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

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…