[war321]

I had some gripes with the way the timeline developed later on (like why in a world where Saturn Vs and Sea Dragons are getting launched, are space shuttles exactly like our world getting made? And getting launched to the moon?) but overall I do appreciate the serious take at an alternate history work on mainstream television.

[jessriedel]

One of the biggest causes of lack of realism is the audience. People know right away that “shuttle” means “post-Apollo spaceship”, and they don’t know enough about them to understand why it makes no sense to take it to the moon.

[war321]

But by being alternate history, you're already conditioning the audience to expect divergences and that presents a great opportunity to explore more varied alternatives that were being thrown around in the post-Apollo era. The Sea Dragon alone shows they were willing to expand audience expectations. They could've played around with ideas like the National Launch System (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Shuttle_...) and different kinds of lunar tugs.

I mean, James Cameron could've gone with generic sci-fi brick or saucer spaceships for Avatar, but instead gave us the beauty that was the ISV Venture Star, which introduced a lot of people to hard sci-fi design aesthetics.

[jessriedel]

The audience wants the historical feel, but they don’t actually know enough about spaceflight to judge reasonableness.

[shiroiuma]

I haven't seen this show yet, but I know a little about why the STS was developed and why it was really a bad idea (basically the military wanted the ability to launch and recover spy satellites intact without anyone seeing, and this drove the requirements).

However, if you have a big settlement on the Moon, wouldn't a "space truck" actually make a lot of sense, for carrying large cargo loads both to and from the Moon? What am I missing?

[thedrbrian]

>what am I missing?

The wings, wheeled landing gear, all that aerodynamic streamlining,etc. everything that makes it useful to fly in the atmosphere is dead weight on its way to the moon. Best off sending the supplies up in a simple capsule and using something like a space tug to take the capsule to the moon

https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacetug.php

[shiroiuma]

Interesting. But is that mass really that significant compared to the rest of the craft and cargo?

If it is, would it make sense to use the Shuttle (or something like it) to ferry cargo to and from orbit, and then use a "space tug" to transport it to the Moon without the extra mass of the Shuttle?

From what I read, the main problem with the Shuttle was the requirement of bringing cargo back to Earth, intact: this prevented using small, simple capsules, with disposable rocket stages like on Saturn V (or now with SpaceX, a reusable lower stage). This required a big Shuttle craft that was horrifically expensive to both build and to maintain, and we no longer use the Shuttle because they finally figured that out. However, in an alternate timeline with significant facilities on the Moon, they'll probably want to, for instance, manufacture stuff there with the low-g environment and ship it back to Earth, which would require some way of transporting such cargo safely through re-entry. Just sticking it in a disposable capsule might not be sufficient.

[JKCalhoun]

I think that's the idea — space tug for the Earth/Moon trip. Even the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey got that right with the Earth-orbiting space station being the transfer point from streamlined Orion Space Clipper to spherical, leggy Aries Moon Lander.

[jessriedel]

ChatGPT + wikipedia suggests that payload to LEO, dry mass for ascent (engines, fuel tanks, etc), and dry mass for return (wings, landing gear, etc) were all in the roughly 30 tons.

[b112]

Strong disagree. It's not the audience, because the audience watches loads of scifi without such things.

A lot of Apple TV is just weird. I suspect weird people have creative input, EG Apple execs, who shouldn't.

[rsynnott]

This is actually the future NASA wanted (kinda; the Sea Dragon was always a _bit_ on the fanciful side). The shuttle (or at least _a_ shuttle; early designs were pretty different) was supposed to sit alongside Saturn V descendants; the shuttle as a cheap frequent manned launcher (of course, in reality it was anything but, but they didn't know that at the time), and the Saturn V derivatives for big heavy stuff.

In the event, budgets got cut, and the Saturn V derivatives went away.

Granted, the Shuttle going to _the moon_ is a weird one, alright.