DBWI: Germany never colonized The Moon

Dolan

Banned
Well, we all knew that Germany was actually coming rather late in the Colonial fad despite being a Great Power on their own right, so, lacking any colonies to boost German Prestige, Kaiser Wilhelm II The Visionary (or The Mad, depending on your perspective as he did screw German Economy somewhat), ordered The German Moon Colonization Program, that many thought to be a German folly.

Of course, it took several decades and a huge financial injection that almost breaks the German Economy of that time, but Kaiser Wilhelm managed to live to personally see the first unmanned probe land on the Moon in 1941, merely a week before his death, to be exact.

The manned mission to claim the Moon for the German Empire would only be achieved in 1954, but it was nonetheless marked a very important step in human scientific achievement.

Now, let's say that Kaiser Wilhelm II was never struck with his obsession to claim The Moon in the first place... What will happen to Germany without that mind of obsession? Who will land on and claim The Moon first?

OOC: This was taken from/inspired by several discussions about earliest possible Moon Landing and feasibility of German(Nazi) Space Program. Assume Germany ITTL had some luck behind them.
 
OOC: This is pretty ASB. Rocket technology IOTL progressed about as fast as it could up through 1970 or so, given the constraints of overall technological development. It's not just liquid rocket engineering that's a constraint here, but general materials science, chemistry, and especially electronics. The obsession of a single ruler isn't going to change that, especially not enough to have a probe landing on the Moon in 1941. Especially not if that obsession starts in the very early 20th century (since the PoD seems to predate WWI), before anyone had built a working model of a liquid rocket. The liquid rocket bit is important here, since you can't (cannot, period, for very solid technical reasons) get something to the Moon with gunpowder or smokeless powder rockets. Technical issues aside, there would be a coup long before the Kaiser's obsession could bear any fruit, and no reasonable amount of luck is going to change that.

In character: The British Empire, maybe? They certainly had the technical base and resources to pull it off, but it's hard to figure a reason why. The monarchy had lost too much power by the 20th century for a single man's obsession to be the driving force as it was for Germany IOTL. Actually, that's a problem in general - it's hard to think of any nation that had both the necessary level of development and a good reason to go to space. And before anyone goes pointing fingers at us here in the States, I would like to point out that we're still busy settling the land in our borders. We barely get involved in affairs across the Atlantic - the thought of an American space program is laughable.
 

ASUKIRIK

Banned
How to make The Flying Kaiser into your usual monarch? Simple, just have him never met and later being the financial backer of Otto Lilienthal, the Father of Heavier-than-air Flight. It was Prince (and later Kaiser) Wilhelm's donations who enabled Otto Lilienthal to create the first-ever powered flight, and said success at being the pioneer of Flight Technology started Der Kaiser's obsession with making a colony above the clouds, and thus the obsession to claim The Moon as German Colony began.

Without Otto Lilienthal being his most influential advisor, I guess Flight Technology would be halted up to a century.
 
Honestly you probally get a world war with out the Kaisers obsession.

It was the reason why he worked so hard for global peace.

That said the German moon base has an estimated 50,000 people on it, and that's after generations of work, and the other powers of the world are catching up. The british empire has a program, Every one knows the Russian empire has one, though theirs is the worst of the great powers, and Japan's program is also doing well even if its pretty obvious that all of their equipment is obviously stolen by their spies.

As for us yanks, we are involved in the space race but mostly in a supportive roll, a lot of American electronics, American rocket fuel, and materials are made here and used in the British, French, German, and Russian space programs...but not the Japanese one their currently under embargo for thieft of intellectual property.
 

Dolan

Banned
Without Otto Lilienthal being his most influential advisor, I guess Flight Technology would be halted up to a century.
A century would be rather unlikely though, the first heavier than air flight was simply combining large set of glider with the light but powerful gasoline engine to move the wind propeller. Someone else somewhere is bound to stumble upon it sooner or later.

But yeah, Otto Lilenthal was definitely one of the biggest influence of Kaiser Willy's obsession with the sky, being the only Empire who could boast the first, and biggest air force on earth, nobody wanted to provoke Germany after the demonstration of Kaiser's Air Cavalry Capability by bombing empty field outside of Paris during the Alasce-Lorraine debacle.
 
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allot of people curse the day
were Emperor Wilhelm II got presented with this Book in 1929

"Wege zur Weltraumschifffahrt" by Herman Oberth
a scientific book about concept of space Travel
Wilhelm confused at first Weltraumschifffahrt is about ships on ocean
but he began to understand some thing of that what he understood in this Book
He could expand the Empire Vertical to other body of Solarsystem

So started the madness of Emperor Wilhelm II...
 
A Moon not colonized by Germany would probably look like this:

Lenin on the Moon.jpg
 
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