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…