Americans on the Moon? DBWI

We all know the Soviets won the Space race hands down after they made it to the moon in 1972. What if the U.S. had sent people to the moon before then? Would we have won the space race? Unlike us would the soviets have went to the moon after we did?
 
We all know the Soviets won the Space race hands down after they made it to the moon in 1972.

Yeah. The dead hands of the astronauts who died after their spacecraft malfunctioned and they were stranded there. I still think the US really won it; we've got six times as much tonnage in Earth orbit now. Going to the Moon would've actually been a distraction for us; if we'd been consciously racing the Soviets, we couldn't have gotten as much in place as we have now.
 
Second to the moon is just as expensive, and with a fraction of the prestige.

No, just going for the sake is going will not happen. But they could still send unmanned probes to send back samples. Maybe the Soviets in TTL return decades later with a manned lunar observatory, as opposed to our orbital one in OTL.
 
I actually started writing an ATL for this ("To The Moon, Alice!") but was
never satisfied I could make it plausibly work.

Delaying the Soviets isn't that hard: have Korolyev die of a heart attack
or something ; have the N1 blow up on the launch pad ; etc.

The real difficulty is having the U.S. invest the billions needed for a moon
program of our own. At a minimum, you'd have to keep us out of the
Indochina war, and somehow prevent the Nixon Recession of the 1960s.
 
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The real difficulty is having the U.S. invest the billions needed for a moon program of our own. At a minimum, you'd have to keep us out of the Indochina war, and somehow prevent the Nixon Recession of 1960.
I'm not sure about the dollar amounts, but a single lunar shot can be done for a lot cheaper than our current orbital expenditures. Of course, at the end, you won't have anything but the glory - unlike what we've got now. I still think Von Braun had the right idea: build up something in orbit now and maybe try for the moon tomorrow if we think it's worth it.
 
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