TLiaW: Dawn of the Dragon

[fasquardon]

They don't NEED a serious budget increase here IMHO. A lot of TTL's Artemis hardware either already exists or needs only moderate uprating to support Manned Lunar Missions:

• Orbiter - ESA Hermes adapted for Lunar/Cis-Lunar Environment
• HLV - Shuttle-C which has the ET and SRBs already built and with flight history, needing only a new payload/engine bay that can function alongside STS
• EDS - Joint US/Jpn development using known techniques
• Lander - New development, pacing item

Which also illustrates how it's not just NASA, thus the overall cost is spread amongst three notable Space Agencies, reducing the cost to each individual member while making it so much harder to cancel.

I've done a fair bit of reading on the cargo variants of the shuttle that were proposed or tried in OTL and none of them - none - had what might be called a "negligible cost". As such, I think this TL would be strengthened by explaining what makes the version of shuttle C adopted in TTL so affordable - or (as is more likely) why Congress is willing to give NASA so much money.

And while half of the EDS is described as being developed by Japan, the other half is still an American project requiring American money. Again, EDS stages have a troubled history - the only one I can think of off the top of my head that didn't have significant difficulties during development being the Saturn V's own EDS.

The lander, being ambitious technology, would seem to be an area where things would go wrong. Yet somehow, this machine far in advance of the Apollo LEM, seems to be developing with no issues.

I can accept some handwaving, but at the moment, it just seems like both programs are doing too many things that were hard IOTL easily with no good explanation as to why.

fasquardon

 

[e of pi]

I was also hoping for more talk on the Hermes/Ariane Side of things. Speaking of, I think by now they were well on their way with their Ariane 4 Replacement IOTL (save for that spectacular failure), though here there's the Artemis costs which eat into their budget, so even with the UK in the fold, I wouldn't be surprised if TTL's Ariane 5 is going to be a while yet.

Ariane 5 work is proceeding, but a bit slower than OTL, yeah. As with Russia, it's not relevant so much here, so with a goal of keeping this whole TL under 25-30k words, some things just weren't going to get covered.

Would the massive Us outsourcing to China still occur in this AtL? I mean, China secured a place for itself far sooner than OTL and has now become the main Communist Rival to the US. I don't think such a public and political climate will accept China as the main Country to manufacture American, or even European to a lesser extend, goods.

We bought from Japan in the 80s and early 90s in massive amounts even when, if you'd read cyberpunk, Japan was going to buy the Washington Monument out from under us. I really doubt that China having a space program would change the economic forces that drove outsourcing, at least not without a lot of intermediate effects I don't feel like dealing with ITTL.

Then, on top of that, it somehow has enough money to develop a generation 2 shuttle C (skipping the generation 1 shuttle C they were planning IOTL), including the fancy payload fairing NASA seems to have considered necessary to fly the generation 2 shuttle C, shell out for the upgrades to the bottle-neck areas of shuttle manufacture so that shuttle and shuttle C can operate side-by-side, develop the tankage and avionics for a new EDS, develop a new fancy hydrolox lunar lander, train the astronauts and plan the actual lunar missions and deal with the hundreds if not thousands of smaller pieces of hardware and organization that need to be put in place for a landing AND it is ready to do the landing in 1997?!

If you ask me, considering the political constraints and the constraints of already running programs, achieving all this would mean NASA consumes significantly more funding than it did during the previous Apollo program.

And I really don't see how Congress would grant NASA more than 1-2 billion USD more than its OTL budget, not with China only threatening to execute a budget lunar landing.

They IOTL go a budget boost of almost 50% in nominal dollars between 1988 and 1991 from Bush's OTL SEI. In real dollars that was only about a 30% increase, but it was still more than $6b/year...which ITTL is mostly going to the manned program. So, a lander would run about $12 billion? Call that $2b/year over six years. Shuttle-C is $6b over three years, not the estimates I've often seen to $3b and 24 monhts? That's $2b per year during the first two years, which can also then be set aside for the launch operations cost afterwards and account for about 4 launches per year at the ~$500m marginal cost of a Shuttle flight. Say the EDS costs as much as Shuttle-C, that's still within the $6b/year SEi saw the budget increase by IOTL. Now, granted--after 1991, that budget fell back a bit, because IOTL it was clear that SEI wasn't going to accomplish anything and it got caught in the peace dividend. I don't aim to deal with politics ITTL, and in fact somewhat the opposite, but it seems reasonable that with Artemis two years into development and some of the major parts like Shuttle-C already at least 2/3rds developed, Congressional support might not taper off as it did IOTL--especially with big aerospace companies with active contracts acting as lobbyists for whom Artemis is a large benefit on balance sheets that are potentially about to turn red with other "Peace Dividend" cuts.

Given one of the simpler Shuttle-C options, a 30% increase in NASA's budget, and the rest...1997 is 8 years after Bush sets his SEI goals ITTL, and 9 years after the start of background studies directly affected by Shenzhou 1, which in turn built on OTL studies from the mid-80s. You could argue it's not the most likely option, but I think it holds together for a TL where China has been spending a nearly Apolloesque portion of their budget on space since 1968.

Indeed, I find the assumption that China going to the moon would push the US to actually spend money on going back dubious enough to begin with.

It's less that they push the US into going back--that was already under discussion with the Ride Report and SEI IOTL. They just cause the US to abandon the more fantastic elements that caused issues IOTL--like Mars plans that were never going to happen--and focus on the lunar elements which are actually achievable on the budget they have.

Not only do we have a China where the engineers are politically invulnerable (there's being good at politics and then there is not having to compromise and throw the political masters a bone even once in a 20 year program - even NASA has had to knuckle under and follow political directives that were against the best interests of science and engineering, so say nothing of the Soviets who still had a more mellow Communist Party to deal with than China did between the PoD and the 90s)

I've done a fair bit of reading on the cargo variants of the shuttle that were proposed or tried in OTL and none of them - none - had what might be called a "negligible cost". As such, I think this TL would be strengthened by explaining what makes the version of shuttle C adopted in TTL so affordable - or (as is more likely) why Congress is willing to give NASA so much money.

It's not "negligible," nothing in spaceflight is. But $6 billion is within the budget limits.

And while half of the EDS is described as being developed by Japan, the other half is still an American project requiring American money. Again, EDS stages have a troubled history - the only one I can think of off the top of my head that didn't have significant difficulties during development being the Saturn V's own EDS.

So that's, what, one EDS out of two? We haven't tried very many actual projects. If you include upper stages in general--which EDS systems are very much a subset of--you find much better odds of success. And again, the costs aren't negligible...but they are within achievable funding.

I can accept some handwaving, but at the moment, it just seems like both programs are doing too many things that were hard IOTL easily with no good explanation as to why.

fasquardon

They might not be the most likely, but that's not the point of Dawn. They're roughly achievable on the budgets I've roughly estimated, and that's good enough for what I wanted for TTL. I'm not writing Eyes here.

 

[fasquardon]

They IOTL go a budget boost of almost 50% in nominal dollars between 1988 and 1991 from Bush's OTL SEI. In real dollars that was only about a 30% increase, but it was still more than $6b/year...which ITTL is mostly going to the manned program. So, a lander would run about $12 billion? Call that $2b/year over six years. Shuttle-C is $6b over three years, not the estimates I've often seen to $3b and 24 monhts? That's $2b per year during the first two years, which can also then be set aside for the launch operations cost afterwards and account for about 4 launches per year at the ~$500m marginal cost of a Shuttle flight. Say the EDS costs as much as Shuttle-C, that's still within the $6b/year SEi saw the budget increase by IOTL. Now, granted--after 1991, that budget fell back a bit, because IOTL it was clear that SEI wasn't going to accomplish anything and it got caught in the peace dividend. I don't aim to deal with politics ITTL, and in fact somewhat the opposite, but it seems reasonable that with Artemis two years into development and some of the major parts like Shuttle-C already at least 2/3rds developed, Congressional support might not taper off as it did IOTL--especially with big aerospace companies with active contracts acting as lobbyists for whom Artemis is a large benefit on balance sheets that are potentially about to turn red with other "Peace Dividend" cuts.

Given one of the simpler Shuttle-C options, a 30% increase in NASA's budget, and the rest...1997 is 8 years after Bush sets his SEI goals ITTL, and 9 years after the start of background studies directly affected by Shenzhou 1, which in turn built on OTL studies from the mid-80s. You could argue it's not the most likely option, but I think it holds together for a TL where China has been spending a nearly Apolloesque portion of their budget on space since 1968.

OTL's Shuttle C was expected to cost 1.8 billion USD in 1989 - that's 1.9 billion in 1990 dollars.

For an alternate shuttle derived launch vehicle, in 2009 "(a)ccording to NASA's John Shannon the HLV can be developed within 4 1/2 years until the first manned flight occurs. The development program should cost about US$6.6 billion" - in 1990 dollars that would be about $4.04 billion USD.

The difference could well be due to degraded capacities or due to the 2009 proposal being drawn out over 4.5 years. So a shorter, more intense development program with deeper industrial capacity for shuttle-type components could plausibly result in shuttle C being developed for 2-3 billion.

For the lander, given that the Apollo lander cost 9.5 billion in 1990 US dollars. I suspect that 12 billion for the lander is lowballing it.

The EDS stage I can't imagine costing the US (ignoring the Japanese part) more than 500 million or so. My feeling is that though (relatively) cheap, it would, along with the lander, be a pacing item.

Just how large is Freedom in this TL? I was imagining that it would be consuming 2 billion USD a year through the 90s...

It's less that they push the US into going back--that was already under discussion with the Ride Report and SEI IOTL. They just cause the US to abandon the more fantastic elements that caused issues IOTL--like Mars plans that were never going to happen--and focus on the lunar elements which are actually achievable on the budget they have.

A fair point. If you mentioned this in your updates, I missed it.

So that's, what, one EDS out of two? We haven't tried very many actual projects. If you include upper stages in general--which EDS systems are very much a subset of--you find much better odds of success. And again, the costs aren't negligible...but they are within achievable funding.

Well, Saturn V had its EDS, the Americans also developed the Centaur stage, then the Soviets developed the block D for the N-1 and the briz-M specifically for Proton then the Americans have been trying to develop a new EDS for the Ares V/SLS.

The Centaur, block D and Briz M all had significant delays as the teams dealt with various teething problems.

(I'm counting systems that can act as earth departure stages for probes as well as systems developed to throw things at the moon here.)

They might not be the most likely, but that's not the point of Dawn. They're roughly achievable on the budgets I've roughly estimated, and that's good enough for what I wanted for TTL. I'm not writing Eyes here.

Well, the budgets I don't find so much of a stretch to believe. The issue is more that I have a hard time believing that both programs aren't suffering more from inconsistency by their political bosses.

fasquardon

 

[e of pi]

Sorry for delay. I hope you haven't been too much on the edge of your seats as this timeline winds to a close, because it looks like we're...

Part 23: Down to the Wire

By the end of 1996, the Chinese government had supported their program’s drive for a manned lunar landing for over a decade based on the assumption of the political value of such a landing. From the perspective of the mid 1980s, this had seemed a safe bet--with secrecy, preparations for a lunar mission could be kept from the West and the Soviets until it was too late. Efforts like the sub rosa test of Chang’e in the guise of a failed GTO launch or disguising the first test of Shuguang-D as a Chang’e flight were further evidence in favor. Even as late as 1989, while the Americans were distracted with returning their Shuttle to flight and both they and ESA focused their remaining attention on preparations for Space Station Freedom, things had seemed on track. However, the 90s had dramatically changed the picture, as the debut of the lander had been repeatedly delayed. Even after its maiden voyage, the twin failures of Long March 2D during the Shenzhou 5 tanker campaign had left the Chinese at risk of losing a race they had themselves begun--and in a way which might only highlight structural weaknesses of their program, in spite of the fraction of the national spending which had been spent on rockets. With threats of funding cuts if the nation were to lose face, and perhaps even the necessity of more direct investigation in search of “counter-revolutionary sentiments” and “saboteurs”, the Chinese engineers labored on.

In the meantime, the Americans had assembled an international program to conduct their own return to the moon. Budget hawks and the pressure to maintain a relatively tight gap behind the Chinese had lead to the selection of relatively conservative launch vehicle goals and the modification of the existing European Hermes capsule. The level of international cooperation and the contracts with American companies helped cushion Artemis against the demands for a “Peace Dividend” and the incoming Clinton administration--unlike Reagan and Bush’s militaristic SDI, Artemis was a cooperative mission of peaceful exploration which merely happened to also promote American power and global leadership. These points, and the labyrinthian negotiations required to set up the contracts with ESA and NASDA in the first place, were enough to leave the program on track--or as close as the occasional schedule slips could allow. [1] While the Chinese struggled to bring their schedule under control, NASA was faced with public pressure to accelerate their program to win a race they had tried to make a question of capability, not speed. The agency, chastened by their soul-searching after the Atlantis/Hubble disaster, pushed back hard against the sentiment. The twin Shuttle-C rockets which would carry Artemis 2’s crew and lunar hardware to orbit--and on to the moon--were being prepared just eight years after the program’s official beginning, but they would fly when ready--and not one day sooner.

Whether because of or in spite of this atmosphere of rising pressure, both internal and external, the Chinese managed to return the Long March 2D to flight status in record time. Only a month and a half elapsed before the Shenzhou 5 assembly campaign--already twice delayed--continued. [2] Despite the somewhat strained circumstances of this return to flight, the remaining six tankers for Shenzhou 5 flew in quick succession with no further issues over the next eight months, with the lander making its trip to the growing accumulation of hardware at Tiangong 6 in December. Thus, in late January 1995, Shenzhou 5’s crew of Shen Kuo (commander) and Long Hsia (co-pilot) made their own ascent to orbit on a final Long March 2D rocket. With the assistance of the crew of Tiangong 6, the two astronauts completed fueling and configuring their stack, and the lander and Shuguang-D capsule departed for the moon aboard their twin departure stages. Once in orbit, Kuo and Hsia docked to the lander, and the commander began his descent to the surface below.

Roughly thirty years after the birth of the Chinese manned program, Shen Kuo climbed down the ladder from his cockpit and stepped off onto the dusty gray regolith of the lunar surface. China's first lunar astronaut had to work fast. The mission plan allowed only six hours on the surface before he needed to return to orbit. The time flew, and finally Kuo collected his last samples, checked the instruments he'd left on the surface, and climbed regretfully up the ladder. It was a powerful moment for China--despite the issues, the program had pulled off a critical second in spaceflight, and had achieved the perhaps overambitious goals they had committed to more than a decade before. However, even as Kuo and his co-pilot returned to Earth, final preparations for Artemis 2 were in progress in Florida. The margin of China's victory would be less than a month. Artemis 2 landed as scheduled in February 1997 and spent more than four days on the surface. The Chinese had secured a win, but the joint Western program had scored their own PR points.

The two missions generated different reactions around the world. In the West, the Europeans, Americans, and Japanese public viewed the narrow victory by the Chinese as either a stunt or (often) a missed opportunity--some questioned why NASA had been unable in the end to catch the Chinese. These questions, though, were tempered compared to similar questions asked in the 1970s and 1980s of similar Chinese stunts largely by the explosive growth of China in the meantime, and the relative capabilities of Shenzhou and Artemis. If it had been embarrassing for Europe to be beaten to manned flight by a nation with less than a tenth of their combined GDP, it was less so to be narrowly exceeded by a dramatically less capable lander launched by an economic near-peer, particularly as their new Ariane 5 rocket--nearing its debut--would enable new expansions of European ambitions. Similarly, the Americans could expect a similarly capable Artemis mission to be flown every year, with future missions enabling four or more launches to land additional cargo and construct full on moon bases--a stark contrast to Shenzhou’s short sorties. The biggest gnashing of teeth came from the former Soviet Union, where Russian engineers felt somewhat robbed of their own chance at the moon. Though Clinton had proposed cooperation with Shuttle flights to Mir or the incorporation of a module from the never-launched Mir-2 into the growing Space Station Freedom, it had been too late in Artemis’ development for the Russians to secure their own spot as Japan or Europe had. It was only with the rejuvenated Russian economy of the last two years that Russia had been genuinely able to contemplate a lunar program of their own, and even so the chances looked poor.

As the new millennium approaches, the major nations of the world ponder their future plans in light of the end of the race back to the moon. However, ironically, the nation with the toughest decisions to make is that race’s nominal winner, the People’s Republic of China. With the comparative capabilities of Shenzhou and Artemis, the future of the Chinese program will have to depend on either further stretching of the capabilities of Long March 2D and orbital assembly or a new, stronger foundation for future space missions built on the larger launch vehicles they are rumored to be developing…

[1] A bit defensive on the politics front, eh? I thought that “politics wasn’t the point of this timeline.” It’s not, I just...thought this was worth explaining more. Uh-huh, sure.

[2] That’s a bit short for a thorough investigation, isn’t it? IOTL it was a four month stand-down. ITTL, they’re under a bit more pressure.

 

[e of pi]

Just how large is Freedom in this TL? I was imagining that it would be consuming 2 billion USD a year through the 90s...

It's initially only about a third the size of ISS, growing over the 90s slowly towards something roughly equivalent to ISS. Of course, with the Russians interested in adding Mir-2 modules to it, that would then result in a SSF a tad bit larger than OTL ISS. However, you're probably not too far off in your budget estimates--it's probably close to the OTL 2005 ISS costs ($1.8b/year).

A fair point. If you mentioned this in your updates, I missed it.

I did, in part 19. It's basically the same trick WG and I pulled in Eyes--there was a good amount of money in the initial surge of SEI, but with overly grandious plans and out-of-reach schedules, the money melted back away by 1993/94. In Eyes, we had Gore and particularly the (fictional) Administrator Lloyd Davis act as the clarifying force to cut the fat from the projects and focus on the moon as our justification for the landings in 1999 ITTL. In Dawn, China's own aim for the moon means that Mars gets taken off the table almost immediately at least for the short term to focus on the moon--and thus the money sticks around a bit more as it's producing results, and the two or three year jump on Eyes' Artemis gives Dawn's Artemis a two year jump on landing.

Well, the budgets I don't find so much of a stretch to believe. The issue is more that I have a hard time believing that both programs aren't suffering more from inconsistency by their political bosses.

fasquardon

As I mentioned in the finale, just posted, Artemis is far enough along by the time Clinton is elected to be hard to cancel, and the international angle gives him his own reasons for liking the program. As for China...their politics in this TL have been barely plausible from the beginning, and I said from the start they would be. Ss I've said, they've spent a fraction of their national budget on the order of NASA during Apollo for about the last 25 years straight ITTL, and their space program has narrowly escaped purges several times for failures in spite of that.

A lot of the reason I'm stopping here is because continuing that trend as China continues to grow to the present would see them with a budget about four times NASA, or a major shift of the valuation of spaceflights soft power in China's internal hierarchy, not to mention picking newer, more well-founded goals for their program--they're sort of out of easy stunts.

Thanks for the comments, and I'm eager to see what everyone makes of this. There's a bit of epilogue coming, and if there's anything in general people might like to see touched on, let me know!

 

[Bahamut-255]

By rejuvenation, you mean the Russian Debt Default of 1998 whose after effects forced major revisions to their economy and currency that managed a one-time GDP Growth of >10%?

Russia, truly, has, drawn, the, short, straw, here. IIRC what they have left at this time is:

• Soyuz (LV)
  
• Soyuz (Spacecraft)
  
• Proton
  
• Zenit
  
• Mir

As their most notable items. All (save maybe Zenit) showing their age, and Zenit being built outside Russia. No Shuttle, their LOX/LH2 Tech not going anywhere on their own systems, and probably struggling just to keep what they have going.

And it seems I was right, a tiny gap in actual timing of landings with the magnitude of difference in capability between the respective systems being a notable item.


As for notes on the epilogue, I'd like to hear about TTL's Ariane 5, what becomes of Hermes over the years, what Russia does with what they have to hand, and what NASA does next.

 

[fasquardon]

Thoughts for future developments:

________

For China the big choice is whether they continue to compete on Lunar missions or turn their efforts elsewhere.

Given the rate at which the Chinese economy is expanding, I can see the space program continuing to win funding increases, even if the % of GDP devoted to the program drops. Alternatively, the Chinese leadership may feel so badly shown up by Artemis that they opt to focus the program on more practical goals in LEO and GEO.

I suspect that in the 90s, showing that they are number 2 to the US would be seen as a reasonable payoff though. That they've achieved something that the USSR never managed is worth significant bragging points too, so I'd expect the space program to continue to grow.

The big question is do the Chinese continue to go to the moon? I would bet that they go back at least once, to prove that the first time wasn't simply a fluke. After that, I suspect the focus would swing to increasing the capabilities of the hardware China has. The Long March 2D in TTL is close to 20 years old at this point.

A move to ker-lox rockets would probably be on the cards as would adding more launch centers or more pads to their existing launch centers, so that they could fuel their EDSs faster. I am dubious that the Chinese would seek to build their own heavy lift vehicle soon. It's a whole lotta investment for something that wouldn't be very useful for China in the short term and China is already a leader in orbital refueling and multiple launch missions. Also, the light and medium lift vehicles can be produced in bulk. Making it so the new generation rockets are more automated would also help.

Once the rockets and launch centers were upgraded, I could see China returning to the moon for longer-stay missions, just to prove that the program of the 90s wasn't just a stunt. Particularly if the US and partners keep Artemis going long enough to score real Lunar firsts (like first moonbase).

I wonder if China in TTL will move into the commercial launch business?

________

For the US, what to do with Artemis and the Shuttle C will be big questions. I suspect the US will complete whatever initial plan was made in TTL's SEI. But after that? The mind boggles. Having a working Shuttle C opens up so many interesting doors for the US.

The real question is what is politically possible.

I suspect that in TTL, something like TTL's Delta IV will come along, or else the generation 1 Shuttle C will be built to give NASA and the USAF medium lift capacity.

One day I'd really like to see a TL focusing on what effect Shuttle C being developed would have.

________

I wonder if pressure from China in TTL will force Japan to consolidate its space efforts into a single agency earlier? That, combined with the nationalistic yearning to prove that Japan is at least a near-equal to China, could save the plans for a Japanese manned space program.

Maybe a Japanese astronaut in orbit in the early 2000s?

________

Hermes being such a success would have big effects on the ESA. I wonder if this might result in Europe emerging as the second space power in the early years of the 21st Century?

________

Russia is in deep trouble. With so much focus on domestic programs, I wonder if any president would be able to get US money into the Russian space program in order to keep all those rocket scientists out of the hands of 3rd world arms development programs.

Perhaps the US might encourage Russia and Japan to work together more?

I can definitely see Russia cooperating more with Ukraine in TTL.

The other possibility is for Russia and China to work together. With China having proved its own abilities more in TTL, I could see them being more open to working with other countries and for both Russia and China, competing with the NASA/ESA/Japanese program on their own is simply not possible. Russia/China/Ukraine together could perhaps compete as a near equal.

fasquardon

 

[prolemasses]

Can't wait to see rendering of the Chinese Lander. Is it a two stage mini LM type Lander, or a single stage LK type lander?

 

[Shevek23]

Can't wait to see rendering of the Chinese Lander. Is it a two stage mini LM type Lander, or a single stage LK type lander?

I wouldn't define LK as "single stage" exactly; it's a crasher design, meaning that another stage deorbits and brakes the craft down to a low speed at low altitude, is discarded to crash some distance from the landing site, and then the remaining craft is indeed one stage that must finish landing itself, sufficient propellant mass to lift off and rendezvous with the parent Earth return craft. The LK design did involve a little bit of liftoff mass savings by dropping landing legs and I suppose other strategically separated masses such as equipment and tankage needed only for descent or the lunar surface mission, so call it say a stage and a quarter? (I doubt the hypergolic propellants were kept in two groups of tanks to save a bit on the liftoff mass; apparently I've been underestimating how much mass tankage and plumbing for hypergol props would be but subdividing it adds to the overall total somewhat and having to switch propellant draw from one to the other risks an extra possible failure point. Most of the benefit of that would be covered by the crasher strategy).

I became more enamored of the crasher approach when I learned of the risky failure window the Apollo LM was exposed to during the final moments of descent; there was some concern that while the abort mode of separating the Ascent Module immediately upon problems with the Descent module would indeed always enable the crew to get off the crashing Descent stage and with enough delta-V to get back to low Lunar orbit, if such an abort were attempted too close to final touchdown, delays in separation and startup of the ascent engine would have the AM very close to the DM when it impacts the surface; when that happens, presumably the tanks holding the two hypergolic propellants would be ruptured and the two fluids coming into contact with each other would immediately cause an explosion, which would finish the job of scattering the two props into one another completely; all reserves of prop left would explode essentially together, sending debris up to strafe the AM, perhaps if it were too close even damaging it with direct blast. A fix was suggested but would have demanded a schedule slip and I don't know how much extra cost, plus perhaps impaired the LM's cargo capacity to limit the surface missions.

I'd think using alternative propellants, such as ker-lox or meth-lox, might lower the risk considerably, though clearly not eliminate it completely. With the LK's crasher design on the other hand (where the Block D stage serving as the crasher did also use ker-lox, for efficiency rather than safety) the whole issue of risking exposure to detonations of untapped propellant from a discarded stage is sidestepped; first of all the plan would be to completely drain the crasher in order to maximize reserves left in the lander/ascent module, and any failure of the crasher stage (which can also have a much simpler engine than the throttling descent engine of the Apollo LM) to fully deliver before depletion would be grounds for an immediate abort to orbit, and at the latest would occur while the lander was still some miles up, buying time for separation. Then the crasher, even if for some reason some reserves were wasted left in it, would hit the ground far away from the intended landing site; assuming the engine(s) of the lander work at all, they will anyway be well separated. The risk all our OTL landing Apollo astronauts ran at the end of their descent thus would hardly exist at all for a crasher design--even if it sticks to hypergols for all stages. (But it would be easier to make the crasher stage use a more efficient mix with a more powerful engine...)

Then, either the same engine that must later fire to ascend will work or it won't; in the latter case the cosmonaut is DOA--except that the Soviets did make the sacrifice of installing a backup alternate engine, which would also have to fail to doom the cosmonaut. If it works to complete the descent, presumably it will be OK for ascent--or if not, as mentioned there was a backup. It can't be 100 percent safe, but it was somewhat less risky that the American approach. How the efficiencies of each compared, in terms of mass landed on Luna and then mass returned to orbit as fractions of total system mass placed initially in LLO compared, I am not sure since I haven't seen a lot of instances of claimed hard definite mass breakdowns for the Soviet system.

Instead of designing a separate backup ascent engine (the LK alternate engine was not throttleable and failure of the primary during landing attempts would demand immediate abort) I'd suggest making six small identical engines, any four of which would be adequate to complete a landing in case one failed during a nominal descent, for a 50 percent reserve in case of single failure (with the engines arranged in a symmetrical hexagon, simply shutting down the opposite engine from a failed one keeps the balance); this should be able to reduce risks comparably to the Soviet alternative engine system with some more mass efficiency and great flexibility too.

One might make the hatch to descend to the surface go at the bottom of the manned part of the craft, down a short ladder to emerge under the shelter of the lander itself and even design such a craft made from united modules so that this is its main docking port through which the crew initially entered and will ultimately leave the craft.

I'd think, especially given that the Chinese system of the ATL is going to be dependent exclusively on hypergol fuels for all phases of operation, and since the craft is assembled from small unit modules, that a crasher/1.5 single stage approach would be very strongly recommended.

But it is a matter of some slightly esoteric math to be sure; it may be that the American 2-stage approach is more efficient, and too much more so to set aside despite somewhat worse risks.

 

[red1]

Did the world know that astronauts dies in the shuguang-5 disaster, or did China cover it up?

 

[torten]

Where next for China? Well, firstly the leadership will want to continue Chinese landings, so I can see the Chinese attempting a Far side landing to prove they can go to the moon twice.

China could use a Proton class vehice. You could argue that since China has mastered the idea of using many launches instead of one or two, then a Heavy launch Vehice is not worthwhile. However, any Chinese hardware cannot weigh more than 10 tons, or they simply cannot not launch it into Orbit. A proton class heavy booster would raise that to 20-25 tons, meaning that larger, Apollo size Lunar lander and Mir core block size payloads become possabilties. This could be combined with a new generation of rockets which run on Liquid fuel, with a Liquid booster that can carry a Shuguang-B. Add liquid boosters or CCB and it could take a Shugauang-C unit. This provides possibitlies for standardisation, as the Heavy booster could just use several of the engines used on the Long march C/D MK2. I think at this point however, Space-X style recovery is unlikely.

As for Space hardware, the Chinese might consider making an variant of Shugaung B that can carry six men to orbit, like Big Gemini, but I could see this getting ignored in favour of other projects.

They might also consider building a new lander which could compete better with the Artemis system, and could stay longer on the surface which could be launched using their new heavy booster. This would be very useful for the Chinese, as it could be used as a Habitat module if wanted, something that the current lander wouldn't be that good at.

 

[e of pi]

Well, as the Age of the New Board draws to a close, I'm very pleased to present the final bit of Dawn of the Dragon. I'm willing to answer further questions, but I wanted to keep this epilogue--like the entire timeline--focused on the program it featured. It's feels good to have this posted, as the idea has been bouncing around in my head for a few years. I hope you've all enjoyed it. Thanks for reading, and see you all on the Third Board!

Epilogue: Onwards and Upwards

“Shenzhou 5’s narrow victory over Artemis 2 in China’s self-declared moon race with the Americans and Europeans marked a major victory for the Chinese program. China had succeeded in outdoing, even temporarily, every other major space program on the planet. However, Shenzhou 5 was very much a high-water mark, as Shenzhou’s architecture was unsuited for more than flags-and-footprints. This was illustrated not only by Shenzhou 5 and Artemis 2, but by the next pair of missions. Artemis 3 flew just a year later, spent nearly a week on the Moon and accumulated as much EVA time as the entire Apollo program had in thirty years before. It took six months longer to prepare the Shenzhou 6 mission, which managed merely 36 hours on the surface, with the commander spending 12 hours in his two solo EVAs. While Shenzhou’s architecture worked, it compared poorly on repeat performances. China had pushed its abilities and capabilities to the limit through innovative mission selection, architecture design, and sheer number of flights--but they had reached a limit for the moment.

By beating Artemis to the moon, they had raised the bar--the expectation was for a further upward trend. However, there were few more “easy” firsts. Unmanned missions to Mars and Venus were planned, but were overshadowed by already-flying NASA flagship missions like the Cassini Saturn probe or the repaired and improved Hubble Space Telescope. With upcoming missions like the NASA Herschel mission to orbit Uranus--the first spacecraft to make a detailed survey of that world and its major moons from Miranda to Oberon--NASA continues to push where China was not easily able to follow in spite of ongoing investment. Some of these problems were solved recently with the debut of the Long March 5 rocket, which can launch 25 tons to Earth orbit--almost double that of their previous heaviest vehicles of the Long March 2 and 3 family. Though this and a revised tanker setup enabled the new, larger Shenzhou lander debuted last year on Shenzhou 7, questions surround the Chinese program. China’s space program has long been a source of prestige, but it is rarely appreciated how much it is and has always been a shoestring program aimed at the development of soft power relative to the west.

Can China afford to develop and operate their own Shuttle-C and a new heavy lunar landing capacity to equal Artemis and the followup short duration bases NASA plans in coming years? Will they declare victory and seek other targets, and if so which? Will they finally seek to develop new, larger spacecraft to replace the venerable Shuguang and Tianjia? Speculation is even rife that China may seek to mimic American collaboration with Europe and Japan on Artemis and Space Station Freedom by allying with the Russians on spaceflight, potentially resurrecting Energia as the enabler for a variety of heavier missions with minimal development required. Whatever answers shake out of these interesting times, China’s program will continue. Like a dragon rising on a tail of fire, the path beckons on to space.”--Dragonrise: The Chinese Space Program from Birth to the Moon

 

[Usili]

A very nice ending to the TLIAW.

 

[Michel Van]

all good things come to end, so this TL

Thanks e of pi it was wonderful to read
and sorry for mix up i made in 2001: A Space-Time Odyssey ver 1.
with it's China manned program looking so similar to this program, by my mistake...

 

[Shevek23]

I guess most of what I might have to say is largely tangential. After the Board reboot i rather hope you might publish some specs on the Long Marches and the standard capsules in more or less collated form, since I obviously did a rotten job trying to estimate them, allowing far too little dry mass.

I've had a bit of fun and self-education trying to evaluate the "crasher/single stage and a half lander/ascent vehicle" mode by trying to see if it offers any advantage or disadvantage versus Apollo's two-stage lander, by trying to arrive at what an alternate super-LK/crasher stack for Apollo might have looked like. Intriguingly, the more or less standard (by 1969 anyway) Agena stage might have served very well as such a crasher; I estimate that an Apollo LEM modified to take advantage of it might have been slimmed down to between 8-9 tons by using a somewhat expanded Agena to take 1500-1600 m/sec off its lunar orbital velocity. Reading about the Apollo landing strategy used OTL introduced me to terms like "High Gate" and "Low Gate" and the "glide" path of 4:1 chosen for penultimate descent from there--horizontal velocity being held at roughly 4 times the descent rate. Allowing for 60 seconds or so for hover and fine final placement maneuvering I variously come up with figures for a propellant burn of about 2 tons, versus 8+ in the OTL Descent stage. It would still make sense to retain the separate Ascent stage, and the risk of a disaster in a last-minute abort would remain the same requiring the same OTL fixes proposed but not implemented.

As far as I could tell, it was pretty much a wash in terms of all-up mass for the total lander system; given the basic ISP and thrusts of the types of engines involved, any approach to the problem that can work at all will give pretty much the same answer in terms of all-up mass. And pose similar risks too. Either your engines work or they don't; taking measures to ensure backups must eat away at a thin mission margin.

Replacing a well-developed hypergol stage with a new hydrogen-oxygen one for the crasher should tip the balance in favor of crasher mode, but I didn't investigate that too closely; a single RL-10 would have a lot less thrust than the single Agena engine so either one sacrifices some of the ISP advantage (not to mention managing hydrogen boil-off on the outward trip and LOI and other preparation time for landing) to more gravity loss in a longer burn, or add risk by adding more engines.

I've had a terrible past couple months and don't look forward to the Board being down for most of a week; the new features people have been touting mostly strike me as pointless. I'd rather that some steps could be taken to preserve one's Subscription list than have any three of the new stuff; I have 16 pages of old Subscriptions and the best thing I could think of was to save screenshots of each one as PDFs, which was a cumbersome process. Then later I'd have to manually re-subscribe to interesting ones. Subscriptions is the main thing I have been getting use out of.

(Anyone know a more painless way to transfer one's Subscriptions over?)

So perhaps in my jittery nervousness I've overlooked perfectly plain and adequately described details about how exactly the Chinese landers were configured. I have been assuming that the modular launch pattern strongly favors a crasher, allowing minimal mass for the manned craft itself and adequate removal of delta-V by simple and mass-efficient fueled modules--probably just one, topped off with later fuel launches.

This is not identical to LK; the Soviet plan of Mishin's in OTL was rather heavily controlled and supplemented with auxiliary landings in advance. Specifically a Lunokhod would be landed at a prospective site, and the rover would go out and survey for an optimal exact touchdown point, and then strew remote guidance transponders. The actual landing of the LK would be essentially an automated, optimized profile--assuming the main engine worked within parameters. If it didn't the auxiliary backup ascent engine would kick in and the LK would abort back to orbit. I gather that the idea was that it would be best if the controls were untouched by human hands and the cosmonaut let the designers and controllers set it up for him; his mission would then be to get out, plant a Soviet flag, gather some rocks, take a nap in his unremoved space suit with the helmet open, then return to orbit (with helmet closed).

The Chinese clearly cannot afford to send an unmanned probe to prepare the site like that, so the Chinese lander would come down cowboy style, with a hot pilot's hands on the stick and his life dependent on his Yeageresque Right Stuff skills and keen Mark 1 eyeball. It means a less efficient decent profile and a need for hovering reserves similar to Apollo's, and therefore for a given mass (already tightly constrained) even less capacity on the surface than a mere comparison of masses between the three systems would suggest. I wonder if they don't even give in to the obvious dread of a one-point failure and rely on a single engine for the lander.

Or I could be wrong about the crasher being more suited, and instead what they have is a mini-LEM, where the same engine and tanks and controls that accomplish the long brute force slog of braking from orbit to High Gate also do the final phases of landing, and a backup of a sort does exist because the ascent module is designed strictly for ascent and stands ready to separate for an abort to orbit at any time, abandoning the fussy and yet high-thrust requirements of the descent engine for the relative simplicity of a constant thrust, on or off hypergolic ascent engine.

So anyway, even if pictures are going to be too much to ask, some description of the Chinese moon lander package in a bit more detail would be pretty cool. And a matter for a canon appendix; it was hardly essential to the main story line after all.

 

[Usili]

(Anyone know a more painless way to transfer one's Subscriptions over?)

As a suggestion, you could right click on each link to bookmark the link, which should work so you can resubscribe once the board comes out of the transition. Still a bit of a hassle there.

 

[Shevek23]

As a suggestion, you could right click on each link to bookmark the link, which should work so you can resubscribe once the board comes out of the transition. Still a bit of a hassle there.

I've saved my 16 pages of Subscriptions, page by page, as HTML, and hope that the links to threads individually work after the new Board is up. I sure am not going to attempt to bookmark each link separately!

Personally, being told we're moving to a new format of Board with all kinds of neat features but alas Subscriptions can't be ported over is a bit like being told I'm moving to a new house, but it happens not to be wired for electricity--but look at the gilding on those gas lanterns!

But of course Ian can do what he wants when he wants and however he wants, it being his Board. I'm a hoarder I guess.

 

[e of pi]

Well, we're up! I had a bit of a project while the boord was down, which I'll be posting later tonight. In the meantime: Shevek, check your "watched threads". Ian managed more than promised, and saved subscriptions.

 

[Bahamut-255]

Well, we're up! I had a bit of a project while the boord was down, which I'll be posting later tonight. In the meantime: Shevek, check your "watched threads". Ian managed more than promised, and saved subscriptions.

Oh? That I think I'll want to take a look at.

 

[e of pi]

So, that’s it?

I was planning for it to be, yeah. Also, shouldn’t you have died with the New Board?

The boldtext is coming from inside your head.

Why’re you bugging me while the board is down?

You’ve used the excuse that this timeline is just about China to weasel out of giving much detail to anybody except the US, but I think you owe a few answers now that it’s over and done with.

So, what, some kind of…

Appendix A: All of the Other Reindeer

Yeah, basically.

Alright, I guess that makes sense. Let’s start with:

Turning Japanese, I Really Think So:

With China as a major competitor, both in economics and soft power areas like spaceflight, manned space stays a bit more central to Japan’s plans. The three Japanese agencies (ISAS, NASDA, and NAL) were merged into a single agency a bit earlier than IOTL. They have their participation in the EDS for Artemis, of course, but also participation in Freedom. Their initial plan had been to develop their own spacecraft to fly crew, like ESA had done in the early 80s, but with a twist: instead of the entirely-expendable, heavily modular design of Hermes, Soyuz, or Shuguang, they were going to include all the expensive hardware inside the return capsule for reuse--like the American Space Shuttle, but lighter and with a simpler aerodynamic profile. The end result is basically a Dragon with a hinomaru on the side--systems in the (designed-to-be) reusable capsule, with radiators and solar arrays on a simple structural trunk. Luckily, H-II has about the same payload as Falcon 9 v1.0, so the sizes should just about work. The budget problems of the early 90s delay things a bit, but as IOTL the first payload of H-II includes an engineering payload to test thermal systems (OREX).

I’m going to steal the OTL nickname for that payload for the capsule it’s testing for ITTL: Ryūsei, or “shooting star”. Because of the budget issues and weight growth, the manned Ryūsei gets delayed in favor of fulfilling the barter agreements for Freedom with the unmanned version, which is first launched in 1997. It’s again like the OTL Cargo Dragon: internal payload in the capsule, external payload in the trunk, so it can just about replace HTV on a one-to-one basis. As of the end of the TL in ~1999 the manned debut of Ryūsei remains one of Japan’s priorities for the new millennium. With it, they hope to offer the Americans a larger alternative for Hermes on Artemis and a better crew lifeboat for Freedom--both of which would be major expansions of the perceived power of Japan in spaceflight. It certainly kicks Shuguang’s butt.

Europa Universalis:

The Europeans are very pleased with what Hermes has brought them and the general state of their program as of the end of the timeline. The Ariane 5 rocket debuted in 1996, breaking from the Ariane lineage in basically every way. It’s a two stage all-hydrogen rocket with a payload of about 10 metric tons. Four alt-Vulcain engines power the first stage, with one driving the upper stage (Vulcain has only about 75% of the OTL thrust in this timeline--it’s built to a different specification). The rocket can take two, four, or six solid rocket boosters, enabling a payload of up to 20 metric tons--the next time they need to launch something the size of their Freedom lab, they can do it themselves. The introduction goes about as smoothly as IOTL, but they get their issues figured out, and the rocket has a bright commercial future ahead of it. Given Ariane 5’s dial-a-rocket design ITTL, they can entirely discontinue Ariane 4 instead of flying it alongside Ariane 5 as they had to IOTL which helps to offset some of the operational costs of picking hydrogen and solids.

That leaves Hermes as the big open question--its three-person capacity is a big limiting factor on the capacity of Freedom (since it’d take three lifeboats on orbit to increase the crew above six) and of course on Artemis. There’s just only so much room inside a reentry module built to fit on the 5-metric-ton Ariane 1. With the Japanese Ryūsei as potential competition to replace Hermes as a Freedom lifeboat and crew capsule for a potential second series of Artemis missions, the Europeans have been looking heavily at replacing Hermes basically since they finished the Lunar Hermes development in 1995. The proposals cover a range, from miniature spaceplanes to fly on Ariane 5 to lifting bodies and more, but one of the leading ideas is a joint development with Russians to implement a version of the “Super-Soyuz” Zarya design--an irony given the “inspiration” of Hermes’ concept being Soyuz’ modular design and “headlight” entry capsule. Discussions are advancing behind the scenes as of 1997 to secure official approval from the European space ministers, with the support of the US government--who would much rather see Russian rocket engineers working on a new capsule with the Europeans than North Korean or Iranian missiles.

Ah, Those Russians…

The Russians probably got the shortest shrift in terms of detail ITTL, largely because up until the nineties they were roughly on an OTL track. Their program was pretty well set up to play against the Chinese program, and as a result they mostly just did what they did IOTL. In the nineties, of course, well...as the saying goes, the nineties sucked. After 1992, Clinton made a point of reaching out to the Russians, and of course securing their space program from having skilled rocket engineers end up working for rogue states was a big part of that. Unfortunately, unlike in Eyes, the Artemis program is running a couple years ahead of its counterpart in that timeline. The end result is that to fit in a Russian contribution would be a major revision to the plans.. There’s consideration given to using Energia to loft a stretched EDS for second-generation Artemis missions, but that’d mean changing the EOR orbit to 51 degrees from 28 and take a bit of a payload hit on the Shuttle-C with the crew. In the meantime, while NASA is going to the moon with Europe and Japan, Russians and Americans are negotiating more humble collaborations. In 1995, tentative agreements are reached regarding the launch of some of the modules of the stagnant Mir-2 station to join Space Station Freedom, potentially bringing with it an expansion of the crew to 9. The Europeans are also negotiating for joint development of a “Super-Soyuz” replacement for Hermes, with some relation to the Soviet Zarya project.

In addition, there have been meetings with Chinese program leadership regarding some sort of collaborations, but these often stagnate--China feels the ego of the reversal of Cold War power perhaps a bit too strongly: they’ve got their own stations, their own capsule, and they’ve landed on the moon twice. All the Russians can offer is more engineers and perhaps rides on Energia--and haven’t the Chinese shown they don’t need large rockets? The Russians should be begging China to collaborate. These discussions have not been nearly as fruitful as the ones NASA and ESA. However, that’s for the future of this TL. In the meantime, Russia’s working with the Americans to fly a series of Shuttle missions to Mir, and perhaps even with the Europeans for them to fly a few exchange missions with Hermes, and with the RUssian economy apparently recovering from bottoming out, perhaps they can finally think about driving the fate of their own program again, not just dancing to the tune other programs are willing to play…

U...S...A...U...S..A...U..S...A!

In spite of the rise of China in this timeline, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States is the leader in global spaceflight--certainly in terms of a dominant voice in guiding what happens if not as much in terms of achievements and pure spending as IOTL. With Space Station Freedom and the Artemis Program,the United States is the center of global spaceflight alliances that offer much more capable space station and lunar programs than their Russian or Chinese peers, and the Space Shuttle and particularly Shuttle-C offer more proven ability to loft payloads for major projects than the new Ariane 5, Long March 5, and their closest equivalent--Energia/Buran--is effectively defunct. This is only enhanced by the planned Shuttle-Mir missions and the likely addition of segments of the Mir-2 project to expand Space Station Freedom into a larger, even more international space station. Still, with the first few Artemis landings complete the question is what’s next. Thankfully, the international elements of Artemis make it a hard target for budget hawks, as does the ongoing Chinese lunar program--as much of a sideshow as it might in actuality be. There’s at least grudging support for a second series of Artemis landings, using a four-launch profile to send a crew lander and a second cargo lander to the same site on the lunar surface, enabling missions of up to a month to be conducted--four times the exploration capacity at only twice the cost. The main question is if this will mean flying missions half as often--every two years--or require an increase of about a billion dollars a year in NASA’s budget.

The other thorn in NASA’s side is the age of the Shuttle hardware--with the new millennium, the Space Shuttle’s technology is easily thirty years old, and the Shuttle has never quite lived up to expectations--and the AtlantisHubble disaster was a tragic warning of what would happen from trying to push the limits to force it to meet those expectations. Under the direction of Clinton’s Vice-President Al Gore, NASA has been giving extensive thought to a second-generation reusable vehicle, one which could enable meeting NASA’s future objectives with lower costs. Still it remains to be seen if the NASA/Boeing X-33 demonstrator will succeed in meeting these goals, or if the program’s objective of demonstrating aerospike engines, advanced metallic thermal protection, and composite cryogenic tanks will prove to be too much for even a relatively conservative vehicle configuration to outweigh, or if it will fall to the budget axe on the back of pushing too far and too fast. Much may depend on whether Al Gore himself succeeds in his bid for the presidency as the new millennium arrives.

And the Rest…

With China setting a model, there’s a bit more of a tendency ITTL to view a space program--and particularly a manned space program--as a declaration of “coming of age” as a powerful, industrial economy. India’s manned program is much less of a powerpoint project than IOTL, and the coming debut of the GSLV, with a potential 5-ton LEO payload, offers a chance for that. Still, the real development of the program to do more than unmanned comsats and weather satellites will have to come in the new millennium. India’s certainly not the only player in this new space race--other nations like Brazil and even South Korea are looking at launching their own rocket programs or collaborating with others. The problem is the expense--not everyone is as bonkers as China, and as willing to sink as much as 1.5% of their GDP into a soft power project for thirty years just to show off their development.