Reaching for the Stars [PH] - Jane's VI 3 Feb 15

[NathanKell]

Author's note: For a prequel of sorts, see Jane's All the World's Hunters of the French Civil War.

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Reaching for the Stars

An Alternate Space Race

(Roundel of the League of Nations, post-Second Covenant)

It was the dawn of a new age on Earth. The three remaining great powers, the victorious allies of the Second World War, had drawn up a permanent treaty of friendship and international governance, turning the League of Nations into a true law of peoples. Beating swords into ploughshares, they now turned their attention to the skies above: this new age would be the age of rockets.

The origins of space exploration can be traced to before the two world wars. All the great powers had their pioneers, but perhaps the greatest was Konstanin Tsiolkovsky of Russia, who had worked out most of the fundamental theories before the First World War. Aviation was the big thing however, and Tsiolkovsky’s equations lay unnoticed for some time. In the interwar years, rocketry grew in popularity, as clubs and universities launched sounding rockets to probe the upper atmosphere, much as had the balloonists of the Belle Epoque. In America, Robert Goddard, a keen follower of Tsiolkovsky’s work, launched the first liquid-fueled rocket in 1921. His claims that such a rocket could one day reach the moon were met with mockery by a Times editorial, but some knew better. Tapped to head the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at CalTech, Goddard quickly gathered to him a group of fellow rocket aficionados.

A similar situation developed in Germany, with young scientists and engineers like Irene Bredt and Adolf Thiel working with the renowned expatriate aerodynamicist Theodore von Karman at RWTH Aachen; together they founded the Verein für Raumschiffahrt, the Spaceflight Society. They were quickly launching sounding rockets of their own, helped by the philanthropy of the Kaiser and of the Lilienthal-Junkers Foundation (and its close ties to the often-ruling SPD).

In Tsiolkovsky’s native Russia, blue-sky research took a backseat to rearmament. Indeed Tsiolkovsky himself was forced into exile as the crackdown on the RSDLP and the SRs (or anyone who sounded the least bit like a socialist) intensified after the First World War. Many later-famous scientists and engineers would share his fate, escaping before the Second World War; an expatriate community of rocketeers formed around Tsiolkovsky in Britain. Across the channel, France, Russia’s First World War ally and partner in defeat, was itself all too busy rebuilding. The other second tier powers--Japan, Italy, the Ottomans--made their own experiments, but they too had their own problems. The British Empire was no second-tier power, but did not claim any firsts in rocketry in the interwar period--indeed British law, dating to 1875, precluded the private launching of liquid-fueled rockets, so the British Interplanetary Society, founded soon after the VfR, and counting both native Britons and expatriate Russians in its number, could only dream, not build. The British made a different contribution to high speed flight: the jet engine. While the invention soon spread, throughout the Second World War British jets would remain the best in the world, a great advantage for the Allied cause.

The ground was well-laid for an explosion in rocketry; theory, experiments, technology from other fields. All that was needed was a spark. The Second World War provided that spark. Both continental opponents--the German Empire and the Russian Empire--poured massive sums of money into their rocketry programs. The German goal was simple: develop a missile that could hit Petrograd from launch sites in East Prussia, and later (after its loss) from central Germany. Russian research, given the strength of Russian panzer armies, was focused more narrowly, primarily on smaller tactical military rockets--rocket artillery and SRBMs designed to pierce German and British air defenses. In the United States, rocketry also saw much interest, both for research and for war. Missiles seemed the only hope of staving off the Russian Bear in the early, dark days of the war--if Germany were overrun and metropolitan Britain cowed, only a radical new weapon, the nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile, could give America the chance of victory. If things went better, as they eventually did, then the Army and the Air Force could use shorter-ranged missiles that could overfly and avoid Russian air defenses and provide standoff capability for carrier-launched aircraft. As the Russians were gradually pushed back and eventually forced into surrender, the Allies scrambled to pick over the pieces of Russian technology. The Russians had advanced far with solid fuels--necessary for convenient battlefield usage--and these were quickly tested and copied. But solid fuels alone would not yield the stars.

In Russia, the Left SR-RSDLP coalition that took power after the final collapse of the Tsarist regime was far too busy rebuilding to focus on any kind of space race. But a race there was. First, it was just a resumption of the interwar competition to see who could launch the most advanced, highest-and-fastest-flying sounding rocket or aircraft. But soon it intensified. The Americans, British, and Germans had just signed the first attempt at a permanent, empowered international order--the famous Second Covenant of the League of Nations--and had forsworn all war under its auspices. Antagonism was dead, rockets needed new use, but nationalism was still alive. And German SRBMs had kissed the edge of space on their way to Petrograd.

German Armbrust (Crossbow) SRBM, range 500km, warload 1 ton.

See also: Postwar range test with late-war improvements.

Edited February 4, 2015 by NathanKell

[NathanKell]

Table of Contents

Introduction (above)

I: Higher, Faster Part 1: US Sounding Rockets and Their Wartime Roots (US)

II: Higher, Faster Part 2: Postwar Sounding Rockets and Their Wartime Roots (Germany)

III: Faster than the Sun: Postwar British Jet Research (Britain)

Edited March 13, 2014 by NathanKell

[NathanKell]

Craft of Reaching for the Stars

Introduction:

Armbrust - a German short range ballistic missile of the Second World War.

Higher, Faster Part 1:

Fat Albert - a USN standoff attack rocket of the Second World War.

Wren - JPL sounding rocket, boosted by a Fat Albert.

Higher, Faster Part 2:

Pfeil - a German tactical ballistic missile: militarization of prewar Repulsor, first large liquid-fueled rocket.

Repulsor - postwar sounding rocket, demilitarization of Pfeil. Final development of Repulsor series.

Edited January 24, 2014 by NathanKell

[NathanKell]

OOC Information:

This thread chronicles an alternate space race. It is on an Earth whose history is the same as ours, until the point of divergence during the US Civil War (technically, Wendell Phillips's sickly wife taking a turn for the better in 1862 or so, leading to an even more politically engaged Phillips during and after the Civil War...the butterfly effects mount quickly.)

It is a reboot of The KATO Space Race, which was a thinly veiled kerbalification of this same history (Kerbicans, Kritish, Kermans, RAF Boskombe Down, Rothbin Koddard, etc.) This reboot features more realism (including the real solar system, a work in progress) prettier rockets, and somewhat redone material.

Please feel free to ask history questions. I gloss over many things, writing "in character," and even noticing some divergences may require a knowledge of historical minutiae.

Relevant Mods Used:

Everything I've made (obviously): Real Solar System, Real Fuels, Deadly Reentry Continued, StretchySRB, Realism Overhaul. RftSEngines (see below), obviously.

Engines and some parts from AIES, NP2, KW Rocketry, RLA Stockalikes, Space Shuttle Engines

FASA

Firespitter (with some half-size parts)

B9 turbojet

Visual Enhancements

Engine Ignitor

Crew Manifest

FAR

KJR

RealChutes

Procedural Fairings

KSPX

SDHI Service Module

Procedural Wings

RemoteTech2 with my range algorithm and other tweaks

ReStock parts

Sam Hall's Mk2 Cockpit IVA

TAC Fuel Balancer

ECLSS

Touhou Torpedo's Mk3 parts

Taverio's Pizza and Aerospace

EVA Parachutes

And various support mods like MechJeb, Editor Extensions, RCS Build Aid, etc.

]RftS Pack (current dev release) - Required for any RftS craft. Parts, tweaks, and comes with RftSEngines, so delete your own copy first if you have it. Updated 1/24/14. Note you will need the latest ExsurgentEngineering plugin from careo (HERE--replace any existing ExsurgentEngineering.dll with it, or install it into GameData/ExsurgentEngineering/Plugins [making folders as necessary].)

Edited October 26, 2014 by NathanKell

[AbeS]

First fan here!

[Captain_Party]

First NERVA!

Edited November 12, 2013 by Captain_Party

[borisperrons]

First propeller here!

[NathanKell]

Thanks folks!

Just updated/edited the preceding posts.

[borisperrons]

OOC Information:Wendell Phillips's sickly wife taking a turn for the better in 1862 or so, leading to an even more politically engaged Phillips during and after the Civil War

I guess this means a more tolerant world, with no segregation, no holocaust, etc., and that the Great War started because of French revanchism about the franco-prussian war.

Actually, if you wrote something else setted in this timeline and you feel right about sharing it, I would be very pleased of reading it. Always loved alternate history stories.

[NathanKell]

borisperrons: nailed it quite close! Except it's still "some damn fool thing in the Balkans," only this time it grows out of two crises: an Italo-Austrian one, and a Russo-Turkish one. The alliances are UK-Germany-Italy-Turkey(-US) vs. France-Russia-Austria. I presume in those circumstances Japan would stick with the UK and go for round 2 with Russia.

This grew out my years of lurking on soc.history.what-if...

Since you asked, some years ago I wrote some about the POD and immediately after (done as a Victoria AAR, but having basically zero influence from gameplay). I have a slightly cleaned up version that I posted on SHWI but it's not available anymore IIRC. Never did get more written, but I have lots plotted out.

Some relevant details:

***SPOILERS*** Highlight to read if you want OOC background.

*the wounding of Wilhelm I in the Six Weeks War and his death in the Franco-Prussian War (Bismarck is also wounded; out of commission and unable to argue leniency, and with the General Staff and government angered at Wilhelm's wounding, the peace with Austria is harsher, leading to no rapprochement or Dual Alliance).

*the coup attempt against Friedrich III, and the future Wilhelm II being hidden sheltered by Berlin workers (later, with the right discredited in his eyes for hurting his family, and no grandfather to influence him, Wilhelm channels his opposition to his father to the left, not the right).

*An FV (a union of progressive parties)-SPD coalition government by 1906 or so, Wilhelmine influence having given the Bernstein revisionist faction the upper hand in SPD (and no Bismarckian electoral hijinks).

*Chief Justice Robert G. Ingersoll

*In the US, a different Fourth Party System: the disappearance of the Democrats, and the Radical Republicans (shoved out by the end of Grant's second term) forming the Progressive Party, eventually merging with the Populists. While a Liberal Republican / Populist / Greenback-FL coalition had won the presidency in 1880 and 1884, the first under the new party are LaFollette and Watson, riding to victory over backlash at Republican imperialism in 1900. (Watson obviously never gives up black-white fusion politics)

*With the un-trampled potential of an additional 30 million minds by 1900, the US (and the world) have advanced a bit technologically compared to OTL. Technology is around five years or so in advance of OTL by the First World War (though various areas differ, obviously). As you can tell by the intro, for example jets reach Korean War level by the end of the Second World War.

Though I don't promise to not retcon things, this timeline starts in 1947-8, a few years after the end of the Second World War. Yet another SPD-FVP coalition governs Germany; the presidential campaign in the US is heating up between the incumbent Progressive People's Party (literally the same name as FVP, an interesting irony) president and a Republican promising to cut government waste like all these literal-blue-sky-research space programs; in Britain the Tory government is trying to make ends meet and not kill too many Labour programs.

EDIT: Now that it's explicitly non-Kerbal, I'm considering cross-posting on AH.com (where I lurk).

Edited November 13, 2013 by NathanKell

[SFJackBauer]

I think I came to KSP in the right time to see some amazing stuff happening before my eyes, and I have no doubt this AAR will be no exception. Now I will have to ponder where to store all this popcorn I made...

[Patupi]

In your stomach! Doh!

Keep up the great work on the story NathenKell! Love this.

[Captain_Party]

This dead?

[FanaticalFighter]

Are you gonna do any posts, Nathan?

[NathanKell]

Gawd, it's been two weeks. I keep thinking I'll have time, and then...not so much. This will be continued Real Soon, I promise. Sorry.

[Patupi]

Hey, no need to apologize. I'm getting slower on my ARR too. Still going though. As long as you're having fun doing this then keep it up You're under no obligations. I promise the MIB won't pop around your house if you don't keep up the story... Absolutely promise!

[asmi]

I promise the MIB won't pop around your house if you don't keep up the story... Absolutely promise!

I might though...

[astropapi1]

*Sigh. Well, I guess that's what happens when you have a metric crap-ton of mods to mantain.

I loved your old AAR.

[NathanKell]

Yeah. Um. Sorry.

But this isn't dead! I'm gradually getting nearer to the next update. Promise!

A teaser from much later, however:

Aquarius-Herakles 3 roars skyward atop a tower of flame from its LR18 main engine and four LR16 verniers. The Herakles I booster has a Prometheus-derived lower stage (but without the latters's problematic balloon tanks) and new upper stage. It is hoped that a dual-engine version of the upper stage, with a diameter increase to match the lower stage, will be sufficient to launch the Project Argo spacecraft too.

[asmi]

Aquarius-Herakles 3 roars skyward atop a tower of flame from its LR18 main engine and four LR16 verniers.

Lol. That looks so much like new Soyuz-2.1v

[NathanKell]

Heh. The lower stage (1+4 verniers) certainly does! Though I dare say the Herakles II will look closer, with a full-width upper. Especially if it's used for satellite launches and needs a hammerhead fairing.

[miracmert]

I'd love to see this story continued NathanKell is like a gift to KSP Community: A perfect modder, a polite helper and a talented author!

[asmi]

Heh. The lower stage (1+4 verniers) certainly does! Though I dare say the Herakles II will look closer, with a full-width upper. Especially if it's used for satellite launches and needs a hammerhead fairing.

Soyuz-2.1v looks very "conventional" - pretty much like any 2 stage rocket would look like (compare with Antares, Falcon 9, Zenit), unlike other Soyuz LVs with distinctive LRBs that one just can't confuse with anything

[Autochton]

I'd love to see this story continued NathanKell is like a gift to KSP Community: A perfect modder, a polite helper and a talented author!

Only problem is, we need there to be, like, eight of him. :-) This is usually the case with tremendously useful people...

[NathanKell]

Wow, y'all are super kind.

Anyway, in preparation for resuming this I have slightly changed the OP (retcons! tweaks!) including adding a link to new Armbrust screenshots, and edited the following posts to update to the current state of the KSP modding world. Also I have put up a link to my RftS pack (see post 3) and added a link to the Armbrust so you can play with it yourself. I will endeavor to post links for all craft I make.

Post 2 coming soon--screenshots done, have to finish writing.

Sneak preview: the Wren sounding rocket on its Fat Albert booster.

Edited January 20, 2014 by NathanKell