Baikonurek Cosmodrome, Boratstan
December 1960
Comrade Shroomanski, Premier of the Zenobian Onion, had flown down specially to Baikonurek for a short visit, to partake in the celebratory speechifying and parading in honor of the glourious cosmonautical and bureau-technocraticoid achievements of the Zenobian space program. After giving one of his famous not-so-Seekrit Speeches, Shroomanski settled down to have a discussion over tea, cigars, and corn, on the future of the program with the Interim Chief Designer, Comrade Syrgy Pavylyvych Kyrylyv.
"Comrade Shroomanski, our options are myriad. We have now, on the drawing board a vast legion of rockets, capsule concepts, and even schemes for landing on the moon!"
Shroomanski scratched his head. "The moon?"
"The moon!"
"Why the moon?"
"It is inevitable. The progress of technology, social advances away from unnecessary blind batrachian belligerent buttheadedness and towards peaceable agreement and cooperation on great projects for the advancement of science and civilization, it will happen, Your Excellency. And there are only two possibilities as to who will do it first, with the fall of Thanasia and the struggles of Stenchia and Angliannica to maintain their unjust colonial oppression over our browner comrade-nations such as Shroomalia."
The premier nodded to himself, and sipped from his glass. "Us, or the Murcan capitalists..."
"Da. So it is a choice, whether we will be first to explore a new, virgin celestial body, or..."
"Sloppy seconds. Da! I see; we must press on or become a laughingstock. But what of your complex schemes?"
"As I said, Your Excellency, there are many possibilities. The simplest and perhaps most glorious, but also most technically challenging, would be to build a very large capsule- something seven or eight times the weight of the little Vostoks- and a very, VERY large rocket. Then, we put the enormous capsule on the enormous rocket, and hurl it to the moon! The capsule is large enough to contain copious fuels and instrumentations, including a four-cosmonaut crew, and there are no fancy orbital rendevous steps to go wrong like in other plans. The men leave the earth, the men land on the moon, the men leave the moon, the men land on the earth."
"I like it."
"As do we all. We call it
direct ascent. The problem is that while it is easy to explain, it is hard to do. During the War, even the maddest Thanafanafofantasians never conceived such an enormous rocket in their wildest wet dreams. Design and development costs will be immense; the project must consume the entirety of the space exploration budget for years, and any serious setback in testing and operation could be a disaster."
"Hmmms. I see. What of your other plans?"
"These can be achieved with smaller rockets and are thus less demanding, which is of course all to the good. Broadly speaking, our choices depend on whether we want to construct a huge moon rocket, or merely a moderately large orbital rocket. With a huge moon rocket, we can simply pile together all the hardware we need in one go and hurl it to the moon."
"How then is this different from the... direct ascent?"
"In that instead of hurling one enormous capsule at the moon, we will use multiple components that must rendevous in space. This is more challenging, but it can be done-
if we build the rocket."
"Must this rocket also be as large as the direct ascent rocket?"
"Nyet. It will, however, be most splendiferous and large by any normal standards, standing roughly a hundred meters tall, and equipped with as many as thirty engines to get it aloft. We're planning to call it the N1... ah, Your Excellency, are you all right?"
"Da! Da! I was just... distracted. Mmm... heavenly body..."
"... Ah, shall I continue, or do you wish me to explain at another time?"
"Nyet, nyet, go on."
"Alternatively, we can proceed with a simpler, more ruggedizable rocket design which is already entering the concept stage- though the hardware is not yet firmed up. We call it... the Proton."
"What's the catch?"
"A Proton cannot possibly carry enough hardware to put a crew on the moon."
"Wretch! Did you not just tell me you could do it!"
"
Two Protons, however, can."
"So you... tie the Protons together?"
"We have investigated this possibility. Unfortunately, Comrade Landau and his students assure us that Proton-Proton fusion is decades in the future. Instead, we will simply launch the Protons separately, each carrying roughly half the burden. Then, we assemble the hardware either in orbit around the Earth, or around the moon. When the combination is placed together in safe comradeship in lunar orbit, we transfer personnel to a specialized lander. This, too, is complicated- quite a few steps to go wrong, but it places minimal budgetary demands on the rocket-science side of the project. Rocket production, though, may prove expensive- two rockets per mission, and there will need to be a number of missions prior to the final landing on the moon."
"Hmms. I see. So, one HUEG rocket for direct ascent, one merely very large rocket for the combinatorialized version, or two less large ones, likewise combinatorialized... what other concerns do we have? What capsule do you envision for flight to the moon?"
"For direct ascent, we need a massive, four-man capsule that contains copious fuels, as explained earlier. Developing such a capsule would prove expensive, and as with the super-rocket, any failure could catastrophically set back the program since we would have no backup plans. This four-man capsule would not be useful for any other purpose, as well."
"Alternatives?"
"The most favored proposal is the Soyuz, a next-generation capsule that is still on the drawing boards. It would seat three, contain integral boosters capable of reaching lunar orbit without additional rockets, and be comfortable...ish."
"Comfortable-ish?"
"A brave man who did not mind smelling very bad could live in one for as much as two weeks."
"I see. What else?"
"Some radical engineers wish to design a... call it a spaceplane, a reusable vehicle which could reenter the earth's atmosphere without being irretrievably burninated, and thus used over and over on multiple missions. The projected long-ranging version would seat three like the Soyuz, but would need special boosters to reach the moon, unlike the Soyuz."
"A reusable- this is going to be expensive, da?"
"Da! Personally, I would be just as happy to wait on development of reusable shuttlecraft until the next decade- advances in metallurgical and computronic scientifics are needed. But it is at least conceivable that we could do it in this decade, at great cost. It would certainly be a remarkable achievement of Zenobian engineering if we did."
"I don't know... what about the capsule I am hearing about, the two-mang one with which we will do all manner of impressive stuntitude?"
"With boosters, this capsule
could reach the moon, and... I
suppose we could build a one-man lunar lander to go with it. It's at least possible. But... it would be an inglourious and improvised solution; I would much prefer to go forward with Soyuz if possible."
"A point. However, I have other concerns about the two-mang capsule. What if the Murcans build this before us? I am worried!"
"Da, we must do this before the Murcans."
"It is more than a matter of prestige! If the Murcans send up two meng at once, who knows what they will get up to? They will pollute the cosmos with their degeneracy and decadent ways! NAY! We must send our UPSTANDING NEW ZENOBIAN MANG up into space in this capsule first! Also, we must send WOMEN into space, to further reduce the risk! Get on it!"
"...Ah, if we can find women candidates for space flight, I'll see what I can do. This may prove difficult, of course-"
"Da, da, it is not urgent. Not unless the Murcans threaten to totally overwhelm space with their oiled musculatures and hot dogs and Coca-Cola and whatnot."
"But we will push ahead on the two-mang capsule regardless, and on other things such as the walking of space. You have been most generous in funding our researches, Your Excellency."
"The program has done amazing things for Zenobian prestige. Even in far Shroomalia, our Killyshnikov-wielding brown-comrades can tune in on their crystalloid radiophones and behold the glories of our beeping, and take heart in the might of commienism!"
Practical upshot:
-Concrete Zenobian plans for the short term future include the development of the two-man Voskhod space capsule, EVA suits, and in the nearish future the Proton medium-lift rocket.
Broad options for a moon program include:
1)
Direct Ascent
This involves building a superheavy booster (larger than a Saturn V), and a superheavy four-man capsule, and simply sending the capsule to land. Instead of the complex three-module system used by Apollo, we have
one module... but it is large, very expensive, will take a long time to develop, and setbacks in either the superheavy rocket (Vulkan) or the superheavy capsule (Qvartet) could devastate our program.
2)
Historical Lunar Landing
This is, basically, the same method used by the Apollo astronauts, only with red flags and funny-looking hardware. We use a two or three-man capsule, an attached lunar lander, and whatever extra 'kicker' rockets may be needed to get the hardware to the moon. For most (all?) possible configurations of hardware available to us, doing it this way would require us to develop the N-1 rocket, a Saturn V equivalent.
3)
Earth/Lunar Orbit Rendevous
This allows us to launch the various components of the lunar landing system (the manned capsule, the lunar lander, and assorted docking and 'kicker' modules as needed) on multiple rockets, then link the components up in orbit around the Earth or around the moon. It is somewhat more complicated, but we can do it without developing the N-1. On the other hand, the extra investment in Proton boosters required to do each joint mission, scaled over the cost of the equivalent of multiple Apollo missions (say, Apollo 8, 10, and 11), is significant. Also, using two launches means double the risk of one of the rockets exploding and ruining the whole mission, which is not to be sneezed at.
____________
In addition, we must consider advanced capsules- what are we flying to the moon?
1) If we want to go direct ascent the choice is simple: Qvartet is the only thing that can land on the moon with enough fuel to take off again without a dedicated lunar module. This option is cool, but expensive and has a lot of drawbacks- on the other hand, it is technically
simpler.
2) The three-man Soyuz is a good option (historically, most of the Soviet moon plans used it). One advantage of using Soyuz is that Soyuz capsules come with an integral booster capable of getting them to lunar orbit on their own power. For our other options (below), we'd need to launch a specialized kicker rocket along with the manned vehicle.
We can either use Soyuz more or less the way the Americans would use Apollo, or we can develop a specialized kicker rocket which would allow a Soyuz capsule to land
directly on the moon and take off again.
Doing this latter method would commit us to a joint launch; not even an N-1 can carry both the Soyuz and the specialized Kicker-C stage we'd need for this job. The counterbalancing advantage, though, is that we develop Kicker-C instead of a lunar module, which simplifies our testing requirements somewhat in the final stages of the program.
The Soyuz is probably our most practical bet, but not our only one.
3) Yet another option is the "Lapot" minishuttle- this would be
functionally equivalent to a Soyuz capsule, and allows most of the same mission profiles. However, the minishuttle is reusable, and can reenter the atmosphere repeatedly. We save money on capsules and gain a huge bonus for coolness, but the development costs of the minishuttle are very high. Lapot can also be researched to a slightly higher max R&D than Soyuz, giving us a marginally lower risk of catastrophic capsule failures during the first few tests of the three-man vehicle.
The minishuttle would require a kicker to reach lunar orbit, and of course would require us to develop a lunar module, just like a normal Soyuz landing would.
This method is very cool, and I have a soft spot for advancing shuttle technology because of my role in SCRAMming up, but it is probably not the most efficient method.
4) We can, in principle, send
Voskhod (a modified version, I'd think) to the moon. This will, again, require a kicker. We would also have to develop a more expensive
one man lunar lander, since we need one guy to stay with the Voskhod command module while the other guy goes down to the moon. This will be lonelier on the lunar surface.
In my opinion this is a lame and inglorious way to win the race, and I hope neither side picks it.