The Selene Project

[sts-200]

Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

Selene 2​

Commander Guy Larosse and Navigator Malcolm Leyton-Arnold become the first men to ride the Constellation Launch Vehicle when they liftoff from Rainbow Beach on the 31st March. The ascent to orbit is near-perfect and the crew describe the first ECPS burn as a "very smooth ride". They achieve an Earth orbit at 188km.

An intensive period of checks and calibration begins 14 minutes after liftoff. Crew and controllers work together to verify the performance of the ship's main systems while they are in the comparative safety of low Earth orbit. If anything is wrong, they can complete an Earth-orbit backup mission and re-enter at any time. Everything checks out and at T+4:43, ground controllers give the “GO” to proceed with the sequence for translunar injection. Five minutes 22 seconds later, the ECPS guidance system re-ignites the engine. All goes exactly to plan for the next 62 seconds.

The caution alarm sounds on board the spacecraft and alert lights flash in mission control. Fault indicators glow red showing a warning of low hydraulic pressure on the ECPS stage. Working calmly and professionally but with sinking hearts, over the next 50 seconds booster controllers see the pressure steadily drop in the SVV control system; the very same system that failed on CLV-5.

At T+4:50:14, the pressure drops below the red line programmed into the ECPS control system and it responds by shutting down the engine. The spacecraft and the now useless ECPS stage are left in a 188x11,330km orbit around the Earth. The crew are quite safe, their ship is functioning normally, but they are falling over 200,000 miles short of the Moon.

With no reason to stay attached to the ECPS, the crew separate their ship, the “Harmony”, at T+5:18 as originally planned, pitch up and photograph the stage to record any visible damage [there is nothing immediately obvious].

Selene 2's ECPS photographed from the PROM​

Mission controllers debate what to do next. There is still a glimmer of hope, buried in the details of a backup mission plan. Although Selene 2 was never intended as a landing mission, the VDL carries a full load of fuel and it is quickly calculated that there is enough on board to reach the Moon – if crew and controllers act quickly.

To reach the Moon, the ship would have to complete a loop in its current elliptical orbit, then make an additional TLI burn using the VDL’s on board engine. Another manoeuvre would then be needed once away from the Earth in order to help correct for the later departure time. Three days later, the VDL could perform the lunar orbit insertion manoeuver as planned and the existing flight plan could be resumed. The PROM itself has sufficient fuel on board to return to Earth from lunar orbit, and it was always planned to return from the Moon in this way.

The next opportunity to complete TLI is near the orbit's perigee, which will occur at T+8:26. Two hours of rapid recalculation and checking using the computer facilities at Biscarosse allow controllers to relay the parameters of the new burn up to the crew as their orbit carries them back down towards Earth. Flight medics are concerned that the additional time in high Earth orbit will expose the crew to additional radiation exposure in the Van Allen belts, however the predicted doses are still below overall crew and mission limits.

Having seen the Earth recede and approach in their elliptical orbit, the crew ignite the VDL's engine shortly before perigee. Thirteen minutes of thrusting uses up two-thirds of the VDL's fuel, but succeeds in putting them on a course towards the Moon.

Analysis of the ECPS failure begins immediately the VDL separates, just over 5 hours after liftoff. Booster controllers command a series of valve and actuator movements to try to gather more information on the fault before the stage's batteries run down.

Early press reports surrounding the "failure" of Selene 2 are very mixed, as it soon becomes apparent that the mission will still go to the Moon. Very negative reports in both Soviet and US press are clearly rushed and speculative. British and French media focuses on the efforts being made to resume the mission and praises both the crew's determination and the remarkable "real time computation" being carried out at mission control. TV news in Europe, and to a lesser degree elsewhere, gives continuous (if rather confused) updates on what is happening.

At T+30:06, a course correction is made using the VDL’s main engine, a manoeuvre that completes the process of realigning the trajectory to allow for the Moon being a few hours further along in its orbit than in the original flight plan. It is now possible to revert to something close to the original mission, albeit with a four hour delay added. At T+82hrs the crew make a colour TV transmission showing their ship and the crescent Moon, still 50,000km away from them.

The technical and managerial skills displayed by the drastic changes in the flight plan are not lost on several NASA observers. Many of their confidential reports back to the US state that this supposed "failure" actually shows that mission planning and operations within the Selene Project are of the highest quality, even if the bugs have not yet been worked out of the launchers and hardware. As one NASA flight controller later wrote “If we’d had a problem on the way to the Moon, I hope we would have done as well as these guys…”

The next day, at T+97:50, Harmony disappears behind the Moon, fifteen minutes before the lunar orbit insertion burn is due. When it is complete, only the crew will know if they are in lunar orbit or not. Mission controllers and the rest of the world must wait for the signal to reappear at the right time. Too soon, and the ship may not be in lunar orbit, too late and the ship might be heading for a collision with the surface.
When it appears at exactly the right time, T+98:21:06, Mission Control erupts in cheers and applause. The first Selene crew to orbit the Moon are in a 95x355km orbit, very close to plan. After two revolutions, they fire their engine again to circularise to the 115km orbit they will use for their lunar observation mission.

The first full day in lunar orbit is spent in testing the procedures that will be used for future landings, checking guidance solutions and setting up the systems. Larosse and Leyton-Arnold make the first ever spacewalk conducted outside of Earth orbit, out to Harmony’s external control cockpit. After a "night" in the VDL's Hab, the crew repeat the descent checkout procedures before photographing one of three possible prime landing sites.

Day 3 in orbit includes a third spacewalk to practice the attachment of refuelling lines using a new fitting, designed after the problems encountered on Aurora 11. No actual fuel transfer is planned, but the test of the new lines is a success. Photographs of a second potential landing site are taken later in the day.

The final day around the Moon sees more photographs of sites further west and two interviews, carried live on British and French TV. The PROM is separated from the VDL at T+212:15 and once again, the crew check their navigation systems before using the PROM’s engine to boost themselves onto a course back towards Earth.

A 1.4s correction at T+262:16 is all that is needed to target the ship for re-entry. RM separation is at T+301:38 and the crew feel the first effects of the atmosphere 12 minutes later, travelling at 11,008m/s (just over 24,600mph). They splash down within five miles of the recovery ship under two parachutes to complete a 12 day 14 hour mission.

What could have been a near-total failure was saved by the flexibility and training of the Selene Project’s crews and controllers. Despite the booster failure, the mission proves that the PROM/VDL-C flies as intended, and should be capable of attempting a landing later in the year.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Well, that would have been exciting to live through!

 

[Archibald]

Hawker Siddeley and Lockheed sign a joint memorandum of understanding. The firms will seek to work together to put a modified Lockheed "Agena" upper stage on top of surplus Blue Streak missiles. This combination would create a small-medium satellite launcher that could be targeted at the export market for the next few years until the Space Shuttle becomes available. To avoid US laws requiring that NASA has control of all American space launches, the project would be 51% owned by Hawker, with 49% owned by Lockheed. Costs would be shared accordingly.

[SNIP]

Hopes of a deal between HSD and Lockheed to build a Blue Streak derived launch vehicle are scuppered by the US government's refusal to allow any non-US involvement with any part of the "Agena" stage, which is regarded as a national security asset. The entire deal never really stood a chance. NASA took a dim view of this attempt to circumvent its launch service monopoly and the possible threat to the Agency’s desire to put more payloads on the Space Shuttle. Lobbying by McDonnell Douglas, builders of the competing Delta rocket, also helped persuade the administration to block the export of Agena (or any Agena-derived) stages.

It was learned only decades later that HSD and Lockheed had in fact managed to fly a single test vehicle. The information was classified for decades because of a totally unexplainable phenomena.
The booster worked perfectly but all of sudden telemetry was lost as The Cape encountered a strange storm-like vortex which disappeared after the Blue Streak Agena ascended through it. Nothing was ever heard of the stack, ever; not even a single debris was tracked either falling on the ocean or in orbit. Nothing.
After a young Stephen Hawking was called to the rescue and discovered the unthinkable then the whole launch was classified.
According to Hawking the Blue Streak Agena had been sucked in a parallel universe where it enjoyed a lot of success as Canada national rocket launcher.

 

[sts-200]

It was learned only decades later that HSD and Lockheed had in fact managed to fly a single test vehicle. The information was classified for decades because of a totally unexplainable phenomena.
The booster worked perfectly but all of sudden telemetry was lost as The Cape encountered a strange storm-like vortex which disappeared after the Blue Streak Agena ascended through it. Nothing was ever heard of the stack, ever; not even a single debris was tracked either falling on the ocean or in orbit. Nothing.
After a young Stephen Hawking was called to the rescue and discovered the unthinkable then the whole launch was classified.
According to Hawking the Blue Streak Agena had been sucked in a parallel universe where it enjoyed a lot of success as Canada national rocket launcher.

Well, there's another way of securing export orders. Getting the payment back might be a bit tricky though...

Meanwhile, in an alternate-alternate universe into which a quantum-pair duplicate of the missile had been mysteriously transported:

Radar Targeting Officer Lt. Malcolm Wilkes sees the primitive vehicle on his scope.
Such laughable little rockets are nothing to the Revenge-class nuclear space cruiser HMS Vindictive, on her way to a deterrent patrol around EML1. Wilkes looks up and wryly observes to his electronics operator, Leading Spaceman Cafferty, "With rockets like that, the Americans can keep the Earth ... we'll settle for the rest of the Universe, ehh Cafferty?"
Vindictive silently slips away into deep space, her position carefully chosen to allow targeting of any unfriendly nations on Earth, while keeping an eye on the space lanes to the new Mars Colony. They were impressive, but troublesome types those Martians; who knows, if things kept up as they were, they'd be agitating to become a Dominion by 1985.

That of course is the ASB Selene Project, the version where the UK discovers a trillion barrels of extractable oil under the Midlands. Later it is found that starting to extract the oil has naturally fractured a deeper layer of shale; allowing access to a quadrillion cubic metres of natural gas. It is believed that extracting so much oil and gas will eventually cause the country to collapse into the hole thus created, so British scientists decide to leave the planet, ideally sometime before it happens...

 

[Paulo the Limey]

That of course is the ASB Selene Project, the version where the UK discovers a trillion barrels of extractable oil under the Midlands. Later it is found that starting to extract the oil has naturally fractured a deeper layer of shale; allowing access to a quadrillion cubic metres of natural gas. It is believed that extracting so much oil and gas will eventually cause the country to collapse into the hole thus created, so British scientists decide to leave the planet, ideally sometime before it happens...

This is an amazing timeline, I've enjoyed reading through it over the weekend. So good to hear you've already got a sequel lined up for when this is over!

 

[sts-200]

This is an amazing timeline, I've enjoyed reading through it over the weekend. So good to hear you've already got a sequel lined up for when this is over!

I think that'll have to wait a million years or so; all that oil needs time to form.

Meanwhile, back in 1973...

 

[sts-200]

Throwing down the Gauntlet

Apr-73
A consortium led by French firm Aerospatiale submits an outline design for a European Intermediate Launch Vehicle. Nominally, this fits a specification laid down by ESRO, however the proposal also forms part of wider French efforts to expand pan-European space development. The idea of a “European Space Agency” is also floated; something much more like NASA than the small and marginally effective ESRO.
Aerospatiale’s design is a revision of an earlier concept, now surrounded by four solid rocket boosters rather than two. It draws heavily on technology that France has developed for Selene and its own missile programme. The consortium proposes to manufacture several parts of the vehicle outside France, including the payload fairing in Italy and upper stage tanks in the Netherlands.

At a post-landing press conference, the crew of Selene 2 and Selene Project Director-General Aubinere answer questions about the flight from a carefully selected audience. Seeking to limit the number of questions surrounding recent failures, many non-European and non-scientific journalists have been excluded from the meeting.
However, with the conference carried live on TV it is not possible to exclude all of the "troublemakers" and the negative and leading questions are soon flying. "Will the £30M Constellation rocket ever work properly?", "The same system has failed twice in a row, will it be third time lucky?", "Should we be co-operating with the Russians? ", "Are we really ready to go to the Moon?" … and so it continued.

The journalists' respect for the astronauts is notably higher than that shown to the Director, with most of the negative questions specifically directed at him. The last question finally triggers the response that so many have been trying to provoke:
"Does the failure of the Selene 2 rocket and the recent success of Zond 11 mean that the Russians will beat you to the Moon?"
While Director Aubinere visibly fumes at this latest impertinent question, Commander Larosse tactfully replies first, saying only that Selene is pursuing a carefully planned series of tests to ensure the highest chance of success and the greatest scientific return. However, after a short pause, Aubinere looks straight back and replies, with an air of Gallic contempt, "No, we will be first".

Privately, ministers on both side of the Channel are irritated at the statement. Publicly, the Selene Project has never been conducted in terms of a race with anyone. There are outstanding questions surrounding the failure of CLV-6 and it looks far from certain that Selene will be able to follow through on Aubinere’s boast.

The diplomatic and technical dance in Europe continues as a British-led bid for the European Intermediate Launch Vehicle contract is submitted. Despite the fact that Britain has yet to formally join ESRO, BAC and its major contractors have worked around the clock to respond to the French concept in only three weeks. What they have come up with is in fact a modified Silver Star, altered to meet European requirements.
The first stage would be shortened by 18' to reduce propellant load and two of the seven engines would be removed. An upper stage based on the known specifications of a French-built solid rocket motor would be fitted to deliver a payload of 2.4t to GTO. The proposal notes that "significant upgrades are possible" (i.e. simply build a “normal” Silver Star). The shortage of time prevented any formal agreements with international partners, but BAC has discussed the construction of interstage adaptors with Italian firm Aeritalia and the supply of communication and control equipment with several German firms. They are confident that the vehicle could be ready within 30 months.
In an attempt to sweeten the deal, UKAA offer to launch a “Symphonie” prototype on an unmodified Silver Star in 1974.

May-73 Overseas
NASA and US intelligence produce an analysis of the recent Zond 11 flight and the state of the Soviet space program. It is believed that their lunar lander (called the LK-M) is capable of supporting two crew on the lunar surface for up to 48 hours. Zond 11’s LK-M did not reach the lunar surface intact as initially reported by the Soviets, in fact contact was lost a few minutes before the scheduled landing. The crew on the LOK reported that they saw a "flash" close to the planned landing site, and it seems likely that the lander either crashed or suffered an engine failure in flight.
If the traditional pattern of Soviet tests is repeated, two successful unmanned tests would be needed before a manned landing is attempted. However, the CIA is able to confirm that this rule was overridden for Leonov's Zond 8 flight in 1970 and that there are only four N-1 rockets remaining (a second batch of rockets is delayed). These four rockets would support only two missions and it is therefore possible that a manned landing might be attempted on the second flight, if the first is successful. The best available intelligence suggests that pairs of launches are being prepared for June/July and October/November.
Selected details of the report, including the planned launch dates, are passed to British intelligence.


May-73
The ECPS fault investigation team reports on the failure of the CLV-6 launch vehicle used on Selene 2.
After the problems on the earlier CLV-5 flight, the ECPS stage of CLV-6 was removed from the pad to a hangar for further testing and inspection. To avoid time-consuming reassembly and re-testing of the entire stage, the R-1450 engine was not removed from the stage but was inspected in place. The critical SVV unit is located at the top of the engine, buried in between it and the stage's Oxygen tank. To access the unit some small parts, including several hydraulic lines, had to be removed and then replaced.
Many of the bolts were difficult to access and technicians had to make a customised spanner there and then in order to reach them. Unfortunately, changes to the torque settings were miscalculated and the bolts that clamped sections of the hydraulic lines together were left too loose when the lines were reassembled. In flight, vibration probably worked these even looser until seals failed and hydraulic fluid started to leak out. The failure was clearly not a complete one, as it took 50 seconds for the reserve of fluid stored in the system to leak away.
The findings of the report are that this rushed method of inspection, coupled with poor quality control of a non-standard piece of equipment led to the failure of the SVV system.
However, this was a one-off check. Current ECPS stages already incorporate the lessons learned from the CLV-5 fault. The investigators conclude that the fault has no impact on future flights (and therefore these can go ahead as planned) as the underlying system has been changed.


May-73 Overseas
NASA launches the core of its new space station "Skylab" on a Saturn III rocket.
This “Control-Habitat Core” will be joined later in the year by a second, similarly sized module equipped with additional power, storage and docking facilities. The two will be joined end-to-end, creating a station roughly twice the size of the earlier Spacelabs. Once complete, the new station will be capable of being refuelled and re-equipped while in orbit; it is anticipated that it will be operational until 1980. Early missions will visit the station on 3 or 4 man Apollo spacecraft. Once the Shuttle is operational later in the decade, Skylab will be able to accommodate up to 6 crewmembers.

 

[Shevek23]

..."Are we really ready to go to the Moon?" … and so it continued.

I have to say I'm amazed at how very ready the Anglo-French project does seem to be by this date.

...However, after a short pause, Aubinere looks straight back and replies, with an air of Gallic contempt, "No, we will be first".

I hope so. Because the writing seems to be on the wall that after one, maybe three landings, the Project will be rolled up, by French withdrawal, no matter what. If the Soviets are first, there might just be one Selene landing to prove they could do it, and no follow-through at all. Precisely because it has never been advertised as a race, and anyway the French are already satisfied they've got what benefit they signed on for.

Maybe it will change; hitherto Selene has been a negotiation between limited interest groups. In Britain the notion that it is a matter of national pride has caught on, but it seems less of a public issue in France.

But that might change; if French patriotism gets invested, the coalition of aeronautical/wanna-be astronautical firms and engineers might find themselves, or rather Selene as a program, lifted up on a tide of unwanted public support (much as Eisenhower found the Democratic-controlled Congress willing to fund military programs to a degree he found embarrassing).

...
The diplomatic and technical dance in Europe continues as a British-led bid for the European Intermediate Launch Vehicle contract is submitted. Despite the fact that Britain has yet to formally join ESRO, BAC and its major contractors have worked around the clock to respond to the French concept in only three weeks. What they have come up with is in fact a modified Silver Star, altered to meet European requirements.
The first stage would be shortened by 18' to reduce propellant load and two of the seven engines would be removed. An upper stage based on the known specifications of a French-built solid rocket motor would be fitted to deliver a payload of 2.4t to GTO. The proposal notes that "significant upgrades are possible" (i.e. simply build a “normal” Silver Star). ...

Well, this is a comedy of errors! Not the only one going in this thread, I'll get to that, but the problem of EuroSpace seems to be that the British, in developing an expensive but successful missile program that also upgrades nicely into a medium sized Saturn scale space launcher have pretty much cornered the market for big rockets. But they can't afford to sustain this monopoly. The French want to do it all over and by themselves, using expertise they may think is wrung third-hand from jealous Americans--actually what they've they've picked up from Selene is really British know-how, but the Americans still want to guard it because it is quite equivalent to their own.

Neither Britain nor France can afford to simply muscle in to a market Americans want to dominate on their own. (The Americans are making it easier by being less aggressive on the front of actual accomplishment. But make up for it by being all the more dog-in-the-manger, manipulating their alliance with both Britain and France to try to deny either what they could do on their own).

Both European leading powers need an alliance, a long-term partnership. Meanwhile the other leading European nations--Germany, and behind them in I don't want to say what order the Dutch, the Belgians, the Italians and who knows who else--I omit the Swedes only because of their long-standing policy of more truly going it alone and pushing their competence within the limits of that--all want their piece of the action too, and why not? And even Britain and France together perhaps cannot face down Yankee power and arrogance just by themselves, they ought to both make room for the rest of Europe as well and all stand together.

But how? Silver Star and Constellation are all-British, and have the more glorious (if perhaps not more lucrative, in terms of reliable) market share sections of the launch business all locked up. That is they would if one simply used the most cost-effective option currently available.

Going forward on this basis means handing a certain, and the most prestigious, share of European launch capability straight to the British. A sustainable stable of European launchers needs to be the shared product of all the major European nations, indeed some share has to go to everyone.

(It's the European version of the American dilemma that a NASA, or even DoD, patronized stable of launchers has to spread the governmental pork around many of the key Congressional districts and keep a viable mix of many contractors in business. Thus a Saturn launcher, be it "III" or "V" or even "1B" must be made by several major contractors subcontracting to rope in dozens of companies, all spread around the Northeast and West Coast and the South/Sunbelt too, with the Midwest perhaps claiming its piece of the action too, and therefore there are irrational costs of transporting stuff all across the continent when rationally the space biz should be concentrated at the launch sites).

So I'm not sure how to get there from here, with the French wanting to reinvent all the wheels the British have already fashioned, and the other nations needing to be involved in this too.

BAC deliberately dumbing down Silver Star to a lower range seemed insulting and pathetic to me, but hey, it may be the way to sustain the construction of Orion engines so there are more available for big projects that a confederated European program might sustain.

I hope you can save Europe from this cliffhanger, and show how all the potential European coalition members can get roped in and resolve to keep working together.

Because sadly--Uncle Sam, not getting it done. More comedy of errors.

May-73 Overseas
NASA and US intelligence produce an analysis of the recent Zond 11 flight and the state of the Soviet space program. It is believed that their lunar lander (called the LK-M) is capable of supporting two crew on the lunar surface for up to 48 hours. Zond 11’s LK-M did not reach the lunar surface intact as initially reported by the Soviets, in fact contact was lost a few minutes before the scheduled landing. The crew on the LOK reported that they saw a "flash" close to the planned landing site, and it seems likely that the lander either crashed or suffered an engine failure in flight.
If the traditional pattern of Soviet tests is repeated, two successful unmanned tests would be needed before a manned landing is attempted. However, the CIA is able to confirm that this rule was overridden for Leonov's Zond 8 flight in 1970 and that there are only four N-1 rockets remaining (a second batch of rockets is delayed). These four rockets would support only two missions and it is therefore possible that a manned landing might be attempted on the second flight, if the first is successful. The best available intelligence suggests that pairs of launches are being prepared for June/July and October/November.
Selected details of the report, including the planned launch dates, are passed to British intelligence.

Comedy of errors, Bolshoi Ballet edition. Actually Ivan seems to be dancing as fast as he can, here, and without the benefit of wires too.

They are tap-dancing through a minefield comprising two types of mines, it seems to me.

1) is N-1 really shaken down yet, or have they been lucky with the early launches. There are 4 of them ready to hand right now--are they all good, or are some of them duds? Will the test articles work OK only to have the real missions be the ones that show the flaws?

2) It isn't clear whether the LK-M is a good design that, Selene-style, has shown fixable minor flaws that prove fatal in the test articles, and will be fixed up to perform well on the real mission, or is the design fundamentally flawed? It may or may not have as much work put into it as the Selene descent stages do.

There is no doubt that Selene's design and construction firms have higher standards of craftsmanship and quality control than the Soviet bureaux can have. But they are working in a similar way, compared to the Americans. Uncle Sam's space program has a lot of money behind it, and so NASA and DoD can afford deep-pocketed development programs that dot the i's and cross the t's with lots of tests extended over many years. Selene has been working doggedly toward its goal for over a decade, and the lack of funds relative to NASA, let alone DoD, has forced them, like the Russians, to use launches meant to accomplish milestone missions (if all goes well) as test flights at the same time. So the apparently embarrassing string of malfunctions in missions that were hoped to achieve more is actually par for the course the two European nations can afford--just as the Soviets are improvising with spit and baling wire..

At this point both European blocs have designs in hand, and ready to be tested (in P Soviet case, being tested) for the arduous task of landing human beings safely on the Moon. (And then the Soviets have to also demonstrate the ability to get off the Moon again--the PROM seems to be well shaken down, matured and proven now and provided it can be refueled on the Moon we can be quite confident in it!)

The Soviet advantage, offsetting their basic poverty, is that they have been the ones to hit upon the rationally economical LOR approach. But that means they have a third type of mine in the minefield they dance in--I don't think they have the extensive track record of practice with orbital rendezvous they need to be confident. The LK-M might land a couple cosmonauts on the Moon, and even boost them right back off of it again, but if they have trouble rendezvousing with the Safir that would be their ride home, they can't close the loop.

Selene's nail-biter is whether the composite manned descent craft can land close enough to the cargo lander to get its fuel for ascent, and whether the problematic operation of moving that fuel from depot to return craft will come off smoothly or not. Basically it is Lunar Surface Rendezvous instead of orbital.

So the question of whether the West European Entente or the Soviets will get there and back again first is a real cliff-hanger.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention a notion I had for the Soviets to try:

Instead of using two N-1s on a test and then exhausting their current stock on a landing if all goes well with the test, they don't have to use both of the first ones on the next LK-M test. Using one to send that craft unmanned to the Moon, they could, instead of sending a big Safir to go into low lunar orbit, send a small one launched on a Proton to do a non-orbital Lunar flyby, timed to closely observe the LK-M's landing attempt.

Now if they did go ahead and use two N-1, the manned orbiter could wait around for the unmanned LK-M, if it lands OK this time, to send out a Lunokhod type rover probe (in lieu of a crew) to gather up a lot of more or less randomly picked moon rocks to load into the ascent module of the lander, up to the mass of two cosmonauts. And then observe the launch of that ascent module, intercept it, and take custody of the moon rocks. If it were a one-cosmonaut mission, the standard reentry capsule would then have the right mass for a three-man reentry and the Soviets would be the first to get moon rocks, lots of them, too.

But I was thinking that if they just did the fly-by to observe the landing, they could save one N-1 to be paired with one of the next batch given extra high priority for completion and have two pairs handy, in case the next LK-M unmanned test does not go as well as needed for a manned mission to follow immediately.

May-73
The ECPS fault investigation team reports on the failure of the CLV-6 launch vehicle used on Selene 2.
After the problems on the earlier CLV-5 flight, the ECPS stage of CLV-6 was removed from the pad to a hangar for further testing and inspection. To avoid time-consuming reassembly and re-testing of the entire stage, the R-1450 engine was not removed from the stage but was inspected in place. The critical SVV unit is located at the top of the engine, buried in between it and the stage's Oxygen tank. To access the unit some small parts, including several hydraulic lines, had to be removed and then replaced.
Many of the bolts were difficult to access and technicians had to make a customised spanner there and then in order to reach them. Unfortunately, changes to the torque settings were miscalculated and the bolts that clamped sections of the hydraulic lines together were left too loose when the lines were reassembled. In flight, vibration probably worked these even looser until seals failed and hydraulic fluid started to leak out. The failure was clearly not a complete one, as it took 50 seconds for the reserve of fluid stored in the system to leak away.
The findings of the report are that this rushed method of inspection, coupled with poor quality control of a non-standard piece of equipment led to the failure of the SVV system.
However, this was a one-off check. Current ECPS stages already incorporate the lessons learned from the CLV-5 fault. The investigators conclude that the fault has no impact on future flights (and therefore these can go ahead as planned) as the underlying system has been changed.

I don't know if anyone here is following Jared's dual threads on a habitable Venus or not. On the Venus Space Program thread I just last night put up a lot of ranting against hypergolic launchers in general and Chelomei's UR-700 in particular ("Dragon's Blood Sword of Damocles, Now in the Kiloton Range, with Compounded and extra-egregious Overconfidence!") And being questioned on my personal family connection to America's own Nedelin Incident led me to purchase a book, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser, Penguin Books, NY, 2013. (My late uncle is not in the index, and after all was not killed in the incident but rather poisoned in the post-mortem--but I'm only about 7 percent into the book just yet).

In a background bit, I learned about some kludging with the Fat Man bomb that ultimately struck Nagasaki--at the island base from which the B-29 "Bockscar" would fly to strike a second time at Japan, the bomb had had a vital electrical component mis-installed. To disassemble it, fix the mistake, and reassmemble it meticulously would have taken weeks, so a few guys with soldering irons kludged the wiring to a functional state. (Other wacky shenanigans also happened on that mission that could have led to total failures and might be a good POD, though honestly "WI Nagasaki were not bombed because of loss of the Fat Man?" probably would not divert history all that much--I daresay that even if it took months to replace the damn thing Truman would have held off on the invasion until the next bomb was ready and tried, and maybe Japan would surrender in the interim...side track, sorry).

The point being, this sort of kludge leading to embarrassing results has lots of company in the history of technical advancement.

May-73 Overseas
NASA launches the core of its new space station "Skylab" on a Saturn III rocket.
This “Control-Habitat Core” will be joined later in the year by a second, similarly sized module equipped with additional power, storage and docking facilities. The two will be joined end-to-end, creating a station roughly twice the size of the earlier Spacelabs. Once complete, the new station will be capable of being refuelled and re-equipped while in orbit; it is anticipated that it will be operational until 1980. Early missions will visit the station on 3 or 4 man Apollo spacecraft. Once the Shuttle is operational later in the decade, Skylab will be able to accommodate up to 6 crewmembers.

Comedy of Errors, Broadway edition.

The Americans need an LM. They don't have an LM. Making one NASA style would take years they don't have if they don't want to be #3 on the Moon. The sorts of kludges considered in the early and mid-60s OTL would not cut it in the face of Selene's elaborate, extended missions or the sort of LK-M the Soviets might have on hand to be send by a dedicated N-1 launch. The Americans have the deep space craft, and the launcher, but no lander.

And so, whichever Old World bloc gets feet on the Moon first (and hopefully returns them to Earth alive), Uncle Sam will surely be no more than #3, if we bother at all.

This makes me sad. It's absurdist humor, with America as Godot.

(Hey, you know Beckett's estate goes around suppressing unauthorized performances of Waiting for Godot, don't you? Watch your back, sts!)

 

[sts-200]

I have to say I'm amazed at how very ready the Anglo-French project does seem to be by this date.

I hope so. Because the writing seems to be on the wall that after one, maybe three landings, the Project will be rolled up, by French withdrawal, no matter what. If the Soviets are first, there might just be one Selene landing to prove they could do it, and no follow-through at all. Precisely because it has never been advertised as a race, and anyway the French are already satisfied they've got what benefit they signed on for.

Maybe it will change; hitherto Selene has been a negotiation between limited interest groups. In Britain the notion that it is a matter of national pride has caught on, but it seems less of a public issue in France.

But that might change; if French patriotism gets invested, the coalition of aeronautical/wanna-be astronautical firms and engineers might find themselves, or rather Selene as a program, lifted up on a tide of unwanted public support (much as Eisenhower found the Democratic-controlled Congress willing to fund military programs to a degree he found embarrassing).

-Unfortunately that’s one thing this story shares with Apollo – the writing is on the wall before the goal has been achieved. Having staunchly supported the Project for years, the French are ready to move on to other things. The Brits are still (barely) convinced that it is supporting their aerospace industry, but times are beginning to change. We’ll have to see what the public reaction is come the first landing.

Well, this is a comedy of errors! Not the only one going in this thread, I'll get to that, but the problem of EuroSpace seems to be that the British, in developing an expensive but successful missile program that also upgrades nicely into a medium sized Saturn scale space launcher have pretty much cornered the market for big rockets. But they can't afford to sustain this monopoly. The French want to do it all over and by themselves, using expertise they may think is wrung third-hand from jealous Americans--actually what they've they've picked up from Selene is really British know-how, but the Americans still want to guard it because it is quite equivalent to their own.

Neither Britain nor France can afford to simply muscle in to a market Americans want to dominate on their own. (The Americans are making it easier by being less aggressive on the front of actual accomplishment. But make up for it by being all the more dog-in-the-manger, manipulating their alliance with both Britain and France to try to deny either what they could do on their own).

-The US administration is playing it very cool. They know they have the upper hand, through a much broader program than (the admittedly more spectacular) Selene. They’ve controlled the possible threat of British comsat exports by bringing the UK into a solid second position in Intelsat, while doing their best to limit what the European satellite industry can do (as they did in reality – that’s where Ariane came from).
Tacit US support for Selene is another thing – it doesn’t cost much and keeps pressure on the Soviets, until the Shuttle comes along and revolutionises everything.
Well … that’s the theory anyway.

Both European leading powers need an alliance, a long-term partnership. Meanwhile the other leading European nations--Germany, and behind them in I don't want to say what order the Dutch, the Belgians, the Italians and who knows who else--I omit the Swedes only because of their long-standing policy of more truly going it alone and pushing their competence within the limits of that--all want their piece of the action too, and why not? And even Britain and France together perhaps cannot face down Yankee power and arrogance just by themselves, they ought to both make room for the rest of Europe as well and all stand together.

But how? Silver Star and Constellation are all-British, and have the more glorious (if perhaps not more lucrative, in terms of reliable) market share sections of the launch business all locked up. That is they would if one simply used the most cost-effective option currently available.

Going forward on this basis means handing a certain, and the most prestigious, share of European launch capability straight to the British. A sustainable stable of European launchers needs to be the shared product of all the major European nations, indeed some share has to go to everyone.

(It's the European version of the American dilemma that a NASA, or even DoD, patronized stable of launchers has to spread the governmental pork around many of the key Congressional districts and keep a viable mix of many contractors in business. Thus a Saturn launcher, be it "III" or "V" or even "1B" must be made by several major contractors subcontracting to rope in dozens of companies, all spread around the Northeast and West Coast and the South/Sunbelt too, with the Midwest perhaps claiming its piece of the action too, and therefore there are irrational costs of transporting stuff all across the continent when rationally the space biz should be concentrated at the launch sites).

So I'm not sure how to get there from here, with the French wanting to reinvent all the wheels the British have already fashioned, and the other nations needing to be involved in this too.

BAC deliberately dumbing down Silver Star to a lower range seemed insulting and pathetic to me, but hey, it may be the way to sustain the construction of Orion engines so there are more available for big projects that a confederated European program might sustain.

-BAC’s design is a hasty ploy to try to stay in a game that’s stacked in favour of the French. Europe/ESRO is a “Frenchman’s club” and the British are still outsiders. Even BAC don’t think it’s a good idea, but it's cheap and building half of a stupid design is better than nothing.
Naturally, one would expect the French to be a bit further ahead with organising European co-operation, and their argument that developing an “efficient, right-sized” launcher that will also benefit the rest of the European aerospace industry is a difficult one to counter.
That said, Britain has friends too and these are only the opening moves.

I hope you can save Europe from this cliffhanger, and show how all the potential European coalition members can get roped in and resolve to keep working together.

Because sadly--Uncle Sam, not getting it done. More comedy of errors.

Comedy of errors, Bolshoi Ballet edition. Actually Ivan seems to be dancing as fast as he can, here, and without the benefit of wires too.

They are tap-dancing through a minefield comprising two types of mines, it seems to me.

1) is N-1 really shaken down yet, or have they been lucky with the early launches. There are 4 of them ready to hand right now--are they all good, or are some of them duds? Will the test articles work OK only to have the real missions be the ones that show the flaws?

-There’s the 64,000 rouble question. A new Lada and three-room flat on Gagarinskiy Prospekt for the winner, an expenses-paid vacation in Siberia for the loser.

2) It isn't clear whether the LK-M is a good design that, Selene-style, has shown fixable minor flaws that prove fatal in the test articles, and will be fixed up to perform well on the real mission, or is the design fundamentally flawed? It may or may not have as much work put into it as the Selene descent stages do.

-It’s probably somewhere in the middle, Western intelligence hasn’t been able to find out yet (there’s a classic author’s device to avoid difficult questions).
Despite the name, it shares very little with the tiny LK. With two N-1s (although the N-1 of the story isn’t as powerful as the real one), they have a lot more mass to play with. The LK-M is a bigger two man, two stage lander with a mass of about 15t in lunar orbit, not totally dissimilar to a certain Grumman product.

There is no doubt that Selene's design and construction firms have higher standards of craftsmanship and quality control than the Soviet bureaux can have. But they are working in a similar way, compared to the Americans. Uncle Sam's space program has a lot of money behind it, and so NASA and DoD can afford deep-pocketed development programs that dot the i's and cross the t's with lots of tests extended over many years. Selene has been working doggedly toward its goal for over a decade, and the lack of funds relative to NASA, let alone DoD, has forced them, like the Russians, to use launches meant to accomplish milestone missions (if all goes well) as test flights at the same time. So the apparently embarrassing string of malfunctions in missions that were hoped to achieve more is actually par for the course the two European nations can afford--just as the Soviets are improvising with spit and baling wire..

-Exactly. The US has plenty of resources – both money and numbers of trained people, so peripheral and backup research are quite practical, without damaging the overall program.
Selene can’t afford to be distracted in that way. What they do has to work, or be made to work, or they suffer crippling delays.
The big Soviet/Western difference lies in management and in a few niche technical areas. Directly or indirectly, Selene has access to lots of earlier US experience on how to manage these things and knows the necessity for all sorts of quality control.
In Russia, there was something of an institutional aversion to spending money on ground tests (at this time), together with unachievable political goals and in-fighting.
Selene also has the huge advantage of Western control, telemetry and computer systems – meaning that their systems can be more fault-tolerance, or at least when they do fail, they have a lot more information available about what went wrong.
They failed a lot in the 60s, and lessons have been learned.

At this point both European blocs have designs in hand, and ready to be tested (in P Soviet case, being tested) for the arduous task of landing human beings safely on the Moon. (And then the Soviets have to also demonstrate the ability to get off the Moon again--the PROM seems to be well shaken down, matured and proven now and provided it can be refueled on the Moon we can be quite confident in it!)

The Soviet advantage, offsetting their basic poverty, is that they have been the ones to hit upon the rationally economical LOR approach. But that means they have a third type of mine in the minefield they dance in--I don't think they have the extensive track record of practice with orbital rendezvous they need to be confident. The LK-M might land a couple cosmonauts on the Moon, and even boost them right back off of it again, but if they have trouble rendezvousing with the Safir that would be their ride home, they can't close the loop.

-And they only have a few hours to do it, as the Apollo guys did. On the other hand, the Soviets did put a lot of effort into automatic rendezvous and docking systems.

Selene's nail-biter is whether the composite manned descent craft can land close enough to the cargo lander to get its fuel for ascent, and whether the problematic operation of moving that fuel from depot to return craft will come off smoothly or not. Basically it is Lunar Surface Rendezvous instead of orbital.

-They’re pretty confident about the landing. In many ways it’s not too different from a launch and there is a bit of slack when it comes to accuracy. The goal is to land a few hundred yards from the cargo ship, but they will have a rover and several days’ life support, so if it happens to be a few miles that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re stuck.
The bigger risk is if it is more difficult to move things over the surface than was thought, that’s why they were keen on soil dynamics experiments with Explorateur (and seeing whatever results NASA had). There is a chapter on all that coming later.

So the question of whether the West European Entente or the Soviets will get there and back again first is a real cliff-hanger.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention a notion I had for the Soviets to try:

Instead of using two N-1s on a test and then exhausting their current stock on a landing if all goes well with the test, they don't have to use both of the first ones on the next LK-M test. Using one to send that craft unmanned to the Moon, they could, instead of sending a big Safir to go into low lunar orbit, send a small one launched on a Proton to do a non-orbital Lunar flyby, timed to closely observe the LK-M's landing attempt.

Now if they did go ahead and use two N-1, the manned orbiter could wait around for the unmanned LK-M, if it lands OK this time, to send out a Lunokhod type rover probe (in lieu of a crew) to gather up a lot of more or less randomly picked moon rocks to load into the ascent module of the lander, up to the mass of two cosmonauts. And then observe the launch of that ascent module, intercept it, and take custody of the moon rocks. If it were a one-cosmonaut mission, the standard reentry capsule would then have the right mass for a three-man reentry and the Soviets would be the first to get moon rocks, lots of them, too.

But I was thinking that if they just did the fly-by to observe the landing, they could save one N-1 to be paired with one of the next batch given extra high priority for completion and have two pairs handy, in case the next LK-M unmanned test does not go as well as needed for a manned mission to follow immediately.

-These things can’t be reconfigured that easily, and you can't do a free-return flyby that closely observes the Moon's nearside. The whole system is based on two N-1s, so that’s what they’ll have to use. One launches a booster stage to LEO, the other puts up the LOK, LK-M and a bigger version of the Block-D stage.
Your next point about the manned lander waiting in orbit is spot on – they want to demonstrate the complete LK-M landing/takeoff/rendezvous before committing a crew to the surface. It will be a standard 3-man LOK, although there would still be room for a few Moon rocks if they can scoop some up automatically.

I don't know if anyone here is following Jared's dual threads on a habitable Venus or not. On the Venus Space Program thread I just last night put up a lot of ranting against hypergolic launchers in general and Chelomei's UR-700 in particular ("Dragon's Blood Sword of Damocles, Now in the Kiloton Range, with Compounded and extra-egregious Overconfidence!") And being questioned on my personal family connection to America's own Nedelin Incident led me to purchase a book, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser, Penguin Books, NY, 2013. (My late uncle is not in the index, and after all was not killed in the incident but rather poisoned in the post-mortem--but I'm only about 7 percent into the book just yet).

In a background bit, I learned about some kludging with the Fat Man bomb that ultimately struck Nagasaki--at the island base from which the B-29 "Bockscar" would fly to strike a second time at Japan, the bomb had had a vital electrical component mis-installed. To disassemble it, fix the mistake, and reassmemble it meticulously would have taken weeks, so a few guys with soldering irons kludged the wiring to a functional state. (Other wacky shenanigans also happened on that mission that could have led to total failures and might be a good POD, though honestly "WI Nagasaki were not bombed because of loss of the Fat Man?" probably would not divert history all that much--I daresay that even if it took months to replace the damn thing Truman would have held off on the invasion until the next bomb was ready and tried, and maybe Japan would surrender in the interim...side track, sorry).

The point being, this sort of kludge leading to embarrassing results has lots of company in the history of technical advancement.

-Not nice stuff Nitrogen Tet., give me HTP any day. At least they never got around to using Chlorine trifluoride. I have occasionally thought about transplanting that incident a thousand(ish) miles East and moving it up to January 28, 1986. Something dropped onto the leading edge of Challenger’s wing that morning would produce interesting consequences for the Shuttle program – and not necessarily all good ones.

These are the things that make space travel hard. Building a (small) launch vehicle, designing a guidance system, putting together a satellite – none of those things are overwhelmingly complex or expensive on their own.
Making sure your fifty contractors don’t make any mistakes with 50,000 parts, and then checking and re-checking each of them, then checking that they will all work well together for the next ten years is what costs; and woe betide you if you have to make a design change - that one change probably affects ten other systems; all of which then need to be re-tested.

Comedy of Errors, Broadway edition.

The Americans need an LM. They don't have an LM. Making one NASA style would take years they don't have if they don't want to be #3 on the Moon. The sorts of kludges considered in the early and mid-60s OTL would not cut it in the face of Selene's elaborate, extended missions or the sort of LK-M the Soviets might have on hand to be send by a dedicated N-1 launch. The Americans have the deep space craft, and the launcher, but no lander.

And so, whichever Old World bloc gets feet on the Moon first (and hopefully returns them to Earth alive), Uncle Sam will surely be no more than #3, if we bother at all.

This makes me sad. It's absurdist humor, with America as Godot.

(Hey, you know Beckett's estate goes around suppressing unauthorized performances of Waiting for Godot, don't you? Watch your back, sts!)

-I think the absurdity began with the first sentence of this story.
I had to come up with a way of stopping the US getting to the Moon first – if they had (let’s say in a different story they did it in 1970) I can’t see Selene being continued for long enough to succeed. Selene didn’t start as a race, but it has been sustained for some years partly by the unspoken hope that they might beat the Russians and give a couple of second-rate powers the chance to score a world-beating success.
If the Americans had got there already there wouldn’t be that incentive and the whole thing could be abandoned whenever either partner next got cold feet. We might have seen an Anglo-French module on a US space station, or Europeanised PROM ferry capsule. That might not be bad for Europe’s space programs, but it wouldn’t be the same story.
The easiest way of stopping NASA without making them look stupid was for them to be less focussed and slightly less well funded. Early success made them look good (don’t forget in the story the US orbited Shepard before Gagarin went up) while reinforcing the message Kennedy would have received on entering office - that his “missile gap” was just fantasy. There wasn't the same need for a major space effort, so research could proceed more steadily, following several paths rather than going all-out for the Moon. Here, the LM is like Apollo Applications, it was always the follow-on, to be funded “tomorrow”; and of course tomorrow never came.

Although NASA has no immediate plans to send anyone to the Moon, as you say they have lots of long-duration experience. They’re not doing too badly – they have just launched their fourth space station and a Shuttle is 3 years into development.

 

[Archibald]

until the Shuttle comes along and revolutionises everything

Provided the shuttle doesn't become OTL white elephant (I do know ITTL Shuttle is smaller and cheaper, but still, building a workable RLV with 70's technology is a tall order)

 

[sts-200]

Provided the shuttle doesn't become OTL white elephant (I do know ITTL Shuttle is smaller and cheaper, but still, building a workable RLV with 70's technology is a tall order)

It was (and still is with today's tech). As I said, that's the theory. The Shuttle's off to a good start, but we'll have to see.

 

[sts-200]

The Sound of Silence

Jun-73
The MoD starts a new programme, codenamed Cavalier, to develop a series of improvements to the targeting and decoy systems of Black Anvil missiles.

Jun-73 Overseas
NASA mission Skylab-2 (sometimes called Apollo 16) docks with the core of the new Skylab space station. During a 27 day setup mission the crew activate some of the station’s systems, start several long-duration experiments and prepare the aft berthing port for the arrival of the station's second module later in the year.


Jun-73
Ministers meet to discuss the long term future of the Selene Project. Although the mood at the meeting seems positive, even cheerful, all parties are now in agreement that the Project needs a defined end. The original treaty calls for a “series of manned missions to explore and map the lunar surface”. In the early days, it was widely assumed that this might mean six to eight landings, perhaps leading on to other goals. Such ideas have long since passed, and for some years no-one has seriously expected to fly more than four manned missions.
The point of difference lies in the timing. Officially, Britain is still in favour of a four flight plan (meaning 4 lunar landings) through to 1975, although there is clearly room for negotiation. France is seeking to shut down the Project after the second successful landing. Australian interest is dropping quickly, partly as a consequence of Britain's shift of political and economic focus towards the EEC.
The British position is dominated by concerns over ESRO, as the French are still stalling over finalising the terms of British membership. Britain’s position comes down to "How quickly can we join ESRO and agree programmes to replace some of the work now being done for Selene?", while that of the French is "How quickly can we shut down the Project, so that we can start work on other programmes?"
No decision is reached, but the outlines of a three-flight plan are left open for discussion.

BOAC makes its first supersonic route proving flight from London to Sydney, with the Boeing 7227 landing in Bahrain and Singapore to refuel. The airline plans to introduce a twice weekly supersonic service to the Far East and Australia later in the year.

The UKAA looks to other government departments for support in Selene and ESRO negotiations with France. Before the formation of UKAA, space research in the UK was funded on a multi-departmental basis, with responsibilities varying according to the type of programme. Many developments enjoyed broad support from both military and civil agencies, and the management, funding and responsibility for the space program spanned several departments, all of which therefore had some interest in seeing it continued.

Now, with the UKAA as an agency of the DTI, space research does not enjoy quite the same broad bureaucratic support.
There is little money in the Science budget to support space operations, beyond a few scientific satellites. Selene is particularly vulnerable here, as many leading British scientists regard the lunar programme as a waste of money (or rather they think that the money would be better spent on their projects).
The missile programme is secure under the control of the MoD, with Black Anvil now forming the core of Britain's deterrent capability. The UK has significant access to US space assets as well as the new NATO communications satellites launched by the Americans. Few in the MoD regard any type of military satellite programme as a priority.
Government and government-owned organisations are becoming tired of pouring money into spacecraft development. The official view has shifted; firms such as HSD should be encouraged to develop systems on a purely commercial basis, both for export and for the government to buy where required. The existence of several orders for British satellites from overseas suggests that a more commercial mode of operation should now be viable.
The GPO is discussing a "Hermes Mk.3" satellite design with HSD, however they are not interested in fully funding the development and are looking towards some sort of risk-sharing agreement. The technical concept represents a significant advance on the original Hermes Mk.1 and Mk.2 designs. It includes solid-state solar panels in place of solar thermal generators, a revised bus and a more powerful transmitter payload which would allow up to four TV channels per satellite. Operation life would be 6 years (vs. 3 on the original Hermes) and the same basic bus could be reconfigured for more traditional point-to-point telephone or long-distance TV relay.

Countdown tests on CLV-7 are started at Rainbow Beach. The rocket is scheduled to launch the unmanned Selene 4 mission towards the Moon on the 4th July.

Pan Am and Air France begin scheduled supersonic services between New York and Paris. The French airline announces that their Paris-New York route will be extended to Caracas and French Guiana twice a week later in the year.

HSD are successful with their bid to build two of the next generation of Intelsat spacecraft. These "Block 4B" satellites will be built to a standard design based on the American-built Block 4 spacecraft, not HSD's own "Hermes" platform. Although the firm is only assembling, rather than designing the spacecraft, it is still a valuable export order.

Jul-73 Overseas
NASA launches two "Viking" Mars probes on board a Saturn III rocket.
The launch is successful and both probes go on to enter Mars orbit in 1974. Both deploy large landers to the surface which return colour images, atmospheric and soil data over the 9 and 10 days after their landing, until their batteries run out. The solar powered orbiters operate for much longer, although the loss of the Viking 2 orbiter on 18th December 1974 reduces the number of high quality surface photos that are returned. Viking 1 operates until June 1976.

Jul-73
Selene 4 lifts off from Rainbow Beach.
It is expected that this unmanned test version of the VDL-Cargo will touch down on the Moon four days after liftoff, however news of the landing comes almost twelve hours later than was expected. After what is announced as a successful landing, the press soon pick up on the fact that that there is a lack of the usual follow-up images and publicity regarding the flight. Even “off the record” discussions with Project managers and the astronauts seem to be very hard to arrange.

Over the past month or so, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain information on the Project, or more specifically, about its future plans. Such circumstantial evidence has alerted the press to the fact that something out of the ordinary is happening at the Selene Project and several speculative articles appear on the inner pages of various papers while journalists follow their leads. The Selene Project is usually very open about its operations, and the sudden quiet is noticed by both inside and outside observers. Three days later, only a few surface images have been published and even the Selene Public Relations Office complains to Project managers that no-one is being made available for comment.

On Friday the 13th July, the Selene Board is alerted to a request made by a Daily Telegraph journalist in London.
The Public Relations Office has been notified that the paper intends to run a story on Sunday about the dismantling of the Selene Project. Investigations have led to the conclusion that Britain and France are seeking to shut down the Project as quickly as possible. They intend to publish several details, together with "informed speculation" that the lack of any major public announcements regarding Selene 4 points to yet another failure, lending support to the theory that cancellation may be imminent.
A request has been made for comment on the article.

Late on Friday afternoon, it is announced that a press conference will be held on Saturday at the Project’s headquarters in Paris.

 

[Archibald]

OMG no - don't let Selene ends like goddam OTL Apollo, six landings and then four decades of doing nothing. I'm quite sure Selene still has some tricks under its sleeves.

 

[TheBatafour]

I'm with Archibald-Britain and France can and should do better than this. Surely the public backlash will get them moving their proverbial asses? Let's hope this is just the darkness before dawn, and not the imminent end of Selene's greatness...

 

[e of pi]

I guess I'll break from the others and say I think that a quick end to Selene after a few landings seems both most plausible and within the political situation laid out. For one thing, that's basically the planned program at the moment, and both France and Britain are barely resigned to funding the program to that level of completion at the moment. That, in turn, makes its own sense. The cost is certainly on the level of Apollo from OTL, and that was a rather large burden for the US budget. For France and the UK, with their combined 1975 GDP being about a third the US, that burden is even more out-sized. There's little political benefit to an expensive continuing program to merely hold equal to the Soviets, and the partnership behind Selene here is barely being held together at the seams by the goal of the moon. I'd say a few landings and abandonment seems quite likely, and honestly if Selene 4 is a major failure it might even be a major stretch to just get a single landing.

The public backlash is probably a worry that's overstated. Even IOTL, American support for Apollo peaked at about 50%, and that wasn't enough to create a "backlash" from cancelling it. Not one that had any real political meaning, anyway. With three times the relative impact on the budget, that makes Selene even more of a prospect for cuts as we come into the late 70s, the oil crisis, stagflation, and all that jazz. It has to be recognized the amount of luck that went into Selene making it this close to the moon--managing even one entirely anglo-french landing before anyone else would be a minor miracle that required a certain degree of thumb-on-the-scale. A cancellation after that is achieved and the planned missions are flown out seems likely even with the situation sts has created.

 

[Shevek23]

OMG no - don't let Selene ends like goddam OTL Apollo, six landings and then four decades of doing nothing.

Worse than that. Three landings at most--the British side having conceded, however tacitly and indirectly, on the fourth means with the French attitude that they'll never get even that back. Let alone an open-ended program.

Not as Selene anyway. They'd have to go back to the drawing board, take a few years to make it more European, less British, and maybe then there would be an *ESA follow-up program.

Unless something changes the equation a lot.

I'm quite sure Selene still has some tricks under its sleeves.

I don't think Selene, the project, can. The French are determined to pull out and perhaps negotiate a new deal with Britain, that might well mean a third chapter in this story--remember, "The Selene Project" is a sequel to the prelude TL. The Selene chapter is definitely approaching an end--the question is, will there be a next thing after it or not?

For that, I share your hopes.

But meanwhile--good tricks under sleeves are not the only kind of tricks.

Doesn't the point of the last update seem that some sort of very bad trick has befallen the VDL-Cargo ship? This is the first landing attempt of an all-up Selene spacecraft, and we know how long it took to get the unmanned probe landers to work successfully.

There shouldn't be panic if the Cargo ship came down hard, leaked away the stored fuel (or would have if it had any; perhaps they substituted some other mass since this one is not landed to fuel a PROM to go home?)

Something is clearly wrong on the Moon. No one should panic; they'll fix the cause on the next test landing. This is how Selene works, as I said before, much like the Soviet program. To learn by trial and error you have to try--and err.

But given the political climate, it might be misinterpreted.

And so it might be worse than Apollo of OTL--not six landings, and not three, and then nothing--but no landings--and then nothing.

If you are disappointed in the failure of the USA OTL to extend Apollo-Lunar and then not follow it with anything manned higher than ISS--consider how many times it looked like Selene, and even the Black Anvil/Silver Star-Constellation projects, would suffer the fate of all too many OTL British schemes--make solid and impressive progress toward a worthy if not quite perfect goal, only to be scrapped just before, or if very lucky just after, the first success? That would be disappointing.

And that is what seems to be in the cards once again.

The author is downright Hitchcokian in the matter of cliffhanging suspense.

Must be a British trait.

I'm with Archibald-Britain and France can and should do better than this. Surely the public backlash will get them moving their proverbial asses? Let's hope this is just the darkness before dawn, and not the imminent end of Selene's greatness...

Well, the negative "public" backlash is not the masses, you know. It's all a bunch of elite interests. Naturally, the power elite, in all its diversity, thinks it is the Public, all the Public that matters anyway.

But I still wonder if there is a place in this story for the real public, the people, to weigh in and do so with an attitude that would surprise the elites.

I believe that if you took a poll of the masses of the American people at any time, from the late 1950s when the Eisenhower administration wanted to slow down and proceed very deliberately toward Man in Space, right into the mid-1970s when Apollo was dead and the USA had no manned launch capability whatsoever until the Shuttle became operational, and perhaps any and every year since then, that they are by a large majority in favor of manned space flight as a national commitment, and more in favor of doing more than saving money by cutting back.

It isn't entirely a rational thing. It is a spiritual thing, and I freely admit my own enthusiasm and interest is not contingent entirely on the idea that space exploration is profitable. I am also confident that in the broadest sense it must be and has proven to be so--but getting rich, or getting the drop on the Russians or whomever we've decided to make the Enemy this generation or that, is not the entire point. The point is we do it because we want to, and if it were a matter of public referendum, we'd do more than we have.

So--while the "informed" and "responsible" public is too keenly aware of responsibility to rational interests, there is another public, which is the actual people of Great Britain and France. They are, I would expect, quite proud and confident their boffins and astronaut heroes can pull it off and are taking for granted they must and will do so.

We've already seen this sort of thing in effect, back in the later 60s, I believe it was '68, when Labour leadership, feeling a responsibility to criticize and question a project that appeared to them as a costly military-industrial Tory boondoggle, discovered that their rank and file rather liked Selene and probably with it Black Anvil. And so they backed off and took ownership of it instead.

In my opinion, were this timeline made real and taken out of the hands of its author, the common people of Britain and France might surprise the know-it-all leadership. And the story, in the hands of this author, has already shown us that kind of thing happening once before.

Circumstances are different now to be sure. Although HMG managed to be in embarrassing fiscal straits in the late '60s, the world economy as a whole and even Britain's was still quite buoyant from the long boom that crested in the go-go Sixties. Now it is the stagflation-plagued 1970s.

It would be mendacious for politicians to turn to the voters with a shrug and say, "well, we want to see our people go the Moon too, but the budget is coming up short, and if you really want that you'll have to have a big tax hike, and see cuts in your housing and schools and national health...is it worth that much to you?" The mendacious part is that while a trip to the Moon does cost a lot of pounds and francs, compared to the national budgets and GNP it isn't much at all--those tax hikes and service cuts will be funding other agendas mostly, and will come regardless of whether Selene continues (for three landings anyway, or maybe just two, or one) or not.

But what ever stops politicians, and newspaper editorialists, from being mendacious?

As I say, it is a nail-biter.

But I find it hard to believe the two leading nations of Europe would go this far, and demonstrate so much technological leadership, and then simply toss it all aside. I suspect, whether the author has time to write it or not, there must be another chapter and who knows how many of them, after Selene.

And meanwhile I still want to see if Selene or the Russians get there first.

 

[Incognitia]

Well, I've caught up with this fascinating TL.

I had no idea what to expect when I clicked on it (and then backed up to read the prequel), but a plausible Anglo-French moonshot was not it.
This is excellent work, and certainly the British side of it rings true for how so many project were pursued, then cancelled.

Keep up the good work - it seems I've caught up just in time to see the landing itself (hopefully)!

 

[sts-200]

Well, that got everyone talking didn’t it?

I know all us Anglophiles would love Selene to go onwards and upwards, but the party must end sometime.

Shevek23 and E of Pi’s posts above are worth a read if you haven’t already. I will neither confirm nor deny all the details at present, but there is some well-considered reasoning and speculation there.
That being said, there might be reasons for Ministers and Selene personnel to be cheerful. One thing is for sure, they're living in interesting times.

Sorry folks, I can’t really comment more than that without giving too much away.

 

[sts-200]

...
The author is downright Hitchcokian in the matter of cliffhanging suspense.

Must be a British trait.
...

Yes, I do love a good cliffhanger…
… and I’m going to stretch this press conference one out a bit longer.

Up next, we go back a few weeks, to the unmanned flight of Selene 4.

 

[sts-200]

Well, I've caught up with this fascinating TL.

I had no idea what to expect when I clicked on it (and then backed up to read the prequel), but a plausible Anglo-French moonshot was not it.
This is excellent work, and certainly the British side of it rings true for how so many project were pursued, then cancelled.

Keep up the good work - it seems I've caught up just in time to see the landing itself (hopefully)!

Glad to hear it, I've tried not to make it totally predictable.

Welcome to 1973.