For All Mankind Trailer - Apple TV- SPOILER

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.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19910018890/downloads/19910018890.pdf
Shuttle II
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=6348.0
http://www.lunadude.com/
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6348.0;attach=17448;image

Now earlier in the thread, there is a link on how the orbiter could be sent to the Moon, IIRC.

The orbiter would have to remain attached to the (refilled) External Tank. I have even seen art of External Tanks on the lunar Surface.

The idea is to fill the ET and send the orbiter to the moon with some excursion module perhaps in the payload bay. That’s what Homer Hickham did in “Back to the Moon.” He had his astronauts chunk the dead-mass-on-orbit SSMEs, making the orbiter a bit lighter. A smaller rocket in their place. A fuel tank would go inside most of the payload bay—like from Cowboy Beebop. The lander was a balloon, with 4 smaller balloons as legs that are to be left behind.

Now, the study had the ET remain attached on the orbiter’s way back, it slows to orbit velocity, then it is chunked.

Sea Dragon must have refilled the ETs off screen, with fuel tanks left in the orbiters too, Doohan style. That’s all I can come up with.

There are engineless orbiters in James Martins paper on shuttle derived vehicles that never were.
https://www.aiaa.org/docs/default-s...ttlevariationsfinalaiaa.pdf?sfvrsn=b8875e90_0

 

Oops, I forgot all about yesterday's episode because of WandaVision's series finale.

Oof, everyone's personal lives are falling apart. Well, not everyone's, but it certainly felt that way with all of the ugly messes that happened. The most significant is Ed and Karen facing their collective and individual pain of Shane's in the face of both Kelly's decision to go to Annapolis and Jamestown discovering a Soviet bug on the premises, likely planted there during Ed's solo time and grieving over Shane's death. Considering who Ed is, how much Shane's death hit him, and the news of the bug, I wasn't at all surprised when he reacted so poorly to Kelly's decision but I still taken aback how ugly the collective fight got for a brief moment. I was relieved that they were able quickly walk it back from the brink, mostly thanks to Kelly's calm clearheadedness. I was just as much in tears as the three of them and it was a wonderful cathartic moment for them that I don't think most shows would've taken the time to explore.

The other big messes are Gordo and Tracy, both individually and as a former couple. It's weird how I spent all of last season firmly on Tracy's side of things and purely loathed Gordo but this season I find myself swapping sides. I feel sympathetic for Gordo's struggles in trying to keep his head straight and working on becoming an active astronaut, even though I know this whole venture is going to end badly. And while I agree with Tracy's point that Ed is letting his loyalty to Gordo dictate the Jamestown mission, Tracy is a complete mess herself. She has let her own celebrity take over her life and now her career as an astronaut has fallen to the wayside and not just because of her alcoholism. That will make the already volatile situation in Jamestown all the worse when both of them are up there together with their own personal shit in the mix.

And then there's Aleida. The hard break between her and Margo is clearly a deep and painful one for her, so it's no surprise that she reacted so poorly to Margo arriving to offer her a job, even if it was out of guilt. And it's no surprise she dumped Davy even after she decided to accept the job (the guy is an idiot for not seeing that coming). Considering everything both Margo and Aleida have gone through to get where they are individually, it'll be interesting to see them working together with the strife between them.

We knew this was coming, but the arms race has arrived on the Moon and it's only going to get uglier from here...

 

Agree with your summary completely. One thing that also played into Ed's initial reaction is that he has access to Top Secret information, like the escalating tension on the moon and the plan to ship weapons up there. It might have been subconscious but by the time Kelly graduates Annapolis and gets into an F-14 cockpit the US might be on the brink or even in a war with the Soviet Union, which of course means that Kelly might be in actual danger if she goes through with her wish to become a fighter pilot.

Another very good episode but man Gordo - you need to start training now to lose that gut!

 

That last scene at the Baldwin house, wow. I thought I heard a little of Joel Kinnaman’s Swedish accent during Ed’s breakdown.

 

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?

 

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.

 

Yeah, all of that could turn public opinion against NASA and may even cool off the space race...

 

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
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...tudies-aka-shuttle-ii.3876/page-2#post-486862

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...

 

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.

 

The tank has to stay on both going and coming back. It would slow Columbia (I wish) to orbital speeds, then be cast off, for wet stage station construction like Space Island Group and Mark Holderman wanted...the latter of Nautilus X fame.

Now Homer thought Columbia could come back on its own—and did in his novel..less the SSMEs. That would throw off the balance. A Buran like engineless orbiter was looked at, with a stretch. There, a refilled SLS/Buran core with no need of legs and windows might be refilled by unmanned Starship. I think the SSMEs were looked at for Methane. Lander in the payload bay...like a scaled down Eagle. Pat Rawlings and Frassanito did great real space art, BTW.

With Lunar shuttle, the orbiter tells the ET “hold my beer.”

With Starship...the beer holds you.

 

The Ghostbusters cartoon was a few years early, which probably means the Ghostbusters movie happened a few years early.

 

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).

 

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.)

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.

 

The scene of the Baldwins fighting was absolutely incredible. There's a slower burn with the space-stuff this year, it seems, but the time skip allowed for a payoff like that to the cascading series of disasters they went through at the end of season one. One thing I noticed in particular about the scene was that it really captured how terrifying it can be for yourself to fly off the handle like that. All three of them were clearly as disturbed by their own reactions as the others'.

The car might not be as far ahead as it seems. The concept car that led to the EV1 was put out in 1990, and the EV1 was superior in range and speed compared to what was was said about the electric car in the show (which is probably down to worse batteries leading the manufacturer to put the lowest practical limit on the top speed; it's a fundamental aspect of electric motors versus gasoline engines that lets modern electric cars accelerate so quickly, and that'd be as true in 1983 as in 2020).

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 saw the logo but not clearly enough to recognise it but do remember Zenith from that era (thanks Byte and PC Magazine).

the Lisa came out in 83 so it took off the Mac probably doesn't get made.

so down the track they get the Lisa Portable but it doesn't use lead acid batteries.

or maybe Xerox Parc sued Apple over the Gui and neither gets made.

as to the electric car shown I guess either lead acid or NiCad batteries (maybe early nickel metal hydride) but don't really have the necessary energy density for range or speed.

 

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.