SunlitZelkova

It benefits people who are alive. More speculation during the early Shuttle development era might have prevented Challenger and Columbia. One thing I would like to ask you, and anyone else who holds the belief we need to get to Mars and elsewhere for the purpose of colony building ASAP- what’s the rush? Why do we have to have Musk timelines of a self-sustaining city by 2050? Realistically the probability of Earth getting hit by an asteroid or some other catastrophe wiping out all life is low. In fact, the last time an asteroid big enough to cause an extinction event hit, life was just fine. Unless we adopt levels of fear and urgency on par with the worst of the climate alarmists, I don’t see why a Mars colony or colony anywhere else can’t be a project with lead times lasting in centuries, if not millennia. A space colony should be done right, not fast, right? Kinda like how achieving net zero emissions should be done in a way that doesn’t cause economic and societal havoc. Note that I underlined “for the purpose of colony building” because a simple Mars expedition is another story. That is something that can be done pretty fast (at least fast compared to how long it would take to build a space colony) and it’s understandable one would want to see humans set foot on Mars in their lifetime. I don’t think it is absurd to demand a human Mars mission by 2040 in the same way expecting a city on Mars by 2100 is.

I think the issue with fail-learning is that people talk about how this worked well when the Europeans crossed to the Americas and the US expanded westward, but ignore the massive costs involved in that. Someone from Bulgaria made a good statement when talking about the p-word over on the For All Mankind Reddit. To use it here in the context of how we should go about colonizing space, “yes, the 1800s pioneers were successfully in colonizing, but with great loss of human life along the way. That was fine for the 1800s but unacceptable for modern society.” IMO, I think it’s in engineering where that “fail-learning” is best applied, but a good level of discussion by multiple parties is necessary for ethics and broader goal planning. Soviet space goal planning in the 60s was not unlike Musk’s “we’ll land on Mars in 2024” style of doing things. It cost a number of people their lives, such as in the Soyuz disaster of November 1966. A little more thoughtfulness might have prevented loss of life, and if the program wouldn’t have been so secretive, it might have benefited from think tanks auditing the design bureaus’ engineering practices, in the same way Soviet nuclear strategy was influenced positively by both civilian and military think tanks. That’s not a jab at present day SpaceX by the way. They’ve clearly done well so far, with a darn good safety record and impressive engineering feats. I’m talking about SpaceX in the 2040s or 2050s, which may be a wildly different organization from the one we have now, much in the same way 1990s NASA did not resemble 1960s NASA that much. The Soviet method of management and organization performed just fine for Sputnik and Vostok, but failed when they tried to go to the Moon. There’s a thin line between insanity and genius, and I’m just concerned SpaceX will tip the wrong way in the future.

I think committees can fail and “Leaders” (with a capital L) can fail. The Soviet space program was driven by both Leaders and committees to some extent. The Leaders proposed things and then had to modify it until the “committee” of the Communist Party, government, and Ministry of Defence signed off. That didn’t work for them getting to the Moon. This was both due to the mistakes of the Leaders and inexperience with spaceflight matters on the part of the “committee”. On the other hand, Leaders at NASA utterly failed to prevent the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia disasters when they could have. It was NASA committees that helped solve the issues related to those incidents, at least in the former two. If a committee hand been formed beforehand, of a similar type to the one that only showed up after the disaster, it might not have happened. I can’t think of what big failures you’re hinting at. I’d be interested to hear them. I think this quote from Vasily Mishin, who succeeded Sergei Korolev after his death and thus has first hand experience with both being a Leader and working with committees, embodies what a proper space program should look like. I used to have it as my forum signature. “Space exploration has been hampered by monopoly and secrecy, and by nepotism and politically dealing in the allocation of buildings and subsidies. We need broad, open competition in projects for a unified technical task. And discussion of tasks, ideas, and proposals, and independent expert evaluations, and open selection of the winners. Only after this, in full view of everyone, should there be implementation of projects in which the whole of society is convinced of their need and soundness.”- Vasily Mishin

Oof. Coincidentally I was spared a loosely similar situation when I was on the verge of cooking beef for quesadillas without putting anything in the pan first. I’ve never really cooked meat before though so my mother came over and showed me how. There was no cheese involved at that point in the recipe though, so I might have suffered damage. I know from watching my sister cook that you always put something in the pan though, so I don’t know what possessed me to think cooking meat without oil would be okay.

In addition to my Shenzhou-Shuguang-1 analogy I gave above, another thing to think about is how long it took the Shuttle derived SHLV to fly. First proposed in 1989 under the Space Exploration Initiative, it lingered as a power point slide for years, until finally getting approved at Ares V. Then that got cancelled and turned into SLS, which continued to slip and remain a render. But it flew in 2022, after years of political and economic events. Another example is NASA’s space station. First proposed as a successor to Skylab in 1969, the space station was continually relegated to pretty artwork and slide show presentations. Freedom was “funded” but never got work done. In fact, it was nearly cancelled in 1993, surviving by one vote in the House. But it flew a whopping 30 years later in the form of the first component of the ISS.

Hey, if China built Shenzhou 30 years after Shuguang-1 was cancelled due to politics and economic reasons, anything is possible.

According to my pen pal Lev, a hammer and sickle shaped UFO was spotted near Ulyanovsk. He sent me a picture, but the spirit of Marx overwhelmed me and warned me not to share it, so I won't.

Post-writing note: This is something of a monologue or rant. My thought process is more or less on display in it. Apologies if you find it unpleasant! So one of my big projects I have been working on to different degrees for a long time is either a world or a series of worlds, where sometimes there are political differences from our timeline, but no matter what, the space programs vary. About a couple weeks ago, I decided to consolidate everything into one timeline. The premise was that the Soviets land on the Moon and fly by it first. But then I wavered, because some of the other worlds I had dreamed up- like one where George H.W. Bush's Space Exploration Initiative succeeded- were so interesting. A discussion I had in the Science and Spaceflight section about the Soviet Vostok derived lunar flyby spacecraft, the Vostok-7, was attractive too. So I restored all of the old docs I had deleted that had the info about the other worlds on them. But now I'm wavering again, because there is just so much these worlds entail and it doesn't seem worth it. I'd rather focus everything into one big detailed one than a bunch of small ones. But at the same time, a big detailed one would be a lot of work for something I might not even use anyways. This started as a way to figure out what astronauts would be on spaceflights and what date they would land on, so when I plant flags in KSP after flying replicas of never built spacecraft, I could have a good looking plaque on it. I'm quite pooped and need some time to think about it. Another think I'm tempted to do is dump every single space world except for two- the world where the Soviets land on the Moon first and the world where the Constellation program succeeded. This is only because these concepts were near and dear to me when I first became a space addict in the 2nd grade. I'm way more invested in building the world where CxP succeeded, because this is the world of Space Brothers, the Japanese manga about two brothers who became astronauts, is also a world where CxP succeeded, so I'm incorporating elements of that into my flight schedule. BUT I also like the world where the Soviets land first. When I was a teen, one of my beloved guinea pigs looked up to the ceiling a lot and I interpreted this as him wanting to go to the Moon, and because of my political inclinations at that time, that's how I became interested in the Soviet space program. So I have a lot of happy memories dreaming of landing in an LK with my four guinea pigs and jumping around on the Moon, and it's cool to imagine a world where that equipment actually flew. I was also fascinated with the cancelled Soviet stuff when I was in the 2nd and 3rd grade, as previously mentioned. But, by nature of the expansive proposed programs of the 60s and 70s, building a world where the Space Race continued is a total pain in the butt. To put it into perspective, I've so far written down the rough parameters of a whopping 500 STS missions, ranging from lunar transport to nuclear shuttle refueling, spanning from 1979 to 1994. I really don't want to do this indefinitely, which is part of why I wrote in the plot point of a Space Tug exploding on its way back from the Moon and forcing the retirement of some of the STS stuff. I also originally planned to end the world where the Soviets landed first by having a nuclear war destroy the world in 2011. But then I watched Cowboy Bebop last summer, and came up with the idea of connecting the world where the Space Race never ended to a world inspired by Cowboy Bebop (well, more or less transplanting that world in a realistic way into my world. Like ICT fusion drives instead of the warp portals in the show). So I cut the plan to end the world with a nuclear war. That would have been a huge project. Last month I embarked on a study to see if it was even realistic to have the Soviets land on the Moon first. It wasn't, so I considered dropping that world and having the CxP world be the only one. But, I still had those memories of the Soviet Moon program and my pigs. So, I came back to it and figured out a somewhat realistic way of having them land first, more realistic than what I originally had at least. In some ways, it's what Philip K. Dick called a "hell chore". This whole thing, besides maybe the CxP world, really is. If my two pigs I had the most memories with were still alive, I'd probably drop the world where the Soviets first with no second thoughts. But it's hard to get away from it. But now that I'm thinking about it, I had these previous thoughts about career choices, politics, and future plans too. It was hard to get away from what I did while my pigs were alive because of the good memories of it. I felt as though if I stopped doing those things, I would be forgetting them. However, I did overcome this feeling in regards to my career choices and politics. So why can't I overcome it with my hobby? Yes, I no longer think I need to do the world where the Soviets land first just because I had good memories when I desired to do it. It is not an affront to the memory of my pigs just because I don't feel like doing that anymore. So, to answer the question of what happened in my life today? I resolved a big issue that was bothering me- how to organize my big hobby. Writing this helped a lot, so if anyone else ever has an issue in their life, I recommend trying to write out what you've been through, think about what you want, and see where that leads you.

“Secondary schools operate like the Soviet Union in the 1930s in terms of how much evidence can send someone to the gulag detention” was not on my November bingo card.

Wouldn’t this be more or less like what is done with crewed spacecraft? The Space Shuttle was built by North American Rockwell. IIRC this is already the plan to some extent. I think Lockheed is building the Mars Ascent Vehicle for MSR. This is a good point. It’s like saying professional militaries aren’t competent based on how Iraq fared during wars. Perhaps government space agencies haven’t been given enough credit. The reason we are here in the first place is because of them after all, even if why we are still here and not on Mars has to do with the way things have been handled, albeit not entirely by the agencies but also by the holders of the purse.

It's been that way for me for some time, at least on mobile. Things others post show up, but the tweets I link don't embed.

It seems the examples of missions with high traffic only came after the missions actually launched though. This commercial Mars sample return wouldn't have funding unless the private company does other space missions which people then watch and see ads. But if the private space company has to do other missions, they will have to spend money just to get funding... at which point they might as well have just done the MSR out of pocket. By the way, only space probes would make sense for trying to generate ad revenue. Satellite launches probably won't generate lots of views. I don't recall any major media reporting of things like the last Delta IV launch or the every other week Starlink mission, and thus it is unlikely those were watched by a lot of people.

I don’t understand why doing things privately is cheaper. Doesn’t that just mean NASA is full of excess costs for no reason, bordering on corruption? Obviously SLS is, but I’m talking about science missions like Curiosity and JWST. Why does the private industry magically do things at a cheaper cost? Didn’t Faster, Better, Cheaper do alright for NASA?

The Vostok is only for getting the cosmonaut to the 1L in Earth orbit. It returns to Earth before TLI. The spherical descent apparatus was only capable of a ballistic reentry, so if they tried to use it for a lunar return, the cosmonaut would either be severely injured or killed.

No, I'm talking about the 1L/Vostok-7 spacecraft (not to be confused with the cancelled Vostok-7 mission, the Vostok-7 I refer to is of the same category of designations as the Vostok-3KA, the official name of the original Vostok). 1L was the name of the spacecraft the cosmonaut would fly around the Moon and return in. He would be launched in the Vostok-7, a suped up Vostok with docking equipment and more engines for orbital maneuvering. The cosmonaut would EVA to the 1L crew compartment. @sevenperforce The Soyuz A-B-V design did not involve any EVA transfers. The crew would launch in the single 7K Soyuz-A and then only dock with the TLI stage once it was fully fueled. Additionally, every other Soviet crewed lunar landing proposal besides the L3 complex was a direct ascent architecture, so there were no EVAs involved until getting to the surface. Yes, I forgot there wasn't an internal transfer system for Soyuz until the 7K-OKS variant. I spend so much time thinking about Soviet Moon and Mars landings I forgot about the Earth orbital stuff lol. I've never heard of EVA transfers for Skylab. I'm not as familiar with the construction of the ISS so I don't know whether there were EVA transfers or not. But really what I was referring to was EVA transfers as an integral part of the mission profile, not related to construction or emergencies.

N1-L3 flashbacks. Historically the Soviets preferred an internal transfer tunnel between the LOK and LK but couldn’t because they didn’t have the mass to. I think that and the Vostok derived lunar flyby are the only other instances of EVA transfer being proposed.

As a 2000s kid who grew up on outdated books from the 90s that still showed things like Hermes, HOPE, and the HL-20, it’s super cool to see a new civilian spaceplane come to fruition!

https://x.com/cnspaceflight/status/1719165273029460135?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A Shenzhou 16 is back on the ground. Taikonauts have disembarked.

China is actually not trying to get there first. They have explicitly stated they won’t land people there until 2030- five years later than the current American goal. It should be noted Bill Nelson has tried to paint the possibility of… someone else (you know who)… getting there first as risking a crisis if that certain someone tries to claim territory on the Moon. Regardless of whether that’s a realistic scenario, officials have included getting there first as a major goal. I’d be highly skeptical. India has publicly stated they won’t land a person on the Moon until the 2040s. That’s basically a goal with the same level of commitment as NASA has stated it wants to send people to Mars in the 2030s. I think it will be delayed to the 2030s. They are focusing on the Long March 10 now. The reason there is a “Second Space Race”* is because there already are tensions in the world. There isn’t a goal, it’s just a race to do as much as possible. Long March 7 is a dinky LEO rocket like Falcon 9. They are using a new SHLV called Long March 10 for their lunar missions. It’s like SLS but actually useful to some extent, and reusable. Long March 9 is a Starship equivalent, but with no reusable upper stage.

I think the US will initially lead due to having Starship, but China will catch up by the end of the 2030s once Long March 9 becomes operational. I think Artemis III will be delayed to as late as 2029, resulting in China landing only one or two years after the US. So it will be a tie more or less. The interesting thing about this time around is that there is no deadline for anything, like how whoever landed on the Moon first won. It's basically just two countries trying to do as much stuff as possible ahead of each other.

The problem with these proposals is that it requires people acting completely different from how they did in real life. If we are getting Korolev not imprisoned, and Khrushchev not making the mistakes that cost him the leadership, we might as well turn the USSR into a functioning democracy like it was on paper. It would become a superpower run by the people. I actually have done that in my stories sometimes- one time I had the Ming dynasty discover China, and then entire world become a cosmopolitan utopia (no mass dying of natives in the Americas, invention of airplanes in the 1600s, Moon landing in the 1800s). But for the purpose of the story I was intending to use the research for, I wanted things to be a bit more limited. This decision is made then, this decision isn't made then, etc. The USSR built the world's first modular space station, and simultaneously built a super heavy lift launch vehicle and reusable crewed spaceplane- feats no other country besides the US has done, and even the world's richest country did one after the other. I'd argue the American program actually stagnated, as it was never able to build its own space station and the Shuttle was limited to two weeks flight maximum, resulting in the USSR having much more data on the effects of long term spaceflight than the US- one of the reasons NASA was so eager to cooperate after Space Station Alpha was nearly cancelled by Congress. This is actually a stereotype, at least when it comes to the Soviet space program. By the time of Sputnik, Soviet decision making required the approval of dozens of different entities. Khrushchev couldn't make decisions without approval and support from the Ministry of Defence, for example. Korolev and Chelomei needed the support of the RVSN for their projects at times. This is part of why the Soviet Moonshot failed. Nobody could agree on anything. I think it was very feasible for both sides to sustain a presence on the Moon if they wanted to. Let's say there is no 60s nuclear arms race, and each side builds about 600 bombs and then settles on a no first use policy. The US nuclear arms build up would be over by 1952, and the Soviets would be finished by 1963. This would free up millions or billions of funding. If the US and USSR were historically able to sustain massive nuclear arsenals, they were probably capable of maintaining a lunar base. I'd say the fact that Russia still has a solid nuclear deterrent after the collapse of the USSR shows even the 1990s Russian Federation could have maintained its own lunar base.

https://x.com/cnspaceflight/status/1717927891022041473?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A Shenzhou 17 carrying Tang Hongbo, Tang Shengjie, and Jiang Xinlin lifted off yesterday. It docked at Tiangong 6 hours later. The three taikonauts already onboard will stay for a couple more days before returning to Earth.

It’s great! Good on you for taking the time to shade in the blackness of space, when I draw spacecraft I usually just put stars and call it a day. I especially like the last one with the flag.

One issue is that the N1 was never going to successfully fly until 1974/75, and then not with crew until 1976. I don’t think Apollo could ever be delayed that long.

We’ve come a long way from that inflated balloon beneath some steel pipes.