Very good idea
.Or, ask the guy who runs Astronautix. He seems to know a lot... (bottom of page, 'Contact us' link)
To Rise From the Earth: Alternate 'post-Apollo' space program
- Thread starter Workable Goblin
- Start date
.http://astronautix.com/lvs/x33.htmVery good idea
Or, ask the guy who runs Astronautix. He seems to know a lot... (bottom of page, 'Contact us' link)
has the X33, including pictures of the losing concepts. Little detail about them, 'tho.
I suspect that if he had that info, he'd have put it up....
No update this week. I have a big paper and programming project I need to work on, and they look to be quite complicated. Loads of other stuff, too, but those are the biggies.
And I looked at my numbers for the Saturn II again, and it has a better T/W ratio than the Saturn V at takeoff (using my consensus average number for weight), so that's not a problem
And I looked at my numbers for the Saturn II again, and it has a better T/W ratio than the Saturn V at takeoff (using my consensus average number for weight), so that's not a problem
Yeah...I've also asked on NASASpaceflight.com (which has a number of expert members--eg., Asif Siddiqi, who is probably one of the world's foremost experts on the Soviet space program is a member), and the only thing they dug up was a Rand report I found on Google. It has a few numbers, but unfortunately it seems such things have been forgotten as much as possible by those involved. It probably doesn't help that both alternative contractors were absorbed by the Boeing mothership over the next few years.
I haven't looked at it closely, but the main reason for the Descent Stage is to provide attitude control for the rendezvous and docking. The Logistics Module is just a pressurized can. The fuel tanks will most likely be partially empty (at least for the first few vehicles using already existing LMs), as you are right that the DV is not particularly necessary (though using it as an impromptu 3rd stage would allow a payload boost)
Can't post this week either. Reason? All that stuff I had to do last week? Is due this week. And I haven't finished it yet. Oh yeah, my computer just failed too, making me unable to boot from hard drive or access my /home partition (where all the documents are).
Of course, you may wonder how I'm posting here at all. Answer: the magic of liveCDs! I kept my install disk around just for this sort of situation. Doesn't get me the documents, but it does get me online and posting.
Of course, you may wonder how I'm posting here at all. Answer: the magic of liveCDs! I kept my install disk around just for this sort of situation. Doesn't get me the documents, but it does get me online and posting.
Not so much...
My current best guess at what went wrong was that a monster .xsession-errors file corrupted the file system on that partition when I tried to delete it. After struggling some, and negotiating extensions on the papers I needed to do with the relevant professors, I gave up and formatted the hard drive to fix the problem. It's gotten me back online without needing a liveCD...but it means ALL of the documents for ALL of my TLs that I haven't posted yet (which, luckily, is not all that much--most of this stuff is in my head) are GONE. Poof.
Needless to say, between that and the multiple papers I STILL have yet to do, I am not posting this week. Nor next week, for that matter, most likely. However, I should be able to unwind and get a post up by the week after that, since that will be during spring break.
Not so much...
My current best guess at what went wrong was that a monster .xsession-errors file corrupted the file system on that partition when I tried to delete it. After struggling some, and negotiating extensions on the papers I needed to do with the relevant professors, I gave up and formatted the hard drive to fix the problem. It's gotten me back online without needing a liveCD...but it means ALL of the documents for ALL of my TLs that I haven't posted yet (which, luckily, is not all that much--most of this stuff is in my head) are GONE. Poof.
Needless to say, between that and the multiple papers I STILL have yet to do, I am not posting this week. Nor next week, for that matter, most likely. However, I should be able to unwind and get a post up by the week after that, since that will be during spring break.
Having suffered from a few computer crashes in the past decades, I can sympathize. Of course, doing regular backups (at least for important stuff like AH
) should be standard procedure.My most recent crash was gradual enough that I actually succeeded in backing up first
I just had another silly computer malfunction that ended up with me formatting my hard drive
Luckily, this time I backed up first. So I still have everything. ATM is not so good, but I'll try to have something up by next week. It's hard to get started again when you haven't been working in a while The main problem that I'm having now (vis-a-vis TTL) is that I want to do some cool little vignettes about the actual missions--I figure y'all are, you know, space nuts and would like to see some of this hardware flying instead of me just talking about how it WILL fly or DID fly. The problem then is that I have to figure WHEN all this stuff is launched, which means I have to calculate the launch windows, which is a non-trivial problem (as physicists like to say), especially with the outer-system probes. I can steal a bit from Voyager, but it's still troublesome to figure out when all this stuff is going on to any specificity (day or even month). For the moment I suppose I can skip that and just get back to other things.
Oh yeah, you might like this little snippet from my summary document:
Gives an alternate reason for the delay
Apollo 18 was the 12th manned space mission in the Apollo program. It was the seventh manned lunar flight, the final lunar flight of the Apollo program, and the only Apollo flight that carried a professional geologist...Until the 1981 Soviet manned lunar flight, it was the last manned lunar flight, and held the record for the longest traverse, longest duration, and largest sample return until 1983...
Crew
Commander: Richard F. Gordon, Jr. (Third flight)
Command Module Pilot: Vance D. Brand (First flight)
Lunar Module Pilot: Harrison Schmitt (First flight)
Schmitt was only the second scientist to fly to the Moon (and the first geologist) after the flight of Don L. Lind on Apollo 17...
Landing
The landing site was the Hyginius crater/rille complex, one of the very few craters on the Moon formed by volcanic processes. After the accidental discovery of "orange sand" by Cernan during Apollo 17, the selenological community pressed for an expedition to another volcanic site, though Hyginius had been a strong contender for some time due to its location near the center of the Moon's face, making it much easier to reach than many other sites of interest. Alternate sites considered included Copernicus crater and Gassendi crater...
--Cyclopaedia, the Free Encyclopaedia
What else can compare to going to the Moon? All the old hands--the Mercury, even the Gemini astronauts--they were leaving. Well, some of them were getting a bit old, others wanted to parlay their fame into other spheres. A few had already quit for medical reasons or just to do something else--Carpenter's done pretty well in undersea research. But in the end, most of them left because, well, when you've been to the Moon, just flying around in a tin can looking at the Earth isn't so exciting anymore.
--Anonymous astronaut quoted in Touching the Sky: History of Human Space Flight
The first flight of the Saturn II rocket was a key step for NASA. Besides testing the rocket itself (though given the pedigree of the parts and the extensive static testing already conducted, its reliability was never in doubt), it was the first test flight of the LLLV that was supposed to make extended space habitation possible. This demanded a number of important breakthroughs, especially in automated rendezvous and docking. While for this first flight docking was not attempted, having a spacecraft determine its orbital parameters, calculate the necessary burns, and perform them in order to synchronize orbits and rendezvous with another orbital object, along with autonomously determining its distance from that object to avoid a collision, was a huge step forward for NASA. In the event, things did not go as planned. Multiple problems with electrical systems, the weather, and mechanical faults delayed launch by over a month. Even when it was launched, there were some serious problems, especially the LLLV shutting down after its first approach and refusing to be restarted, or the star-trackers being fooled by visual artifacts until JSC issued a software patch--believed to have been the very first one applied to an operating spacecraft. Nevertheless, Hermes was a major success for NASA, one which would lead to important future developments...
--Touching the Sky: History of Human Space Flight
Crew
Commander: Richard F. Gordon, Jr. (Third flight)
Command Module Pilot: Vance D. Brand (First flight)
Lunar Module Pilot: Harrison Schmitt (First flight)
Schmitt was only the second scientist to fly to the Moon (and the first geologist) after the flight of Don L. Lind on Apollo 17...
Landing
The landing site was the Hyginius crater/rille complex, one of the very few craters on the Moon formed by volcanic processes. After the accidental discovery of "orange sand" by Cernan during Apollo 17, the selenological community pressed for an expedition to another volcanic site, though Hyginius had been a strong contender for some time due to its location near the center of the Moon's face, making it much easier to reach than many other sites of interest. Alternate sites considered included Copernicus crater and Gassendi crater...
--Cyclopaedia, the Free Encyclopaedia
What else can compare to going to the Moon? All the old hands--the Mercury, even the Gemini astronauts--they were leaving. Well, some of them were getting a bit old, others wanted to parlay their fame into other spheres. A few had already quit for medical reasons or just to do something else--Carpenter's done pretty well in undersea research. But in the end, most of them left because, well, when you've been to the Moon, just flying around in a tin can looking at the Earth isn't so exciting anymore.
--Anonymous astronaut quoted in Touching the Sky: History of Human Space Flight
The first flight of the Saturn II rocket was a key step for NASA. Besides testing the rocket itself (though given the pedigree of the parts and the extensive static testing already conducted, its reliability was never in doubt), it was the first test flight of the LLLV that was supposed to make extended space habitation possible. This demanded a number of important breakthroughs, especially in automated rendezvous and docking. While for this first flight docking was not attempted, having a spacecraft determine its orbital parameters, calculate the necessary burns, and perform them in order to synchronize orbits and rendezvous with another orbital object, along with autonomously determining its distance from that object to avoid a collision, was a huge step forward for NASA. In the event, things did not go as planned. Multiple problems with electrical systems, the weather, and mechanical faults delayed launch by over a month. Even when it was launched, there were some serious problems, especially the LLLV shutting down after its first approach and refusing to be restarted, or the star-trackers being fooled by visual artifacts until JSC issued a software patch--believed to have been the very first one applied to an operating spacecraft. Nevertheless, Hermes was a major success for NASA, one which would lead to important future developments...
--Touching the Sky: History of Human Space Flight
Blair152
Banned
There's a book called Children of Apollo. I don't know who wrote it but you
can find it at www.amazon.com .
Eh, that bit's been obsoleted. The current TL starts on page 3, I think. Went over and looked CoA up, and doesn't look particularly applicable.
I'm not a fan of how Children of Apollo was carried out. It's an ok premise, but was used for Liberal bashing fodder.
(Actually, Buran was crushed in a hanger collapse in 2002. The one in Gorky Park was an engineering test model)
That aside...Well, Saturn is an expensive launcher. I hope I won't be giving too much away if I say that NASA will be looking to replace it at some point. Funnily enough, without the Shuttle the DoD will be looking to replace their old Titans, Atlases, and Deltas at about the same time. IOTL, this led to the EELV program. Obviously, ITTL that's going to start a bit earlier, and have NASA as an integral member from the start (and of course they'll have built-in man-rating). So, I want to come up with a name for this program. So far, I've thought of:
* Neptune: obvious--next planet after Saturn that doesn't have...unfortunate pronunciation
* ELVRP (Expendable Launch Vehicle Replacement Program): Also obvious
But, neither of those names is terribly striking my fancy. I like Neptune better, but the DoD seems like it would go with ELVRP. So, suggest me a name, preferably with some kind of theme (there's a secret (from you) project going with this). You'll see it show up in two weeks...
EDIT: Also, I need an administrator for the post-Low period. Right now, I conceive of Low as serving through the Nixon and Ford administrations (I'm assuming politics go as per OTL for this TL, at least until 1981) but resigning after 1976, so I need Carter's nominee. Fletcher (as per OTL until '77) is certainly possible, though I'd rather avoid Frosch. And you'll see this guy in 4 weeks.
That aside...Well, Saturn is an expensive launcher. I hope I won't be giving too much away if I say that NASA will be looking to replace it at some point. Funnily enough, without the Shuttle the DoD will be looking to replace their old Titans, Atlases, and Deltas at about the same time. IOTL, this led to the EELV program. Obviously, ITTL that's going to start a bit earlier, and have NASA as an integral member from the start (and of course they'll have built-in man-rating). So, I want to come up with a name for this program. So far, I've thought of:
* Neptune: obvious--next planet after Saturn that doesn't have...unfortunate pronunciation
* ELVRP (Expendable Launch Vehicle Replacement Program): Also obvious
But, neither of those names is terribly striking my fancy. I like Neptune better, but the DoD seems like it would go with ELVRP. So, suggest me a name, preferably with some kind of theme (there's a secret (from you) project going with this). You'll see it show up in two weeks...
EDIT: Also, I need an administrator for the post-Low period. Right now, I conceive of Low as serving through the Nixon and Ford administrations (I'm assuming politics go as per OTL for this TL, at least until 1981) but resigning after 1976, so I need Carter's nominee. Fletcher (as per OTL until '77) is certainly possible, though I'd rather avoid Frosch. And you'll see this guy in 4 weeks.
Last edited:
Cook
Banned
I think it’s the fact that Skylab B is in the Smithsonian that is the connection.
Ie. Both ended up as ornaments instead of operational.