Had the Space Race stayed on trajectory after Apollo 12...
- Thread starter M79
- Start date
This would have required the continuation of the Saturn heavy lift rocket program. Both the manufactor & skilled employment & the R & D that is liable to continue with heavy lift Saturn rocket production. It is possible we would not be paying the Russians for their aging rockets to service the international space station or certain other commercial lifts.
Skylab is likely to have been stabliized in a better orbit & not lost, so the waste of not getting full use would be avoided.
With whatever other project requiring heavy lift would follow further research, discovery, spin off technology, ect... Keeping general technology advance broader.
Probablly more manned projects in orbit, & possiblly extended Lunar expeditions after the original Apollo series finishes. If a Lunar water source is found then the odds of extended expeditions are increased.
Skylab is likely to have been stabliized in a better orbit & not lost, so the waste of not getting full use would be avoided.
With whatever other project requiring heavy lift would follow further research, discovery, spin off technology, ect... Keeping general technology advance broader.
Probablly more manned projects in orbit, & possiblly extended Lunar expeditions after the original Apollo series finishes. If a Lunar water source is found then the odds of extended expeditions are increased.
Archibald
Banned
this is one of my favourite alt-space history.
Briefly: Nixon november 1968 transition team (on space) was chaired by a nobel price, and inventor of the laser, Charles H. Townes.
In its report, issued January 8, 1969, Townes expressedly called Nixon to continue Apollo. No shuttle, no space station (steps backward) no Mars (bridge too far).
It was a report that made tons of sense, but was not heard - a crying shame.
January 1969 was the perfect moment to continue Apollo. Saturn V production was on hold since July 1968, but not dead yet (it was stopped definitively in January 1970, a year later)
Where would the space program be ? God know.
The major roadblock is Apollo 13. Both Nixon and NASA top brass were scared like hell by the near miss. On the other hand, Apollo itself survived the 1967 fire, and the shuttle survived two accidents and 14 deads, so perhaps Apollo would have survived past Apollo 13.
As for the Soviets, their LK lander was a piece of junk, but they had a much better system on the drawing board, the L3M.
If the american keep on with Apollo, the Soviets will build the L3M and the DLB lunar base.
Briefly: Nixon november 1968 transition team (on space) was chaired by a nobel price, and inventor of the laser, Charles H. Townes.
In its report, issued January 8, 1969, Townes expressedly called Nixon to continue Apollo. No shuttle, no space station (steps backward) no Mars (bridge too far).
It was a report that made tons of sense, but was not heard - a crying shame.
January 1969 was the perfect moment to continue Apollo. Saturn V production was on hold since July 1968, but not dead yet (it was stopped definitively in January 1970, a year later)
Where would the space program be ? God know.
The major roadblock is Apollo 13. Both Nixon and NASA top brass were scared like hell by the near miss. On the other hand, Apollo itself survived the 1967 fire, and the shuttle survived two accidents and 14 deads, so perhaps Apollo would have survived past Apollo 13.
As for the Soviets, their LK lander was a piece of junk, but they had a much better system on the drawing board, the L3M.
If the american keep on with Apollo, the Soviets will build the L3M and the DLB lunar base.
Others have pointed out that preserving Saturn/Apollo might have been possible.
However, the funding that NASA got during the '60s was simply unsustainable for long. Especially with the cost of the Vietnam War, then the hit of the Oil Shock, etc.
Could NASA have a sustained budget perhaps 2x that of OTL? Probably. Especially if they didn't over promise and over run their budgets. Could they have continued at the high percent of total Federal Spending that they had during the Apollo peak? Only if an alien base was discovered on the moon.
Public Interest...
One big problem in all such TLs is that public interest dropped like a stone after Apollo 11.
"Been there, done that and the Ruskies ain't coming, jawn"
The Apollo 13 launch basically got one liners in the media, and no-one from the national media was present during the Apollo 13 mission. The accident was reported by some local stringer.
Then interest peeked again. Apollo 14 got some interest, but when there was no drama the audience tuned out. Apollo 15 was back to barely reported.
You need sustained public interest for the politicians to prioritize funding over Vietnam/Great Society/...
One big problem in all such TLs is that public interest dropped like a stone after Apollo 11.
"Been there, done that and the Ruskies ain't coming, jawn"
The Apollo 13 launch basically got one liners in the media, and no-one from the national media was present during the Apollo 13 mission. The accident was reported by some local stringer.
Then interest peeked again. Apollo 14 got some interest, but when there was no drama the audience tuned out. Apollo 15 was back to barely reported.
You need sustained public interest for the politicians to prioritize funding over Vietnam/Great Society/...
No or much smaller Vietnam, the Soviet Union continuing to 'threaten' US superiority in the space race, and something actually worth going into space to achieve. All three is ideal, two sufficient, one barely adequate.
It was primarily fear of Soviet Superiority in Space that saw the Apollo programme massively accelerated with an immense cash boost to see Kennedy's deadline of landing a Man on the Moon and then bringing him home safely.
Thus for me, the most likely way to keep Apollo Lunar Missions going is to make sure that Congress has a very good reason to continue the programme. And the biggest reason I can see is if the USSR are able to succeed with their own Lunar Mission, whether it be the UR/LK700 or the N1-L3.
And for that to happen IMHO, the Soviet Leadership need to take Kennedy's challenge seriously the moment he makes it, and use the 7-8 years they have instead of the 3-4 they got IOTL to allow them the time they need to properly debug the chosen LV (given that at the time they used a battery of launches to assess them and make the modifications as they went along). IIRC the LK lander was tested in LEO during the early-70's, and performed extremely well in its tests, but the lack of an N1 doomed it.
Should the USSR best the US, or come a very close second (few months at most), then the need in the minds of the US Government to keep going to build a proper lead should be there.
Thus for me, the most likely way to keep Apollo Lunar Missions going is to make sure that Congress has a very good reason to continue the programme. And the biggest reason I can see is if the USSR are able to succeed with their own Lunar Mission, whether it be the UR/LK700 or the N1-L3.
And for that to happen IMHO, the Soviet Leadership need to take Kennedy's challenge seriously the moment he makes it, and use the 7-8 years they have instead of the 3-4 they got IOTL to allow them the time they need to properly debug the chosen LV (given that at the time they used a battery of launches to assess them and make the modifications as they went along). IIRC the LK lander was tested in LEO during the early-70's, and performed extremely well in its tests, but the lack of an N1 doomed it.
Should the USSR best the US, or come a very close second (few months at most), then the need in the minds of the US Government to keep going to build a proper lead should be there.
The Apollo program was dying already under Johnson administration order to shutdown the Saturn V & IB production
after Success of Apollo 11 and lack of soviet to land on Moon, the Program was so good as Dead.
Next to that the Vice president Spiro Agnew push for manned Mars flight and proposed a gigantic insane Space program to President Nixon
what needs hundreds of astronauts in space ! with prize tage of today U$ 500 billion !
from that Nixon took only a small piece the Space Shuttle and dump the rest...
but What if Soviet manage to land a Cosmonaut on Moon and bring back save ?
Apollo had continued, with restart the Production line of Saturn V
here it could be under Charles H. Townes advice
even with Vietnam War, Nixon would be willing to pay NASA for 2 Apollo mission a Year for U$4 billion
so long the Soviet launch cosmonaut to Moon.
Who a 1970s Apollo program could look like this:
in 1973 would be Apollo 18 landing in Copernicus crater and Apollo 19 to Hadley Rille with last old Saturn V
featuring a new Space Suit the Garret AiResearch EX-1A
in same time new improved Saturn V would be ready with advance J-2S engines, what give more payload in low orbit and to Moon
it would launch Skylab A in earth orbit also in 1973 with 3 to 4 mission
1974 would have Apollo 20 to Tycho crater Surveyor 7 site and Apollo 21 inside of Tycho crater.
1975 feature Apollo 22 and 23
1976 launch of modified Skylab B (four mission) and Apollo 24 and 25 (mabye with first Afroamerican crew)
1977 Apollo 24 and 25
1979 launch of Skylab C (several mission) and Apollo 26 and 27
If here the Soviets goes for L3M mission or even a Lunar base
USA would react and launch either a Small lunar base for 6 men or launch Apollo Logistics Support System to moon
after Success of Apollo 11 and lack of soviet to land on Moon, the Program was so good as Dead.
Next to that the Vice president Spiro Agnew push for manned Mars flight and proposed a gigantic insane Space program to President Nixon
what needs hundreds of astronauts in space ! with prize tage of today U$ 500 billion !
from that Nixon took only a small piece the Space Shuttle and dump the rest...
but What if Soviet manage to land a Cosmonaut on Moon and bring back save ?
Apollo had continued, with restart the Production line of Saturn V
here it could be under Charles H. Townes advice
even with Vietnam War, Nixon would be willing to pay NASA for 2 Apollo mission a Year for U$4 billion
so long the Soviet launch cosmonaut to Moon.
Who a 1970s Apollo program could look like this:
in 1973 would be Apollo 18 landing in Copernicus crater and Apollo 19 to Hadley Rille with last old Saturn V
featuring a new Space Suit the Garret AiResearch EX-1A
in same time new improved Saturn V would be ready with advance J-2S engines, what give more payload in low orbit and to Moon
it would launch Skylab A in earth orbit also in 1973 with 3 to 4 mission
1974 would have Apollo 20 to Tycho crater Surveyor 7 site and Apollo 21 inside of Tycho crater.
1975 feature Apollo 22 and 23
1976 launch of modified Skylab B (four mission) and Apollo 24 and 25 (mabye with first Afroamerican crew)
1977 Apollo 24 and 25
1979 launch of Skylab C (several mission) and Apollo 26 and 27
If here the Soviets goes for L3M mission or even a Lunar base
USA would react and launch either a Small lunar base for 6 men or launch Apollo Logistics Support System to moon
Michel Van has hit it on the head: the Apollo Program was already dying even before Neil and Buzz stepped foot on the Moon.
Look at the funding levels by year here:
In real dollars, funding peaks in FY 1964-66, and then starts to tail off rapidly. Further Saturn V production was suspended in late 1968. By FY 1971 NASA was making do with less than half the budget it had had just five years before - and more drops were on the way. In short, Apollo shriveled up after Apollo 12 because it had been shriveling for a while - it just wasn't quite so obvious to outsiders.
So the important question is to ask why this happened, by way of figuring out how you can change it.
David Portree, who ran the BEYOND APOLLO blog at WIRED for a while, zeroed in on the proximate cause: The Apollo 1 fire.
Of course, what Portree really doesn't go into is that, even without the fire, funding was already dropping, and it was always going to be a real push to keep Apollo going in some serious fashion no matter what. Apollo 1 probably cost a few Apollo Applications missions, but the full panoply of Apollo Applications plans (AES, ALSS, LESA on the Moon, lunar mapping missions, a Venus Manned Flyby, etc.) was never likely to survive intact, fire or no fire.
So can that be reversed or avoided? How can Apollo be kept alive and vigorous? We have had a fair number of threads (like this one recently) asking some variant of this question, and the usual answer we come up with is, like Bahamut says up above, that the one real shot is a more sustained and successful Soviet moon program - and as a corollary, that detente doesn't happen for a while longer. Either Korolev is given a green light a few years earlier, allowing the Soviets to beat the U.S. to the Moon, or they sustain the effort and attempt to one-up the Americans by establishing a lunar base. And this is not all that impossible, given that, even as delayed and disorganized as the Soviets were, they were within weeks and even days of beating Apollo 8 to the punch with a cislunar flight (though a Moon landing before 1971-72 was not in their cards by that point).
Otherwise, short of Alien Space Bats, there's no real plausible point of departure. It was the Cold War that got Apollo off the ground in the first place, and only the Cold War can keep it going. There's no major domestic constituency for NASA otherwise. Indeed, polling shows that popular support for Apollo even in its heyday was moderate at best, and declining even before Apollo 11. So you need an external driver, and the only one really possible is the Soviets, whose leadership doesn't have to worry about opinion polls or a rambunctious legislative process.
So if, somehow, you CAN get the Soviets to drive harder for the goal line (and set new goal lines beyond it), there are some timelines that you could look at. Here's three of the best recent ones:
1. David Portree's continuing Apollo. David Portree himself looks at how Apollo Applications would have played out - Archibald set up a thread for that here. That timeline goes into the late 1970's.
2. 2001: A Space Time Odyssey (Version 2). Spacegeek, with help from Michel Van, constructs a timeline wherein Sergei Khrushchev, the General Secretary's engineer son, gets a job at the Soviet Experimental Design Bureau (OKB) in 1958, which later results in a more unified and aggressive Soviet space program, with all that entails for the Space Race. In progress, updated through 1968. Wiki page with dates and posts here.
3. Red Star: A Soviet Lunar Landing. Spacegeek and Bahamut-255 looked at what a successful Soviet Moonshot program - driven by Khrushchev giving Korolev a blank check in immediate response to Kennedy's speech in 1961 - would have looked like, and done for Apollo. I think that this may be the most satisfying attempt at answering your question, because it shows what a Space Race continuing well into the 1970's would have looked like on both sides. (Hint: Lots more boots on the Moon.)
Otherwise, if you want a more modest and realistic point of departure, our best ongoing timeline is Eyes Turned Skywards by e of pi and Workable Goblin (with fantastic renderings by Nixonshead - see the timeline wiki for an easier read-through, technical specs, and all the images). In this world, the decline in NASA funding is just baked into the pie, and the authors look at what a simple change in direction at NASA - Nixon appoints George Low rather than Tom Paine as Administrator, and Low opts to forego the Shuttle and stick instead with developing Saturn/Apollo hardware toward a more affordable low earth orbit space station program (Skylab, and a Skylab based long-term successor) for the 1970's and 80's. The good news is that this hardware family is much more suitable for an eventual lunar return in the 1990's, when the political will for it returns.
And since you mentioned Apollo 12, I thought I'd just leave you one visual teaser from the Eyes Turned Skywards timeline:
Look at the funding levels by year here:
In real dollars, funding peaks in FY 1964-66, and then starts to tail off rapidly. Further Saturn V production was suspended in late 1968. By FY 1971 NASA was making do with less than half the budget it had had just five years before - and more drops were on the way. In short, Apollo shriveled up after Apollo 12 because it had been shriveling for a while - it just wasn't quite so obvious to outsiders.
So the important question is to ask why this happened, by way of figuring out how you can change it.
David Portree, who ran the BEYOND APOLLO blog at WIRED for a while, zeroed in on the proximate cause: The Apollo 1 fire.
Of course, what Portree really doesn't go into is that, even without the fire, funding was already dropping, and it was always going to be a real push to keep Apollo going in some serious fashion no matter what. Apollo 1 probably cost a few Apollo Applications missions, but the full panoply of Apollo Applications plans (AES, ALSS, LESA on the Moon, lunar mapping missions, a Venus Manned Flyby, etc.) was never likely to survive intact, fire or no fire.
So can that be reversed or avoided? How can Apollo be kept alive and vigorous? We have had a fair number of threads (like this one recently) asking some variant of this question, and the usual answer we come up with is, like Bahamut says up above, that the one real shot is a more sustained and successful Soviet moon program - and as a corollary, that detente doesn't happen for a while longer. Either Korolev is given a green light a few years earlier, allowing the Soviets to beat the U.S. to the Moon, or they sustain the effort and attempt to one-up the Americans by establishing a lunar base. And this is not all that impossible, given that, even as delayed and disorganized as the Soviets were, they were within weeks and even days of beating Apollo 8 to the punch with a cislunar flight (though a Moon landing before 1971-72 was not in their cards by that point).
Otherwise, short of Alien Space Bats, there's no real plausible point of departure. It was the Cold War that got Apollo off the ground in the first place, and only the Cold War can keep it going. There's no major domestic constituency for NASA otherwise. Indeed, polling shows that popular support for Apollo even in its heyday was moderate at best, and declining even before Apollo 11. So you need an external driver, and the only one really possible is the Soviets, whose leadership doesn't have to worry about opinion polls or a rambunctious legislative process.
So if, somehow, you CAN get the Soviets to drive harder for the goal line (and set new goal lines beyond it), there are some timelines that you could look at. Here's three of the best recent ones:
1. David Portree's continuing Apollo. David Portree himself looks at how Apollo Applications would have played out - Archibald set up a thread for that here. That timeline goes into the late 1970's.
2. 2001: A Space Time Odyssey (Version 2). Spacegeek, with help from Michel Van, constructs a timeline wherein Sergei Khrushchev, the General Secretary's engineer son, gets a job at the Soviet Experimental Design Bureau (OKB) in 1958, which later results in a more unified and aggressive Soviet space program, with all that entails for the Space Race. In progress, updated through 1968. Wiki page with dates and posts here.
3. Red Star: A Soviet Lunar Landing. Spacegeek and Bahamut-255 looked at what a successful Soviet Moonshot program - driven by Khrushchev giving Korolev a blank check in immediate response to Kennedy's speech in 1961 - would have looked like, and done for Apollo. I think that this may be the most satisfying attempt at answering your question, because it shows what a Space Race continuing well into the 1970's would have looked like on both sides. (Hint: Lots more boots on the Moon.)
Otherwise, if you want a more modest and realistic point of departure, our best ongoing timeline is Eyes Turned Skywards by e of pi and Workable Goblin (with fantastic renderings by Nixonshead - see the timeline wiki for an easier read-through, technical specs, and all the images). In this world, the decline in NASA funding is just baked into the pie, and the authors look at what a simple change in direction at NASA - Nixon appoints George Low rather than Tom Paine as Administrator, and Low opts to forego the Shuttle and stick instead with developing Saturn/Apollo hardware toward a more affordable low earth orbit space station program (Skylab, and a Skylab based long-term successor) for the 1970's and 80's. The good news is that this hardware family is much more suitable for an eventual lunar return in the 1990's, when the political will for it returns.
And since you mentioned Apollo 12, I thought I'd just leave you one visual teaser from the Eyes Turned Skywards timeline:
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Worth noting today is the anniversary of JFK's speech to Congress proposing the moon landing.
Archibald said:
Luna is halfway to nowhere.
The delta-vee for a soft landing, OTOH, puts about 90% of all asteroids in the solar system in reach.And an even bigger boondoggle in terms of delta-vee.Archibald said:
Ideally, you get O'Neill's plan: a construction shack at L4 or L5, & building SPS & O'Neill-style habitats there beginning around 1975. The end to use of coal for fuel follows shortly.
So does manned exploration of Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Europa. (Since now, launch is from GEO/L-point & the flights are SPS-powered, delta-vee is less an issue...)As war is about logistics, space flight is all about delta-vee.
thanks, for info, Athelstane
Also Playing with Soviet-USA Space Race is the TL "2001 : A Space-Time Odyssey" by SpaceGeek
here Sergei Khrushchev, son of Nikita Khrushchev, Get a job at OKB-1 of Sergei Korolyov.
and Nixon has to take drastic option to overtop the soviet space activity ...
Also Playing with Soviet-USA Space Race is the TL "2001 : A Space-Time Odyssey" by SpaceGeek
here Sergei Khrushchev, son of Nikita Khrushchev, Get a job at OKB-1 of Sergei Korolyov.
and Nixon has to take drastic option to overtop the soviet space activity ...
Always a fun cartoon, Michel
Of course, in real life, Tricky Dick would have thrown in a few choice Anglo-Saxon expletives...
P.S. Apologies for forgetting all about your 2001 timeline. I added it in to my post, in case M79 is still lurking here.
Of course, in real life, Tricky Dick would have thrown in a few choice Anglo-Saxon expletives...
P.S. Apologies for forgetting all about your 2001 timeline. I added it in to my post, in case M79 is still lurking here.
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