DBAHC giant rocket to the moon

I know there is a lot of enthusiasm on this forum for the space planes but none have left low earth orbit. Could a space program build a giant rocket that can escape the Earth's gravity and take astronauts to the moon? A rocket program was one of the German "wonder weapons" programs but it never really got off the ground.
 
It's not theoretically impossible, by any means. After all, the Silbervogel that started things off used rockets, and the laws of physics work just as well now as they did then. The problem is weight, or more precisely mass. A rocket launch would have to use pure thrust to overcome gravity and gain altitude, which demands an immense amount of fuel. That fuel then needs more fuel to be burned to accelerate it until it gets used, and so on and so on. Unless you've got some kind of very energetic fuel in mind, the payload could only be a tiny fraction of the rocket, and at that point I doubt any remotely practical design could carry astronauts to the moon - at least, not if you wanted to get them back again!

I think it's far more practical to build your rocket in orbit. It would take a lot of flights, but spaceplanes could absolutely carry the parts of a rocket up to low-orbit for assembly. You'd need to figure out some way of keeping people alive up there for more than a few hours, but honestly you'd need that anyway if you're sending people off to the moon, so it's not wasted effort. Building and launching from orbit vastly reduces the fuel requirements, and drags the whole idea into the realm of the practical. Build it, fuel it up, and off it goes. Much easier.

The whole idea of a single giant rocket just doesn't make much sense to me. Like I said, it's not absolutely impossible, but it would be very difficult and I honestly can't see why you'd WANT to do it that way. Much better to go with some sort of incremental plan like I suggested.
 
What if military rockets were produced for strategic reasons, not just as tactical or operational artillery?

What if there was some small but medium weight device that had so much gross explosive power to justify the investment in shooting it long ways? Like 20 bomber raids in a single 20t bomb?

Surely 20th century great powers with a big small bombs wouldn’t risk them in “slow” planes.
 
That's an interesting question. If you had a device like that, with perhaps the power of ten thousand tonnes of high explosives in a single bomb, the great powers would certainly want a long-ranged way to deliver them. A huge rocket could certainly fling such a thing a long way, and although the difficulties of hitting even a large target (such as an airport) are horrendous we can assume there's a solution. However, I think we're basically back to spaceplanes in this case too, and for the same reason - they're just easier. I don't see how a huge rocket like this would be much quicker to fuel and launch than a spaceplane, and spaceplanes of course have a crew so you don't need some sort of complicated automatic guidance system. Spaceplanes can also be called mid-mission and told NOT to deliver this device, change targets to a degree, and are generally more flexible while not being much slower than this hypothetical huge rocket.

Now, if you were writing an AH timeline - and we are on the AH forum, after all - then I think you're on the right track. Once there are dozens of these huge rockets around the world, each capable of throwing 20 tonnes or so across the Atlantic (for example), the chances of one or two being diverted for other purposes becomes much better. Nations which already have these rockets might look at using them as a basis for a moon mission. You'd need to come up with some PoD which butterflies away spaceplanes or renders them irrelevant, and you'd need to come up with some military reason for the rockets (although this superbomb idea looks like the way to go). The difficulties are still huge, of course, but it would make for an entertaining bit of AH. Feel like giving it a try?
 
What if military rockets were produced for strategic reasons, not just as tactical or operational artillery?

What if there was some small but medium weight device that had so much gross explosive power to justify the investment in shooting it long ways? Like 20 bomber raids in a single 20t bomb?

Surely 20th century great powers with a big small bombs wouldn’t risk them in “slow” planes.
We need a huge war to justify that level of destruction being considered then. But at the same time, europe was hesitant to point its armies at each other because of the rising power of America... and it has to be between industrial countries for this kind of arms race but those countries were mostly allied and Germany wasnt stupid enough to face half of Europe alone.
 
What if military rockets were produced for strategic reasons, not just as tactical or operational artillery?

What if there was some small but medium weight device that had so much gross explosive power to justify the investment in shooting it long ways? Like 20 bomber raids in a single 20t bomb?

Surely 20th century great powers with a big small bombs wouldn’t risk them in “slow” planes.

ASB
 
Youd think, but there are extremely reactive elements like Uranium. Otl there wasn't a desire to build bombs with them because wars are meant for conquering and theres no point to conquering wasteland. But if a war evolves from conquest to "survive at any cost" it would be a high priority research. But how to get there?
 
But how to get there?

So I’ve used ASB to make a big little bomb by physics magic. May as well use ASB for social change. The immediatist Marxists always had an analysis that a cataclysm of imperial empires grinding against each other would happen. Imagine Europe and America going to war over, hmm, a permanent division of China in 1953? The eventualists were proved right that imperial conflict would be mediated, trade based, and that single monopoly capitals would be so transnational that English monopoly capital wouldn’t want their capital stock in Germany held up by absurdities like a war to the death with England and Austria.

But what if capital didn’t transnationalise fast enough, or was willing to accept a ten or longer year return on patents and overseas investments? Such a capital network would encourage preexisting nationalism or sectarianism to the point where a state became dominated by ideology or culture or god or nation to the point that return on investment came second. An irrational and selfish capitalism if you will.

There’s your ten year war. And it’s just as likely to be each power against the other. Look how many fingers were in China, the “open door” for capital. Now imagine them thumb wrestling over Shanghai for good.
 
This is actually very good. You've managed to come up with a situation where great powers could plausibly come up with superbombs as a kind of last resort, point them at each other, and yet be too scared to actually use them. Because of all that, I think you've also managed to come up with a vaguely-plausible reason why they might divert some of their efforts to a moon project: direct confrontation is now too dangerous, so they look for other forms of competition, and science/exploration have historically been able to benefit from military resources being used for their ends. I imagine in this timeline we'd see massive investments in all areas where nations can compete without risking a military confrontation - sports, the arts, etc - as well as science, but science could piggyback off the efforts needed to develop these superbombs.

I'm still stuck on the spaceplanes, though - why would they not be used as the delivery systems for these superbombs? The Germans seemed to have something similar in mind with the Silbervogel, they can carry a payload about the right size (10 or 20 tonnes), they can get to low orbit, and they're probably about as fast to use in a crisis as rockets would be. So how do we get them out of the way so the great powers decide rockets are a better alternative?

Edit: I had a thought! Could we come up with something dangerous about the delivery of these superbombs which means a human crew is likely to fail but a guided rocket might succeed? Something about the environment they have to pass through, the qualities of the bomb itself, or perhaps even an effective defence (although why wouldn't it work on bomb-carrying rockets)?
 
This is actually very good. You've managed to come up with a situation where great powers could plausibly come up with superbombs as a kind of last resort, point them at each other, and yet be too scared to actually use them. Because of all that, I think you've also managed to come up with a vaguely-plausible reason why they might divert some of their efforts to a moon project: direct confrontation is now too dangerous, so they look for other forms of competition, and science/exploration have historically been able to benefit from military resources being used for their ends. I imagine in this timeline we'd see massive investments in all areas where nations can compete without risking a military confrontation - sports, the arts, etc - as well as science, but science could piggyback off the efforts needed to develop these superbombs.

I'm still stuck on the spaceplanes, though - why would they not be used as the delivery systems for these superbombs? The Germans seemed to have something similar in mind with the Silbervogel, they can carry a payload about the right size (10 or 20 tonnes), they can get to low orbit, and they're probably about as fast to use in a crisis as rockets would be. So how do we get them out of the way so the great powers decide rockets are a better alternative?

Edit: I had a thought! Could we come up with something dangerous about the delivery of these superbombs which means a human crew is likely to fail but a guided rocket might succeed? Something about the environment they have to pass through, the qualities of the bomb itself, or perhaps even an effective defence (although why wouldn't it work on bomb-carrying rockets)?
Quite simply it's too dangerous to everyone. Right now, the best spaceplane is the HMS Jupiter. It requires a lot more power than terrestrial level planes, its pilots are given anti gravity training as technology improves, and even the best terrestrial pilots are stumped by space planes. Spacial pilots are too valuable a resource to be spent on bombs.

Contrast an automatic rocket and theres no contest
 
They did figure out (mathematically) how to make it work. It's just too expensive to be worth doing. Only point is a dick measuring contest and with the Soviets having no interest in sending people into space there's no reason for us to use space to prove we're better.
 
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