A Sound of Thunder: The Rise of the Soviet Superbooster

[nixonshead]

So if I read this update right, Soyuz ITTL will continue to fly with the crew not wearing Pressure Suits owing to the lack of a very Public Loss-Of-Crew Event?

Am wondering as to the state of Almaz here, sounds like something's off. But is it a fixable issue or not? That is the question.

TKS eh? That would be nice to see. ^_^

So US is committed to STS ITTL as well. That should make for some interesting times in the late-70's/early-80's.

Great update! Delighted to see that Soyuz 11 has a much happier outcome ITTL

Something tells me that a preventable accident is still going to occur. Doesn't look like they're making the switch to wearing pressure suits yet, perhaps they'll risk it for Soyuz 12 then switch to two-person crews with pressure suits for Soyuz 13.

Well, the OTL Soyuz 11 mission profile is actually much closer to TTL’s Soyuz 12, so we’ll see how that goes… Going forward though, the plan is to still have Soyuz flying with a crew of 3 in normal flight suits. The changes to address the Kosmos 456 anomaly are mainly electrical fixes to avoid all the BO separation charges firing together, and moving the manual valve control to somewhere the cosmonauts could actually reach it in an emergency (in OTL on Soyuz 11 it appears the crew tried to manually close the valve, but were not able to do it in time as it was located behind them).

Great update, it lives up to the Nixonshead attention to detail and plausibility that I loved in your previous timelines. Now I'm wishing for more than two updates a week. I really hope the N1 makes it to the Moon. Maybe the fact that as of this moment, in the real world, there is an honest to goodness Moon Rocket on Launch Complex 39 once again is an omen of things to come.

Thanks! I could post at a faster rate, but I still have some images to do and some tweaking in future posts, so I’ll continue at the current pace. Plus, from my experience of streaming shows, I prefer a weekly schedule to an all-in-one dump (but then I’m an old fogie from the days of four UK broadcast channels, when you actually had to plan when to be in front of the telly, like some sort of cave man).

Regarding all the speculation on lunar bases, flybys, etc… Well, let’s wait and see

They can't afford it.

You say that like a little thing like fiscal sustainability is going to prevent the determined space cadet from obtaining Barmingrad.

One comment here: IOTL, the Soviets couldn’t afford Energia, but that didn’t stop them from doing it.

A shame that the OTL Shuttle design will likely be preserved. I always cherish the opportunity for another variation of that famous Decision. In general, I'm curious why TTL is going with a rather last-minute PoD when it comes to salvaging the N1. There is of course the far more conventional option of having Korolev survive his unfortunate OTL death. But I suppose there's also something unique about an N1 timeline where the Shuttle still goes ahead as planned. In any case, I'm very interested to see where this goes!

As mentioned before, for the PoD I was mainly looking for the smallest change that would let me play with my N-1 Blender models, and this seemed the best candidate. Mishin really was against DOS IOTL, so the only thing I had to do was tip him off before the Conspirators could by-pass him and speak with Ustinov - loose lips sink space stations!
I also considered having Korolev die a little earlier and Okhapkin talk over instead of Mishin. Okhapkin was the Deputy Chief Designer responsible for N-1 under Korolev (and Mishin’s deputy IOTL and ITTL), and was open to working together with Chelomei, which could have been an interesting way to remove the destructive competition between the two Bureaus. That would likely have even more extreme consequences. If anyone feels like following it up in their own TL, feel free!
Korolev surviving is, of course, the standard approach, but I’m pretty certain it would not result in a Soviet on the Moon before Apollo 11. As I mentioned elsewhere, the only chance I see of the USSR winning the Moon Race is if the US isn’t running. Chertok and others apparently felt that, had Korolev lived, they would have gotten L1 around the Moon before Apollo 8, but I’m sceptical even of that, as Korolev had already agreed to use Proton for the mission, which was the main source of problems (and there was no time to build an alternative). Based on Yuriy Mozzhorin’s assessment of Korolev’s strategy (see Interlude: “Boris, give me back 800 kilograms.”), a “Korolev Lives” TL could well end up going down a similar route to this one, with a switch to a 2-launch solution after Apollo 11.

Well, @e of pi kinda spoiled it a bit so now I know a little of what's to come.

I don’t think @eofpi gave away anything not implicit in what’s already been released, or covered in my own response on the Shuttle approval dates. The implications and responses to these facts… well, that’s all to come

 

[nixonshead]

Interlude: Soyuz 12​

- 4th March 1973, Low Earth Orbit

Pavel Popovich, commander of Soyuz 12, stared in disbelief through the ship’s periscope viewer at the Almaz space station, now just fifty metres away. More specifically, he was staring at the shattered remains of the left side solar array.

“Now we know why the power output is low,” said Yuri Artyukhin, leaning in from his own Flight Engineer’s seat to share the commander’s view.

“Do we?” interjected Viktor Patsayev, the mission’s Research Engineer. “Something clearly hit the solar panel. But what?”

“I don’t see any damage to the main hull,” Popovich noted. “Whatever it was, it looks like only the left array was affected”

Popovich strained to pick out any new details. The base of the array, where it met the aft section of the station right behind the large cylinder of the main Workshop Compartment, appeared undamaged. But about halfway along its span, the extending truss and the solar panels attached to it were twisted. At least two of the panels were completely missing, and others had large holes in them.

“Bozhe miy!” Popovich cursed under his breath. “A few metres over and it would have hit the Workshop.”

“The station could have depressurised!” Artyukhin exclaimed. He paused before continuing. “Do you suppose it could happen again?”

Popovich shook his head. “Unlikely. The station’s orbit has been raised since the impact. Any debris it generated will still be close to the original orbit. And what are the odds of us meeting another stray meteoroid?”

But Artyukhin was considering other options.

“What if it wasn’t an accident?” he asked. “What if this was an attack?”

“The Americans?” Patsayev asked, scepticism in his voice. “That seems unlikely.”

“Is it?” Artyukhin continued, counting off points on his fingers. “Think about it. Just a few months before their Skylab is ready, TASS triumphantly announces that we have beaten them in launching the world’s first space station. A space station with an important military purpose, which is surely known by the American CIA. Then suddenly, before we can man the station, it is struck by some mysterious object that leaves it crippled. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“This is speculation,” Popovich said firmly. “And if it was an attack, it wasn’t a very effective one. See, the docking port appears undamaged. We will still be able to board the station and complete our mission.”

“Unless they try again,” Artyukhin replied, grimly.

Before Popovich could answer his comrade, the radio crackled back to life.

“-rya. On line! Yantar, here is Zarya. On line!.”

 

[Thoresby]

Beautiful as always and a reminder that Cold War paranoia wasn't restricted to the ground.

 

[Bahamut-255]

Ouch, that's a sore one there on the Left Array >_<

So the question is how did that happen?

Obvious answer to me is of course some kind of impact, for which there are no shortage of candidates, from Orbital Debris (there would be at least some even at this point) to micro meteoroids.

But I'll place my money on remnants of an exploded Proton Stage 3 which did wreck Salyut 2 IOTL. If that's true here, they got off lucky all things considered.

Given that they can at least complete their mission - assuming they can dock to it.

 

[TaintedLion]

So it looks like they're still going with the three unsuited cosmonauts. Still doesn't bode well imo...

 

[Michel Van]

There is a overlook option

NASA stored and mothballed the Saturn V Production tools after Johnson order the production stop in 1968
Nixon had no interest in Space program do lack of Soviet response to manned moon landing
And took Space Shuttle program on pure political reason in 1973
NASA scraped the Saturn V Production tools in 1973 and started with Shuttle Program.

but how will TL Nixon react on successful N1-7L flight ?

I wonder if Space Shuttle will be Saturn V based system, that also can launch Apollo style mission ?
A reusable winged S-IC stage with five F-1A, Second stage with five J-2S engines and third stage with one J2-S for Apollo
A reusable winged S-IC stage with five F-1A with Orbiter with four J-2S engines for Low orbit mission.

 

[Tshhmon]

... as Korolev had already agreed to use Proton for the mission, which was the main source of problems ...

There was Glushko's ammonia/fluorine RD-600 engine, and he allegedly lobbied for its usage. I'm sure you could squeeze 50 tons, maybe even 70 tons to LEO out of the Proton with that. It however would make Korolev turn in his grave so fast as to break the sound barrier.

 

[Michel Van]

There was Glushko's ammonia/fluorine RD-600 engine, and he allegedly lobbied for its usage. I'm sure you could squeeze 50 tons, maybe even 70 tons to LEO out of the Proton with that

Nope RD-600 was a Gas core nuclear engine Glushko worked 1962-1970
That is the RD-301 for fourth stage of Proton rocket, engine tested in 1977 but never used.
Also Glushko study to replace UDMH with Pentaborane (B5H9) to increase rocket performance...

 

[Juumanistra]

Nope RD-600 was a Gas core nuclear engine Glushko worked 1962-1970
That is the RD-301 for fourth stage of Proton rocket, engine tested in 1977 but never used.
Also Glushko study to replace UDMH with Pentaborane (B5H9) to increase rocket performance...

This post, right here, is the best encapsulation of the Soviet space program. Glushko couldn't solve the kerolox combustion instabilities, but finds the time to doodle about a gas-core nuclear-thermal rocket. And hell, didn't the RD-600 keep getting worked on to the point of doing practical experiments in the Eighties?

 

[marathag]

Glushko couldn't solve the kerolox combustion instabilities, but finds the time to doodle about a gas-core nuclear-thermal rocket.

Well, to be fair, it's far easier set of problem to solve,
Turbopump a lot of H2 thru a Reactor, Just heating- no oxidizer issues at all.
Simple, really/
other than the radioactivity.
That's something that can't be fixed, but only mitigated, like the NASA plans for NERVA


IMO, a real mistake for Tricky Dick to have killed it.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Well, to be fair, it's far easier set of problem to solve,
Turbopump a lot of H2 thru a Reactor, Just heating- no oxidizer issues at all.
Simple, really/
other than the radioactivity.
That's something that can't be fixed, but only mitigated, like the NASA plans for NERVA


IMO, a real mistake for Tricky Dick to have killed it.

Well, what @Juumanistra said was GAS CORE nuclear thermal which is a lot nastier than a NERVA.

 

[Juumanistra]

Well, to be fair, it's far easier set of problem to solve,
Turbopump a lot of H2 thru a Reactor, Just heating- no oxidizer issues at all.
Simple, really/
other than the radioactivity.
That's something that can't be fixed, but only mitigated, like the NASA plans for NERVA


IMO, a real mistake for Tricky Dick to have killed it.

As @Dathi THorfinnsson says, there's worlds of difference between a solid-core NTR and a gas-core NTR.

NERVA was a solid-core NTR. It works on fairly well-established technologies, in which you've got fissionable fuel contained within solid fuel rods. The fuel is brought up to criticality within the reactor and then a working fluid -- the propellant itself in a direct-cycle solid-core NTR and an intermediate working fluid in an indirect-cycle one -- is run through the reactor core to carry heat away and drive the engine's operation. Not that building a solid-core NTR is easy, but OTL it was done in the Sixties and never flew only due to political considerations.

In a gas-core NTR, your atomic reaction's fuel is gaseous. So your reactor's really a chamber housing a plasma full of fissioning material through which your propellant (or other working fluid, though I've never heard of an indirect-cycle gas-core NTR) is circulated. The gas-core NTR offers good thrust and world-beating exhaust velocity, which has why it has been a long-time favorite of sci-fi authors: The Heinleinian nuclear-lightbulb was, for all practical purposes, a gas-cored NTR. Practical work on gas-core NTRs has tended to struggle with basic questions like "how do we initiate, let alone control, a nuclear reaction in gaseous uranium?" and "how do we pass LH2 through the core without letting all of the gaseous fissionable materials out too?"

Re: Glushko, this is like saying the multiplication tables are insoluble, while working on the Theory of Special Relativity. As trying to solve the kerolox combustion instabilities in Soviet rockets is leagues easier than the practical difficulties associated with a gas-core NTR. And, again, if you believe what the Cyrillic side of the Interwebs says, the Soviets got as far as doing practical gas-core experiments by the mid-Eighties, while NASA generally wrote off gas-core NTRs as not worth the time to even think about due to their engineering complexities in addition to their political baggage. The RD-600 remains my favorite of the Soviet engines, because of how utterly insane and terrifying it is to contemplate had it ever gotten to the point of being test-standable.

 

[KAL_9000]

Yikes! That Alamaz needs some time in the shop...

 

[Kloka]

Some Soviet boi:”Alright,who sabotaged our space station?”
Chad Miller,Luke Hemming:look around nervously

 

[Workable Goblin]

In a gas-core NTR, your atomic reaction's fuel is gaseous. So your reactor's really a chamber housing a plasma full of fissioning material through which your propellant (or other working fluid, though I've never heard of an indirect-cycle gas-core NTR) is circulated. The gas-core NTR offers good thrust and world-beating exhaust velocity, which has why it has been a long-time favorite of sci-fi authors: The Heinleinian nuclear-lightbulb was, for all practical purposes, a gas-cored NTR. Practical work on gas-core NTRs has tended to struggle with basic questions like "how do we initiate, let alone control, a nuclear reaction in gaseous uranium?" and "how do we pass LH2 through the core without letting all of the gaseous fissionable materials out too?"

Well, that's why you use a lightbulb--it's called a "light" bulb because it's a bulb (of quartz) that emits light (of gamma rays) from the furiously fissioning uranium (and/or plutonium, I suppose) inside. Then you just run hydrogen over the top, and Bob's your uncle. Easy!

(if you can't tell, I regard gas-core NTRs in rather the same light that I do fluorine rockets)

Re: Glushko, this is like saying the multiplication tables are insoluble, while working on the Theory of Special Relativity.

Not special relativity, which is a fairly straightforward result of Maxwell's equations when you start really dissecting them, but general relativity, which is black space magic.

 

[Craig]

Practical work on gas-core NTRs has tended to struggle with basic questions like "how do we initiate, let alone control, a nuclear reaction in gaseous uranium?" and "how do we pass LH2 through the core without letting all of the gaseous fissionable materials out too?"

Might the more recent work done for the Russian atomic cruise missile "9M730 Burevestnik (NATO: SSC-X-9 Skyfall) be a successor technology to this? A radioactive exhaust was seen as a feature, not a bug.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik

 

[Vhen]

Chad Miller,Luke Hemming:look around nervously

I got that reference!

 

[Juumanistra]

Well, that's why you use a lightbulb--it's called a "light" bulb because it's a bulb (of quartz) that emits light (of gamma rays) from the furiously fissioning uranium (and/or plutonium, I suppose) inside. Then you just run hydrogen over the top, and Bob's your uncle. Easy!

Indeed! Which is why nuclear light-bulbs are a mere ten years away.

And have been since at least 1948.

(if you can't tell, I regard gas-core NTRs in rather the same light that I do fluorine rockets)

That's a little unfair to NOMAD and its ilk. We could actually have a flying fluorine rocket today, if we hated our launchpad crews and astronauts enough. Thankfully nobody does, but maybe we'll get an RD-301-powered something lofted by an N1 yet.

Might the more recent work done for the Russian atomic cruise missile "9M730 Burevestnik (NATO: SSC-X-9 Skyfall) be a successor technology to this? A radioactive exhaust was seen as a feature, not a bug.

Skyfall is basically just a Russian rebooting of the Fifties-era Project Pluto, which was an open-cycle nuclear ramjet-powered cruise missile that had it been optimized to salt the territory it flew over would've probably been the most diabolical WMD ever proposed by the Air Force. Hard to tell if that or the Doomsday Orion's intended use to cause all of Siberia to spontaneously combust wins that title.

 

[RLBH]

Skyfall is basically just a Russian rebooting of the Fifties-era Project Pluto, which was an open-cycle nuclear ramjet-powered cruise missile that had it been optimized to salt the territory it flew over would've probably been the most diabolical WMD ever proposed by the Air Force. Hard to tell if that or the Doomsday Orion's intended use to cause all of Siberia to spontaneously combust wins that title.

Almost certainly Pluto. The Doomsday Orion was less a serious project, and more a flippant response to a stupid question that got a bit of engineering time behind it. I assume the end of the financial year was coming up and the wonders of public sector accounting meant they had to use the whole budget or face cuts next year.

 

[RanulfC]

Ouch, that's a sore one there on the Left Array >_<

So the question is how did that happen?

Obvious answer to me is of course some kind of impact, for which there are no shortage of candidates, from Orbital Debris (there would be at least some even at this point) to micro meteoroids.

But I'll place my money on remnants of an exploded Proton Stage 3 which did wreck Salyut 2 IOTL. If that's true here, they got off lucky all things considered.

Given that they can at least complete their mission - assuming they can dock to it.

I'd thought so too but re-reading it and from the context maybe not as the OTL event happened before the Salyut moved to its 'station' orbit while it was still in co-orbit with the Proton Stage 3. This looks to have happened AFTER it reached the higher orbit and left the stage (and subsequent debris cloud) behind and below it.

Ya, docking was an issue during this period about half the scheduled crews were unable to do so.

So it looks like they're still going with the three unsuited cosmonauts. Still doesn't bode well imo...

Depends. While I generally agree with you they don't actually need full spacesuits and there are "off-the-shelf" high altitude flight suits they could wear that are a lot less bulky than a full up pressure suit. It takes time to re-engineer the EVA/full space suits which is why they dropped to two Cosmonauts until they'd done so and then went back up to three. Though to be fair they think they've found and corrected the issue and Soyuz was always planned to be a shirt-sleeve vehicle.

There was Glushko's ammonia/fluorine RD-600 engine, and he allegedly lobbied for its usage. I'm sure you could squeeze 50 tons, maybe even 70 tons to LEO out of the Proton with that. It however would make Korolev turn in his grave so fast as to break the sound barrier.

RD-301 actually Followed by the RD-302 and RD-303 versions using the same propellants. Supposedly to "flight ready" status by the early 70s
Oddly it's suggested the work on these and his hydrazine/H2O2/pentaborane and finally LF2/LH2 engines that helped Glushko figure out how to build high power hydrolox engines. So good there I guess

This post, right here, is the best encapsulation of the Soviet space program. Glushko couldn't solve the kerolox combustion instabilities, but finds the time to doodle about a gas-core nuclear-thermal rocket. And hell, didn't the RD-600 keep getting worked on to the point of doing practical experiments in the Eighties?

Well as noted it avoided most of the issues he didn't want to work on and keep in mind the rocket engineer isn't the one working on the reactor portion but the support equipment per-se. So ya, Glushko's "job" was the easy part

On the other hand look how much work they had to put into getting the F1 to stop blowing up, (and the use of explosive charges was quite innovative and quite nuts at the same time ) and Glushko wasn't really interested in kerolox engines anyway. He liked propellants that tended to simplify his engine design, (decomposed hydrazine or peroxide for example) so he could concentrate on getting reliable ignition and running. Never mind how much trouble some of those propellants were to handle, (fluorine, hydrazine, et-al ) again that was 'mostly' someone else's department

On the gripping hand all his obsession with higher performance was invariably leading him towards hydrolox propellants anyway and you are still correct an overseeing force to compel a bit more focus on most of the designers would have done a lot for the Soviet program no doubt

Practical work on gas-core NTRs has tended to struggle with basic questions like "how do we initiate, let alone control, a nuclear reaction in gaseous uranium?" and "how do we pass LH2 through the core without letting all of the gaseous fissionable materials out too?"

Both the US and USSR/Russia have actually gotten and sustained working gas reactors, (for obvious limited times) and the 'open cycle' (for both LH2 and the gaseous core) have been well studied. We've (again both) even tested the proposed fused silica 'lightbulbs' to the point where it's likely we could actually build a working engine but neither the will or the funding is there for it. Very much like solid core NTR getting the needed funding is tough to say the least and specifically in gas-core work they want a good amount of safety and handling systems in place before they really get into it. Unfortunately that costs money and that's hard to come by when you mention the word "nuclear" anything.

Might the more recent work done for the Russian atomic cruise missile "9M730 Burevestnik (NATO: SSC-X-9 Skyfall) be a successor technology to this? A radioactive exhaust was seen as a feature, not a bug.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik

Skyfall is basically just a Russian rebooting of the Fifties-era Project Pluto, which was an open-cycle nuclear ramjet-powered cruise missile that had it been optimized to salt the territory it flew over would've probably been the most diabolical WMD ever proposed by the Air Force. Hard to tell if that or the Doomsday Orion's intended use to cause all of Siberia to spontaneously combust wins that title.

Almost certainly Pluto. The Doomsday Orion was less a serious project, and more a flippant response to a stupid question that got a bit of engineering time behind it. I assume the end of the financial year was coming up and the wonders of public sector accounting meant they had to use the whole budget or face cuts next year.

Actually it's doubtful that it has a 'real' nuclear engine in one major case due to it's size as it's highly unlikely to be able to have a reactor capable of being used for propulsion purposes in something that small. More technical speculation thinks it's an advanced radiothermal plant that provides heat to a 'sustainer' turbojet which would not leave a radioactive trail or be highly radioactive outside of a couple hundred feet. (Radioactivity btw makes it very easy to track but likely won't do all that much damage)

As an FYI Pluto wasn't really optimized to drop radioactive exhaust but since it was designed to fly around at 200ft above the terrain the simple exposure to what amounted to a multi-gigawatt unshielded reactor would be QUITE enough to kill everything within several kilometers of each side of the flight path. (The fact that it would doing this at Mach 3+ was an added bonus and the 'warhead' it would chuck out along the way were really just icing on the cake)
The problem of course is that once that reactor is live EVERYONE under the flight path is in danger and you couldn't practically reach the USSR without flying over at least a couple of nominal allies so ...

The Doomsday Orion was actually a thought experiment more than anything else. What kind of a weapon could you deliver if you had the capability to loft a 400 kiloton (mass) weapon. Part of the answer was you couldn't likely loft a single nuclear warhead that big as it wouldn't work. You could lot 400 one-thousand ton nuclear weapons but part of the question was since you had to use about a thousand one kiloton 'pulse charges' to launch your vehicle how much of your country is still around? Worse about 2/3rds of those weapons wouldn't work because of nuclear fratricide of the other third going off. The only 'plausible' option was to simply launch the Orion to high altitude and then launch 400 some odd large nuclear weapons in every direct and then set them off once they got far enough apart.
The "Doomsday" moniker comes from the calculations showing that would likely blow half the atmosphere off the planet and sterilize every square inch of the surface to a depth of several feet. Oh did I mention there was cobalt involved?

Randy