AHC: Permanent Orbital Presence by 2000

The challenge is, using any POD post moon landing, is for the United States or Russia to have a permanent orbital presence by the year 2000. When I say permanent I mean something more substantial than Mir or Skylab like a space station capable of supporting deep space missions and providing support for orbital satellites. Bonus points if you get the EU, China, or Japan in on the space race.
 
Apollo 13 never happens, so something of Kennedy's dream for space travel (at least vis-a-vis the Soviets) remains alive in the general populace. Probably Apollo 18, 19, and maybe 20 all go forward as planned. Of course, not having Nixon re-elected would help this greatly, given that he scaled back on NASA, but you do have to change things prior to 1972 if you want Apollo to continue.

Von Braun and his crew had plans to put people on Mars by (IIRC) the late 1970s. Find a president who would have made that happened, and figure out a way to get him elected.

Whatever you do, the Space Shuttle program can never, never, never happen (at least not as it did IOTL) if you want space travel to continue in any meaningful way. People act like STS getting cancelled was some kind of death knell for American domination of space, but it's actually the best thing that's ever happened for it. The shuttle allowed us to circle the earth over and over again without ever having to advance anything beyond robotics.

Some of the earlier Lifting Bodies designs would have been more conducive to actually getting stuff done, as they were conceived with the idea that they could potentially fly past LEO at some point. There were early concepts to build space stations at the earth's Lagrange points, and of course the early ideas for building semi-permanent structures on the moon.

For an interesting read on this subject, I'd recommend Ben Bova's "Welcome to Moonbase", which discusses primarily lunar explanation, but also touches upon an alternate (at that time future) history of human space exploration, particularly an upgraded shuttle and continuing Skylab-style habitations.

Also, don't let Reagan become president.
 
Apollo 13 never happens, so something of Kennedy's dream for space travel (at least vis-a-vis the Soviets) remains alive in the general populace. Probably Apollo 18, 19, and maybe 20 all go forward as planned. Of course, not having Nixon re-elected would help this greatly, given that he scaled back on NASA, but you do have to change things prior to 1972 if you want Apollo to continue.

Von Braun and his crew had plans to put people on Mars by (IIRC) the late 1970s. Find a president who would have made that happened, and figure out a way to get him elected.

Whatever you do, the Space Shuttle program can never, never, never happen (at least not as it did IOTL) if you want space travel to continue in any meaningful way. People act like STS getting cancelled was some kind of death knell for American domination of space, but it's actually the best thing that's ever happened for it. The shuttle allowed us to circle the earth over and over again without ever having to advance anything beyond robotics.

Some of the earlier Lifting Bodies designs would have been more conducive to actually getting stuff done, as they were conceived with the idea that they could potentially fly past LEO at some point. There were early concepts to build space stations at the earth's Lagrange points, and of course the early ideas for building semi-permanent structures on the moon.

For an interesting read on this subject, I'd recommend Ben Bova's "Welcome to Moonbase", which discusses primarily lunar explanation, but also touches upon an alternate (at that time future) history of human space exploration, particularly an upgraded shuttle and continuing Skylab-style habitations.

Also, don't let Reagan become president.

Agree with all but the last part. Reagan was great for NASA, giving it a boost after Nixon and Carter scaled it back. He was the one that proposed the Liberty space station and the return to the moon - give him the funding and the will and Reagan would have been JFK Mark II
 
Could Skylab B be involved in any way? To my mind it would make a much better service module than Zvezda. hells, Skylab had, in one module, more than 9/10 the pressurised volume of the whore Mir station.
 
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