AHC: Multiparty Space Race

What it says on the tin, with a POD between 1900 and 1920, can you have a space race involving multiple parties (Nations or otherwise)
Bonus points for- (the race spanning from 1950s to 1990s and ending with a landing on mars.)
(the highest number of players)
 

Riain

Banned
CP wins WW1, France and Britain form a strategic union and Russia undergoes forced industrialisation. The Space Race kicks off in the 50s with these 4 players with the Anglo-French assisted by Australia launching rockets from Cape York.

The rest writes itself.
 
Britain/France increases military spending to 3% of GDP and the commonwealth to 2% of GDP in 1932.

The western allies and their commenwealths goes into ww2 with a larger military and defeats Germany significantly.

Anglo/France +empires form a block in a cold war against ussr America remains in splendid isolation but determined to still be seen as a preeminent nation.
 
Avoid WWII, and Europe, plus Japan and China, are much richer and more industrialized than IOTL. Millions of potential engineers and scientists killed IOTL are also alive. They are also in an arms race against one another, meaning that many more nations work on building missiles and atomic weapons instead of MiG clones.

By the 1980s, I could reasonably see a Japanese, German, British, French, Chinese, and possibly even Czech and Polish and Romanian space program (gotta have spy sats to watch the Soviets). Most of those would be unmanned, or only manned as part of some ESA-like joint effort, but they'd stimulate further growth. EDIT: But the bigger European and Asian economies, at least, could probably afford a manned program. The second-tier powers might do it as a joint thing--'Little Entente in Space.'

EDIT2: as for precise POD, have Germany lose WWI harder, so that there is no question of revanchism, and have Poland and Czechoslovakia come to a more agreeable solution for Cieszyn so that they work together to contain Germany down the line.
 
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Britain/France increases military spending to 3% of GDP and the commonwealth to 2% of GDP in 1932.

The western allies and their commenwealths goes into ww2 with a larger military and defeats Germany significantly.

Anglo/France +empires form a block in a cold war against ussr America remains in splendid isolation but determined to still be seen as a preeminent nation.
I'd think that the POD is after 1920?
 
WW1 does not happen and by extension a WW2 analogy type war does not happen either

There would be conflict but on a much reduced scale vs OTL

Therefore while some war based technologies would be slower to develop humanity as a whole would achieve development faster than OTL

Assuming enough interest in a orbit shot (I can see a 'friendly' competition between nations along the lines of the Blue ribbon and aviation achievements) then stuff might start moving as early as the 20s and 30s
 
Prevent the world wars and space is the next great colonial frontier as competition for prestige continues. France, the UK, Germany, and the US shoot for the stars. Russia, Japan and maybe A-H follow as does the Ottoman Empire when that oil money comes in. There will be lunar colonies by the 1960s, asteroid mining by the end of the century, and maybe manned flights to Pluto thereafter.
 
Avoid WWII, and Europe, plus Japan and China, are much richer and more industrialized than IOTL.

You definitely have to butterfly away WW2. At least.

What you need is a genuinely multi-polar world. Which is what we had in the interwar period.

Say the Nazis fizzle out, and Germany ends up with some other autocratic government dominated by the army and industrialists (which was the more likely outcome anyway) - bent on "getting theirs back," but not European conquest. At that point, the United States, Russia, the British Commonwealth, the French Empire and Germany would all have the resources and perhaps even willpower to undertake at least modest space programs.

But that's just one scenario (perhaps the easiest one).
 
Let's see... in 1916 Goddard wrote around to various parties looking for sponsors for his research which led to the Smithsonian agreeing to a grant of $5,000 over five years, they also pushed him to publish his paper A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitude in 1919. As a point of divergence have the widely distributed paper come to the attention of some foreign wealthy individual so that they step in to fund his research instead of the Guggenheims. This new source of funding allows him to relocate to New Mexico a few years earlier than our timeline and it means that details of his on-going research will be flowing overseas to an interested party that might also fund local work as well.
 
Let's see... in 1916 Goddard wrote around to various parties looking for sponsors for his research which led to the Smithsonian agreeing to a grant of $5,000 over five years, they also pushed him to publish his paper A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitude in 1919. As a point of divergence have the widely distributed paper come to the attention of some foreign wealthy individual so that they step in to fund his research instead of the Guggenheims. This new source of funding allows him to relocate to New Mexico a few years earlier than our timeline and it means that details of his on-going research will be flowing overseas to an interested party that might also fund local work as well.
Hmm, interesting but how would it culminate in a multiparty space race? I'd think it'll be mostly 2 powers duking it out with other minors.
 
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