What Happens If Russia Refuses to Fly U.S. Astronauts?
Of the many things I didn’t see coming in the sixties, two items near the top of the list would have been:
a) NASA forgets how to build heavy-lift spacecraft, so
b) It relies on the Russians for all that.
Nope, though my faith in NASA as the future of spaceflight started to slide somewhere around Skylab, I definitely didn’t anticipate that. Even years after I started calling NASA the Federal Spaceflight Prevention Administration, I did not predict that they’d actually stop being able to launch manned spacecraft.
But here’s my shot at answering the question in the headline: Nothing happens. At least, not to the U.S. The federal government will stop pretending to have a manned space program. From now until the ISS breaks up and lands on Milwaukee, the Soviets sorry, the Russians will sell cut-rate rides to Belgians and Chinese with an occasional joyride to an American billionaire just to rub it in.
SpaceX and others not in the M/I C will have their funding pulled and go under in a blaze of lawsuits. Boeing, Lockheed and others will pull subsidies until the fall of the dollar and beyond. The American space program will consist of military satellite shots, which will continue to go quite well until the unintended consequences of the public school forced monopoly kick in and nobody in the continental US can count past 10. Or less, if they’ve lost a finger or two.
RussoDisney will build a huge new amusement park over the still-smoldering ruins of Milwaukee. Kim Jong Three will ceremonially open the park by launching a missile at a big yellow ribbon across the park entrance. It will miss and devastate an elementary school in Charlevoix. Strongly-worded letters will be exchanged.
Meanwhile, deep in an underground bunker somewhere in the American Southwest High Desert, the future takes shape…
Next time someone asks when the sequel* to Net Assets is coming out, I’m just going to refer them to you.
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* Sheesh, Bargaining Position and book’s worth of short stories were the frickin’ sequel.
That shouldn’t have landed in the spam locker, Bear. Sorry.
And you can use as much of that as you like for the plot of the next sequel, because I owe you one. I did try to contact you when I was writing Songs of Bad Men and Good, but when I couldn’t I just flat stole your idea for EMP bombs from Postage Due.
If it’s really important, somebody in the private industry will figure it out and we’ll have comparatively inexpensive rides to space in no time. No matter what, if there is a demand, someone will step up to provide the supply. That’s just the way it works.
Dragon X comes to mind – didn’t it already dock with the space station once? I can’t remember.
I’m of the opinion that NASA would be better served to just pay some private contractor to shuttle their astronauts than they would to try and come up with something on their own out of the bureacracy there. It’d be cheaper, faster, and if not better, at least sufficient.
Hey, Joel; it ain’t stealing, it’s homage. [grin] Like when I… borrowed Neil’s freefall kitty litter box for “A Little Pussy”. Or the… well, actually that story was chock full of old SF references.
I chuckled at the observation that this would confuse children of the 60s. Then I realized it probably would not. Except for landing on the moon, the other firsts (rocket, animal & person in orbit) were actually done by the Sowjets.
It would probably confuse children of the 90s, though.