The space race is something that has it's niche here in AH, where we lament that we killed Apollo in the early 70s, never got our moonbases, never went to Mars, and we got one space station (Skylab) which we let go into the ocean after 6 years. The best we got were satellites sent to the other planets and the Space Shuttle, which was a LEO vehicle originally intended to supplement the Saturn V but which was made into something of its own, and thus limited what we could do with manned space operations.
Our reality is not what we were told to expect over the course of the 60s and 70s and onward: there's no multiple space stations that were put into orbit, nor even any permanent ones save perhaps the ISS, not to mention no spinning wheel station which creates artificial gravity through rotation. No moon bases or moon colonies or mining stations. No manned missions to Mars, or anything beyond Mars.
But was any of that really the plausible path anyway? What was truly plausible for how space exploration would proceed?