Actually I didn't see this till today and it was on page 4 already so I'm guessing a glitch?
How do you think would it be possible to have more space infrastructure, possibly more frequent manned space missions, or even a rotating space station, or Moon or Mars bases today with the earliest PoD of 1945?
In essence in this TL, much of the hopes for a "space future" as imagined by people during the Cold War both from the West and the East Bloc would be around to a rudimentary degree by 2018.
What? Trying to steal all my idea eh? Like I'd fall for that! Actually I WILL fall for that because I'm basically lazy so...
I think a closer Space Race would somewhat head in this direction. With less 'pressure' to not only equal but exceed Soviet achievements the US would have probably stuck with a more paced and sustainable overall program. While not as obvious outside Russia at the time Voskhod 1 (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_1) was a bit of a desperate gamble by the USSR given how much could have gone so very wrong.
A less panicked US would have been able to grasp the significance of the first Saturn-1 flight in 1961 as the point of having surpassed the Soviets in lift capacity which was one of the main reasons they seemed 'ahead'.
Another idea is that something makes Von Karman believe that instead of ballistic missiles being "more than a decade away" in his 1946 report "Towards New Horizons" in which he recommended that the Air Force focus on more 'near-term' items such as supersonic bombers and cruise missiles. While obviously aircraft and air-breathing missiles can tap into the ongoing research and development for aircraft purposes such as turbojet and ramjet engines where as missiles needed new and advanced rockets that were at a very low development level and everyone was starving for funding. Yet the systems of automated navigation and guidance were going to be the same either way and rocket technology was in fact advancing and Von Karman was aware of this.
Still he choose the "safer" near term route so that when the more serious funding crisis happened ballistic missiles which had been near the bottom of the development list dropped off almost completely. (The one bright spot OTL was that there was a need to have powerful rockets to boost our intercontinental ramjet powered cruise missiles to speed. In a different TL where ballistic missiles have more priority these engines will power them)
More once I have some more time to think
Randy