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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition

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The top thing on everybody's mind with the space program right now is how we're spending ~1.2% of the entire national GNP to produce little more than live TV broadcasts of Glushko turning a woman into chunky marinara. I want to stress again that I don't mean 1.2% of the state budget, I mean 1.2% of the entire country's economic output, remember that's what our base income is calculated off of.

Meanwhile back here under the troposphere, Moscow still doesn't have fluoridated drinking water, most people not directly on top of a rail yard are still making do with dirt roads that were cleared during the Stalin era if they're lucky, we're still short of actually providing universal secondary education, and the state of the medical system outside of major cities doesn't even bear thinking about.

For comparison, in 1962 OTL the US was spending ~0.2% of their GDP on the space program, and even at the (wildly unpopular and unsustainable) peak in the later 60's only got up to about 0.75% of GDP dedicated to space. So us spending 1.2% in 1962 does look pretty unreasonable and the SupSov is honestly correct to be upset with us and force cutbacks. Hell, they're arguably being way too generous already given how much we're spending vs. how fucked things still are groundside.

Blackstar is very good at cultivating proper bureaucratic mindsets in her players, I honestly think it's a great narrative and artistic achievement that she managed to organically get us to recreate the OTL Space Race despite most of the thread thinking that we were playing it so much smarter. A bunch of huge nerds that read books all day in Moscow getting super excited about (in hindsight obviously absurd) dreams of asteroid mining and moon bases and the triumphant conquest of the solar system for communism in the late 50's/early 60's, only to be reality checked by everybody who actually works for a living saying "hey assholes, I have no access to a full doctor and it takes my kid two hours to get to his shitty underfunded school, why are you setting my taxes on fire and exploding all these pilots to maybe if we're lucky have two dudes briefly touch a rock?!?!" is a pretty damn accurate way to model this period.
 
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It is a very effective way of reprising in miniature one of the great spiritual and cultural dissatisfactions of my life, yes.

I get to watch the same dream molder all over again, for much the same reasons.
 
Crazycryodude said:
The top thing on everybody's mind with the space program right now is how we're spending ~1.2% of the entire national GNP to produce little more than live TV broadcasts of Glushko turning a woman into chunky marinara.
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Hm? If our base RpT is 25% of GNP, then our current space spending limit is set at about 1% of it. Also, GDP and GNP are slightly different metrics, but probably not enough to be relevant.
 
Dwergar said:
And we can either pull on other people for payloads (btw, where is Germany vis-a-vis space ITTL? And nukes?) or go for SOI ourselves (so military is paying for payloads). Or both.
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Only we're what, 17 years after the Germans were killing Soviets by the millions? Probably not politically possible, and Germany likely has been told "gonnae no" about rocketry by the Soviets, British and French just as they were in OTL (see how much trouble OTRAG had in the 70s in OTL).

That said, turning the moon mission into the start of TTL's Intercosmos is a brilliant idea here, and Germany might be able to come along if Poland, China and as many of our other allies as we can get are involved. India might be interested too.

Dwergar said:
Considering the space budget - since moonshot likely would mean RLA being more or less done, what would be left is just providing payload (since R7M & RLA provide quite enough lift for the next half century or more - so long as they're used often enough).
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Well, with the RLA being modular, we do have the option to say "the heavy variants will have to come next decade" to Glushko (IMO we would be asking for trouble if we said "the heavy variants will have to come never" to him - he wants his big rocket) and basically spread out the development costs of the RLA over more time. We should be able to do a lunar orbit mission with a middle of the road version of the RLA.

Also, the payload development costs for the Lunar landing are non-trivial. The LEM was one of the most difficult parts of Apollo, as was the space suit that allowed men to actually walk on the surface (both were significantly harder than the Saturn V itself, which was comparatively the easy part of the Apollo R&D). Both the LEM and the moonsuit were significant pacing items as well - if schedules are going to slip, the really serious slippage would happen in our versions of these programs, especially as the lower level of Soviet materials science makes the moonsuit even more challenging for us, even ITTL, than it was for the OTL USA.

If we defer those programs until the 70s, not only do we reduce the costs we have to convince the SupSov to accept during the 1960s, but we also get to take advantage of the vastly better materials science of the 70s to do those projects for less money than OTL's Apollo.

Pittauro said:
this was mentioned to be a viable choice, actually, though an unpopular one with people in the chat.
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The exponential rise of civilian technology means that it is MUCH cheaper to go to the moon in the 1970s than it is in the 1960s. Better textile and plastics help the moonsuit, microchips save enormous amounts of weight on the LEM-equivalent, not to mention on the capsule and the RLA (but savings on the LEM-equivalent dominate since each kilo of LEM-equivalent needs to be lifted off the surface of Earth, inserted into lunar trajectory, inserted into lunar orbit, landed on the moon, then much of it lifted off the moon again, placing exponentially more stress on lower stages).

So if we build the infrastructure for sending men to Lunar orbit in the 1960s, it doesn't cost that much more to land men on the surface by the mid-70s or so.

And if the Americans do beat us to a manned surface landing, the slow and steady approach means a 2-7 man moon base for c. 3 month manned stays isn't that much more expensive than just the surface landing itself (and if we've got Intercosmos going, sending scientists of allied nations to the moon for a stint on the moon base could be a diplomatic tool of sufficient utility to win the support needed to turn a temporary base into a base that might be worth operating for a few years). In other words, so long as we win the race for Lunar orbit, I am reasonably confident that the Americans beating us to the landing can be overshadowed by just going to the moon better and not have it break the bank. (Though predicting what impresses people is an imprecise thing and likely down to background rolls.)

The really expensive part of the space program is the R&D - actually doing cool stuff in space is relatively cheap (as in, costing tens of millions of roubles instead of billions of roubles).

As such, even if we decide we don't want to push for the landing in the 1960s, that doesn't mean cancelling the landing outright. Indeed, I'm not sure that would be a good idea. While we may be doubting that the SupSov will support the high yearly costs of the moon program currently, remember that we got into this because the SupSov were upset that the first artificial satellite was American. Whatever the exact value of prestige, it is clear that the SupSov puts SOME value in it, and considering how high they've allowed the funding for rocketry to go (indeed, how high they encouraged it to go - the SupSov are the ones who offered the ministry more funding if we took them too the moon!) it is clear that they put a high price on the value. They may be having some regrets as they face up to just how high the bill could be, but if we are being told that the sustainable level of funding for the space program could be as high as 50% of the current level, we shouldn't over-correct.

As we consider how to keep the costs during the 1960s acceptable, we also need to consider that, well, people want us to do stuff in space.

Crazycryodude said:
the SupSov is honestly correct to be upset with us and force cutbacks. Hell, they're arguably being way too generous already given how much we're spending vs. how fucked things still are groundside.
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OK, where are you getting this from? Last mention I can find with regards to the politics is:

Blackstar said:
Continuous work on the development of the rocketry program has continued to receive mild but acceptable criticism.
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It is all very well to talk about the things that need doing on the ground, but the people who live on the ground also need infrastructure in space. Plus, we are constrained by politics. Just like when Stalin told us to build the occasional boondoggle, the SupSov (and indeed, the people themselves) will have boondoggles they want too. And in this case, the SupSov wanted the moon. We may have been irresponsible to try to give it to them, and we may be spending too much right now (though most of the money is going into the RLA, and the RLA looks like it will be great at the bread and butter of launching weather sats and coms sats, so IMO we are doing well at putting money into space things that will improve life on the ground), but at the end of the day, we still have to make people happy to do our jobs.

Regards,

fasquardon
 
Crazycryodude said:
The top thing on everybody's mind with the space program right now is how we're spending ~1.2% of the entire national GNP
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I don't think that is correct, our base resources is government budget, not GNP. Though, the majority of our GNP and GDP is part of the government budget through SOEs, as private companies still have fairly harsh limits on how big they can get.

Anyway, even ignoring that: 105 rocketry/Base 2790=3.8%. I think we're still on 25%+15%, so we directly control 1/4 of the government budget (and 15% is enterprise self investment funds). If we assume 0 private enterprises contribute to GNP, that's still <1% of GNP going to rocketry... but yes, it is awfully close. We probably hit about the 1.2% GNP mark this turn with the wind tunnel and cosmodrome combined.
 
fasquardon said:
Only we're what, 17 years after the Germans were killing Soviets by the millions? Probably not politically possible, and Germany likely has been told "gonnae no" about rocketry by the Soviets, British and French just as they were in OTL (see how much trouble OTRAG had in the 70s in OTL).

That said, turning the moon mission into the start of TTL's Intercosmos is a brilliant idea here, and Germany might be able to come along if Poland, China and as many of our other allies as we can get are involved. India might be interested too.
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Eh. Germans probably do have a decently big conventional army (if one stiffened by OGSVG), and I presume are collaborating on bleeding edge tech (even with what Nazis did to the state, it should still have one of the better educational systems on the continent - we're likely graduating more students by now, but on quality I'm not so sure), even if ICBMs and nukes are still a no-go (for Germany - I'd assume our mailboxes to have quite a few of the fellows. They might even have our passports!).

So, how could we speed up creation of Intercosmos? Given progress in integration of COMECON and other fellows, could deliberate ignorance of budget limits and ensuing crisis work?
 
Dwergar said:
So, how could we speed up creation of Intercosmos? Given progress in integration of COMECON and other fellows, could deliberate ignorance of budget limits and ensuing crisis work?
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I can only see that coming from regular space activities - giving them a reason to sign up for satellite services and, if we want them to put in manned program money, putting up their astronauts on our own program first. So it'll only likely happen soon if we can exit the moon program onto a course of regular manned flights and civilian satellites, while keeping on good terms with the bloc. Also, given OTL, it's unlikely that half of Europe will bump up budgets enough to support manned exploration, though they might help keep a station program alive.
 
Crazycryodude said:
Blackstar is very good at cultivating proper bureaucratic mindsets in her players, I honestly think it's a great narrative and artistic achievement that she managed to organically get us to recreate the OTL Space Race despite most of the thread thinking that we were playing it so much smarter. A bunch of huge nerds that read books all day in Moscow getting super excited about (in hindsight obviously absurd) dreams of asteroid mining and moon bases and the triumphant conquest of the solar system for communism in the late 50's/early 60's, only to be reality checked by everybody who actually works for a living saying "hey assholes, I have no access to a full doctor and it takes my kid two hours to get to his shitty underfunded school, why are you setting my taxes on fire and exploding all these pilots to maybe if we're lucky have two dudes briefly touch a rock?!?!" is a pretty damn accurate way to model this period.
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"A bunch of huge nerds"
"hey assholes"

Could you maybe not brag about us failing at something we really wanted, while also insulting us at the same time, too?
 
This just proves that SupSov needs to give us a bigger budget so we can do everything at the same time. 80% of GNP should do.
 
Dwergar said:
So, how could we speed up creation of Intercosmos? Given progress in integration of COMECON and other fellows, could deliberate ignorance of budget limits and ensuing crisis work?
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@Blackstar Could we propose a bureaucracy action for this?

Dessard said:
Also, given OTL, it's unlikely that half of Europe will bump up budgets enough to support manned exploration, though they might help keep a station program alive.
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Yeah, we could maybe get other countries chipping in a little, but the real attraction of Intercosmos is getting to show off/burnish our internationalist credentials. It is a way to keep SupSov members on side who might not necessarily see the value of the space program otherwise.

Also, if a program is tangled up in international agreements (like our government promising the Chinese government that they can have a cosmonaut on the second moon landing), that makes the whole moon program harder to cancel.

Regards,

fasquardon
 
Derpmind said:
"A bunch of huge nerds"
"hey assholes"

Could you maybe not brag about us failing at something we really wanted, while also insulting us at the same time, too?
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That is who we, the player character Nikolai Voznesensky, are. He is undeniably a massively out of touch nerd who lives in a little bubble of perfect spreadsheets and big dreams in his Moscow office. I didn't mean it as an insult directly at posters so much as a commentary on how heavily filtered our information and perspectives are through the narrative, and I'm pretty sure that Blackstar intentionally tries to get us to act "in-character" even in out-of-character spaces like the Discord through selective encouragement vs. silence on topics etc.

Sorry if it came off rude, that was not my intention, I was trying to (crudely) point out that anyone in the USSR with a "Whitey on the Moon" criticism definitely has a valid point. Even if there are also plenty of valid reasons to keep investing this heavily in the space program, a random worker from one of any of our dozens of second and third tier regional cities or uncountable towns and villages that have seen chronic underinvestment would be entirely correct to complain to their local SupSov representative about it.
 
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fasquardon said:
The exponential rise of civilian technology means that it is MUCH cheaper to go to the moon in the 1970s than it is in the 1960s. Better textile and plastics help the moonsuit, microchips save enormous amounts of weight on the LEM-equivalent, not to mention on the capsule and the RLA (but savings on the LEM-equivalent dominate since each kilo of LEM-equivalent needs to be lifted off the surface of Earth, inserted into lunar trajectory, inserted into lunar orbit, landed on the moon, then much of it lifted off the moon again, placing exponentially more stress on lower stages).

So if we build the infrastructure for sending men to Lunar orbit in the 1960s, it doesn't cost that much more to land men on the surface by the mid-70s or so.
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I think that there's an argument to be made that many of the civilian tech advances in the 70s that would make a moonshot cheaper came from running a moon launch in the 60s. Microchips and electronics development in particular were pushed forward by the space program pretty heavily, with Apollo alone eating something like 60% of the entire integrated circuit production of the US by 1963.

I also wonder whether whatever textiles and plastics we develop during the decade would be up for the kind of extreme environment resistance needed for a suit to walk on the moon if we didn't have a moonshot goal specifically pushing for something that could handle them, or if in absence of that pressure they'll only be developed to handle use on earth in an atmosphere under an ozone shield, since that's cheaper to make and the primary use case for the vast majority of our materials that aren't going to space.

While there probably around going to be a few things we could piggyback off of, I wouldn't expect a moonshot attempt in the 70s from a timeline when we didn't do one in the 60s to be as affordable as an attempt in the 70s from a timeline when we did.
 
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Dessard said:
I can only see that coming from regular space activities - giving them a reason to sign up for satellite services and, if we want them to put in manned program money, putting up their astronauts on our own program first.
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Eh. We can support manned flight by now, so that part can be covered as soon as their cosmonauts are trained up - still a lead-up of months to maybe several years, but reasonably quick.

On satellites, though... Places like Germany, and to lesser extent other fellow travellers could be incited to join through the removal of the biggest hurdle of a space program, by getting access to reasonably cheap and reasonably common space lift platform (quickly) - and quite possibly a stream of income through soviet and other orders, as we ourselves can outsource development and maybe even production of some payloads (say, survey or meteorological sats).

And then, some state that is not as advanced could still reap economic benefits through developing a cosmodrome of their own (with our help, of course), and maybe even localized production of R7 variant in time - an equatorial launch location could provide us significant benefits for available delta-v with little R&D expenditure; And with our rockets being set up for over-water transfer from Stalingrad to cosmodrome of our own, adjustment to moving through Black Sea - Mediterranean - Suez - Eastern Africa or maybe Indonesia shouldn't be very complex technically.
 
fasquardon said:
@Blackstar Say, any chance we could get some detail on what the US space program is doing and when they passed their major milestones? Am curious about how the two efforts are matching up so far.
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Generally speaking, the biggest change in timeline has been a far more military run program then OTL. Less emphasis on achievements and more on ICBM technology and spy sats. Larger number of enlarged super versions of the OTL Titan platforms, more SRB based designs, more modular designs. It fucks their moon goal, but their also mostly going for a militarized program anyway, and there is no photogenic Kennedy that managed to martyr himself.
 
I think people shouldn't be 'too' scared about the worst case quartering of the budget for space. For one what ultimately happens probably to an extent depends on some of the further choices made along the way to then as well. There might be some ways to stave off some of the budget cut, but lets assume there isn't or it wasn't chosen, what can one still do with just 25% of the budget? Is it still possible to pursue some reasonable space goals and keep a some what functional space program going?

I'd argue you could and that a possible budget for this could perhaps look a bit like this:

12 rp - space probe/science missions, continuation of Venus and Mars plus extra worlds
8 rp - RLA upgrades, engines, tech improvements and cost reduction work
5 rp - Space Station
5 rp - R&D for increased economic use of space, ie comm sats, radio/infra/optical observatories for agriculture, mineral searches, land surveys, etc

Which as one can see would let one cover most of the basics one would want plus continue some further development. Now whether @Blackstar would agree those numbers are reasonable is of course a matter of speculation and they probably have their own ideas on the matter. But I can at least give a basic argument why something like these numbers and why those costs should be some what reasonable, if not perhaps some what generous in at least some cases.

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The space probe cost estimation is based on that the current probe designs are more expensive then they could be for several reasons. One the current launch system can't throw heavy weights at reasonable costs. Which means substantial weight restrictions, meaning much more cost to make low weight components.
Also further scale increase is an option, for instance one could make just a singular specialty probe to study one planets atmosphere. Or one could use a common interplanetary bus to make 5 of them to study Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Titan; all of which are quite reasonably in reach with the RLA. Yes, you might not be able to launch to Mars every single launch window if you did such things, but at the same time making more the same probes using many the space standard interplanetary platforms would help cut costs down a moderate bit at least.
This is further benefited as much of the infrastructure was centralized in a single location already and the projects are already using some level of common parts and platforms. As such one should be able to launch say at least 50% more probes while trimming at least 20% of the total launch costs off. (I believe this is more budget then NASA has in this field anyway, which is a further argument that some scale advantages could be applied)

RLA upgrades, running for instance a major engine upgrade program, like say a full flow stage combustion should be fairly doable at 5 rp I believe, especially if not as rushed. If one at the same time did some work on the rocket for such a change that would surely only be a few rp as well.
Arguably this might again being a bit pessimistic, and one could also try and finance a slightly more ambitious program that say does a full flow engine plus tries to make a useful aerospike nozzle for the rocket. This shouldn't really even take a decade, as a full flow stage combustion engine was completed in the early 70s in the Soviet Union for their moon rocket, this due to it being just a some what more tricky extension of staged combustion engine technology. Hopefully something we could start before even the budget cut as such.
Aside of that Aerospikes themselves while like any rocket tech not being easy aren't remotely some impossible to make make thing either, they need an alloy with excellent heat conduction properties to really have a real chance to be economically useful, but NASA developed that material for fairly limited costs really, it was just a singular copper alloy they needed to handle the heat in some parts of the aerospike, otherwise it was further already existent materials. The bigger issue with aerospikes nozzles is really to get them lightweight enough to make them worthwhile to have at all, but it's not like there's that many other options to research to improve overall engine efficiency, so a long term background program of 1-2 rp could be a realistic cost over 10 years or more to try and develop such an engine improvement. Which would hopefully succeed at making an economic to make and use one.
(It's also worth noting Aerospike technology may be necessary to have any real shot at for instance being able to make a detonation engine as well, like the modern rotating detonation engine)

The Space Station cost at around 5 rp I think is reasonable, so long as one is aiming at just a modest sized one that one isn't in a big rush to build. It would give the manned side of the program something to do as well and learn some useful skills in how to work in zero-g, something you'd like to know if you want satellites you can maintain one day. It would give an extra destination for ones 'space plane' (space brick) to dock with as well and might create some future opportunity for international cooperation.

Considering many of the earth observing sats have some overlap with space probes, both for instance needing to be able to communicate and observe a planet. I think 5 rp is pretty reasonable to develop a type of earth observing sat and perhaps even deploy a few over say maybe 3 years time. Assuming the earliest version isn't aiming to high and is in part just a demonstration on usefulness and to allow people to experiment which methods of using the ability are most interesting. If they do gain economic return, that should hopefully be enough to maintain such constellations, or perhaps it could be routed back to overall earnings for the space program in general?
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I hope this demonstrates that even this pretty tight budget would allow for a some what productive space program still as such, with it being able to support a variety of ventures because there is no need to develop a new rocket, unlike what NASA had to do. So all the savings from that are being instead directed in doing moderate amounts of space activity and upgrades. Something that should be further helped by the RLA being a design that should be some what affordable to run, at least more so by quite a margin then the Space Shuttle ended up being.
 
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To think, that back in the great patriotic war era the Discordburo was seriously discussing asteroid mining in the 80s to crash the precious metal market. Blackstar even threadmarked the post that brought it to Threadviet attention (post 4366). And here we are now. Either she changed her mind a lot over the past 30 months, or threadmarking that pile of hopium was a clever plot to screw with us. I'd guess the latter.

fasquardon said:
Once the RLA is developed, if we don't utilize it enough (read: launch stuff), people will loose skills, the factory will be inefficiently utilized, low skill will lead to more mistakes on the launch pad and in the factory (which we'll have to spend money fixing) and we'll end up spending nearly as much money as we would by doing lots of stuff, but without the benefits of actually doing that stuff!
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Yeah, loss of institutional knowledge if we draw down the space program too much will cause escalating problems and we want to keep up a steady, if slow, pace as long as possible.

Given that America is less dead-set on its own moonshot in TTL, I think it's advisable for us to draw out our own quest for moon landing as long as possible. Start projects that are not strictly necessary for the moonshot, but would help it along and hopefully build up at least a little bit of infrastructure. Yes Comrade Aristoshit, I assure you learning to park fuel in orbit is essential to our quest to beet the capitalists to the Moon. Oh no we couldn't do without it, that would be way too dangerous and expensive I swear!
 
General_Urist said:
To think, that back in the great patriotic war era the Discordburo was seriously discussing asteroid mining in the 80s to crash the precious metal market. Blackstar even threadmarked the post that brought it to Threadviet attention (post 4366). And here we are now. Either she changed her mind a lot over the past 30 months, or threadmarking that pile of hopium was a clever plot to screw with us. I'd guess the latter.
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I'm pretty sure we could still do the Asteroid Mining experiments if we really want them. Just, y'know, it'll cost a lot and wouldn't be worth it. Having cheap gold or something would be nice, but there's no way it'd be able to be cost-competitive with normal mining. If we really wanted to spend tens of thousands of resources on normal mines we could crash the market that way too.

The reason to do it would be for the propaganda win and maybe for long-term sequel quest possibilities of being more prepared to do it economically then. Blackstar's prediction was that we could do two projects from this list in the 70s:
Code: 
-Mass Nuclearization
-HSR Project
-Asteroid Mining Experiments
-Ultima Tower Construction
-Computerization Experiments/Mass funding
We're going for Nuclear and Computers, maybe with some half-assed HSR if we can. If we wanted to do asteroid mining in the 80s to the degree of being a noticeable economic impact (even if not a cost-effective one) then we have to do the experiments for it in the 70s.
 
notgreat said:
The reason to do it would be for the propaganda win and maybe for long-term sequel quest possibilities of being more prepared to do it economically then. Blackstar's prediction was that we could do two projects from this list in the 70s:
Code: 
-Mass Nuclearization
-HSR Project
-Asteroid Mining Experiments
-Ultima Tower Construction
-Computerization Experiments/Mass funding
We're going for Nuclear and Computers, maybe with some half-assed HSR if we can. If we wanted to do asteroid mining in the 80s to the degree of being a noticeable economic impact (even if not a cost-effective one) then we have to do the experiments for it in the 70s.
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It's the early sixties and we're already almost done with high speed rail. Or is this project referring to extending it to Vladivostok and/or upgrading to Shinkansen-tier speeds? 'sides that, I am very surprised to see computerization listed alongside asteroid mining and such as a high-cost project. What sort of scope are we talking for it to be so expensive?

The Ultimate Tower meanwhile is a totally pointless boondoggle of zero if not negative worth and I'd be surprised if anyone here thinks it's a good idea.

I'm inclined to make sacrifices to allow the asteroid mining experiments, perhaps not mechanically ideal but it will be HELLA cool. Plus, I'm not aware of existing works that look at the beginning of asteroid mining- if it's present in a sci-fi work its often taken for granted.
 
notgreat said:
We're going for Nuclear and Computers, maybe with some half-assed HSR if we can. If we wanted to do asteroid mining in the 80s to the degree of being a noticeable economic impact (even if not a cost-effective one) then we have to do the experiments for it in the 70s.
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Is asteroid mining really realistic in the 80s already? With our current and suggested future budget limits, I'd have thought we'd first need to start cornering the partial and fully reusable rocket process, and I'm not sure we can achieve that before the 80s. Meaning asteroid mining would probably only really get going in the 90s at earliest?


Or is this like a major project, where one is allowed to spend far more on space because a major economic return is suggested?
 
Meme OGAS is a given, but I don't know that mass nuclearization is the way to go. It's better than letting fossil fuel reign, but we've already made a dramatic investment into hydropower, filling a similar niche. It might be better to do a smaller project pushing renewables research and give the major slot to asteroid mining.

But also, having said that...Maximum Space is cool and good, but I don't know that it's that essential to the fate of the USSR. It won't win the Cold War, assuming we even truly get a Cold War. I think there's been a bit of conflation about surpassing the US and using asteroid mining to crash the global metals market. I mean hell, the post that mentioned asteroid mining as a possibility also teased that it could cause a nuclear war.

If we don't get to asteroid mining in the 80s, that's not really an unrecoverable loss. The most important things in my mind are to normalize international space efforts and tech developments that will come from it, and to use the Moonshot to plant the seeds of Space Communism that can be harvested in the 80s and 90s onwards. Asteroid mining as the unimpeachable "something capitalism could never do" prestige project is only so attractive when being done by a USSR who's economic and cultural influence is beginning to outshine the US as a whole.

Like, if we want to address "why are you spending the GDP on rockets while the people suffer"...then get to pushing that HDI into the .90s and beyond. If we act consistently with developmental and techno-progressive ideals in all sectors, not just rocketry, it starts standing out much less.
 
Quickshot0 said:
Is asteroid mining really realistic in the 80s already? With our current and suggested future budget limits, I'd have thought we'd first need to start cornering the partial and fully reusable rocket process, and I'm not sure we can achieve that before the 80s. Meaning asteroid mining would probably only really get going in the 90s at earliest?


Or is this like a major project, where one is allowed to spend far more on space because a major economic return is suggested?
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it's asteroid mining experiment.

Basically have a rocket reach an asteroid and take a few grams to AT BEST a few kilograms worth of samples.
 
Pittauro said:
it's asteroid mining experiment.

Basically have a rocket reach an asteroid and take a few grams to AT BEST a few kilograms worth of samples.
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I see if it's just that, you could basically push that under an ambitious science mission I guess.... Fair enough. You might even need to try a few times. Though that would really not be a major project at all. As it doesn't sound like a you can only do two of these projects this decade kind of thing.

Which is why I thought it might mean launching an actual experimental processing system to an asteroid. Not all the logistics or infra, but at least the ability to scrape some moderate amount of material from an asteroid and see how well you can do in processing it. Well admittedly we now know quite a few asteroids are probably more like loose rubble piles, so that would be challenges of its own. Not sure even that would really qualify as major though, but it would at least be far more substantial.
 
Quickshot0 said:
I see if it's just that, you could basically push that under an ambitious science mission I guess.... Fair enough. You might even need to try a few times. Though that would really not be a major project at all. As it doesn't sound like a you can only do two of these projects this decade kind of thing.

Which is why I thought it might mean launching an actual experimental processing system to an asteroid. Not all the logistics or infra, but at least the ability to scrape some moderate amount of material from an asteroid and see how well you can do in processing it. Well admittedly we now know quite a few asteroids are probably more like loose rubble piles, so that would be challenges of its own. Not sure even that would really qualify as major though, but it would at least be far more substantial.
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It's pretty major, really. first asteroid sample OTL is from USA in 2010 from a quick wiki check. before that there was dust samples from a comet, and a few other minor things before even that.
 
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