ATL space program so far (ITTL October 1977, six years after the POD)
Spaceplanes
- space shuttle = dead and buried (although it still haunts NASA)
- Hermes = aborted (CNES moves in a different direction past 1977)
- Buran = obviously aborted
- MiG Spiral: continuing at a very low pace just (further than OTL since no Buran)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105
- HOTOL / Skylon: the saga started in spring 1982, so it is still in the future (as of 1977 Alan Bond is working on Daedalus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus)
Space stations
- Skylab A: proceed as per OTL (until 1977 at least. 1978-1979 will be markedly different)
- Skylab B: grounded as per OTL, but not in NASM yet (still property of Mc Donnell Douglas)
- Salyut DOS-1 to DOS-4: as per OTL (1971 - 1974, Soyuz 11 disaster included)
- Almaz: OPS-1 & OPS-2 as per OTL, but OPS-3 grounded just like OPS-4 .
- So Salyut 5 is actually a Salyut (a DOS) and not an Almaz in disguise (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_5)
- MOL: cancelled in June 1969 as per OTL, BUT will be revived in a different shape
- U.S / Soviet large diameter space stations in the 80's (no Proton/ Salyut or Shuttle 15ft constraint)
Manned ships & capsules
- Soyuz: as per OTL
- Apollo: as per OTL (last flight ASTP 1975) but with a better legacy
Apollo lunar missions: as per OTL (shuttle cancellation date of October 1971 is too late to change
anything to the 1970 cancellations)
- Big Gemini: the great winner of the shuttle death
- TKS: an obvious counterpart to Big Gemini
- Corona - tied to the Agena because of the KH spysats.
People
- Elon Musk: born just before the POD (June 1971) Currently a very unhappy child in apartheid South Africa
(bullied to near death)
He will find a very different space program ITTL 2001, and this will change SpaceX saga entirely
- Robert Zubrin: graduated with a PhD in mathematics from Rochester University, 1974.
Life already changed from OTL:
the shuttle death late 1971 impacted Viking positively, which impacted life of Carl Sagan friend Wolf Vishniac...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_V._Vishniac
a space scientist at (Zubrin !) Rochester University whose experiment was dropped out of Viking on cost ground
(not happening ITTL).
Young Zubrin (born in 1952 thus aged 21) met Vishniac, and later Sagan, and landed a
job at Martin Marietta in 1977 - a decade earlier than OTL (OTL Zubrin created Mars Direct in 1989 while at Martin
Marietta since the year before)
There will be no Mars Direct ITTL, but I'm confident Zubrin's genius can take different shapes.
- Vasily Mishin: although kicked out of (Korolev) OKB-1 as per OTL in May 1974, yet a happier man:
his N-1 rocket will live on, making Glushko furious.
- Boris Chertok: the faithfull OKB-1 deputy since the 50's, now in charge of OKB-1 (he outsmarted Glushko)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Chertok
- Valentin Glusko - a big change compared with OTL: he failed in his takeover of the Soviet space program in June
1974. Because some Saturn V were mothballed, the N-1 had to survive, too, and Glushko couldn't stomach that.
No Energia big rocket, no Buran, no Zenit. Horrified because N-1 is not cancelled (he hates Mishin large
lunar rocket)
Per lack of OKB-1, Glushko take over Chelomei rocket shop instead.
- Vladimir Chelomei: still the perenial loser, with Glushko taking over his little empire (earlier than OTL, and more completely)
Rockets
- space shuttle: dead and buried
- Saturn V and Saturn IB: two and five left after Apollo,stored, six of them later used to build a large space
station of Skylab legacy (one Saturn V held in reserve)
- Energia, Zenit: dead on Glushko drawing board, 1974
- N-1 : alive and kicking, fifth flight involving vehicle 8L suceeded in August 1974 putting a complete,
unmanned lunar stack to the surface. Vehicles 9L to 14L on the pipeline for varied missions. Also to be declined in
cut-off variants - N-11, N-111, a universal family of boosters to replace Proton and Soyuz
- Titan III: the great winner of the Shuttle debacle. Forced on NASA by Nixon OMB.
- Atlas and Delta: Agena variants touted as space tug launchers (Thorad kills the Delta 1000-7000 series)
- Lockheed Agena: the other great winner
Currently flies on Delta (Thorad) Atlas and Titan. As a space tug it will ferry space station modules from
injection into orbit to docking with the space station core.
As a space tug it will be integrated into a lot of other ELVs - Diamant, Blue Streak, Saturn IB, Ariane,
NASDA N-1
- Proton: doomed by its toxic propellants, to be replaced by the N-11
- Soyuz: still the great workhorse, but to be replaced by the N-111 ASAP
- Diamant: ESA Agena space tug testbed (three flights from Kourou, then CNES give it to Lockheed at bargain price
- Blue Streak: another Agena space tug carrier, to Canada thanks to General Dynamics - Canadair connexion.
- Ariane 1 to 4: well on track as per OTL, although the lack of shuttle mean that Atlas-Centaur remains a big roadblock on the way to Intelsat launches. Ariane will certainly have a thougher time than OTL breaking out on the communication satellite market.
- Ariane 5: preliminary studies are still two years in the future, but the lack of Hermes and Shuttle mean it will be definitively different than OTL oversized, overpowered and unflexible beast.
Planetary exploration
- Pioneer 10 & 11: mostly untouched (with a small twist)
- Voyager: untouched
- Viking 1& 2: mostly untouched but they slightly benefited from shuttle cancellation, Vishniac life experiment
still onboard (leading to a very different controversy over life-seeking experiment results post 1976)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_lander_biological_experiments
- Mars 4NM and 5NM: Soviet monster robotic probes to Mars, launched by N-1 rockets
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/mars5nm.htm
(OTL killed with the N-1, they were a serious project in the sense they had very strong political supporters)
- Pioneer Venus: dead and buried (1978)
- Venera 11 & 12: dead and buried (1978)
- VOIR - Magellan: dead and buried (1980)
- Exploration of Venus: ITTL great loser, although the Soviets will carry on. As of 1977: in shambles for at least a decade.
- Viking 3: lander mounted on ELMS tracks, (NASA answer to the 4NM large rover)
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=17804.0
- Bruce Murray push for MSR (NASA answer to 5NM)
- Galileo & Cassini: twin Jupiter and Saturn orbiter spacecrafts in the 80's with entry probes (mostly ESA)
Hope this help !