Search Results : 1968 to 2001

Side roads on the way from 1968 to 2001: 5a

blather, history, science fiction 9 Responses »

Dec 032013

Here’s a minor one: the automobiles of 2001.

The books and movies related to “2001: A Space Odyssey” provide little to no information about the automobiles in use around the year 2001 of the alternate timeline. To my knowledge, “2001:ASO” the movie showed a grand total of two cars; “2010” showed one (and a bicycle).

In “2001:ASO” there is a very brief, poorly displayed scene playing out on the back of a passenger seat on the Orion III spaceplane. This is a bit of “in flight entertainment,” either a TV show or a movie. The scene was shot specifically for “2001” in Detroit. In the scene, you can make out two vehicles; one is far too low-rez to make out. The other is a General Motors “Runabout” concept car from 1964. The “Runabout” was a small vehicle, basically basic transportation meant for urban dwellers going to the store, picking up kids from school, that sort of thing. It wasn’t meant to go fast, go far or carry much. In many ways, it did look not unlike the economy cars of the 1970’s and beyond… AMC Pacer and such. However, there were a few important differences: the body was more “stylized” than the econoboxes that came later. There’s no rear fender, for example… something that would probably be in violation of some regulation somewhere. The windshield wrapped around most of the top of the car. It’s pointier and more wedge-like than the later cars. And most of all, it only had three wheels: two in the back, one in front. Such cars have been built from time to time, and achieved at least some level of popularity in post-war Britain, but never caught on in the US.

The “Runabout” was one of those concept cars that the US automotive industry cranked out seemingly by the truckload until the 1970s energy crisis drained the joy out of car design.

Here’s the scene:

That’s pretty clearly the “Runabout.” Some descriptions say that the vehicle was modified for “2001,” but if so, the modifications don’t seem terribly obvious. The only thing that looks like it might be different is the front wheel… on the small screen, it *kinda* looks like it might have been mocked up to look like a four-wheeler. But it’s hard to say. Here’s the Runabout in all its PR glory:

As for the other vehicle, this seems to be as good as it gets:

Really hard to make out, but I think it’s a truck. The cab is very far forward, and the bed seems pretty long… might it be the Dodge Deora? The Deora was unveiled in Detroit in 1967, so… maybe.

It could also be that I’m looking at the mystery vehicle *backwards,* and the “cab” is actually far at the back, meaning a very long “nose.” In that case, this would very likely be a “dream” sports car. Just too fuzzy to tell.

If the mystery vehicle is the Deora, it shares with the Runabout something important: while neither are really close matches for the kind of vehicles actually sold in the real world of 1999-2001, they also represent a major shift in thinking in concept cars from just a few years earlier. Just slightly before the Runabout, concept cars tended to look like ridiculous 1950’s sci-fi movie space ships: big fins and nozzles and sharp spiky bits, perfect for impaling or disemboweling pedestrians, but not much else. The Runabout and the Deora demonstrate restraint comparatively. While still being pretty futuristic, at least as seen from 1968.

The Runabout had stablemates. If it’s safe to say that in the alternate history a concept car from 1964 would be a production car in 1999, then the concept cars that came out with the Runabout might be equally valid. At the 1964 Worlds Fair (a concept that was pretty well extinct by 2001), GM showed off not only the Runabout, but the Firebird IV and GM-X (AKA “Stiletto”) concepts. The Runabout and the Firebird IV were clearly designed by the same people, using similar lines.

If the Runabout is 2001:ASO canon (and it is), then it seems reasonably safe to assume that the Firebird IV can also be wedged in there, and perhaps also the GM-X/Stiletto.Interestingly, the Firebird IV was listed as being meant for automated highways; at the time, it seemed reasonable to assume that cars would be self-driving before too long. Whether GM thought the car would be autonomously self-controlled by onboard computers, or externally piloted by a large HAL-9000-like mainframe I can’t say… but I can bet that the HAL option would be the logical one given the state of electronics in “2001.”

As for controlling the Runabout… who needs pesky steering wheels when you have a gigantic Nintendo controller?

Since the Firebird IV is computer controlled, it hardly needs a drive. And not needing a driver means you can dispense with things like controls. Because that worked out so well on the XD-1.

And this here is the *fully* terrifying interior of the GM-X, a true Mans Car with not of that “computer controlled” gibberish. Airbags? Pfff. Don’t need them, son. But you know what we do need? Instruments. Lots of ’em. Above, below, off to the side…

For those of you model fanatics who want to have models of everything in 2001, you’re in luck… GM got patents on each of these designs, so there are drawings available. Also available is a list of dimensions for the three vehicles, certainly handy for scale modelers.

The list of data would seem to come from something describing the displays at the 1964 Worlds Fair. The last item on the list – with the data presumably on the following un-available page, is the GM “Bison,” which was certainly a unique looking truck:

The Bison was turbine powered. The ‘module’ above the cab contained turboshaft engines, which powered the wheels below. It was meant to be very low profile, and to be part of a standardized shipping system, with standard containers organized by computer. Hmm. Very “2001.” While, to my knowledge, there is zero evidence not only for the Bison in the “2001” canon, and not even a mention of a truck… there would certainly be trucks trundling around hauling cargo, and this looks like it’d fit the bill.

Side roads on the way from 1968 to 2001: 4

blather, history, nukes, science, science fiction, youtube 24 Responses »

Nov 252013

Nuclear Power

In my vision of how to get from the real world of 1968 to the alternate reality of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I made nuclear power an important aspect. Rather than basically locking up in the 1970s, nuclear power expands to become not only the dominant electrical power generation system, but has grown into whole new markets. Space, of course, has made considerable use of nuclear power and nuclear propulsion.

Nuclear power is mentioned in “2001,” and of course the Discovery is nuclear powered, so obviously nuclear power is alive and well in “2001:ASO.” However, by my recollection, neither the movie nor the book go into much detail about it. There is, however, one little detail that tells me the whole story:

[youtube kS9dhG_dYVQ]

If you don’t know the details beyond having seen this scene, you won’t get it. It’s a cool scene, but what does it have to do with nukes? The little detail that’s not obvious: the pen… it’s nuclear powered. At the time, Parker Pen Company put out this press release:

“Designers from… Parker Pen, among many others, were asked by Kubrick to produce samples of what their companies might have on the market in 33 years’ time.
“An example of a product (of) the future is this atomic pen made by the Parker Pen Company and used in the movie. It is equipped with a tiny isotopic packet within the pen to produce power which is then converted to heat. This varies the flow of the pen’s ink supply so that the writer can produce a wide range of line densities, from barely visible to strikingly embossed – a feature required by the addition of a third dimension to handwriting that Parker pundits think might develop during the next three decades.
“No point in going to your dealer’s now – Parker doesn’t expect to put this pen on sale until the next century!”

So, in alternate-timeline 1999, consumer electronics might be rather backwards… but consumer atomics are a real thing. Even if we assume that an atomic pen is a rare, expensive commodity, available only to the rich and highly ranked government bureaucrats, they are nevertheless available. This means economically available, technologically available and, importantly, legally and politically available. If someone were to produce a radioisotope-powered pen, there’s virtually no chance that it would be allowed to be sold in todays America. So… in the alternate timeline, nuclear power is sufficiently developed to permit the development of atomic pens, and sufficiently accepted to allow folks to walk around with easily-lost nuclear power sources in their pockets.

In the real world, three corporations did manufacture plutonium-powered pacemakers; only a few hundred of them, and they are returned to Los Alamos upon the death of the “owner.” These pacemakers were made in the 1970’s, and you of course cannot get them now.

So, in the alternate timeline, it seems to me that the only way to get atomic pens is to have a massive, and massively successful, civilian nuclear power program.

About the pen: the description sounds not unlike the nuclear D-cells mentioned hereabouts previously. The most likely explanation for the pen is that it contains a tiny nugget of plutonium-238, probably in oxide form, bound up in a heavy metal (tungsten, molybdenum, etc) matrix. It would sit and cook, consistently producing a certain thermal output. The ink would be a solid until the nuclear heat melts it. This would have to occur right at the tip, but the photos show the pen to have a more or less standard pointy pen-like tip. The ink and the heat source would seem to be up in the body of the pen, meaning that the hot liquid ink would have to flow some distance to the tip while staying liquid. In order to pull off this feat, it would seem that the duct would need to have a very high thermal conductivity. Silver is about as good as it gets with conventional material… but there’s a better option: diamond. About ten times the thermal conductivity of silver. So it could be speculated that the pen has a core of silver or perhaps vapor-deposited diamond. Expensive… but what the hell, it’s an atomic pen.

On other matters: in the real world, the US, the USSR, Germany and Japan each produced one nuclear powered cargo ship. The NS Savannah first sailed in 1959, and was mothballed in 1972. Very likely, it would have remained the only US nuclear cargo ship… for a while. In the alternate timeline, civilian nuclear ships might start reappearing in the mid 1980s. Nuclear cargo vessels, of course… and nuclear cruise ships. Perhaps nuclear powered luxury tourist submarines. That would seem rather Clarke-ian.

Additionally, the ready availability of marine nuclear propulsion opens up new possibilities. From the 1960’s into the 1980’s, there were numerous studies of oceangoing intercontinental nuclear powered cargo *hovercraft.* The advantage of this form of cargo transport over a regular ship, apart from increased speed, somewhat escapes me. The greatly increased fuel consumption of a hovercraft over a regular vessel of course helped doom the idea in real life, but in a world where energy is nearly free? Maybe…

By the late 80’s/early 90’s, all the commercial nuclear reactors in service the West would likely be new, By having a culture that embraces nuclear power, old reactors would be swapped out for new ones faster. Less safe designs would be replaced with more safe. Would the Chernobyl disaster happen there as it did here? Almost certainly not. By 1986, the changes in the the timeline would have reached deep across the world, so it’s very likely that the people responsible for the string of bad decisions led to Chernobyl would, at the very least, be making different decisions. But the Chernobyl reactor design was bad. It might be inevitable that something tragic would happen there, sooner or later.

How about atomic cars?

I’m still rather dubious on this, but just maybe. The real-life Nissan Leaf has an 80 kilowatt electric motor, so any nuclear powered car would need to be at least as powerful, and probably several times more powerful… the world of “2001” doesn’t seem to be one where people accept “basic transportation.” So if there are actually atomic cars, they would probably be sizable, powerful, fast and stylish, not nuclear powered econoboxes. So, let’s call it 215 kilowatts, same as the Tesla Roadster. If we assume RTG power, like the atomic pen, then the car will have a pretty massive battery pack. Based on the “nuclear D-Cell,” five watts would be available in a package weighing less than a pound. But for 215,000 watts, that’s potentially 43,000 pounds… clearly not feasible. Obviously, by going to an integrated system, rather than a collection of D-cells, weight could be substantially reduced. And by being much better at atomics than we currently are, weight can be reduced. Even so, at 0.39 watts per gram this system would require at least 551 kilos (1212 pounds) of plutonium 238. Clearly not feasible.

So, an atomic car would seem to need an actual full-up nuclear reactor, not just an RTG. I’m beyond dubious that even in 2001-world, actual reactors would be allowed to roam the streets, driven by an army of technologically enhanced Don Drapers.

However, even today in our atomically stunted world, there are those looking to develop atomic cars. Laser Power Systems of Connecticut seems to be working on some sort of miniature nuclear reactor sized for automobile power production. Whether they’re for real, whether they’re on the right track, whether they have a shot in hell… I dunno. Their website seems unenlightening. But if a thorium reactor could be designed *today* that just might work for a car… then in the alternate timeline, it’d be a near-certainty that it would be at least possible.

In a world where a large fraction of the entire plants energy production comes from nukes, where would the nuclear fuel come from? Where, in short, would all the uranium be dug up? Well… it need not be dug up at all. Rather, even today we can fish uranium out of sea water. Couple that with the addition of thorium fueled reactors, and mankind could have an embarrassment of electrical riches for many centuries. And that’s not even considering nuclear fusion powerplants.

Next: Ummm… I dunno. Fashion? Style?? Meh, I’m probably done here.

Side roads on the way from 1968 to 2001: 3

blather, history, Hmm..., politics, science fiction 15 Responses »

Nov 162013

Politics and Economics

So, what do we know about politics in the world of “2001: A Space Odyssey?” Only a few things, directly:

1) The Soviet Union is still a going concern

2) The Cold War is still a going concern

3) Space is seriously militarized

4) The American space program is massive, and while government-directed, there is substantial corporate involvement

From that, I have extrapolated a few things in my own take on the alternate history, such as that Communism has spread further around the world. Apart from driving the space program as seen in “2001:ASO,” what other effects would this have?

For starters, Asia would be split into two distinct groups, both of which would be armed camps. Much like North and South Korea, writ large. All of southeast Asia has fallen to communism, including Indonesia and Malaysia, possibly the Philippines. Taiwan, South Korea and Japan remain free, but are under dire and constant threat. A result of this is that more of their economy than IRL is devoted to defense, less to things like consumer electronics and TVs and cars and radios and such. Of course, with China being more hard-core Maoist than IRL, one they *they* are not doing is producing vast piles of cheap goods for sale on the American market. Not only because they wouldn’t be as well set up for that, but because Americans in that timelines wouldn’t buy it. So, with far fewer options for cheap Asian manufacture of low-cost, reasonably high-quality consumer computers… well, there’s a good chunk of the explanation as to why consumer electronics are so apparently backwards.

The United States would, necessarily, remain more of a manufacturing economy in the alternate timeline. This would of course have pluses and minuses. The unemployment rate would potentially be driven lower as a result, but most things would cost more. The staples – food, housing and energy – would be cheap, but luxuries would be anywhere from somewhat more expensive to a *lot* more expensive. Go back to the briefcase computer prop made for “2001:ASO.” Even if one were to assume that it had all the functionality and power of a real-world 1999-vintage laptop, there is simply no what that that clunky device would cost less than several multiples what the laptop cost, especially given that it was likely made entirely in the US.

Western Europe is a bit fuzzier in my mind. As I’ve suggested, communism has made inroads here as well, but a complete takeover hasn’t happened, as witnessed by orbital weapons platforms from West Germany and France (and we can probably suggest the British). Had they become Soviet vassal states, it is unlikely that the Soviets would let them launch weapons platforms of their own. However, the existence of western European space weapons indicates that Europe is taking a more active role in its defense than IRL. Europe is spending much more of its GDP on defense, and presumably less on the social welfare state. So I would guess that western European nations that haven’t fallen to socialism or outright communism are split into two camps, economically:

1) Capitalist states, but with relatively big governments

2) Economically fascist states, where the governments control the economies

Sub-Saharan Africa is even more of a basketcase in the “2001:ASO” timeline than IRL. With several sub-Saharan nations falling to outright communism, their economies have, like Zimbabwe’s, completely collapsed taking their agricultural systems with them. Far better armed by the Soviets than IRL, warfare and bloodshed along political, economic and tribal lines is much more common, and far worse. With the increased Communist threat, did South Africa ever abandon Apartheid?

The Middle East has in some ways undergone a renaissance, and in some ways fallen into obscurity. With the bulk of the developed worlds energy needs supplied by cheap, abundant, clean and safe latest-generation nuclear reactors, including breeder and thorium reactors (perhaps with fusion being on five years away in that timeline, rather than ten as in ours), the need for fossil fuels in greatly reduced. With the memories of the trouble OPEC gave the US in the wake of the Yom Kippur War and numerous following terrorist acts, the American people just don’t give a damn about the likes of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and the like when the dropoff in sales coupled with the collapse in oil prices causes their economies to utterly collapse. As in sub-saharan Africa, these regions, based so much on a single product that no longer rakes in the cash, have devolved into pestilential, barbarous no-mans-land. Several attempted wars on their neighbors, such as against the likes of Egypt, Israel, the southern parts of the USSR and even India, were all complete disasters and have resulted in this region being economically and culturally blockaded for *years* by the time of 1999. A result of this is that ideologies like Wahabbianism have simply faded from worldview. With much of Arabia being a wasteland, cities like Riyadh and Mecca being poorly maintained low-population towns of limited interest to the outside world, cultural influence around the world is minimal.

At the same time, northern Africa, now largely freed from the ideological trap that had ensnared it , has been allowed to progress. The animosity between the likes of Egypt and Israel so common in our timeline has faded, allowing these nations to work together. Efforts are now underway to refill the Chad Sea. The canal linking the Med to the Qattara Depression has been completed, and the region has been turned into a new Riviera, not only making vast sums of tourist money, but also changing the local climate by increasing evaporation in the deep desert and increasing rainfall downwind. A dam across the Straits of Gibraltar is under serious consideration, with the nations surrounding the Mediterranean merrily fighting it out in unceasing debates. Some are Communist, but all recognize the value that the project will bring.

South America… hmmm. I imagine that it would be pretty much South America. More communist insurgencies, perhaps, with lots of American funding of counter-insurgencies. So… kinda like the 1980s, just more so.

The US: as anyone who has read my blog for long enough has probably figured out, I lean towards libertarianism. Minimal government, just big enough to do what it – and nobody else – can and should do: exactly what the US was founded on, and what the US has fallen far from. But that’s *not* the world of “2001.” Clavius Base shows that the US Federal Government is massively involved and massively invested in space exploration and exploitation.

The alternate timeline I came up with is one way I can see how the US could have gotten to the world of “2001” using known political figures. Some have accused me of partisanship. Shrug. The fact is, the US is a two-party system, Democrat and Republican. Of the two, the Democrats have been, since Johnson, rather actively *opposed* to manned space flight. Go ahead and *try* to name a Democrat politician who was ever a serious possibility for the Presidency who supported expanding the manned space program. While I’ve no doubt there have been many Dems who would have liked to have seen that, none spring to mind, while many spring to mind who would have gladly gutted NASA in order to dump money into the inner cities. So in order for “2001” to come about as a result of active Democrat Presidential support, either entirely fictional Dems would need to be created (not invalid, under the circumstances), or historical Dems would have to be “flipped.”

On the other hand, the Republicans have generally not been a whole lot better. Most Reps, though, rather than being actively opposed to manned space exploration, simply don’t care. The one major area of clear difference, though, has been republican support of *military* space. Reagan is of course the prime example of this; in real life he kickstarted the Star Wars program that, while not orbiting so much as a drunken bum in a spacesuit armed with a shotgun and an mandate to shoot commies, did manage to spend the USSR into oblivion. So by replacing Carter and Mondale with Reagan, the Star Wars effort gets an early start. Through some authorial handwaving, this actually works, and gets the space program roaring off the pad.

The United States is dotted with towns and cities with names like Fort Dodge and Fort Madison and Fort Wayne and Fort Collins and Fort This and Fort That. Having the military lead the way in exploration and colonization is neither unprecedented, nor unwarranted.

It may have made statistical sense to have more Dems in the Presidency through the 1990’s. But there was one obvious choice that made perfect sense, under the circumstances: Newt Gingrich. He is one of the few politicians of *any* party who has actively supported manned space exploration, going so far as to suggest, early in the 2012 campaign, that the US needed to build a lunar colony. Sadly, the overall popular cultural consensus was that this was pure crackpottery on Gingrich’s part. The biggest difference, in my opinion, between the “2001:ASO” timeline and the real-world timeline is that what so many see as nutty in this timeline, is seen as a good idea in the other timeline. “They,” in turn, might see “our” obsession with Facebook and Twitter as equivalently nutty. By installing a known seriously pro-space politician into the White House in 1992, the stage was set for construction to begin on the Clavius Base mega-project.

There are, of course, other political parties in the US. But unless you invent an entirely new and rather unlikely party, I can’t see how you get there. Look at the alternative parties:

Green: Anti-nuclear, anti-space. Will actively work *against* “2001.”

Socialists: Anti-nuclear, anti-space. Will actively work *against* “2001.”

Libertarian: Pro-nuclear, but anti-big-government. Clavius Base and other such government mega-projects would be impossible.

If anyone knows of a political party that has existed and gotten so much as a dogcatcher elected on the platform of Colonize The Moon Now, I’d love to hear about it.

Next up: atomics

Side roads on the way from 1968 to 2001: 2

blather, history, science, science fiction 14 Responses »

Nov 092013

Apart from space exploration, computer technology is the biggest difference between the 2001 of A Space Odyssey and the 2001 of Real Life. In 2001: ASO, just about the only interesting character is a heartless artificially intelligent computer on a spacecraft. More than a decade beyond that, the closest we have in real life are smart phones that can answer questions in an almost realistic fashion, but nobody suggests they are actually aware. And yet… smart phones. If you look at some of the secondary stuff available about the props made for 2001:ASO, nothing even close to the compactness and elegance of the laptops and Blackberrys and cell phones available in the real world of 1999 . Still, one of the props was for a computer-in-a-briefcase:

This “portable computer” has a screen, a keyboard, a video camera, audio input/output. Functionally, it appears to be able to at least kinda-sorta replicate a laptop with a webcam and Skype. But compared to a laptop, it’s clunky as hell. How to explain the existence of the HAL 9000 artificial intelligence, and yet the apparently backwards smaller computers? Well… the simple answer is “this was a movie dreamed up in ’64, and they did the best they could.” But that’s boring. How to explain it in terms of an alternate history? I think I’ve got that one figured out.

History begins to really diverge in 1969 with a space program that Nixon decides to *not* gut. Given the previously explained explosion of funding for NASA and great expansion of actual space exploration, there would of course be a great need in the government for powerful new computers. The expanded space program would also spur technology as a whole… not just because NASA needs all new everythings, but because more people would be *inspired* to go into science, technology and engineering. You’d think that, if anything, this would lead to the commercial computer business exploding earlier, not later. But consider… with NASA hiring everyone with skill, and promising – and delivering – the universe, things would be different. For example: Bill Gates, long a computer aficionado, dropped out of Harvard in Real World 1974 to go into business for himself. But by 1974 in the alternate timeline, things are rapidly starting to diverge in important ways with the space program. so… instead of going into business for himself, in the alternate timeline he stays in college because he’s more inspired by progress in Big Time computers. After graduation, he gets himself a respectable job someplace like IBM and does great things… and vanishes within the vast sea of cubicals, never to be heard from again.

On the other side, Steve Jobs IRL spent much of the early 1970’s messing around with computers… and messing around with Eastern mystical newage. In 1976, he and Steve Wozniak – who seems to have the technically-capable one of the two – formed Apple Computers. Jobs’ artsy creativity, and Wozniak’s ability to make good computers, combined with Gate’s business savvy – and a hell of a lot of other people, working at many, many computer companies large and small – led to the commercial computer revolution. But if Gates was embedded deep within IBM, and Wozniak was busy working for, say, NASA directly, and Jobs had run off to some Indian ashram to spend the next several decades navel-gazing in a haze of LSD… that might have helped contribute to a world in which the growth of consumer electronics is greatly slowed. The computer-in-a-suitcase illustrates, if nothing else, that the design ethic towards sleek and ‘sexy” mastered by Jobs and Apple clearly never caught on in the world of 2001:ASO.

The internet would exist in the world of 2001:ASO, though of course quite different than IRL. The internet was an outgrowth of ARPAnet, which came into being in 1968. The need for ARPAnet would be every bit as great, probably more so, in the 2001 timeline, as the threat of nuclear war is stronger and lasts longer in that world. But the civilian aspects of the internet would be greatly reduced. I suspect the internet might exist in the 2001:ASO timeframe much as it existed in the late 1980’s IRL, but with perhaps better bandwidth: lots of scientific data being transmitted, and discussion and news forums (remember newsgroups?), but with far less of the multimedia glitz and glam.With the existence of video telephones (as demonstrated by Bell Telephone on Space Station V), I suspect a lot of the drive for internet social media would be slightly damped.

If you consider the Real World to be balanced between Big Institutional Computers and Consumer Electronics, the world of 2001: ASO would be tilted drastically, with far more emphasis on big, powerful computers far beyond the reach of average folk, and far less emphasis on computers for the masses. Given that this opinion is being published on a blog, this world may seem “unfair” to us, but to the people of ASO, they’d see it as good and proper. And given that the result of this would be children spending less time online and more time doing other stuff (admittedly, that might well be just watching TV), that would probably tend towards being better for society.

The 2010 book and movie are tertiary and basically non-canon sources. However, it should be noted that the movie shows Dr. Heywood Floyd preparing for his mission to Jupiter by working on a portable computer… an Apple IIc computer with a small separate display screen. Horribly clunky by real-world 2010 standards, this was a 1984-vintage computer slightly dressed up to look like a truly portable computer. This would indicate that computer design, by 2010, has slipped behind real life by about a quarter century. One possible advance over real computers would be the virtual necessity of much better batteries… I suspect an Apple IIc would burn through a modern laptop battery in very short order.

[youtube j5C3rhkqrlg]

Next up: Politics and economics (Yay! Get the pitchforks and torches!)

Side roads on the way from 1968 to 2001: 1

aircraft, blather, history, science fiction 7 Responses »

Nov 082013

My little alternate history was dreamed up to try to come up with a more-or-less believable timeline that led from the April of 1968 as remembered by actual history, to the 1999 as envisioned in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. This means that the two endpoints are known and fixed, but the stuff in between is unknown and flexible. There are an infinite number of paths that lead from A to Z, so my path is, even if it is judged to be Accurate, Awesome and Reasonable, just one of many that could be dreamed up. My own little story here focused on the Big Picture, with the US President, International Relations and the Space Program being the main things.

There are a vast number of smaller stories that fit in, but don’t drive the timeline as much. Still, such things might be of interest to some… certainly to *me.*

Here’s one: commercial aviation.

History starts to diverge in 1968, and really starts to take off after July, 1969. At that time in the US, the Boeing 747 was just about to enter service, and the Boeing 2707 SST was still a forward-moving project. It was eventually cancelled IRL in 1971 after Congress cut off funding. But in the alternate timeline, the change to a more robust space program is, by 1971, starting to have some subtle changes to society and technology at large. Additionally, the Kennedy Watergate Scandal has hit the Democrat Party worse than the IRL Nixon Watergate Scandal hit the Republicans, since the RFK scandal dealt with numerous party officials and the party machine. A result of this is that the voices of the likes of William Proxmire, one of the primary opponents of the SST program, are somewhat muted. As a result, in this timeline the funding for the SST program is not cut. The prototypes are completed and fly successfully; the 2707 goes into production and a number of airlines buy and operate them.

A side effect of this is that the British-French Concorde ceases operations *years* earlier. The Concorde was a relatively tiny aircraft compared to the 2707 (about 100 seats compared to 277), and was insanely expensive. So long as it was the *only* SST out there, it was a prestige aircraft, but in a world with a much less expensive 2707, it would simply be ridiculous to keep flying it. But even though the British had insanely nationalized their aerospace industry, it seems unlikely that they, the French or Airbus would simply let the US *own* supersonic transport. So it’s fair to assume that European competition to the 2707 would arise within a decade or so.

And the 2707 would of course begin to show its age by the early 1980s. With the advances in aerospace that would necessarily follow from the beefed-up space program, much more efficient SSTs would be possible in the 1980’s. So I suggest that the Boeing 2717 would enter service in the mid ’80’s.

The Boeing SSTs would see competition from not only other SSTs (not only a hypothetical Airbus SST, but also a McDonnell-Douglas SST and a Tupolev SST better than the rushed Tu-144), but from aircraft improving on the SST. A Lockheed hypersonic transport enters service in the 1990s.

Even with great advanced in aerodynamics, materials and engines, supersonic transportation would remain substantially more expensive than subsonic transport. By alternate 1999, the skies would be crawling with jetliners that look like jetliners we knew in 1999… but subtly different. Why not a latest generation 747 where the upper deck goes all the way back to the tail, providing an Airbus A380-like monster years earlier? With the cheap electricity provided by nuclear power and the reduction in use of middle eastern petroleum, why not jetliners fueled by hydrogen, methane or propane? Blended wing bodies? Flying wings? It’s just barely possible that someone might even have a nuclear powered commercial aircraft, though I think that making that politically practical even in the alternate timeline would require a whole new type of extremely safe reactor. Something like the hafnium isomer “reactor” or cold fusion would seem a good fit… except for the little problem that these technologies just don’t seem to work. But in a world where nuclear power is not irrationally feared and repressed as in ours, who can say…

Next: Computers

How to get from 1968 to 2001: Part 11

blather, history, science fiction 4 Responses »

Nov 072013

When last we left alternate history, it was 1996, aiming towards 1999. Space station IV has been built; construction of Clavius and AristarchusBases on the moon began in earnest in 1994. The one-million-pound payload Neptune has just been retired, replaced by the twice as powerful Uranus. The Shuttle II is in its last days, about to be replaced by the Orion II cargo spaceplane and the Orion III passenger spaceplane (each using the turboramrocket-powered Orion I booster). There is a space station in orbit around Venus, a base on Phobos and the beginnings of a permanent base on Mars in the form of Lowell Base. The path from here to 1999, when the scenes in Earth orbit and on the moon were supposed to be set, is both clear and fairly short, so there’s not a whole lot to say.

From 1994 to 1999, Clavius base goes from groundbreaking to operational. The only way this could be feasible is with a massive spacelift operation, with pre-assembled buildings, building segments and equipment launched from Earth to LEO atop Uranus boosters. Transfer from LEO to lunar orbit would be by use of ion engines or similar extremely high Isp electrical propulsion systems. In order to provide power, a combination of on-site generation (via nuclear reactors) and remote transmission would be used. The Solar Power Satellite prototypes are not economically competative with the terrestrial commercial nuclear reactor program… but they are a fantastic way yo provide vast amounts of power to cislunar tugs. These would be composed of large, lightweight truss structures with microwave receiver mesh tht intercepts the power beams from the satellites and converts that radiation into electrical power. Ion and/or plasma engines use the massive power available to boost the payloads. But even with hundreds of megawatts to even gigawatts of power, acceleration is slow, so the massive payloads slowly spiral out of Earth orbit, taking months to reach lunar orbit. Once there, they are intercepted by lunar “taxis” that lower the payloads to the lunar surface. This is accomplished with high-thrust nuclear engines for the final landing, but LOX/aluminum powder slurry engines – crude and inefficient, but using propellants plentiful on the lunar surface – are used for braking out of lunar orbit and for much of the descent.

The thousands of workers needed on the lunar surface are sent from Earth via Space Stations II and IV, transported up on Shuttle II and Orion III vehicles. From the space stations they are transported to the moon via Aries Ia and Ib moon ships.

The first structures build are the preliminary housing facilities (inflatable “domes” initially), followed by improved landing facilities.. Once the facilities are in place to safely house the work crews and provide for efficient cargo operations, the massive subterranean operations begin. While hundreds of thousands of square feet of facilities are being dug out underground and built up using locally produced materials, such as nuclear melted regolith castings, facilities are rapidly built up on the surface. Here greeenhouses – using natural sunlight for thee two-week-long day, artificial lights for the two-week-long night – grow plants and algae for oxygen production, carbon dioxide scrubbing and food production. By 1999, Clavius and Aristarchus Bases are officially self-supporting: in the event that transport from Earth were cut off, the bases could survive idefinitely.

By 1999, facilities are in place that will process lunar regolith into constituent elements. However, it remains more efficient to process more pure sources. So numerous geological expeditions are sent out to find veins of valuable ores and meteorites. Of great importance are carbonaceous chondrites (needed for the carbon) and subsurface ices (needed not for rocket propellant, but for the maintenance and growth of the artificial biospheres). In support of this, numerous satellites orbit the moon, scanning the surface for gravitational, magnetic and chemical anomalies. One of these satellites detects, in 1999, a magnetic anomaly at the crater Tycho. One of the many geological expedition groups examines the site, and rapidly build a small base there and excavates a large “pit.” Due to the experience such groups have had, and the tools and techniques at their ready disposal, the pit, which is begun late in a lunar evening, is completed within the span of the lunar night. The discoveries at the pit are quickly classified. The new President, inaugurated just a few months earlier, is faced with a set of issues no President has had to face before, and makes decisions informed by a confidential report put together by the head of the NCA based on a hastilty-organized trip to the moon and a visit to the Tycho discovery.

This would seem to get us from 1968 to 1999, along one of an infinite number of paths. This particular path ends up with the USSR still a going concern, due in part to Nixon pulling out of Vietnam several years early. This has led to communism being a more powerful and aggressive force around the world. At the same time, the US has begun the true conquest of the universe, with *thousands* of people living off-world. The US – and world, except for countries that live solely on oil – economy would be substantially bigger than “our” economy, due in part to the space program, but more due to cheap electricity provided by a healthy nuclear industry. The space program would be a much vaster effort than in our world, and by this point would be about as difficult to cancel or curtail as Medicare or Social Security is in ours.

I have ideas about secondary topics for the “2001” world, but this closes out the basic story of “how we get there.”

How to get from 1968 to 2001: Part 10

blather, history, science fiction 13 Responses »

Nov 042013

The election of 1992 comes after several years of economic decline, Soviet expansion and a growing sense of malaise. The Dukakis administration has made a number of policy blunders that have made things worse; the worst being to slash the budget of military space programs. This has a carryover effect into the civilian sector, and greatly angers the public.

The Democrat party, after seeing early campaigning by Republican hopefuls for their parties nomination, realizes that Dukakis simply has no chance of defeating any likely Republican candidate. So in a historically unusual move, Dukakis faces serious challenges within his own party… challenges supported by the party itself. In July, 1992, Dukakis is officially replaced in the coming election by the current California Governor, who has been a vocal proponent of the Solar Power Satellite program. While being substantially more expensive than nuclear power, the SPS remains more popular in his home state. Even though the anti-nuclear sentiment so common IRL has been substantially tamped-down in the alternate timeline, it hasn’t been completely eliminated, and the Soviets are still making clandestine efforts to push an anti-nuclear meme in the American media. The Governor is also a vocal supporter of the American space program as a whole; not the military side so much as the civilian, but the recent space downturn has hit California hard. Turning the space program around will provide a massive boost to the Californian – and US – economy.

The Republicans are also seeking a new candidate. The Dole administration showed the downside to dull, and it’s clear to the party that what’s needed is someone enthusiastic and, if at all possible, relatively young… and space-positive. Most of the Republicans putting themselves forward for the party nomination are reliably pro-space, but they are, as a group, deadly dull and relatively old. However, a young Representative from Georgia has made a name for himself by being pro-space, going so far as wrangling official junkets to Space Station III and the Space Station IV construction site (his efforts to get an official tour of the Sea of Serenity Base have so far been unsuccessful). He is an obvious choice for the Presidential nod.

Realizing that space is a winning position in the coming election, efforts behind the Republican Party scenes promote an unconventional Vice President. A non-politician, never having held an elected office, the science fiction writer who gets the VP position has nevertheless had an active influence on American politics. Prior to his election to the Presidency in 1976, Reagan had had little to say about space; but shortly after taking office he had started talking about the benefits of weaponizing the heavens. These talking points and speeches had come after meeting the now-VP candidate; rumors have floated for years that it was this guy who had written Reagans speeches on the topic.

The election of ’92 is a close-run thing, with the Republican candidate winning. The Democrats retain control of the House; the Republicans gain a substantial majority in the Senate. It does not take the new President long to ram new spending policies through Congress, and the space program roars back to life. The Uranus booster, recently mothballed, is completed; the first launch takes place in the summer of 1993. The production line is put into action, and two-million-pound payloads become a reality.

All is not perfect, of course. Since nuclear power now fulfills the bulk of Americas energy needs, petroleum is less of an influence on American international policy, and is less economically important around the world. So when, in 1991, Iraq invades Kuwait, nobody pays much attention. Second-hand Soviet conventional weapons are used by the Iraqis to defeat impoverished Kuwaitis armed with third-hand Western weapons. Iraq, flush with success, but with little enough to show for it, presses the attack on and defeats the greatly weakened Saudi forces. Still the world largely just shrugs. But then Iraq looks to Jordan, with the aim of taking that state, Israel and, eventually, Egypt. Those nations had had little enough oil to begin with, and had built their economies on other industries; as oil had faded in economic power, there had been a brain-drain from the formerly oil-rich nations to the non-oil nations of the middle east. The brightest were actively sought by Israel; Israeli nuclear reactors are some of the best in the world They are the unquestioned leaders in the manufacture of sub-scale, completely encapsulated and rock-hard reliable reactors for factories and small towns. Israeli prototype reactors for home use are being successfully tested. That fabulous wealth this close to the starving millions of the former oil nations is too tempting of a target. In 1993, the now-combined forces of Iraq, Arabia, Kuwait and the former UAE launch a massive, if somewhat impoverished, assault on Jordan, Israel and Egpyt.

The western trio form an unlikely alliance against the eastern force, and easily outmatch it in terms of weapons technology and funding. But the sheer numbers threaten to overwhelm them.

The US tries to get the UN to act, but they are countered in the Security Council by the Soviets and Red Chinese. The Soviets have little enough to gain from the war; the only people in the region who want to buy their weapons are poverty stricken. But the more who get themselves killed in Jordan, the fewer will continue to try to move north into the USSR through Azerbaijan. And the Chinese have even less to gain directly… but they are still looking to retake Taiwan, and the less precedent in the UN to stand up to invasion, the better.

Since the Soviets launched the very first Polyus space battle station, there has not been a single (official) use of space weaponry in an offensive capacity (several defensive uses, against space junk and dead satellites on impact trajectories with “live” hardware). This changes in 1993: while the US does not send troops into the war, several night-time battles are lit up by new weapons: kinetic energy weapons drop from the sky and take out massed artillery and tank columns; space based lasers set fire to troops and trucks out in the open, and blast aircraft and missiles from the sky. Particle weapons are employed that do virtually no physical damage at ground level due to atmospheric scattering, but the electromagnetic interference wipes out communications, lights up the sky and creates lightning-like atmospheric displays that panic the invaders. In the end the Iraq War results in a complete rout. The Soviets express outrage over this use of space weaponry against ground targets, but the western world is in fact overjoyed: a war is won, in their view, with no loss of American or European life (little is said about the multitudes of Iraqi, Arabian, Jordanian, Egyptian and Israeli dead on the ground).

This only bolsters American public opinion on space. Spending for the USAA skyrockets, and for several years in the mid-90’s breaks the 4% mark of the Federal budget, during the construction of the Aristarchus and Clavius Bases. Space Station IV is completed, and work begins on Space Station V, along with expansions of Martian infrastructure. Construction begins on at Space Station IV on the XD-1, the first manned spacecraft to the outer planets.

By this time the Shuttle II is showing its age. Rather than have another design competition for a replacement, the NCA and the President suggest a new approach: a prize. The basic requirements are set forth and a lump sum is made available to the first company that can provide the capability. High-priority cargo launch and passenger transport specification are published in early 1994. And in record time, several firms produce their vehicles… time aided by the fact that successors to the Shuttle II had been in works for some years. The Lockheed/North American Rockwell Orion I booster and Orion II cargo spaceplane first fly to orbit in late 1995, with the Orion III passenger spaceplane orbiting a few months later, winning them the prize and numerous contracts. Unlike the Shuttles, the Orions are sold to commercial operators, including airlines, for passenger and cargo transport to space. The vast number of workers going up and down to support the various projects simply buy tickets. They travel alongside tourists, businessmen, politicians and others who previously would not have ventured into space.

By 1996, the US economy is again booming, and space is again a roaring business. The Presidential elections that year are a cakewalk for the incumbents. Things are almost where they need to be…

To be concluded

How to get from 1968 to 2001: Part 9

blather, history, science fiction 16 Responses »

Nov 032013

The leadup to the 1988 elections is one of the nastiest on record. The three main Democrat contenders, Michael Dukakis, Jesse Jackson and Al Gore, rip each other to shreds in the primaries. Gore is the only one with a space-friendly campaign; while lukewarm on space militarization, he claims a desire to continue exploration efforts, and to push hard on the Solar Power Satellite program. In contrast, Dukakis is lukewarm on space exploration, and downright hostile to space militarization; and Jackson wants to cancel all space militarization and effectively curtail space exploration efforts, with the intention of redirecting those funds to social welfare programs.

Jackson is knocked out of the running early on, finding that the public has no desire to see the space program end. Gore generally leads in the polls; he is the stronger campaigner, and has the more space-positive message. But a few mis-steps dog his campaign. A series of TV and radio ads attempt to tar Dukakis with a policy he had enacted in Massachusetts of weekend furloughs for prisoners, a policy that resulted in tragedy when one such prisoner committed murder while out and about. Gore’s campaign runs a series of negative attack ads which backfire badly. Jackson, already effectively out of the running by this point due (according to opinion polls) largely to his anti-space stance, uses his powers of agitation to raise a stink against the ads, and against Gore (who he is particularly angry at for having very effectively shot him down over space). The end result is that Gore campaign slips, falters, and falls behind.

President Dole runs a particularly lackluster campaign. Coupled with the slow economy, this results in a narrow loss to Mike Dukakis. In January of 1989, Dukakis and his VP Gary Hart take office. At the same time, the Democrats take control of the House, and nearly the Senate.

In Real Life, the President elected in 1988 witnessed the end of the Soviet Union. In the 2001 timeline, this does not happen. In this timeline, the Soviet Union is spending vast sums on their space exploration and weaponization program, several times more than IRL; however, here this does not bankrupt the Soviets. Partially this is due to the different global situation… with more Communist satellites basically paying tribute to the USSR, the Soviet economy is improved; additionally, as in the US, the active space program inspires the Soviet public, and spurs innovation. The domestic Soviet economy is more productive.

Additionally: the Soviet leadership is more hardline and paranoid than IRL. After Brezhnev dies in ’82, he is replaced by Andropov; when Andropov dies in ’84 he is replaced directly by Gorbachev (IRL Andropovs choice to replace him; in this timeline, Chernenko, already terminally ill, is seen as too frail to stand up to the Americans in the struggle to come). Gorbachev introduces his perestroika (“restructuring”) policies in early 1985. The goal is a revival of the Soviet economy and culture… even though things are cruising along, the Communist Party can see that the vast expenses on the military and space are not supportable long-term. At the same time, no alternatives seem to present themselves to the threat of the US in space. But on Earth…

Communism is slowly expanding around the world; all of eastern Asia is communist, about a third of sub-Saharan Africa, several Latin and Central American nations have installed communist governments, and open and bloody civil wars are rampant. Italy is Communist; West Germany is teetering, and American Polaris missile submarines are kicked out of Britain by the Labour-led government (Thatcher having been booted from her role as Prime Minister due to the disastrous effect of the coal miners strikes of ’84… here far worse than IRL due to the fact that nuclear power has led to coal being that much less valuable).

The result of this is a serious sense of cognitive dissonance on *both* sides. The Americans see the world with a sense of dread due to the growing Communist world, yet they are clearly leading the way into the future by conquering the heavens.The Soviets see the world as belonging to them, with a single world Communist government being the goal and the expectation, and yet the Americans are building an armed camp right over their heads.

By 1990, the Moon has a population of more than a thousand, more than 90% of whom are Americans. The US has sent several missions to Mars and has established a permanent base on Phobos, with Lowell Base on the surface of Mars in the early stages of assembly. The USAA has visited a number of near-Earth asteroids, and has begun moving several smaller ones towards Earth (with the intent of using the Moon to help swing them into a high orbit about the Earth). Unmanned probes have flown past every planet save Pluto, and several orbiting robots circle Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and one is heading towards Neptune. Cytherian Station One circles Venus, providing safe accommodations for the occasional manned missions to the hellhouse world. Plans are in place for massive bases at Aristarchus and Clavius. Two vast radio telescopes have been built on the farside, away from the blare of terrestrial radio transmissions. Solar Power Satellite prototypes have proven technically successful, though clearly more expensive than ground-based nuclear; still, construction begins on a full-scale Manhattan-sized satellite in geosynchronous orbit. The raw material for the bulk of the structure is aluminum, production of which has begun on the moon. Transport of the raw aluminum to lunar orbit is via crude hybrid rockets made locally, using oxygen cooked out of the soil, and aluminum powder. The two are mixed together to form a slurry; pumped into a combustion chamber, the mix burns spectacularly hot. But the exhaust product is of course aluminum oxide, which is a solid at distressingly high temperatures. So additional oxygen is pumped into the aft end of the combustion chamber; the rocket exhaust is composed of aluminum oxide dust and superheated oxygen. Performance is pitiful and reliability is poor… but it’s good enough to launch several tons at a time into lunar orbit. The booster itself is built largely from lunar aluminum. The cargo rockets are collected in lunar orbit and sent to geosynchronous with nuclear-ion tugs. It’s slow and uneconomical, but it works. Still, two vast magnetic launchers are planned to replace these clunky boosters. In support of these planned projects, new satellites are to be launched in the coming years that will focus like never before on mapping the subsurface geology of the moon using gravitational and magnetic sensors.

And on top of all that, Earth orbit from LEO to GEO is loaded with weapons platforms. Nuclear powered free-electron lasers and neutral particle beams form the bulk of the American defensive systems, with individual platforms numbering in the hundreds to perhaps a thousand (numbers being hard to come by, since Neptune launches tend to split off any of a number of sub-payloads, most of which are officially undefined). The American ICBM leg of the nuclear triad has evaporated; the Titan and Minuteman missile silos now sit empty, having been replaced by orbiting nuclear weapons platforms. However, the US Navy has four dozen Ohio class ballistic missile submarines, and the USAF still operates a fleet of aging B-52s and a hundred B-1As, all armed with stealthy subsonic cruise missiles.

All this of course costs. While the civilian space efforts are starting to become profitable on their own, the military programs are simply vastly expensive. And while the Soviet leadership is perfectly happy to launch their own space weapons, they make much use of propaganda claiming that *all* of the American space efforts are military. This has an important impact outside of the US. Within the US, the Soviets use somewhat less obvious propaganda; their agents and sympathizers in the entertainment and news media propagate memes that convince some people that if only the money spent on space were spent on Earth, problems such as poverty and unemployment could be fixed; or that the Soviets only want peaceful relations, but US militarism is a threat to the world. For the first time since the late 1960’s, this sort of thinking gains a level of prominence within the US.

President Dukakis seems to support at least part of this thinking. The US economic slowdown has seen the unemployment rate shoot upwards to almost 3%. Dukakis argues that military space spending should be slashed and the money used to bolster welfare programs. In 1990, the US Federal budget is produced that reflects this policy. As a result, space spending as a whole is cut, social welfare spending explodes; but within a year is is clear that what has transpired is that tens of thousands of high paying high tech lobs have been sacrificed for food stamps. Rather than bolstering the economy, unemployment rises and tax revenues decline. The response is a proposed raise in tax rates.

The Presidential election of 1992 becomes a mandate on the space program as a whole. The slashed military space budget has had a negative impact on the civilian efforts – as many expected, since the two are so closely interlinked. The first Uranus booster is scheduled for launch in early 1992, but the changes in government policy have put the Uranus project in mothballs. Even the production facility is shuttered.

Dukakis’ popularity tanks in early 1992, with protests and riots of the kind not seen since the 1960’s; the Democrat party actually replaces Dukakis in the primary. For once, the Republicans and the Democrats send candidates before the electorate who can both be declared “space cadets.” So in 1993, a new President takes office who was, for the first time, a true proponent of the space program in all its aspects…

To be continued

How to get from 1968 to 2001: Part 8

blather, history, science fiction 20 Responses »

Nov 012013

The 1985 USAA design competitions lead to the Shuttle II and the Uranus booster designs. The Shuttle II remains a two stage design, but this time fully reusable. The booster stage is a simple optionally-manned flyback booster, powered by LOX and RP-1; the orbiter is a tripropellant LOX/LH2/CH4 design. The orbiter can be replaced with a number of upper stage options; the most advanced being a nuclear stage used for single-stage transits to the moon and beyond.

The Uranus design is again won by General Dynamics. Boeing protests the award in the courts, but the decision is upheld. General Dynamics’s Neptune (based on the IRL “Nexus” design of 1963) has proven reliable at launching million-pound payloads into LEO; the Uranus is an enlarged and improved version, similar in appearance but capable of orbiting two million pounds (also based on the Nexus, which indeed had a 2 million-pound payload design).

Plans are to use the Uranus to launch raw materials such as aluminum sheeting (used by automated beam builders) and water (used for shielding and as rocket propellant). Low Earth orbit is starting to fill up with platforms of many kinds and sizes. Not only are there weapons systems galore( including American, Soviet, Chinese, British and French, with West Germany, South Korea and Brazil working on their own military space programs; rumors exist that the Japanese are also working on space weapons, a concept that does not go over well in much of East Asia), there are also commercial and scientific platforms in vast abundance. Optical telescopes hundreds of meters wide image individual planets around nearby star systems and thrill the public.

While Space Station II has proven to be a disappointment (damaged during launch, it was never quite right and was forever needing maintenance), Space Station III is under construction and looks promising. It is a giant construction project, but is dwarfed by the planned Space Station IV, and the somewhat bigger-still Space Station V. In this timeline, satellites are both more numerous *and* larger than IRL, due largely to the availability of relatively cheap space launch. There is not the drive to miniaturize everything as much as possible. Much of the satellite communications, as well as television broadcast systems, utilize large manned commercial space platforms from LEO to GEO. Manned platforms are of course more expensive to operate, but this allows for easy maintenance and replacement of obsolete components with new ones. Additionally, being commercial television facilities… these platforms, including the Intelsat series, form the first orbital filming studios. Starting in the early 1990’s, documentaries, science fiction, even comedies film scenes in the voluminous propellant tanks that have been converted into living space.

The temporary habitats on the moon are being replaced with permanent encampments. The Sea of Serenity is the first permanent base, with a permanent staff of 150; it is declared fully operational in 1987. Bigger bases are planned; base camps have been set up at Aristarchus, Copernicus, Clavius and Kepler craters to test the local geology for planned town-sized bases. These bases will be truly self contained; with plans for thousands of inhabitants, these bases will need to be self-sufficient in the event of problems with Earth-Moon transport… such as war. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of tons of raw materials and equipment will need to be transported to the Moon over the next two decades, requiring not only the sort of heavy lift the Uranus will provide but also the sort of cheap space launch that smaller manned vehicles will provide.

But for the rest of the 80’s, the Neptune and Shuttle fulfill the bulk of the USAA’s launch needs.

The plans that the NCA has come up with and put before Congress and President Dole are vast, forward-thinking… and very expensive. In order to fulfill the whole program, USAA funding will need to be increased from 2.5% of the Federal budget to nearly 3.5%. After the boom years of the early 80’s, the economy is beginning to cool off. Nearly two decades have passed since the Watergate Scandal torpedoed the plans of the American Left to gut the space program in order to expand he welfare state; the public no longer holds the Democrat party responsible, and elections start trending in their direction. Additionally, Dole is not the charismatic leader that Reagan was; he does not make the case for the NCA’s plans as successfully as his predecessor would have. Further, Dole’s duller personality does not buoy public sentiment. The economy continues the slow, while Communism continues to expand around the world. Tensions remain high around the world.

In this timeline, by the 1988 elections the US space program is firmly entrenched. USAA facilities dot the country and employ, directly or indirectly, hundreds of thousands; the space program is almost as untouchable as Social Security. Additionally, nearly a decade has passed since the Three Mile Island incident; IRL, this was the death knell to commercial nuclear power in the US, but in the alternate timeline it has been spun into a nuclear power *success* story: even with a partial reactor meltdown, not a single person was injured and no environmental damage was done. And a new generation of even safer reactors have come along. So nuclear power is also firmly entrenched.

The space and nuclear programs (military and civilian) are basically safe… and are now largely President-independent (and, for the purposes of this narrative, are now fairly self-guided… the course from *here* to the world of “2001:ASO” is fairly clear). So in January of 1989, a new President takes office, replacing Dole. This new President promises to fix the economy which is edging towards recession, as well as mend relations with the Soviets…

How to get from 1968 to 2001: Part 7

blather, history, science fiction 13 Responses »

Oct 312013

By the early 1980’s, NASA has semi-permanent manned lunar bases and is sending men beyond. Numerous space stations and manned platforms circle the Earth and the moon. Commercial platforms are popping up, with companies buying rides on the Space Shuttle and sometimes “renting” the entire vehicle. People are starting to seriously pursue space tourism as a paying business; the first such tourists buy seats on Shuttle flights that have been rented by commercial satellite launch firms. And now due to competition with the Soviet Union, the US is quickly getting into the business of militarizing space.

This is a major change to the way NASA has worked. NASA has been in the business of science and exploration; it is not well suited to commercial enterprise, military endeavors or construction projects. Future commercial and military plans are rapidly outpacing NASA plans and NASA capacity. While the NASA budget has settled out at about a constant 2.5% of the US Federal budget, the total number of trained astronauts is far too low even for planned commercial efforts in Earth orbit, never mind all the other programs. Additionally, NASA has focused on training “elite” astronauts, when what’s becoming needed is a construction corps of builders and get-it-done-types.

Further: NASA’s efforts and funding have gone preferentially towards the “S” in NASA (“Space”), while the first “A” (“Aeronautics”) has been virtually ignored. As a result, the American SST program, which resulted in the Boeing 2707 (first flight 1976) has stagnated with only twelve aircraft flying. The Boeing 737 and 747 remain, by the early 1980’s, the primary means of American air travel; even with the massive drop in oil prices following the collapse of OPEC, supersonic travel remains terribly expensive and beyond the financial reach of most travelers.

So, in 1982, after much wrangling, wailing and gnashing of teeth, NASA is broken up. The old National Advisory Council on Aeronautics, which formed the original backbone of NASA, is re-incorporated, focusing on aeronautical technology… aerodynamics, jet engines, materials technologies, etc. Facilities, staff and funding are now separate from the space-oriented organization that had been strangling them.

The space side of NASA is reorganized into the US Astronautics Agency. The USAA is aimed not only at continuing the “elite” efforts of NASA, the pushing-the-envelope projects, but also at the less glamorous efforts of space launch and construction. The USAA is modeled somewhat on the Works Progress Administration for the Great Depression era, but instead of hiring millions of low-skilled workers in order to prop up a faltering economy, the USAA hires and trains thousands of skilled workers to be space workers.

In order to provide direction to the USAA, the anemic National Aeronautics and Space Council (done away with by Nixon on 1973 IRL, but here it has hung on) is reformed into the more focused National Council on Astronautics. The NCA and the USAA are closely linked, in that the NCA is the political link between the USAA and the President and Congress; staffed by career bureaucrats, the NCA works to both direct political will, and to carry out political will.

The USAA is tasked with physically building the future. The former NASA research facilities, such as Marshall, Langley, Ames and so on, continue to develop advanced technologies and missions. New facilities are set up around the nation to train the vast numbers of astronauts and technicians and engineers and others that the new programs will need, as well as take advanced new technologies and turn them into standard practices. Boise, Denver, Seattle and Albuquerque, for example, see massive new facilities. New launch facilities are built offshore from Kennedy Space Center, in the Gulf of Mexico a few miles from Galveston, and south-east of the Big Island of Hawaii. Belize lobbies hard for a launch facility.

Where NASA had tried to hold itself somewhat apart from the military and seemed at best lukewarm to commercial enterprise, the USAA is formed to work hand-in-hand with both the military and private enterprise. The USAA has unique launch and space construction abilities, and is available for rent. While some in government take issue with this, calling the USAA a “mercenary perversion of NASA’s mission,” the fact remains that the income the USAA derives from both American and foreign paying customers offsets a large fraction of the total USAA budget.

The USAA is born in controversy, with many angry at the loss of NASA; but within the decade the controversy has faded in the face of unquestioned success. While Space Station II was an acknowledged failure, Space Station I was a roaring success and a half dozen clones of it have been built and put into service. Space Station III is a new concept in space station construction; plans are in place for even bigger stations and even permanent “towns” on the moon.

Of course, there are also plans to fill the heavens with weapons. By the time Reagan leaves office in 1985, the USAA is busy launching nuclear weapons platforms and directed energy systems into orbit. These remain against international treaty… but by this point, nobody really cares much. The Soviets got there first… but the Americans got there bigger. The fact that the “mass simulator” launched by the first Neptune booster was in fact a harmless mockup remains a tightly guarded secret… by simply claiming that it is, in fact, simply a mass simulator. The Soviets assume that the claim is a lie, and so continue to believe that the platform is a weapon. Ironically, over the course of the 80’s, the platform is slowly converted into an actual platform; the mass of inert aluminum structural beams that make up its bulk are removed for use in other orbital construction projects, and are replace a bit at a time with actual power systems, sensors and weapons. By the end of the 80’s the “mass simulator” is a true battle station, but by this point it’s merely one of many.

1985 sees not only a new President – Vice President Bob Dole easily defeats Mondale – but also new design competitons. The Shuttle has been flying operationally for half a dozen years… successfully, but expensively. It will need replacing by the 1990’s for passenger launch. Also, the Neptune has replaced the Saturn V, but it, too, will need supplementing by the early 1990s. Something bigger is needed…

To be continued

Older Entries