Timeline Elevator Pitch: Stuck with The Right Stuff

[JEF_300]

What many of us don’t remember today is that when Alan B Shepard Jr. became the first human-being to ever cross the Karman Line, most American’s thought the space race was over. In spite of the Soviet’s topping that by putting a man in orbit 19 days later, the US public still saw themselves as the victor. And why not? Sure, the Soviet’s got the first satellite, and the first orbit, but most Americans and their Senator’s didn’t even know what an orbit was. And even NASA personnel were sure they’d have a man in orbit by that time next year, and so they themselves weren’t super concerned about the Soviet lead.

The history books would forever have to say, “...the first Human in space was an American.” Wasn’t that enough?

Hello everyone! I've wanted to do a spaceflight timeline for a while now, and have been kicking around a bunch of ideas for what to do one on. I also have known that I want any spaceflight timeline I make to be pretty high quality. This is a large part of why I decided to just start writing Concert of Earth, so that I could quickly build up some experience writing a timeline.

Well, we're now fourteen chapters into CoE, and I'm now totally confident that this idea I've had for a timeline revolving around the Mercury capsule is something I want to develop. But like I said, I want this to be high quality. And in writing, and most things, quality means you need more than one pair of eyes. So this is going to be my elevator pitch of this timeline to you guys, which I make in the hope that some of you will be interested in becoming editors, perhaps even co-authors, or even just pitch ideas or provide reference material.

The Pitch:​

The basic premise here is that either Mercury-Redstone 2 goes perfectly, or Von Braun just doesn't demand a perfect flight before putting a man on board. Either way, Alan Shepard has his suborbital hop on March 24th instead of May 5th, beating the Soviets to put a man in space by 19 days. This isn't exactly a new point of departure I know, but stick with me.

With America putting a man in space first, the US is seen as ahead, or at least apace, with the Soviets. There is no urgent need to declare a major goal like the Moon, and funding for NASA doesn't really go up, and may even go down. The result of this is that there isn't funding for a new capsule of any kind. Apollo is remembered as a conceptual capsule for space station crew rotation which never got enough funding for metal to be bent.

The Mercury Mark II program, which would become Gemini IOTL, instead becomes the Mercury Block II program, as it becomes clear that they'll have to keep as much of the Mercury capsule as possible if they want to stay on budget. The result of this is the part of the timeline I have the clearest picture of; the Venus spacecraft is basically a Gemini adaptor module with a Mercury capsule on top. The Venus is enough to test rendezvous, docking, and duration flights, which lets NASA go blow-for-blow with the Soviets in the mid-60s.

And then the Soyuz (or equivalent) flys in 1967(-ish), and I'm sure you can see where this is going now. NASA is still stuck with the Mercury capsule. And because of pressure from constant Soviet achievements, NASA has to spend most of the money they'd like to spend on a new capsule on developing ways to match the Soyuz using only a humble Mercury capsule. And the longer this goes on, the more evidence Congress has that they don't need a new capsule to keep up with the Soviets, so the problem only gets worse.

NASA ends up "Stuck with The Right Stuff" until at least the mid-70s, but maybe as late as the early 80s. By that point there's some sort of space station being serviced by these advanced Mercury capsules, and that means that NASA ends up stuck with design decisions made because of the Mercury capsule for at least another decade still.

My hope is that aside from just being silly and fun, that this timeline would give us a look at an American space program that's a lot more like the Soviet one in real life. Sort of the story of an American Voskhod program if you will, though it'll go on much longer.

End of Pitch.​

Like I said, I'm very early into this, and I'll just be working on this in my free moments for a while. I want to be at a (probably temporary) stopping point in CoE before I really take time every week to delve into this. I have that point in mind; it'll come between 1918 and 1920 in that timeline, which at the current rate means 7-20 weeks from now. So this is very much not something that'll be happening soon, but probably within the year.

There are lots of ways you can contribute to this that would be helpful aside from editing/writing. Research is a big one; in particular, if you know of or find any interesting reports about advanced applications of the Mercury, those would be supremely helpful. I'd also love any ideas you guys have about how to do all the crazy things Mercury capsules will have to do in this timeline, like dock to a station, or things of that nature. We have to account/substitute somehow for all the concept studies that would happen ITTL that didn't in ours.

Another big area where I'm lacking is the entire Soviet program; I have no idea what Soviet manned spaceflight looks like without Voskhod or any Moon race, so any ideas at all would be appreciated.

 

[Workable Goblin]

The basic premise here is that either Mercury-Redstone 2 goes perfectly, or Von Braun just doesn't demand a perfect flight before putting a man on board. Either way, Alan Shepard has his suborbital hop on March 24th instead of May 5th, beating the Soviets to put a man in space by 19 days. This isn't exactly a new point of departure I know, but stick with me.

With America putting a man in space first, the US is seen as ahead, or at least apace, with the Soviets. There is no urgent need to declare a major goal like the Moon, and funding for NASA doesn't really go up, and may even go down. The result of this is that there isn't funding for a new capsule of any kind. Apollo is remembered as a conceptual capsule for space station crew rotation which never got enough funding for metal to be bent.

The Mercury Mark II program, which would become Gemini IOTL, instead becomes the Mercury Block II program, as it becomes clear that they'll have to keep as much of the Mercury capsule as possible if they want to stay on budget. The result of this is the part of the timeline I have the clearest picture of; the Venus spacecraft is basically a Gemini adaptor module with a Mercury capsule on top. The Venus is enough to test rendezvous, docking, and duration flights, which lets NASA go blow-for-blow with the Soviets in the mid-60s.

And then the Soyuz (or equivalent) flys in 1967(-ish), and I'm sure you can see where this is going now. NASA is still stuck with the Mercury capsule. And because of pressure from constant Soviet achievements, NASA has to spend most of the money they'd like to spend on a new capsule on developing ways to match the Soyuz using only a humble Mercury capsule. And the longer this goes on, the more evidence Congress has that they don't need a new capsule to keep up with the Soviets, so the problem only gets worse.

NASA ends up "Stuck with The Right Stuff" until at least the mid-70s, but maybe as late as the early 80s. By that point there's some sort of space station being serviced by these advanced Mercury capsules, and that means that NASA ends up stuck with design decisions made because of the Mercury capsule for at least another decade still.

My hope is that aside from just being silly and fun, that this timeline would give us a look at an American space program that's a lot more like the Soviet one in real life. Sort of the story of an American Voskhod program if you will, though it'll go on much longer.

It's an interesting idea, and actually I've kicked around similar ideas in the past, but have you read On the Shoulders of Titans, the official NASA history of Gemini? The thing is that it was pretty clear from the beginning that Mercury was only a stopgap spacecraft to get up ASAP that would need to be replaced straight away. It had a lot of design features that made it quicker and cheaper to develop but weren't good for ongoing missions. Additionally, there's also the crucial issue that Atlas wasn't suited for launching a spacecraft with a longer (7-14 day) duration, and once you're looking at a larger launch vehicle then it becomes hard to avoid going just a bit farther and making a really good spacecraft that has much more development potential (i.e., Gemini). Especially if you're already looking at developing the Gemini adapter and adding extra consumables and thrusters and fuel cells...well, actually you've done like 80% of the work needed to build Gemini anyway (the thrusters and fuel cells were two of the major development items), so you might as well go for the two-person capsule too.

In all honesty, I think that a timeline where the space race gets aborted in the early Mercury period would be more likely to end up with NASA operating Gemini or Apollo than trying to make do with Mercury. It's just too obviously and severely limited a vehicle for them to keep using it indefinitely, and it wouldn't really be that hard to make a case to Congress that it's time to move on. A lot of the justification for Gemini, for instance, was about making it easier to maintain and operate, so you would be lowering operational costs compared to Mercury (in other words, basically the justification for Shuttle...which, well, worked! Even though by Shuttle's time there wasn't a Space Race any more)

 

[JEF_300]

Especially if you're already looking at developing the Gemini adapter and adding extra consumables and thrusters and fuel cells...well, actually you've done like 80% of the work needed to build Gemini anyway (the thrusters and fuel cells were two of the major development items), so you might as well go for the two-person capsule too.

I'd be curious to see how the actual funding numbers pan out on Gemini capsule vs adaptor. Regardless, avoiding all the testing and requalification required by a new capsule design should save a lot of time and money. Even if that time and money is only 20% of the total development cost, it shouldn't be too hard to devise a scenario where Congress won't give manned spaceflight that 20%.

In all honesty, I think that a timeline where the space race gets aborted in the early Mercury period would be more likely to end up with NASA operating Gemini or Apollo than trying to make do with Mercury. It's just too obviously and severely limited a vehicle for them to keep using it indefinitely, and it wouldn't really be that hard to make a case to Congress that it's time to move on.

I largely agree that it basically never makes sense to use Mercury instead of developing Gemini. My justification for this is that Congress just provides NASA a budget that really is that harsh, and that the Soviet are applying that much time-pressure. Is that plausible? I don't know.

When writing alternate history, we have a lot of lee way to decide how people react to our POD, since there often isn't a real event that directly compares. If stretching the margins of that lee way makes an interesting timeline possible, I don't particularly have a problem with that, especially if the rest of the timeline doesn't take the same liberties. Sort of in the same way that I don't mind that the sandstorm at the start of The Martian is non-sense, because the rest is great and scientifically accurate.

 

[e of pi]

I'd be curious to see how the actual funding numbers pan out on Gemini capsule vs adaptor. Regardless, avoiding all the testing and requalification required by a new capsule design should save a lot of time and money. Even if that time and money is only 20% of the total development cost, it shouldn't be too hard to devise a scenario where Congress won't give manned spaceflight that 20%.

On the Shoulders of Titans, Section 2-6 "Modification or Transmutation:

A McDonnell group led by Mercury manager Walter F. Burke attended a senior staff meeting at STG on 7 July to outline the company's studies of an advanced Mercury capsule that took three distinct forms. One version, the "minimum change capsule," involved not much more than cutting some hatches in the side of the capsule for better access. Although it could be ready to launch relatively quickly and cheaply (II months, $79.3 million), it had some obvious drawbacks. Better access only accented the capsule's cramped interior, and the hatches themselves weakened the capsule's structure and heat protection. As Chamberlin later remarked, "It was clear that this mod was too little to inspire any additional confidence in the design, and hence make it worth doing. Thus, the merits of the greater modifications became apparent."94 The second McDonnell advanced design, called a "reconfigured Mercury capsule," adhered closely to the Chamberlin Blatz proposal of June. It would take longer to build and cost more than the minimum change capsule (20 months and $91.303 million), but it might very well be worth the expense. And for another two months and $12.248 million, NASA might do even better with McDonnell's third version, a "two-man Mercury capsule."95

The notion of putting more than one man in a modified Mercury capsule was not new, having been suggested at least as early as January 1959.96 That idea had gone nowhere, but Faget revived the possibility at the review board meeting on 9 June 1961. Blatz recalled that, after he and Chamberlin had made their pitch, Faget's comment was, "If we're going to go to all of this trouble to redesign Mercury, why not make it a multiplace spacecraft in the process?"97 Faget's interest in a two-man spacecraft was prompted, in part, by the prospect of extra-vehicular operations. As early as March 1961, he had asked John F. Yardley, McDonnell's manager for Mercury operations at Cape Canaveral, to look into the possibility "of expanding Mercury into a two-man version" for this purpose.98 Others saw reason for a two-man spacecraft in the rigors of long missions. If the Mark II were to be in space for more than a few orbits, then having two men to share the strain [47] and support each other's activities made good sense.99 There was also a certain compelling logic in building a two-man spacecraft for a program falling between the one-man Mercury and three-man Apollo.100

If, in 1961, Apollo is being cancelled, then finding that extra $12m will be even easier than IOTL--it's a trivially small amount of money even in NASA's budget then ($744m in 1961), and if it's the only way to get two people into space at a time, then they will find a way to make it happen.

 

[JEF_300]

If, in 1961, Apollo is being cancelled, then finding that extra $12m will be even easier than IOTL--it's a trivially small amount of money even in NASA's budget then ($744m in 1961), and if it's the only way to get two people into space at a time, then they will find a way to make it happen.

How specific were the NASA Authorization bills in the 60s? One of the things I was considering was Congress allocating some of NASA's budget that might otherwise be left for manned spaceflight into the early unmanned planetary probes, in an attempt to rush them. The idea being that they believe that now that the 'first man in space' phase of the space race is over, the next logical phase of the space race would be the 'first probe to Moon/Venus/Mars' phase, and so Congress turns it's focus to that. I can't imagine that would totally account for a squeeze on the manned spaceflight program, but it could be one of many factors.

Another idea I was working on was leaving Apollo intact, but also keeping the Apollo 1 fire and having Apollo cancelled after it. That eats up a lot of NASA's budget for a long time, and yet still leaves NASA stuck with Mercury, if you can avoid Gemini.

As I said, the other option for forcing NASA to stick with Mercury, in the early days, would be time pressure from the Soviets. Perhaps the actual POD is that the CIA gets ahold of the Vostock design in late 1960, and NASA goes into 1961 knowing how much more capable the Russian spacecraft is than theirs. So they don't hesitate to launch Shepard and pick the fastest upgrade to Mercury offered to them.

I'm not married to the design of the Venus or any one approach to making this happen. Probably it would take a combination of a bunch of bad circumstances to make NASA keep the Mercury capsule. Whatever get's the result and makes sense works for me.

And clearly I should take some time to read On the Shoulders of Titans. I'd heard the name before, but not had the link. This'll help a lot.

 

[e of pi]

How specific were the NASA Authorization bills in the 60s? One of the things I was considering was Congress allocating some of NASA's budget that might otherwise be left for manned spaceflight into the early unmanned planetary probes, in an attempt to rush them. The idea being that they believe that now that the 'first man in space' phase of the space race is over, the next logical phase of the space race would be the 'first probe to Moon/Venus/Mars' phase, and so Congress turns it's focus to that. I can't imagine that would totally account for a squeeze on the manned spaceflight program, but it could be one of many factors.

Another idea I was working on was leaving Apollo intact, but also keeping the Apollo 1 fire and having Apollo cancelled after it. That eats up a lot of NASA's budget for a long time, and yet still leaves NASA stuck with Mercury, if you can avoid Gemini.

I don't think either of these work. A ingle person in orbit for an hour or two is clearly only the first step to EVA, docking, and more that Mercury can't do without effectively total overhaul from the keel up, much of which is rendered much easier and safer by a two-person vehicle which is at that point hardly more expensive. You can get a sense of the budget breakdown's detail level (or lack thereof) here:

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/o45128943_1962.pdf

Given that an expanded Mercury program would have already been looking at a cost of $780m or so in development and $300-400m in flights, adding another $10-15m to get a two person vehicle is a drop in the bucket below the level of such documentation.

And clearly I should take some time to read On the Shoulders of Titans. I'd heard the name before, but not had the link. This'll help a lot.

Very much so, it'll give you a good sense for how much overhaul Mercury needed before NASA was ready to countenance flying it more than they had to, and once they committed to that overhaul, how quickly the large diameter Gemini arose from Mercury Mk II.

 

[Workable Goblin]

How specific were the NASA Authorization bills in the 60s?

Quite unspecific. On the Shoulders indicates that Gemini's first funding came from Webb redirecting money from a pot that Congress had given NASA to spend on, basically, whatever they wanted to, as long as it could be couched as R&D. It wasn't exactly the '70s yet...

 

[SpaceMarathon]

The Bay of Pigs invasion would need to be successful too for a tempered cold war and space race.