Panam Orions Spaceships

[StephenMiller]

Great stuff there.  Someone should make some profiles of these orbital nuclear satellites.
Changing the subject while still on 2001:  what about post-Apollo lunar missions and Mars missions in the 1980s leading up to the establishment of Clavius and other lunar bases and also a base on Mars?
Any backstories there?

[Archibald]

Well missions to Mars would have used the Nerva nuclear-rocket engine, itself a development of the highly successfull  Kiwi test engines. According to an old source (Science&Vie, 1984) a Saturn V with Nerva could have launched 26 tons to Mars. A bit weak, so why not change a Skylab into a Mars vessel? Now that's an idea... a Skylab with Nerva engines pods, bigger solars cells, and others goodies.

Let's see... had the Ares 1 "Super LM" been developed in the mid-70's, a return to the moon would have been possible in the late 70's. Now, what to do after that ? More Apollo-like missions, albeit longer (up to 15 days, then one month).

Maybe a true Lunar settlement would be made step-by-steps ? Multiple Skylab in LEO (similar in fact to the civilian MOL dubbed the MORL from 1969)
Then, with Super Saturn boosters (dubbed Neptun in the book) or even those Boeing monsters (450 ton payload in LEO!) you can probably send a Skylab up to the geostationary orbit (sorry, Clarke orbit   )

Then, you can resurrect the concept of the OMV, a manned spacecraft which would... shuttle between LEO and GEO, ferrying satellites among others loads.

All the LEO-GEO stuff would be build between 1975 and 1990, in paralel with still improved, 2 months-long Apollo missions. Then, time to settle on the Moon, establishing Clavius Moon base in 1994    

A Nerva-powered probe could have been ready maybe in the mid-80's for a first test on the road to Mars. After some successfull unmanned atempts from 1984 to 1992, and test of manned variants of the Nerva Mars vessel in LEO (in paralel), a first trip beyond the moon orbit could be atempted circa 1995.

The target would be Lagrange L1 point and back. After intensive tests on this road, first atempt to Mars in 1997. More follow over the years, including one with Heywood Floyd (see the book).

Et voila! We are in 2001...    

[StephenMiller]

Very good.  How about the Russians in this era?  Would they finally get the kinks
worked out of the N-1 and use it to go to the Moon and launch space stations larger than Salyut and also to build their Project Aelita Mars ship?
Interesting thoughts on that area in the 2001 mythos.

[Archibald]

Well the N-1 is definitevely a non starter, unless you want to rebuild Baikonur after each atempt    30 engines on first stage is a bit too much... better to use Energia, particualrly the Vulcan variant. 200 tons in LEO rather easily, enough to build a mars vessel... if USSR don't collapse before, which is rather unlikely...

Rather hard to imagine what USSR could do, because Energia first launch is closely followed by USSR collapse...

Only way is imagining a cooperative program with the Chinese, a transfer of all this Energia stuff to them...  

[Hobbes]

The N-1 just needed more testing. Discovery (or History channel?) had a program about the N-1 a while ago. I'd have to look it up, but IIRC there was nothing wrong with the engines. The Russians decided not to do full-scale testing, but to go from component testing directly to launching the first rocket. They more or less counted on losing several rockets before getting everything right.
The program was never funded as lavishly as the Saturn program, and Korolev's death didn't help matters either, so the program was shelved before they worked out all the kinks.
The engines were very advanced for their time. The remaining engines were later used in several other programs, and have performed very well.  

[StephenMiller]

Had the N-1 continued with more testing, they would have lunar missions in the
1970s and there would be no reason to cancel Apollo but go along with the competition.  The N-1 would be used to launch Soviet space stations larger than Salyut and also lunar missions and the Project Aelita Mars missions along with stations in lunar and Martian orbit.
The Chinese could fit in there too as by 2001, they have a lunar base and engaging in scientific expeditions on the moon as per the novel.

[jcf]

I was intrigued to see a German Luftwaffe nuke in the film, which is seen after the USAF one.  How would Germany develop nuclear capability in the 2001 world after the end of the war in 1945?  Any thoughts?

Got the answer to your question. France will help! De Gaulle and Adenauer officially started what we call "la reconciliation franco-allemande" circa 1962. Interestingly, that's more or less the moment when France detonated its first nuclear weapons. Maybe after the cuban crisis and Soviet threats on Berlin, Germany decided to have its own nuclear weapons ? Then it depend if these weapons are within MATO or not.
Things could have been very different had Franco's Spain developed its own nuclear weapons. Add to that Carrero Blanco not assasinated by ETA this day of 12/1973, you have a longer dictatorship in a nuclear Spain... european local Cold War ?

And you can use Ariane rockets to ferry nuclear weapons into LEO...

There is an even simpler way to German nuclear capability, the Multilateral Force (MLF) proposal from the early sixties.

Here is the text of a Time magazine article from 1963:


Friday, Apr. 05, 1963
MULTIBAFFLEMENT

THE U.S. today is engaged in not one, but two nuclear arms races. Its first and overriding concern, of course, is to deter Soviet aggression and to be capable of massive retaliation if the Russians should attack the West. Washington's second aim, however, is less strategic than political; it could be called the theory of the massive placebo, since its primary purpose is not to deter the foes of the U.S. but to mollify its friends and discourage the proliferation of nuclear arms. By last week, U.S. placebo planners had succeeded only in frustrating and perplexing the very allies they hoped to please.

Uneasily aware that the increasingly prosperous and powerful nations of Western Europe would not forever accept total U.S. control of nuclear weapons, the U.S. offered more than two years ago to give them a voice in their disposition and use—but left it to Europe to devise a formula. It was not until the Kennedy Administration canceled the bug-ridden Skybolt missile project last December that the U.S. was forced to take the initiative. In place of Skybolt, the Administration reluctantly offered at Nassau to supply Polaris missiles for an independent British submarine force.

Change of Mind.
At the same time, the U.S. insisted that the British subs must be "multinational," that is, they were to be part of a NATO deterrent in which other allies might in time pool their own strike forces, if and when they acquired nuclear weapons. To placate its other European allies, the Kennedy Administration also proposed a "multilateral" force of Polaris submarines, which would be multimanned-and multifinanced—by the U.S. and its partners, each of whom would have a veto over the use of the missiles.

Then, just as the Europeans began to get interested in this scheme, the U.S. abruptly changed its mind and announced that the multilateral force (MLF) should consist of Polaris-armed surface vessels instead. Though it would be of little strategic value, a 25-ship surface force would cost only $500 million yearly, far less than a submarine fleet. To most Europeans, the strongest argument for the MLF was that it would give West Germany a voice in nuclear strategy and possibly discourage it from developing nuclear weapons of its own, with or without help from France.

Frankly Interested.
To peddle the placebo, the Administration plucked old State Department Hand Livingston Merchant from retirement. To his surprise, MLF met with a surprisingly warm reception. Though some allied statesmen hemmed that its cost would prevent them from meeting U.S. requests to strengthen conventional forces, West Germany, Italy and Belgium were frankly interested. Last month Merchant actually succeeded in extracting a commitment from West Germany to pay 40% of the entire cost of the project.

However, last week, word reached NATO headquarters in Paris that Washington had suddenly lost its enthusiasm for the multilateral force. Its change of mind not only left unsolved the political problems that MLF was devised to solve, but even seemed likely to aggravate them, since the U.S. was now reportedly ready to back the idea of independent multinational forces instead, thus encouraging its allies to build their own bombs.

Even if every NATO ally could afford its own nuclear force—and a scientific breakthrough may yet make that feasible—Europe would have only a minute proportion of the total U.S. nuclear armory. But who can predict how it will turn out? In the brave new world of build-your-own-bang, it could even happen that European hydrogen bombs might not fall on the Soviet Union at all, but on the U.S.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

So there is a real world starting point.


Cheers, Jon

[Archibald]

The N-1 just needed more testing. Discovery (or History channel?) had a program about the N-1 a while ago. I'd have to look it up, but IIRC there was nothing wrong with the engines. The Russians decided not to do full-scale testing, but to go from component testing directly to launching the first rocket. They more or less counted on losing several rockets before getting everything right.
The program was never funded as lavishly as the Saturn program, and Korolev's death didn't help matters either, so the program was shelved before they worked out all the kinks.
The engines were very advanced for their time. The remaining engines were later used in several other programs, and have performed very well.

Hmmm I really have doubts about the N-1... the rocket didn't used hydrogen, it has to rely on kerozen engines much less powerfull. Result was 30 engines... even if the rocket could fly with 4 or 5 of them extinct, control of such vast numbers was rather hard.
More interesting designs were on the way, Korolev competitors were also on the way. I think about Yangel and Tchelomei projects (UR-700 and a R- something)

Another interesting piece of soviet hardaware was the TKS manned space tug. This fabulous machine was to be Almaz' capsule. At the time  the Soyuz was a civilian spaceship for civilian Saliuyts, when both TKS and Almaz were military hardawre equivalents to the US MOL.
In the end various TKS were launched but none was ever manned, they were used as unmanned space tugs (Cosmos 1443 tugged Saliout 7 in 1983)
Then, module derivatived from the TKS were use on Mir (Zariya) and the ISS (first module launched in November 1998).

More precision at Mark Wade Astronautix

http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/m...e/craft/tks.htm

For me the TKS would be equivalent to the Titov V shuttle    

[StephenMiller]

My take on the Titov-V shuttle would be an advanced version of the planned Spiral spaceplane version as it was a planned project in the 1960s, if I recall.  Had it gone forward, they would have done larger versions of the vehicle eventually doing a commercial passenger spaceplane version for Aeroflot by 2001.

[Archibald]

Yeah, this one http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/spil5050.htm

Spiral spaceplanes followed an interesting path from the 60's to the late 90's. Main problem was first stage... second stage was more or less ready (Avion MiG-105 demonstrator).

First stage was at first an hypersonic aircraft with exotic propulsion (which could not work in the 60's and is still not mastered in our days).
Then it move to subsonic aircrafts, including Antonov 124, 225 and even
ultra-large, catamaran aircrafts (it was the Bizan project). This lineage ended with the MAKS shuttle concept (proposed against Klipper some years ago) which consist of a shuttle mated to an external tank plus an An-225 acting as take-off booster.

So spaceplanes of this Alternate timeline would be Orion III and Titov V.
Orion III would have a catapult and a flyback booster, Titov V would look like MAKS concept...

Let's see.. NASA would have developed 3 generations of Shuttle from the 60's.

1- Dyna Soar would have been used as a 1st generation shuttle, launched by conventional rockets.

- 2nd generation shuttle would have been rather similar to the actual shuttle  except for its booster (a single big-dumb booster, falling into the ocean below a parachute)

- 3rd generation shuttle would have had internal fuel tankage (ala X-33), but to help at take-off a booster would still be here
This booster would be a flyback one (Starbooster, Baikal).  
As this is probably still unsufficient, an electromagnetic catapult would help at take off (skyramp)

On the Soviet side, a Shuttle+ external tank would first be launched by a giant subsonic aircraft, then an internal-tank shuttle would be lauched by an hypersonic aircraft later...

[StephenMiller]

Here is a website which has information and pics of the Orion flyback booster and also the Titov-V shuttle at http:www.worldof2001.com
This is an Orbiter Simulation add-on and fun too.
Comments?

[Archibald]

And here's last PanAm first step to the stars, the Orion I.


Thanks for the link !  

[uk 75]

I read in a magazine that the modelers on 2001 had also done time on Gerry Anderson TV progs like Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet.  I mention this as it explains the choice of markings on the briefly seen orbital platforms in 2001.

The World Air Force planes in Thunderbirds used fictional markings cannibalised from old kit transfers to give an amalgamated USAF West German Air Force marking.  Similarly at London Airport one can see in the background on the airport buildings the initials "BAOC" (taken from the old BOAC which preceded British Airways).

Markings for planes in other Anderson episodes used a variety of cannibalised kit transfers in the same way.

There used to be an excellent 2001 Space Odyssey exhibition site which gave a whole alternate timeline for the 2001 film. It seems to have fallen into disrepair lately.

My take on 2001 is that the two world blocks have polarised to such an extent that NATO members like Britain, France and West Germany have nuclear weapons much in the way envisaged when Clarke wrote his novel ie as a cheap alternative to conventional forces.  This 50s future world also accounts for the lavish Space Programme which by 1971 had been lost in the chaos of Post Vietnam US politics in our world.

The Airfix Shuttle would look great in some BOAC blue-gold livery!

UK 75

[StephenMiller]

I think BOAC markings would look good on an Orion shuttle or some sort of homegrown British-made spaceliner.  Regretfully, we did not see a British orbital nuke in the film.  Perhaps it would be similar to the US one in design albeit with RAF markings.

[Archibald]

In pre-challenger disaster times, (Ie between 1971 and 1986) there were plans for private owned-shuttles (and orbital silicon valley- like labs)

Another intresting movie is Moonraker. The movie itself is crap, but there's some fascinating ideas, such as private -build Shuttles  and RAF space shuttle...

Uk, I think I remember the website you mentioned. Was it the one with 3-D renderings of Explorer 1 ?
3 years ago I've pasted their Explorer 1 rendering onto a Jupiter photo taken by the Cassini probe in 2000 (the best pic of Jupiter to the day aparently).
I have to show you the result... lots of fun!!