Nuclear Age Space Exploration [Space/Spaceships]

[AlexanderHowl]

One of the interesting implications of Spaceships is the idea that our civilization could have been much more effective in space than what actually occurred in OTL during the Nuclear Age (TL7). In an ATL where there was sufficient investment in space to allow for mass production of rockets, the prices would have probably dropped to align with the suggested prices in Spaceships (though the GURPS prices would have to be /5 to translate to the equivalent Nuclear Age prices). For the sake of simplicity though, we will keep to GURPS prices in this discussion.

With an expanded Nuclear Age Space Exploration, perhaps triggered in the ATL by having a habitable Venus and/or a habitable Mars, you would still need an affordable way the get off the Earth. I would suggest that the Humpback-Class Heavy Lift Vehicle would be one way to go. It is a massive three-stage reusable rocket capable of sending a 3,000 ton payload into LEO. The specifics are the following:

Humpback-Class HLV (TL7)

First Stage (SM+12): Upper Stage (Front 1-6), Fuel Tanks (Central Core-5 and Rear Core-5), Soft-Landing System, and Chemical Rocket-2.52 mps

Second Stage (SM+11): Upper Stage (Front 1-6), Fuel Tanks (Central Core-5 and Rear Core-5), Soft-Landing System, and Chemical Rocket-2.52 mps

Third Stage (SM+10): Upper Stage (Front 1-6), Fuel Tanks (Central Core-5 and Rear Core-5), Soft-Landing System, and Chemical Rocket-2.52 mps

And one possible payload-

Icarus-Class Passenger Shuttle (SM+9): Steel Armor (Front 1, Central 1, and Rear 1), Control Room (Central Core 1), Habitat (Rear Core 1), Chemical Rocket (Rear 2), Fuel Tanks (Rear 3-6), Passenger Seats (Front 2-6), Hanger Bays (Central 2-6), and Winged.

The 84,000 tons of reaction mass per launch would cost $67.2M and the soft-landing systems per launch would cost $17M, for a total of $84.2M per launch. If we assume that the other costs associated with the Humpback-Class also equal $84.2M per launch, the cost to send an Icarus into LEO would be $168.4M per launch (an Icarus would return to the Earth by using its wings).

An Icarus would have 1,000 passenger seats and a cargo capacity of 500 metric tons. If we assume that 10% of the passenger seat are reserved for attendants and other non-paying passengers, that would leave 900 paying passengers. If we assume the luggage of the passengers if 0.05 tons each (50 tons total), that leaves 450 tons for cargo. If we assume that we charge the same for a passenger as we do for cargo, a ticket cost of $300,000 per passenger and/or ton of cargo to LEO would give a healthy profit and would align with the costs for TL7 space travel presented in Spaceships 2.

So, what type of adventures would you have in a TL7 setting with regular enough space travel to allow for the reduced costs presented above (remember, the costs are in GURPS $, not Nuclear Age $)? As an aside, a SM+9 vehicle could reach the Moon, land on it, and return through staging non-reusable sections, so the first landing on the moon would occur really early in such a setting, probably in the mid-50s. Do you think that such a setting would continue into TL8 or would it diverge into TL7+1?

[Anthony]

Well, you've got something variant going on for this to actually make sense, but there's no need for dramatically different tech.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Well, you've got something variant going on for this to actually make sense,

Some sort of massive increase in societal wealth perhaps but you'd be looking at some place more optimistic than Gernsback.

Let's see, you've got c. 300x the capacity of a Saturn V and you'd probably need to build a hundred or so to get the price fully down. So that's 30,000x as much space activity (not even including the resusability) and quite possibly 30,000x the general wealth needed to fuel that level of activity.

Nope, starkly incredible. I have no idea what such a place would look like. Perhaps a TL7 post-scarcity economy.

Youy also ned a radically alternate timeline. You might need soemthing like a world that hit TL7 and was very successful at that level but also one that plateaued there for a couple of centuries. There's no way you could ahve fit this much development into the time between the end of WWII and 1980 in our timeline.

[RogerBW]

Well… no Test Ban Treaty means Project Orion doesn't get killed off.

At which point it's External Pulsed Plasma all the way, with 2mps per tank of bombs. Three tanks gets you into orbit (plus one for the drive, plus dDR 50 of armour - one system for SM14, two for SM13, three for SM12, four for SM11, five for SM10) and you still have a useful payload for your crew and CASABA HOWITZER armament.

[Astromancer]

Heck, if there had been the will to invest in rocketry and space travel in the late 1940's many of Goddard's and von Braum's ideas and designs would have functioned. Once in space regularly there would have been improvements. Allow a space race to start earlier and last longer and we might have Mars bases.

[AlexanderHowl]

Or orbital solar arrays. NASA came up with a full design for the infrastructure, including orbital colonies, required to supply the world with solar power using materials mined from lunar mining facilities back in 1977. Depending on the level of investment, they could have had 10 TW of electricity production by 2020, with an annual investment of 1% of US GDP every year for the first ten years.

After ten years, revenues start to reduce overall costs until it reaches breakeven by 2000, when it rapidly starts to generate much more revenue than it costs, eventually generating $4 trillion per year by 2020. So, by not investing in space, we ended up losing $4 trillion per year of economic activity. You could have paid for the entire federal government with revenues from the orbital solar array, and we would have avoided global climate change without even trying. Instead, we invested in computers and social media, which will be of great help when the seas rise.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Or orbital solar arrays. NASA came up with a full design for the infrastructure, including orbital colonies, required to supply the world with solar power using materials mined from lunar mining facilities back in 1977. Depending on the level of investment, they could have had 10 TW of electricity production by 2020, with an annual investment of 1% of US GDP every year for the first ten years.

After ten years, revenues start to reduce overall costs until it reaches breakeven by 2000, when it rapidly starts to generate much more revenue than it costs, eventually generating $4 trillion per year by 2020. So, by not investing in space, we ended up losing $4 trillion per year of economic activity. You could have paid for the entire federal government with revenues from the orbital solar array, and we would have avoided global climate change without even trying. Instead, we invested in computers and social media, which will be of great help when the seas rise.

"Came up with a full design" is not really as strong a statement as you're making it out to be that that design would in any respect work.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Or orbital solar arrays. NASA came up with a full design for the infrastructure, including orbital colonies, required to supply the world with solar power using materials mined from lunar mining facilities back in 1977. .

This is irrelevant to TL7 space industrialization. There is no way you're jumping from a Saturn V to a monster rocket the size of a Nimitx-class supercarrier. That's why I said this needed to belong to a highly variant alternate timeline.

As an example of the problems, even though your full production price appears to come in under a billion $ before the payload the prototype would of course have cost 100x that and that would be on the rough orsder of the entire cost of the Apollo program just for your first rocket. Not happening in our timeline.

What you need is some sort of timeline where space tech froze at TL7 for long enough to first build a SM+10 rocket and then work your way upwards. This would take multiple decades for each generation of rockets of increasing SM. That the TL would not advance past TL7 during this time period would be another anomaly that would need explaining.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

"Came up with a full design" is not really as strong a statement as you're making it out to be that that design would in any respect work.

Orbital power generation isn't that much of a problem. Building and running a circumlunar infrastructure to build, maintain and operate orbital power satellites is a big problem. It is truly raining soup up there. Getting there at an acceptable price and surviving are the problems. But power generation would be easy.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Orbital power generation isn't that much of a problem. Building and running a circumlunar infrastructure to build, maintain and operate orbital power satellites is a big problem. It is truly raining soup up there. Getting there at an acceptable price and surviving are the problems. But power generation would be easy.

Orbital power generation is indeed easy...so long as you want to use the power in orbit.

Getting it to the surface is a bit less of a trivial solved problem.