Just a heads up, i have updated the pdfified version found at https://www.dropbox.com/s/c4agenier605y3j/Eyes Turned Skyward.pdf?dl=0 with the last chapters and the key dates from the wiki. If you notice any errors or want to suggest images to be placed in the pdf shoot me a pm.
It's just two launch sites, LC39A and LC39B, still in essentially "clean pad" condition as they were during Apollo and as LC39B has been restored IOTL. Shuttle showed that one pad can support a launch rate such that the dozen-odd NASA Saturn missions from KSC can fly off just the two pads. In 2010, for instance, they launched STS-131 and STS-132 just 20 days apart, both from LC39-A.
The bigger gate is the availability of VAB cells--ITTL, there's generally about three VAB cells in active use stacking missions, and at one point or another all four are actually used.
There are two additional Saturn Multibody pads--one at LC-36 in Florida and one at (unspecified pad) at Vandenberg for DoD missions. Fun fact: in the history of the vehicle, these are the only two Multibody pads to launch vehicle with SRBs. Some of these are large DoD sats from the Cape headed to GTO, others are DoD REDACTED from Vandenberg headed to sun-synchronous orbits.
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Hold it. They launched vehicles with 3 Saturn cores PLUS solids? Have you discussed that in the TL, 'cause I don't remember it. What kind of solids?
No. As you note, there's no such thing as a "Heavy-with-solids". The whole Saturn Multibody family is Saturn Multibody. NASA's pads are set up for Multibody M02 or H03 launches (that is, single and tricore launches, not with SRBs). The DoD pads are set up for all the Multibody Medium-with-Titan-SRB variants, but not multicore,which is the type I was referencing there.
I was going to say no, that we never ended up having a payload that was in the payload range where H02 was more cost effective than just stepping up to an H03. However, totaling up the crew launch of the Artemis, I see that it actually comes in under 60 tons--I knew it was the only launch in an Artemis 3-launch sortie that has that kind of mass margin, but I hadn't realized it was light enough to be in the H02 cost-superior range. I won't say canonically, since there's arguments about operational commonality and the like, but maybe a few did end up flying. The range of answers is either zero, or more than a dozen--nothing in between. (9 on Artemis 3 through 11, plus the second launch in a 2-launch Orion crew rotation campaign). Precise enough for you?
Hmmmm.
According to that map, the Republicans took Ohio but still lost the EC vote. IOTL, Ohio’s vote for the winning presidential candidate has deviated from the national vote an average of just 2.2 points since 1900 and only 1.3 points since 1964. Since 1964, no candidate IOTL has won the Presidency without carrying Ohio. IMO, this could mark as significant a divergence from OTL as the original NASA decision. I'm still reading through for the first time, so we'll see but that map woke me up. (Yeah, I'm a politics nerd too.)
According to that map, the Republicans took Ohio but still lost the EC vote. IOTL, Ohio’s vote for the winning presidential candidate has deviated from the national vote an average of just 2.2 points since 1900 and only 1.3 points since 1964. Since 1964, no candidate IOTL has won the Presidency without carrying Ohio. IMO, this could mark as significant a divergence from OTL as the original NASA decision. I'm still reading through for the first time, so we'll see
but that map woke me up. (Yeah, I'm a politics nerd too.)"That map?" What map? It seems you are just starting the TL from the beginning so I suppose you might mean 1972, or maybe '76, since the point of divergence is after Nixon takes office in 1968.
But you could tell us which map you mean, you know. You can cite the post number, or simply say what election you mean. Then it would be possible for someone to find the post in question with the map, and make a link--if you go to the post number there is an option to copy the more complex hidden HTML post URL and then use the tools up above a reply box to make a word or phrase a hot link to it.
IOTL, Ohio’s vote for the winning presidential candidate has deviated from the national vote an average of just 2.2 points since 1900 and only 1.3 points since 1964. Since 1964, no candidate IOTL has won the Presidency without carrying Ohio. IMO, this could mark as significant a divergence from OTL as the original NASA decision. I'm still reading through for the first time, so we'll see
I'm a nerd who has from time to time even thrown himself into actual campaigns, canvassing actively for candidates.
Yep, I know you cite conventional wisdom--"as Ohio goes so goes the nation." But why is that?
I'd already thrown myself into at least one campaign before another such verity was disproven--from 1840 (or maybe it was 1820) until 1989 every single President who was elected in a year ending in zero eventually died in office, though often enough not until after being reelected in the 'x4 election year. This too appeared to be some sort of iron-clad jinx. Then Reagan beat it by living to see Bush inaugurated and then lived on quite a few years afterward.
One might guess that the Ohio requirement for winning the Presidency has a bit more cause-and-effect substance and is not merely a string of coincidences, but it is up to the believer to demonstrate the link. It may well be that Ohio by some geopolitical fluke happens to encompass in miniature the exact balance of interests and apathy that holds in the nation as a whole and so it replicates, not entirely by coincidence, the choice the rest of the states also average around. Or it may be something more subtle even than that.
Still, as you say this verity only holds since 1964; the death jinx on the Presidential office held with perfect regularity (even to the extent that IIRC, no other Presidents elected for the first time in non-zero years ever died in office, though I might be forgetting someone) for 120 years. If ever a President seemed likely upon his election to continue the trend it was Reagan, at his great age, and of course someone did try to assassinate him too. But he failed to die. Nor did GW Bush die in office. Can anyone offer a casual reason for the death jinx, and for its apparent exorcism now?
The Ohio-as-bellwether phenomenon might just as well be another such string of coincidences, in which case breaking this "rule," especially just one or two elections after it seems to kick in, would have no casual bearing on anything whatsoever. It wouldn't demonstrate the USA was evolving on a substantially different political track. I suppose one effect would be that it would delay the years in which political pundits start pontificating that one must win Ohio to win the White House by a decade or more--if and only if the coincidence reasserts itself in later years.
I just wouldn't read too much into whether Ohio deviates from the Presidential victor or not unless I had a theory that could explain why it should be aligned in the first place.
Anyway as someone who has followed the TL from beginning to end, I don't get an impression of radically different politics or policies--except of course insofar as...well you are just starting so to cite anything in particular would be a spoiler for you, so just go on with it and remember, the major purpose of this TL is not to explore AH in general but to focus on what could happen in space if the same funds were available as OTL but there was no investment in the Shuttle. If the authors had made every election come out just as in OTL they could have been easily forgiven for doing so.
Im a little late to the game but id just like to say that i really enjoyed this timeline but im posting now because i recall a comment made before the final post that i think e of pi said. about you might post various little scraps of the timeline and of different plans you had along the way or for the future and i was just curious if there were any plans to post such things although now that i write this this thread might be dead but hopefully it might be checked
although now that i write this this thread might be dead but hopefully it might be checked It's still checked, and thank you for the kind words. I've been meaning to post a bit of write-up about how Eyes came to be, but things keep coming up--mostly a couple new timelines, one of which I'm planning to start posting pretty soon if people are interested.Im a little late to the game but id just like to say that i really enjoyed this timeline but im posting now because i recall a comment made before the final post that i think e of pi said. about you might post various little scraps of the timeline and of different plans you had along the way or for the future and i was just curious if there were any plans to post such things
Anyway, that aside, the Turtledoves end tonight, and on the off chance anyone who enjoyed this TL has yet to vote, it'd be nice to manage a podium finish the final year of the TL. If you've already voted, we thank you for your support!
Okay thats great to hear! yea i know id be interested in any thing you might have coming
A photo from Blue Origin's headquarters, as shown on SpaceNews. That phrase, "Eyes Turned Skywards", continues to inspire
Query - could the Orion flights have needed only one Saturn Multibody Heavy, and a M02. My reasoning is that the Apollo capsule could have gone up on the MO2, and the Multibody stack could have then launched a Pegasus stage with the Lander, as done by the Artemis Cargo Flights?
Also, the Area around Armstrong base must be getting littered with Artemis lander descent stages. How do they ensure that they don't have a pile up?
Also, the Area around Armstrong base must be getting littered with Artemis lander descent stages. How do they ensure that they don't have a pile up?
Our model showed only a 14.5 metric ton surface payload for the one-launch direct-to-moon trajectory we used for the Artemis cargo flight. The ascent stage on the crew landing was about 17 metric tons. The issue arises from the need to have Pegasus burn ~20 metric tons of its propellant on ascent to get the heavier lander stack to orbit, so we had to short-fuel the lander by about 4 tons and have less payload to squeeze the cargo lander through TLI on the remaining ~50 metric tons left in the Pegasus.
That'd only get worse when you have to get the Apollo through TLi as well--you need to burn the Pegasus more on ascent and then short fuel the lander yet further to keep TLI mass down. Both hurt an already negative payload margin. Refueling the Pegasus in orbit would solve that, which is what Armstrong missions do (as well as leaving the reusable tugs at Gateway-1 between missions), but wouldn't be an option given the state of the technology at Orion's debut.
Short answer: careful planning.
A combination of using rovers to clear landing sites near the base of depleted stages, preparing alternate landing sites up to a few km away that they access via the pressurized rovers, and the aim to transition within 5-8 years to a reusable lander as well as the existing Armstrong reusable Gateway tugs.