An extended/better-financed NASA?

Curious to know what events could have made a stronger NASA, which could now see us going to Mars, or having advanced space technology today.

The books 'The Tranquility Alternative' by Allan Steele, or 'Voyage' by Stephen Baxter; both are excellent "better-space-program" novels.

Are there any private companies that would have taken up space property by now? - like the US Postal Service with their rocket planes zipping about.
 
The space race was intimately tied to the military ambitions of the Cold War superpowers, but were their plans for a more countercultural space program?
 

Archibald

Banned
Back to November 1968 and Nixon election. Nixon transition team included a dedicated space group, led by Nobel Prize Charles Townes. The group issued its report on January 8, 1969.

The report strongly recommended to continue lunar exploration, notably by giving NASA a budget high enough to keep Saturn V in production.

Unfortunately, the NASA administrator at the time - Thomas Paine - disliked the report, and lobbied Nixon with an expensive space program that included EVEYTHING (space shuttle + space station + the moon + nuclear rockets + Mars in 1982)

Nixon balked at the cost, and in March 1970 more or less picked the shuttle and throw everything else away.

Nox drop Thomas O. Paine, replace him with George Low or Robert Seamans and there you are, Apollo continue, maybe up to a lunar base.

Baxter plan is cleaver. Its Mars shuip is build from four major elements
- the S-II earth departure stage
- a Skylab
- an Apollo
- the Mars Excursion Module
Of the four, three already exist. Only the MEM is a clean-sheet design. Its development cost is equal to the shuttle, around $5 billion between 1972 and 1985...
 
Have there been other plans or projects to launch moon or mars colonies etc.... Building of spaceships etc...
 
Well how could we improve the space race, or delay it to make it last longer, thus get more out of it?
 
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