Proxima: A Human Exploration of Mars
- Thread starter defconh3ck
- Start date
It would have been an interesting expedition, but maybe not the best due to the surrounding terrain. Perhaps, a later crew can take a gander at it!
Chapter 10: Return to Launch Site
Hi all, today we're exploring a side of the shuttle that is essential in understanding why it has its place in history. As you may have guessed, lots of internal safety culture stuff has been building in the Air Force, and now, it's come to a head. I want to preface this chapter that it is heavy, and is a little bit upsetting, so do proceed with caution. This is not a fun or happy story to tell, but it is an important one. That being said, let's explore the world of Proxima once more.
PS: there will be an image annex done by the amazing Zarbon going up a little later this week, and I'm very excited to show you what we have in store.
Chapter 10: Return to Launch Site
The year 1987 promised many things for both the Air Force’s space program, and NASA’s own Human Spaceflight program. NASA’s Olympus program was progressing mostly on schedule, with the first wave of support spacecraft sent from both sides of the Iron Curtain already returning valuable data about candidate landing sites, local environmental conditions, and more. In conjunction with work on the Martian surface, two probes would soon be dispatched via Titan IIIE to the moon, to begin a higher fidelity survey of our nearest neighbor. These Lunar Dual Surface Mappers would work in tandem to identify ideal points of interest for further study, as the success of the Mars Dual Surface Mapper proved the efficacy of mapping a planetary body. There was discussion as to why the first flights of the Olympus program themselves could not potentially take place near the Moon, rather than in LEO as planned, and to those at NASA, it was a repeat of lessons they had learned during Apollo. By performing an “all-up” test close to home, like Apollo 9, the systems could be checked with an easy return time, before the crew would have to commit to a voyage to the Red Planet. Plus, the addition of the Base Station and other successful, independent tests had calmed the worries of many engineers both within NASA and their partner agencies. Members of Congress, impressed with NASA’s dedication to crew safety, allocated additional funds to potentially allow for a landing attempt on the moon with Olympus hardware, completing the entirety of the all up test. This option, ultimately, was not chosen as the lander program encountered difficulties with first stage performance, and required a minor redesign. In support of low Earth orbit operations, work on the Liberté crew rescue vehicle was drawing to a close, and NASA felt confident that the crew of the Odyssey Orbital Laboratory could soon be expanded to a full time 6 person crew to aid in construction of the MTV, components of which were already undergoing fit checks in their respective launch vehicles. Tooling was largely finished on the updated tanks for the SDLV, and soon, fit checks would begin at the upgraded LC-39A facility in preparation for their first flight.
The Air Force, impressed with the performance that their Aft Cargo Carrier modification had brought to the program, had now formally elected to make the change standard for launches of their Space Shuttle, Valiant. Valiant had proven to be an efficient machine for the Air Force, free from the safety rigors and downtime of NASA’s orbiter program. Unfazed by the close calls on OF-16, their manifest only expanded, with payloads being readied 10 flights in advance. On February 21st, 1987, Valiant began its final countdown sequence on SLC-6 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, with six crew members onboard to oversee the deployment of a large satellite, rumored to be a Lacrosse; a new type of reconnaissance sat that could evade detection through advanced stealth technology, and a small experimental maneuvering vehicle in the Aft Cargo Carrier. At 10:21:36am, Pacific time, Valiant and her crew lifted off for OF-19, pitching south to take the crew on a trajectory that would take them into the required polar orbit. At 10:22:21, the central SSME, reflown from the previous mission in late December and subject to a less intense inspection, shut down. A moment later, a secondary notice indicating potential loss of thrust in the Left SSME cropped up, only further baffling the crew. Alarms triggered in the cabin, and the pilot, commander and ground teams at Vandenberg made the call to initiate an RTLS abort, untried so far in the history of shuttle flights. As CAPCOM called out the command, there was a fleeting moment in which the fear of the maneuver they were about to undertake overwhelmed the Commander, evidenced only by a pause.
Valiant rattled under the G loading, and the solids burning out and jettisoning brought some momentary relief to the crew. Now, the really tricky part. The vehicle began its pitch around maneuver, and the crew soon found themselves facing the direction they had launched from. Coming out of the roll, the coast of California lay out in front of them and fainter still, Vandenberg could be made out in the heads up display. The 2 remaining SSMEs, canceling out the velocity of the solid rocket motors, would soon exhaust the fuel in the External Tank. The vehicle pitched down to 40º, and the crew prepared to separate the now spent tank from the Orbiter. The pilot pulled the vehicle up and free from the external tank, but, in the tension inside the cabin, did not account for the Aft Cargo Carrier. The rear of the vehicle recontacted the tank, scraping the aft heat shield and damaging the body flap, both crucial for entry and landing. The vehicle rolled slightly, and the crew attempted to correct as much as possible with the reaction control system. Ionized plasma began to build around the vehicle as they assumed the correct attitude for entry. For observers on the ground, it soon became apparent what would happen next - but in the cabin, the crew continued to work through their procedures, unaware of the extent of damage to their vehicle. First optics from the spotter aircraft led the head of guidance at Edwards to deliver one of the most famous remarks in the history of the accident: “Jesus, Flight, the vehicle’s burning..”
Valiant began to descend through the quickly thickening atmosphere, and it soon became apparent to the crew that they would be unable to meet the landing site at Vandenberg. The descent was steep and brutal, and they were losing crossrange velocity faster than anticipated. The vehicle, leaking various fluids, was now experiencing intense heating, and exposed bits of the airframe were straining to stay intact as the thicker atmosphere buffeted the crew. The choice was made by the crew to try and level the orbiter out, with the intention to bail out once they had passed through the area of maximum heating. However, the vehicle would not remain intact long enough to prepare to abandon ship. Damage to the heat shield, caused by the impact with the Aft Cargo Carrier, resulted in ionized plasma entering the airframe, straining the components of the vehicle as it bore the brunt of a steep re-entry. The body flap and engine section would be the first components to detach from the vehicle, and soon, the whole spacecraft began to tumble. The RCS did what it could to hold the orbiter stable for a fleeting moment, but atmospheric forces would soon take hold. The starboard wing would separate next, only furthering the tumble, and causing the crew cabin to separate, torn to shreds by the aerodynamic forces. To those watching the launch, it was a moment of existential dread. The vehicle, originally one point of light on tracking cameras, was now several, falling in a slow arc towards the Pacific ocean. Debris from the external tank and orbiter filled the thermal imaging cameras as airmen looked for any sign that the crew might have somehow, possibly survived. Booster recovery ships, similar in function to NASA’s SRB ships, reported pieces of the vehicle falling all around them, and the call was made at Edwards to lock the doors.
The recovery was arduous. Every available aircraft that could be immediately scrambled after the accident was soon airborne, and military vessels out of the Los Angeles region soon joined to search for any sign that the crew had somehow survived. In the back of the recovery team’s minds, they knew that this kind of accident would be a death sentence, especially during an RTLS. As much as they could hope that some sort of miracle had occurred, they had watched the vehicle break apart. The signs would soon become crystal clear to them, as the first piece of the crew cabin was identified. Hoisting the panel onto a recovery boat, a photographer would snap a picture which would define the story of the Air Force’s shuttle - The shuttle’s name, positioned on the nose below the flight deck windows, was scorched and waterlogged, a grim reminder of what had become of her crew. Valiant lay before them, bobbing in the waves and slowly sinking to the depths of the Pacific; once a vision of the future was nothing more than tangled metal and thermal blankets. The first human remains were recovered by ship before the end of the day, and were brought back to Vandenberg for identification. As the days went on, more and more pieces of the good ship would be pulled from the sea and stored in a hangar, beginning a painstaking post mortem on the vehicle.
NASA immediately grounded their shuttle fleet and began to work with the Air Force to determine the cause of the accident, inciting an international panic from the Olympus partners. NASA’s public relations team would quickly stress that the delay to Olympus would not be long, provided the Air Force cooperated on the assessment of the incident. Challenger, which had been preparing to launch to Odyssey, was immediately rolled back to the VAB, and a crew from Houston boarded a Gulfstream headed for California. A malignant sense of unease hung around the agency, and for some, it felt like the end of human spaceflight was nigh. For the first time since the Olympus program began, there was a pause - lingering in the air like the orbiters themselves were holding their breath. Crowds that had flocked to see Challenger depart for the Station returned home confused and dismayed. The investigation began in earnest on February 24, with NASA, Rockwell and Air Force officials commandeering an office to act as a nerve center. Hundreds of hours of footage from tracking cameras was pulled together for review, and comparison to previous launches of Valiant as well as NASA’s shuttle fleet began to piece together an accurate picture of what had gone wrong.
NASA personnel were quick to point out the footage of the orbiter contacting the tank, which would have been negated in the event of RTLS without the ACC modification and proper training. The latter accusation stunned Air Force officials, who insisted that their crews had been trained to operate the vehicle in the ways both Rockwell and NASA had recommended. The focus of the investigation then turned to the actions of the pilot, and highlights the ways in which Air Force personnel were told that an RTLS abort mode was unlikely, and their training in the T-38 and Shuttle Sim aircraft was inadequate, as it did not cover the maneuvers required to pull the vehicle away from the external tank prior to entry. This failure to train properly would ultimately prove to be the most damning factor, and the lax safety culture within the Air Force's astronaut core was now on display. Congress was immediately curious about the engine shutdown, and whether or not it would impact the ongoing Olympus program, as well as regular shuttle flights. NASA and its engineering partners re-iterated that the Shuttle system was safe, and that work using derived vehicles could continue. Rockwell and Rocketdyne were brought in to testify, and the findings quickly showed that less intense inspections between flights, as well as the internal culture of the 77th, aimed for faster rotations of Valiant to ensure more operational payloads could be launched on the Shuttle, rather than conventional launch vehicles. The engine shutdown had been due to failure to maintain the often fickle SSMEs, and the fault was traced to a leaky coolant pipe, which forced a shutdown of the engine. The vehicle was, other than that, in perfect condition to perform an RTLS abort. Footage sent to NASA’s Ames research center provided further context of the RTLS sequence, and the recovery of the orbiter’s black box showed a high g load and shift in the center of mass towards the end of when the orbiter was intact. It was soon determined that the payload, damaged by the collision with the external tank, came loose and offset the center of mass in the vehicle, exacerbating the breakup.
NASA’s grounding of shuttle flights lasted six months while new operational procedures were put into place, including a revision to the crew escape suits and improvements to engine inspection. Challenger launched in late August for the Return to Flight, conducting proximity operations at the Soviet space station Zarya, which had been outfitted with 2 TKS-derived laboratory modules named Spektr and Kvant. Kvant would debut the “power tower” section of the station, designed to help mitigate thermal loads on the structure by moving the solar arrays away from the spacecraft. This approach work done by Challenger would also prove crucial in testing the autonomous approach and docking systems being developed for both the MTV and the MSAV, which would have extended periods of independent operation. Martin Marietta shut down production of the Aft Cargo Carrier modification, and scrapped any remaining ACC modifications. The US Air Force, now without a newer heavy lift vehicle, began to lobby Rockwell for rights to convert the space Shuttle Test Article, Enterprise, into a space capable orbiter, but Rockwell deemed the project too expensive to continue. Internally, the company was unwilling to publicly lose another vehicle to the mismanagement they had identified in the Air Force command structure. With only their aging Titans, Atlas-Centaurs and lightweight Delta vehicles, the DoD began to call for new medium to heavy weight expendable vehicles able to be launched from both coasts, and potentially launch from a new launch site on the East Coast, most likely Virginia or Texas. McDonnell-Douglas, Morton Thiokol and Boeing would answer the call with 3 new launch vehicles to meet the Air Force’s needs: the Delta 8000, SRB-X and partly reusable Boeing EELV. Ultimately, the Boeing EELV and the Delta 8000 were selected, with the Air Force citing their common upper stage as a benefactor in securing routine, uncrewed access to space.
PS: there will be an image annex done by the amazing Zarbon going up a little later this week, and I'm very excited to show you what we have in store.
Chapter 10: Return to Launch Site
The year 1987 promised many things for both the Air Force’s space program, and NASA’s own Human Spaceflight program. NASA’s Olympus program was progressing mostly on schedule, with the first wave of support spacecraft sent from both sides of the Iron Curtain already returning valuable data about candidate landing sites, local environmental conditions, and more. In conjunction with work on the Martian surface, two probes would soon be dispatched via Titan IIIE to the moon, to begin a higher fidelity survey of our nearest neighbor. These Lunar Dual Surface Mappers would work in tandem to identify ideal points of interest for further study, as the success of the Mars Dual Surface Mapper proved the efficacy of mapping a planetary body. There was discussion as to why the first flights of the Olympus program themselves could not potentially take place near the Moon, rather than in LEO as planned, and to those at NASA, it was a repeat of lessons they had learned during Apollo. By performing an “all-up” test close to home, like Apollo 9, the systems could be checked with an easy return time, before the crew would have to commit to a voyage to the Red Planet. Plus, the addition of the Base Station and other successful, independent tests had calmed the worries of many engineers both within NASA and their partner agencies. Members of Congress, impressed with NASA’s dedication to crew safety, allocated additional funds to potentially allow for a landing attempt on the moon with Olympus hardware, completing the entirety of the all up test. This option, ultimately, was not chosen as the lander program encountered difficulties with first stage performance, and required a minor redesign. In support of low Earth orbit operations, work on the Liberté crew rescue vehicle was drawing to a close, and NASA felt confident that the crew of the Odyssey Orbital Laboratory could soon be expanded to a full time 6 person crew to aid in construction of the MTV, components of which were already undergoing fit checks in their respective launch vehicles. Tooling was largely finished on the updated tanks for the SDLV, and soon, fit checks would begin at the upgraded LC-39A facility in preparation for their first flight.
The Air Force, impressed with the performance that their Aft Cargo Carrier modification had brought to the program, had now formally elected to make the change standard for launches of their Space Shuttle, Valiant. Valiant had proven to be an efficient machine for the Air Force, free from the safety rigors and downtime of NASA’s orbiter program. Unfazed by the close calls on OF-16, their manifest only expanded, with payloads being readied 10 flights in advance. On February 21st, 1987, Valiant began its final countdown sequence on SLC-6 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, with six crew members onboard to oversee the deployment of a large satellite, rumored to be a Lacrosse; a new type of reconnaissance sat that could evade detection through advanced stealth technology, and a small experimental maneuvering vehicle in the Aft Cargo Carrier. At 10:21:36am, Pacific time, Valiant and her crew lifted off for OF-19, pitching south to take the crew on a trajectory that would take them into the required polar orbit. At 10:22:21, the central SSME, reflown from the previous mission in late December and subject to a less intense inspection, shut down. A moment later, a secondary notice indicating potential loss of thrust in the Left SSME cropped up, only further baffling the crew. Alarms triggered in the cabin, and the pilot, commander and ground teams at Vandenberg made the call to initiate an RTLS abort, untried so far in the history of shuttle flights. As CAPCOM called out the command, there was a fleeting moment in which the fear of the maneuver they were about to undertake overwhelmed the Commander, evidenced only by a pause.
"Valiant, Edwards, you are to proceed to Return to Launch Site, NO/GO for Transpacific Abort."
"Five-By, Edwards... RTLS abort confirmed, NO/GO for TPA"
"Godspeed."
"Five-By, Edwards... RTLS abort confirmed, NO/GO for TPA"
"Godspeed."
Valiant rattled under the G loading, and the solids burning out and jettisoning brought some momentary relief to the crew. Now, the really tricky part. The vehicle began its pitch around maneuver, and the crew soon found themselves facing the direction they had launched from. Coming out of the roll, the coast of California lay out in front of them and fainter still, Vandenberg could be made out in the heads up display. The 2 remaining SSMEs, canceling out the velocity of the solid rocket motors, would soon exhaust the fuel in the External Tank. The vehicle pitched down to 40º, and the crew prepared to separate the now spent tank from the Orbiter. The pilot pulled the vehicle up and free from the external tank, but, in the tension inside the cabin, did not account for the Aft Cargo Carrier. The rear of the vehicle recontacted the tank, scraping the aft heat shield and damaging the body flap, both crucial for entry and landing. The vehicle rolled slightly, and the crew attempted to correct as much as possible with the reaction control system. Ionized plasma began to build around the vehicle as they assumed the correct attitude for entry. For observers on the ground, it soon became apparent what would happen next - but in the cabin, the crew continued to work through their procedures, unaware of the extent of damage to their vehicle. First optics from the spotter aircraft led the head of guidance at Edwards to deliver one of the most famous remarks in the history of the accident: “Jesus, Flight, the vehicle’s burning..”
Valiant began to descend through the quickly thickening atmosphere, and it soon became apparent to the crew that they would be unable to meet the landing site at Vandenberg. The descent was steep and brutal, and they were losing crossrange velocity faster than anticipated. The vehicle, leaking various fluids, was now experiencing intense heating, and exposed bits of the airframe were straining to stay intact as the thicker atmosphere buffeted the crew. The choice was made by the crew to try and level the orbiter out, with the intention to bail out once they had passed through the area of maximum heating. However, the vehicle would not remain intact long enough to prepare to abandon ship. Damage to the heat shield, caused by the impact with the Aft Cargo Carrier, resulted in ionized plasma entering the airframe, straining the components of the vehicle as it bore the brunt of a steep re-entry. The body flap and engine section would be the first components to detach from the vehicle, and soon, the whole spacecraft began to tumble. The RCS did what it could to hold the orbiter stable for a fleeting moment, but atmospheric forces would soon take hold. The starboard wing would separate next, only furthering the tumble, and causing the crew cabin to separate, torn to shreds by the aerodynamic forces. To those watching the launch, it was a moment of existential dread. The vehicle, originally one point of light on tracking cameras, was now several, falling in a slow arc towards the Pacific ocean. Debris from the external tank and orbiter filled the thermal imaging cameras as airmen looked for any sign that the crew might have somehow, possibly survived. Booster recovery ships, similar in function to NASA’s SRB ships, reported pieces of the vehicle falling all around them, and the call was made at Edwards to lock the doors.
The recovery was arduous. Every available aircraft that could be immediately scrambled after the accident was soon airborne, and military vessels out of the Los Angeles region soon joined to search for any sign that the crew had somehow survived. In the back of the recovery team’s minds, they knew that this kind of accident would be a death sentence, especially during an RTLS. As much as they could hope that some sort of miracle had occurred, they had watched the vehicle break apart. The signs would soon become crystal clear to them, as the first piece of the crew cabin was identified. Hoisting the panel onto a recovery boat, a photographer would snap a picture which would define the story of the Air Force’s shuttle - The shuttle’s name, positioned on the nose below the flight deck windows, was scorched and waterlogged, a grim reminder of what had become of her crew. Valiant lay before them, bobbing in the waves and slowly sinking to the depths of the Pacific; once a vision of the future was nothing more than tangled metal and thermal blankets. The first human remains were recovered by ship before the end of the day, and were brought back to Vandenberg for identification. As the days went on, more and more pieces of the good ship would be pulled from the sea and stored in a hangar, beginning a painstaking post mortem on the vehicle.
NASA immediately grounded their shuttle fleet and began to work with the Air Force to determine the cause of the accident, inciting an international panic from the Olympus partners. NASA’s public relations team would quickly stress that the delay to Olympus would not be long, provided the Air Force cooperated on the assessment of the incident. Challenger, which had been preparing to launch to Odyssey, was immediately rolled back to the VAB, and a crew from Houston boarded a Gulfstream headed for California. A malignant sense of unease hung around the agency, and for some, it felt like the end of human spaceflight was nigh. For the first time since the Olympus program began, there was a pause - lingering in the air like the orbiters themselves were holding their breath. Crowds that had flocked to see Challenger depart for the Station returned home confused and dismayed. The investigation began in earnest on February 24, with NASA, Rockwell and Air Force officials commandeering an office to act as a nerve center. Hundreds of hours of footage from tracking cameras was pulled together for review, and comparison to previous launches of Valiant as well as NASA’s shuttle fleet began to piece together an accurate picture of what had gone wrong.
NASA personnel were quick to point out the footage of the orbiter contacting the tank, which would have been negated in the event of RTLS without the ACC modification and proper training. The latter accusation stunned Air Force officials, who insisted that their crews had been trained to operate the vehicle in the ways both Rockwell and NASA had recommended. The focus of the investigation then turned to the actions of the pilot, and highlights the ways in which Air Force personnel were told that an RTLS abort mode was unlikely, and their training in the T-38 and Shuttle Sim aircraft was inadequate, as it did not cover the maneuvers required to pull the vehicle away from the external tank prior to entry. This failure to train properly would ultimately prove to be the most damning factor, and the lax safety culture within the Air Force's astronaut core was now on display. Congress was immediately curious about the engine shutdown, and whether or not it would impact the ongoing Olympus program, as well as regular shuttle flights. NASA and its engineering partners re-iterated that the Shuttle system was safe, and that work using derived vehicles could continue. Rockwell and Rocketdyne were brought in to testify, and the findings quickly showed that less intense inspections between flights, as well as the internal culture of the 77th, aimed for faster rotations of Valiant to ensure more operational payloads could be launched on the Shuttle, rather than conventional launch vehicles. The engine shutdown had been due to failure to maintain the often fickle SSMEs, and the fault was traced to a leaky coolant pipe, which forced a shutdown of the engine. The vehicle was, other than that, in perfect condition to perform an RTLS abort. Footage sent to NASA’s Ames research center provided further context of the RTLS sequence, and the recovery of the orbiter’s black box showed a high g load and shift in the center of mass towards the end of when the orbiter was intact. It was soon determined that the payload, damaged by the collision with the external tank, came loose and offset the center of mass in the vehicle, exacerbating the breakup.
NASA’s grounding of shuttle flights lasted six months while new operational procedures were put into place, including a revision to the crew escape suits and improvements to engine inspection. Challenger launched in late August for the Return to Flight, conducting proximity operations at the Soviet space station Zarya, which had been outfitted with 2 TKS-derived laboratory modules named Spektr and Kvant. Kvant would debut the “power tower” section of the station, designed to help mitigate thermal loads on the structure by moving the solar arrays away from the spacecraft. This approach work done by Challenger would also prove crucial in testing the autonomous approach and docking systems being developed for both the MTV and the MSAV, which would have extended periods of independent operation. Martin Marietta shut down production of the Aft Cargo Carrier modification, and scrapped any remaining ACC modifications. The US Air Force, now without a newer heavy lift vehicle, began to lobby Rockwell for rights to convert the space Shuttle Test Article, Enterprise, into a space capable orbiter, but Rockwell deemed the project too expensive to continue. Internally, the company was unwilling to publicly lose another vehicle to the mismanagement they had identified in the Air Force command structure. With only their aging Titans, Atlas-Centaurs and lightweight Delta vehicles, the DoD began to call for new medium to heavy weight expendable vehicles able to be launched from both coasts, and potentially launch from a new launch site on the East Coast, most likely Virginia or Texas. McDonnell-Douglas, Morton Thiokol and Boeing would answer the call with 3 new launch vehicles to meet the Air Force’s needs: the Delta 8000, SRB-X and partly reusable Boeing EELV. Ultimately, the Boeing EELV and the Delta 8000 were selected, with the Air Force citing their common upper stage as a benefactor in securing routine, uncrewed access to space.
What happens when you take a good thing too far… Valiant is gone…( well… we’ll see, wink wink) but not forgotten. Hopefully Air Force takes a good look at its safety culture, and maybe NASA will look a little deeper into their own safety standards now…
Valiant is dead, long live Valiant!
Given the classified payload I can see the decision to RTLS....
I guess better than landing on Easter Island...
Er, hold one here. Why is the USAF seeking a 'new' launch vehicle when there's one already 'available' in the SDV that NASA already paid to develop? It's going to be rather tough to argue they need a 'separate' launch capability when they spent the entire time with "Valiant" essentially arguing the opposite. Specifically with all the 'issues' being identified with Air Force operations Congress would NOT be 'happy' to have them trying to gain a 'new' launch vehicle that will require even more expensive changes to Vandenberg.
Randy
(Edit) Heck it's rather unlikely that the Air Force at this point is going to be willing to give up 'crewed' launch capability and if they can't get "Enterprise" I'd expect them to look into one of the 'lifeboat' options fitted to the SDV. And Congress is likely to indulge them...
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my figuring for seeking a new launch vehicle, rather than the shuttle derived vehicle, is that the SDLV will primarily be kept on retention for assembly and logistics missions for Olympus. It would be feasible that something might be launched on an SDLV, but remember, they will want redundancy in the face of what they've just learned with Valiant. Plus, in this timeline, we're seeing a lot more of the shuttle technology being integrated into commercial vehicles (no RS-68s here, just stock SSMEs) and that allows for the DoD to take capabilities from the shuttle and integrate it into whatever they see fit. As for crew? We shall see - our relations with the soviets is pretty good right now, we have a good line of communication and we're making a lot of cooperative strides into the unknown together. Perhaps a disarmament campaign is in our future? I'm not sure.
I felt it was important, re: Valiant, to show that any system has its limits, and when those limits are pushed it can all come back in your face. Valiant is not a name we will soon forget, it will be a reminder that we are not immortal and we must constantly do better to make space travel safer. NASA, in this timeline, has been lucky that the incidents that have doomed their shuttles IRL have been seen outside of the context of a launch, and the divorcing of military and civilian launches has resulted in a new operational paradigm for both the DoD and NASA.
As for the future of Valiant in Proxima? There are stories left to tell. Valiant is a legendary bird after all.
Relations with the Soviets? We're talking the ACTUAL enemy here for the USAF... NASA and every other branch of the military!
More seriously, (well a bit anyway
) the USAF FINALLY got it's own manned space capability and they would seriously fight to keep any shred of it they could. They may have egg on their face from pushing "Valiant" too far but this is vastly further than they every got OTL and vastly closer to what they actually wanted OTL. (Which was at least two Orbiters of their own, preferably four and hey look that's how many NASA has and they 'obviously' aren't using them.... )The USAF might want redundancy, (that's actually arguable given if they did they likely would not have gone with "Valiant") but as it's pretty clear they did this to rub their version of Shuttle operations in NASA's face which means they had to go all in on Shuttle operations which means that's a sunk 'cost' and effort the can't afford (literally because Congress won't be charitable to paying for yet ANOTHER launch system) to toss aside. The SDV checks all the proper boxes "and" if they can get a manned vehicle in the deal too they will still be playing the game.
Congress is already paying for a NASA Mars mission so they will be vastly less forgiving the Air Force's "faults" here but they also will not be willing to indulge the Air Force buying what is obviously a 'competing' system to the STS. (I'd also point out that part of the what sold Congress on the STS was the inference and understanding that it would be the basis for almost all US launch capability once in operation and that included DoD/Air Force payloads and that's not changed in any respect. OTL Congress ONLY allowed the Air Force "redundancy" argument once it was crystal clear that the STS could not actually handle such a launch cadence. TTL there's SDV to fall back on and STS is vastly closer to being able to handle that cadence or a reasonable facsimile thereof at any rate)
OTL the Air Force was reluctant to accept the STS until forced to do so by the mandate that all payloads would go on the Shuttle once it was operational. Once they did embrace the change and the Shuttle became operational it became clear that it was not going to meet the flight rates expected, (and they weren't going to get their own Orbiters) they started seeking "redundancy" with Titan IV and eventually EELV.
You're going to have some 'redundancy' anyway as the Atlas versions were still going rather strongly, along with the Delta family, having actually managed to transition somewhat to the more 'civilian' market and the Air Force can always continue the Titan III (though TTL it may be a stretch to far to get the Titan IV) versions IF they even consider it given they have so much invested in the STS.
The 'problem' with writing a more successful STS timeline, (and If I haven't mentioned it already thanks very much for writing one, I'm likely to crib some notes from this btw
) is it IS a 'success' and therefore less likely to be seen as the "failure" (in general but not specific terms btw) it was OTL meaning it will be utilized more.Er, not really. NASA in TTL has pretty much gotten everything they want and their hubris (post-Apollo) was pretty huge and despite the Shuttle losses OTL they STILL didn't lose that 'edge' until rather recently. I also don't see a separation of launch operations or paradigm's since as noted above the USAF TTL has gone all-in on the STS that feeds into and supports the rationale behind the STS proposal and paradigm itself leaving NASA no reason to significantly change their operating paradigm. They will likely reduce the 'expected' flight rate of the Orbiters in light of the Air Force experience but are just about as likely to push their own fleet BECAUSE they have multiple Orbiters and can 'off-load' some payloads to the SDV which was not an option OTL.
Well Star Trek fans could have told you what happens to the "Valiant" if anybody was willing to listen
Randy
Historically, OTL, the USAF(but really congress, by cutting funding) is quick to drop a project if it even starts to fail. And imo, although USAF did rely on An STS vehicle, the divorce in operations between DoD and NASA has to do with USAF running it’s own program completely by itself without NASA oversight, the 77th VOW. Shuttle also was not cheap, and as far as national defense interests go, crewed presence in space was becoming less necessary. Valiant mostly just offered a platform for more complex on orbit research that couldn’t be done with a normal AFRL satellite like they do things now OTL.
As far as acquiring new launch vehicles, 77th would likely see a big restructure, seeing as it has no shuttle to operate, so the cost of that would make cheaper, uncrewed, partially reusable systems more appealing.
As far as the Soviets, there’s a big difference between our relationship in space and our political relationship. NASA and Roscosmos are really good pals for the most part, considering the work towards going to Mars, but obviously, DoD is gonna be more wary of them. But there are real attempts on both sides to preserve a working relationship between the two countries. For example, the decision was made to not intercept a Soviet spy sat during Valiant’s once around capture mission, but instead to grab an old US sat as a demonstration.
As far as acquiring new launch vehicles, 77th would likely see a big restructure, seeing as it has no shuttle to operate, so the cost of that would make cheaper, uncrewed, partially reusable systems more appealing.
As far as the Soviets, there’s a big difference between our relationship in space and our political relationship. NASA and Roscosmos are really good pals for the most part, considering the work towards going to Mars, but obviously, DoD is gonna be more wary of them. But there are real attempts on both sides to preserve a working relationship between the two countries. For example, the decision was made to not intercept a Soviet spy sat during Valiant’s once around capture mission, but instead to grab an old US sat as a demonstration.
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Actually "historically" the USAF has a very bad habit of riding a dead (flying
) horse into the ground and continuing to tell Congress they absolutely HAVE to have this capability long after the budget it gone But I get what you're getting at.The thing here is though that, as OTL kind of shows, Congress is quite willing and able to keep putting funds into a certain program as long as that effort can be 'justified' by not being actively opposed by general public opinion. Here in order to get "Valiant" up and running the USAF had to sink a LOT of political effort and actual money into standing up their STS activity. Vastly more than OTL with Vandenberg being an operational launch facility at all that goes with that effort. The 'crewed' presence was (and is) actually beside the point here as it's a capability that the Air Force would like to retain, (and will fight to do so despite actual "need"... they have been doing so since the late '50s after all) that Congress will have little 'care' to deny but what WILL be important is that the USAF has all the needed infrastructure, facilities and personnel to continue to operate SDV's as launch vehicles without any need to instigate or support an "additional" launch vehicle development program. Full Stop, in that Congress will not have to 'spend' any more money to allow the Air Force to continue to launch DoD satellites and payloads. It's not going to be 'cheap' by any means, (and especially as I note the Air Force will likely pursue manned operations anyway) but it is both a capability AND active launch system that will in many ways make both the NASA and Air Force STS cheaper than it was OTL at the very least. Congress has every reason TO support it and to deny the Air Force if it tries to use the 'redundancy' argument and that's what they will ultimately do.
Despite the Air Force's historic 'blinders' regarding space flight they DO actually know how the game works and will maintain what capability they can which in this case is likely SDV and maybe a very small manned presence.
Something else I should probably point out is that the Air Force will NOT actually be as 'embarrassed' by the "Valiant" outcome as we might think. Yes a lot of questions will be asked about the Air Force 'safety' culture and "rush" to push so may flights but actually MORE questions will go towards NASA and it's "projected" flight rate for the Shuttle which have just been soundly proven HIGHLY optimistic at the very best. The reason for the Air Force NOT being held as 'accountable' as one might expect is pretty straight forward: it's the military which has a vastly different "risk acceptance" than a "civilian" agency can. (Or arguably should really)
What this shows really is that far from being "fully operational" as NASA has claimed the STS is still very much a limited and almost 'experimental' system which will affect NASA far more than any future Air Force usage. This will shine a very bright and not very comforting spotlight on NASA's "safety culture" and Shuttle expectations more so than the Air Force's. (As I noted though they have SDV in both cases which they didn't have as a fallback OTL )
Which means the SDV NOT a 'new' launch system since they already have everything they need to launch the unmanned SDV in place. (And as noted they have a good opportunity to 'slide' a manned component in as a 'side-effort' with little Congressional opposition)
Uhm only because the DoD and Air Force is QUITE aware that grabbing even a non-operational Soviet spy satellite is nearly an act of war
(Second only to the OTHER reason it was never actually a 'plan' OTL was the fact that we knew most spy sats had self destruct charges in them which would nicely wreck the Shuttle that tried to do such a snatch mission... Our sats did so the assumption was theirs did as well
)The very 'fact' that Valiant DID snatch a satellite (ours or not) ratcheted UP the tension and didn't help our relations a single bit and was likely used at the UN to get a lot of nations riled up at the "high-handed" example of the US's ability to 'pirate' (and yes it's legally an act of piracy btw) ANY nations satellites if they wanted.
I'm VERY sure the USAF got a strong lecture on NOT rocking the international political boat by 'showing off' for that little stunt. Specifically why the US went out of it's way to deny and counter any suggestions that the Shuttle OTL could in fact perform such a mission. (It could not in fact, though when "Analog" pointed out we could fit a Salyut into the Shuttle cargo bay there was a LOT of denial both from NASA and the Air Force
)Randy
The Soviets didn’t know about the once around mission afaik… not likely we’d tell them about it
It's so funny, that's what Valiant was named after! One of my favorite episodes of Deep Space Nine. I was waiting to see if anyone got the reference!Well Star Trek fans could have told you what happens to the "Valiant" if anybody was willing to listen
Chapter 10.5: Image Annex
Chapter 10.5: Image Annex
Hi all, I know this post is a little later in the day than I'd usually post but I wanted to share some images of the developments at Zarya, the Soviet station sharing a 51.6º orbit with Odyssey, our American counterpart. This station is designed to be serviced by both the American Shuttle and Soviet Soyuz, and will enable long term research on the human body in space, and will assist in developing Soviet-built experiments to fly on the MTV in the next decade. The orange module is a docking module, similar to the one built for Mir IRL, and will assist with potential clearance issues for Shuttle docking with the station. This station was built by Zarbon, who's done a lot of amazing work in designing mission patches that you all will see later in the series! Enjoy!
Hi all, I know this post is a little later in the day than I'd usually post but I wanted to share some images of the developments at Zarya, the Soviet station sharing a 51.6º orbit with Odyssey, our American counterpart. This station is designed to be serviced by both the American Shuttle and Soviet Soyuz, and will enable long term research on the human body in space, and will assist in developing Soviet-built experiments to fly on the MTV in the next decade. The orange module is a docking module, similar to the one built for Mir IRL, and will assist with potential clearance issues for Shuttle docking with the station. This station was built by Zarbon, who's done a lot of amazing work in designing mission patches that you all will see later in the series! Enjoy!
Is that a proto-SPP I see in that last picture ?Chapter 10.5: Image Annex
Hi all, I know this post is a little later in the day than I'd usually post but I wanted to share some images of the developments at Zarya, the Soviet station sharing a 51.6º orbit with Odyssey, our American counterpart. This station is designed to be serviced by both the American Shuttle and Soviet Soyuz, and will enable long term research on the human body in space, and will assist in developing Soviet-built experiments to fly on the MTV in the next decade. The orange module is a docking module, similar to the one built for Mir IRL, and will assist with potential clearance issues for Shuttle docking with the station. This station was built by Zarbon, who's done a lot of amazing work in designing mission patches that you all will see later in the series! Enjoy!
We wont' have to
By this point everyone is VERY well capable of tracking everyone else's missions and the majority of satellite orbits are quite well known. "Valiant" took off and landed after one orbit and now one of the known US satellites is missing from orbit. Not hard to figure out what happened and keep in mind this was already a 'scenario' that the USSR feared the Shuttle would be used for. (Along with dropping nukes on Moscow)Randy
Thanks very much! Can't wait to show you more of what we have in store.These images are awesome
No but SPP was one of the big inspirations for the design of this whole station, this station is kind of a fusion of both ISS and Mir ideas that never really came into fruition. Perhaps in the future we will see more stations of new and unique designs.
Uh, What?
I think we need to take a step back and remember what ACC was for. Early in the program, there was consideration to the idea that the space shuttle would 'volume out' before it 'massed out' on payload. Given that idea, the extra volume the ACC added would allow the shuttle to make better use of the payload mass capability of every launch by offering more volume. The cost for this extra volumes is about 10klbm, to a 160 nautical mile orbit. Because shuttle payload reductions for a given orbit is linear both with respect to inclination and to altitude, this payload hit is presumed to be the same for polar missions. If the vehicle maximum payload capability is 72klbm (as was presumed for a 106/106 + FWC* launch to due-east from KSC was in the 1980s), then a 10klbm reduction isn't bad, certainly given that the payload bay is only rated for 65klbm in the first place. If the shuttle is instead on a polar flight, the payload available falls to only ~32-4klbm, and the ACC's 10klbm empty mass is a reduction of ~30% from the total payload the shuttle can deliver to a polar orbit. For a vehicle that was fighting for every ounce of capability, I don't think the USAF is going to use this unless they have spacecraft that can't fit in the payload bay. After over a decade of having the shuttle as the planned primary launch vehicle, and with the bay being about the same size as the larger fairings on Titan 34Ds, I don't see the USAF as even having payloads that need the ACC volume for years after it is flying.
If instead you intended to mean that the USAF program is going to make sure that SLC-6 can launch with ACC, then I think that there should probably be a grammar change someplace because that meaning isn't what I got from it.
Portree's article on the ACC.
General Purpose Aft Cargo Carrier Study, Volume 1, CR-178905
*This nomenclature is used to represent the engines being rated for 106% for both regular operations and aborts, as well as the other use of the Filament Wound Case SRBs.