What if Apollo/Saturn Had never been Cancelled?

[Blackstar]

Tri-core Saturn 5, anyone?

"Three-stage core" means that the core would have 3 stages, this 1992 document (on page 9) shows it having four side boosters with three F-1A engines each. So it would have 17 F-1A engines firing to produce 30.6 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. The payload is given as 281 mt (presumably to LEO but that isn't specified).

So just to be clear, this was a student project. My quick look indicates that they didn't really do this to meet a perceived need. Rather, it was a training project that posed a bunch of problems for the students to solve, like "What is the maximum noise that this big rocket will generate and how many alligators will it kill?" and "Will the rocket plume be so hot that it melts the rocket and blows it up?"

[libra]

Bringing this excellent thread out of its grave.

I want to criss-cross three entries from David Portree blog wich gave a glimpse of what might-have-been had the Shuttle never happened  late 1971 ( I could write a PhD thesis on the matter if alt-history was an Academia subject study  ).

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sPq2UmK9Xd4J:https://www.wired.com/2013/03/a-series-of-small-specialist-space-stations-1968-3/+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=fr

http://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2015/10/an-alternative-stationshuttle-evolution.html

http://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-bridge-from-skylab-to-stationshuttle.html

The first link relates to a 1968 Bellcomm study.
The second, to a July 1970 North American Rockwell sale pitch to NASA.
The third one was a NASA internal study (Headquarters OART)  from April 1971.

I have two of the three papers on my HD and I will post them later. Plus another one from Bellcomm, related to the first.
There are certainly many other studies like this buried in archives - but these three only, if added / crossed, clearly show what might have been had "Cap the knife" Weinberger OMB managed to kill the Shuttle late 1971.
And well, Logsdon After Apollo and Heppenheimer The Space Shuttle decision show Weinberger bean counters come an hairbreadth away from succeeding.

[libra]

My bad, I haven't the Spirit of '76 presentation.  The others two are linked there, plus some interesting Bellcomm memos on space stations.

[libra]

Those day I'm growing fascinated with a couple of S-IC derivatives: the S-ID 1.5STO and the flyback S-IC (RS-IC) for the Shuttle. I wanted to compare them to the "stock" S-IC.
Thanks to Luke Strawalker I've found some numbers here and there.

Page 493 of the big Pdf attached.

Further documents dealing with the S-ID and the RS-1C.

The Open office document has the final comparison between all of them.

[reeceemmitt]

With greatest apologies for the mild necro...

Apollo and Skylab crews launched with A7L suits.

Had Apollo continued as a ferry to Skylab, would we have seen the same separation between launch suits and EVA suits that we see today?

Would Astros be wearing LES/ACES for ascent/descent, or even the flight suits used pre 51L, with EVA suits carried up separately/stored on Skylab? Or would launch have continued with the A7L and all future EVA suits be based around said pressure garment.

Really appreciate your thoughts. My suggestion is that by the 80s astronauts would be wearing pumpkin suits while EVAs were conducted in the eqv of today’s Eva suits.

[the_other_Doug]

If Skylab had continued, with additional workshops, etc., and relatively unlimited Saturn Vs and IBs were available, I think you would have seen multi-module stations take shape from OWS-sized blocks launched by Saturn Vs, and smaller logistics blocks launched by IBs.  I think a logistics module cheaper than a full Apollo CSM would be developed for uphill cargo, and knowing NASA in the 70s, these would just be added on to the station structure as new mission modules, not just allowed to go to destructive entry upon completion of their cargo duties.

Downhill cargo would still accompany returning crews in a CM, since that would be using an existing system in the way it was designed.  That was very big back when Apollo was being being designed and flown.

But that's not how we went, because it would have cost more than the Shuttle development cost, and all of the benefits from the continuing Saturn architecture were being promised by the Shuttle backers, and more.  That was never realistic, but oh, well.  Live and learn.

[Vahe231991]

Let's say that the US had chosen not to go to war in Vietnam, in which case Congress would have had a bit more fiscal leeway to provide substantial funding for the Apollo program in the 1967-1972 period. Even if the US had not gotten involved in Vietnam, would Congress have been inclined to fund the planned Apollo 18, 19, and 20 missions, given that Apollo 18, 19, and 20 never took place due to congressional cuts? If the Saturn program continued past 1972, would development of the future Space Shuttle have been put on the backburner?

[edkyle99]

Let's say that the US had chosen not to go to war in Vietnam, in which case Congress would have had a bit more fiscal leeway to provide substantial funding for the Apollo program in the 1967-1972 period. Even if the US had not gotten involved in Vietnam, would Congress have been inclined to fund the planned Apollo 18, 19, and 20 missions, given that Apollo 18, 19, and 20 never took place due to congressional cuts? If the Saturn program continued past 1972, would development of the future Space Shuttle have been put on the backburner?

I'm going to say "no".   Apollo was an enormous expenditure, war or not.  Once astronauts stepped on the surface it was over.  The public did not support the cost.  The majority of Americans wanted it to end, especially after the goal had been achieved.  It is no coincidence that Apollos 18-20 were all cancelled during 1970.   Four astronauts had already done Moon walks.  The race was over.

 - Ed Kyle

[LittleBird]

Let's say that the US had chosen not to go to war in Vietnam, in which case Congress would have had a bit more fiscal leeway to provide substantial funding for the Apollo program in the 1967-1972 period. Even if the US had not gotten involved in Vietnam, would Congress have been inclined to fund the planned Apollo 18, 19, and 20 missions, given that Apollo 18, 19, and 20 never took place due to congressional cuts? If the Saturn program continued past 1972, would development of the future Space Shuttle have been put on the backburner?

I'm going to say "no".   Apollo was an enormous expenditure, war or not. Once astronauts stepped on the surface it was over.  The public did not support the cost.  The majority of Americans wanted it to end, especially after the goal had been achieved.  It is no coincidence that Apollos 18-20 were all cancelled during 1970.   Four astronauts had already done Moon walks.  The race was over.

 - Ed Kyle

Indeed. As I noted recently in another thread here https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48532.msg2501893#msg2501893 I was quite surprised (that was a British quite btw) that while Apollo cost the realtively well known sum of about $25 billion, all in, the Vietnam war was "only" about 6 to 7 times that.

These are US govt budget declared costs so caveats apply etc etc but they give you an idea of orders  of magnitude.

[laszlo]

Indeed. As I noted recently in another thread here https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48532.msg2501893#msg2501893 I was quite surprised (that was a British quite btw) that while Apollo cost the realtively[sic] well known sum of about $25 billion, all in, the Vietnam war was "only" about 6 to 7 times that.

These are US govt budget declared costs so caveats apply etc etc but they give you an idea of orders  of magnitude.

And a lot fewer people were killed as a result of Apollo than because of US involvement in Viet Nam. But, Viet Nam had taken over from Apollo as the symbol of American determination to halt the spread of global communism so it had to be supported regardless of the cost in money and lives. Somehow that resulted in 50 years later Viet Nam being considered a potential US ally and the US being the largest buyer of Vietnamese exports, even though the communist government stayed in place and eventually took over the entire nation. Go figure.

[Blackstar]

Indeed. As I noted recently in another thread here https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48532.msg2501893#msg2501893 I was quite surprised (that was a British quite btw) that while Apollo cost the realtively[sic] well known sum of about $25 billion, all in, the Vietnam war was "only" about 6 to 7 times that.

These are US govt budget declared costs so caveats apply etc etc but they give you an idea of orders  of magnitude.

And a lot fewer people were killed as a result of Apollo than because of US involvement in Viet Nam. But, Viet Nam had taken over from Apollo as the symbol of American determination to halt the spread of global communism so it had to be supported regardless of the cost in money and lives. Somehow that resulted in 50 years later Viet Nam being considered a potential US ally and the US being the largest buyer of Vietnamese exports, even though the communist government stayed in place and eventually took over the entire nation. Go figure.

History can do weird things.

[Steve G]

Everyone blames Nixon for cancelling Apollo (even though it was doomed once he took office). BUT, what would have happened to the space program had Nixon won the 1960 General election?

[Will O Wisp]

Everyone blames Nixon for cancelling Apollo (even though it was doomed once he took office). BUT, what would have happened to the space program had Nixon won the 1960 General election?

There almost certainly wouldn't have been a moon landing in 1969.

In 1960 Nixon largely presented his policies as an extension of Eisenhower's, under whom he'd served as vice-president. Eisenhower himself had a complex relationship with space, and his opinions on it varied wildly throughout his term. He believed in competition with the Soviets, and in general was in favor of civilian research in space, but was notably less enthusiastic about it than Kennedy/Johnson.

After the humiliation of Sputnik, Eisenhower initiated the Mercury program in 1958. This would have run more or less the same regardless of who won the election in 1960, with John Glenn becoming the first American in orbit in 1962.

In late 1959, with the first flight of Project Mercury still years in the future, NASA began considering a potential follow on. Even at this early stage NASA wanted to try for a lunar landing, but Eisenhower was against the idea. Although supportive of further manned space missions, he considered a moon landing too expensive and with marginal benefit.

NASA began formal study of what would become the Apollo program in mid-1960. Under Eisenhower's guidance, NASA conceived a three man earth orbital spacecraft, which could be modified for lunar orbital or lunar landing missions.

Launch vehicles were more in flux. A series of studies were conducted from 1959-1961. The Saturn C series of rockets emerged as early favorites. There were three variants of the Saturn C:

-The Saturn C-1, a relatively small earth orbital launch vehicle. This was chosen for initial development, evolving into the Saturn I which first launched in 1961. It's fairly safe to say this would have occurred regardless of if Kennedy or Nixon won in 1960.

-The Saturn C-3, a three stage rocket capable of placing 45,000kg into LEO. It would have used two F-1 engines in the first stage, 4 J-2 engines in the second, and 6 RL-10 engines in the third.

-The Saturn C-5, a massive launch vehicle limited mainly by the capacity of existing aerospace manufacturing infrastructure. This of course became the Saturn V.

By 1960 Von Braun and NASA mostly gave up on the Saturn C-5, believing they would never be able to get funding for it, but were still pushing hard for development of the Saturn C-3. The Saturn C-3 would have theoretically allowed lunar orbital missions, or an earth orbit rendezvous lunar landing mission. The latter was tentatively penciled out for the mid to late 1970s.

This brings us to the election of 1960. One of Kennedy's main talking points was the the US was falling behind the Soviet Union in ICBM development and space travel. He strongly contrasted himself with Eisenhower and by extension Nixon, accusing them of endangering the country with their lax attitudes. A democrat in the Rooseveltian vein, he supported large government led projects to achieve policy goals, and proposed increased funding for NASA to return America to the forefront of technology and science.

Nixon was by no means against space travel, but didn't make it a focus of his campaign. He stated his support for future manned spaceflights, but not an expansion of NASA. His opinion was that it would largely be a waste of money, and the current trajectory was more than enough to achieve whatever benefits there were to be gained from space exploration.

As we all know, in the end Kennedy won. In 1961, just a few months after his term started, the Soviet Union was able to get the first man into space. In response he approved a full lunar landing "before this decade is out". From that point forward NASA would get all the resources it could ask for, at least for a moon landing.

What would Nixon have done after America lost the race to put a man in orbit? It's hard to say. He likely would have felt a need to make some sort of reply. An expansion of robotic exploration would certainly be a possibility. Another option would be to look at constructing a space station. He also could have made a symbolic gesture of setting America on course for a lunar landing in the 1970s (knowing full well he would long since be out of office so he wouldn't need to find funding for it).

In any case, development of Apollo would likely be accelerated. This would probably be a smaller version Block I CSM. In reality, the Saturn I was abandoned when it became clear that it wouldn't be able to lift a lunar capable CSM into orbit, in this case shrinking the CSM seems more likely. The systems overall would have been more primitive, probably on the level of Gemini's, and it would have likely first flown in 1965-1966 just as Gemini did.

This alternate Apollo would likely conduct a variety of earth orbit science missions, set new records in spaceflight duration (at least for American spaceflight), and possibly test out rendezvous and docking.

If Nixon approved the Saturn C-3, we might see some more advanced missions in the late 1960s or early 1970s. A larger version of the Apollo CSM would likely be built to support this, with true docking capability like the Block II CSM. We might see a series of small scale space stations, much like the Soviet Salyut series, or even a lunar flyby.

But by the time any of this happened though, Nixon would be gone and it'd be up to the next guy figure out what to do next, and in the midst of the late 60s/early 70s budget crunches I suspect that would be a challenge. The Saturn C-3 could just as well be cancelled, and America could end up flying truncated Apollo capsules well into the 1980s if not longer.

 

[Vahe231991]

If the US had not gone to war in Vietnam and instead focused on channeling some funds to all Great Society initiatives and the War on Poverty, would Congress still have had enough wiggle room to fund all Apollo missions beyond Apollo 17 as well as the proposed Apollo Applications program?

[edkyle99]

Launch vehicles were more in flux. A series of studies were conducted from 1959-1961. The Saturn C series of rockets emerged as early favorites. There were three variants of the Saturn C:

-The Saturn C-1, a relatively small earth orbital launch vehicle. This was chosen for initial development, evolving into the Saturn I which first launched in 1961. It's fairly safe to say this would have occurred regardless of if Kennedy or Nixon won in 1960.

-The Saturn C-3, a three stage rocket capable of placing 45,000kg into LEO. It would have used two F-1 engines in the first stage, 4 J-2 engines in the second, and 6 RL-10 engines in the third.

-The Saturn C-5, a massive launch vehicle limited mainly by the capacity of existing aerospace manufacturing infrastructure. This of course became the Saturn V.

By 1960 Von Braun and NASA mostly gave up on the Saturn C-5, believing they would never be able to get funding for it, but were still pushing hard for development of the Saturn C-3. The Saturn C-3 would have theoretically allowed lunar orbital missions, or an earth orbit rendezvous lunar landing mission. The latter was tentatively penciled out for the mid to late 1970s.

This differs from the histories I've read.  Silverstein Committee conjured C-1, C-2, and C-3 plan.  Meanwhile there were plans by non von-Braun groups for larger Nova launch vehicles, which never materialized.  It was only *after* JFK's to the moon speech that MSFC set aside Saturns C-2 and C-3 in favor of an F-1/J-2 powered C-4, which itself morphed into Saturn C-5 - designed from its inception to put men on the Moon by decade's end.

 - Ed Kyle     

[LittleBird]

If the US had not gone to war in Vietnam and instead focused on channeling some funds to all Great Society initiatives and the War on Poverty, would Congress still have had enough wiggle room to fund all Apollo missions beyond Apollo 17 as well as the proposed Apollo Applications program?

The US had to run a deficit, and, I think, add a tax surcharge for a while, to fund Vietnam war. The end of this deficit surcharge was in fact one of the contributors to the space budget pressure in the early part of the Nixon administration, which reflected a much larger balanced budget issue. John Logsdon's After Apollo book is v good on this stuff.

Does anyone really believe they'd have run a deficit for the programmes you mention-I would suggest the world didn't work that way ? [Edit: Glad I checked. See grabs from Logsdon, I was right about tax surcharge but apparently the crunch circa 1969-70 was in part to avoid a deficit. Not sure if it worked.]

[Will O Wisp]

The US had to run a deficit, and, I think, add a tax surcharge, to fund Vietnam war. This deficit was in fact one of the contributors to the space budget pressure in the early part of the Nixon administration, which reflected a much larger balanced budget issue. John Logsdon's After Apollo book is v good on this stuff.

Does anyone really believe they'd have run a deficit for the programmes you mention-I would suggest the world didn't work that way ?

There are a lot of cost estimates for the Vietnam war, the exact figures can vary a lot depending on what you count as an expense, but even the lowest one I found ($110.7 billion - 1975 DoD count of direct war costs) is still 4x what was spent on the entire Apollo program ($25.8 billion).

That 1975 DoD estimate only covers ammo expended in theater, replacement equipment, training and salaries for troops deployed to Vietnam, etc. It doesn't include the costs of equipment the used to support the war the DoD says it would have purchased anyway, stateside training costs, and foreign aid to South Vietnam. That brings the total to around $168 billion.

The US budget deficit from 1965-1974 was $106 billion. So without the Vietnam war there would have been a $4 billion to $62 billion surplus.That's from the DoD's own figures, the Census Bureau pegged the war's costs at $352 billion, which would have given a massive $246 billion surplus instead.

Scrapping the last two Apollo missions saved $800 million. NASA never gave a firm cost estimate of the AAP, because it never formally selected what missions would actually be a part of it.

So Apollo 18 and 19 could certainly be accommodated without putting the budget in deficit, along with likely some version of the AAP.

[LittleBird]

The US had to run a deficit, and, I think, add a tax surcharge, to fund Vietnam war. This deficit was in fact one of the contributors to the space budget pressure in the early part of the Nixon administration, which reflected a much larger balanced budget issue. John Logsdon's After Apollo book is v good on this stuff.

Does anyone really believe they'd have run a deficit for the programmes you mention-I would suggest the world didn't work that way ?

There are a lot of cost estimates for the Vietnam war, the exact figures can vary a lot depending on what you count as an expense, but even the lowest one I found ($110.7 billion - 1975 DoD count of direct war costs) is still 4x what was spent on the entire Apollo program ($25.8 billion).

That 1975 DoD estimate only covers ammo expended in theater, replacement equipment, training and salaries for troops deployed to Vietnam, etc. It doesn't include the costs of equipment the used to support the war the DoD says it would have purchased anyway, stateside training costs, and foreign aid to South Vietnam. That brings the total to around $168 billion.

The US budget deficit from 1965-1974 was $106 billion. So without the Vietnam war there would have been a $4 billion to $62 billion surplus.That's from the DoD's own figures, the Census Bureau pegged the war's costs at $352 billion, which would have given a massive $246 billion surplus instead.

Scrapping the last two Apollo missions saved $800 million. NASA never gave a firm cost estimate of the AAP, because it never formally selected what missions would actually be a part of it.

So Apollo 18 and 19 could certainly be accommodated without putting the budget in deficit, along with likely some version of the AAP.

Thanks. By programmes I meant things like the Great Society, but that's a very helpful reply, unlike mine ;-) 

[Blackstar]

I have no better thread to drop these in, and I don't want to create a satellite servicing thread. But here's something wild: satellite servicing with an Apollo CSM:

[laszlo]

That looks like an OSO satellite being serviced. As I recall, building and launching an OSO ran to something like 23 million in then-dollars. Would launching an expendable Apollo CSM/S1B mission been cheaper than just building and launching a new satellite?

Thanks for the memories, BTW. I worked in Larry Peterson's lab at UCSD back when I was an undergrad and it's fun to see this blast from the past.