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.
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.
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.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)
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