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.