AHC: How Soon a Moon Landing

With a POD after the end of the Paris Peace Conference, what is the earliest plausible human landing on the moon? Can it be done by 1950? 1960? Or is the late 1960s really the best we could have done??
 
Do you mean the Paris Peace Conference of 1919?

Had Hermann Oberth get his chance to build his rockets
he and Werner von Braun could land on Moon in 1950s, under assumption there are no NAZI or War that destroy Germany.

1939 British Interplanetary Society Moon Plans go ahead, in 1950s first british Moon landing

cold war scenario
Von Braun Szenario von 1952 with No space station and only assembly of moon fleet, landing around 1960.

had NASA went for Solid rocket booster instead of Saturn V
1962 JPL concept for an all-solid Moon rocket for the Apollo program.
build in record time of 27 Months, the Ugliest Launch Rocket of all time UGMO* for moon landing in 1966/67
ugmoart-743x1024.jpg

* nickname by Scott Lowther

Another idea was to launch A single US astronaut to Moon with Atlas-centaur using Modified Mercury/Surveyor Hardware.
he land near shelter landed before and wait 2 to 6 years (with resupply) until Apollo LM rescue the man.
 
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To pull off an absolutely minimal moon landing (and return--the Atlas one skimps by not worrying about how to come home), you need about 90 metric tonnes in Earth orbit. That means large turbopump-fed engines, large lightweight tanks, and the stuff to guide a rocket to a safe landing--gyroscopic inertial measurement systems, at least simple computers to allow the pilot to control the spacecraft (it is very, very difficult--nearly impossible, really) to command a spacecraft entirely manually. Even in "manual control" of Apollo or Shuttle, there were two or three layers of software turning their commands into actual valve and gimbal motions.

That technology was just barely in infancy by 1950, and a lot of the advancement had been quite recent. It matured over most of the early 60s to the point where it became at all conceivable, which combined with political focus and will finally by the turn of the decade it was ready. I could see some slight advancement if somebody was to decide that it was a priority worth spend billions and billions of dollars on in 1950, but there's levels of development you have to pass through to even understand the next problems that need solving.

EDIT: While Michel has provided a nice list of landing plans earlier than IOTL, there's only a few of them--mostly right near the end--that would have a chance of succeeding without running headlong into problems they couldn't know about due to insufficient experience--experience gainable only through trying them out, and some of which are serious showstoppers.
 
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e of pi argumentation is right

how older the Proposal more crew its needed to run the system manually !
like Von Braun 1952 lunar lander needed 25 men to keep this thing working in shift.
and the lander had no computer on board, only brainpower and slide rule

on the 1939 British Interplanetary Society Moon Plans was first attempt to study a realistic Moon rocket.
 
Well if you can somehow prevent remilitarisation of the Rhineland, then the Nazis likely collapse before they become a serious threat. Due to the chaos, Werner von Braun decides that the resurgent US might be a better place to start up a rocketry business, so he moves, there, and with plans for his already successful A-2 he manages to interest the air-force enough to get a little funding, which with a continued series of successful tests, least to more funding, and more tests, etc.
 
Theres orion which could have launched in the early sixties, but for the moon a nuclear bomb rocket is over kill in power terms (which is why the studies all had saturn as the final goal).
 
Motivation

The big key for an earlier moon landing is enough motivation. The 1960's NASA program had massive funding and no demand for financial return. The question, IMVHO, becomes how we get that same motivation much earlier.

With enough motivation, a willingness to throw money at a problem, and a command team with brains and guts, things can happen, sometimes in ways we'd never expect. So--get enough desire earlier, and hardware may (or may not) fly earlier.

Once the need for assistance controlling a space capsule is discovered, there can be massive well funded research there--perhaps using gears and levers. There's different routes available to do some tasks.
 
For the moon landing in 1969 you needed the Nazis wasting lot of money for the A4, USA and Soviets both competed for a ICBM and finally Kennedy deciding for a push for the moon for pure political reasons. Actally said its astonishing that we landed so early on the moon, with the tech already hard stressed to just bring to people there and without any reasonable interest.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
What if a small station were set up in earth orbit and an Orion style craft were built there which bombed its way to the moon and then solved the return problem by bombing its way back?
 
What if a small station were set up in earth orbit and an Orion style craft were built there which bombed its way to the moon and then solved the return problem by bombing its way back?
It'd have two major issues. First, you'd need to lift the spacecraft to this parking orbit on a conventional launcher, meaning you have to develop essentially all the same technology for a conventional moon landing, plus Orion. That's worse, not better.

Second, detonation of nuclear weapons in space are pretty nasty. The OTL Starfish Prime test, a 1.3 Megaton device, supercharged the Van Allen Belts and generated a strong EMP, which between them caused the disabling of 1/3 of all
satellites then in orbit. An Orion drive ship would be much more powerful, and correspondingly deadlier to all other objects in orbit. It'd mean essentially completely rebuilding the entire orbital infrastructure of every nation on the planet every time the ship left orbit. That's...more than a minor issue.
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
The technology, in terms of electronics and liquid fuel

engines, is tough to see absent the sort of push the second world war, or something like, gave...nuclear weapons were another driver, of course, but the physics for those need to develop, and that took most of the interwar period.

So you really need a geostrategic situation where either:

a) very high altitude reconnaissance is a necessity; or
b) nuclear weapons are not only developed, but there is also a reason to develop ballistic missiles as a delivery system for them;

Frankly, I think a) is easier to envisage; a Pacific War in the (late) 1930s (shades of Hector Bywater) requires the US to place its strategic focus elsewhere than Europe in the early 1940s, which (potentially) opens the door for some sort of Anglo-Franco-Russo-German strategic stalemate - including the possibility one of the European powers (possibly the French) is removed from the board in a way that reinforces the stalemate.

Absent an immediate threat from the continental power (Germany, the USSR, or some sort of Russo-German alliance), but in an era for the medium-term threat is obvious, the US would probably allign, presumably, with the UK, but short of active operations.

Given a hot war in the Pacific AND the need for aerial recce over Europe, the need for high altitude recce could lead - albeit with some sidesteps; stratospheric balloons, hight altitiude pressurized aircraft, even rockoons - to something approaching a US manned LEO recce system being developed in the late 1940s or early 1950s, with the continental power doing something similar in response.

Obviously, the potential for nuclear weapons being delivered by ballistic missile would be a pacesetter for the necessary technological development, as well, probably on a parallel track that eventually merged with the LEO system requirements.

That could lead - if the "competition other than war" diplomatic gambit is seen - to a manned fly-by/lunar orbital/lunar landing on the Moon by the US in the late 1950s; my guess is a decade earlier (call it 1959) is the absolute maximun one could expect.

Best,
 
I would like to throw in the old Moon Landing Plan of the British Interplanetary Society.

From 1939...

http://astronautix.com/craft/bisander.htm

Michel Van already mentioned that, but thanks for the link.

That plan was incredibly, overwhelmingly optomistic. It was a breat job for 1939, especially for guys who werent able to experiment with actual hardware. But in no way would that project have come close to a moon rocket. In fact, if someone tried funding them theyd be horrified by the plural order of magnitude cost increases....
 
Second, detonation of nuclear weapons in space are pretty nasty. The OTL Starfish Prime test, a 1.3 Megaton device, supercharged the Van Allen Belts and generated a strong EMP, which between them caused the disabling of 1/3 of all
satellites then in orbit. An Orion drive ship would be much more powerful, and correspondingly deadlier to all other objects in orbit. It'd mean essentially completely rebuilding the entire orbital infrastructure of every nation on the planet every time the ship left orbit. That's...more than a minor issue.
Except that Orions would use much much less powerful nukes than those of the Starfish Prime test (For the 4,000 ton interplanetary it was calculated that each of the 800 nukes to get it to orbit would need a yield of only 0.14 kt).
 
Except that Orions would use much much less powerful nukes than those of the Starfish Prime test (For the 4,000 ton interplanetary it was calculated that each of the 800 nukes to get it to orbit would need a yield of only 0.14 kt).

Its stIll a nuke, we keep orion on the drawing board for emergancies but I don't see it ever being used short of alien invasion or asteroid deflection.
 
Michel Van already mentioned that, but thanks for the link.

That plan was incredibly, overwhelmingly optomistic. It was a breat job for 1939, especially for guys who werent able to experiment with actual hardware. But in no way would that project have come close to a moon rocket. In fact, if someone tried funding them theyd be horrified by the plural order of magnitude cost increases....

Yeah, the idea of a black powder moon rocket is just unintentionally hilarious.

I recently read Gordo Cooper's autobiography, Leap of Faith and he said that one idea that was semi-seriously considered was to launch a Gemini mission on a large earth orbit trajectory which would have taken it to the vicinity of the moon and back to Earth.
 
Michel Van already mentioned that, but thanks for the link.

That plan was incredibly, overwhelmingly optomistic. It was a breat job for 1939, especially for guys who werent able to experiment with actual hardware. But in no way would that project have come close to a moon rocket. In fact, if someone tried funding them theyd be horrified by the plural order of magnitude cost increases....

There problem next with financing, was Testing of Rocket engine, the Explosives Act of 1875, which prevented any private testing of rockets in the United Kingdom.
BIS who wanted to use something better as black powder. the irony: the second World War let to development of new Solid fuels for rockets.

the BIS Moon rocket was incredibly, overwhelmingly optimistic, but one of first engineering study for real rocket with technology of 1930s.
if rocket had work is another story...
 
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