Correction here - Nectaris was an old site in our notes. He landed in Procellarum, yeah - I figure somewhere west of Apollo 12/Surveyor 3, but we didn't really define it beyond "somewhere in the Ocean of Storms". It's a big target.
Small Steps, Giant Leaps: An Alternate History of the Space Age
- Thread starter ThatCallisto
- Start date
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Thank you! Agreed on the renders - I'm so happy we were able to snag those. A million thanks to the ever-talented @nixonshead for those! Unparalleled in the althist spaceflight sphere.
Thanks a lot! We've got a lot planned for the future, stay tuned!
(As a note, I'm actually the only "gent" on the writing team- hard to tell over the Internet.)
The gorgeous LK renders are now up on @nixonshead's DeviantArt page, for anyone who wants to take a look at them without our text.
Hey guys, lots of exciting developments behind the scenes! Interlude 8 is largely going to be about US politics and how it's changed since the PoD, and I'm curious as to how regular you folks think these "politiludes" should be. Obviously, they won't be what anyone comes to SSGL for, but it's difficult to write a space-focused (and NASA-focused, at that) TL without addressing it.
Once per presidential term (so 1971,1975,1979......you get the drift). Plus elections.
I think that what LordandsaviorKloka sounds more than enough, but if it's possible, it might be a good idea for other efforts to be shown.
I get that it's easier to focus on NASA, but it'd be nice for another agency or company to have a role outside collaborating with them. It seems like the standard approach is just 'replace Hermes with capsule, Japan builds Kibo, everyone hitches onto NASA', which is interesting, but often a sideshow in a sideshow.
That's just a suggestion, I get this TL is supposed to focus on Apollo, but I think it could differentiate it from other TLs that have come before.
The TL is Apollo for now. We have plans all the way to the modern day (and are comically slow about writing those plans into parts)!
Don't worry, ESA and JAXA (and some of the agencies that often get forgotten completely, like ISRO) all have a big role to play, but seeing as it's still 1972, they aren't quite relevant to the overall TL just yet.
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How can ISRO play a part here? Next thing you know the Chinese will be getting into the act!
Well, they won't be playing a part for a while, but they'll become relevant more in Chapter 4. ESA and JAXA (or their predecessors) will start showing up in Chapter 2, and there's always our old friends the Soviets...
(SSGL is planned to have five "chapters", each covering about a decade. We're nearing the end of Chapter 1, hence my optimistic Chapter-per-year comment.)
Let me guess
Chapter 1:1966-1976
Chapter 2:1976-1986
Chapter 3:1986-1996
Chapter 4:1996-2006
Chapter 5:2006-2016
?
Close. They're about a decade each, the TL officially ends in the 2020s.
Interlude 8: Nothing Bad Ever Happens to the Kennedys
Small Steps, Giant Leaps - Interlude 8: Nothing Bad Ever Happens to the Kennedys
The presidential election of 1968 was, by all accounts, one of the most extraordinary and defining moments in American political history.
Robert Francis Kennedy, having survived an assassination attempt in June of that eventful year, narrowly carried the Democratic nomination at a tumultuous Chicago convention. In the general election, Kennedy faced down Republican powerhouse Richard Nixon, the second Kennedy to do so; from his right within the traditional Democratic voter base, former Alabama Governor George Wallace’s third-party “American Independent” run threatened to split the vote and hand Nixon the win.
Against all odds, however, Kennedy stuck it out. When the dust settled after Election Day, RFK won the White House by just five electoral votes past the required 270 - the closest electoral margin in modern history. It is much debated whether Wallace’s third-party run secured Kennedy's victory over Nixon by splitting the Southern conservative vote, but it can at least be considered a factor.
[1968 electoral map. Kennedy’s states are shown in blue, Nixon’s in red, and Wallace’s in yellow.]
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Robert Kennedy was elected on a dual mandate: ending the Vietnam War, and continuing the reforms and progress of the 1960s into a new decade. This first goal materialized within the first 9 months of the new administration, with stalled peace talks started under Johnson finally coming to fruition in August of 1969.[1]
As for social and economic reforms, Kennedy continued to support and expand Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ programs, and signed a number of landmark bills into law in his first term covering civil rights, housing, labor rights, and environmental protection.
In terms of space exploration, the second Kennedy Administration would, in the beginning, be defined by the policy set by the first. Robert Kennedy oversaw the fulfilment of John Kennedy’s great decadal goal of landing a man on the Moon. As one Kennedy set a course for the space program of the 1960s, it would be another’s role to do the same for the 1970s as NASA looked to a post-Apollo future. While the space program budget under RFK’s administration decreased from its late 1960s Apollo peak, new initiatives - namely the Apollo Applications space stations, and the Space Shuttle - promised to be just as transformative and bold as their predecessor, greatly reducing the cost of access to space and presenting an opportunity to learn how to effectively live and work in orbit long-term.
By the start of the election cycle in 1972, prospects remained good for a Kennedy re-election, with RFK riding high on a first term of progress on seemingly all fronts. From within his own party a challenge arose in the primaries once again from Alabama Governor George Wallace (subsequently re-elected to the governorship in 1971), running this time as a Democrat and positioning himself as a “moderate conservative”; Wallace won a respectable number of primary contests across the South and in Michigan, but ultimately failed in the face of a popular incumbent and his own abysmal (to put it lightly) record on race. Kennedy and Wallace exchanged a now-famous “respectful handshake” on-stage at the Democratic National Convention, and that was that.[2]
The biggest shock of 1972 came not from a primary challenger, but from within the White House itself: Vice President John Connally, former Navy Secretary and Texas governor who’d taken a bullet during the JFK assassination, chose not to seek re-election on Robert Kennedy’s ticket- and endorsed RFK’s Republican challenger, Kansas Senator Robert Dole. Connally, and later in the election Wallace, would spearhead a “Democrats for Dole” movement, a rebellion attempting to break the ranks of Kennedy’s broad 1968 coalition.[3] In Connally’s place as a running mate, Kennedy would select Governor of Georgia James “Jimmy” Carter Jr., a relatively unknown figure on the national stage as yet whose presence on the ticket was hoped to boost Kennedy’s standing in the South.
Kennedy’s early polling lead was boosted by the echoing fallout of the Chennault Affair, when it came to light in the months following Kennedy’s 1968 win that the Nixon campaign had been in contact with South Vietnamese officials in an attempt to sabotage the peace talks and hand Nixon the election. While Nixon himself faced no legal repercussions, both his running mate Spiro Agnew and Republican Women for Nixon Committee chairwoman Anna Chennault would be charged with violating the Logan Act by early 1971. The Chennault Affair effectively ended any prospect of a third presidential run for Nixon, who appeared only rarely during the 1972 election cycle, speaking at the Republican National Convention and at a handful of campaign rallies.[4]
[Bob Dole speaks at the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami, Florida. Image credit: Robert and Elizabeth Dole Archives and Special Collections]
After the Democratic and Republican conventions of 1972 in July and August respectively, the field emerged as Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Carter on the Democratic side, versus Bob Dole and running mate Nelson Rockefeller on the Republican side. Dole presented himself as the candidate of “law and order”, railing against the “radical liberal policymaking of the Kennedy dynasty.” He characterized his intended voter base as the “real America”, now famously stating in a television interview that “[...] there is a great, silent majority of Americans who are dissatisfied with the way this country is going, after over a decade of Democrat leadership.”
While Kennedy’s initial lead had been strong, In the final months of the election cycle things began to appear less certain as Dole climbed in the polls. By early October, polls that had consistently shown a Kennedy victory began to indicate the possibility of a surprise Dole win, coming down largely to Kennedy’s loss of Texas with Connally off the ticket, and Dole’s presumed win of New York with Governor Rockefeller as his running mate. Final polling in the first days of November showed that things could, really, go either way.
America went to the polls once again on November 7th, 1972, to decide yet another close presidential race. In the end, RFK would thread the needle once again, even increasing his electoral margin from 1968 by 2 votes. It was the second-closest electoral win in history, and the closest two-candidate race, by the same president who’d threaded the needle in 1968. Lightning had struck twice, so it seemed.
[1972 electoral map. Kennedy’s states are shown in blue, Dole’s in red.]
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There are a number of factors that can be considered relevant in Kennedy’s re-election win. In terms of Electoral College votes, RFK narrowly holding onto New York despite Dole’s running mate being governor can certainly not be discounted, nor can the significance of California and its 40 electoral votes, which had gone to Nixon in 1968.
Beyond raw numbers, however, Kennedy’s win can perhaps be attributed most to two constitutional amendments - one passed, and one yet to come. Firstly, the ratification of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution in 1971, lowering the voting age to 18, can be seen as a massive contributing factor to Kennedy’s re-election win, given RFK’s popularity among the young Americans of the ‘counterculture’ movement when compared to Dole’s typically older, more conservative voting base. Secondly, the ongoing campaign to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment - a constitutional amendment to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens both male and female - was a central part of Kennedy’s campaign messaging of continued social progress, and won the president support among women increased from an already-high margin. The Dole campaign remained largely silent on the ERA, with Dole commenting at one point that it was “a matter for the state legislatures now.” Kennedy’s vocal support of the ERA during the 1972 election cycle and subsequently during his second term would contribute to its final ratification and addition to the Constitution by early 1976, as the 27th Amendment.[5]
If the 1968 election can be seen as the beginning of a shift in American politics, 1972 can be considered the further crystallization of those changes. With the exception of Georgia, the South now swung firmly Republican; and a number of prominent formerly-Democratic politicians and figures crossed party lines and eventually changed parties altogether, most notably then-Vice President John Connally; this seeming realignment in the parties would set the stage for elections and legislation for decades to come, and whose effects we are still seeing in the modern day American political landscape.