On March 24th 1961 NASA's astronaut Alan Shepard became the first man in space when he rode Freedom 7 into space. The trip was reportedly a bumpy one with vibrations reported during the flight which I can't but think of a momentous decision made after the flight of Ham on January 31st.
During that meeting von Braun asked his team whether they should proceed onto the flight or delay it, with the former unanimously voted upon by the entire team. According to Deborah Cadbury's book about the Space Race, WVB later recalled that he thought about overrulling his entire team and delay the flight to the month of May but decided against it anyways.
The book also written that one of the team members Kurt Debus was very close to dissent against proceeding with the flight at the fateful conference and had thought about inserting another test mission in the schedule between MR-2 and MR-3 which ironically took place at May 5th soon after Shepard's bumpy ride.
What if Debus and von Braun chose to switch places of MR-3 and the test mission to each other by delaying Shepard's flight to May 5th and ran another unmanned test on the spacecraft on March 24th beforehand which makes Yuri Gagarin became not just the first into orbit on April 12th, but first into space?
Would we see that Apollo 18-20 not getting cancelled then? Would it cause Leonov to beat Armstrong to the Moon first?
During that meeting von Braun asked his team whether they should proceed onto the flight or delay it, with the former unanimously voted upon by the entire team. According to Deborah Cadbury's book about the Space Race, WVB later recalled that he thought about overrulling his entire team and delay the flight to the month of May but decided against it anyways.
The book also written that one of the team members Kurt Debus was very close to dissent against proceeding with the flight at the fateful conference and had thought about inserting another test mission in the schedule between MR-2 and MR-3 which ironically took place at May 5th soon after Shepard's bumpy ride.
What if Debus and von Braun chose to switch places of MR-3 and the test mission to each other by delaying Shepard's flight to May 5th and ran another unmanned test on the spacecraft on March 24th beforehand which makes Yuri Gagarin became not just the first into orbit on April 12th, but first into space?
Would we see that Apollo 18-20 not getting cancelled then? Would it cause Leonov to beat Armstrong to the Moon first?
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