Sputniks... an Alternate Space Race

[neopeius]

No comments? I wonder if Friday night is a bad time to post.

[Bahamut-255]

Not really. Was just asleep when you posted. Some good things here, but I'll comment when there's more.

[The Oncoming Storm]

Another good one! The different names for the programmes take a bit of getting used to but the Norse names are very cool

What got my attention was the canning of Nimbus, just as with the earlier cancellation of INTELSAT in the form we know it that's going to have big implications for weather forecasting and Earth observation in general.

[OutsiderSubtype]

So we are seeing some financial trade-offs and more emphasis on manned over unmanned exploration. I don't really know how to predict the consequences of that since it obviously didn't happen OTL.

[Shevek23]

Originally Posted by neopeius

Part 9 DoD, NRO and NASA unmanned, 1963-64


<The X-20 Dyna-soar>


Development of the X-20 went extraordinarily quickly with the help of plentiful funding and the wealth of data resulting from the flight of the X-15b. The experimental spaceplane was ready for flight testing by the end of 1964. It was hugely popular already, thanks to an Air Force advertising blitz (to keep their vehicle in the spotlight while headlines were made by Magellan and Nievo missions). A schedule of flight testing, including B-52 drops followed by Titan 2-boosted suborbital missions, was drawn up. Unfortunately, the X-20's orbital booster, the powerful Titan 3, suffered delays in development, and it would not be ready until 1966, at the earliest. Yet, there was immense pressure to get the X-20 up before it was completely upstaged by the competition.


MacNamara's solution was crafty and politically astute. For the first several years of the space program, civilian programs had used military boosters to launch their spacecraft. Now they would return the favor. DoD purchased several Saturn 1 boosters (which had no spacecraft associated with them) to ensure that X-20 flights could begin with no delays.







The single-man spaceplane had limited operational utility, but it would serve as the basis of a series of evolved designs. The X-20 Mark A (Satyr) space transport began development in early 1964. It was to be a direct competitor to NASA's Delphi. The X-20 Mark II (Cerberus), the operational version of X-20 designed for reconnaissance and limited bombardment, also began development in 1964. Management conflicts between the two similar craft caused progress to be slow for both projects until the summer....

Now, first of all when did the Body Snatchers get MacNamara and replace him with Santa Claus?

MacNamara gets so much flak from both sides of the political aisles I have to wonder how much of it is really justified, but for good or ill, his hallmark OTL, at least in the earlier years (Kennedy admin, early Johnson years) was a rather fanatical devotion to cost-cutting by imposing standardized one-size fits-all programs like the F-111, which was supposed to serve the needs of both Air Force and Navy, and wound up pleasing neither. And OTL he was quite harsh and skeptical of X-20 (and lots of other programs) and demanded the Air Force convince him there was a military mission that this led up to meeting. Bombing would not cut it if ICBMs could do the same job; as for

It was to be a direct competitor to NASA's Delphi.

That was exactly what MacNamara accused the Air Force of doing, in direct violation of Presidential policy going back to Eisenhower and affirmed by Kennedy and Johnson. Man In Space was supposed, at least OTL, to be peaceful, civil, and done by NASA.

Now he did give the OK to the Manned Orbital Laboratory, presumably on the grounds that an Air Force presence in space did have some military justification--the old "spy satellites" were not very flexible, they had to take pictures on film and then drop the film down to be captured and examined (assuming it didn't accidentally fall into Soviet or other hands instead!) and the delays involved could make the intelligence gathered old news; a case could be made for having some uniformed military up there to turn the cameras onto immediately developing situations and make evaluations directly, so military Man In Space included realtime surveillance as an urgent mission; that would justify quite a lot of other stuff as covers.

It could be that I've lost track of some aspect of this ATL that explains why not just MacNamara but the whole Washington establishment is a bit more hawkish and eager to see NASA's efforts backstopped and competed with by the Air Force, or military in general.

Given a competitive relationship that is also symbiotic, then I'd agree MacNamara trading boosters with NASA makes some sense! The question is, why is he backing X-20 at all!

The specified mission of bombardment seems just foolish to me; why risk a crew and have to design a craft of which the warhead is only a small fraction of the whole, and needs to manage a very demanding skip-reorbit (right over the angry missile fire of the people it just bombed) when an ICBM delivers the warhead much more efficiently and cheaply?

Recon, I think, would be the justification.

Now--as for using the Saturn 1--that booster was a kludge. You know those stripy tubes apparently making up the first stage? (There's another, larger tank inside of them though). They are Redstone and some other booster tanks, enclosing IIRC a Jupiter tank. Von Braun's people at Huntsville (formerly the Army's Redstone Arsenal) needed to cobble together some kind of Saturn 1 design fast, and they had all these smaller rockets lying around, and they just sort of lashed them together real quick, because they didn't have time or budget to design it from scratch.

So it made sense, given that they could make some test articles fast and they passed the tests, and that they could assemble a number of Saturn 1 and 1Bs from available missile stocks, to scrape up a number of Apollo boosters for the early stages of the program. But they were in limited supply; it would make little sense to plan on manufacturing more 1s. Or even 1Bs

A new rocket based on the parameters of the 1B but designed from the ground up needs to be developed I'd think. Artemis's EOR strategy will want to use more rockets on a Saturn 1 scale than OTL Apollo did; OTL the Saturn 1 was merely a step toward the real goal, which was the Moon rocket; here NASA is planning to piece things together in Earth orbit anyway, so not just early testing and development but actual mission stages will be using the Saturn 1 scaled rockets, I'd think. Call them Saturn 1C I guess!

[Shevek23]

Ok, I apologize for elements of my last post that were a bit off-the-wall. Apparently, kludge or not (I stand by my statement the original Saturn 1 design was a kludge and I don't think anyone in NASA, not even at Huntsville (especially not them!) would deny that) it was nevertheless a design that continued in new construction. Had I consulted my wooly memory I would have recalled that Chrysler Corporation had the contract for making new Saturn 1 first stages. I don't know if they followed the Redstone and the other rocket (was it Viking? Thor?) tank designs to the hundredth of an inch so they were essentially in the business of making something like 3/4 of two or three different rocket types, then binding them together to make a fourth rocket, or if the later iterations of the design adjusted things a bit so the components were distinct from their miscellaneous ancestor rockets. Anyway Chrysler was making new ones, to essentially the old design. A design that I suppose might have had some advantages to offset its apparent drawbacks. (But I note such designs of clusters of small tubes are not imitated in other rockets of whatever purpose!)

I guess one reason the Saturn 1 first stage design was not rationalized into a simpler single pair of tanks as most other rockets are was that once the contract with Chrysler was signed, that company had the license to make that one design, and substituting in an equivalent-delta-V new first stage that was a scaled-down version of the Saturn V 1st stage would have meant either dropping Chrysler as the constructor or leasing to Chrysler the right to use, and become intimately familiar with, whichever contractor's design who made the V's first stage. As long as they stuck with the multi-tube first stage, perhaps making small modifications, Chrysler was happy, the other contractors weren't worrying about their intellectual property being given away to someone else, and whoever politically represented the plant workers and/or was concerned about Chrysler as a lobbying force was happy. So no one wanted to rock that boat.

Of course an important distinction between the Saturn series and other candidate rockets like the delayed Titan III was that Saturn was a NASA design associated strictly with the civil space agency, whereas other boosters (including to be sure all the ones used for manned programs OTL before Apollo, and in your timeline before Artemis) were more or less modified military rockets. ITTL MacNamara has gone and blurred that fine line; how much so depends on how aggressive the missions of the successors to X-20 will be perceived as being. If MacNamara is just tiding over the program during the temporary delay and the eventual standard launcher for operational Dyna-Soars will be the Titan III, then it's not so bad yet; X-20 itself can be billed as not a military craft as such but merely a test article. Still that opens the can of worms of just why the Air Force is doing a job that NASA should be doing (namely, exploring the limits of alternative re-entry craft).

I do think someone OTL should have done something like Dyna-Soar, just to explore the possibilities if nothing else. And that someone IMHO should have been NASA, not the Air Force. Obviously OTL NASA was not funded to do much of anything manned but Apollo and development stages leading straight toward the moon landing mission, and in fact a certain amount of parallel work by both the military and the secret services was done and this was good for NASA and for the development of the technology in general.

But to begin with, the uniformed services themselves have got to ask themselves, just what will be the distinctively military missions to be carried out by X-20 derivative aerospace craft--they after all will be the Charlies who have to actually do it! Then, if the Secretary of Defense and the President are not rather pointedly demanding clear answers to that same question, they are not doing their jobs. If they don't ask, members of Congress may and should! And if the US Government as a whole, and the mainstream US press along with it, would rather just muddle along without looking too closely at the military-industrial sausage factory's inner workings, foreign governments who might reasonably be expected to be mere spectators of NASA's civil ventures would just as reasonably be expected to look more closely at ventures labeled "Defense." The Soviets of course will have their questions, rhetorical or otherwise, at their US Embassy and at the UN, not to mention on the diplomatic and espionage fronts around the world, but so might allied nations in Europe and Asia!

Someone somewhere should be asking these questions and someone should be answering them.

There's nothing wrong of course with the military assisting NASA by volunteering their expertise, by freeing up their contractors to use cutting-edge technologies otherwise shrouded in secrecy, above all by offering the sort of people whom everyone had in mind for the pioneering generation of astronauts--I believe that OTL, every NASA astronaut had previously served in some branch of the military and most still retained commissions, at least until well into the Shuttle era. ITTL Crossfield was not technically in uniform but of course it was DoD who sent him on his wild ride!

It's really a rather metaphysical divide from a practical point of view; clearly the blurring of the lines OTL (and their even murkier appearance here) put more money in the kitty for space exploration in general.

But by that same token I wonder why NASA could not have been given the funding and access and given the complete responsibility for developing all this cutting-edge stuff. Well again, I suppose part of that was not wanting to taint NASA's civil, peaceful image by having it in any direct way involved in developing hardware that was for any clearly direct military purpose--OK for them to explore the parameters of hypersonic flight, improved rocket engines, etc etc, but not to actually finalize a design for a missile.

[neopeius]

Shevek, I love your stream-of-consciousness screeds

The Saturn 1 as a DoD launcher is a very-short term situation. It's too light to field components of EOR Artemis.

[neopeius]

<1963 -- in with the new>


1963 saw the Soviets poised to take the lead again. On March 10, 1963, unmanned Novii Nievo 1 completed six orbits, returning to Earth about nine hours later in the Siberian landing field. Details of the launch were not made public. Meanwhile, the American Magellan program still had several flights left before the larger Delphi could take the spotlight. On May 20, 1963, Alan Shepard became the first man to make a second trip into space, he and his Freedom 7 II making an exceptionally successful twenty-four hour flight. The Magellan spacecraft was put through every test possible and passed them with flying colors. The Magellan was greenlit for even-longer missions.



33 days later, the Soviets launched another unmanned and unannounced Novii Nievo. This spacecraft encountered difficulties on orbit which prohibited a successful retrofire. However, extensive orbital modification maneuvers were conducted which indicated the success of the design. While the rest of the world remained in the dark on the progress of the Soviet program, bad news on the American front made headlines: On July 1, 1963, astronaut Deke Slayton was grounded with a suspect heart arrhythmia, preventing him from making an orbital flight. Gus Grissom would have been next in the rotation, but he was already preparing to command the first Delphi mission. As a result, Scott Carpenter was selected to be the pilot of the next (and final) Magellan mission.


Before the Americans could launch this ambitious mission, however, the Soviets (again) beat the West to the punch with their October 4, 1963 launch of the first manned Novii Nievo. Dubbed, "Nievo VI" by the free press, it marked the first time two men had flown in the same spacecraft. They were Cosmonauts Vladimir Komarov and physician Boris Yegorov. Another Novii Nievo, crewed by Comrade-Designer Konstantin Feoktistov and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, was scheduled to be launched later that day for a rendezvous, docking, and exchange mission, but a fault in their booster precluded launch.


Tragically, Comrade Komarov died while conducting the first spacewalk. While he was able to leave the capsule successfully, his faceplate fogged up completely and the exertion of attempting to reenter the ship left him too tired to succeed. Cosmonaut Yegorov did what he could, but Komarov’s suit was too unyielding. Ultimately, Komarov had to be cut loose so that the craft could come home.






Absolutely no information on Comrade Komarov’s death was released to the public. Soviet media announced that the mission went completely according to plan.


Scott Carpenter's November 16, 1963 flight, in Aquarius 7, could have been rather lackluster in comparison, but the thoughtful astronaut's musings on man's place in the universe as he spent three days in space captured the world's imagination far more than the terse news releases of the Soviet media. While still falling far short of the nine day record set by Nievo V, the mission stretched the Magellan's endurance capabilities to the limit and paved the way for the upcoming Delphi. It was a fine finale for the first American manned project.


<Interlude, with Taps>


Late '63 was the scene of political turmoil in both Superpowers. On a cool November day, President Kennedy toured the streets of Dallas in a parade of government vehicles. The route had been planned out days before and announced to the public in various media. Amongst the thousands that came out to watch the President roll by was one man with a sinister agenda. As the Presidential limousine drove past the Texas School Book Depository, shots rang out. Kennedy was hit twice, both fatal wounds; and his car-mate, Texas Governor John Connally was also critically wounded. The President was announced to be Dead on Arrival at Parkland Memorial Hospital.


It was a national tragedy unprecedented since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. A nation mourned the loss of "Camelot," the romanticisizing of the Kennedy White House. The assassination had profound effects on the Space Race as well. President Kennedy had consistently rejected DX status for the military's X-20 project. While defense advocates had been particularly persuasive on Capitol Hill, the President was concerned that, in the eyes of the world, America's civilian program would be eclipsed by military endeavors. It is ironic that Kennedy had rattled sabers to get elected, touting a profound "missile gap." But the President had wanted to beat the Soviets, at least publically, with a peaceful endeavor.







Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, was enamored with both the civilian and military projects. He put full political protection in place for the X-20 and its follow-ons as well as the Saturn and Artemis programs. The odd man out was the Office of Space Science whose severe budget cuts were detailed in Chapter 9. The straightened circumstances faced by the unmanned program ultimately hatched the "Make it Pay" philosophy of the mid-to-late 60's, which bore tremendous fruit by the early '70s.


<1964 in Space>


Space buffs had to wait until spring for their next fix, and it tasted like Borscht. The first shot of the season was the (unmanned and unnamed) Delphi, which orbited the Earth on April 8, 1964, proving both the Titan II booster and the Delphi spacecraft systems. It was quickly upstaged by the exciting dual missions of Nievo VII and VIII, launched on April 23 and 24, 1964. On board the former were veteran cosmonauts Leonov and Feoktistov. The other was crewed by newcomers Boris Volnyov and Vasili Lazarev. Though the docking adapter proved faulty, and the two craft could not be snugly connected, they did accomplish the stunt of exchanging crewmembers via EVA (using lessons learned from Komarov's tragedy). This act not only stunned the world with Soviet technical prowess, but it provided valuable experience which would be directly applicable to the upcoming space station assembly and lunar missions.






After a quiet summer, the Soviets launched another double mission on September 1 and 2, 1964. “Nievo IX” and “Nievo X” (with cosmonauts Pavel Belyavev and Victor Gorbatko in one and cosmonauts Yevgeny Khrunov and Dmitri Zaikin in the other) had a mission plan identical to the previous pair of Nievos. This time, the docking adapter worked. The two craft remained docked for 26 hours, although the design of the adapter did not permit internal transit between the spacecraft. Both crews again did a spacewalking swap. Comrade Belyavev joked that his new capsule smelled of Zaikin, who was known for his unfortunate tendency toward methanous effluence.


Nievo X exhibited unexpected oscillations upon reentry, perhaps caused by an offset center of gravity. Both spacecraft landed without trouble, however.






Though their flights were less impressive, at least they ended the year with American missions. On September 23, 1964, veteran Gus Grissom and rookie John Young flew the first two man American space mission in Delphi II which he controversially dubbed, “Phoenix,” in honor of his explosive first Magellan flight. The three orbit mission was a complete success, but the row over the unappreciated spaceship name went on for weeks. It was even suggested that all future American spaceships go unnamed to avoid a similar crisis. Ultimately, Grissom's popularity won over the NASA brass, and astronauts retained the right to name their craft, so long as the names were both mythological and dignified.


December 10, 1964 saw the unsuccessful launch of Edward White and Jim McDivitt’s Delphi III (Nete) mission , which was aborted shortly after liftoff when the Titan II engine cut off prematurely. Thankfully, the Delphi's escape tower propelled both astronauts to safety. Interestingly enough, the Delphi had originally been planned without an escape tower, but Grissom had lobbied extensively for its inclusion in the Delphi design after the Magellan tower had saved his life.






As it turned out, the aborted mission may well have been life-saving in more than one way. By early 1965, American intelligence sources had determined that Komarov's spacewalk had not been entirely successful. Nete was to have been an EVA mission, and it could well have ended in disaster like Nievo VI. NASA could now plan accordingly for the rigors of spacewalking.

[truth is life]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

I believe that OTL, every NASA astronaut had previously served in some branch of the military and most still retained commissions, at least until well into the Shuttle era.

Depends on how you look at it. Technically, Neil Armstrong was the first "civilian" astronaut, in group 2, since he had resigned his commission in 1960. However, as an ex-military test pilot, he wasn't really civilian in the usual sense, only in the sense that he was not then employed by the military. The first astronauts without a military background were recruited in Group 4 in 1965, which was appropriately called "The Scientists," after pressure from, well, scientists. However, they were still required to qualify on jet aircraft like their military counterparts, and most of them still had former military service (OTOH, the draft may have played a role in that). The first completely civilian astronauts, who were essentially payload during launch (no pilot training) were hired in 1978, during the selection of Astronaut Group 8. A bit before the Shuttle era, but certainly bound up in it (they wanted to replace all the old blood which had left over the last several years of no-flights, and would leave after the next several years of no-flights).

Since then, a large proportion of astronauts, if not, by now, the majority, have been civilians with no military background whatsoever, and no pilot training.

[neopeius]

BTW, three of the above pictures are native to the ATL (i.e. representing something which did not exist OTL)

[truth is life]

Originally Posted by neopeius

BTW, three of the above pictures are native to the ATL (i.e. representing something which did not exist OTL)

Escape tower on the *Gemini, that's a good one. I almost missed it (skipped over it the first few times I looked at it--saw the Titan, ignored the escape tower).

Um, the Soviet spacewalking postage stamp? I'm not a stamp person, so I don't know that they never did something like that IOTL, but it seems like a good guess.

Since I recognize the other three from OTL, then, the third imaginary image must be the one of the two astronauts in a cockpit. But I'm not completely sure of that.

[The Oncoming Storm]

Love the photoshopped Gemini-Titan!

Good touch that Gus Grissom's lobbying after his mishap saves his life ITTL as opposed to what happened in this.

[Shevek23]

Well most of them are rather generic shots of astronauts/cosmonauts in various capsules which to my eye look pretty much interchangable with OTL; I guess you might have photoshopped in the faces of different crew, maybe swapped around some control panel elements and the like?

The Soviet stamp doesn't look like anything I know of they actually orbited OTL, but I can well imagine that Soviet propagandists had all sorts of artwork commissioned for them that either was for some tentative plan that didn't work out, or based on nothing more than generic SF ideas of what plausible spacecraft (and some not-so-plausible ones) might look like. So, since you've previously indicated you aren't a graphics whiz who makes up totally new art on a whim, either you've recycled some such more hypothetical/fanciful artwork done by them OTL but made the craft involved real, or one of your partners in the years-long game this TL originates in whipped it up?

So the stamp is one, I guess, unless it is misdirection and is taken from a real OTL Soviet print run, leaving 2 perhaps three pictures that as far as I can tell at most differ from OTL in very subtle detail.

Is the Kennedy funeral pic subtly different from any shot in OTL, for instance?

Or would you rather leave it as an exercise for us?

I should commit to one theory then and admit I got it wrong if that turns out to be the case rather than straddle the fence, so I'm going to lay down my bet the Soviet stamp is in fact fictional, heavily modified or drawn from scratch by one of your game partners some years ago.

I really can't say much about the others, except the Titan/"Delphi" launch looks exactly like an OTL Gemini launch so that's two I commit to possibly being wrong on--the stamp is fictional, the Titan launch is straight from OTL photos. Leaving the candidates for the other two being two of the capsule-interior shots where the crew's faces have been replaced with someone elses'.

Those are my best guesses!
-----
So before posting I happened to glance down at the commentary of others (I was looking at the pictures one last time) and see how they point out you've added an escape tower to Delphi.

So I was wrong about that one! One to go!

I thought OTL the reason there was no escape tower for Gemini was that the "adapter stage," jettisoned for reentry and serving as a sort of minimal Service Module, down below the main capsule, included maneuvering engines that would have been adequate for an emergency separation, so the tower would have been superfluous. (On Apollo OTOH, the SM itself would add so much mass, and its fuel would pose so much of a hazard, that such a maneuver would not have been as effective, so the CM had its own escape tower a la Mercury).

Does this mean the 'adapter stage" of Delphi is downgraded a bit, with the escape tower being retained to provide a standardized deorbit burn and some of the mass overrun being made up by scanting the storable liquid fuel of the AS, or is it entirely a "suspenders and belt" approach where the extra weight and drag of the escape tower is strictly cost, paid for extra safety by reducing the mission capabilities of the system a bit?

Or am I all wet believing the adapter stage of the OTL Gemini could possibly have served as a suitable escape system and Gemini was taking a rather daredevil risk that given the alternate history is unacceptable here?

Something persuaded the Apollo designers OTL to retain or return to the escape tower system, which I why I guess I have been surprised to notice, or relearn, quite recently, that Gemini didn't have it!

[neopeius]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

Or am I all wet believing the adapter stage of the OTL Gemini could possibly have served as a suitable escape system and Gemini was taking a rather daredevil risk that given the alternate history is unacceptable here?

You're wet, I'm afraid. Gemini was built with ejector seats for weight savings and simplification of readying. Edit: The nose rockets in OTL could detach the Gemini capsule from the rocket, but not on the pad.

The three photoshops are:

1) Volnyov and Lazarev (that's Volnyov, but it wasn't Lazarev when I started...)

2) Delphi with tower

3) The stamp--it's based on a real stamp, but there was only one "Voskhod" rather than two "Nievos." Also, I rewrote the Russian. I'm rather proud of that job.

[truth is life]

Also, Komarov dies Don't know why I forgot to mention that earlier, but he does. Is he fated to always be the victim of rush-job Soviet technology?

[Bahamut-255]

Originally Posted by truth is life

Also, Komarov dies Don't know why I forgot to mention that earlier, but he does. Is he fated to always be the victim of rush-job Soviet technology?

Wouldn't be surprised if the answer is yes.

[The Oncoming Storm]

Well Leonov suffered a similar problem in his OTL EVA and only managed to get back in his ship by taking a huge risk by deflating his suit. Also Gene Cernan was in serious trouble on his Gemini 9 EVA which was in 1966, the Soviets are pushing hard to stay ahead and so they're taking more risks than IOTL, they've lost 3 cosmonauts in orbit so far, some of them have been through bad luck but spaceflight is such a risky undertaking that it doesn't take much to go from triumph to disaster.

[neopeius]

Originally Posted by The Oncoming Storm

Well Leonov suffered a similar problem in his OTL EVA and only managed to get back in his ship by taking a huge risk by deflating his suit. Also Gene Cernan was in serious trouble on his Gemini 9 EVA which was in 1966, the Soviets are pushing hard to stay ahead and so they're taking more risks than IOTL, they've lost 3 cosmonauts in orbit so far, some of them have been through bad luck but spaceflight is such a risky undertaking that it doesn't take much to go from triumph to disaster.

Exactly. I don't think this number of deaths is ASB.

It is ironic and sad that Komarov still died ITTL. Some die when they didn't and some don't die as they did. I actually kept track of all of the astronauts and cosmonauts' histories, and the results are pretty interesting. Gus has a *very* different career path. And Deke got to fly in this world, at least for fifteen minutes.

[neopeius]

<The Artemis Spacecraft>




Artemis was designed to be assembled in Earth orbit and then launched to the moon for a stay that would last up to ten days. Initially, there was some debate as to how many astronauts would fly the spacecraft: a complement of two would reduce weight, but a three-man crew allowed more flexibility and redundancy; it was the latter configuration which was ultimately developed.


The spacecraft consisted of four components:


The gumdrop-shaped Command Module (or CM) was the primary living quarters for the crew. More spacious than any previous craft, it was the only component of the assembly which would return to Earth.


The cylindrical Service Module (or SM) housed the life support and ascent engine for the CM.


The Lunar Descent System (or LDS) was the throttleable engine which decelerated the spacecraft stack into lunar orbit and landed the assembly on the moon. At the end of the lunar mission, the LDS was left behind when the CSM flew back to Earth.


Finally, there was the transtage: a modified Saturn upper stage which launched the assembly from Earth orbit towards the moon.


The "fifth" component was the Asgard space station, designed to be launched all-up with a large refrigeration facility and docking adapter (aft) and an array of scientific experiments in the forward docking compartment. Launched with provisions to last at least a year, it was designed to be reprovisioned.






Construction began in early 1964 and progress has remained steady. It was hoped to be completed by early 1967—just in time for its launcher to be ready. Of course, in 1964, no one was sure if humans could survive in space for the extended periods required for lunar missions and space station operations. Only data from the later Delphi flights would answer that question.


A "typical" Artemis mission went as follows: A Saturn V launched a fully fueled transstage into orbit. This transstage was docked with the Asgard space station where its fuel was kept stable pending the next launch. A second Saturn V then launched with the CSM and LDS on board. These docked with each other in lunar mission configuration and then docked with the transstage, which then boosted them towards the moon.


The transtage jettisoned, the LDS braked the assembly into lunar orbit. It was then used to land the CSM and LDS on the moon for a many day mission. At the end of the mission, the ascent stage on the CSM fired, propelling the CSM to Earth. A second firing decelerated the craft whereupon the CM detached and splashed down into the Pacific ocean.


The success of the program was tied to the Saturn rocket, the biggest rocket ever made. The Saturn 1 booster was completed in 1964. At that time, it was the largest rocket ever built. It was, however, a rocket without a mission, as the Artemis components were all far too large for it; however, several were purchased by DoD to launch the X-20 in the event the Titan 3 proved unready for launch.


Developed in parallel with the Saturn 1 booster was the Saturn C-5, later known simply as the Saturn 5. Powered by five F-1 engines, the largest ever manufactured, it could launch a fully-fueled space station in a single launch. Yet, it would require two of these behemoths to get up all of the components of the Artemis lunar spacecraft. The Saturn 5 was scheduled to be finished by 1967, along with its smaller sister, the Saturn 1B, which was a sort of hybrid between the Saturn 5 and the Saturn 1. It would launch pieces of the Artemis spacecraft for individual testing. Jim Webb knew that a lot of eggs were being placed in the Saturn basket. Any delays in development would throw a wrench in the lunar mission timetable -- perhaps even making it impossible to get to the moon before 1970, per Kennedy's directive. The Saturn 5 thus got top priority; thankfully, its development proved very smooth with no delays throughout '63 and '64.







<Red Moon>


The Soviet lunar program also continued apace. Work on the segmented "Moryak" spacecraft began in 1963. Looking suspiciously similar to G.E.'s proposal for the Artemis project, the Moryak was Korolev's next-generation spacecraft. It was designed to be modular so it could fulfill a variety of roles. The base model, consisting of a solar-powered service module and a three-man re-entry capsule was designed for minimum orbital and early circumlunar missions. Plans existed to develop a third "orbital" module for duration LEO flights and a small lunar lander was also to be built. Progress was aggravatingly slow, especially when compared to that of the Novii Nievo (and, indeed, it is likely that intra-bureau jealousy and priority wars contributed to this). By 1965, it was clear that the spacecraft would not be ready until 1967, around the time the N-1 lunar rocket was scheduled to be finished. The plan to have a full year of R-7-based testing before launching the Moryak on the N-1 meant that the big booster would sit idle after completion, giving the Americans time to take the lead. Still, with Chelomei and Yangel nowhere near able to develop their own lunar programs, Korolev did not need to worry about his own comrades beating him to the moon.


OKB-1 completed development on a first-generation spacecraft boost stage in 1964. When fully-fueled, the component would propel the Moryak spacecraft on a circumlunar trajectory. With less fuel, the boost stage could send the Moryak into high orbit for reconnaissance and interception missions. A larger version, the Block D, was also under development for use in a landing mission.






The completion of the boost stage was not immediately useful to any Soviet program: the Moryak was nowhere near completion, and it took three R-7 launches to fully fuel the vehicle! So, instead, the Boost Stage Mark I remained in hangars waiting for the completion of the N-1 and the lunar spacecraft. Plans to adapt it for the Novii Nievo never left the drawing board and, in fact, the component never flew. See later chapters for a detailed account of its more illustrious (and ill-fated) big brother.


<Houses in Space>


The American space station program was designed primarily as an adjunct to the Artemis lunar program. The Soviet station, begun in late '64, was an independent project. Launched as three components, this station was designed to be assembled by the maneuverable Novii Nievo and could be used for all manner of scientific and/or military purposes as well as providing invaluable information on long-term exposure to the conditions of space. The upcoming turmoil in OKB-1 (not to mention competition from the pro-lunar factions) would soon play havoc with the project's development, however.

[Bahamut-255]

Stations AND Lunar Flights? This is seriously OTT.

On a more serious note. It was calculated at about this point OTL that a 2-man Apollo could be used for Direct Ascent Lunar Missions using just a single Saturn V - though it was rejected since they didn't have enough confidence in automated systems to want to risk it. That and it would require an new spacecraft to replace the already in-development Apollo CSM IIRC.

But at least the Space Stations are getting a better run in the US ITTL.

As for USSR. I'm willing to venture that since Kuznetsov was drafted in by Korolov earlier than OTL, he has built up the necessary experience in rocket engine designing and building to create an NK-33 esque engine far earlier than OTL - in OTL he only had them ready by the end of 1972 - giving the N1 a major boost in reliability terms. As should not trying to get the payload up to 95,000Kg from 75,000Kg. That really f****d it up in a big way.