Continued:
The Soyuz 7K-LOK needed only about one km/s to break out of Lunar orbit, the LK needs twice that, even without the crasher stage. Plus, doing two burns at once with spacecraft practically right next to each other is all but asking for them to collide. Then again, having good footage of it would be awesome.
Ya, I keep forgetting Apollo was overbuilt and overpowered in comparision. But yes in the main you want to keep the vehicles in visual range for most of the testing so you can get good film records of the manuevers and performance. Where te LK would 'move' away would be for the landing abort test where it retroburns for a specific amount and then switches to 'landing abort' mode, dropping the surface package and 'climbing' away as if going back to orbit all in one burn. This is the point I'd assume the engine explodes since it goes from 'landing throttled down' to "full blast abort mode" while switching tank sets. Either way the 'support' vehicle will be an orbital Soyuz rather than an LOK simply to provide that backup should it be required so it'll have the delta v to rendezvous with the stricken LK.
In the original TL for this thread, I had the N1-LK-LOK refuel in Earth orbit, with Leonov attaching a transfer line to a refueling stage launched by a Proton. They did ullage burns simultaneously to settle the propellents for the transfer. But, I would imagine in real life they would wait until they had more capable landers like the TLK.
Practice makes perfect
Though again anyone seeing any part of the orbital operations will know what it's for given an idea of the vehicles involved. They would also dock 'nose-to-nose' with the tanker to transfer rather than using a line. You then set the assembly spining, (end-over-end) which settles the propellant at the nominal end of the tank with the line intakes and pumps.
It would be, but that would make the chances of continuing the race to Mars all but disappear. Of course, they might do a joint Mars mission...
Decide on a joint Mars mission and in the 80s relations sour as per OTL and each side decides to go it alone maybe?
Ok, so no water ice early on then. I guess Zvezda will have to make do with baking the water out of the soil.
It's very much a 'safety' thing, one person on the surface is dangerous enough. Especially given the Soviet surface suit is actually less flexible than the Apollo suits. The very real fear is that if one falls they won't be able to get back up again. A surface experiment into which they feed the regolith and see what they can extract is going to yeild some interesting results so yea, I can see it.
6 females applied to Astronaut Group 5 in 1966, so if we have one of them get in, maybe as a political stunt or something, the Soviets would probably respond. So basically the exact opposite of what happened in For All Mankind.
Unfortunately, I cannot find the names of the women who applied, so if I ever mention them it will have to be using a random name generator.
Thirteen 'applied' for the Mercury program and by design they were denied a chance since Eisenhower specificaclly ONLY wanted male test pilots for astronauts. NASA ran with this and it wasn't till Group 8 in the late-70s where females were allowed in. (And much to just about everyones disgust a serious question at the pre-flight news breif was if one of her duties would be to make the coffee for the crew... :O ) Essentially NASA isn't going to do it as long as we're 'behind' the Soviets. The USSR 'might' but it won't be on a major mission and it won't be alone. Unfortunate but it's the attitude of the time. I've always wondered what would have happened if the Mercury 13 had reached out to Pat Nixon instead of butting heads with Eisnehower. She and Richard had a pretty equal relation and if SHE brought it to him in a rational manner he might have been able to budge Ike.
How would they know how much of the spacecraft is fuel or structure? And even if they could, reaching Lunar orbit takes 3950 m/s, while getting to mars takes about 4270 m/s. The excess propellant could be to compensate for the mascons.
There are people who's JOB it is to figure those things out and frankly you can get a very accurate 'read' on a ships solid versus liquid mass during a burn to orbit. By this point it will be well understood that a Lunar orbit station would not be very effective or cost efficent. The could be boosting for an "L" point, (L1-5) but you wouldn't do that as a manned first flight and getting back would require even more propellant so it's not likely. It's not a 'space station' and it has an engine and propellant tanks. The highest and most likely possibility is they are going for an interplanetary flyby.
I will admit that the US could just strap 50 boosters to their ship and call it a day, but I dought in reality they would actually do that. Then again they are Americans, they don't exactly know the meaning of overkill.
As an American I resent that statement... "OVERkill" is obviosly when you get some on your shoes and have to clean it off... Just because we take along enough boosters to slightly move Mars in it's orbit... Don't worry we had some guy named Von Kerman or some such check the math...
Interesting, I didn't know that. Thanks.
Oh there are ALL sorts of 'options' when the race is active and close. Ever heard of "TRITON?" (TRI-modal capable, Thrust Optimized Nuclear propulsion system) A NERVA with a 'high-thrust' mode using LOX injection and a high power generation capability for 'other' uses in standby mode. (
http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Space_Engines/AIAA-2004-3863_TRITON.pdf) If you can't have Orion it's about the next best thing
Yes, it is. In fact, I did consider many alternatives to the way I wrote it in that draft. For instance;
- The US and Soviet landers land next to each other safely and do Apollo-Soyuz but on Mars
- The Soviets crash and use an emergency ascent vehicle to get back into orbit (aka some fuel tanks and engines strapped together with duct tape)
- The Soviets crash and the Americans rescue them
- The Soviets half-crash and the Americans help with the repairs
I might change it in the next version of the story, whenever I get around to writing it.
I'd probably vote to avoid the "Happy Ending" on this one unless you want the American's to get there somehow and help. Nice idea but this way you still show that space travel isn't always going to be safe nor easy. A 'just-in-time' rescue would still work as would some other options to, maybe not 'rescue' but extend their capability until they can be rescued might make a good story as well. As is it's depressing but something that fully could happen in a space race.
I would also like to write some sort of sequence where they find life. I'm not entirely sure if that counts as ASB though...
Might be more cliche rather than ASB since I've seen in a half dozen times in 'realistic' Mars landing shows. (And no, that's not counting ANY of the ones where it then procedes to eat the astronauts faces off. Only ones where one or more astronauts 'die' for some reason and manage to find life while doing to to make it 'worth' the price. I don't buy that though)
Randy