What impact would a reusable high-payload rocket have on present-day space travel?

A follow up to this thread in the Space thread over in OTC, I was wondering how 2010s and 2020s would be different if a [fictional] country had created by 2005 a non-reusable rocket that can carry about 100 tons to low-Earth orbit and a reusable version of the same by 2015.

I'd imagine that some would seek to create competition [but wouldn't necessarily make it in time] and those like Musk for which high-payload rockets are a means to an end (his Mars project) might consider changing over to use that one.

16 and 6 years aren't vast time differences, so I don't think there would be any major changes in things like daily technology, or even geo-politics, depending on which country made the discovery (I believe that in the other thread you implied it was somewhere in Eastern Europe). There would barely be any large scale economic impact at all. The personalities involved might be shuffled around (some Oligarchs might be in charge rather than our handful of billionaires), but otherwise it seems like it would just be 2021 except it's 2011 or so.

On a more detailed level, unlike the US, this is a small country trying to compete with larger, better funded ones, so their approach will be to try to solicit as many foreign cargoes as possible, including American ones. In the time period you are discussing, Soyuz was the cheap reliable surface to orbit spacecraft, so they are competing directly with Roscosmos. To the extent that they are successful in poaching American and European contracts, they are costing the Russians the money they need to keep their space program funded. Putin plays dirty, so international shenanigans are in order. Perhaps raising the gas prices, cutting off trade, even a cross-border excursion isn't out of the question (just ask the Ukrainians). So there will develop extreme political pressure to shut the program down, or at least transfer the technology to the Russians.

What kind of story are you telling? Alternate history, obviously, but is it action-oriented, character driven, an espionage thriller, or what?

Actually, it's in the Atlantic/Africa. But it spent a lot of time under Soviet influence, hence why I am referencing Russia/Soviet Union a lot. That's where they took that rocket from - it's basically a derivation of the Energia rocket. Unlike most of the Eastern Bloc they have no particular regrets on having been a member of it even if they are totally Westernized since then.

The story is mostly a government procedural sort of thing, which is why I want to know about the political repercussions. And the economical ones - this isn't all about foreign relations - which is why I am mentioning Elon Musk specifically [~Fighteer in case he is interested].

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Dec 31st 2021 at 12:14:25 PM

I gave all my thoughts in the Space thread, but I suppose I can summarize here.

In the early 2000s, there are two major private companies working on rockets: SpaceX (Elon Musk) and Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos). Both of them have as objectives rapid, cheap orbital launch, although with different ultimate goals. Musk wants to colonize Mars; Bezos wants to establish heavy industry in orbit.

In your timeline, this (evidently very rich) nation is adapting Energia to achieve (non-reusable) super-heavy lift capacity by 2005 and full reusability by 2015. 2015 is, coincidentally (?), the year when SpaceX achieves the first propulsive landing of an orbital rocket booster, Blue Origin having done this with a suborbital booster earlier in the same year.

Leaving Bezos aside for the moment, Musk's core motivation for founding SpaceX was to give the launch industry a kick in the pants, as he believed rockets at the time were too expensive to accomplish his goal of colonizing Mars. So what would he do in the situation described above? It could go one of two ways.

Scenario 1: Do it anyway

In this scenario, Musk may see in 2002 that a super-heavy lift vehicle is being prepared, but not have confidence that it will be able to accomplish the job. Also, it's not likely that the US will take advantage of its capabilities considering that it has Shuttle (again, at the time). He founds SpaceX and ends up building Falcon 9 on a similar timeline. Rather than standing alone, it is now in competition with our Energia derivative, although Falcon 9 and Energia would serve very different markets.

The question is then whether SpaceX proceeds with Starship. If rapid, cheap, fully reusable, super-heavy lift is available in 2015, I don't see why Musk would do that. Rather, he might try to get in on it himself by investing SpaceX's resources into this other nation's project. (ITAR might rear its head, though.)

Scenario 2: Do something else

If Musk sees that we'll have rapid, cheap, fully reusable, super-heavy lift capability in 2015, he might not even bother developing rockets, but would shift into some other area where he feels he can contribute. Given the four pillar ideas that he set forth in his post-PayPal plan: Internet, AI, Mars, and clean energy, the obvious second choice would be AI.

In this scenario, your Energia derivative is already solving Mars, so Musk puts his money into Tesla and a company that tries to solve general AI.

Edited by Fighteer on Dec 31st 2021 at 10:51:06 AM

Regarding 2015 it's a coincidence - my thinking is that making an Energia rocket reusable takes its time [development, production, testing, the inevitable mishaps that cause delays, occasional funding squabbles as the project is eating up a large part of their space budget etc.^note I have done a bit of math - 51.57 billion $ per 5.29*10^9$*(0.5^(10/28)+0.5^(9/28)+0.5^(8/28)+0.5^(7/28)+0.5^(6/28)+0.5^(5/28)+0.5^(4/28)+0.5^(3/28)+0.5^(2/28)+0.5^(1/28)+0.5^(0/28)) is the nation's space budget 2010-2022 - and it seems like if this project is as expensive as the Space Launch System it could easily be half of their space budget. I am assuming however that no matter how complicated this project is it can be made cheaper than SLS] and even copying the Energia design isn't free, since it needs modernization.

Incidentally, that means that they probably don't have the money to run a Mars program along the way too.

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Dec 31st 2021 at 12:10:01 PM

Well, the political implications are all still there, just with the "cross-border incursion" option removed, but with a "fund a guerilla-terrorist group" added.

The fictional country in question has an effective police, military/navy and intelligence/counterintelligence agency so that would never work. We aren't talking about an Atlantic Ukraine, here. Besides, they acquired the Energia the legit way and Russia still has Soyuz, Proton etc. which for small payloads are competitive.

It's your story.

So I am guessing the coda is that such a system may or may not greatly accelerate space expansion - depending on the launch costs of an Energia/Zenit derivative which are hard to estimate.

One thing regarding ITAR is that until 2013 anyone putting satellite technology on a foreign rocket would be due for a bureaucratic nightmare with the US government. So that country would not have many US customers before that year.