A tech manual I'll actually be interested in!
Some of that art came from a guy called lunadude. Wayne L. Ordway had a presentation in 1990 that had not only the F-111 canard wing escape cabin, but had the Orbiter as an American Buran style orbiter.I'm guessing it'll probably look more like the proposed 'Shuttle II LaRC'.
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We knew this was coming, but the arms race has arrived on the Moon and it's only going to get uglier from here...
I feel like while Gordo is being looked at as the problem it will end up being Tracy's lack of preparation which is going to result in some type of accident and we are heading to some kind of Congressional hearings over the activities of NASA with Ed and his selection of astronauts likely being under question as well.
I don't know if something like court drama fits with the style of the show. Rising tensions with the Soviet Union are pretty clear and soon there will be an ex couple up there, one of whom is more concerned with her public image than her job and the other actually unfit ( physically and mentally) AND there will be weapons on the moon base with astronauts from a hostile nation within reach, what can possibly go wrong?
Yeah, all of that could turn public opinion against NASA and may even cool off the space race...I'm not sure it would be some kind of big multi-arc courtroom thing... Hell it could just end the season with subpoenas served to NASA and the FBI coming in to secure documents. I think some type of Congressional investigation is fairly realistic at this point. The Russians having the moonbase bugged for nearly a decade isn't going to look very good either.
They have Garrett Reisman on staff as a technical consultant, either he objected to using the Shuttle for lunar missions and was ignored, or he suggested one of these stretch-goal mission profiles like we have been discussing that would make it at least plausible. I would like to see, before the season ends, a Shuttle heading for the moon, still attached to its external tank, which had been refilled in earth orbit.On the topic of lunar shuttles—I just wanted to post this again
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19910014907.pdf
Now, the take-away was that this was a poor plan...but I question that. This is no different from Starship in that both need re-fueling. But from a structural standpoint, this could have been better.
Are you cutting windows into your External Tank, perhaps weakening it?
No.
Are you trying to put landing legs to support the whole load?
No—you keep high value engines, windows and such only on the orbiter, with less weight on the landing gear.
Are you having to cover a resonating, flexing tank with heat shields? Again, no...just the orbiter. Lunar Starship will be bare, but not the Mars ship. The ET is not asked to do “stupid tank tricks” like “the Adama Maneuver” that are cool to watch, but perhaps unwise.
In this plan, the tank only has to be a drop-tank—the way God and P-51 pilots intended
Old Spacers could think boldly, they just never had enough money. At least they aren’t trying to cut the air-lines of the other teams bus to win, like some new-spacers trying to kill jobs.
But to get back on topic.
Russia never really had a “NASA” until the 90’s, and it was a tool of the Energia company (not the rocket). Artillery men ran the R-7 pads until not long ago. We had that background with something called the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. York and the USAF had that killed. In terms of a more pro-space history, General Medaris should have stayed in charge.
Medaris wrote a book called Countdown For Decision that should be required reading. The wiki has a pretty good page on him, the ABMA especially, and a good history on the Saturn I (near cancellation section).
Huntsville was robbed, and space was given to the USAF (and NASA). There was an article called “ Is the Air Force the Enemy of Space?” at space daily, before it was taken down—it might still be out there, floating around...
The Ghostbusters cartoon was a few years early, which probably means the Ghostbusters movie happened a few years early.
The rate of incremental improvements in chip development are still constrained by Moore’s Law, though the slope may be a little steeper in this timeline, or it was just pushed a few years ahead by the red moon panic like everything else. I do expect to see smartphones, tablets, and a fully realized internet in the third season (which will be set in the 1990s I’m assuming.)Some every day things seems to be about 3 - 4 years ahead of the real world (the cellphones, the IBM PS/2 computer in Margot's office), others seem to be a lot further ahead (electric cars).
Some every day things seems to be about 3 - 4 years ahead of the real world (the cellphones, the IBM PS/2 computer in Margot's office), others seem to be a lot further ahead (electric cars).
I noticed an Apple II PC in one of the season two clips, not surprising I suppose. The founding of Apple in 1976 was very much a right-place-at-the-right-time story. Had a cheap 8-bit microprocessor been available a few years sooner, Jobs and Woz would not have been in a position to exploit it, and someone else would have instead.
In retrospect, I was surprised those laptops weren't Apple III Portables or something (I recognized a "Zenith" logo, but it looked like there was more than one logo on the machine). I wonder if the Lisa is going to beat out the Mac in this timeline, just like they ended up calling it "digital mail" instead of "electronic mail."
I would think if we had bases on the moon ALL technology would have advanced quicker than it did in OUR timeline. NASA/Military research has always pushed civilian technology.Cellphone technology looked to be at least 5+ years ahead of time since one of the scenes showed something that appeared to have what looked more like something Nokia came out with in the late 80s.
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