SpaceX’s “Starhopper” testbed for their Raptor engines, intended for use on the “Starship” fired up a single engine and*apparently* lifted off yesterday on a tethered flight. This probably means it got no more than a few feet off the ground at best.
Unmanned test flight *was* to be in may, now August.
Prolly shouldn’t’a cribbed the capsules flight control software from the 737 MAX program…
The launch vehicle would require a number of modifications, including the use of the ULA Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage and a larger payload fairing.
The article seems lean on some details. The launch vehicle thus modified with the ICPS and an Orion capsule would seem perhaps capable of sending men *around* the moon, but actually landing on the moon would seem to require a lot more capability. The obvious approach would be to go back to the original idea NASA had in the earliest Apollo days of launching multiple Saturn I’s, with separate vehicles and tankers, for a rendezvous in Earth orbit and an assembly and tanking. But beyond all that there remains one over-riding problem: where the frak is the lunar lander?
Given how it finally turned out, I think I should feel safe in saying that to a great degree I’d like to forget that I ever had anything to do with “Man Conquers Space.” Still and all I *did* do a lot of work on it in the early aughts, and it grates on me that it all went for naught. Well, maybe it’ll provide some minor amusement for some of y’all: my contribution was in the area of launch vehicle, space vehicle and space station design. The plot as of circa 2003 was that the German built the Sanger antipodal bomber, the US caught wind of it and got Robert Goddard to slap together an interceptor (this part of the plot was cribbed *directly* from Allen Steele’s “Goddard’s People,” which makes me wonder if proper permissions to do that were obtained… shrug). As a result of this, history goes different and the “Collier’s” series of space articles from the early 1950’s come to pass. The US lands on the moon in the early 60’s with those giant landers, and on Mars in the late 60’s with those giant gliders. I did some work to try to rationalize how the Collier’s Mars gliders could work given that the Martian atmosphere turned out to be nowhere near as dense as they thought in the 50’s, but IIRC the final decision was to just sorta gloss over that little aeronautical detail.
This much is well known, but the later versions of the MCS movie would have continued the timeline forward to circa 2004. There would be solar power satellites, planetary colonies, lots of space stations and the first space habitats under construction; some discussion was had about maybe showing the start of the first starship, but I don’t think that was ever incorporated.
The design ethic for the post-Colliers vehicles was to be a blending of the purely practical with “it could have evolved from Colliers,” with, at the end, a heaping helping of “2001.” Space stations *resembling* Space Station V, Clavius Base analogs, *bits* of Discovery. The space agency, for example, would not have been NASA, but the NCA.
Still to be found on one of my hard drives are some of the diagrams I was working on for the Ferry Rocket and its descendants. Realistically I think that in a world where the US had gone full-bore into spaceflight in the 1950’s the launch vehicles of 2004 would have been very realistic-futuristic, but the idea was to carry the original Ferry Rocket design ethic forward. So a combination of practical and “that looks cool.”
The evolution of the Ferry Rocket system is shown below. The Mk 2 clearly takes after the Disney designs that followed after the Colliers series. The Mk 3 was, as requested, designed to resemble the Avro Vulcan; the booster is derived from a Martin Nova/Post-Saturn. The Mk 4 was never quite finalized; the booster took after the Boeing AMLLV, and the glider was to be fitted with variable geometry wings. By 2004 the NCA is using the Mk 5 ferry rocket, fully reusable with a first stage booster that would land itself back at the pad much like the Falcon 9. The second stage would go into orbit with the “shuttle” stage and would either be turned into payload (serving as either wet lab, or just chewed up for the raw materials) or would re-enter and again land itself back at the pad. The shuttle stage was to be the most “cool” of the designs, intended to serve in a number of capacities… including as a US Marine Corps “Drop Ship” for troop deployment; this necessitated such slightly unlikely features as VTOL jet lift.
The earlier Mk 3 system went in for a more detailed design and analysis, much of which has been lost in the intervening decade and a half.
In addition to design, I also worked on a number of props. One was a 1/72 scale Mk 1 ferry rocket display model, to be seen (IIRC) in the 1960’s era NCA heads office. This was finished while I still lived in California and shipped – at no small expense – to Australia. Where is it today? Not a clue.
Note the industry standard feline scale reference, the late lamented Koshka. She didn’t know what to make of the Ferry Rocket.
In addition, a 1/72 Mk 2 Ferry Rocket display model was also under construction when the project seemed to stall circa 2005. The glider was more or less finished, but I seem to have lost it.
I still have some of the fiberglass molds used to make these, though I suspect they’re a little grotty.
Kinda hard to “shoot down” something in orbit (as the wreckage remains in orbit and unlike waht the movies show, doesn’t just immediately fall from the sky) , but it seems they bullseyed it with a ground-based interceptor.
On one hand: congrats for the technical achievement.
On the other hand: this shows that such abilities are becoming more and more readily available. And while India is not an enemy state, the US *does* have both vital space-based infrastructure *and* enemies. Thus driving home the importance of developing a true Space Force capable of defending what we’ve got as well as replacing what we lose.
On one hand… good. On the other hand… I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ll *start* to believe in the possibility of it when I see a finalized design for a lunar lander.
The US *should* be able to do this. Whether *NASA* could do this, I have substantial doubts. SpaceX? I would be unsurprised if they could do it, and it would make me happy if the first manned lunar landing of the 21st century happens in 2024 when a USSF-owned and operated SpaceX Starship lands on the lunar surface with ten scientists and ten Space Marines ready to plant the flag and claim territory for the United Federation of Planets of America, complete with had modules, regolith moving equipment, a ten megawatt nuclear reactors and a big-ass Drax Industries “Screw You Mk. 2” laser gun.
Artwork of the Boeing Integrated Manned Interplanetary Spacecraft, circa 1968. This is the best known of the numerous manned Mars spacecraft designed over the last half century, and is often directly associated with Werner von Braun as he would go on to try to get congress and NASA to forge ahead with the program. Obviously he was not successful. Aspects of this spacecraft design were illustrated in great detail in US Spacecraft Projects #03 and USSP #04
I’ve seen this piece of art many times over the years, always in pretty poor resolution; I finally found a good-rez version on eBay a while back. I’ve made the full-rez scan available to above-$10-subscribers to the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program/Patreon. Clearly the original painting must have been done in color, but I do not think I’ve ever seen this image reproduced in color. I suspect that about ten seconds after I keel over someone will put on eBay a 24X26 full-color pristine lithograph with a buy-it-now price of five bucks. So keep an eye out for that: you see it, I’m like as not deadern’ disco.
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An idle thought occurred while Netflix was on for background noise while I poked away at the computer.
Can we shoehorn the James Bond and 2001 universes together? Obviously we can’t assume that every Bond movie is canonical with “2001,” since the Bond flicks recognize that the USSR fell. But *one* movie… maybe. Consider the linking figure: actor William Sylvester.
Sylvester played Dr. Heywood Floyd, head of the National Council of Astronautics, in 1968’s “2001.” He also played “Pentagon Official” in 1967’s “You Only Live Twice.” Obviously these are not the same character, as the timeframes of the movies are separated by ~34 years, while the *actor* was essentially the same age (~45) in both movies. But here’s the what-if: what if that Pentagon Official was Heywood Floyds father? It’s *really* not that unusual for people deeply involved in the government bureaucracy and politics to have kids who follow in their footsteps. Dr. Floyd would have been born when his father was about 34, a perfectly cromulent age for that sort of thing.
It’s a minor point, of course, to have the same actor. But the events of “You Only Live Twice,” where a well-funded terrorist organization is paid by the Chinese to run a space launch facility and program to steal Soviet and American space capsules, might be just the sort of thing to set changes in the timeline in motion. A private organization operating Chinese equipment (it’s unclear whether the entire rocket and spacecraft were Chinese products through and through, or if SPECTRE designed them themselves using Chinese hardware, or what) and proving rapid turnaround for a partially reusable space launch system in 1967 would have been just the thing to get the USA and USSR off their butts. NASA was well on it’s way to the moon, but the “Bird One” spacecraft would have set them on the course to developing low-cost reusable craft *fast.* Because not only would it be obvious that major powers have such craft… so do criminal organizations.
“Pentagon Official” saw World War III nearly break out over a small reusable spacecraft of remarkable capability. Doubtless he would have shared that with his then-11-year-old son. That could well have set Lil’ Heywood on his way, just as the events set the US and the USSR on their way to lunar bases and space stations.
I suppose there might be a longer fan-fiction story in there.
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By the way: a few years ago I mastered kits for Fantastic plastic that fit directly into this hypothesis. Click the pics for the links to ordering them.
A couple vintage (1960) magazine photos showing the Mk2/3 and Mk IV warheads used on the AtlasSM-65 ICBMs.
White House is looking to cut back on the SLS.
The NASA budget proposal is about half billion dollars less, but a lot of that would be made up for in going with cheaper options. For instance, by switching from SLS to a commercial launcher (presumably the Falcon 9 Heavy), $700 million would be saved. In this proposed budget most areas of NASA would get some amount of cuts, but an interesting bump up is in “Exploration R&D.” Given that NASA works best as an R&D organization, that’s very likely a good thing.
| Account | FY19 Enacted | FY20 Proposal | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| SCIENCE | $6,905.7 | $6,303.7 | -$602.0 |
| – Earth Science | $1,931.0 | $1,779.8 | -$151.2 |
| – Planetary Science | $2,758.5 | $2,622.1 | -$136.4 |
| – Astrophysics | $1,496.2 | $1,197.4 | -$298.8 |
| – Heliophysics | $720.0 | $704.5 | -$15.5 |
| AERONAUTICS | $725.0 | $666.9 | -$58.1 |
| SPACE TECHNOLOGY | $926.9 | $1,014.3 | $87.4 |
| EXPLORATION | $5,050.8 | $5,021.7 | -$29.1 |
| – Orion | $1,350.0 | $1,266.2 | -$83.8 |
| – Space Launch System | $2,150.0 | $1,775.4 | -$374.6 |
| – Exploration Ground Systems | $592.8 | $400.1 | -$192.7 |
| – Exploration R&D | $958.0 | $1,580.0 | $622.0 |
| SPACE OPERATIONS | $4,639.1 | $4,285.7 | -$353.4 |
| STEM ENGAGEMENT | $110.0 | $0.0 | -$110.0 |
| SAFETY, SECURITY AND MISSION SERVICES | $2,755.0 | $3,084.6 | $329.6 |
| CONSTRUCTION & ENVIRONMENTAL | $348.2 | $600.4 | $252.2 |
| INSPECTOR GENERAL | $39.3 | $41.7 | $2.4 |
| TOTAL | $21,500.0 | $21,019.0 | -$481.0 |