AHC: Moon Landing in 1953

In the Tintin comic books, a moon landing takes place as early as 1953. I always wondered whether this would have been possible in the real world. Is there any chance for it to happen with a PoD after 1900, and, if yes, what changes would be necessary?
 

hammo1j

Donor
I believe there was a British plan to use a modified V2 for sub orbital manned flight in 1949 that was technically possible, but Britain was too broke after the war.

Have that happen and you could get an earlier moon landing but 1953 would be a giant ask.
 

Ian_W

Banned
No sane government would back the V2 program, and the learning done in that liquid-fuel program was essential for the later American and Soviet programs.

And no government was able to fight WW2 against said insane government, and then do a moon landing 8 years later.

An absolute minimalist moon program involves something like Gemini being refuelled in orbit, and connecting up to a lander that's already in Moon orbit ie you're doing three small lifts rather than moving everything in one giant rocket.

If you had a 'Golden Twentieth Century' with no WW1 and international prestige based around fastest airplane and then highest rocket ascent and so on, you might do it.

This might be of interest.

http://www.astronautix.com/data/6407gmfo.pdf
 
No sane government would back the V2 program, and the learning done in that liquid-fuel program was essential for the later American and Soviet programs.

And no government was able to fight WW2 against said insane government, and then do a moon landing 8 years later.

An absolute minimalist moon program involves something like Gemini being refuelled in orbit, and connecting up to a lander that's already in Moon orbit ie you're doing three small lifts rather than moving everything in one giant rocket.

If you had a 'Golden Twentieth Century' with no WW1 and international prestige based around fastest airplane and then highest rocket ascent and so on, you might do it.

This might be of interest.

http://www.astronautix.com/data/6407gmfo.pdf
Basically this.

In many ways, otl had an absurdly early moon landing - which shows in the way we haven't been back.

1) Nazis building V2s, as pointed out above.
2) Soviets developing the R7 to carry supermassive Abombs (before lighter hbombs were developed).
3) the 'backwards' Russians who were also ideological enemies beating the US multiple times in space providing the shock necessary for the US to try the wildly ambitious goal of a moon landing
4) all this happening during a time of massive economic (and technical) expansion, which meant the government was overflow with money, and could actually spent those kind of sums on a useless project.

So... You have to MASSIVELY speed up tech and economic development. No World Wars is probably an absolute minimum.
Have things like the air trophies continue. Expand that into rocket contests - initially, how high can you get, but a bit later, first to orbit, then mass to orbit.

You'd need orbit by the early 30s, really, then docking. Fuel depots. Etc. Get reusability early, somehow. Get costs way down.

How you could manage all that without ASBs, i'm sure i don't know.
 
A man in space by 1953 (ie over the von Karman line)? Easy. Tiny satellite in orbit by then? Also easy. Man in orbit that early. Requires a pre WWII pod. On the moon? Really, really tough.
 

Dolan

Banned
If you had a 'Golden Twentieth Century' with no WW1 and international prestige based around fastest airplane and then highest rocket ascent and so on, you might do it.
Yep, this is the most likeliest outcome that would get everyone satisfied.

Let's start by Archduke Franz-Ferdinand somehow end up surviving his assassination attempt and WW1 Equivalent would be series of trench skirmishes between Russia and Austro-Hungary that end up with (ironically) Anglo-German mediated ceasefire and White Peace.

The war is not that destructive to both AH and Russia, but it gives a glimpse of what things could be if the war becomes larger, as series of static trenches and hard to penetrate defensive positions would be the norm.

Avionics being pushed faster into RND over initial fear of imminent Great War, but then, greater aviation prestige ends up with all Great Powers getting into a bet, who could land first on the moon would get Moon as their exclusive colony.

Cue German-Austro-Hungarian-Italian alliance VS France-Russian VS Anglo-Japanese race to claim orbital spaces first, before escalation ends up with German, French, and British Astronauts ends up landing on the moon at the same time, have a laugh, and end up splitting the Moon into three.
 
I agree that 1953 is a stretch without some big changes to the timeline earlier on.

For what it's worth, there was a book by Wernher von Braun called First Men to the Moon that showed his vision of a moon flight circa 1960-ish. Very cool illustrations by Fred Freeman:
7bdf2c78fb08fe0d9e0e4882694409cd.jpg

22e84465c4cb5bbacff57b444cc8bee2.jpg

untitled-11.jpg

Perhaps a bit too optimistic on Von Braun's part, but I love the aesthetics of it.
 
This bit of Napkinwaffe gets built during the war,
and in 1947 there's a real compelling reason to goto the Moon.

That's the real problem, not the tech

Oh, and even 1953 tech, you may do a moon landing, but return from moon is probably out.
 

Deleted member 94680

You need an analogue to the Cold War or some such as I believe that was a major factor in the US government funding NASA’s missions. Beating the Soviet Union by other means. That and all the money the Soviets spent on their space programme wasn’t being spent on coups and AK-47s.
 
Thank you all!

The general consensus seems to be that avoiding both World Wars would be absolutely necessary. So even with a much, much shorter WWII, it won't be possible?

It's just that I'm a big Tintin fan - so big that I'm currently trying to fathom how hard it'd be to provide background for the Tintinverse by constructing a believable alternate history timeline around it. It's just some sick nerdy obsession of mine. Apart from the existence of several fictional countries, the moon landing Tintin participates in is probably the biggest problem, so I figured it'd be best to start with it.
 
If someone very skilled in rocketry doesn't die in World War 1, let's say Joe Smith has a freak accident and breaks a leg and so can't go to the front and die in the trenches, you would then have the problem that even was someone smart enough to invent the tools to make the tools (and add another "to make the tools"?), you need someone with a super amount of funding. After all, even our timeline you had Robert Goddard and even if he gets all the funding he wants that's just going to get to the V2 level for the u.s. by the start of World War II. That's why it's so hard to do it. You pretty much need a lack of the world wars to provide government funding.

Now, if Britain and Germany where to get into a cold war in the 1910s instead of a hot War, and let's say someone in one of the countries does develop a V2 rocket in the early twenties, I can see the other country insisting on trying to catch up and the space race starting. Especially since Wilhelm II lived till 1941, I can easily see him having spaceship envy.
 
Yep, this is the most likeliest outcome that would get everyone satisfied.

Let's start by Archduke Franz-Ferdinand somehow end up surviving his assassination attempt and WW1 Equivalent would be series of trench skirmishes between Russia and Austro-Hungary that end up with (ironically) Anglo-German mediated ceasefire and White Peace.

The war is not that destructive to both AH and Russia, but it gives a glimpse of what things could be if the war becomes larger, as series of static trenches and hard to penetrate defensive positions would be the norm.

Avionics being pushed faster into RND over initial fear of imminent Great War, but then, greater aviation prestige ends up with all Great Powers getting into a bet, who could land first on the moon would get Moon as their exclusive colony.

Cue German-Austro-Hungarian-Italian alliance VS France-Russian VS Anglo-Japanese race to claim orbital spaces first, before escalation ends up with German, French, and British Astronauts ends up landing on the moon at the same time, have a laugh, and end up splitting the Moon into three.


Or you can keep the Great War but have it end a bit sooner. Perhaps no US entry and a negotiated peace near the end of 1917?

So the war is destructive enough to scare away the great powers from wanting a rematch but not so destructive that the empires collapse.

The post war period sees all the major factions compete with each other in researching aircraft and rocketry for military and prestige reasons (much like the OTL Space Race).
 

Ian_W

Banned
Or you can keep the Great War but have it end a bit sooner. Perhaps no US entry and a negotiated peace near the end of 1917?

So the war is destructive enough to scare away the great powers from wanting a rematch but not so destructive that the empires collapse.

The post war period sees all the major factions compete with each other in researching aircraft and rocketry for military and prestige reasons (much like the OTL Space Race).

The problem with any Great War is that it will force all sides to keep spending money on the military.

A 1914 War Scare that gets resolved diplomatically and a new Concert of Europe will mean rearmament may not happen.

Continued development in aircraft and rockets would need to be pushed by "higher, faster, stronger" - which was happening prewar anyway, with all the air records being set.

Basically, you need a bunch of very rich states, as opposed to the very well armed states that were the Short Twentieth Century.
 
The problem with any Great War is that it will force all sides to keep spending money on the military.

A 1914 War Scare that gets resolved diplomatically and a new Concert of Europe will mean rearmament may not happen.

Continued development in aircraft and rockets would need to be pushed by "higher, faster, stronger" - which was happening prewar anyway, with all the air records being set.

Basically, you need a bunch of very rich states, as opposed to the very well armed states that were the Short Twentieth Century.

Well I imagine a negotiated end to the Great War would mean the establishment of a kind of new Concert of Europe/League of Nations to prevent a future war. A kind of armed peace in the style of the OTL Cold War will ensue.

Research into military technology to prevent the kind of stalemate of the last war will be studied so things like tanks, airplanes and rockets will be examined. Rockets that can deliver bigger and bigger explosives can also be used to put capsules and satellites into orbit.

The military potential of rocketry and the prestige will be the impetus for the great powers to go for orbit.
 

Ian_W

Banned
Research into military technology to prevent the kind of stalemate of the last war will be studied so things like tanks, airplanes and rockets will be examined. Rockets that can deliver bigger and bigger explosives can also be used to put capsules and satellites into orbit.

An early development could be a rocket-launched homing torpedo ...
 
Let's take Apollo program as template
it took from 1961 to 1969 to land first human on Moon so 8 years
some elements like F-1 and HydroLox engines were work on since 1957

so with Moon landing in 1953 the program must have started in 1945 or 1943
With allot of PODs that change the World and it's technology
Here first satellite goes into orbit around 1943

you need a Pod that put technology 10 year a head of it time
and also massively changes in politic that in 1943 some politician say "we go to the Moon"
 
I will quote Wikipedia article on Hermann Oberth:

In 1912, Oberth began the study of medicine in Munich, Germany, but at the outbreak of World War I, he was drafted into the Imperial German Army, assigned to an infantry battalion, and sent to the Eastern Front against Russia. In 1915, Oberth was moved into a medical unit at a hospital in Sighișoara (German Schäßburg, Hungarian Segesvár), Transylvania, in Austria-Hungary (today Romania).[8] There he found the spare time to conduct a series of experiments concerning weightlessness, and later resumed his rocketry designs. By 1917, he showed designs of a missile using liquid propellant with a range of 180 miles to Hermann von Stein, the Prussian Minister of War.

If rockets were used by Germans during World War I, it would make even bigger impression than an aircraft or a tank. Imagine what would happen, if they dragged the War to 1919 (maybe by feeding starving population from Ukrainian grain, remaining on a defensive lines during 1918 and Austro-Hungarians remaining whole year with preparation for a defense) and then used rockets on French cities. Sure, they would still lose, but impression of unstoppable rockets falling on cities would force post-War Powers to invest into rocketry and anti-rocketry. There, you are only few steps from sending man or device into space to show that your nation regained lost prestige.
 
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