Slight up date of the timeline, putting the Backup Skylab 2 Crew (Schweickart, Musgrave, McCandless) into Moonlab 4. Also see up thread.Edit: Interesting enough, the back up crew for both Skylab 3 and 4 was Brand, Lenoir, Lind who we have flying Skylab 7.Modeling the timeline and assignments is almost as much fun as building the models. I wonder what Stephan Baxter would think of our work. Any response Ron?
Actually, this is Dalhousie's MEM and he named her Endeavour!
Quote from: Ronpur50 on 02/19/2015 01:48 pmActually, this is Dalhousie's MEM and he named her Endeavour!Oops ! Massive brain fart...
It is interesting to consider how little information of Mars existing prior to the Baxter mission.In the story the preceding missions Mariner V flyby (1965)Mariner 6 & 7 flybys (1969)Mariner 9 and Mars 2 & 3 orbiters (1971) Mars 5 orbiter (implied) (1971)Mars 4, 6 & 7 flybys (implied) (1973)Mars 8 lander (1976)Mars 8 orbiter (implied) (1976)High resolution imaging Mariner orbiter studying landing site candidates (possibly film return?)Other possible Soviet missions (no mention of Mars 9 in 1976 so that may have been a failure) in the 1978 1980, and 1983 windows.Challenger landed on Mars with far less knowledge of what to expect than the Apollo astronauts.
Quote from: Dalhousie on 02/21/2015 02:27 amIt is interesting to consider how little information of Mars existing prior to the Baxter mission.In the story the preceding missions Mariner V flyby (1965)Mariner 6 & 7 flybys (1969)Mariner 9 and Mars 2 & 3 orbiters (1971)That's correct.Everything got cancelled to feed Ares. Which is probably what would have happened. But I find it hard to imagine that knowledge of the surface from one landing site (Mars would have been deemed adequate. I would have thought that Viking might have been re-jigged into several small landers to gain more experience of the surface, especially the engineering properties, bit like Surveyor. Mars 5 orbiter (implied) (1971)Mars 4, 6 & 7 flybys (implied) (1973)Mars 8 lander (1976)Mars 8 orbiter (implied) (1976)High resolution imaging Mariner orbiter studying landing site candidates (possibly film return?)Other possible Soviet missions (no mention of Mars 9 in 1976 so that may have been a failure) in the 1978 1980, and 1983 windows.Challenger landed on Mars with far less knowledge of what to expect than the Apollo astronauts.Not only Mars, but the rest of the solar system. No Pioneers or Voyager to the outer planets or even Viking to Mars. I think Mariner 9 was the last mission mentioned for the US. I doubt Mariner 10 went to Venus. Everything was cancelled and the money put into Ares.In fact, I think the only probe the US sent to Venus was launched by Ares on it's flyby.
It is interesting to consider how little information of Mars existing prior to the Baxter mission.In the story the preceding missions Mariner V flyby (1965)Mariner 6 & 7 flybys (1969)Mariner 9 and Mars 2 & 3 orbiters (1971)That's correct.Everything got cancelled to feed Ares. Which is probably what would have happened. But I find it hard to imagine that knowledge of the surface from one landing site (Mars would have been deemed adequate. I would have thought that Viking might have been re-jigged into several small landers to gain more experience of the surface, especially the engineering properties, bit like Surveyor. Mars 5 orbiter (implied) (1971)Mars 4, 6 & 7 flybys (implied) (1973)Mars 8 lander (1976)Mars 8 orbiter (implied) (1976)High resolution imaging Mariner orbiter studying landing site candidates (possibly film return?)Other possible Soviet missions (no mention of Mars 9 in 1976 so that may have been a failure) in the 1978 1980, and 1983 windows.Challenger landed on Mars with far less knowledge of what to expect than the Apollo astronauts.