I agree. Any Shuttle program being developed at the same time as Ares will be very scaled-down, or take longer to develop. I would bet on option 1.
Hrrmmm, don't get me wrong a smaller shuttle would likely be easier and faster than a larger shuttle if for no other reason that's the size they'd been working on prior to building one for real. The Shuttle got 'big' firstly because it went from a carried glider to it's own stage and then back but still needing to carry 'big' space station modules. If you have a heavy lifter system your 'shuttle' never needs to carry more than a couple hundred to a couple thousand pounds of cargo and it's main job is carrying people which means it's a lot smaller and lighter. Consider that the 'main reason' given for the Shuttle was to carry it's engines up to orbit and then back again so they could be reused. Once that's a requirement, and you have a "we need wings and wheels for the vehicle" that sets a good number of parameters that constrain the design. Have the "primary" (booster) and "secondary" (orbital) engines on their own reusable vehicle that then sets a huge number of DIFFERENT parameters on the 'shuttle' design. OTL"s TAOS design was actually pretty far fetched for most of the time till a certain set of circumstances came about which rendered it, first viable and then acceptabel and finally the favorite.
Interesting... that could work. It would require a lot of work to get the POD right, but maybe...
I completely agree. A more robust LEO program for testing the LOK and LK is probably a must have.
At least, and you need to , demonstrate, prove and practice orbital rendezvous and docking and the ability to do it without 'ground control' which for the USSR is the hard part... Early space station work provides a LOT of this but as I noted that's going to be a 'distraction' from the Lunar goal. IF the US is going in under a decade can anyone afford to go the EOR/EOA/LOR route? Likely not...
Ok, that's a good plan. I would guess that something like that could advance the N1 program at least a few months, if not a year or two. If we can have it flying by 1967 that would be amazing!
One thing though is that if Glushko isn't working with Chemolie then who is? Would he and Yangel team up? I kind of doubt it because Yangel had his own idea and Chelomie seems to be to be too blase' about storeable propellant and Yangel lost friends during Needlin. If Glushko isn't backing Chelomie then he may be working for Yangel which will leave Chelomie out in the cold, (as well as Krushevs' son mind you, that won't go over well) and even if Glushko is working with Korolev the N1 as we know it isn't the design we probably want to go with...
Yeah, good points there. I'm still not entirely convinced that they wouldn't still launch it though, even with a super-high chance of failure (just look at Voskhod 2 or Soyuz 1). If they could get even one flight where it worked perfectly unmanned, and if the launch escape tower worked every time it had failed, then I'm sure they would say "screw it, let's see what happens".
I have to disagree here. If you want the Politburo on board it needs to work consistently and be convincing AS A SYSTEM! Otherwise they have too much to lose and not enough go gain by going for it. Keep in mind that at some point they HAVE to make participation in the 'race' public IF they are going to go. You can hide a lot with 'space station' operations but there's specific and crucial stuff you can't and IF you make those little 'side-tracks' you have to have enough performance and spare capability to make up the lag that causes.
Specifically the examples of Voshkod 2 and Soyuz 1 were vehicles that were KNOWN to have some issues but there was redundancy planned to cover that. It was the UNKNOWNS that caused the problems and those could not have been known without the testing that was done. Voshkod 2's airlock worked perfectly on every test on the ground so did entry and exit. It was only once they were weightless and in a vacuum that the problems cropped up. Soyuz 1 was supposed to have another vehicle as back up. Had it had it would have been abandoned in orbit and brought down remotely. Again the problem ON ORBIT was mostly stuff that worked on the ground and were based on known and understood, (so they thought) system. While there might be attempts to launch the N1 into orbit manned it certainly won't go to the Moon till it's working at least 90% of the time simply going to orbit. Keep in mind Saturn worked EVERY SINGLE LAUNCH to degree the N1 NEVER achieved and even the Proton could barely touch. "Let's see what happens" could, maybe, at the outside, be something the American's with a 99% surety of a viable launch every single time MIGHT say, it is nothing anyone in the Soviet program would EVERY say. They knew how far their technology and operations were short of the American and they played it safe for a very, very good reason.
So yes, maybe Korolev sells the N1 to the military as a huge space station or Lunar base builder. Maybe he can convince them that putting missiles on the Moon would be strategically important for some reason.
Huge payload to LEO maybe but it's Lunar throw weight was pathetic and everyone knew it. Putting missiles on the Moon was considered and dropped for some very sound reasons. Something to keep in mind is that after the Soviets had Proton up and running for a while they had a choice to make:
Use it to put a series of long orbit 'command and control' stations into Cis-Lunar long-orbit where it could never be taken out by an American "sneak" First Strike
Use it to put a small outpost on the Moon that could be use as a similar 'command and control' station but buried under the surface for extra security
Use a 'standard" ICBM and a buried command and control center on Earth to launch a single ICBM that would broadcast a "Launch" code to all launch facilities and submarines even though that was 'technically' more vulnerable than the first two.
They and everybody else, including the American's whom we KNOW could get to the Moon or Lunar orbit pretty regularly, chose option 3.
Korolev has to sell the N1 as something the military can use, yes, but he's got to sell them on it to support an already made decision by the civil authorities to support the N1. The N1 is lousy military weapon and always will be so they military interest has to be marginal but interested enough to maintain support. The "Super-ICBM" idea was always a first-strike/decapitation/devastation concept and that was pretty clear to everyone who heard it. That takes an easy to ready/launch "missile" which was never going to be the N1 in any form. Early problems, (especially a launch failure or two) of the UR500 might convince the military to look at the N1 but Korolev then has to face the fact that any "lunar" program just took a back-seat to military needs. Given a good spin on the various sub-systems, (fun-fact! the LK can actually be used as a manned satellite inspection vehicle to look at suspicious Capitalist Satellites Comrade!, "But can't you use Soyuz or Zond to do that"? "Oh look, more vodka!"
) some work can continue but the military focus takes precedence till they can convince the military to let them go back to planning the moon shot. This is historical BTW, Korolev ONLY got permission to work on launching a satellite AFTER he proved the R7 was military operational, the same would apply here though he could get pretty far IF the N1 can meet military specifications.
Ok, that sounds promising. I'll have to do the math on it, but it might just work.
Toss in some actual Glushko engines and tweak the upper stages and it's a lot better than OTL. It's 'slightly' less important for the Soviets but if they can work in down-range recovery for not to much of a penalty ...
(I'm seeing a bit shakey but pretty clear black and white of a stage descending towards the steppes under a set of parachutes when suddenly a roar and a cloud of dust obscure everything... as the rumble fades the dust clears to show an upright stage on some way-to-thin looking legs standing against the horizon with a voice over in accented English, "And New Soviet Man shows his technical superiority by returning a booster stage to our Earth as Mr. Helnlien-o-vitch and the non-existent God intended for it to be done!" Martial theme swells...
)
I actually remember an Enigira-Buran thread where the POD was someone breathing in at the wrong moment, getting ever so slightly too cold, losing his balance, and falling into a lake... and another where someone (Korolev actually) didn't find a piece of bread on some super-specific table somewhere in the gulag and froze to death. Talk about being specific! Anyways I'll probably just keep to my assumption of April 1968.
I think I know which ones your talking about actually
BTW, the 'bread' may or may have existed in the first place and Korolev admitted he wasn't in his right mind when it happened
In my take Glushko bluffs him into eating some snow as 'bread' (eating some himself) telling him it fell out a window so he can keep going another day... Works but much later Korolev admits he KNEW it wasn't real but did so to humor Glushko because he thought HE needed the delusion
Koroleve 'living' should be a butterfly not the POD because we really need an earlier POD or this won't work. There's to much work to do and not enough time to do it in even with the earlier POD
That's really good news, a Saturn I can survive parachuting into the ocean. So maybe a good second or third POD would be somehow keeping the Saturn I series alive, I'll have to think about how to do that.
As fasquadron notes if you have a US Lunar program it's likely that the Saturn 1/1B is rapidly regulated to a secondary role. I can work on some 'butterflies' where the support for Saturn is a bit more consistent if a bit less 'panicked' allowing them to actually test out the recovery/reuse aspect which will come in hand later...
Saturn-Clipper (I really like how that sounds) is definitely the way to go then.
I like the way that sounded as well
Also, SpaceX definitely happens, I cannot imagine that being butterflied away. I mean, Elon was convinced to start a rocket company by a meeting with Robert Zubrin, so it's possible if he's affected Musk is too, but I would bet it still exists. In fact, SpaceX's entire thing is colonizing Mars (not booster development), so if we've already proved we can go there, and given up on it, all that will probably do is make Elon want to go there even more. Blue origin also probably still exists for the same reasons. And Zubrin too for that matter. Im not sure about Virgin Galactic, paid tourist flights on Clippers might butterfly that away.
Er, SpaceX came about because Musk couldn't find an affordable launch system to put a greenhouse on Mars. Zubrin convinced him about colonizing Mars and (ahem) planted the seed of the Mars Greenhouse idea but Musk quickly realized that OTL there was no way to get it to Mars for an affordable price. Zubrin was pretty specific that 'launch' costs would come down when the "public" forced the "power-that-be" to build Mars Direct type Ares launch vehicles, not private enterprise. Zubrin was adamant ONLY the government could do this and that Musk needed to motivate the public with the Greenhouse. Zubrin was an early critic of SpaceX because he saw no 'use' for the Falcon 1/5/9 though he did get somewhat interested in the Falcon Heavy much later. Had Musk been able to get a fairly 'cheap' ride to Mars for the greenhouse SpaceX probably wouldn't have been founded and he would have gone straight onto Tesla, et-al. Also you need to read up on SpaceX NOT through Zubrin, Musk has ALWAYS been quiet adamant that SpaceX is NOT interested in creating or running a colony on Mars, (Musk in interested in LIVING there but he's in no way interested in the managerial and operational hassles of founding a colony) but in creating a TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM for going to Mars and back. TTL he may actually be more interested in the colony concept and organization, yes but he's not OTL. Getting there and back is his main goal.
Now having said that lets also look a few 'butterflies':
If you have an ongoing, (or have gone) Mars program in the US by the early 90s Zubrin is very different than OTL. For one thing the "Mars Underground" isn't a thing because every single one of them is ALREADY or has been WORKING on a US Mars program and that we did NOT have one is the only reason they came together in the first place. Zubrin never comes up with Mars Direct in this case as it was in direct response to the failure of the Space Exploration Initiative between 89 and 93. Instead he's probably still working at LM developing hardware and technology for the planned US Mars mission.(or the NEXT one at any rate) It's still possible that Musk gets involved with launch services but it's more likely something about privatizing the current government Saturn-Clipper system rather than developing a new LV. If he's 'interested' in Mars at all it's probably likely it's more along the lines of getting Tesla a contract to build a long duration, duel purpose Mars rover for the expedition rather than going to Mars himself. At least at the moment.
If we've gone and not gone back that doesn't help the situation all that much. Zubrin's mad but is unlikely too see the governemnt as a way to get to Mars again, (after all they quite the first time) and if he and Musk end up commiserating then it's more likely Musk convinces Zubrin that commercial space travel is the key to Mars and Zubrin becomes an advocate for that instead. Again, Mars Direct never come into play. Some aspects do but ISRU is really a very old idea, (first serious study in the US was in 1962) so while it will help it's not the 'key' as many think but simply a part of the needed infrastructure to make interplanetary travel less expensive.
One thing to keep in mind is that the position both Musk and Zubrin hold, (that the "general public" is highly interested in space, space travel and space colonization and only need a small 'push' to explode the interest) is going to be MUCH harder to hold to if we've been to Mars and stopped instead of just the Moon. And extra decade or two of 'sustained' interest is going to make the kick-back OTL felt in the 70s that much longer and deeper TTL. So while you might get an upsurge in space utility and industry in the 90s TTL about equal to the SPS/Space Colonization blip in OTL's late 70s/early 80s it's likely to be much more a flash-in-the-pan since the capability is more there but the overall support will be thinner. (With more and more accurate data on space transportation the 'math' is going to contain less guesswork and less chances for optimistic fudging which was prevalent OTL) It will be much clearer that there in fact NOT "Millions" of people waiting impatiently to go into 'space' at the drop of a hat.
Yes it's likely having a 'clipper' system will mean far less guesswork about space tourism and industry it depends on the amount of regulation and control on the system. Given any kind of semi-regular service to orbit, (such as supporting one or more 'international space platforms' will allow more tourist and commercial traffic. Since it's probably cheaper and easier to launch and support a specialty station "Hilton" may in fact have on in orbit
But we'll also have a much better idea of what we can and can not do in orbit than we to OTL at the same time and it may not be as 'rosy' as some thought. It will be a mixed bag to be sure.
I kind of love and hate Mars direct.
Welcome to my world
It just seems too easy. It's like a 'get out of jail free' card. Quite frankly its absolutely brillent, and I'm surprised we didn't see it sooner. But, it's not that interesting. You launch two rockets, and boom, you're on Mars. An Ares mission is better in my opinion, purely because it actually does something interesting. 'It's not about the destination, but the journey' and all that. Plus it was not invented until the late 80s, so as a follow on to Ares it might work, but any earlier and you have to have someone other than Zubrin invent it.
First is IS too "easy" and simplistic and frankly while the concept is over all interesting and 'brilliant' once you first look at it, with any research you realize we HAVE thought of it before, (again it was essentially proposed in 1962 as far as ISRU for mission and vehicle support is concerned) and it is FAR from as easy or as cheap as Zubrin makes it out to be. Worse, it is exactly opposite of what you think it is and it is ALL about the 'destination" and ignores and belittles the journey as being immaterial and unimportant. The key is in the original article where Zubrin makes clear that how we planned to go to Mars in SEI, (over a 30 year period during which we built up the Earth-Luna system into a self sustaining, industrialized and colonized economic and production system which Zubrin ignores) was "not how we did Apollo" as if that was a bad thing and Apollo the only way to 'do' a space program. You may have noted I have issues with this POV
Instead of building up infrastructure, (IF he can get 30 years of missions to Mars his plan allows SOME infrastructure but to as you read it, you realize it all happens 'naturally' at a NOT very "fast" due to the nature of Mars Direct and the time, effort and money needed to get to the point where it can 'take off') he shoots one (1) ship and then two years later shoots two (2) more and then two years later ASSUMES there's enough interest to shoot two (2) more... Have you read, (not seen, but read) the end of "The Martian"? A kid asks the protagonist if he can't wait to go back to Mars... And then is hurt when the man who managed to survive and return from that hostile and forbidding place when that man laughs uproariously... No he's in NO hurry to every go back thank you very much. Let me address this little bit:
Actually, Mars Direct is brilliant because it is very hard to cancel.
Specifically and especially the opposite, it's far to EASY to cancel at a whim. Worse than Apollo because it's both 'cheap' (so not very much money 'sunk') and easy, (because people will get bored after the third landing) And mind you that 'assumes' (with all that work implies) that it is actually 'cheap' since as we are already aware the cost per launch of the SLS which is pretty near a Ares rocket is going to be higher per launch than the shuttle it is supposed to replace and vastly more than a single Falcon Heavy launch and it can't even do Mars Direct.... Yet.
Every mission you land a second ERV, so it makes sense to launch a follow-up mission so it isn't wasted. And if you launch a follow-up, you need to launch another ERV for safety, and the cycle continues.
Like Zubrin that somehow 'assumes' that the 'spare' ERV isn't worth 'wasting' by leaving it in place and stopping going. Have you noted the number of LEMS and unused Saturn V's in museums? They were both equivalently MORE expensive to produce. Worse, while you DO explore more area with twice as many people it's still not going to be a 'base' but single expeditions to multiple places and wee, we went to Mars again, what's on the sports tonight....
Seriously there's a REASON NASA TV and the ISS live feed have been drastically cut back.
Also, keep in mind Mars Direct needs water ice unless you want to only use the atmosphere for ISRU (which is possible, but less efficient).
Using the atmosphere and NOT having to find water-ice was in fact the 'selling' point. More so because while 'easier' to make the methane it's vastly harder to harvest the water than the atmosphere which means more equipment dedicated in the payload for processing and less for science and supplies. There's a reason the 'water-ice' spots are to be visited not landed at in the planning.
Plus, you can land them next to each other and build a base.
Yes, eventually if enough missions are run AND there's some reason to land at only one spot. Note this isn't as 'ground-breaking' as you might think the same aspect was examined for modified LEM's for advanced Apollo's.
And the Mars direct spacecraft can be modified quite easily for Lunar missions or even space stations.
Same as the Apollo equipment EXCEPT Zubrin actually points out they are really quite useless for anywhere but Mars... because why would anyone WANT to go anywhere but Mars? He proposes in the original article, (and a bit less in the book version) using MD equipment for the Moon and then spends most of the rest of the section on why that would be 'inefficient' (report) and an outright waste (book) since Mars is right there and the Moon is "useless" as are space stations and why would you go anywhere but directly from the surface of Earth to the surface of the perfect planet Mars? (And I suppose you didn't note that the Mars Direct habs actually DO require either artificial or real gravity to work properly? By design?) And since we're begin honest I myself suggested they were usable for Venus atmosphere stations... Once the "Mars Mafia" got done with the boards the only place that stuck around were heavily moderated sites like nasaspaceflight and a few others. I had the mods try at least on the NewMars forums but they were overwhelmed... At least in recent years you aren't dog-piled for any thread not directly related to Mars and Mars Direct there...
What finally 'killed' Zubrin for me was "The Case for Mars" series and his attitude there and in his 'travel to Mars guide' where he spent half a chapter tearing down and berating anyone using any other method to get to Mars other than something MD derived. His worship of Apollo as the 'right' way to do anything, (and then blaming NASA for 'squandering' public and government support like it was their fault alone) and gushing how people just need to see one human on Mars and they will throw themselves on to anything bound for Mars is both frightening and a bit worrying. (His comment "my daughter would love to live in a mall" when describing the underground housing on Mars as "like a shopping mall", along with the amount of people who eat it up without examination, would be laughable if not so sad as there are groups out there who actually KNOW what it's like to be confined to an indoor environment for years on end and I'm NOT talking about prisoners or something. I have a friend with environmental illness and going outside at the wrong time could literally kill him)
The truth is anyone on Mars or the Moon or in a space station is literally going to be enjoying the "Great Indoors" as my friend says and while that's not terrible IF you are prepared and design things right BOTH of those are quite demanding AND require a lot of work and care to plan and execute. Not be glossed over as being "like living in a shopping mall" or letting people assume they can just throw on a vac-suit and step outside whenever they want.
Sorry, sorry it's not you it's me and let's get back on topic shall we
So maybe more (but not complete) collaboration between Korolev and Glushko would be useful. I'll see if I can work that into the POD without going behind the 1960s, it will be hard.
Hey if it were easy everyone could do it... Like me
ITL I had them launch in June 1969, so the US doesn't need to change at all. All you have to do is try and keep it secret, which would be hard, but not impossible.
Actually it WILL be "impossible" since they have to do so much testing in Earth orbit they can't be 'secret' about it. The LK for example is obviously a lander and you can't leave that for the last minute. A successful N1 flight will push the US to advance Apollo if nothing else. Anything the USSR does outside of outright sabotage to the US program to delay them means the US will pour on the coal to keep ahead. And you have to deal with that somehow. (Keep in mind the US was keeping a VERY careful eye on the USSR for exactly this reason)
This is the thing with a Soviet Lunar program timeline of any type: Unless Kennedy or someone never set the goal the US is GOING to be on the Moon by 1970 at the latest. And even if the USSR takes this seriously from day one they are STILL going to both be playing catch-up AND falling behind due to the nature of their production system and technology. (Even assuming the in-fighting can be handled which in itself is problematical) The US has that much excess industrial and scientific capacity, heck France and the UK could 'beat' the USSR if they put their minds to it and got a few breaks the Soviets were never that far 'ahead' of anyone.
And the USSR HAS to commit with all that implies to even have a shot in this so there is little wiggle room or possibility of secrecy.
As for the margins, well, theres nothing they can do about that without some major changes to the timeline, maybe even reworking the N1 to use different propellants (which I really don't want to do because, as I said, figuring out the timescales would be a nightmare). I could change the N1 program very drastically if I had no choice, but I cannot even pretend that what would come out of it would be guaranteed to be realistic. At least this way I can closely follow real events. But as I said, if I really need to, I can change it more drastically.
You may have to
Frankly we can 'work' with the N1 but to realistically have a shot of beating the US to the Moon with it and the LK plan ... Well either the US has to find some reason to not follow up Kennedy's challenge or just screw up so badly they aren't "our" US anymore. Now that's not 'impossible' mind you, just highly implausible
As an example, OTL Kennedy changed his mind shortly after the whole ball got rolling and tried to offer the Soviets a joint mission which they refused. (As I note the reason was they were well aware how short their 'lead' was and how they really had no technical margin which the US would figure out within seconds of getting a look at anything they had) They could possible string a JFK that lives after Dallas along for a good while till he finally either leaves office or the US quits the 'joint operation' in disgust which could delay the US but that won't help much unless the next US President simply back-burners Apollo totally due to other more important Earth bound issues. Thing is then the US isn't going to Mars, or even the Moon as THEY quit the Space Race so the USSR going is "meh" moment rather than a triumph. More likely is Kennedy gets impeached or ousted and Johnson is ruined and the NEXT US President put Apollo back on track which will likely still beat the USSR to the Moon or at least do it bigger and better than the USSR can at any rate. They won't go to Mars though.
(Unless the next US President is RHH in which case we might see "Orion Rising" and the Soviets will have even more regrets than OTL
)
That's a good point. So a Mars mission would need to be politically viable to get through. That might be workable.
Correction: Politically viable to President and Congress and publicly viable to the public instead of spending the money 'here' where there are numerous and very direct 'problems' the public cares about more than space flight. THAT'S why there's an issue with this working.
I would hold off on reusing the second stage since that's a lot of work. Maybe by the 90s, they can start planning to do that, but initially, it will just be the first stage coming back. Hell, for the first couple of launches they'll probably throw away the entire thing.
Ahh yes, the "SpaceX mistake/maneuver" as it were
How's that? Well this is the excuse that SpaceX uses but really what make this 'difficult' lead directly back to certain choices SpaceX is making and the future plans they have which simply preclude second stage reuse. ???
SpaceX set the bar with their "Falcon 9 Recovery video" where both stages were recovered by propulsive retro-fire at the launch site. On top of this Musk himself has disparaged any OTHER mean of landing other than propulsive landings. Oh and then there's the touted 'economy' of only using a single propellant over both stages, (it's not that great, especially with the current low flight rates), really they could go with a more 'powerful' upper stage propellant (such as propane
but more likely liquid methane and a 'mini-raptor') and vastly increase their margins enough to cover re-usability, but they won't for many reasons but mostly...
And finally there's Starship/Super Heavy. That last? If it's not clear once Starship/SH is flying Falcon has to die, fast. Why? It directly competes against Starship and like the Shuttle to be 'economic' there can only be one. And since by that time there is likely to be far MORE than just 'one' launcher around, Falcon has to die to make room for Starship.
These are choices that SpaceX made and that they have to live with. Unless Starship/SH is VERY delayed or runs into significant development issues Falcon isn't going to evolve anymore... By choice and design. That's all on SpaceX....
A reusable Saturn or Saturn Clipper system is the opposite because the design decisions early on make re-use much easier and further operational decisions make institutionalizing that far easier. The Saturn uses dense, powerful propellants in the lower stage which can be optimized and economized over time. (Shades of Falcon
) Re-design and rebuild the booster for easier recovery and more robustness, (a given in the cited design) and economy goes through the roof despite the 'awkward' at sea recovery. (The government would have to really work to make it as expensive as the Shuttle SRB recovery and since it's NOT being shipped across the country for 'refurbishment' that's not going to happen)
The Second stage, (S-IVB really if the go with the SII that's actually easier to make cheaper) is pretty expensive but that's due to being essentially hand built and pretty fragile. Not all THAT fragile as the above cited recovery method, (at Edwards AFB to cut down on transport costs) was estimated to require the loss of around 600lbs of payload for dry land recovery. (Maybe a bit more) But the more advanced J2 engines such as the J2S and J2T were supposed to bring the back to 'standard' Saturn payload ranges with ease. And the J2T being an 'truncated aerospike engine' would have allowed the 'crush-able nose and forward reentry shield to be deleted which would have saved several hundred pounds of mass while saving structural mass due to having to only build for aft stress vectors.
There's more but the main reason you 'throw it away' at first is it's actually cheaper to do that if you have a low flight rate. The more you fly the more reuse makes economic sense.
How hard would building cylindrical tanks be? And how would it effect the overall shape of the N1, would it still look like a giant cone? I hope so, I really like the way it looks, but cylindrical tanks would be a huge help. Maybe truncated cone tanks?
A 'squat' Saturn V probably with 'transition cones' to a smaller upper stage instead of the open latice work OTL's N1 had.
I meant no propaganda value. Plus, it was assumed that a Mars mission could be spun-off into Lunar mission hardware at the end of it. And of course, the president probably doesn't care that much about the cost if we assume that an earlier end to the Vietnam war happened, or they got more funding from somewhere.
If it has no propaganda value what's the point?
And yes, even without Vietnam cost matters and will still be an issue. Fatigue was an issue even more than the cost, and why the general population didn't much tune in till Apollo-13 went pear shaped. Apollo 14 had attention similar to Apollo 12, Apollo 15 was far less than 13 was by Apollo 17 you only got high points during the News hour, except when they took off.
Also consider that as far as I can tell, the NASA budget at the end of the 60s was around 5 billion a year. If we assume a Mars landing in 1985-ish and a total program cost of 40 billion (Apollo was 20 billion), then the annual budget on the Ares program would have to be... 1.3 billion for 15 years. Not that much. Actually, that's way less than I thought it would be. I'll have to look into that.
Peaked at around 5.9 billion in 1967 and dropped like a rock every year after that. (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA) Ares would have to follow a similar curve so closer to 10 to 15 billion near the time of the first landing to get the final pieces in place and ready. Adding an extra five years would make it closer to 6 to 8 billion peak with a total approaching somewhere north of 50 top 60 billion total. (You have inflation to deal with as well) and don't forget that a lot of the early NASA peak funding, (1958 to around 1965) was infrastructure and initial outlays that won't occur again as bad as the first time but you have a greatly expanded, (and expensive) run of Saturn's and their launches which is going to cost more as time goes on.
Those are good points. I would say closer to 200 years though.
Why? What's the 'draw' to shorten the timetable? I think Fasquadron is actually being optimistic under the circumstances myself
Randy