Title suggestions for an '80s space TL?

Title suggestions for a space TL with an April 15,1981 POD?

  • Beyond the New Frontier:Tales From An Earlier SEI

    Votes: 8 42.1%
  • Astronomical Expansion

    Votes: 1 5.3%
  • The Second Space Race

    Votes: 2 10.5%
  • Bold They Rise

    Votes: 7 36.8%
  • The Wild Black Yonder

    Votes: 1 5.3%

  • Total voters
    19
Carter is reelected and announces the Space Exploration Initiative (a space initiative proposed by Bush Sr in OTL) the day after the first Shuttle mission lands. It's.....ambitious:
-The Kennedy Space Center parking lot Saturn 5 to launch Skylab B in 1985;Skylab B to be visited by 4 man crewed Apollos launched atop Commercial Titan rockets until 1992,after which it is deorbited
-Assembly of a permanent,international space station to commence in or around 1990,to be completed by 1996
-Manned lunar missions to resume in 1998 after a brief robotic lunar exploration program,,with manned landings to resume in 1999
-An extensive lunar exploration program in the 2000s,culminating with a permanent polar base being established in 2011
-Manned visit to NEOs in 2009,2011,2012,2014,and 2017,followed by limited asteroid mining in the 2020s
-An extensive Mars precursor program in the 2000s,culminating with a Mars/Venus flyby in 2011 and the first manned Mars landing in 2015,followed by longer missions in the 2020s and establishment of a base in 2031
-And much,much more (I haven't even MENTIONED unmanned missions,commercial space endeavors,Russia,ESA.China,Japan,India,and emerging space nations)
 
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Peanuts for Space? :p

That said, the parking lot Saturn V and Skylab B are not flightworthy by 1981. Also, what happens to Shittle that they're using Crew Totans in the 80s? Why not Shuttle for the same, or SDHLV? By the late 80s, Titan costs had risen enough that any savings from Titan ise will be largely erased by two separate production and launch infrastructures.
 
There was a study in the 1960s for maintaining a Saturn V to the mid-1980s in reserve status. Archibald cited it in Explorers. And if in Titan Stephen Baxter had alt.mid-2000s NASA restore the JSC Saturn V,the same could be done with KSC's in the early 80s. Just clean off half a decade's worth of weather damage,shore up the fuel tanks,replace the F-1s with upgraded SSMEs (a daunting task,but it could be done),upgrade the IU computers,test the living flip out of the thing,and you're pretty much ready to go.

And who said OTL Skylab B? I didn't mean the one at the Smithsonian,I meant the engineering simulator currently at MSFC. Again,it could be done.
 

Archibald

Banned
This remind me that I'm lousy at TL titles (sigh) voted for the first proposal

Beyond the New Frontier sounds good
 
Skylab B launches-NASA needs the Shuttle for other missions,but it does visit twice in 1986,once to attach a logistics module and once to install an experiment pallet. Skylab B is a stop-gap measure until the permanent station begins launching.
 
Just clean off half a decade's worth of weather damage,shore up the fuel tanks,replace the F-1s with upgraded SSMEs (a daunting task,but it could be done),.

5 F-1 engines have the same thrust as 18.2 (regular) SSMEs... (at sea level) Also, the 1st stage would need to be completely redesigned, as is was made for kerosene-oxygen instead of hydrogen-oxygen, which needs a lot more space due to hydrogen's low density... Seems like it'll be easily to just get new F-1s, or to get the ones they have to be flight-ready...
 
5 F-1 engines have the same thrust as 18.2 (regular) SSMEs... (at sea level) Also, the 1st stage would need to be completely redesigned, as is was made for kerosene-oxygen instead of hydrogen-oxygen, which needs a lot more space due to hydrogen's low density... Seems like it'll be easily to just get new F-1s, or to get the ones they have to be flight-ready...
Or just spend the engineering effort on a Shuttle-C or other Shuttle derived heavy you can keep building once it's flown instead of spending a billion dollars or more to make a lawn ornament fly.
 
All right,i'll keep the F-1s. Shuttle-C will fly ITTL but not for a while yet. Oh,and NASA gets a New Glenn-esque Saturn V derivative in the mid '90s.
 
All right,i'll keep the F-1s.
Even keeping the F-1s, the studies on 1960s preservation were not enacted. There's careful preservation for flight, and then there's this (actual image from 1980): Launching that rocket is possible, but requires either a PoD in 1972 or so, or a depth of engineering effort that would be better spent on the year or two of work required for Shuttle-C or other SDHLVs. Baxter is not always ruled by realistic logic, and Titan has many examples of which that is only one. A similar logic applies to the Hunstville engineering mockup. As far as I know, it was not a flight-quality stage even at the start, only a high-fidelity training mockup, so the only thing using it would gain you is a pressurized rigid hull. You'd have to rip the guts out of it and rebuild it from scratch. At that point, you might as well design to fit something Shuttle or Shuttle-C can launch, so you can use the design as the test and base for your permanent station.
 
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