For All Mankind

[Blackstar]

Ah, true - forgot about him - but he got explicitly taken out in the same episode.

Wubbo appeared in two episodes, but since it is strongly implied that he got a fatal radiation dose, you're right.

Tom Paine is also NASA administrator.

[sanman]

Tom Paine is also NASA administrator.

Wow, Paine was a real life person?

This then again makes it feel like they're taking a lot of liberties with interpreting non-fictional people, purely for dramatic purposes.

[Blackstar]

Tom Paine is also NASA administrator.

Wow, Paine was a real life person?

Yes, surprisingly, there are real people in the space program who are not astronauts.

[sanman]

Yes, surprisingly, there are real people in the space program who are not astronauts.

LOL - I did cite Von Braun & Krantz, who were not astronauts - I'm just saying that the show seems to be defining the character of a real life person like Paine, and casting aspersions on him for dramatic purposes. I feel a little leery about this, because I think that fictional characters can do that stuff without it being at cost of the reputations of real people.

[Blackstar]

LOL - I did cite Von Braun & Krantz, who were not astronauts - I'm just saying that the show seems to be defining the character of a real life person like Paine, and casting aspersions on him for dramatic purposes. I feel a little leery about this, because I think that fictional characters can do that stuff without it being at cost of the reputations of real people.

Keep watching. See how Paine fares in the alternate history books.

[ncb1397]

Even if the payload bay was filled solid with hypergolic propellant tanks; I doubt there'd be enough delta-v and thrust for the OMS engines to slow it into LLO, boost it out of LLO and then slow into LEO. I sincerely doubt the Orbiter shape and TPS could survive a direct-entry into Earth's atmosphere; traveling more than 36,000 feet per second!!

Actually, it would be very close to LLO (assuming the dry mass of the orbiter doesn't change much). You could easily fit 300 t of hypergolic fuel in the cargo bay.

315*9.8 * ln(370/70) = 5140 m/s.

LLO requires almost exactly that (TLI is 3.2 km/s). Of course, 100 t of hydrolox fuel gets you almost the same performance and would also approximately fit in the cargo bay.

453 *9.8*ln(170/70) = 3940 m/s.

Hydrolox would require staging in a higher orbit but such a move requires much less propellant mass.

Shuttle actually got pretty close to flying a pretty big hydrogen tank in the cargo bay in our timeline through the shuttle centaur program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Centaur

Hell, yes. The Shuttle payload bay is a cylinder with a radius of 7.5 feet (15 feet diameter) and 60 feet long.
Volume =  πr2h
=    π×7.52×60
=    3375π
=    10602.9 feet3

10603 cubic feet are 300 000 L. With a density close from water, 1 L of storable would weight 1 kg, so 300 000 L would be indeed 300 metric tons.

Geez, we heard so many times the Shuttle orbiter payload is 30 metric tons, never thought it could carry 10 times that mass in liquid. Crazy, when you think about it.

From there, surely, with 300 metric tons of storable props in the bay, it can go... pretty far.

TLI or Earth escape takes 3.1 km/s ; LLO  takes +1 km/s "in" and +1 km/s "out". 

How about that... the Shuttle could go to LLO on the freakkin' OMS pods alone.

 Except the bay would be filled to the brim, so where would the Lunar Module go ?

Perhaps send ahead to a lunar orbit space station and the Shuttle crew commute there, to the surface...

There is a vehicle on the moon that is refueled from the lunar water mining sites at the south pole. So, the Shuttle wouldn't normally have to carry a lunar module. Season 1 heavily implied this based on the events that occurred although it didn't directly spell it out and is just the most plausible explanation.

But playing with numbers for split hydrolox/hypergolic for the lunar transport requirements, that may have been the best/most plausible explanation for  Season 2s events. The breakdown then is 100 t of hydrolox and 25 t of OMS fuel. The hydrolox provides ~3.2 km/s of delta v for the ~70 t  shuttle and the hypergolic fuel does insertion into and out of a high lunar orbit by providng about ~950 m/s of delta V (we know that  the LSAM vehicle used for transport up and down from the moon is capable given that it does an in space  rendezvous with a CSM on an earth escape trajectory at the end of Season 1). How our shuttle was engineered, the OMS pods already contained over 21 t of fuel so this isn't much of a stretch.

[Robotbeat]

Shuttle could’ve handle Lunar reentry if it had a slightly different heatshield or construction. For instance, Starship’s tiles are supposed to do lunar.

I like season 2 better so far.

[libra]

Yep. X-33 "metallic shingles" were derived from a couple of pre-Shuttle projects: Douglas Model 176 & Lockheed FDL-5M. Lifting body "taxis" for the planned MOL in the 60's. Not build of course, but some basic technology was tested.
Alternatively: spray a thick layer of ablative TPS on the Shuttle TPS. Although this would make an even more giant maintenance PITA between flights. Probably another reason why they are moving toward Pathfinder ASAP.

Administrator Tom Paine ? aye, this must be... controversial. Looks like his 1969 STG report got a better fate than OTL, and he didn't had to wait 15 more years and Pioneering the space frontier to "return".

In passing, this proves the script writers learned their space history lessons...

But playing with numbers for split hydrolox/hypergolic for the lunar transport requirements, that may have been the best/most plausible explanation for  Season 2s events. The breakdown then is 100 t of hydrolox and 25 t of OMS fuel. The hydrolox provides ~3.2 km/s of delta v for the ~70 t  shuttle and the hypergolic fuel does insertion into and out of a high lunar orbit by providng about ~950 m/s of delta V (we know that  the LSAM vehicle used for transport up and down from the moon is capable given that it does an in space  rendezvous with a CSM on an earth escape trajectory at the end of Season 1). How our shuttle was engineered, the OMS pods already contained over 21 t of fuel so this isn't much of a stretch.

Brilliant. And it wouldn't be too complicated to swap one of the three SSMEs in the back for a J-2S of Apollo legacy...TLI included, and restartable in space.
One J-2S thrusting should be able to push the Orbiter into a TLI: its mass is (very aproximately)  in the same ballpark as a S-IVB + Apollo stack.

[hektor]

So Sally Ride is in the crew of Pathfinder during the following episodes ?

[hektor]

I wonder if the late USSR senile leaders - Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko - have gone the same way as Jimmy Carter, that is - were they erased from that timeline ?

Brezhnev stagnation and seemingly never ending agony did half of the job of finishing USSR - all by themselves.

Andropov is the leader of Soviet Union in the latest episode. He is mentioned about Apollo Soyuz which like in our timeline is the final Apollo flight (but much later).

I wonder who will win the 1984 presidential election. Schweiker ? Mondale ? Bush ? Dole ?

[Blackstar]

In passing, this proves the script writers learned their space history lessons...

I have actually been very impressed at how well the writers understand various aspects of American space history. This isn't a documentary, it's alternative history (or maybe more accurately a parallel history), but they have a deeper understanding of the subject that doesn't come from reading some Wikipedia entries. And they have thought out some of the cause-effect relationships well. I particularly liked how Ted Kennedy avoided Chappaquiddick.

[Robotbeat]

I want to point out that there's no great contradiction in Shuttles being used as cislunar transports in an alternate/parallel history. We don't know the details of their construction, and SpaceX with Starship is essentially proposing the same kind of thing with Dear Moon. We know they have access to relatively inexpensive propellant in both LEO (Sea Dragon) and lunar vicinity (lunar propellant mining). A better TPS is most certainly feasible, as are multiple pass aerobraking maneuvers (which may allow basically the same TPS tech to be used).

For All Mankind is as hard scifi as they come.

[sanman]

So Sally Ride is in the crew of Pathfinder during the following episodes ?

Well, as was just noted, she is currently a member of the Pathfinder crew.
Maybe IMDB will change the episode-count for her number of appearances in this season.

Andropov is the leader of Soviet Union in the latest episode. He is mentioned about Apollo Soyuz which like in our timeline is the final Apollo flight (but much later).

I wonder who will win the 1984 presidential election. Schweiker ? Mondale ? Bush ? Dole ?

It seems like they're going with major political figures as anchors, so I'd guess that George H W Bush will get 2 terms, 1984-1992. That would then provide a seamless transition to the Clinton era. Maybe Gorbachev is bypassed entirely, in order to keep the Soviet side of the Great Cold War Space Race going. On the other hand, that scene where Paine exposits on NASA's licensing revenues providing more-than-adequate funding may be foreshadowing an end to the Cold War storyline, since its existence will no longer be necessary to justify support for NASA's expansive space activities.

The Season 2 trailer seems to show glimpses of a Cold War showdown on the Moon, however. If resolution of showdown becomes a catalyst for peace between the superpowers, then that would set the stage for Moon to be peacefully exploited as a jumpoff point for Mars. I'm only guessing in this direction because otherwise it would seem premature to introduce the Mars-capable Pathfinder spacecraft, unless they're planning to transition to a Mars storyline in the next season.

They've not even shown any Soviet Shuttles like Buran yet. I was hoping we'd get to see those sometime this season, as a mirror to America's STS going to the Moon. Presumably, that would require them to use Mir in the same way that NASA is using Skylab for Shuttle refueling.

At some point, will Skylab (and Mir) give way to ISS? Or do these older-generation stations + moonbases make ISS redundant and unnecessary? Also, if Pathfinder is a nuclear-propulsion spacecraft, then does it even need to refuel in LEO or near the Moon? Shouldn't it be able to travel to Mars directly?

[Robotbeat]

Yeah, the fact the Soviets don’t have Buran up and running is unfortunate (if probably realistic). It means that the soft power victory of getting to the Moon first didn’t translate into a lasting technological/economical edge. And so we may be about to come to the fall of the Soviet Union instead of a continuation of Soviet power into the 90s and beyond. Too bad, really, as it’d be interesting to see two strong Superpowers continue to try to one-up each other all the way to Alpha Centauri.

But I will point out that the lack of Soviets invading Afghanistan could give the Soviets a lifeline to last another decade or two. Likewise, the lack of Osama Bin Laden (because no invasion by the Soviets) and the much earlier invention of practical lithium ion electric vehicles may mean the US doesn’t get as heavily involved in the Middle East in the 1990s and doesn’t get bogged down in the Middle East in the 2000s, and 2010s.

And BTW, the ISS wouldn’t exist in the traditional way in this timeline as it really was built around the Soviet Salyut and Mir stations, the latter of which was visited several times by the Space Shuttle. The Russian segment of ISS *is* basically Mir parts, and the US bankrolled the project in the early days. Also, the US side, starting as Space Station Freedom, was built around the constraints of Shuttle. They have Sea Dragon in this timeline.

Both Salyut/Mir and Freedom/ISS were built around the launch constraints of Proton and Shuttle. In this timeline, both the US and the Soviets have much larger operational launch vehicles AND were much more heavily focused on the Moon instead of these LEO stations (which in the Soviet case were sort of intended as precursors for Mars Transfer missions).

[sanman]

Gee, that's a good point - if you have Sea Dragon, why do you even need the Space Shuttle at all? With Sea Dragon, you should even be able to do Mars Direct.
(Speaking of which - once they shift toward a Mars storyline, they really need to include at least one scene with Dr Zubrin - that would be priceless   )

Assuming the Soviets have moved beyond N-1 and are using Energia or something comparably powerful, then they'd be able to put up space stations bigger and better than Mir on their own. Perhaps then there's no need for collaboration on ISS, when each side has such strong lift capabilities of its own.

Sadat surviving assassination means Middle East peace has more chance to germinate.
Assassination of the Pope means that Soviet hold over Poland stays strong, and Eastern Europe remains firmly under the Iron Curtain.
Each of these things helps free up more resources for the superpowers to direct spaceward (which is obviously the intention of the writers.)
They keep mentioning Panama for some reason, as a hotspot of contention.

[sanman]

So I'd thought that the character of Molly Cobb (first American woman in space, in the alternate history timeline of the show) was totally fictional, but it turns out that she's at least partly based on a real life person:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrie_Cobb



I found the background history to be fascinating. So she and others went through a privately-funded test program which wasn't part of NASA, but was designed by the same physician who did the testing for NASA's Mercury program? When we're introduced to the character of Molly Cobb in the show, it seems to be implied that she's some kind of former astronaut candidate who's been brought back for the new ad-hoc program.

[GusReid]

I think there's a fair dollop of Wally Funk in her also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Funk.

[Blackstar]

I found the background history to be fascinating.

Tracy is also modeled on a real person.

[libra]

One of the Mercury 13 was young enough to be candidate for the TFNG 1978 astronaut selection, the first in the Shuttle era.
She tried but was rejected. NASA probably had valuable reasons, but imagine if she had made it through and found herself amid Sally Ride, Judith Resnik, and the other four.

Well it was Wally Funk, born in 1939.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_13

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Funk

[LM13]

Gee, that's a good point - if you have Sea Dragon, why do you even need the Space Shuttle at all? With Sea Dragon, you should even be able to do Mars Direct.
(Speaking of which - once they shift toward a Mars storyline, they really need to include at least one scene with Dr Zubrin - that would be priceless   )

Assuming the Soviets have moved beyond N-1 and are using Energia or something comparably powerful, then they'd be able to put up space stations bigger and better than Mir on their own. Perhaps then there's no need for collaboration on ISS, when each side has such strong lift capabilities of its own.

Sadat surviving assassination means Middle East peace has more chance to germinate.
Assassination of the Pope means that Soviet hold over Poland stays strong, and Eastern Europe remains firmly under the Iron Curtain.
Each of these things helps free up more resources for the superpowers to direct spaceward (which is obviously the intention of the writers.)
They keep mentioning Panama for some reason, as a hotspot of contention.

Back in the first episode of S2, there was a montage of newspaper articles showing, among others, an "N-3" rocket that presumably is an uprated N-1 (maybe with the LH2 stages they wanted for later models). 

My assumption is that Shuttle is used because JSC wanted a replacement for Apollo that they thought would be safer, while Sea Dragon exists because MSFC wanted high-mass-to-orbit (and is presumably not man-rated--so crews and fancy stuff launch on Shuttle, bulk cargo on SD). 

In a world where NASA is plausibly bound for Mars in the 1990s, Zubrin has published the "Titan Direct" plan to establish a beachhead in the "Persian Gulf" of the Solar System.    In all seriousness, with NTR, it seems, coming to flight in this scenario, he wouldn't be pushing Mars Direct as we know it, but a single-vehicle setup where the Mars spacecraft uses CO2 as reaction mass.  Conceivably, you could fly Pathfinder directly to the surface of Mars and back, refueling on-site.