What's the space committee opinion on the new space options? Reusable Launchers sound bonker for 1970s...
In general? Reuseable launchers would be great.
The issue is, what kind of reusable launchers? How do you approach solving the problem? What do you make re-useable first?
For example, the Saturn 1B and Saturn 1C stages of the Saturn IB and Saturn V rockets could have been turned into very nice re-useable first stages in the late 60s or early 70s had the US wanted. A Saturn IB with a reusable first stage would have been a Falcon 9 40 years early. But such an incremental upgrade to existing rockets seemed like a false economy to NASA, so they went for the Space Shuttle. First stages are the cheapest part of the rocket, so making them re-useable doesn't really help a whole heck of alot.
But they are also vastly easier to make re-useable. Hence why the Falcon 9 has been such a great success. Because SpaceX had constrained finances, they needed to crawl where other rocket designers ran right past low hanging but sour looking fruit.
Other approaches are: upper stage re-useability first (like the Space Shuttle) where the upper stage is made part of the payload fairing and manned part of the machine and is designed to re-enter the atmosphere, upper stage and lower stage re-useability like the SpaceX Starship, or launching from a first stage that is an airplane like the Northrop Grumman Pegasus.
I'd note that "reusable first stage on conventional rocket" likely means "giant spaceplane" in the context of the 70's.
The Soviets had ideas for making what became Zenit re-useable in the mid 70s of OTL that were very much not "giant spaceplane" type ideas.
And while the Soviets had their Space Plane afficianados, generally, the idea was less popular among their designers. That could be different in TTL, but TTL has had far more success with rockets and capsules than the OTL Soviet Union had, so I find it unlikely that they would find the idea much more attractive than they did in OTL.
In terms of broader assessment on our rocket program I think the main focus right now is investing in good programs but not overcommitting and failing to reinvest in the rocket systems. I'm actually kind of eyeing the Luna program because 20 RpT is signficant for at this point limited scientific value. We're learning about building good rovers, but once that's sort of settled I think cutting it and using the resources on other programs or upgrades makes sense.
I think you are under-estimating how interesting the moon is. Things that I am particularly keen to see happen: find water in crater shadows; build an automated moon base (which potentially can support humans later on); place a telescope on the dark side of the moon.
That said, I'd be willing to pause or cut back on our moon probes if that allowed us to sieze some opportunity that was time-limited. All the things I want to do on the moon aren't super time sensitive.
"Reusable launch vehicles in the 1970s" describes how the Space Shuttle came to be. I understand the details little, @fasquardon might be able to elaborate, but generally space nerds consider that to have been a very big mistake and hate it with a frothing passion.
I would say that the Space Shuttle doesn't really deserve the hate, but yes, it was a failure.
It was, to be sure, a flawed design, but I don't think many folks care to understand why the Shuttle was flawed.
The Shuttle was designed at a time when people were launching more and more stuff to orbit. So some NASA consultants drew a straight trendline from then-present day data into the future and said "in the future America will need to launch thousands of tonnes of stuff into orbit". People called the assumptions bull from the start, but no-one ever took the bad assumptions out of the program requirements. So NASA pushed for something that was massively-over capable. Combine that with NASA designing in even more over-capacity into the system to meet the USAF's bull requirements to cooperate with NASA (which were pretty much pulled out of some general's butt on the principal of "if someone else is paying for it, what capabilities do we dream of") and NASA built an orbital truck when they needed an orbital delivery motorcycle and planned for 20-100 of the things meaning that things like deciding how the manufacturing of expendible items should be done, what could affordably be made expendible and how to approach refurbishment between flights were all done with a much larger fleet in mind.
On top of that, the 1970s weren't a good time in the US economically, and Congress had a distinct hang-over from spending enough to fund a small war on Apollo, so development funds were limited. But not so limited that NASA thought they couldn't apply everything they'd learned during Apollo to create something vastly superior to a mere Saturn V upgrade. As such, NASA needed to cut corners while also being ambitious. They sensibly figured that the Orbiter would be the hardest thing to upgrade after the fact, so they spent most of their budget on the orbiter, and figured everything else could be replaced during later upgrade cycles and so didn't worry too much about things like the SRBs.
They also figured they'd be replacing the thing in the mid to late 90s with an even better version of the Shuttle.
What actually happened is that improved satellite life spans meant launch demand actually shrank from the late 60s to mid 90s, this combined with a more expensive than expected development process meant there was no need and no money for a large enough Shuttle fleet. Low demand and a small fleet meant that fixed costs weren't spread out, meaning each launch would be expensive. Expensive launch meant that fantasies about induced demand ("build it and they will come") didn't kick in. Low demand and the Challenger accident (caused by cut corners during development and pushing the small fleet too hard to try to induce demand) meant that Congress wouldn't fund upgrades, so the Shuttle flew with the el-cheapo components right to the end of its life. A life that was extended more than a decade past its planned retirement point.
The Shuttle didn't fail because it was re-useable, it failed because NASA were building something that fundamentally did not suit their (or anyone else's) needs. The design compromises made to get the Orbiter out the door with minimally functional complementary systems (the SRBs and external tank) also ended up killing two crews, further tanking the Shuttle's reputation.
Ok, NOW I understand why the USSR's interpretation of the space shuttle was that it was a secret US superweapon. Thanks you for that explanation.
Oh yeah, the Space Shuttle design is completely nuts. And the Soviets, having an inferiority problem about American technological leadership, assumed there must be a clever reason for it.
Now with all that in mind, let's look at what the option actually says:
[]Reusable Launchers: The initial MKAS program following the PKA was dismissed by Glushko as an impossible engineering nightmare but it can still be resumed for the sake of providing a lighter launch vehicle. Using long-burning hydrogen engines along with a reusable launcher attached to a drop tank will improve launch capacity and especially if paired with a carrier aircraft reduce costs. The technologies for the project itself are available today with the only issue being the degree of complicated engineering work. It is believed to be possible that some form of the MKAS concept could be launched in the decade allowing space to be opened to low-cost space launch. (-10 RpY Expected) (1 Dice)
So, the program isn't committed to using an aircraft as a first stage. That's good. Building aircraft big enough to support manned orbital vehicles is really dang hard. A clog-shaped lifting body sent up on an RLA first stage with drop tanks would be an excelent small vehicle to support a space station and stretch our rocket designers. Rocket designers do need practice to stay good.
A RLA-boosted MKAS might also lead us to upgrading the RLA first stage to be re-useable as well.
And if the giant airplane approach rolled well, we'd get a superheavy plane which could be useful for all kinds of things.
Assuming that the MKAS being proposed is like the OTL MAKS of the late 80s, we're talking a system that could get 2-6 people and about 7 tonnes of cargo to LEO. That's a much more reasonable vehicle than the OTL Space Shuttle and now that we have a space station program, it is a vehicle we have a mission for.
I don't regard this as being super necessary, it can't completely replace the RLA or our existing capsules, meaning that while it would reduce costs of the station program in the long run, adding complexity to our space program logistics will lead to some new costs partially offsetting the savings. The need to satisfy the SupSov that we are keeping ahead of the Americans in LV technology may require us to either fund the re-useable launchers or the Next Generation Hydrogen Launcher. I am not sure which of the two would be more useful.
An all LH2-LOX rocket would offer some benefit to use, since all our rocket kerosine probably comes from the one Azeri oilfield that it did in OTL and since the costs of liquid hydrogen were less than the costs of chemically processing oil from other wells to the syntin that the Soviets favoured in OTL, LH2 has some benefit. On the other hand, the hydrogen launcher program is twice as expensive as the re-useable launcher program and, in general, we want to develop as few rockets as we can get away with to support our space program. Also, the OTL Soviets used syntin in a big way, but our program may use more normal and less branched kerosine, making us less dependant on a single source.
Overall, I would say that I am pro Reausable Launcher program, but I do not place a super high priority on it. And I think that the bigger we go on space stations, the more the re-useable launcher becomes more important.
Regards,
fasquardon
