The Snow Flies: A History of the Soviet Space Shuttle

[Bahamut-255]

That was always the problem with both STS and Buran. One was a compromise (and compromised) design built to keep people in jobs and maintain US Manned Spaceflight against a Congress whose interest was low. The other was a panicked counter-move to maintain parity (and inadvertently aided Reagan in brining down the USSR IOTL) for scenarios that never materialised.

That said, there is something about them. A beauty, and...elegance(?) to them, that makes them so likeable. Just looking at even the images shown here, you really get the sense they're flying.

That's the Sodruzhestvo (TTL Don) LV you're speaking of? I can see this being far more likely to get built ITTL with a surviving USSR, which makes the Zenit-based system rather more feasible. The obvious penalty I can see here is that volume could be a concern, with large-diameter payloads demanding a massive hammerhead payload fairing. But then I suppose they'd just design said payloads to be able to fit within the reasonable limits.

And was that talks of an International Lunar Base (ILB) I hear? It would make for an interesting follow-on to this TL. Assuming relations can remain warm enough (and economic conditions good enough) to allow it. And/Or enough international partners to make cancelling it not worth the effort.

 

[fasquardon]

And was that talks of an International Lunar Base (ILB) I hear? It would make for an interesting follow-on to this TL. Assuming relations can remain warm enough (and economic conditions good enough) to allow it. And/Or enough international partners to make cancelling it not worth the effort.

Given that NASA was said to have been put off by Soviet safety culture, I doubt the ILB would actually happen ITTL.

I wonder if the Soviets might get into a moon race with China though? (Bad enough that the Americans beat them and they lost their only shuttle, but to have the Chinese add to that by beating them to the moon too? Terrible!)

That was always the problem with both STS and Buran. One was a compromise (and compromised) design built to keep people in jobs and maintain US Manned Spaceflight against a Congress whose interest was low. The other was a panicked counter-move to maintain parity (and inadvertently aided Reagan in brining down the USSR IOTL) for scenarios that never materialised.

I think the real problem is that the Shuttle was a system for which the political will didn't exist and the Buran in TTL is in the same boat with an added dash of economic constriction.

The actual hardware had some fascinating applications, and I think in a situation where the US (or indeed the Soviets) had the money and interest for loftier goals, the system could have filled purposes that a capsule or a smaller vehicle could not.

This is the real problem of the Shuttle IMO - NASA designed it as part of a large program including a space station, a moon base, a nuclear tug and over a dozen shuttle orbiters. Without that, without continual upgrades to the Shuttle LV and with ground infrastructure being neglected (which even happened to NASA), the system wasn't able to scale down well and ended up being needlessly dangerous and looking like a white elephant.

fasquardon

 

[Usili]

Very interesting TL and thanks for doing it! Really enjoyed it a lot.

 

[e of pi]

Nixonshead, I said this when you finished the draft, but I'll repeat it hear: I wasn't sure I'd have a lot to say on the thread because I didn't have much more than nits to pick. The whole thing feels historical in details, and the limited scope means you were able to execute it with a laser focus. Beautifully written, gorgeously illustrated, and just a blast to read as you wrote it and re-read as you've posted it.

I think an Energia M could scale up quite nicely too - if you stacked 2 Energia M 1st stages on top of each-other and put an Energia EUS on top of that (assuming that Encyclopedia Astronautica has the right numbers for the EUS stage), then the Energia M could launch 76.7 tonnes to a 57 degree 185km*185km orbit (that's assuming a payload that needs a big fairing of 23 tonnes that is jettisoned at 500s into the launch).

I'm not sure it's correctly accounting for the gravity losses there--the lower M-1 stage would be at a T/W of only about 0.5 at burnout, which is anemic for being that early in the burn. Silverbird does its best to account for gravity losses, but it relies on a certain degree of historical precedent. Beefing up the lower stage with two or three more engines starts to look a lot like the full Energia, but slightly more efficient because you're three stage instead of two stage. Three stage gets higher %GLOW to orbit for the same technology than a two stage, not really surprising.

If the Energia M could take more Zenit 1 boosters, I think the system could launch fairly impressive payloads - with a total of 4 Zenit 1 boosters, a similar system should be able to launch 107.7 tonnes into the same orbit and with 6 Zenit 1 boosters, it should be able to get 133.4 tonnes to the same orbit. (On the other hand, I am sure I'm making some mistake with the numbers since they make me wonder why the Soviets bothered with a full-size Energia at all, which is why I was asking you about Silverbird earlier this week - if you or anyone else can see some way that I'm being overly optimistic, I'd love to know before I use this giant Energia M in a timeline.)

Well, the main reason they needed a single tank for Energia IOTL was to hang the Shuttle off the side. And Energia-Buran did launch about 100 metric tons to orbit, once you add in the mass of the Shuttle to the mass o the paylaod it carried, so those sound reasonable. With 4xZenit and twin-stacked Energia-M stages (especialy a lower modified with more engines), you start basically equaling the OTL Energia stack in gross liftoff mass, so it's not surprising you start matching in capacity if not exceeding payload for the OTL Energia derivatives with similar numbers of boosters.

Like the American Shuttle and the various Shuttle-C proposals, Energia wasn't the best launcher for non-Buran paylaods that might have been done with the same engineering from a clean sheet, because it had to carry a big orbiter. But they needed a big orbiter to...do whatever it was the Americans were secretly planning, since obviously the public rationale was so silly it had to be a coverup. An LKS just wasn't similar enough to the American Shuttle,so there was a risk the American shuttle's secret mission might not be feasible to copy with it. Freed of the constraint to match the American's designs closely enough, I doubt they'd have bothered with the hydrogen core at all.

 

[Michel Van]

It was a Short but intense TL
i enjoy reading it
THX, Nixonhead

 

[fasquardon]

I'm not sure it's correctly accounting for the gravity losses there--the lower M-1 stage would be at a T/W of only about 0.5 at burnout, which is anemic for being that early in the burn. Silverbird does its best to account for gravity losses, but it relies on a certain degree of historical precedent. Beefing up the lower stage with two or three more engines starts to look a lot like the full Energia, but slightly more efficient because you're three stage instead of two stage. Three stage gets higher %GLOW to orbit for the same technology than a two stage, not really surprising.

Hmm. I'll have a go at working out liftoff thrust then. Silverbird makes the core on Energia and Energia M seem unimportant at liftoff - when I run the numbers for both rockets with the Zenit 1 boosters acting as the first stage and the core stage acting as a second stage, I see a big increase in payload, rather than a decrease as you'd expect if the liftoff thrust was too low.

I had just assumed that this meant the Zenit 1s were providing all the thrust and the core stages were only lit on the ground for safety and reliability purposes.

Well, the main reason they needed a single tank for Energia IOTL was to hang the Shuttle off the side. And Energia-Buran did launch about 100 metric tons to orbit, once you add in the mass of the Shuttle to the mass o the paylaod it carried, so those sound reasonable. With 4xZenit and twin-stacked Energia-M stages (especialy a lower modified with more engines), you start basically equaling the OTL Energia stack in gross liftoff mass, so it's not surprising you start matching in capacity if not exceeding payload for the OTL Energia derivatives with similar numbers of boosters.

The stacked Energia M with 4 Zenit 1 boosters is actually 216,000kg lighter than the Energia with an RCS upper stage and delivers over 20,000kg more to LEO.

I was very surprised when I ran the numbers - particularly since the whole thing has less engines than the Energia. It makes me think that you may be correct that Silverbird is doing something funny with the thrust/weight ratio.

fasquardon

 

[e of pi]

Hmm. I'll have a go at working out liftoff thrust then. Silverbird makes the core on Energia and Energia M seem unimportant at liftoff - when I run the numbers for both rockets with the Zenit 1 boosters acting as the first stage and the core stage acting as a second stage, I see a big increase in payload, rather than a decrease as you'd expect if the liftoff thrust was too low.

I had just assumed that this meant the Zenit 1s were providing all the thrust and the core stages were only lit on the ground for safety and reliability purposes.

It's not the liftoff T/W that's the problem, you're probably fine there. The issue is the T/W 140 seconds into the flight, after the Zenit's have burnt out and you're now only running on the Energia M-1 stage's engine. With a single RD-0120, the Energia M-1 stage burns 550s, so the lower stage in the paired stack will have about 80% of its propellant remaining at booster separation, giving a total instantaneous T/W for the stack of something like 0.35, rising to a whopping 0.5 as the stage burns out six minutes later. I don't think that's a recipe for getting to orbit--you need more core thrust or you'll run out of vertical speed and essentially "stall". Indeed, Shilling's explanation of Silverbird's algorithms confirms this is a concern: "It is possible to "cheat" and predict unrealistically high performance, by positing strap-on boosters or even entire first stages which provide high thrust for an extremely short period. This would extrapolate to a very short burn time per equation 6, but the expected performance gains will not materialize if the vehicle reverts to a low-thrust trajectory too early in the flight. Great skepticism should be exercised regarding any vehicle whose first stage and/or SRBs burn for significantly less than one minute." You're not into the danger zone, but clearly there's an imbalance between the burn time of the first core stage and the boosters.

The stacked Energia M with 4 Zenit 1 boosters is actually 216,000kg lighter than the Energia with an RCS upper stage and delivers over 20,000kg more to LEO. I was very surprised when I ran the numbers - particularly since the whole thing has less engines than the Energia. It makes me think that you may be correct that Silverbird is doing something funny with the thrust/weight ratio.

Three stages beat two stages for performance per kg of LV. It's not terrifically surprising to me. Certainly it's not hitting you as hard on T/W penalties as it probably should, but double or triple the number of core engines and it would in theory be workable--it just couldn't strap Buran to the side.

 

[TimothyC]

[2] Horizon is largely similar to Dream Chaser, an HL-42 derived lifting body similar to OTL’s X-38. The decision to go ahead with a space station without long-term Soviet involvement meant that the US committed to developing their own lifeboat for Alpha in 1994. This programme used funds that IOTL were spent on the X-33 project, which does not exist ITTL.

I am somewhat confused here. The HL-20/42 used one lifting body design (The BOR-4) while the X-38 used a different one (The X-24A design). Which is it?

 

[fasquardon]

It's not the liftoff T/W that's the problem, you're probably fine there. The issue is the T/W 140 seconds into the flight, after the Zenit's have burnt out and you're now only running on the Energia M-1 stage's engine. With a single RD-0120, the Energia M-1 stage burns 550s, so the lower stage in the paired stack will have about 80% of its propellant remaining at booster separation, giving a total instantaneous T/W for the stack of something like 0.35, rising to a whopping 0.5 as the stage burns out six minutes later. I don't think that's a recipe for getting to orbit--you need more core thrust or you'll run out of vertical speed and essentially "stall". Indeed, Shilling's explanation of Silverbird's algorithms confirms this is a concern: "It is possible to "cheat" and predict unrealistically high performance, by positing strap-on boosters or even entire first stages which provide high thrust for an extremely short period. This would extrapolate to a very short burn time per equation 6, but the expected performance gains will not materialize if the vehicle reverts to a low-thrust trajectory too early in the flight. Great skepticism should be exercised regarding any vehicle whose first stage and/or SRBs burn for significantly less than one minute." You're not into the danger zone, but clearly there's an imbalance between the burn time of the first core stage and the boosters.

Three stages beat two stages for performance per kg of LV. It's not terrifically surprising to me. Certainly it's not hitting you as hard on T/W penalties as it probably should, but double or triple the number of core engines and it would in theory be workable--it just couldn't strap Buran to the side.

Hmmm. Very interesting.

Do you think an Energia M stage would have enough thrust to launch an EUS stage and a payload if it lit in the air at T+140s?

fasquardon

 

[e of pi]

Hmmm. Very interesting.

Do you think an Energia M stage would have enough thrust to launch an EUS stage and a payload if it lit in the air at T+140s?

fasquardon

As a single Energia-M stage, lofted by twin Zenits? Certainly. By that point, the core would have burnt down to about 180 metric tons of prop. Tack on the 28-ish ton dry stage, plus the entire wet mass of a Blok-D or the like, and a 34 ton paylaod, and it's about 260 metric tons. That gets you a T/W of 0.76 at booster separation, rising to 1.0 by T+300s. That's pretty reasonable for a hydrogen stage at altitude, comparable to the S-II ignition thrust at a similar time in the Saturn V profile.

 

[fasquardon]

As a single Energia-M stage, lofted by twin Zenits? Certainly. By that point, the core would have burnt down to about 180 metric tons of prop. Tack on the 28-ish ton dry stage, plus the entire wet mass of a Blok-D or the like, and a 34 ton paylaod, and it's about 260 metric tons. That gets you a T/W of 0.76 at booster separation, rising to 1.0 by T+300s. That's pretty reasonable for a hydrogen stage at altitude, comparable to the S-II ignition thrust at a similar time in the Saturn V profile.

Ah, no, I'm thinking of the Energia M stage firing in the air (not on the ground as the real world Energia M was intended to).

According to Silverbird, 2*Zenit 1+Energia M+EUS should be able to launch 58 tonnes of payload if it's us a 23 tonne fairing (fairing blown free at T+500s).

So at T+140s the stack would be the Energia M+EUS+fairing+payload. The Energia M stage having a gross mass of 355,000 kg, the EUS having a gross mass of 77,000 kg, the fairing 23,000 kg and the payload 58,000 kg. So a total mass of 513,000 kg after the Zenit 1s have separated.

From what you've said already, I am guessing that stack would stall and a successful launch would require the 2nd stage to have 2 RD-0120 engines rather than the 1 the final Energia M ended up with.

EDIT: Got the Energia M stage's mass wrong. Using the correct 272,000 kg mass for the Energia M stage, the total stack after Zenit 1 separation would actually be 430,000 kg.

fasquardon

 

[e of pi]

So at T+140s the stack would be the Energia M+EUS+fairing+payload. The Energia M stage having a gross mass of 355,000 kg, the EUS having a gross mass of 77,000 kg, the fairing 23,000 kg and the payload 58,000 kg. So a total mass of 513,000 kg after the Zenit 1s have separated.

Huh. Those are different stages than I had access to data on and a heavier post-Zenit stack. I thought you had been proposing two of the Energia-M stages listed there, lus,like, a Blok-D, not a 77 ton battleship. The double stack would definitely need more thrust. As for the single stack, with the core air-lit, the Zenit's would have provided about 2.3 km/s of delta-v to the stack, so you'd have a fair bit of loft available if desired. Still, once lit the core would only have a T/W of 0.38 or so at ignition, which is anemic. You might be able to tool into orbit, but it'd be one of those KSP burns where you're desperately thrusting radially to skim the atmosphere and avoid entering again. You'd eat a lot of gravity drag fighting to orbit on, so you'd likely be better off with two engines if not three engines on the core in that case. Or lighting the core on the ground, as designed.

 

[Shevek23]

I was toying around with actually downsizing further from Energia M. It should be very easy to make a mini-Zenit based on paring its four-chamber/nozzle engine down to just one, and one thing discouraging me was not finding any hydrogen engines in the 50 ton thrust range (versus 200 for RD-0120). I skipped over these Lyulka studies because I didn't think anything physical ever came of them.

But yeah, since air lighting the hydrogen engine was what I thought they should do something like RD-57 fits in very well.

In order for me to get Silverbird to play nice and give a 34 ton payload, I used Norbert Brügges's data--which however implied that a Zenit, dry, would mass not 35 tons but 65!

Then came the final TL canon post affirming the Soviets abandon the Energia hydrogen cores and go over to all ker-lox launchers.

A cursory attempt to define a launch system based on Zenit suggests to me this is indeed a promising route to take. A single Zenit, topped by a scaled down stage using a quarter thrust engine can, it appears, serve as a Soyuz rocket replacement, and forming larger rockets by clustering Zenit units combined with this smaller stage and using the low-thrust rocket for upper stages gives many options--18 tons to orbit (big enough for manned TKS), 26 tons (Proton replacement), and larger sizes of 50+ up to nearly 70.

 

[Not James Stockdale]

According to Silverbird, 2*Zenit 1+Energia M+EUS should be able to launch 58 tonnes of payload if it's us a 23 tonne fairing (fairing blown free at T+500s).

This fairing is absurd. Even the largest fairings anybody was ever thinking of putting on an Ares V or a Direct were no heavier than ten tons. Most of the Direct fairing concepts were between four and six tons, with the largest fairings being used to launch lunar landers. Because the Direct would've been relatively slow after the SRBs separated, fairing separation would have happened at around T+300 seconds, which is relatively late. The Atlas V fairing separation normally comes around booster separation at T+250s and the Ariane 5, which is fairly fast off the ground, separates its fairing around T+200s. Taking a fairing to T+500s would mean taking it essentially all the way to orbit.

 

[fasquardon]

Huh. Those are different stages than I had access to data on and a heavier post-Zenit stack. I thought you had been proposing two of the Energia-M stages listed there, lus,like, a Blok-D, not a 77 ton battleship. The double stack would definitely need more thrust. As for the single stack, with the core air-lit, the Zenit's would have provided about 2.3 km/s of delta-v to the stack, so you'd have a fair bit of loft available if desired. Still, once lit the core would only have a T/W of 0.38 or so at ignition, which is anemic. You might be able to tool into orbit, but it'd be one of those KSP burns where you're desperately thrusting radially to skim the atmosphere and avoid entering again. You'd eat a lot of gravity drag fighting to orbit on, so you'd likely be better off with two engines if not three engines on the core in that case. Or lighting the core on the ground, as designed.

Well, part of the discrepancy is that I confused the Zenit 1 for the Energia M stage. Using the correct 272,000 kg mass for the Energia M stage, the total stack after Zenit 1 separation would actually be 430,000 kg.

And the Energia EUS stage does seem quite large. It has a higher thrust and ISP than the Saturn IVB stage, while being slightly smaller. It looks to me like the upper stage for a moon rocket - or a Mars rocket. Of course, the Energia was Glushko's baby, so maybe that shouldn't surprise me. The numbers for the EUS I found here, and those numbers are at least partially confirmed here (b14643.de gives the EUS stage a much lower thrust, but it's not unusual for the site to give lower thrust numbers for stages than astronautix does).

A cursory attempt to define a launch system based on Zenit suggests to me this is indeed a promising route to take. A single Zenit, topped by a scaled down stage using a quarter thrust engine can, it appears, serve as a Soyuz rocket replacement, and forming larger rockets by clustering Zenit units combined with this smaller stage and using the low-thrust rocket for upper stages gives many options--18 tons to orbit (big enough for manned TKS), 26 tons (Proton replacement), and larger sizes of 50+ up to nearly 70.

This was pretty much the original idea that Yangel's design bureau came up with before the Space Shuttle made such a "small" "primitive" system politically unattractive.

There'd be a small version to launch payloads of around 5 tonnes, the medium version (what became the Zenit) and a large version that was made up of clustered Zenit first stages.

Given how the OTL Zenit turned out, I think it's a great shame the original vision for the Zenit didn't come to pass.

This fairing is absurd. Even the largest fairings anybody was ever thinking of putting on an Ares V or a Direct were no heavier than ten tons. Most of the Direct fairing concepts were between four and six tons, with the largest fairings being used to launch lunar landers. Because the Direct would've been relatively slow after the SRBs separated, fairing separation would have happened at around T+300 seconds, which is relatively late. The Atlas V fairing separation normally comes around booster separation at T+250s and the Ariane 5, which is fairly fast off the ground, separates its fairing around T+200s. Taking a fairing to T+500s would mean taking it essentially all the way to orbit.

23 tonnes seems to have been what the cargo-only variant of the Energia would have used. I used such a large fairing mostly because whatever a real vehicle would use, it would have to be lighter than a side-saddle fairing for an 80 tonne payload. The lateness of fairing separation, similarly, is used because I didn't want to underestimate the time for which the rocket would have to carry the fairing.

fasquardon

 

[Archibald]

Glad to see solar dynamic in space. An interesting technology that never got a chance. Overall, a very good TL.

 

[Michel Van]

On Zenit rocket
Already in begin of Energia program they study under 11К37 also the Zenit "Heavy" a cluster of several Zenit rocket

Now with Collapse of USSR the Zenit ende up in Ukraine.
But that not stop the Russian Aerospace industry proposing a Russian remake of "Zenit" with RD-170 engine
Like RKK Energia - with 1999 Sodruzhestvo rocket and 2013 Energia-5K launch vehicle
or KB Yuzhnoe with Mayak rocket family
and 1992 Yenisei-5 launch vehicle by GKNPTs Khrunichev

 

[nixonshead]

Oh God, it's Columbia 4 years before...

I think it is the end of the Buran...

...and the worst part? Columbia is still going to happen, since no camera recorded the ice falling on the wing.

We are going to lose 7 more astronauts.

We are going to lose 7 more astronauts.

<snip>

No one would dare touch a shuttle after this.

Yep, it was the end for the Soviet shuttle... but Columbia has been averted! Whether that will be enough to prevent a different tragidy befalling the US shuttle before it's retired is another question, but not one that will be explored in this timeline. As for shuttles, the Horizon derivative may yet evolve into the CSV, so there could be life yet for spaceplanes of a sort!

Excellent grasp of tragedy. I like how you show how insignificant the damage may seem to be, and how it results in catastrophic end. In space every flaw is deadly. No wonder that spacecraft that remains in service is either unmanned or manned by a tiny crew. Had they have sent Soyuz, losses would three instead of seven.

Indeed, space is unforgiving of even tiny mistakes.

Neat. I didn't know that TKS was still in the race so late in the day.

it went so far in 2000s until Russian Space Agency took PTK/Federatsiya space capsule.

in 2005 the Khrunichev enterprise proposed a modular TKS spacecraft concept

reach from traditional TKS to minimal one with capsule and small service module, crew went from 2 to 6, payload up to 6,350 kg unmanned cargo, also 1,870 kg down in unmanned capsule.

more here http://www.russianspaceweb.com/tks_followon.html

so far i know they try to sell current version of TKS as Private space craft to investor.

Indeed, TKS has had a long and chequered history, with its Functional Cargo Block (FGB) enjoying more success than the VA reentry capsule (which was even more cramped than a Soyuz capsule, though reusable). IOTL Khrunichev did a good job selling an FGB to the Americans as "Zarya", over the objections of their colleagues from RKK Energia who wanted maximum ISS funds to go to their "Zvezda" DOS-8 module. It seems the private company Excalibur Almaz are still claiming they'll one day fly people in their purchased VA capsules, but I wouldn't put money on it.

Not perfectly invulnerable of course, but should a Zenit booster fail as spectacularly as Challenger's SRB did, shutdown, perhaps successful on the malfunctioning booster and continuing toward an emergency abort orbit on the remaining three, more likely of all 4, perhaps successful ejection of them early while the hydrogen main engines continue to work to remove the upper stack from the scene of the dangerous loose Zenits. Separation of Buran (if they still had it) from the stack is probably as problematic as for STS, but there is also the option of the crew ejecting from the whole thing--pretty hair-raising in the vicinity of a disintegrating Energia stack, but perhaps preferable to stoically assuming the system is invulnerable! All engines can be ordered to shut down which makes crew ejection marginally less insane, though the question remains if they can survive individually free-falling and parachuting to the ground. They are in space suits and the air is very thin, so perhaps they can.

Separation of the orbiter from the stack was indeed considered very risky for Buran, as for STS. I don't believe abort to orbit was considered an option if a Blok-A failed (I haven't found any reference to it anyway), so it would have likely triggered either a crew ejection (if early enough in the ascent), dumping the boosters and doing a RTLS-style retro-boost with the core, or separating the orbiter. As for STS, that last was considered very risky. It wouldn't surprise me if, given the choice, the crew would prefer to take their chances shutting down all engines and ejecting.

1) Budget. The cheapest option is to write off Energia and stick to Protons and Soyuzes. Maybe as OTL Zenit can serve as the foundation of yet other launchers.

Good call

The Russians had yet other spaceplane types up their sleeves, I believe, and of course by this point could steal the American HL-20 lifting body space taxi/lifeboat design--and after all in swiping it they are merely stealing back work Americans had to some extent picked up looking over Soviet shoulders when earlier versions of the form had been launched for tests of the planned Spiral small spaceplane. And in turn its design either paralleled or stole some American work in the 1960s including HL-10.


Or they could take Buran's loss as a sign that spaceplanes of any kind are ill advised, inefficient compared to capsules and yet apparently no safer!

Although I went for Zarya in the TL, I very nearly used the US experience with Horizon to steer the Soviets towards their own lifting body solution, either a modernised Spiral or something like Kliper. However, OTL has taught us that the Russians don't necessarily feel wedded to any particular design, and will change tack even after years going in one direction. So if NASA's CSV decision does finally go Horizon's way (although not mentioned in the text, my intention was that it is in competition with at least one "Apollo on steroids" capsule), I wouldn't be surprised to see VKA dump Zarya and switch to a lifing body.

especially if the Soviets have a handy analog to the J-2 engine

Like the RD-57 you mean?
It was being designed for the N-1, but crops up in some of the proposals for upper stages for the Energia as well as the Deuteron rocket.

I'm not sure what engine it used, but there were plans to fit Buran-T (Energia-T ITTL) with a hydorlox upper stage called Smerch (Tornado), with a thurst of up to 10 tonnes and restart capability (p.258 of this JBIS article).

TKS design lends itself better to sticking some wings on it and layering the belly with more TPS

As I understand it, wasn't that basically what the LKS was? TKS systems stuck in an aerodynamic body so Chelomei could get some interest from the Soviet shuttle lobby?

I think LKS was quite distinct from TKS. It was basically the same aeordynamic shape as Shuttle/Buran just scaled down. It did include a TPS derived from that used by TKS.

That was a beautiful ending! Bravo!
I'm slightly confused by your rendering of Alpha though. One, the robotic arm rail along the length of the truss is blocked by one of the US modules, and second, wouldn't the placement of Kibo interfere with shuttle docking at the "top" PMA? And wouldn't the currently unused PMA at the "bottom" of the IS be better relocated along the US core axis? Given the different layout of the station the shuttle docking sequence must be different as well.

The configuration I used for Alpha is Option A2 as depicted in NASA's Space Station Redesign Team Final Report of June 1993 (see Figure 13 on p.36). I must admit I had to double-check when I first built the model that the Common Core/Lab does indeed sit between the two truss sections, but apparently that was the intention. I'm not sure how they planned to solve the RMS rail problem, but in my render I omitted the transporter, so it could just inchworm across the gap.

Also, I see I have forgotten to add the PMA for the shuttle at the bottom of the Common Core/Hab, instead placing it where NASA planned the centrifuge module (which I haven't added). That location could cuase some problems with the radiators, whilst sticking it on the CC/H would probably mean moving the Horizon lifeboat. I may well re-visit that render...

Alas, it is over... But, holy hell did I love this TL!
The Buran at the Cosmonautics Museum photo is beautiful, well... all the pictures of this story is beautiful!
And indeed, "her dream lives on".

Thanks! Don't forget me at next years's Turtledoves (If only I'd posted part 1 a few hours earlier..!)

A bittersweet end to a great alternate history. As much as I wanted to see Buran go on, and as much as this accident seemed so very avoidable, you did well in showing that in reality this spacecraft was due for something bad. Alpha and Mir-2 look quite intriguing, I'm glad to have found some new wallpaper Eager to see what's next from Nixonshead!

Well, I did have one idea for a TL, but I seem to have just been gazzumped by a highly skilled professional author of actual books, so I may put that one on the back-burner for a while. Also, given that this relatively short TL took me a year, and considering I'm just starting a new job which is likely to mean longer hours, I'm not sure jow much time I'll be able to devote to writing. We'll see...

That's the Sodruzhestvo (TTL Don) LV you're speaking of?

That's the one.

nd was that talks of an International Lunar Base (ILB) I hear? It would make for an interesting follow-on to this TL. Assuming relations can remain warm enough (and economic conditions good enough) to allow it. And/Or enough international partners to make cancelling it not worth the effort.

Given that NASA was said to have been put off by Soviet safety culture, I doubt the ILB would actually happen ITTL.
I wonder if the Soviets might get into a moon race with China though? (Bad enough that the Americans beat them and they lost their only shuttle, but to have the Chinese add to that by beating them to the moon too? Terrible!)

Yep, there's talk of an international moon project, but as ESA's Moon Village demonstrates, talk is cheap... (Part of the fun of writing that section of the Epilogue was I got to move away from my general depressing [realist?] "they-wanted-to-do-this, but-there-was-no-money" style to a more optimistic [naive?] "there-are-plans-to-do-this, isn't-it-great!" style. Who knows, maybe this time it will all work out as planned )

This is the real problem of the Shuttle IMO - NASA designed it as part of a large program including a space station, a moon base, a nuclear tug and over a dozen shuttle orbiters. Without that, without continual upgrades to the Shuttle LV and with ground infrastructure being neglected (which even happened to NASA), the system wasn't able to scale down well and ended up being needlessly dangerous and looking like a white elephant.

I'd say that's half the problem (it was built before the projects it was designed to serve existed), with the other half being failure to deliver on its key cost requirement (i.e. making access to space cheap enough to enable those projects it was supposed to support). As soon as it actually got a space station to service, it was shut down. Still, an awesome flying machine!

Very interesting TL and thanks for doing it! Really enjoyed it a lot.

Thanks! It was a lot of fun to write!

Nixonshead, I said this when you finished the draft, but I'll repeat it hear: I wasn't sure I'd have a lot to say on the thread because I didn't have much more than nits to pick. The whole thing feels historical in details, and the limited scope means you were able to execute it with a laser focus. Beautifully written, gorgeously illustrated, and just a blast to read as you wrote it and re-read as you've posted it.

Thank you so much for the kind words and support!

For the Energia-M evolution debate, I think I'll sit that one out and leave it to the experts

It was a Short but intense TL
i enjoy reading it

Thanks! And also thanks for the recommendation of Spaceplane Hermes. My copy arrived last week and I look forward to reading it. Who knows, maybe I was too pessimistic and it could inspire me to create a "Winged Messenger" timeline

I am somewhat confused here. The HL-20/42 used one lifting body design (The BOR-4) while the X-38 used a different one (The X-24A design). Which is it?

Quite right, this is an error in the text, a hangover from an earlier draft. Horizon is in fact OTL's X-38 (I used orthogonal images of X-38 to create the model). I'll update in the text. Thanks for the catch!

On Zenit rocket
Already in begin of Energia program they study under 11?37 also the Zenit "Heavy" a cluster of several Zenit rocket

The version I was particularly interested in, to fill the Proton gap, was this thing:

I can't find many details on it though, so I have no idea how plausible it is.

 

[fasquardon]

For the Energia-M evolution debate, I think I'll sit that one out and leave it to the experts

Aww. I was looking forward to your thoughts on super-Energia Ms.

I'd say that's half the problem (it was built before the projects it was designed to serve existed), with the other half being failure to deliver on its key cost requirement (i.e. making access to space cheap enough to enable those projects it was supposed to support). As soon as it actually got a space station to service, it was shut down. Still, an awesome flying machine!

If the shuttle had liquid boosters and the fleet size it was supposed to, it would have delivered real savings per launch. Heck, even a couple more orbiters would have allowed NASA to manage a flight rate that would have delivered some notable savings.

And you quoted what I said and attributed it to Bahamut there.

The version I was particularly interested in, to fill the Proton gap, was this thing:

Isn't a direct link to Anatoly's site like that burning his bandwidth?

And modeling it in Silverbird as a normal Zenit 2 first and second stage with a Zenit 1 (as on the Energia) as a single booster, I get a payload to a LEO orbit of 57 degrees inclination of 23 tonnes.

However, the high power hydrogen upper stages that were being developed for Energia would result in a similar payload if used as a second stage for the Zenit 2, so I wonder if that would be more economical?

In your research for this TL, did you find any information on how expensive liquid hydrogen infrastructure was compared to kerosene infrastructure for the Soviet Union? All I've found was a comparison of the price of LH2 compared to syntin (according to this LH2 was 30 roubles per kilo in the 70s and syntin was 50 roubles per kilo).

EDIT:

I found a very informative picture of what the 11K55 and 11K37 vehicles might have looked like here.

fasquardon

 

[nixonshead]

And you quoted what I said and attributed it to Bahamut there.

Sorry about that. Edited and fixed.

Isn't a direct link to Anatoly's site like that burning his bandwidth?

Hadn't considered that, fair point. Replaced with inserted images (so burning up AH storage instead )

In your research for this TL, did you find any information on how expensive liquid hydrogen infrastructure was compared to kerosene infrastructure for the Soviet Union? All I've found was a comparison of the price of LH2 compared to syntin (according to this LH2 was 30 roubles per kilo in the 70s and syntin was 50 roubles per kilo).

Not in terms of numbers (and engineering without numbers is just opinion), but I came across several mentions of how the cost of maintaining Energia's large LH2 infrastructure was a mark against it (probably similar to concerns over the infrastructure needed to support SLS). Of course the infrastructure needed to support the fueling of large ET-sized tanks and testing of multiple RD-0120 engines for a rocket that only launches every couple of years is of a different scale to that needed for relatively small upper stages.

I found a very informative picture of what the 11K55 and 11K37 vehicles might have looked like here.

I had seen that somewhere else, it is a nice image (reminds me of a Michel Van diagram!).