As you probably know, the 50th and 60th years are considered an era of Soviet domination in the exploration of outer space. In particular, three events are most memorable: the launch of an artificial satellite, the flight of Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin and the first lunar expedition of Alexei Leonov and Valery Voloshin. Nevertheless, the Americans also distinguished themselves, and could also have left a significant mark in the history of space exploration - the first to be laid on the moon. What are your assumptions?
DBWI: Americans landing on the moon.
- Thread starter WotanArgead
- Start date
QueerSpear
Banned
I think you would have to prevent the collapse of the New Deal Coalition in the mid 1950s, allowing a stable US government to better fund space exploration.
Well I do wonder if the USA would have made a better show of it with their own space program, it would certainly help if the Commonwealth Space Program would stop snapping up their best Rocket and Aircraft Engineers, but then we'd probably lose out on the development of the Hermes and Black buck systems. Still at least the USAAF wouldn't have to go to Vickers or De Haviland every time they need a new toy. I wonder if the American would have wasted as much time as the Soviets did on their Buran spaceplanes.
Well the Russians faked it. I suppose the Americans could have faked it as well. After the collapse of the Soviet Union no country has had a space program anymore though. Nobody has been to space since the 70's. Only private businesses have shown any interest lately of going into space again, but for commercial purposes.
Maybe if the Americans had done it they would still have a space program an eventually actually landed on the moon, but i doubt it could go any further than that. They would be just as far as the UK is right now, nowhere.
Maybe if the Americans had done it they would still have a space program an eventually actually landed on the moon, but i doubt it could go any further than that. They would be just as far as the UK is right now, nowhere.
Keep the conspiracy theories off this site.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the Russians didn't land on the moon.
TheHolyInquisition
Banned
The technical issues are the big problem. Could they have gotten any Nazi scientists?
Maybe, but then the USA would loose the moral high ground post war of not having hired nazi war criminals like the USSR. Or India. Or the United Kingdom. Or Argentina. I guess the key scientist would be Werner Von Braun, and he would have probably been able to achieve a lot more by going to a country with a larger, dedicated budget, instead of following Kurt Tank to Argentina and later India. OTOH, one shouldn't understimate the American scientists.
But the question remains, why? The American space program may not be as flashy as the Soviet one, or even the European program, but it achieved it's goals: The 1,000 ICBMs provide the USA with a credible nuclear deterrence (aka "don't go to war with us, or the USSR will cease to exist. See? Not enough warheads for counter-force, so we'll just wipe you out"), it created a vast (and cheap) constellation of communications, spy, weather and galilleo-like geolocation services. On top, by giving the Soviets just enough competition so they'll keep raising the stakes, it made sure the Soviet Union kept funelling money into useless military and aerospace hardware instead of actual usable conventional weapons systems or consumer goods for its people and thus, may have helped the colapse of the USSR in the late '90s.
As much as the Russian nationalists may claim, putting a man in the Moon and licensing velcro and other stuff worldwide might mean the USSR won the Space Race. But the USA won the Cold War, and that was what it was all about.
Well there is hardly any evidence they did as there is no video footage and nobody else has been there ever since. They just claim the moon as their own and i remember them even threathening any nation that would try to land on the moon next, like they are afraid someone might find something on the moon they don't want to be found...
I know its widely accepted they did, but all i'm saying it will be a secretive for Americans to land on the moon as it was the Soviets. So secret people might think it never happened. Unless they manage to videotape it somehow i guess.
They left the radio beacon, so unless every radio astronomer on Earth who tracked it was also faking, that's pretty conclusive evidence.
Anyhow, to get a U.S. moon program, you'd need to prevent the Nixon Recession, and delay the Soviet landing long enough for us to plausibly catch up. Maybe have Korolyev or Von Braun purged for some offense.
All I know was that the Russians nearly didn't make it to the Moon. Sergei P. Korolyov (1906-1998) nearly died after an operation in early 1966, and after he recovered by late April 1966 faced the daunting task of finishing the development of a rocket and spacecraft that could make it to the Moon and back. It was a very good thing that Korolyov decided to launch what could have been Soyuz 1 as the unmanned Kosmos 148 in March 1967, which had all kinds of problems in orbit and crashed back to Earth at a speed of 110 km/h (68 mph) when the parachute only partly deployed, pretty much destroying the landing capsule. That resulted in a massive redesign of the Soyuz spacecraft, and by October 1968, the very successful manned flight of Soyuz 3 cleared one major hurdle for a Moon mission.
The other problem with the N-1 rocket itself. While the complex-looking first stage worked well, the second stage had all kinds of problems, especially with the troublesome NK-15V engines (the first and second test launches in August and December 1967 failed, both due to turbopump failures). It was after the NK-15V got improved turbopumps that the third and four launches succeeded in April and August 1968, and that made it possible for a manned lunar orbital flight in January 1969, a manned Earth orbit test of the LK lander in April 1969, a manned lunar orbit test of the LK lander in July 1969, finally a successful landing in October 1969.
The other problem with the N-1 rocket itself. While the complex-looking first stage worked well, the second stage had all kinds of problems, especially with the troublesome NK-15V engines (the first and second test launches in August and December 1967 failed, both due to turbopump failures). It was after the NK-15V got improved turbopumps that the third and four launches succeeded in April and August 1968, and that made it possible for a manned lunar orbital flight in January 1969, a manned Earth orbit test of the LK lander in April 1969, a manned lunar orbit test of the LK lander in July 1969, finally a successful landing in October 1969.