very old fashioned, for instance its assumption (albeit justified given the time) of a very robust human presence in space and its interest in satellite inspection. Of course, in reality humans have turned out to be mostly superfluous and/or too expensive for most missions beyond missions intentionally focused on using them, and satellite inspection has proven not really that useful in practice. The latter is probably something that they'll have to figure out for themselves, though, while the former is just a natural development of the electronics advances that are occurring presently (in the TL, anyway).
I am a little surprised that Heinlein didn't retain the boom-sats, though. He never entirely gave up on the idea IOTL, after all.
I am a little surprised that Heinlein didn't retain the boom-sats, though. He never entirely gave up on the idea IOTL, after all.
Oh, quite. Wouldn't be all that interesting of a timeline, either, if there weren't eminently reasonable assumptions about a robust human presence in space. Very much a product of its time, but that's a good thing! Provides things to evolve from as assumptions are proved wrong in ways both expected and not. Though I think there's a real understanding that technology and physics put a massive downward pressure on manned missions and that would only increase over time. Just that there's a hard limit as to what can't be automated or mechanized and men in orbit cannot be reduced beyond a certain point, which is conveniently the number required for a classic robust vision of spaceflight. So being right about the trendline, but everything gets thrown into a cocked-hat because they couldn't anticipate Moore's Law.
True, but without even getting into "something something butterflies from a life in the Navy", how much of this is just playing for his audience? As it's no secret that Ike wants a civilian-led space program and could be counted on to react unhappily to the Navy wanting to make a full-on boom-sat constellation the center of the Navy's vision for itself in space. (As this is a Heinlein-initiated plan; if the Navy wants a full-on boom-sat constellation, his shop will provide it, though with vary degrees of enthusiasm.) And Heinlein's got enough of a grasp of the funding realities that, if you're going to ask for Peak Apollo Money, you can either build a suite of capabilities in near-Earth orbits to act as a launchpad for a wide array of future missions or you can build a boom-sat constellation, not both. (Proverbial Peak Apollo Money; it's conveying a sentiment rather than a specific funding level.) And while it might be much easier to get the boom-sat constellation money, you get far less to show for it in terms of future-proofing. Some of it is also highly related to PRISM and Halfway to Everywhere, a non-insignificant portion of whose marketing is "let's build the Interstate Highway System in SPAAAAAAAACE!". Whether or not that finds an audience is a question for the future.
And besides, if the Soviets do start playing footsy with boom-sats, all of the nostrums about the peacefulness of space can be cast aside and grim work of finding news way incinerate the Russians can begin quickly. As there won't be any further questions about precedents or funding to obstruct the building of boom-sats.
Awesome! Glad you like. To be clear, I'm quite poor at photoshopping as well; these are untouched ingame screenshots. Having written the realism mods for Kerbal, I'm fairly good at getting them to do what I want.
SLS A-series, you say? Funny you should mention that.
Great another timeline, also GREAT another timeline!
Also, also I'm still taking notes on an SLS timeline ;D
"Having written the realism mods for Kerbal, I'm fairly good at getting them to do what I want. "
Still jealous, and rather awed
Randy
Hmm. RAH-as-author could and did occasionally play fast and loose with physics (Single-H as a not-so-random example). But ITTL Captain Heinlein's day-job was the practical engineering involved with the hard realities of Every Gram Counts. Launching bombs into orbit is expensive. Maintaining them there and later maybe de-orbiting them is expensive. Their orbits are utterly predictable, and if the Soviets determined their true nature, utterly vulnerable. And replacing them would probably be doubly expensive. Heinlein and certainly Ike can do the math here: boom-sats are expensive, unreliable/vulnerable, and provocative in the extreme. Keep your bombs close to home until you need to use them: cheaper, much more secure, and probably faster delivery in most cases.
This is one of the background 'bits' from Star Trek TOS that still kind of made sense as a universe. The failed launch of a Nuclear Weapons Platform in "Assignment Earth" was the US 'responding' to the launch of such platforms by "other nations" which makes a kind of sense if someone else convinces their government to do so kind of 'before' it becomes clear how bad an idea that is. Once it's done then in order to 'keep up' you inevitably have to move to counter and launching your own platform makes sense.
The late 50s was a point where (and I mentioned this previously) a lot of high ranking military officers were making a lot of very provocative statements about the militarization of space even though most internal studies and reports were less than enthusiastic about such plans. But it made good 'press' and kept "space" in the public eye which is pretty much why it was being done.
And then that memo came out and the Russians did something unexpected and ...
Randy
Awesome! Glad you like. To be clear, I'm quite poor at photoshopping as well; these are untouched ingame screenshots. Having written the realism mods for Kerbal, I'm fairly good at getting them to do what I want.
SLS A-series, you say? Funny you should mention that.
As an "also" I may be using your numbers for SLS-A as they don't match what I had. (Going to have to look and see if I copie the Astronautix number wrong or just totally messed up the numbers.... Me-vs-Math it's probably a wash and all on me
)Happy New Year folks!
Randy
What Childish Fantasy!: A What-If Anthology #1: Preface
What Childish Fantasy!: A What-If Anthology #1: Preface
Preface: A Spiritual Atomic Midshipman
By: A. C. Clarke (1986)
It was not unexpected when, in mid-1952, I received a request for a meeting with a potential patron to discuss my recent books. Well into my second term as President of the British Interplanetary Society, taking such meetings was a requirement of the position, and in any case the opportunity to advocate the merits of space exploration to the influential was never to be passed up. What had not been expected was the address where the meeting request originated from.
It was 10 Downing Street.
Sir Winston Churchill -- Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and most powerful politician in the Commonwealth of Nations – had, apparently, taken an interest in space exploration after an American acquaintance has shown him copies of a recent issue of Collier’s magazine and he had devoured both of my recent books (The Exploration of Space and Interplanetary Flight: An Introduction to Astronautics) in short order when discovering that an Englishman was writing on the subject. It had, I was informed, been a happy coincidence for Churchill that I was serving in a leadership capacity at the BIS, as it saved him from needing an additional meeting as well.
It is my hope that, in some way, my meeting with the Prime Minister in 1952 helped produce the subject of this anthology which I now have the privilege of editing. As when I first heard it had been posthumously published in 1967, I thought someone was playing a trick on me. Britain’s greatest lion, who saw the country through the Blitz, writing a speculative fiction short story? And on such a subject! A world where an automobile accident in 1933 ended the naval career of Robert Heinlein, causing him to become a landmark science fiction writer whose work is so faddishly received as to cause the Establishment to write-off space as nothing more than a flight of fancy, until the Soviet Union’s halfway through its conquest of it? What Childish Fantasy! was not simply an appropriate title for the work, but rather the whole concept of Winston Churchill writing it in the first place.
But that does not change the fact that he did write it and, had I not been so blindsided, it would not have shocked me in the least. As the man I met in 1952 was both intelligent and keenly interested in technology, despite his lack of any formal technical training. And Winston Churchill is still one of the titans of Twentieth Century English literature, even if precious little of it was of the speculative fiction sort. It is one of my great professional regret that I did not know him as a fellow writer in the genre. I am sure there was much which we could have discussed.
But in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first man in orbit – and the writing of What Childish Fantasy! – let us ponder Churchill’s question: What would space look like without Robert Heinlein?
*=*=*=*=*
Author's Notes
Chapter 10 is proceeding as expected, which is to say slowly and only through clubbing details to death with ALL THE WORDS, so we're getting setting-dressing content to try to keep-up with Heinlein's First Rule of Spec-Fic Writing. And while The Return of William Proxmire was inevitable, I hope this is at least an interesting take on it, as Churchill was indeed deeply interested in all manner of technological developments and a closet spec-fic writer. (One of the earliest surviving writings of his, from when he was 11 or 12, is a short-story about a future war between the British and Russian Empires fought in the Crimea.) And as Clarke also wrote a Proxmire-inspired work upon Heinlein's death, I thought it appropriate that he figure prominently as well. This might also produce a small butterfly or two, so it's not totally bereft of narrative utility! Though any hope of the British aerospace sector being anything other than utterly screwed is almost certainly too much to hope for. There's butterflies flapping their wings and then there's divine intervention and even the latter probably can't save Britain's aircraft makers.
Also please forgive the slight indulging of memery. LEVIATHAN Rising began as a project using The New Order's lore and, as I played entirely too much Kaiserreich to begin with, it was inevitable we'd get into this particular reference eventually. At least it makes sense as a title here.
Probably need something to titillate and keep folks' attention, but which isn't full of spoilers. Here we go!
From LEVIATHAN Rising Chapter 10: A Case of Reveling in Over-the-top Names in Your Musings (ACRONYM)
Stage I of the Naval space program would be dedicated to figuring out basic questions regarding man’s ability to survive during exoatmospheric operations, as such basic astromedical questions of whether a human would be able to stay conscious – or even alive -- in weightlessness remained unanswered. Significant information could be gained from continued biomedical testing with sounding rockets, as well as from very high-altitude aircraft testing like the X-15. A natural progression from there would be, should the D-671 deliver as intended and on time, suborbital testing both below and above the Karman line. PRISM anticipated such suborbital testing would produce the first American in space by the end of 1960.
Preface: A Spiritual Atomic Midshipman
By: A. C. Clarke (1986)
It was not unexpected when, in mid-1952, I received a request for a meeting with a potential patron to discuss my recent books. Well into my second term as President of the British Interplanetary Society, taking such meetings was a requirement of the position, and in any case the opportunity to advocate the merits of space exploration to the influential was never to be passed up. What had not been expected was the address where the meeting request originated from.
It was 10 Downing Street.
Sir Winston Churchill -- Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and most powerful politician in the Commonwealth of Nations – had, apparently, taken an interest in space exploration after an American acquaintance has shown him copies of a recent issue of Collier’s magazine and he had devoured both of my recent books (The Exploration of Space and Interplanetary Flight: An Introduction to Astronautics) in short order when discovering that an Englishman was writing on the subject. It had, I was informed, been a happy coincidence for Churchill that I was serving in a leadership capacity at the BIS, as it saved him from needing an additional meeting as well.
It is my hope that, in some way, my meeting with the Prime Minister in 1952 helped produce the subject of this anthology which I now have the privilege of editing. As when I first heard it had been posthumously published in 1967, I thought someone was playing a trick on me. Britain’s greatest lion, who saw the country through the Blitz, writing a speculative fiction short story? And on such a subject! A world where an automobile accident in 1933 ended the naval career of Robert Heinlein, causing him to become a landmark science fiction writer whose work is so faddishly received as to cause the Establishment to write-off space as nothing more than a flight of fancy, until the Soviet Union’s halfway through its conquest of it? What Childish Fantasy! was not simply an appropriate title for the work, but rather the whole concept of Winston Churchill writing it in the first place.
But that does not change the fact that he did write it and, had I not been so blindsided, it would not have shocked me in the least. As the man I met in 1952 was both intelligent and keenly interested in technology, despite his lack of any formal technical training. And Winston Churchill is still one of the titans of Twentieth Century English literature, even if precious little of it was of the speculative fiction sort. It is one of my great professional regret that I did not know him as a fellow writer in the genre. I am sure there was much which we could have discussed.
But in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first man in orbit – and the writing of What Childish Fantasy! – let us ponder Churchill’s question: What would space look like without Robert Heinlein?
*=*=*=*=*
Author's Notes
Chapter 10 is proceeding as expected, which is to say slowly and only through clubbing details to death with ALL THE WORDS, so we're getting setting-dressing content to try to keep-up with Heinlein's First Rule of Spec-Fic Writing. And while The Return of William Proxmire was inevitable, I hope this is at least an interesting take on it, as Churchill was indeed deeply interested in all manner of technological developments and a closet spec-fic writer. (One of the earliest surviving writings of his, from when he was 11 or 12, is a short-story about a future war between the British and Russian Empires fought in the Crimea.) And as Clarke also wrote a Proxmire-inspired work upon Heinlein's death, I thought it appropriate that he figure prominently as well. This might also produce a small butterfly or two, so it's not totally bereft of narrative utility! Though any hope of the British aerospace sector being anything other than utterly screwed is almost certainly too much to hope for. There's butterflies flapping their wings and then there's divine intervention and even the latter probably can't save Britain's aircraft makers.
Also please forgive the slight indulging of memery. LEVIATHAN Rising began as a project using The New Order's lore and, as I played entirely too much Kaiserreich to begin with, it was inevitable we'd get into this particular reference eventually. At least it makes sense as a title here.
Probably need something to titillate and keep folks' attention, but which isn't full of spoilers. Here we go!
From LEVIATHAN Rising Chapter 10: A Case of Reveling in Over-the-top Names in Your Musings (ACRONYM)
Stage I of the Naval space program would be dedicated to figuring out basic questions regarding man’s ability to survive during exoatmospheric operations, as such basic astromedical questions of whether a human would be able to stay conscious – or even alive -- in weightlessness remained unanswered. Significant information could be gained from continued biomedical testing with sounding rockets, as well as from very high-altitude aircraft testing like the X-15. A natural progression from there would be, should the D-671 deliver as intended and on time, suborbital testing both below and above the Karman line. PRISM anticipated such suborbital testing would produce the first American in space by the end of 1960.
!!!
So it's still 61, although this doesn't say who does it...
Fascinating excerpt! I'm a bit confused at, well, Clarke's confusion (re: Churchill and SpecFic)--surely he would have known of "If Lee Had Not Won At Gettysburg", since it had been published in 1933?
Regarding Britain, while I think you're correct that there's little that can be done to prevent the bloodletting of Sandystorm (though pdf makes a compelling case that something like that was necessary!), Japan has shown pretty conclusively that you don't need a major investment to have a space program. So while the UK's aerospace sector may proceed broadly apace, not much needs to change to maintain indigenous launch capability.
I did promise titillation, didn't I? The better question how long before someone in the Navy sees the USAF's Dyna-Soar concept art and wants one of their own, what with their theoretically already having their own spaceplane to build off of.
Because his universe is a strange one governed by an arbitrary and capricious god, who is also surprisingly forgetful. Probably that last bit at work. (I'd not even known "If Lee Had Not Won At Gettysburg" existed until now, so let's just call it BUTTERFLIES!™ from the unspecified PoD that caused Heinlein not to get tuberculosis. "What if Winston Churchill never became a politician?" is a TL that would drive a man to madness, given it's hard enough to keep track of all the stuff he did write, let alone what he'd've wrote if he had even more time to do so.)
It was never my intent to pass judgment one way or the other on the 1957 White Paper and the slew of consequences it'd produce, though I generally agree that it got a lot right and even if it didn't happen, sooner or later something like it would. But little things can produce interesting results, especially in the space sector. Blue Streak spent the better part of two decades after its cancellation being parted out to try and make a workable launcher (despite the Treasury's damnedest efforts to stop it). Blue Streak, in turn, was cancelled because the Skybolt ALCM was chosen as a superior option. (Prior to Skybolt's cancellation by the Kennedy Administration. You need a flowchart to keep track of who's screwing who with all of the cancellations in favor of products that in turn get cancelled in the Sixties in Britain.) Skybolt was developed by Douglas. If Douglas has a different workload prior to starting work on prior to the USAF's inauguration of WS-199 in 1957 -- such as, say, actively bringing D-671 to life for the Navy -- the chain of events that produced Skybolt might never happen. And if there's no Skybolt, well, the decision on retaining Blue Streak is potentially changed. And if Blue Streak survives, well...
I'm shocked that's not one of those Bell RoBo/BoMi sketches, honestly. What was Dornberger thinking!?
Hah! Yeah, the man was a dynamo. Other things besides, but definitely a dynamo.
And not just "pioneering work in AH" but "literally invented the DBWI", too!
But worry not, you're juggling a ton and doing an awesome job.
Now that is indeed an interesting chain of events! I would be tempted to say that simply a different bid for WS-138A would have been accepted (and might have not even been canceled, particularly if the USAF is feeling more put-upon by the Navy!) but it's at least possible they stick with -199A and B without requesting 138A.
What I'm much less certain about is Blue Streak continuing as a military project. It suffers the same drawbacks as Atlas (and Titan I)--namely that it's kerolox and therefore far too vulnerable, except worse off because the warning time for the UK is so much shorter. (Thor, at least, had about half the propellant load and was smaller, but still was not really viable as shown by anything but best-case-scenario exercises.) Without Skybolt, wouldn't the UK have gone for an indigenous standoff weapon? My impression (from when I looked into Blue Streak) was that it was that vulnerability--and its cost, it's basically the first stage of the OTL Titan after all--that led to cancellation, and without Skybolt something else would be found.
The flipside of course is that, yes, it's basically the first stage of Titan I. Which is to say, a very fine first stage for an LV (as shown by its flawless performance in Europa).
EDIT: Now, a possible alternative here, though it might still be too expensive, is a keroxide Blue Streak. It would require a bunch of work to either design new RZ.2-class keroxide engines or attempt to convert the RZ.2 to HTP oxidizer. The performance will be rather lower, but advances in warhead weight might make up for that. That at least solves the vulnerability problem.
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Not wrong at all: Blue Streak's technologically a dead-end militarily in all likelihood, at least not without a radical redesign to run on some variety of hypergolic fuels or be redeveloped as the Minuteman I With A Spiffing Accent, which the Treasury wouldn't continence to pay for even if it were technically possible. And that's without even getting into the ominous fin rising from the water that is Polaris, which will well and truly kill Blue Streak if it's ever acquirable by the British. And because the author is an unapologetic Anglophile, the purpose of a better British space program is
But in that kind of policy churn, sometimes all that's necessary is time, so getting the can kicked a year or two opens up possibilities. Might not be enough to make any difference, but the classic solution to the "make a Blue Streak-derived launcher" problem -- Black Knight/Prince gets a license-built Centaur second-stage -- would be an interesting creature if it came into being not long after Blue Streak's killed by Polaris. Doesn't solve the question of how the heck it gets paid for, but that's work for the author, I suspect.
Probably an even easier explanation is simply that Clarke doesn't perceive, or didn't at the time, If It Had Happened Otherwise to be a real speculative fiction collection. While it really is, the high-brow nature of the authorship and the fact that it's not presented as a speculative fiction collection I suspect leads many people to consider it as being something different and more "prestigious". Churchill writing an alternate-history story specifically about spaceflight would be surprising even in light of "If Lee Had Not Won At Gettysburg" because it marks a clearer entrance into sci-fi proper.
Which is also a very good point. While today it's recognized that alternative history and science fiction both exist under the umbrella of "speculative fiction", the type of readership each attracts is still quite different. That phenomenon was even more intense in the past, before either achieved any level of mainstreaming, and especially for an individual like Clarke who got into sci-fi because of his intense interest in all things celestial. That Clarke's interests never led him to If It Had Happened Otherwise is an eminently sensible explanation.
Yes, though I was thinking of it from a slightly different direction--the way that literary authors tend to avoid calling their books sci-fi or fantasy even if they are blatantly writing sci-fi or fantasy because they think the latter terms are too low-brow. I think in this case that would be even more intense because literary sci-fi hardly existed in the 1920s and 1930s when the original essays were written and the authors were generally eminent and prestigious historians and authors, very high-brow people. So it probably would not even be seen as being remotely related to science fiction at the time and for a long time afterwards.
Which if Tethys puts the fear of <whatever> into the USAF (who OTL balked on Centaur, but ITTL, needing parity with USN lift capability, would probably bite--LV-3C could probably manage to come close to Tethys's 4 tonnes to LEO, though that's a waste of its potential), you might well have an earlier Centaur. Especially without MSFC/von Braun trying to kill it, and therefore starving/mismanaging it. So an extra year of Blue Streak might well be enough, as you say.
Good bloody luck shaking down the Treasury!