How ambitious can alternate space histories get?

[Mitridates the Great]

I’m not sure where you’re getting this idea from, because the OP is just categorizing stories, and specifically notes that stories that have less space travel than OTL are uncommon. That offers an obvious invitation to consider such stories which is more lacking in other categories (realistic but better, mildly unrealistic, full-on sci-fi) since space buffs such as myself have already, you know, covered a lot of ground there. It’s not that there’s nothing that you can do, but it’s harder to come up with something novel when there are great stories discussing many plausible (or even implausible) PoDs there. Actually per an earlier mention I think it might be interesting to do a timeline focusing on an optimized probe program, but that’s a rather narrow scope (also I did consider this to some extent with Eyes)

Also, I don’t know where you got this idea of “the author trying to keep the TL realistic has meant apocalypse,” since when I think of realistic space timelines I think of the stories by myself, e of pi, Polish Eagle, or Nixonshead (for example), where nothing even remotely similar has been the case, but rather we try to keep the program reasonable in both technical and budgetary details compared to what is physically possible and financially reasonable. No nuclear wars or apocalyptic events in any of those, so far as I know.

I based it on the fact that in the previous three pages many of the proposals that I have seen are of the kind "and then the Space Shuttle/the Apollo program/whatever program it was/there was one or several catastrophes that caused the fall of the interest in space programs. And that caused a chain reaction that, as the United States stopped funding the space race, suddenly all the other countries lost interest in their own space programs and defunded them even faster."

To be fair, when I talked about "disaster stories," I was mostly thinking of Future History and the many variants of "And then climate change screwed us all over in fourteen different ways before we had breakfast", or "and then a civil war broke out in the United States that somehow ended up dragging the rest of the world down the drain even if it was only in the United States where NBC weapons were deployed", or "and then some unspecified disaster occurred"...

...rather than in the examples of "stories focused on successful future space programs" (although I remember seeing at least one that was about humanity being forced to colonize space in huge generational arks after climate change destroyed the Earth).

It is in the latter that I have seen more of what I described as "huge dissertations on politics, economics, and speculative construction of fauna." Which, rather than complaining about it, I commented that it seemed uninteresting to me because the examples I have seen are very dense.

 

[Polish Eagle]

As I pointed out before, wars (and other such broken window fallacy situations) tend to consume resources and manpower for the destruction of more resources and manpower, some of which include resources and personnel for further research. Think of how many brilliant and promising young men (that we know of) whose careers and lives were cut short by the wars. Now think of all the rest of the dead. Sure, this is the same emotional appeal as the anti-abortion crowd (though that's really off topic) but the key difference is that we know those conscripted/volunteered to war are far more likely to be contributing members of society otherwise. Assuming a 1 in a million chance of a brilliant scientist and 1 in 10k chance of a great engineer then WWI killed off at least 40 such scientists and 4k such engineers.

Moving on from the direct costs wars also shifted R&D assets to the here and now, what's useful for the immediate future and the conflict at hand, often at the expense of long term items and potentials. The first jet powered prototypes flew before WWII, and then had to take a backset for a few years in both the UK & Germany due to the pressing needs of WWII.

And all this is compounding the earlier the POD is.

As for motivations in those fields in the absence of war (often trotted out by war as innovate side of the argument), the great power competition isn't going to disappear in the absence of a major war, and competitions of national prestige will occur regardless (witness how transatlantic liners were objects of national pride and having the best (whether it be the fastest or largest) was frequently a competition between companies and national governments). Thus in wealthier world as the then traditional fields of competition begins to cap out countries (and corporations, and even individuals) will look towards new scientific/technological fields to compete in.

The OTL space race was really the larger share of a much smaller pie. A more peaceful world will have a much larger pie even if the share of aerospace & rocketry gets smaller slices.

I agree with this take. While the pre-WWI period was an unjust peace, founded as it was on a system of imperial domination, it was also a period with relatively few major, years-long wars in Europe, and it saw massive technological innovation. A similar argument can be made that, if both World Wars had been avoided and the "belle epoque" had gone on indefinitely, you'd still see competition driving innovation without the human costs of the wars (maybe even more innovation, if/when China gets its act together and industrialized Japan becomes another contender). You do not need to have WWI to have a Dreadnought Race--and similarly, we didn't need WWIII to have an atomic arms race. Sooner or later, the same technological and theoretical breakthroughs will happen--and a Europe that avoids the mass bloodletting of 1914-1945 is better-equipped to exploit them.

 

[Kalga]

The space race could only occur because man had developed the most destructive weapon yet, nuclear weapons.

And this clearly results only from the Manhattan program - in the absence of war, nuclear power plants or ship propulsion would be the first to appear, later nuclear weapons will be developed. Probably sometime in the 1960s they will create bomb, and it is not known whether there would be based on Uranium or whether someone would consider plutonium.

Space could very much become the new frontier of imperialism in a timeline sans the world wars, and sooner or later someone will float the idea/concept of using asteroids or RKVs as WMDs (perhaps even pointing out the Tunguska event as a proof of concept). Resource potential of outer space would spur plenty of investment & development (and scams and disappointments, but that didn't stop the age of discovery colonialism).

 

[Workable Goblin]

I based it on the fact that in the previous three pages many of the proposals that I have seen are of the kind "and then the Space Shuttle/the Apollo program/whatever program it was/there was one or several catastrophes that caused the fall of the interest in space programs. And that caused a chain reaction that, as the United States stopped funding the space race, suddenly all the other countries lost interest in their own space programs and defunded them even faster."

No one was saying anything like “suddenly all of the other countries lose interest in spaceflight” except for the nuclear war scenarios for obvious reasons. It’s simply a fact that Russia in the 1990s was only able to keep flying humans into space because of U.S. money, for instance, so if the U.S. isn’t funding human spaceflight Russia will just not be able to do so—and they simply were not in a position where they could apply “national will” to continue doing so (and had far more important things to use it on if they were). Likewise, although squishier “prestige” has always been an important reason for sending people (instead of robots) into space, so if human spaceflight is not viewed as prestigious then it is pretty likely people will spend their money on robots and/or other things instead. This would likely be the case if the space race is avoided, for example, and that depended a lot on the reaction in the United States and other developed countries being so hysterical over the Soviets being first.

Also, NASA has a larger budget than all other civilian space agencies in the world put together. They are objectively the most important agency due to their sheer scale.

Anyway, I already explained to you why TL ideas in this thread are mostly of the negative type—the positive ones have been done, so no one is going to bring up, say, “what if the U.S. goes to Mars?”—they’ll just mention Voyage. Negative ones involve untrodden territory, at least.

 

[Workable Goblin]

It is also objectively a fact that the space program has never been especially popular in the United States. If you had a prolonged period with no human spaceflight activity or a shift in perception so that it is seen as mostly dangerous and pointless instead of prestigious and cool, then it is very plausible that the budget for it would just be eliminated (especially in the early 1970s when there was powerful political opposition to human spaceflight or in the early 1980s if the Shuttle fails after years without astronauts in orbit). It is not just a random suggestion that a series of accidents might lead to the U.S. withdrawing from human spaceflight.

 

[Jürgen]

It is also objectively a fact that the space program has never been especially popular in the United States. If you had a prolonged period with no human spaceflight activity or a shift in perception so that it is seen as mostly dangerous and pointless instead of prestigious and cool, then it is very plausible that the budget for it would just be eliminated (especially in the early 1970s when there was powerful political opposition to human spaceflight or in the early 1980s if the Shuttle fails after years without astronauts in orbit). It is not just a random suggestion that a series of accidents might lead to the U.S. withdrawing from human spaceflight.

I agree.
Also while I think OTL Apollon Mission was an outlier in how early it happened, I think the aftermath is more interesting. A major problem with the space program after it had been won, was that it became scientific in nature, and it was only when a new space race began and commercial actors arrived on the scene, we saw a new push outward.

 

[UniversalCommons]

I don't think of space industry as a colossal waste of money. I think it requires colossal start up costs which most governments are not able to justify. This is how we get people like Elon Musk. It is very large amounts of money with high risks. If I wanted to make a serious investment in space, I would probably go with Space Angels which has a minimum of a $100,000 investment involved. They helped underwrite Space X. https://www.spaceangels.com/portfolio It is strange that so much is concentrated into a single venture capital fund, but we are talking about private billions in unseen hands. I wish it was easier for the individual investor and the government was not turning things into a private game for the people like Bezos and Paul Allen. I am looking at rocketlab because it is one of the few places with an affordable stock. Most of the defense industry stocks are very expensive. It is too bad in a way.

 

[Pipcard]

It is also objectively a fact that the space program has never been especially popular in the United States. If you had a prolonged period with no human spaceflight activity or a shift in perception so that it is seen as mostly dangerous and pointless instead of prestigious and cool, then it is very plausible that the budget for it would just be eliminated (especially in the early 1970s when there was powerful political opposition to human spaceflight or in the early 1980s if the Shuttle fails after years without astronauts in orbit). It is not just a random suggestion that a series of accidents might lead to the U.S. withdrawing from human spaceflight.

I agree.
Also while I think OTL Apollon Mission was an outlier in how early it happened, I think the aftermath is more interesting. A major problem with the space program after it had been won, was that it became scientific in nature, and it was only when a new space race began and commercial actors arrived on the scene, we saw a new push outward.

NASA's budget peaked in the 1960s, but has been 1% or less of the federal budget after the end of Apollo. The question is not "how could NASA have maintained its 1960s spending?" but "how could NASA (or other space programs) have done more with a smaller budget?”

Or, “what is the earliest date for an economically viable reusable launch system?”

Peter Hague argues that the reason Falcon 9 was able to achieve lower costs (per kilogram of payload) over the Space Shuttle because it could fly uncrewed and take advantage of mass production (of common stages and engines) and iterative design. The Challenger disaster hurt the possibility of the Shuttle having a high launch cadence (to spread the fixed costs over many launches). So sufficiently advanced automation is needed for an economic RLV.

As mentioned before, the DC-X demonstrated the automated vertical take-off and landing of a rocket in 1993. It used avionics from F-15 and F/A-18 fighter jets and was guided by GPS. If Delta Clipper technology was part of a reusable two stage vehicle instead of an SSTO, it could carry significantly more payload.

This was shown in the Eyes Turned Skyward timeline with the X-40 Starcat and its derivative, the Thunderbolt rocket (which began operations in the early 2000s).

 

[Athelstane]

Peter Hague argues that the reason Falcon 9 was able to achieve lower costs (per kilogram of payload) over the Space Shuttle because it could fly uncrewed and take advantage of mass production (of common stages and engines) and iterative design. The Challenger disaster hurt the possibility of the Shuttle having a high launch cadence (to spread the fixed costs over many launches). So sufficiently advanced automation is needed for an economic RLV.

Of course, the other thing you get with a high cadence of an automated launch vehicle is also the opportunity to improve reliability for crewed flight. Humans did not fly on Falcon 9 until it had 84 launches under its belt, and its two snafus were very far back in the rear view mirror.

The Shuttle required human pilots on every single flight.

 

[Athelstane]

I don't think of space industry as a colossal waste of money. I think it requires colossal start up costs which most governments are not able to justify.

It depends on who is defining "waste of money."

Economically, the only activities which have ever managed to close a business case, at least until recently, are 1) telecommunication satellites, 2) earth imagery satellites, and 3) launch vehicles to put (1) and (2) into orbit (along with a notable smattering of government payloads). And even these activities took, as you say, some hefty up front development costs, much of them borne by state actors, to get 'em to that point.

NASA commercially oriented transportation contracts (CRS, CCtCap, CLPS, HLS) are attempting to show that companies can make money transporting more particular stuff (and, uh, people) to space for government now, but that's government trying to create its own market; and it remains to be seen if these can make business cases doing the same for non-government customers. SpaceX is trying really hard, but they have yet to show they can operate Crew Dragon solely for private customers. Yet.

And that doesn't even get us to how you make any money putting stuff on the Moon. Or Mars.

And then there's science. Science does not require business cases; science is seen by modern states as something worth pursuing in its own right. But you don't need human beings in the equation to do science in space. Humans are still more efficient than robots, but they also cost one hell of a lot more to go do your science in space; people also tend to get upset when your astronaut dies in a way that they don't when your robot breaks. Voters are willing to support spending on science, especially if it delivers jobs in their zip codes; but the ceiling on that is fairly modest, even in the postwar era.

The Apollo program could not be justified on either grounds*: it was a prestige project from start to finish, a big PR exercise. And don't get me wrong, it was a glorious one! Arguably, the most impressive technological achievement in human history! But the reason it was not sustainable is because even Cold War American votaries did not think that in the natural course of things there was anything in space of that kind of value that could justify that level of expenditure. Rightly does @Workable Goblin say: "It is also objectively a fact that the space program has never been especially popular in the United States." I think science has gotten more or less what the American (and European, and Japanese) publics will support, and a good deal of that support is driven by the money that it spends in your zip code.

__
* Notwithstanding the remarkable science haul, mostly in geology, that NASA managed to cram into the back end of the program before the cancellation hammer came down. But science was an afterthought for Apollo, by its very conception and design.

 

[UniversalCommons]

There are about 2000 spinoff technologies that have been developed since 1976, velcro, solar panels, and other things. You could argue that this has more than paid for the space program.

 

[Interdimensional Nomad]

If we're looking for a viable form of space industry in late 20th and early 21st centuries (and a reason to have many launches, and thus to lower the cost of spaceflight), I would think orbital solar power would likely be our best bet (short of OTL-style satellite internet constellations in LEO). The SPS program was seriously considered in the 1970s because at the time it seemed like the only long-term solution to the energy crisis. Fossil fuels weren't just polluting and unpopular with the nascent environmental movement; with the OPEC oil embargo and its aftermath their supply was unreliable (and if I recall correctly this was before things like large-scale shale oil and horizontal drilling were developed enough to exploit more oil within North America). And nuclear wasn't really considered viable at a large scale either; the anti-nuclear movement was in full swing at the time. Outside of places that could get hydroelectricity, that left only renewable energy, which was intermittent (and battery tech wasn't as good as today). Unless you put it in space.

For a high-frequency fully reusable launch system, the Rockwell Star Raker is still my favourite never-built spacecraft concept. Designed for the SPS program, it would have been a large SSTO made to carry the sections of the solar power satellites to orbit for assembly (each satellite being about 100 times the mass of the ISS). It was estimated that a fleet of 30 Star Rakers would take about 30 years (with an average of one launch every eight hours) to build the 60 planned SPS satellites (a timeline of the year 2000 to 2030 was given), which together would generate about enough energy to power the entire United States.

But then the energy crisis ended, oil became cheap again, and the SPS program went nowhere. In a world where the energy crisis continues, maybe that could be different.

 

[Workable Goblin]

There were a number of other issues with the SPS concept (one notable one is that it would produce a lot of space debris in GEO), but some kind of "SPS program goes to full development" is probably among the most interesting, if difficult to justify, sci-fi-type scenarios available for a more advanced but still (somewhat) realistic space program. Unfortunately sci-fi authors noticed this too and wrote a lot of stories about it in the 1970s and 1980s, but there's probably still scope for some good (if implausible) AH about it.

 

[Pipcard]

There were a number of other issues with the SPS concept (one notable one is that it would produce a lot of space debris in GEO), but some kind of "SPS program goes to full development" is probably among the most interesting, if difficult to justify, sci-fi-type scenarios available for a more advanced but still (somewhat) realistic space program. Unfortunately sci-fi authors noticed this too and wrote a lot of stories about it in the 1970s and 1980s, but there's probably still scope for some good (if implausible) AH about it.

I thought the main objection to SPS was conversion efficiency rate?

 

[SealTheRealDeal]

Saying wars advance or stall technological development is simplistic.

It is true that a great number of potential scientists and engineers died as grunts, it'd be erroneous to assume that cohort would go into space programs rather than the fields that employ most aerodynamics iOTL (automotive and aviation). So "war is the destruction of [human] capital" is true, but for individual fields it could have a rather low impact.

What war 100% does do is change how resources are allocated. Generally the trend is that resources formerly allocated to pushing boundaries is reallocated to the maturation of production. Looking at WWI, the rate of new air speed records slows dramatically during and after the war, but the war increased the production volume and reliability to the point where commercial air travel and transportation could be born. Looking at WWII, wartime ruggedization and proliferation made the post war period the undisputed era of the automobile, yet Formula 1 would only catch up to the monstrous 1930s Grand Prix cars in the late 60s.

So space travel without wars? Probably a lot fewer satellites, but more flags planted on distant space rocks.

 

[Workable Goblin]

I thought the main objection to SPS was conversion efficiency rate?

Meh, it's hardly amazing (especially with 1970s-era solar cells, though granted those were improving fast), but then conventional power plants of any type have rather dismal efficiencies overall. Combined-cycle plants are the best, but those didn't really exist at the time, and maybe wouldn't if lots of money and effort is being plowed into SPS.

Also, as was said given the technology of the time it was basically the only plausible way to 1) get lots of energy 2) while overcoming intermittency and 3) not using fossil fuels. So there is that...

 

[Interdimensional Nomad]

I thought the main objection to SPS was conversion efficiency rate?

Reading back through the chapter of The High Frontier about orbital solar power, O'Neill writes "Research on high-power microwave transmission has demonstrated experimentally that power can be transmitted at an overall efficiency of at least 55 percent". He also estimates that an SPS station would generate electricity from sunlight at 80 percent efficiency compared to 16 percent efficiency for solar cells on Earth (this was back in the 70s of course; they're more efficient in the present day), so SPS wins out by a large margin.

He actually showed a concentrated solar power design, using a trough layout with liquid helium as the working fluid. You can see them among the book's artwork here, which appears to be the same design that the SPS program had, given the graphic shown in this video (also wow, an SPS satellite is close to the size of Manhattan in area). Given a pace of technology similar to OTL, I would expect they would switch to photovoltaic designs around the 2010s or so, as it becomes cheaper and more efficient.

Of course, the other main objection is the cost of launching all the material needed to build 60 Manhattan-sized satellites from Earth, and the logistics of the whole operation; which was enough that a version of the Shuttle made to carry only passengers (50-86 at a time) was designed just to ferry the workers back and forth (about 1000 would be working on the project in orbit at any one time). I would imagine that once the first few satellites are up and running, they'd be taking a serious look at the O'Neillian idea of building the rest out of Lunar materials, at a space colony with a permanent population. If you have to go all-in on orbital solar power, then I would think space colonization becomes the economically sound decision.

 

[UniversalCommons]

Blue Origin has figured out how to manufacture solar panels using material found solely on the moon. If this fits in with the work on self-replcating solar panel factories, then a complete automated infrastrucure becomes possible for manufacturing both solar panels and space base solar power. I think it may happen sooner than people expect

https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Lunar-Based-Self-Replicating-Solar-Factory.pdf

 

[Kloka]

One example missed here is the 1991 TV movie/failed series pilot "Plymouth". Short version: the town of Plymouth, OR is wiped out by an industrial accident. The evacuated inhabitants want to stay together as a town, and the company that irradiated their town has a failing lunar helium-3 facility. This is not presented as alternate history, and no dates are ever mentioned. However, there is a decidedly contemporary look to the clothing, and one Charles "Pete" Conrad appears as "himself", a resident of the lunar colony. My best guess is that ITTL fusion research actually got the Manhattan Project funding levels needed for fast results. Also, either Shuttle design was not half-assed like in OTL, or a refined Mk2 model was greenlighted.

Yes. That‘s my favorite TV movie,both because Conrad’s in it and it also has one of my favorite underrated actresses,the lovely Lindsay Price. She’s only in it for about 5 minutes and she has maybe that many lines of dialogue,but she’s there.

 

[e of pi]

there's probably still scope for some good (if implausible) AH about it.

I have amused myself once or twice before with the idea of "ASB TL where the fourth or fifth SPS off the line from an alternate 2010 appear in GEO one fine morning in the middle of the Obama space budget debates". SPS is kind of a thing which probably....could continue to exist if it started existing, but getting to that point with all the upfront stuff is challenging.