Introduction -
Inspired by alternate history stories posted online, mainly Eyes Turned Skywards; a story told in a no drama, full of plausible facts, history-book-like-form, through short - maybe less than 500 words - posts, this silly and comical alternate history tells of what if A'tuin - the Discworld - crosses into our Solar System.
Surely it's an alternate history, because it matters with the what if the Discworld crosses into our solar system, however told from the perspective of the greatest judge of time; history, as in from the saying 'Let history be the judge of _'.
As with other alternate history stories, some basic knowledge of the history shortly before the point of divergence - or the event that caused everything to change in relation to our timeline.
This alternate history's point of divergence would be in the middle of the Cold War and the Space Race, where the Apollo 13 incident has just happened and President Nixon starts to think of cutting the budget of the Apollo program among the other stupid things he's about to do.
So this chapter shall cover the historical and technical basis of this exercise in alternate history, from Kennedy's 'We shall go to the Moon' speech, up to the point of divergence; when NASA and the USAF reports to Nixon of the discovery of a strange world flying past in between the orbits of Venus and the Earth.
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What went before.
At the tail end of the Second World War, the Russians and the Americans stand on German ground, doing all they can to unearth the technological secrets of the Nazi regime, an evil regime that has invented the ballistic missile, the jet fighter, and the electric submarine among other evil things they did.
The Americans, through Operation Paperclip, was able to 'rescue' Wernher Von Braun, the chief lead designer of the V2 rocket program - Nazi Germany's ballistic missile - along with his team of engineers. The Russians, on the other hand, did not disclose how they got the technology, however their lead designer was Korolev.
With the invention of the Atomic Bomb, came a race to deliver this powerful weapon onto an enemy's homeland, after all an atomic weapon is heavy, bulky in size, and difficult to detonate, and also difficult to deliver. However, with the invention of rocketry, superpowers can hypothetically deliver something to anywhere across the world, including a nuclear warhead.
Both sides were rushing to build the first rocket to get an object into orbit, the Americans had seriously underestimated the Russians.
To the surprise of the Americans, the Russians did just that, they were able to launch an object into orbit aboard an R7 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, it's called the Sputnik and it became mankind's first ever satellite.
This resulted in 'The Sputnik Crisis' which happened in the middle of 'The Red Scare', a general public paranoia that anyone could be a Russian spy living amongst them, and this crisis was further exacerbated by the American's embarrassing failure to launch their own satellite, the papers called the failure 'Kaputnik'
Kaputnik was mainly caused by an internal tussle between the Army and the Navy; President Eisenhower did not want to have America's first satellite to be associated with war, so he entrusted the Navy to launch America's first satellite, however the Navy did not have Wernher Von Braun, a name that would become renowned in spaceflight history. Wernher Von Braun's rocket eventually launched America's first space satellite.
Eventually, Eisenhower signed the National Aerospace Act, forming the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and all rocket testing and development had went to this agency.
However, the Russians were scoring firsts after firsts; the first man, the first woman, the first dog, the first monkey, the first object on the moon, the first spacewalk, and so on.
As more prestige went to the Russians as time went by, President John F. Kennedy directed NASA to go to the moon, the symbolic victory of the space race. What followed next would be the Apollo Program and the rockets associated with it; the Saturn family of rockets, all under the design and guidance of Wernher Von Braun.
History remembers well of the successes of the Apollo Program; landing the first man on the moon, however it tends to forget how the Apollo Program died and the plans to use Apollo hardware before the death of the program.
But who killed the program? Nixon, yup, President Nixon, the man who used 'The Madman Doctrine' as a legitimate way of getting his way in the world stage; from bombing the crap out of Laos for no reason at all to force the North Vietnamese to talk to the Americans (Laos was a neutral country with no affiliation to the communist North Vietnam and was minding their own business until the Americans dropped more bombs than the overall combined allied bombs dropped on the Axix into a small country.) to trying to break into the Democratic National Convention Headquarters.
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The characters who shaped history.
Wernher Von Braun - considered to be the father of the American space program, he designed the Saturn rockets and the Apollo program, as well as designing other rockets that would make the covers of Colliers' MAN WILL CONQUER SPACE SOON series of magazine.
A special note on Von Braun; because of him, the way government-contractor relationships were handled rather one-sided in favor of NASA, meaning that the contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.) were forced to follow Von Braun's design to the letter, rather than the government simply stating the objectives and allowing the contractors to engineer a way to get to the objective.
President Nixon - The reason why Laos hates the Americans and why the Space Shuttle was developed instead of further developing the plans of the Apollo Program.
George Mueller - A legend in spaceflight history as the head of the Manned program department of NASA, he's the guy that suggested the Integrated Manned Program.
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Meet the rocket (or, a dummies' guide to the Apollo missions and the Saturn V and the other things)
The hardware used for the Apollo program was no joke, it still is the strongest rocket ever built by humanity and it lofted three astronauts to the moon and back alive, however the absolute power of Apollo hardware was never demonstrated and only lived in the notes of Von Braun and other suggestions by the contractors.
Here are just some of the awe inspiring applications of the Apollo hardware that would serve heavily in this alternate history:
Apollo Interplanetary
Using nothing more than an untouched Saturn V (with the exception of the top part of the third stage (SIVB) where the Lunar Module once sat inside), there could have been a flyby of Venus by a team of three astronauts. As far as we're concerned, this would have been the furthest any human being would have gone to.
-Skylab
This may have been executed in real life, however it was only a small part of it, the Apollo-Skylab could have been bigger and could have lasted far longer than it had in our timeline.
Space Transportation System
We are talking about nuclear rockets, space shuttles, and large space stations to support an interplanetary civilization (or at least expedition), all using the Saturn V as their launch vehicle and other Apollo hardware.
The Saturn C5N would have lofted the SIVN stage/ the Nuclear Shuttle into orbit and - based on the designs for the Nuclear Shuttle - could have executed Apollo 8 through 17 without being thrown away, only refueled. Yes, Apollo 8 through 17, all the moon missions with the exception of Apollo 9, could have been done with only one Nuclear Shuttle, it can be reused ten times before the hardware would become unreliable due to wear and tear. Plus, this Nuclear Shuttle can take us to Mars and Venus with heavy payloads compared to the Apollo-Venus flyby.
As for the Apollo-Shuttle/ Saturn-Shuttle, that would be similar to the Space Shuttle approved by President Nixon with one exception; it would be launched on top of a reusable Saturn V first stage, either that or on top of another space shuttle-esque plane (space shuttle-ception)
Saturn MLV
There were plans to expand the capability of the Saturn V by adding extra boosters to the side, the Saturn MLV (Modified Launch Vehicle) would have played heavily with lofting heavy space station parts into orbit. One such modification had made the Saturn V into a monster, from 300 feet tall to 600 feet tall capable of lofting nearly 500 tons into Low Earth Orbit, it's called the Saturn V-24.
Contractors' Plans
Given Von Braun's heavy handedness with the contractors, most of the plans of the plenty of contractors in making the Apollo more efficient and better were hidden, kept in the lockers and drawers in the offices of the contractors, never to reach NASA.
These plans survived and had been uploaded online, painting a MUCH different picture of how Apollo hardware could have been used, here are some of the very notable ones;
Apollo Command Service Module Shuttle - a patent was filed by the contractors who constructed the Command Service Module where swing wings would be attached to the sides of a service module as well as a tail and landing gears, this would have allowed for advanced supersonic flight as well as potential non-rocket way of flying to orbit, probably being dropped from a B52 bomber and activating its engine mid-flight to reach orbit, similar to what the X42 had done.
Reusable Saturn first stage - filed by none other than Boeing, their plan was big, insane, and problematic, but it could have cut costs of the Saturn V, their plan was to attach a heat shield on the top of the SI (S-1, S-I - the first stage) as well as parachutes, and then they'll use large helicopters to catch the first stage mid-air and fly it back to Kennedy Space Center.
Longer Lunar Missions - There were plans to have used a heavier module lander that would allow for week long missions.
SII as an interplanetary spaceship - Lockheed Martin had a patent where the second stage of the Saturn V would have been used as an interplanetary spaceship capable of going to Mars. Dubbed the SIIB, it would be launched on top of another SII and SI, but it would be empty, it would be refueled in orbit by several SIVB tankers (If it sounds awfully familiar, it's because of SpaceX's plan for orbital refueling.)
Conclusion to the Introduction:
With the basic knowledge of the Apollo program and the things that could have been, with further explanations as we apply them to the alternate history, we now hand the show over to the story itself, the year is 1970, and Apollo 13 had just happened.
A/N: If you recognized some aspects of the spacecrafts in the story, then you're either reading the good science fiction stories or spent most of your time going through the internet looking for old plans and studies for the Apollo program. If you've found some erring technical problems or irregularities in terms of the technology used in this odd alternate history, well let's just say that Narrativium has some interesting side effects to reality surrounding it. (or throw in a comment/review, a proper one.)
As with other fictional alternate histories, this is a work of fiction, I do not own Discworld - that belongs to the late Sir Terry Pratchett (GNU Terry Pratchett!), and also let's just hand wave some implausible aspects of the technical details of the spacecraft, I'm just a huge fan of the Apollo program and not a rocket scientist!
The real story starts at Part 04, that is unless you do not mind being given a lecture on the alternate history of the story.