Rockets Red Glare: An Alternate Apollo TL

# Introduction
# March 1985

Jim Ketty leaned back in his seat and remembered the first time he had ever seen a spaceship. He had been seven at the time, and his parents had driven all the way down to San Diego so he could see the new Apollo moon lander be unveiled at the Convair Astronautics plant. Later, he skipped out of junior high to take the bus to Pasadena and watch that first landing on the big screen outside of Mission Control. That grainy, monochrome sight of Grissom, Armstrong, and Lovell bouncing across the Sea of Serenity still sent chills down his spine.

A violent forward bump broke Jim's reverie, as the exhausted first stage fell away so as to parachute into the ocean. After a few seconds of weightlessness, the ring of rockets on the second stage ignited and pushed Jim back again. Ah well, he though, I'll get more than my share of microgravity in just a few minutes. First, there was the week-long trip to Station Beta at Earth-Moon L2, followed by two weeks of "orientation" at the Station. Then they'd finally board the Discovery and set off for the six-month trip (though most of that would be with centrifugal "gravity").

It all still seemed surreal to Jim, but here he was: Mission Specialist 2 on the first manned mission to land on the planet Mars.
 
Still working out a lot of the details, but the you can probably see the broad strokes of where I'm going with this...

This is one of a pair of Alt Apollo TLs I'm working on; it was started second, but I've advanced further in the writing so it gets posted first.
 

Archibald

Banned
Still working out a lot of the details, but the you can probably see the broad strokes of where I'm going with this...

This is one of a pair of Alt Apollo TLs I'm working on; it was started second, but I've advanced further in the writing so it gets posted first.

Go. GO FOR IT !!! I'm hooked.

(Homer Simpson best duff voice) Hmmmm... Earth Moon L2 (drool)

Any political change on the way ?
 
Any political change on the way ?

Not for a long while; before 1975-or-so, I'll try to keep the non-space butterflies at a minimum. The biggest effects outside of NASA will be in the Soviet program, for which I have a few interludes planned.
 
# Ch.1 A New Hope
# June, 1961

"I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth."
- John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961

"Damn!" Wernher von Braun sat back in has chair and thought, "Damn, damn, damn!" The president had made his speech just a week ago, after von Braun had personally promised Vice President Johnson that such a goal was achievable before the Soviets [1]. But the problem was the damn engines; none of the ones he had access to now were big enough to pull off a landing with a single launch. Five highly-upgraded Saturns [2] could do it, but would require docking all the stages in Earth orbit and transferring propellant to the injection stage, something that was turning out to be much harder than he had anticipated. The USAF's F-1 project would be perfect for the job, but it had been canceled in the transition to NASA three years ago [3]. And even then, it had severe combustion instability issues that did not seem likely to go away. There just were weren't any other liquid rocket options.

So, for umpteenth time that day, he pulled out the letter that William Pickering, the Kiwi-born Director of JPL, had sent. The two men knew each other well, as they had run the Army's two pre-NASA rocketry labs, and had collaborated on the first American satellite launcher, which had a souped-up Redstone first stage and JPL-built upper stages. Those JPL stages, like most of the rockets they had produced, were highly-advanced solids. Pickering had attached to the letter a report that proposed some truly massive solid rockets, a full 300 inches in diameter, clustered together produce a rocket, Solid Nova, that could throw 130,000 pounds to a lunar trajectory, enough for a single-launch direct landing [4]. This was exactly what was needed to achieve the landing goal, without requiring any big new liquid engines. In the letter, Pickering offered to collaborate on the rocket, diving up the work at a later date.

Von Braun had generally avoided solid rockets in his career; he was a mechanical engineer by training, and solid rockets always seemed like ungraceful chemistry-based brutes. But, he had to admit that after watching the progress of the Castor rocket being developed on the other side of Redstone Arsenal for JPL's Sergent nuclear missile, they were pretty damn rugged and reliable. And if JPL's report was at least half right, their Solid Nova could be ready much sooner than restarting F-1. Taking a long breath, von Braun made a decision: He would call NASA Headquarters in DC precisely one more time to ask for sufficient funds to rush F-1. If that failed, he'd throw his weight behind Solid Nova, but on the clear condition that MSFC would take the lead on the overall vehicle.

"God, I hope this works", he thought to himself...

[1] As per OTL
[2] IOTL the early version of Saturn C-3 with 8x H-1 on the first stage
[3] The Point of Departure for this timeline
[4] See http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19740074221_1974074221.pdf

EDIT: Added image from the report showing the rocket and the suggested assembly facility in Georgia

nova-2s.png
 
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Archibald

Banned
Not for a long while; before 1975-or-so, I'll try to keep the non-space butterflies at a minimum. The biggest effects outside of NASA will be in the Soviet program, for which I have a few interludes planned.

This a line I follow, too, for my own alt history: no change to the line of US Presidents. first, because the space program has not enough influence to change any presidential election and 2) because it is already hard enough to deal with NASA history !
 
simonbp, you really want use the Ugliest Launch vehicle ever design ?!

JPL-nova-1.jpg

Source: The unwanted Blog

advantage: this gona be a record R&D until prototype is ready so 2 a 3 years
also can you build smaller LV with the Modules

wat you gona use for Apollo Capsule ?
the orginal NAA/Rockwell or Martin or Convair version of Apollo ?
 
Damn straight. And yes, the initial result of this will be a sooner lunar landing on much, much more sustainable rocket than Saturn V.

That may be, but only if the severe thrust oscilation issues inherent in all large solid rockets can be solved. And there are other issues to consider.

Namely that solid propellant tends to be less efficient than liquid propellant, so you need more propellant to launch the same mass to a given point.

Also, it is, at best, extremely difficult to shut down a solid rocket after ignition, meaning that launch abort will be a lot more difficult. All key reasons why any launch system I think of is almost entirely dependant on liquid propulsion systems.

How do you intend to resolve such issues?

Staying tuned in.
 
That may be, but only if the severe thrust oscilation issues inherent in all large solid rockets can be solved. And there are other issues to consider.

Well, let's be honest, thrust oscillation/combustion instability issues exist for any large rocket, regardless of propellant. F-1 had pretty severe problems that were only resolved because of the nearly ten-year development program (ITTL, the interruption of that program is what dooms F-1). J-2 had serious oscillation issues too, and the resulting "pogo" kept both the first and second flights (Apollo 4 and 6) from reaching their planned trajectory. So, it's not a unique problem to solids, and one that is quite plausible to address.

Without getting too much into the engineering, I'm handwave TO a bit by pointing out that the JPL Nova design uses relatively short, unitized solids. This sort of shape is much harder to set up resonances in than a long, narrow tube (which is why woodwinds are long and narrow), and so you get around a lot of the shaking by simple geometry. Plus, the TO is further mitigated by the shear mass of the rocket: the heavy upper stages serve as inertial dampers to reduce the amplitude of the oscillations. It's still going to be a quite bumpy ride to orbit, but not much worse than the Shuttle today (with its long, narrow SRBs).

Namely that solid propellant tends to be less efficient than liquid propellant, so you need more propellant to launch the same mass to a given point.

Yes, but that is mitigated by the much higher thrust of the solids, and their much higher density. If you look at the attached image, you can see that despite the fact that the all-solid weighs over four times more than the all-liquid on the pad, the solid is actually smaller in size than the all-liquid and much smaller than the solid-liquid mixed concept. Indeed, one need only look at the product lineup of Orbital Sciences to see how useful an all-solid launch vehicle can be.

Also, it is, at best, extremely difficult to shut down a solid rocket after ignition, meaning that launch abort will be a lot more difficult. All key reasons why any launch system I think of is almost entirely dependant on liquid propulsion systems.

Oh, you mean like Shuttle or Ariane 5, neither of which would get off the pad without 2x SRB? :)

The JPL report does include mentions of a thrust termination system much like the Shuttle's (linear shaped charges to cut the motors in half). That said, the real issue for aborts is for rockets like Ares I with a solid first stage and liquid second: the second stage is so light that the acceleration in an abort scenario can be quite high. In this case the heavy upper stages mean that the acceleration profile is actually pretty similar to Saturn V, and thus quite escapable from.

nova-3.png
 
Oh, you mean like Shuttle or Ariane 5, neither of which would get off the pad without 2x SRB? :)

Perhaps I didn't come across clearly in the last post. I meant any launch system I think of for an alt-history or future history scenario. Not one that exists IOTL.

As for STS and Ariane 5. SRBs were a compromise to reduce development costs for STS in order for it to be built at all. And initially at least, they weren't very good. For Ariane 5, it was also to cut costs, since it's a commercial launch vehicle, they can worry a little less about pogo and g-forces.

One note I overlooked. Due to the very high Mass/Volume ratio of solid propellant relative to liquid propellant, when a solid rocket explodes, the propellant spreads out in dense, flaming chunks that can still be burning when they hit the ground - proven by launch failures IOTL - while a liquid propellant stage will see its propellant spread out and disapate within seconds - again proven IOTL. Your response?
 
Perhaps I didn't come across clearly in the last post. I meant any launch system I think of for an alt-history or future history scenario. Not one that exists IOTL.

Sorry, your standard of quality is fictional rockets, not real engineering? Both Shuttle and Ariane 5 use SRBs because their principle propulsion are LH2/LOX engines that are propellant-mass efficient, but very thrust inefficient. Rocket science is a lot more complex than just specific impulse.

One note I overlooked. Due to the very high Mass/Volume ratio of solid propellant relative to liquid propellant, when a solid rocket explodes, the propellant spreads out in dense, flaming chunks that can still be burning when they hit the ground - proven by launch failures IOTL - while a liquid propellant stage will see its propellant spread out and disapate within seconds - again proven IOTL. Your response?

The vehicle is launched over water, like all US rockets. In fact, as you can see in the image above, the launch pad is offshore. It can blow into as many flaming chunks as it likes, the debris will fall into ocean. And as the Chinese learned a few years back, a liquid rocket falling on a house can still kill a lot of people...

EDIT: This is what happens when liquid rockets crash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EnrVf9u8s
 
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The vehicle is launched over water, like all US rockets. In fact, as you can see in the image above, the launch pad is offshore. It can blow into as many flaming chunks as it likes, the debris will fall into ocean. And as the Chinese learned a few years back, a liquid rocket falling on a house can still kill a lot of people...

EDIT: This is what happens when liquid rockets crash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EnrVf9u8s

Wrong. Vandenburg Launch Sites are situated over the land - California - and are controlled by USAF. And for the first 30-45 seconds, a launch vehicle launched from Canaveral, Florida is over the land as well. They were selected because the flight path is almost always clear of people when a launch occurs. Same reason why Baikunor, Kakhastan is used by Russian Space Agency, and Kourou, French Guiana by ESA.

As this will show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsVzpE7ltb8&feature=related

While we're on the subject, how much of this do you plan on doing? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umLMkhdf1_o&feature=related
 
Aren't most launches from Vandenburg into polar orbits? So the launches go south, over the Pacific.

The available range for Vandenberg all passes over the ocean. They even avoid some nearby offshore islands. So yes, while it might technically pass over land for a short period of time, that land is part of the launch range itself, is uninhabited, and so doesn't count. It can be covered in flaming chunks of solid propellant all it likes, it won't do very much (well, it might destroy the pad(s), but that's it).

Anyways, the pad for this rocket is at sea, so it definitely won't be passing over land at any point.

EDIT: Also, is it just me or what is with people doing alternate Apollo-related scenarios lately?
 
Aren't most launches from Vandenburg into polar orbits? So the launches go south, over the Pacific.

Just checked. They do. My mistake.

EDIT:

EDIT: Also, is it just me or what is with people doing alternate Apollo-related scenarios lately?

Well it's been over 40 years since Tranquility Base, and the last attempt, the Ares system seems to have failed to lift of the design board, never mind the launch pad.

So it should come as no surprise that people want to do their own alt-histories to not only put men - and women - on the Moon, but keep them there.

That's why despite my reservations about Simonbp's particular design, I intend to stay tuned in to see exactly what happens here.
 
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simonbp, do your take direct lunar landing ?

because the JLP Launch vehicle is design for that
almost all part of mission can be made with solid rocket engine
except the last phase of landing, there you need small liquid fuel engine
the only spacecraft that land this way was Surveyor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveyor_Program

back to Apollo capsule, the direct lunar landing design were very different to used one
here General Dynamic (Conviar) Model one

bwoedgbgkkgrhgoh-euejllluugbktep3bg_3.jpeg

Source: The unwanted Blog
bwofsqbmkkgrhgoh-d0ejlllvkv2bktewgvtg_3.jpeg

Source: The unwanted Blog

last Picture show the 12 short solid rocket engine
that's for shorten the hight of *ascent* stage
 
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