There was a concept in Cold War speculative fiction that there would be an international effort in exploring and colonizing space. For example, in First Men in the Moon (1964) it was a UN mission (including the US and USSR) that first landed on the moon. This did not happen. Rather than being an area of international cooperation, space was an area of national competition. And it is easy enough to argue that the military element of it (winning the Cold War) was the driver, undercutting the realism of an international force to explore outer space for peaceful and purely scientific goals. However, what if? And how could this be made to happen?