One British version has the gun designed in the UK and in use at Farnborough and it is the Americans who are given the design and wreck their aircraft. In the 1960's Frozen chickens were far more common in America than in the UK.
On Brazen Wings - From the Pseudo Space Race to Independence and Beyond.
- Status
1987 Part 2
1987
The Glenn-Paine Commission
The Glenn-Paine Commission
In the wake of 1986, the long-enjoyed popularity of the Reagan Administration had rapidly begun to decline to newer and newer lows. The disasters from NASA aside, the scandal of Iran-Contra, which get even worse for the administration in March of 1987, was taking its toll, and despite his best attempts, the Gipper and his staff struggled to recover. With his speech in the wake of the Discovery breakup, reception to Reagan's attempt at taking responsibility was incredulous, with many seeing it as a sign of the President's growing lack of resolve. This perception would only become more prevalent in the last years of his Presidency, as scandal after scandal began to pile up.
Reagan, in seeing this, would naturally attempt to recover his image, starting with NASA. While the original Challenger investigation had cleared NASA and Morton Thiokol of any wrongdoing or otherwise negligent practices (deeming the explosion on launch a freak accident that was only months away from being made effectively impossible), with the public pressure to get the house at NASA in order, Reagan would reopen the investigation first to go in tandem with the Discovery investigation. While publicly this was intended as a salve to ensure the American people that the administration was being as thorough as possible, behind closed doors in the West Wing, the dual investigation was a rat hunt; Reagan and his staff wanted someone to take the fall for the disasters, and they wanted it fast. Through long since declassified internal notes, we now know that the general mood in the White House was simply that Discovery, like Challenger before it, was another freak accident, with some fringe members suggesting that Soviet sabotage may well have played a part. As far as they were concerned, they might have found it easier to just fire most of NASA's management rather than try to do much else.
But, at the same time, they still had to maintain the appearance of taking the investigations seriously, and they also needed ensure that they had something to offer when the time came to restart the program, as while Reagan and company may have wanted to sweep the disasters under the rug as fast as possible, they couldn't greenlight the Shuttles to fly again, not as they were.
To this end, a new Congressional commission was created to pursue these investigations, and to make recommendations to both Congress and the White House on how to proceed in the future. Seemingly by luck, the administration would find itself with a very willing volunteer to head the commission: Senator John Glenn of Ohio. Glenn, who had nearly faced Reagan in the 1984 election, had been enjoying a growing surge of popularity in recent years, gave Reagan a face to the commission that could sell the commission to the public, while still getting the results they desired, as behind closed doors, Glenn was about as interested in seeing the responsible parties take their blame; Glenn would often say that the disasters of 1986 made him about as angry as he was the day Gagarin and Titov beat Al Shepherd and himself in the 1960's to space and orbit, respectively.
To Glenn's credit of course, he was sincere in these aspirations, and he, as he and his fellow Mercury astronauts were, was eager to be able to influence the program in such a way that few ever had the privilege to do. Glenn was given effectively total control over the commission; which with the Democratic Party controlling the Senate was not contested given Glenn's prominence in the party, and it was in February of 1987 that Glenn would get started, when he would tap former NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine to run the commission alongside him, whom the White House would rapidly approve. Paine's fame as the proverbial "father" of the Space Shuttle program was well known, with 1985's The Dream is Alive making use of clips from his Disney collaboration Man's Job in Space to introduce the documentary.
The Glenn-Paine Commission, as it then became known, got swiftly to work. In a series of publicly broadcasted hearings, the commission would examine documents and conduct interviews with, what felt like to viewers, nearly the entirety of NASA, and as a matter of fact, the entire astronaut corps was actually interviewed, with the emphasis from Glenn being that, much as it was during the Apollo 1 investigation, that the perspective of the astronauts doing the actual flying was perhaps the most valuable above all else.
Of note in the early months would be an interview with Commander "Hoot" Gibson, who was a veteran of the first flight out of Vandenberg on Discovery. While the mission itself remained classified, the Commission eventually ascertained the circumstances of a supposed brawl that nearly broke out on the tarmac after the flight had landed. Gibson would go on to explain and display photographs taken of Discovery after the flight, which displayed near catastrophic damage to Discovery's thermal protection tiles. The damage was so severe that many of the photos were taken standing a few hundred feet away from Discovery, giving an important context as the damage was still easily visible. The damage was the result of a very similar debris strike to that that eventually destroyed Discovery, and Gibson would explain that the brawl he was involved in was due to a specific NASA Flight Director that had both lied about and downplayed the problems to Gibson while he and his crew were in space. This person was present at the tarmac, and Gibson, as he said it, unfortunately lost his temper but was held back from doing anything too unbecoming. The employee remained unnamed as part of the commission for their own privacy, as the employee had left NASA since the incident.
Others interviewed included William "Buck" Thornton, who alongside his other Teacher in Space astronauts Christa McAuliffe and Barbara Morgan would speak out in favor of the program directly against the opinions of certain other astronauts who had voiced opinions that the Shuttle was inherently dangerous, some going as far as to say there was never a way to make its safe. Thornton, no doubt leveraging his skills as a former school teacher, would make his case simple: if the Soviets could do it then the only thing stopping them was the will to make the American Shuttles safe, not some inherent flaw in the idea of them. While Thornton and co were speaking from the heart, their arguments would be reflected as the Commission examined the budgetary history of the program, which revealed that the program was severely underfunded for its goals from the beginning, inducing a series of compromises in the design, many of which contributed to the 1986 disasters, just for the money saved to eventually be spent anyway trying to make up for the designs shortcomings. Comparisons with the Soviet Shuttle design meanwhile, which due to the classified nature of its retrieval from the USSR was not publicly televised or transcribed, also colored the Commission's findings, as analysis from the CIA indicated that while the Soviets had spent nearly twice as much on developing and building their three flying Shuttles, they were spending nearly a fourth of what NASA was spending on actually using them, and that even if you applied NASA's attempted flight rate to the Soviet's operational costs, it still was about 25% less of what NASA was having to spend. And with the design's advanced thermal protection system, which Soviet documents stated needed little to no maintenance beyond an occasional anti-oxidation coating reapplication, and its large abort motor combined with the all liquid booster, the design was not only cheaper to operate but monumentally safer at the same time.
And naturally, NASA would content that these revelations only proved the underfunding argument, citing documents that showed NASA had always preferred liquid fueled boosters to the Solids that were eventually used, but didn't have the budget to develop them. But they would find themselves at a loss for words in accounting for the thermal protection, which NASA had sat firmly behind for nearly the entire development process, and in an embarrassing watershed moment of the Commissions' publicized investigation, NASA officials and engineers would be left stunned when a test was conducted to see the impact resistance of the reinforced carbon-carbon paneling that had failed on Discovery. With even modest impacts, some of which were calculated to be much weaker than that which Discovery suffered, shattering the test panels, they simply couldn't save face. They had not conducted tests of the material under these conditions, and despite repeated instances of tile loss and debris strikes going back all the way to STS 1, NASA management had fostered in itself what would come to be known as a normalization of deviance, or, "go fever".
While it was granted that the pressure from the White House to get the launch rate up had no doubt exacerbated this so called "go fever", of greater concern was the unwillingness to address any issues if they didn't outright prevent a flight, which over time became so normalized that even a recurring issue such as tile loss was just accepted as part of operations, with little to no effort spent on finding a proper solution other than hemorrhaging money just fixing it, or just outright ignoring it otherwise. Thomas Paine would notably have his sole outburst as a result of these revelations, becoming vocally disgusted with the blasé attitude that had been fomented.
Paine, who oversaw the Apollo 13 incident and was well aware of how his predecessors had handled Apollo 1, came into the investigations from the perspective of a man who knew all too well what NASA as supposed to be, and he lamented that it had fallen so far for so little gain, given that even though he himself had advocated for much more wildly ambitious program, it was never under an assumption that safety would be so brazenly compromised.
As the Commission's investigation continued through the Spring and into the Summer, Glenn himself would see his popularity begin to surge to new heights. Throughout the investigations, Glenn was always just off-center stage, providing much needed context and simplification for the highly technical data that while well within Paine's wheelhouse, were relatively obscure to the viewing public. These bits of "everyman" interpretation would endear him to the public, and indeed, to the idea of saving the Space Shuttle. Glenn repeatedly expressed his see them flying again, but throughout he also kept up his tried-and-true persona as a tough love figure, which tapped into a desire from the American public to not just sweep the disasters under the rug or let anyone get off easy.
And indeed, as the Commission rapidly moved towards its latter months in the Fall of 1987, many journalists attempting to interview him after the hearings would try to get his opinions other various topics of the day, and in one now famous instance a reporter from NTC would ask him if he was planning to run for President again. Glenn would noticeably be taken aback by the question, but seemed to be considering it before exclaiming that he "wasn't worried about that". The same reporter would them ask him his opinion on an announcement from the Soviet Union, that had taken the country by storm just hours prior.
"Senator Glenn! One more question - What do you think about the Soviet Union saying they're going to put the first man on Mars?"
Glenn, without missing a beat, "Well - Someone has to. Maybe we'll go with them if we've got nothing to fly."
====
*I've officially retconned the 1986 disasters as being swapped around. So, Challenger happens per OTL more or less, and Discovery instead suffers a debris strike. Interestingly I originally had it this way but had swapped it mostly to be different, as in my research the FWC Solids that Timothy pointed out just never manifested or appeared to me, so I was unaware of them. Not much changes under these circumstances.
*As astonishing as it sounds, Gorbachev in 1987 actually did have it in mind to go to Mars on a joint mission with the US. Now, of course, the context of that idea is very much changed...
1987 Part 3
1987
Wishful Thinking
Wishful Thinking - A still from an RKK Energia film on the Cosmos project.
Wishful Thinking
Wishful Thinking - A still from an RKK Energia film on the Cosmos project.
Mikhail Gorbachev was not typically one for gambling, and in 1987 announcing that the Soviet Union, in the midst of his attempts to reform the country out of its stagnated state, would be making a shot for Mars was certainly a gamble he might not have taken again if you put him in that situation. Driven by the same rationale of ending the stagnation, the state of the Soviet space program ever since the scuttling of Salyut had been a melancholic drain of resources for very little gain, with the original announcement of Salyut's replacement, Zvezda fizzling out as fast as he announced it as funding dried up, and Gorbachev, who might have been inclined to simply draw back the or even cancel the programs, instead decided to go the other direction. On the advice of Valentin Glushko, head of the Soviet space program and the man largely responsible for the USSR's and the world's most advanced rockets and spacecraft, Gorbachev would manage to get the Politburo to approve a new program simply called Cosmos.
The Cosmos program would have several aspects to it, starting first with a series of manned missions to Mars, preferably with a landing, but at least a flyby. RKK Energia, the principal design bureau for the SSSR, developed a profile for the whole of the program in three stages. The first stage, which resembled the Earth Orbit Rendezvous profile of the older American Moon mission designs in its operation, would involve the construction of a large transfer and habitat vehicle in Earth orbit by the MKS Orbiters, which would proceed on to Mars in a series of flights up to the year 2000. As the designs all involved the use of large-scale ion engines, which had to be developed, it was expected that the Mars missions would not be able to begin at least until 1992, as it would take about that long to get the engines constructed and tested, and other options for propulsion, such as nuclear propulsion were too complex to be able to be delivered before the year 2000. Some even suggested carrying a Vulkan core stage to orbit and using it as a propulsion section for the transfer vehicle, but this was rejected for being too risky given the nature of the liquid hydrogen propellant, as well as having to bring a Vulkan to orbit and attach it to a ship, something that had never been simulated before up to that point.
However, engineers at Energia had a rather clever solution, that also helped to downsize the scope of the program, making it easier to fund. Stage 2 of Cosmos, as originally planned, was to see focus shift back to Low Earth Orbit following the Mars missions, building a so-called "Salyut 2" while also developing more of LEO for use by the program, which was easy enough to put to paper, but not so much to secure any funding for, particularly with the Mars missions taking precedence, and with an eventual Lunar Colony being proposed as the final stage for the program. Something, clearly, had to go, and with the Lunar Colony always being a post-2000 project, it came down to whether or not to commit to Mars, or to do a space station instead. Much like the American's were in the early 1970s, faced with the prospect of how to follow up their last successful project, the question of going to Mars or building a space station hung over them.
To get around this conundrum, the solution was rather simple: why not both? Energia engineers proposed that the transfer vehicle could double as a space station unto itself. As it was being constructed, it would operate as a conventional space station while it waited for the propulsion section to be ready, and after its end of life for Mars missions, it could potentially be converted and refurbished for use in LEO as a permanent station. Effectively knocking out two birds with one stone, the proposal quickly dwarfed all other options for the program, giving designers the leeway to begin developing the actual vehicle itself.
Given the codename Aelita, referencing the Tolstoy novel of the same name, the Mars Transfer Vehicle (MTV) of the Mars 1987 design documents was derived from a nuclear-powered vehicle that had been proposed in an unrelated Mars study that had concluded in 1986. It was to have four sections, built over the course of 8-10 flights, leveraging both the MKS Orbiters and the Energia vehicles. The principle module, the Mars Orbital Apparatus (MOA), was to be modularly constructed out of individual sections that, while the vehicle was still acting as a space station, would be able to be "hot swapped" into different births as needed, allowing the MTV-S to accommodate whatever scientific needs are needed while the propulsion section was being built, and when ready to switch to Mars flights, the modules would be able to be arranged and rigidified into a state better suited for the stellar travel between Earth and Mars. This modularity would also prove important, as a temporary power module would be able to be attached to the station as it waited for its main power generation.
The MOA consisted of multiple modules. The Command and Habitation module (CHM) would be the first launched, which as the name suggests, would include the cabins for the 6-man crew as well as the main flight deck of the vehicle. Following it would be the Berthing section, which would be permanently attached forward of the CHM. This section would host the main berths for the eventual science labs the vehicle would carry with it, as well as a docking section for the MKS Orbiter and the Ascent Module of the Exploration Apparatus. With two berths per cardinal direction, the section could support up to 8 separate laboratories at once, or a mix of laboratories, supply modules, and potential probes that the vehicle might carry with it en route to Mars. During the vehicles stint as a space station, the Zenith ports would be dedicated to the temporary power supply and communications equipment.
Notably among the proposed laboratories was a greenhouse, which would be used both to test Martian soil for cultivation purposes, but also to help augment the stations life support systems, a pair of centrifuge modules to give artificial gravity for the cosmonauts, and a fully functional orbital manufacturing facility, that was proposed to enable cosmonauts to manufacture their own replacement parts should something go awry during the missions. The centrifuge modules would remarkably be amongst the first of the vehicles modules to be funded, with the expectation of testing smaller designs in orbit first before moving on to the large, mission-ready modules.
Aft of the CHM would be the storm shelter. Having to be launched on its own due to its massive weight, it was expected the module would be the last to launch before the propulsion module was launched, having its hollow walls filled with a dedicated water supply by a series of MKS flights. The section also doubled as a general-purpose storage and quarantine area, where samples from Mars would be kept while being transferred back to Earth.
Finally, the propulsion section itself, would host the main powerplant for the vehicle, boasting two massive 200mx200m solar arrays that would largely be used to power a pair of large ion engines, themselves fueled by large tanks of xenon. The section would also host the primary communications arrays and batteries for the vehicle, as well as the other fluids and propellants that the vehicle would need during operation, though by design many of these had redundancies built in to each section of the vehicle.
The final aspect would be the Exploration Apparatus, which the 1987 report would have scant details on. This was due of course to the fact that Gorbachev was attempting to get the Americans to buy in to the project, and it was expected they would have the Americans build the descent and ascent vehicles that would make up the Apparatus. However, the Soviets would make some rudimentary attempts at describing what they would build if such things would fall through. Using an all-in-one vehicle, the large lander would superficially resemble the MKS Orbiters in its fuselage shape (and indeed, was explicitly pegged to use the same thermal protection system), that would enter the Martian atmosphere and land on its belly. At the conclusion of surface operations, the cargo bay of the lander would open to reveal a smaller ascent vehicle that in some ways resembled the old Apollo Command modules, if only in general shape. It was also stated that the ascent vehicle's crew compartment would also double as an Earth reentry vehicle, giving redundancy to the program in case an MKS cannot meet the vehicle.
But the MTV was not the extent of Cosmos' first phase. In the lead up to the mission being formally launched, Mars would see series of precursor spacecraft launched to support the missions. Ranging from satellite constellations and orbital supply depots, on down to redundant Exploratory Apparatuses in orbit and robotic rovers on the surface, the eventual Martian Armada would, naturally, not only eclipse that of Apollo or even the Halley Armada, but be one of the most ambitious endeavours that mankind had ever undertaken.
Early concept art of the MTV
Of course, as it happens, the USSR was in no place fund much of this. While they were strongly committed to and began building the MTV as early as the Summer of 1987, just a few months before the programs formal announcement by Premier Gorbachev, much of the other components would simply not be able to be completed by the Soviets; the world's other space powers would have to pitch in, and Gorbachev set his sights firmly on the United States, who he perceived as needing the easy win that a Mars mission might provide. This wishful thinking, something Gorbachev would unfortunately suffer a lot from throughout his term, would be dashed rather harshly by his counterpart in the US, with Ronald Reagan firmly rejecting any notion of cooperation on the program, nor for that matter a proposal late in the year for converting what would eventually become the MTV into a multi-national space station, of which Reagan did not even give Gorbachev the dignity of a formal rejection.
This rebuke of Gorbachev's space ambitions of course had little to do with American pride on Reagan's part, as is often assumed by those not as versed in the history of this time period as others, but simply because Reagan, with his administration in shambles following the revelations of Iran-Contra and the leak of an early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, could not afford to go hand in hand with the Soviet Union. To do so would be effective political suicide, and for the Reagan Administration, they reasoned there was far better ways to do that if they were ready to give up than to jump in bed with the Russians.
Gorbachev meanwhile was developing his own problems with his administration of his own country. In his efforts with Perestroika, the people of the USSR had begun to become more and more aware of the nation's problems, and as often happens, the more often than not indecisive Gorbachev sat the center of this ever increasingly negative perception, which in turn was causing unrest not just in the Soviet Satellite states, but also fomenting insubordination even amongst his closest staff. Taking office in 1985 in the midst of the Salyut accident, a never-ending war in Afghanistan, and the eventual disaster at Chernobyl, Gorbachev had the cards stacked against him, and in 1987, while he had managed to get through these issues, it was not without their scathing effects. While much of the world received the Cosmos program with the excitement of a new Apollo, internally the people of the Soviet Union, though generally supportive of the MKS program and the SSSR in general, saw Cosmos as a massive stunt, meant specifically to deflect attention away the nation's problems.
And unfortunately for him, this assessment was about as true as it was damning.
===
*Originally I intended to just do an alternative Mir, but this concept, and that little alien feller in the concept art, was just too good to pass up as an interesting bit of Soviet space history.
It also just made a lot of narrative sense given how the reported name for that Martian art played so well into what I was going to be writing about either way.
Last edited:
🙏 Praying for the success of the Mars mission right now.
Though personally I'm not holding my breath. They've only got about 4 years before the USSR dissolves unless something significant has changed, and I don't think the program would survive the Soviet breakup, much as I want otherwise.
Though personally I'm not holding my breath. They've only got about 4 years before the USSR dissolves unless something significant has changed, and I don't think the program would survive the Soviet breakup, much as I want otherwise.
1987 Part 4
1987
Evolution
Evolution
By September of '87, the Glenn-Paine Commission had been working nearly non-stop for what seemed to be an endless blur. With Glenn and Paine running nearly an average 12-16 hour days 5 days a week ever since March, the Commission was able to swiftly, yet thoroughly, examine the state of NASA and the circumstances that allowed the 1986 disasters to happen, and nearly all of it was broadcast live to the American public, giving them and the world an unprecedented look at the internal workings of the agency and their rationale over the past decade and a half of operation since the waning days of Apollo. And on the 15th of September, the Commission was ready to commit to a final report, and to make their final recommendations for the future of the program.
Less than a week later, the final Glenn-Paine Report would be published, and the Reagan administration would waste no time implementing the recommended changes.
Much to the administrations pleasure, the principal recommendation of the report was that NASA's upper management needed to be replaced wholesale, with replacements drawn from the astronaut corps, both past and present, and among well vetted members from other areas at NASA, with outside candidates only to be considered in the event that no qualified persons could be found. To this end, the report also made a single specific recommendation for the person to be named as the new Administrator at NASA: Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, veteran of three Space Shuttle missions and one-time associate administrator for NASA. Truly in 1986 was originally tapped to watch over the programs return to flight following the Challenger disaster, but he was sidelined and eventually replaced as associate administrator due to Truly's vocal opposition to the speed at which the program was pushing a return to flight. Truly's own testimony to the Commission would confirm this, as would internal memos discussing the move that were discovered by the Commission.
While the recommendation noted that while it could be read that tapping Truly for Administrator could be seen as an apology or otherwise means of smoothing things over with him, it made the point that aside from other former Administrators and their staff, Truly had the most experience and was already vetted by the Commission as being distinctly separated from the culture that NASA's upper management had formed. The report would further go on to charge the new Administrator, regardless of who was to take the position, with the explicit duty to address any and all deviations from the normal operations of NASA spacecraft, both manned and unmanned, with the authority to proceed with flights without rectifying the deviation being vested only in a tribunal of the NASA Administrator, the President's Science Advisor, and a recommended new Cabinet position, the Secretary of Science and Technology.
The report, naturally, acknowledged that establishing a new member in the Presidential Line of Succession was beyond the scope of its intentions, but made the case that the new position would be integral to both strengthening the oversight of NASA and the nations scientific efforts in general, but also in putting more space between the White House and NASA. Among the reports breakdown of what lead to the 1986 disasters, the simple fact that pressure from the White House to push the flight rates past what would reasonably have been achieved was at the top of the list; the increased stress on the program greatly exacerbated everything that came after, wasting a great deal of funds and, eventually, lives.
Perhaps the most controversial recommendation however, at least in Congress for certain Senators and House members from Utah, was the recommended blacklisting of Utah based contractor Morton-Thiokol. During the Commission, it was found that an engineer at Morton had in fact been attempting to have the o-ring problems that had doomed Challenger addressed, but management at Morton had, apparently, opted to silence the employee, eventually finding reason to lay off the employee's entire department. This move was in turn linked with internal memos that showed that both NASA and Morton management had acknowledged the problem and were attempting to "ride it out", until new Solid Rocket Boosters, that had fixed the issue, would simply replace the faulty boosters. While the Commission made it a point that it could not speak to the apparent impropriety at Morton, they did determine that the company's failure to make responsible recommendations to NASA, regardless of NASA's own culpability in taking those recommendations, had directly contributed to the Challenger disaster. But further than that, Morton would not be able to continue with the program, as the Commission's recommendations for the Shuttle's replacement explicitly barred the use of any solid rocket motors.
Indeed, the most substantive part of the report would be its detailing of what was the proceed the Shuttle Program, as while the investigation aspects of the report were lengthy and exhaustive, the report in its latter sections laid out an exhaustive framework for what it would call the Evolved Shuttle Program
The goals of the ESP would be three-fold. First, the program, once established, would begin a new design competition to replace the original Space Shuttle design. The designs submitted would need to meet five specific requirements, in order of priority:
- Abort Capability; the design must be able to abort at minimum the crewed compartment of the Orbiter at any stage of the launch process, including from space. The Orbiter must also be able to support its maximum crew indefinitely, to allow adequate time for a rescue to be mounted if abort is not possible.
- The use of a durable metallic thermal protection system, or alternatively, the use of a shielded TPS that cannot be damaged as part of launch. Further, depending on the configuration of the launch vehicle, if debris impact can affect the Orbiter, then the fuel tanks of the vehicle must eliminate debris.
- Reusable Liquid Rocket Boosters - Solid rockets as boosters are not to be permitted in any aspect of the design. Instead, boosters must be liquid fueled, and must meet the ability to be reused with minimal refurbishment for at least 15 flights.
- The design must support both manned and unmanned missions.
- The design must meet or exceed the original capabilities of the 1972 Space Shuttle design, with an expected operational life of 250 flights.
The second goal of the ESP would be the establishment of an exhaustive test-flight process for the new designs once built. Before any manned mission could take place on an Orbiter, said orbiter must at minimum fly ten times in a row without significant problems, and Orbiters should regularly be recertified for flight using the same process. The report also recommended that if any Orbiter should meet or exceed the expected operational life of 250 flights, then the Orbiter must be rebuilt or retired.
The third goal of the ESP would be to see the flight rate of once a month established at a responsible pace. Recognizing that the program cannot meet the economic goals of the original program without a sufficient flight rate, the ESP would assert that in order to meet this flight rate, the maintenance of the Orbiter must be able to be met within normal operational hours at NASA for the related staff. Citing nearly $1 billion dollars alone in overtime pay paid out by NASA over the course of the program, it would go on to state that this was not a sustainable program and that if normal operating hours cannot accommodate the maintenance of the fleet, then the fleet must either be reduced, or the entire fleet must be redesigned to rectify whatever is causing the delays.
Further, the report also established that as part of the ESP, a space station must be the first large scale project to be completed by the new Shuttles. Citing examples from the Soviet Union of using their Salyut space station as a co-orbiting safe-haven for their Orbiters, the intent was also that any mission that could not co-orbit with the new station, must be flown unmanned.
The reception to the report would end up being mixed. The Reagan Administration would not waste any time implementing the report's recommendations regarding NASA management, and Vice Admiral Truly would accept the position as NASA Administrator within the same week that the report was published. However, while the administration empowered Truly to begin looking into the Evolved Shuttle, both the White House and Congress were hesitant given that the nature of it was looking to be quite expensive, and throughout 1987 they would drag their feet on securing the needed funds to begin the program for the 1988 Budget.
Morton Thiokol, and their Senators, would naturally find themselves going on a proverbial rampage in the media, but public opinion would dwarf them. While they never had any perceived culpability in the Discovery disaster, for Challenger the fact that the SRB was what destroyed her was a well-known and much despised fact. For other NASA contractors, however, such as those at Boeing or Lockheed, the report was a welcome surprise, given that the Evolved Shuttle program it proposed would be a boon if funded, and its been found throughout the years that some companies, Boeing in particular, had already begun working on alternative Shuttle designs before the Commission had even concluded, anticipating what would be expected.
For the American public, the Report to many came off as their generation's Warren Report, and despite the hearings being televised, many who did not watch or only ever saw highlights would often comment that many of the revelations of the report didn't seem believable, not understanding how NASA could have behaved in the way the report depicts.
For certain sects of the infamous Syn Society, however, the report was seen as a call to action...
1987 Part 5
1987
Max Headroom
A recorded still from the original 1987 Max Headroom hijacking
Max Headroom
A recorded still from the original 1987 Max Headroom hijacking
Throughout the 1970's, airplane hijackings had become a somewhat common occurrence in America and the world abroad, but as the late 80's rolled along, a new type of hijacking would present itself: that of television broadcasts. While there was a notable incident in the UK back in 1977, it wouldn't be until a decade later that America would find itself saddled with a seemingly sudden onslaught of signal intrusions. An incident in Chicago, known as the Captain Midnight intrusion, would mark the effective beginning of this period in April of 1986, and an unconnected incident in September of 1987 would see the softcore pornography channel Playboy interrupted with a scrolling of religious messages. But it would not be until November of that year that arguably the most famous incident would occur, which in turn would spurn on a rapid series of copy cat hijackings across the nation.
On the evening of the 22nd, Chicago's WGN-TV would be hijacked during its 9:00pm newscast, interrupting the station's sports report. During the intrusion, an apparently pre-recorded video would play of a man wearing a Max Headroom mask (Max Headroom being a character from a British TV show), while a strange buzzing sound overlaid the video. The intrusion only lasted 25 seconds before engineers at WGN-TV were able to restore the normal broadcast, but approximately two hours later at 11:00pm, a local PBS station named WTTV would also be hijacked during an airing of a Doctor Who serial "Horror of Fang Rock". This time, the same figure appeared, making a bunch of seemingly random comments, and notably made a comment calling NASA "Ruskie dumbasses", while smashing two toy Space Shuttles together. The intrusion only lasted about 90 seconds before the hijacker unilaterally terminated the transmission.
While the perpetrators of the original Headroom intrusion have never been caught or identified, in the months and years that followed, many of the hijacker's apparent copycats in and around the Chicago area were, the bulk of which were all a part of the same Chicago-based chapter of the infamous Syn Society. The society in recent years had largely been quiet; with Senator John Glenn's near constant outspoken judgement of the group, the societies various decentralized sects struggled against an increasingly hostile public, only finding solace amongst other likeminded fringe groups. These issues were of course compounded by the ever-present fact that the Society had no centralized message or intent other than a general air for fringe science, conspiracy theories, and, in a notable case in California, nearly fascistic environmentalism.
However, in the wake of the 1986 NASA disasters, and the subsequent investigations, many sects of the society found themselves reinvigorated, firmly shifting into a permanent anti-spaceflight stance. This change in rhetorical focus would in turn lead to a more centralized coordination between the often disparate groups, and by late 1987, they would begin to coordinate protests and, indeed, their not-so-legal activities in turn.
This would lead to the Headroom copycat hijackings, which saw the other various television stations in and around Chicago and the greater Cook County area, hijacked by Syn Society members at random times of the day and night. Many of the intrusions copied the Headroom format, wearing the same or similar types of masks, but their content would be defined by anti-spaceflight rhetoric and other call outs towards issues the Society was concerned towards. Notably, only one broadcast would take place outside of the Chicago area that was attributed to the same hijackers, which occurred on Florida's WESH broadcast on the night of December 7th. A seemingly prophetic broadcast, a man wearing an Ike Eisenhower mask and a Hawaiian t-shirt would come into focus saying the phrase "Come for the sunshine, stay for the view" and, in the midst of a rant about NASA being murderers, would go on to call vaccines a myth, meant to spread AIDS amongst the homosexual population, while also making claims that Florida was becoming a cesspool of "old", which many have interpreted as referring to Florida being a popular retiree destination.
Much of the broadcasts would speak out on other issues, such as rising gas prices or the fallout from the October stock market crash, and others would oddly find themselves pushing pro-Reagan political messages, calling the Iran-Contra investigation a Soviet ploy, and Reagan's supposed Alzheimer's diagnosis a complete hoax.
The broadcast intrusions, despite their apparent intentions, would largely become a laughing stock amongst the public, who either saw the broadcasts as outright funny in their own right, or just found barely intelligible rants too silly to take seriously. For the Federal Communications Commission, however, these intrusions lead to a largescale manhunt that lasted months, which eventually lead to the capture and arrest of most of the individuals responsible. While they had tried to pin the original hijacking on these individuals, all had had rock solid alibis for that particular incident, and confirmed that they were in fact copy-catting whoever had perpetrated that incident. In perhaps one of the most ironic, and often satirized moments of the late 80s, however, the main perpetrator of the hijackings, the man from the WESH hijacking, was found to be an Orlando, Florida born man named Maximillian Head. While this bit of irony would be undercut by subsequent investigations revealing that the so-called Max Head had had his name legally changed from Harold Little about a week after his hijacking, it never the less became a substantive source of comedic wealth, with shows like Saturday Night Live or the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson tapping the revelations for jokes and skits.
Meanwhile, late entry Presidential candidate John Glenn, who had announced his candidacy a few days prior to the beginning of the Headroom hijackings, would make it critical part of his campaign to see the punitive guidelines in the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was enacted following the Captain Midnight intrusion, heavily increased as a deterrent, and called for the breakup of the Syn Society, calling them a public enemy to the United States who were approaching far too close to becoming not just mere "video terrorists", as some commentators had coined, but something much worse.
1987 Part 6
1987
And Now: Something Decidedly French
An early version of the Rosny Aine design, featuring a vertical stabilizer and a large, singular main engine, likely derived from the American SSME.And Now: Something Decidedly French
Throughout the 1970's and 80's, the European Space Agency often found itself in conflict. On the one hand, its commercial efforts with the Ariane program suited their general needs very well, and improvements on the first four iterations of the rocket family only enhanced the benefits of the program. But, on the other, when looking beyond commercial or domestic satellite launches, ESA found themselves lacking, and far too over reliant on foreign launch providers. While it was always understood that the ESA, and Europe in general, could not truly hope to compete with the likes of the Soviet Union or the United States, even in the late 70's a certain member of the ESA saw things very differently.
France's CNES, who had led the development of the Ariane rockets that the ESA relied on, had a desire to break this reliance on foreign spacecraft, and in 1975, began a program that sought to give France, and Europe too, its own manned spacecraft. From the beginning, not seeing the value in trying to grandstand with superpowers, the expectation was never to match the US or USSR in capabilities, but merely to build a spacecraft that could service European needs in space. To this end, the program began with research and design phases to determine the shape of their eventual launch vehicle, whether that be a conventional space capsule like that of the Russian Soyuz or the old Apollo Command Module, or a (much smaller) spaceplane like that of the superpowers newer Space Shuttle designs.
For the first six years of the program, the engineers were fairly evenly split on the issue. On the one hand, a capsule design would be lighter and cheaper to develop, while on the other a spaceplane would allow for more flexibility in mission designs, while also potentially reducing operational costs by way of easier recovery and, naturally, the reuse of the plane. But by 1981, following the initial successes of the two superpower's Shuttles, the spaceplane concept began to garner more favor, and in less than a year, CNES as a whole was committed to the spaceplane, and proceeded with the initial design work. The program, now bearing the tentative name Hermes, would see CNES refining the design throughout the next three years, eventually coming up with two designs, which the French team would present to its partner nation counterparts in September of 1985.
The two designs were fundamentally identical, but only differed in their scale, and the nature of their payload configuration, which in turn meant the development costs for a paired Ariane rocket to launch them would be different, hence why the French team opted to present two options.
The French preferred design, which was nicknamed Rosny Aine, was the larger of the two. Superficially resembling a miniaturized version of the American Space Shuttle, if only in configuration, the design featured a crew compartment with seating for six, an unpressurized cargo bay, and an integrated service module, which housed the spacecraft's orbital maneuvering thrusters and its twin main engines. While the design had a comparable crew size to that of the US Space Shuttle or the Soviet MKS, the actual spacecraft was a little more than half of the size. Due to its size, however, either a much more powerful Ariane or a clean-sheet rocket design would be necessary to launch the spaceplane, which increased the projected development costs for the program.
The smaller design, which the team had nicknamed Verne, was scaled down slightly from the Rosny Aine, featuring a smaller, pressurized cargo bay (which could thus not carry or otherwise retrieve satellites), an expendable service module which replaced the main engines and OMS, and a shrunk crew size of three. This design also required uprating of the Ariane rocket, but was projected to be much less costly to enable than the larger design.
The Rosny Aine as presented in October, 1985.
Both designs were intended to serve multiple stations in Low Earth Orbit, such as a Spacelab derived manned station, an unmanned remote sensing station, and others, and it was noted that the Rosny Aine would also be able to handle satellite servicing at a fraction of the cost of what NASA was asking for such services from their Space Shuttle.
While the French team was confident in their designs, and had in self-awareness presented multiple options specifically to avoid having their ambitions work against them, they found these efforts were for naught. Citing the longstanding partnership with NASA, as well as the ESA's planned involvement in their new space station, the Hermes project was flatly rejected, with certain members, notably the United Kingdom, even arguing that it was very well possible that the Ariane program may not even survive, much less their own spaceplane. The French, not ones to be deterred, would leave these meetings in October empty handed, but CNES would continue to fund the project, charging the team with refining the designs further, an oddly prescient decision.
In 1986, the ESA would find themselves facing a very unexpected cold-shoulder from NASA. In the wake of the Challenger disaster, practically all discussion of the ESA's contributions to Freedom had ceased entirely, and by December, the Discovery disaster had all but sealed the proverbial deal. Freedom, if it was ever going to fly, wasn't going up any time soon, and the ESA was effectively out its partner in space. And with the Soviets facing their own apparent standdown of both their Interkosmos program and their MKS flights in general, Europe as a whole would find itself effectively alone, with only their unmanned Ariane to provide access to space. And so, following Challenger, the ESA would collectively decide to put their weight behind the Hermes program, selecting the Rosny Aine design to make up for the apparent losses from NASA. The program, beginning in earnest in January of 1987, had two years to both finalize the Rosny Aine design, and to work out a "Europeanization" of the project, determining which member states would be handing what aspects of the program, and their respective stake in the project, just as had been done with Ariane years before, whose own uprating would continue under the same conditions. By the time of Discovery, this Europeanization was already complete, as CNES wanted as much time and focus as possible to spend towards Rosny Aine. France and West Germany would share an equal 33% stake in the project (Germany's contribution being rather unexpected for CNES, but not unwelcome as it doubled their originally proposed work share), with Italy carrying 15%, Belgium 7%, and the remainder split between the United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden, and the other member states.
With this funding secured, CNES began in earnest on the Rosny Aine. With the 1986 NASA disasters fresh in their minds, the design would face several changes, and some unexpected help from the Soviet Union. With the Rosny always intended to launch in-line with its Ariane launcher, thus avoiding the debris strike potential that the Soviet and American Shuttles had to content with, the Discovery disaster and subsequent investigations had revealed that the silica tile based thermal protection system, which Rosny was originally designed to use, would present an untenable risk and potentially bloated operational costs to boot. While CNES had begun some preliminary work on finding an alternative, in the summer, the ESA would be approached by representatives of the RKK Energia, CNES' equivalent in the Soviet Union.
Under direction from Mikhail Gorbachev, apparently in effort to help fund his planned Cosmos program, ESA was made lease offers for Soviet space technology. While the ESA as a whole was primarily interested in the leasing of Soviet rocket engines (which the Soviets were hesitant to provide), CNES would manage to work out a deal to lease the Soviets thermal protection system from their MKS Orbiters, which the Soviets were all too happy to provide, given France pitched in individually from the ESA to help seal the deal, leasing the technology from the Soviets for nearly 25 million Euros a year, for 10 years. The attempt at leasing rocket engines would, however, fail, as the few prices that could be haggled out of the Soviets were far too steep.
Despite this, as part of the deal on the TPS, CNES would be able to enlist Soviet engineers in the initial set up and manufacturing of the TPS for the first Rosny Aine spaceplane, with any additional sets manufactured being the full responsibility of the ESA.
With an adequate TPS system in-line, all that was needed was to continue the development process, with work proceeding practically around the clock throughout 1987.
The Rosny Aine circa 1987. This design would become the primary configuration for the vehicle throughout the rest of its development.
But, the program still found itself at its ends, as while the spaceplane and uprating of Ariane was proceeding, the locations it was intended to service were not. The member states had decided to take the approach of one thing at a time, expecting that once the Rosny Aine were flying, that then they would be able to pursue further projects.
Its often wondered, however, what may have happened had the ESA been more willing to look beyond its own borders; after all, they were not the only ones snubbed by NASA.
===
*To pre-empt a potential lecture on the economic state of West Germany in 1987...I know. Wait and see. 😉
*Also, Aine in French isnt spelled that way, but lazy sooo...
1988 Part 1
1988
An Evolving Headache...better go Surfin'
An Evolving Headache...better go Surfin'
Of all the mistakes Richard Truly had made in his life, and all the ones he could have made, he most certainly could not have imagined that one of his biggest would be an open design competition. Saddled with the essential rebuilding and restructuring of NASA in the wake of the Glenn-Paine report, he was also juggling the design process for the Space Shuttle's replacement, and he, early on, made the executive decision to open the process up to the general public and corporate worlds, inviting all interested parties to submit proposals. From a sheer efficiency standpoint, not having to worry about vetting submissions gave him more time to spend on his administrative concerns, and he wagered that by the time he could establish a proper team to review and consider the submissions, that they would have a substantive selection to peruse.
What he didn't count on was that waiting nearly 5 months before looking into the state of the submissions was almost certainly a bad idea, as mail room clerks at the Johnson Space Center in Houston found themselves having to convert a breakroom into storage space for all of the submissions they had received. Truly, who had expected the proposals to trickle in over the course of the year, had clearly not anticipated that interested parties had seen the writing on the wall for the greater part of the last two years, and that, at least some, had already been working potential designs to replace the Shuttle.
Many of the largest proposals were from known entities, like that of Boeing, Lockheed, etc. that NASA was already familiar with and had expected to make recommendations. But the vast bulk of what NASA had received, seemed to come from just about anywhere and everywhere, ranging from college students to retired engineers, to random citizens, and even to foreign nations; remarkably even a supposedly Russian design bureau had submitted a proposal, though the package had originations in Morocco, so the truth behind that proposals origins was unclear, though it can be safely assumed that it was likely not truly a work of a Russian design bureau, given the proposal, strangely, consisted of a single page description of a vehicle that was essentially three of the, now discontinued, Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters strutted together, which would then launch an undescribed orbiter or other cargo.
Indeed, many of the proposals were like this, and Truly early on as he began to form the review team decided that if proposals were not physically substantive, as many of the more conventional submissions were, then they would be discarded immediately in the interest of time. But even in doing this, he would find that even among the more serious and substantive of the lot, the guidelines set out by the Glenn-Paine report, which he had taken verbatim as the requirements for the design competition, were seemingly ignored in far, far too many of the proposals, no doubt because of the fact that many of the designs predated the design requirements being established.
One proposal suggested the resurrection of an old Apollo Applications concept for the Winged Apollo Command module. While the proposal did attempt to conform to the design requirements, it made clear that its advantage was in using known hardware, not in achieving what the Shuttle could have. This would be, as you'd expect, summarily rejected. And others would find themselves trudging through all kinds of old NASA concepts, seemingly as if some of them were slogging through NASA archives and throwing whatever they found at the wall to see if anything stuck. The Chrysler corporation, for instance, would dust off its original concept for the Space Shuttle, the "SERV".
The SERV, which was as unconventional a rocket as anyone had ever seen, was a single stage to orbit design that saw a circular cluster of fuel tanks and aerospike type engines, resembling an umbrella without the stick, which could either slot a small orbiter design on top of the cluster, or could carry unpressurized cargo in the effectively hollow space below the fuel tanks, or, if the mass allowed, could do both. While certainly an original design, and the allure of a single stage to orbit design an appealing aspect, the outrageous scale of the booster design precluded its consideration almost immediately, as having to rebuild much of the Kennedy Space Center complex was simply not on the table, and that was before any considerations for the base complexity of the vehicle came into account. In recorded conversations of the review team, one engineer would remark that "the fact that it looks like a perky tit doesn't help either".
Not all of the submitted designs would be quite as ridiculous or blatantly flippant in following the design requirements, however. A design from Lockheed would see the Space Shuttle stack reconfigured, using the same basic tooling and hardware for each component, but changing how they would be arranged for flight. Using an in-line approach, the Orbiter, which would be slightly smaller than the original, would sit atop a new core sustainer stage based on the External Tank, which would host upwards of four expendable versions of the SSME's, and would have the option to support either two or four liquid boosters, sporting what the proposal called the Space Transportation Main Engine, an SSME derivative design that was more efficient and, in clusters of four, produced an equivalent amount of sea level thrust to the SRM's. A vacuum optimized version of the engine was also proposed, which would serve as the Orbiters main engine.
Another design from NASA/Langley went in a decidedly different direction, though again in defiance of the design requirements, but it would go to great lengths to justify itself. The proposal would establish a clean sheet Orbiter based on the Russian BOR-4 spaceplane. Called the HL-20, NASA Langley had originally begun the design in anticipation of the space station, intending to use the HL-20 as an independent crew return vehicle from the main Shuttle Orbiters. Naturally, as a result of this, the design was very much smaller than the original Orbiter (small enough in fact to fit in its cargo bay), though for the proposals purposes it suggested the design could be scaled up to allow for an easier replication of the Orbiters mid-deck capabilities, as well as a small cargo bay. In justifying the approach, the proposal would make the case that in the interest of saving both on costs and time, NASA would only need to work on development of the spaceplane itself; its launcher could instead be any number of already available launchers such as the Titan or Atlas rockets, with either minimal uprating or reconfiguration, or with the development of more powerful variants. The report also acknowledged that a dedicated launcher could also be developed, which would, similar to the Soviet approach to their Energia rockets, double as both a launcher for the spaceplane, and as a cargo launcher.
Arguably the most ambitious design of the bunch was that of Johnson Space Center, which went as far as to call its design "Shuttle II". The design, completely eliminating the need for boosters, would see a greatly scaled up orbiter that would carry its own fuel for its main engines, in tandem with a series of wing mounted drop tanks. The design, which matched the design requirements to the letter, was notable for its much elaborated on abort option, something that most other proposals either ignored outright or only gave minimal mention to, which saw the crew compartment of the Orbiter turned into an independent spacecraft in its own right, which if an abort was called, would detach from the main body, using internal rockets to separate or deorbit, depending on when the abort was called. The solution was considered to be rather elegant, particularly given that the proposal also suggested that the coincidentally named SERV (For Space Escape and Return Vehicle) could potentially even be configured to launch on its own, only needing a launcher and dedicated second stage to place it into orbit.
While the design from Johnson was considered an early front runner, one aspect of the design had deeply held it back, with even Truly himself expressly forbidding the design go through with that aspect intact. What the concern was about was for the design's cargo bay, which Truly and his team considered to be far too risky. Unlike the original Orbiter, which saw the cargo bay doors swing open along the top, the Shuttle II design instead featured no such doors, but instead a hinged engine section, which would swing down to allow for cargo racks to deploy outwards from the now open cargo bay. Engineers at Johnson had designed the cargo bay in this way namely to account for the changes to the orbiter, as both the internal fuel and attached drop tanks precluded the use of conventional doors. While perfectly rational, for Truly and his team the idea was not viable in the slightest. Not only was the nature of the hinge suspect given it introduced a massive weak point to the entire system, but even logistically it made little sense as loading cargo would be made far more complex than it needed to be.
And so, due to the shortcomings of the relative few serious proposals that they had received, Truly would have the proposals sent back with feedback, and the various centers and corporations would be charged with refining their designs, and he would give them until September to resubmit, as he wished to mark the end of his first year in office by beginning NASA's new chapter.
For the rest of NASA, however, the time period was not nearly as exciting. Approaching a third year of a stand-down since the Discovery disaster, many NASA employees and contractors, that weren't outright fired or otherwise ousted in the fallout, would end up finding themselves furloughed for the indefinite future. This would have many impacts across the country, but none quite as harsh as what would be faced in Brevard County Florida.
Long since known as the "Space Coast", the county's primary claim to fame was the Kennedy Space Center, and a great deal of residents across Merits Island, Cocoa Beach, Cocoa, Titusville, Rockledge, and other cities up and down the coast were employed by NASA directly, contracted with them, or otherwise supported those employees, and with the stand-down of KSC, much of that work and opportunity dried up. While Cocoa Beach and the Visitor Complex KSC were still popular tourist attractions, particularly for those vacationing in Orlando that did not want to deal with the, as the locals like to say, "mess" that is Tampa and the Gulf Coast, the reliance of the county on Kennedy could not be understated, and in the midst of an already difficult economy, Brevard would find itself facing an economic downturn in excess of what the rest of the nation was experiencing.
While the county and its various cities could not hope to necessarily support all those that had lost out in the downturn, what it could do, and decided to do, was to at least salvage what they could of the revenue that was lost. And as it often happens, this required investors. Fortunately for Brevard throughout the late 80s, they would actually find themselves being courted by potential investors more often than not, who sought to develop much of the relatively rural county. This would directly lead to large sales of land throughout the county, but particularly around the Cocoa-Rockledge area, where a conglomerate of developers would devise a new community that, eventually, would come to be called Viera. But new communities wasn't quite enough, and much development elsewhere was focused on building up the already established areas. The historical Cocoa Village would see the development of a substantial "downtown", featuring a smattering of trendy restaurants and nightclubs, and just across the bridge on SR 520, Merritt Island would see large expansions made to its already large shopping mall, as well as the addition of a variety of commercial office space locations throughout the eastern end of the island.
Perhaps the most elaborate development would come from Ron Jon's Surf Shop, in Cocoa Beach. The store, which was originally established as a second location for the company in 1969, had grown substantially, and a new location just off the beach a few miles south of the original location had already grown into a tourist destination in its own right. The expansive, 59,000 square foot retail space was effectively the largest surf shop in the world, and the company, who was in the process of looking at even more locations throughout the United States, would find itself being courted in the early 80's by an amusement ride development company, who had approached Ron Jon's with the concept of licensed wave pool locations. Though negotiations broke down with the company (who itself was apparently a two man operation, which likely contributed to Ron Jon's hesitance), the idea of a wave pool would stick with Ron Jon's, and when approached by the city for potential developments, they would pitch to the city their own reimagined wave pool concept, which had grown in scope to an entire surf-themed amusement park, with of course a large wave pool as the centerpiece.
While the park would be incredibly expensive, to the tune of $15 million just to start, Ron Jon's would make a convincing pitch, seemingly echoing a similar pitch that the great Walt Disney would have made when he sought to establish the Disneyland of the East Coast. Citing the concentration of surf culture and communities around the West Coast of the US, Ron Jon's would point to itself as an example of what could be accomplished in bringing the surf to the east coast, as Ron Jon's was founded on same premise that the east coast, despite having a healthy surfer community of its own, had little in the way surf shops and other attractions. And more than that, with the east coast of the US famously not having the best surf in the world on even the best of days, a large wave pool would be a boon to surfers all up and down the east coast, allowing not just for waves even on the worst days, but also for the area to remain open to the public even on days with weather not well suited for a day at the beach, keeping up revenue and tourism year round.
Cocoa Beach, naturally, didn't need to hear much more. And by early 1988, ground would be broken on the Ron Jon Surf Park, which was expected to be finished sometime by 1992-1993.
NASA, to its credit, wouldn't neglect this unfortunate circumstance however, as while it couldn't yet employ at the same level it had during the height of the Space Shuttle program, what it could do (and had already planned to regardless) was help contribute to making up for the losses the county was facing. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Complex, originally opened in 1969, was by 1988 effectively just an outdoor museum, with its primary claim to fame being the Rocket Garden, which displayed all of the early rockets that NASA had utilized, including the venerable Saturn V that had sent the Apollo missions to the Moon.
With the retirement of the remaining Space Shuttle Orbiters, Columbia and Atlantis, NASA had already promised Columbia to the Smithsonian to become a museum piece, but for Atlantis, NASA opted to retain her, with the intent of creating an elaborate museum for her that would also double as a memorial for the fallen astronauts of the 1986 disasters. Developing land it already owned, ground had already been broken throughout the Visitors Complex on new exhibit sites, including a dedicated building to host the Saturn V, which had been left to the Florida elements for some years at this point, the complex would designate an area just off of its parking lot to build the museum.
The museum, which would feature a display of a leftover External Tank and pair of the Solid Rocket Boosters as the entrance centerpiece to the museum building (which incidentally would make it the centerpiece of the revamped Complex, as the stack towered over everything for miles, aside from the Vertical Assembly Building, that is), which would lead into a sort of pseudo queue line. Upon entering the museum, visitors would be treated to a short pair of introductory videos, the first of which covered the lengthy development the Shuttle program had undergone during the 70's, before being lead into a secondary room, which would feature an elaborate, high definition video display, which showed off the program's accomplishments, such as its first launch, the Solar Max Repair, the deployment of Galileo and Ulysses, and other bits and bobs from throughout the program, all leading to a rendition of Atlantis' last launch, which would then see the backing of the video screens fall away, bringing the mounted Altantis, sitting at an adorable 43.21 angle, just beyond the screens.
While the films, which were completed long before the museum, were indulgently patriotic and perhaps over-celebratory of the early Shuttle program, amongst test audiences the films received nothing but stellar reviews, who were eager to be treated to real experience of Atlantis' reveal.
However, the 1986 Memorial would not be given the same bombastic approach. Indeed, from the beginning, the memorial was planned to be a relatively unadvertised aspect of the Atlantis museum, tucked into a prominent, though subdued corner of the ground floor. Displaying the portraits and personal effects of the lost astronauts, as well as their biographies, the hallway would be crowned by a statue, commissioned through local artists, of the lost astronauts, looking to the stars.
But, just behind this statue, the hallway would continue, with no beckoning signs, and would lead up to a dimly lit room, where debris from the two disasters would be displayed. A deeply torn and scarred looking piece of Challenger's fuselage, with the American flag and most of the word States still visible, would flank the visitors left, while on their right, the window frame of Discovery's cockpit, a single pane of near shattered glass still affixed in one of the sections.
The memorial, which would be sheltered from the sound and noise of the greater museum, was a reflection of the general culture at NASA following the disasters, as while they were still proud of what they had accomplished, the 1986 disasters left a somber caveat to the agencies pride, and with as much reverence as it gave the program as whole, so too would an equal level of respect be given to the lost, with the the near silent displays being a vital and visceral reminder.
And indeed, some years later as the museum opened to visitors, the Memorial would certainly hold true to its intentions, with visitors often commenting on the stark abruptness of the display, which even years after the fact, made most Americans who were alive for the disasters feel and remember where they were, and even for those that weren't, the Memorial did not let you get off easy. For all the anger the public felt towards NASA, as justified as much of it may have been, it could never be said that they did not, at least in this small way, do right by those lost.
===
The Atlantis Building at the Visitors Complex is my favorite place in the world, and if there was an apocalypse its probably the first place I'd go to just so I can hop on a ladder and just put my grubby hands on Atlantis, and for the purposes of this timeline I cannot fathom anything that could have been better than what we got IOTL, especially for the memorial, which Id only change to be a bit more prominently visible in the building than it is IOTL, as I always felt it was a bit too tucked away in the corner myself.
But, in a less somber note, LOL at the shade I put in this post. That was fun.
Last edited:
This is an allohistorical space timeline. Ridiculousness and blatant flippancy in following design requirements are the currency of the realm. Ergo that which is the perkiest of tits ought to win.
Sincerely,
An Eternal SERV Partisan
Last edited:
Well, to speak in a meta sense, its already shaky to suggest a double disaster in 1986 wouldnt unilaterally result in the Shuttle being shitcanned forever by Congress, and I feel Im only managing it because a successful and unproblematic, if under-utilized, Soviet Shuttle changes the context completely.
ITTL, the suggestion that the Shuttle as conceived was a bad concept doesn't really get the prominence it does IOTL (instead the focus is all on shitty attitudes and shitty budgets), and with the Soviets to point fingers at its a lot easier to justify continuing the program with a redesign.
But thats also why the double disaster had to happen, as thats the only way I figured to completely break NASA of the mindsets it still carried despite Challenge IOTL, while also forcing them to not just continue on with the original design, as basically everyone involved would likely have tried to do without 1986 precluding it.
Winged Apollo, SERV, HL20 and Shuttle II all in one post, nice
Randy
Dont forget the red headed stepchild!
Fair argument lmao. Takes a special kind of person to be a perky tit rocket enthusiast.
True enough. I'm pretty sure the artist doesn't look too deeply into the histories of the vehicles he's depicted, which frankly is fine with me given how good everything else is about it.
- Status