Alan Shepard, First Man in Space?

The more cynical amongst us might suggest that a little thing like an unreliable parachute wouldn't have stopped the Soviets throwing Gagarin up there anyway to see what happens.

That raises another possible PoD, however - Vostok 1 malfunctions, Yuri doesn't survive his trip, the Soviets authorities claim it was just an unmanned test flight and so when Shepard makes his successful trip three weeks later its his name that goes into the record books.

You really wanna go optimistic not only have US first in space but have Apollo mess cured w/o tragedy (IE no Apollo 1 fire) and get us to moon by 67 or 68 (which could impact 68 elections)
Out of interest, what was the schedule for the Apollo program before the Apollo 1 disaster? The fact that Apollo 1 was intended as a three-man flight, whilst the revised schedule didn't attempt to put astronauts into space until Apollo 7, suggests that the initial plan was indeed to complete Kennedy's goal much earlier than in OTL.
 
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That raises another possible PoD, however - Vostok 1 malfunctions, Yuri doesn't survive his trip, the Soviets authorities claim it was just an unmanned test flight and so when Shepard makes his successful trip three weeks later its his name that goes into the record books.

Unlikely, unless it's an accident on the pad or very shortly after takeoff. The Sovs announced the flight while Gagarin was still in orbit and Western stations picked up the video signal from the capsule, so if he dies up there we'd almost certainly know - it's just not something they'd be able to cover up. I remember reading somewhere that Moscow Radio had a couple of contingency messages prepared for broadcast in cast things went wrong - one was to appeal for help in recovering Gagarin in the event that his capsule came down in the wrong place, and the other was to announce his heroic death.
 
Out of interest, what was the schedule for the Apollo program before the Apollo 1 disaster? The fact that Apollo 1 was intended as a three-man flight, whilst the revised schedule didn't attempt to put astronauts into space until Apollo 7, suggests that the initial plan was indeed to complete Kennedy's goal much earlier than in OTL.

The Apollo 1 fire allowed the correction of many faults in the spacecraft. There would probably have been a couple of additional Apollo 1/7 style missions to work out these bugs. I don't think the Apollo schedule would be any quicker without the fire.
 

Cook

Banned
I was just pointing out a legal technicality.

What rules are you referring to though; Gagarin was a man and he did go into space, how he got up there and how he got back down do not seem to be relevant, if he’d got up there by jumping he’d still have been first up.

Back to the subject: Would Kennedy still have been likely to make that speech?
 
What rules are you referring to though; Gagarin was a man and he did go into space, how he got up there and how he got back down do not seem to be relevant, if he’d got up there by jumping he’d still have been first up.

Back to the subject: Would Kennedy still have been likely to make that speech?

IIRC the rule was that for the flight tonbe valid the pilot must land in his craft, for reason that I don't know the pilot of a Vostok ejected before landing so under a strict interpretation of the rules Gagarin's flight was a failure and the Soviets were forced to issue a story that he had landed in the capsule.

As for if Shepherd had been first, unless he had made it to orbit then he would still have been overshadowed by Gagarin's flight and Kennedy would have wanted to create the Moon race
 

Cook

Banned
for reason that I don't know the pilot of a Vostok ejected before landing



The pilot ejected because the impact of the capsule into the ground would have likely killed him.

The fact that they had a man in orbit would be convincing proof that they had indeed put the first man in space, regardless of rules.

If Shepard gets up there first, then Gagarin, then Glenn, the fact that the Soviets could achieve such a thing would not be seen as so shocking as it was when they were first; they would be seen as chasing American ‘firsts’ rather than being the pioneers.
 
The pilot ejected because the impact of the capsule into the ground would have likely killed him.

The fact that they had a man in orbit would be convincing proof that they had indeed put the first man in space, regardless of rules.

If Shepard gets up there first, then Gagarin, then Glenn, the fact that the Soviets could achieve such a thing would not be seen as so shocking as it was when they were first; they would be seen as chasing American ‘firsts’ rather than being the pioneers.

Thanks for the info!

Obviously Shepherd was just as brave as Gagarin for sitting on top of several tinned of high explosives and hoping that everything worked as it should but his flight was a simple ballistic suborbital shot. Even if he'd been first Gagarin's flight would still have overshadowed him much as John Glenn did in OTL. NASA simply didn't have the capability to do an orbital flight at that time and in the propaganda war that both sides were waging it was the race to orbit that mattered.
 
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