They also sent unmanned landers to Mars that were very successful. So why the US looses all of those Voyagers and Vikings, the Soviets gain them. And they develop their long term space flight as well. So with that and the success of the N-1, they could have come up with a Mars shot. I like to think that in the 1990s, the two countries decide to go back together, as we decided to do ISS.
1972 During the Year - . Launch Vehicle: UR-700M. •Soviet Mars expedition work ends - . Nation: USSR. Related Persons: Chelomei. Spacecraft: MK-700. Chelomei's preliminary draft project for the UR-700M launch vehicle and LK-700 spacecraft was reviewed by a government expert commission. Based on the decades worth of development and tens of billions or roubles required to realise the project, the state commission recommended that further work on manned Mars expeditions be deferred indefinitely.
Baxter said the Soviet have abandonned their lunar landing program and there is no trace of a Soviet Mars shot. I don't think that's very realistic - the Soviets just seat on their hands and do nothing as the U.S goes to Mars.
Very likely he intended it to be a one off, but I want to be optimistic, lol.
Quote from: Ronpur50 on 03/03/2016 08:09 pmVery likely he intended it to be a one off, but I want to be optimistic, lol. I'd say you can't really go "wrong" if you follow his lead in following up his story Randy
my own take about the post-1986 Voyage-verse: the MEM was turned into a fat lunar lander and a lunar base was created as the next logical step after Moonlab.That's how Tim Josephson salvaged the MEM large development cost: build more of them as lunar landers, and the unit cost should drop. Without the heavy heatshield and with a much weaker gravity rate, the L-MEM scrapped a lot of propellant tanks and thus there was more room for the crew. 30 days on Mars probably meant much more days on the Moon. Return to Mars is like our universe Return to the Moon: always ten years in the future. The Voyage-verse manned space program is just like ours, but one step upward - Ares is like our Apollo, while their lunar base is our ISS (boring, a retreat when compared to Ares) In both universes NASA takes a step backward Mars > Moon instead of Moon > low Earth orbit
We're also forgetting there actually WAS a "sequel" to Voyage dealing with the British Space Program:"Prospero One"http://web.archive.org/web/20050310032846/http://www.cix.co.uk/~sjbradshaw/baxterium/prospero.htmlRandy
Quote from: RanulfC on 03/05/2016 12:58 amWe're also forgetting there actually WAS a "sequel" to Voyage dealing with the British Space Program:"Prospero One"http://web.archive.org/web/20050310032846/http://www.cix.co.uk/~sjbradshaw/baxterium/prospero.htmlThat was a weird sequel/prequel! LOL. I have had the plastic to do that model for about 6 months, but haven't started it. I still haven't figured out how it was really ending.
We're also forgetting there actually WAS a "sequel" to Voyage dealing with the British Space Program:"Prospero One"http://web.archive.org/web/20050310032846/http://www.cix.co.uk/~sjbradshaw/baxterium/prospero.html
Btw the MEM used LOX/methane and they actually tested a Sabatier reaction on Mars. For all the pessimism about future manned Mars shots in the book, I felt Baxter opened a door to a sequel there (ISRU = much less fuel = cheaper missions). God knows what happened to Bob Zubrin in the Voyage alternate reality...