Apollo 8 suffers a tank-stir explosion in lunar orbit. Apollo 10 suffers a retro burn failure & crashes. Apollo 11's fuel meter is faulty & runs dry 35sec earlier than OTL. Or, Apollo 11 suffers a tank-stir explosion & the CM is blown out of lunar orbit, leaving the LM stranded.
Or, Hitler doesn't have a dream
& von Braun can't persuade him to fund the A-4. (What this means for WW2 is another thread.
) Or, more Germans end up in Russia's program, building ersatz A-4s.


Or, Hitler doesn't have a dream
I agree with most of this. Just one point of contention: why doesn't Hitler call for many, many more V-1s, if he can't get A-4s?truth is life said:1930s-1940s: Go-ahead is never given on A-4/V-2 rocket program. Instead, development work is focused on tactical artillery rockets, air-to-surface rockets, and anti-air rockets. This leads to a slightly more powerful Nazi Germany, but one which is still overrun by the Allies in about the same amount of time along broadly similar lines to OTL. Along with most other members of the (OTL) German long-distance rocketry team, Wernher von Braun is killed during the war.
After the war, the Allies begin examining the left-overs of Nazi technology. Unlike OTL, these do not include V-2s for high-altitude rocketry experiments, but do include a number of V-1s, actually somewhat more than OTL. This sparks (more) interest in autonomous long-range jet flight, or rather cruise missiles
1940s-1950s: Both in the US and the Soviet Union (also in Britain, but to a lesser extent), active effort is undertaken into the development of intercontinental cruise missiles, the big brothers of the V-1, for nuclear weapons delivery. Variants are developed for carriage on board surface ships, submarines (this happened IOTL, actually), and large bombers, as both countries also begin actively refining the anti-aircraft missile technology recovered from Nazi Germany.
Some advocates, such as Glushko and Korolev in the Soviet Union, or Truax in the United States, argue for the development of long-range rocket-propelled missiles instead, but such missiles are generally viewed as impractical at best, nonsense at worst by those in charge of funding. Some analysis also takes place into the possibility of satellites and their uses, but that is viewed almost universally as science fiction.
The IGY never happens, although an IPY does as usual.
1950s-1960s: The first ICCMs go into service, providing an effective nuclear deterrent to back up manned bombers. Submarine and surface-launched cruise missiles also exist, but are much shorter ranged due to limited size. Given development of anti-aircraft weapons, both sides realize that their current bomber/ICCM arsenals are vulnerable to interception by both aircraft and SAMs, and therefore start to develop new methods to saturate or evade enemy defensive screens. Some effort is made to go higher and faster, but many of the first forays into stealth design occur in this decade. However, the limited computer* technology makes true stealth aircraft impossible.
*ICCMs, SLCMs, ALCMs, and bombers provide many of the same incentives for electronics miniaturization as ICBMs did IOTL, so those technologies are roughly on the same schedule.
No serious effort is made to develop long-distance rocket technology further. The only advantage they would have over conventional ICCMs is speed, and even that would be effaced by the true hypersonic cruise missile or bomber which has been (to some extent or another) under development since the mid-1950s. However, some effort is being undertaken in related or sibling areas, such as sounding rockets, for other purposes. An orbital spaceflight is technologically possible, and would not be a great leap, but seems unlikely to take place soon.
1960s-1970s: Efforts continue to develop both stealth and hypersonic missiles and aircraft. The former are especially favored by the navies of both sides as they would be far smaller and more fuel-efficient than conventional ICCMs, thereby allowing a greater naval deterrent role (although the US, at least, has carrier-based bombers in addition to the usual submarine-based cruise missiles, and very quite SSCNs).
Development of sounding rockets has led to the suggestion that a cluster of them, with appropriate upper stages, could possibly put a small object into orbit, perhaps for scientific purposes. Governments begin to look with interest into the possibility; this might be a way of bypassing the problems with hypersonics that they have been having, and a way of bypassing extensive air defense networks that have made it essentially impossible to gather IMINT of enemy interior regions. Small programs begin in both the USA and the USSR to define possible uses of satellites and to develop a satellite and its launcher.
1970s-1980s: The first true stealth aircraft and cruise missiles appear. Given the ongoing difficulties with hypersonics, stealth units are widely developed and deployed (think F-117 level, not like the B-2). Both the US and USSR launch their first satellites during the decade, roughly on the level of the OTL Vanguard. Now that launch has been demonstrated, however, there is more interest from both sides in military capabilities, navigation, communications, spy, weather, etc. satellites. The respective Air Forces of each country are quick to capitalize on this, particularly as they spearheaded the projects in the first place.
1980s-1990s: FINALLY, some breakthroughs in hypersonics. A relatively larger program over the past decades is paying off, and some actual hypersonic vehicles fly at this time! However, there aren't any plausible space launch applications, sorry (this IS a -screw!).
Then the USSR goes kaput. Well, the peace dividend screws over the Air Force's burgeoning plans for space development. A limited spy satellite system is developed, of course, along with the needed relay satellites, but the big GPS system, the weather satellites, the global communications network (think Iridium) etc. go away.
I think this pretty well screws over the space program in general and NASA in particular. There's very little development of scientific missions, here; most launches and payloads are military, and there aren't many of those either, since developing the big systems would be expensive for little obvious benefit (to the people with the purse strings). There's no big Russian bear out there to spur these sorts of things, nor enough of an institutional base to keep the big stuff going even without it.
We also missed the Grand Tour![]()
Alice Kramden?Sibirskaya said:So who goes on the Moon if the Space Program is screwed?
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