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Cite: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/earlier-icbm-for-us.419018/page-3

Shevek23 in a "micro-rant"* (quoted below) on the above thread whilst side tracking on Kolyma's Shadow TL (See/Read/Enjoy: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/kolymas-shadow-an-alternate-space-race.314576/) brought up an often used but seldom discussed "alternative" Space Race; What if the space race had been less heated? Where would we be without the Sputnik panic? Had Shepard gone into "space" (even suborbital) before Gagarin? What if Apollo had only been the "LEO/Space Station support" vehicle, (with "some" possible Lunar utility at a later date) it was initially proposed to be?

The main question would center around even if you have a more 'sustainable' space program, given that it is rather obvious that "will" is the main component that "limits" a space program would even a sustainable space program not shrivel and fade as time went on. As Shevek23 writes:

The only thing that is lacking for HSF on a much larger scale is will, and an ATL where we don't specify some ASB reason for more resolve-alien artifacts lying around the system derelict or something like that--the same apathy we have OTL seems likeliest to prevail.

I'm going to first and foremost point out that space travel is actually very unlike any other form of transportation on Earth and much as everyone tried to 'tie' it to a historical system to create a precedence or analogy doing so ultimately falls flat due to that very basic difference. There are some VERY basic analogies to air travel simply because for the most part the vehicles both 'move' through a rather hostile medium but that's about the closest you can come to actually creating an analogy and it is far too basic to support any suppositions or arguments. (Doing so, while common, is not as productive as one could hope because you invariably paint yourself into a corner in order to justify the analogy itself rather than analyzing the actual situation)

Transportation on Earth has always been about moving "stuff" from point A to point B for reasons that are not that important. Economics, technology, politics, "will" and such all come into play at some point in refining and defining the HOW of transportation but the WHY has always been the movement of material and people from one place to another.

Space is different because it takes a whole lot of effort to get from point A (the surface of the Earth) to space and there is in fact, no "point B" to be had.

While you can argue that "space" in and of itself is a viable "destination" this is wrong as what it actually has is 'utility' in the same manner as the air and ocean do. But like those it lacks anything beyond this direct utility in general though in the specific you can 'park' an asset in "space" for use but only at a significant energy cost. (Overall though the price would be 'similar' to perform station-keeping of an asset long term on the ocean or in the air the practicality is less)

From very early on "space" was seen not as a medium but as a destination and more specifically as an extensive 'frontier' which could be expanded into and this became an overall image/analogy that has remained to this day. Comparably, during the early Space Age exploration, exploitation and settlement of the ocean floor was similarly in vogue but reality soon modified and reduced this enthusiasm. So the question would seem was there more 'will' to explore/exploit space than the oceans? The rather obvious answer is no as we have extensively explored and exploited the ocean, arguably to a greater degree than space. This wasn't "will" per-se as much as access and ability in that while technologically and operationally the mediums required similar effort the ocean was vastly easier and became vastly cheaper over time whereas space access has not.

And so while space continues to have 'utility' it remains limited and expensive to access and therefor overall limited in use.

And yes, pretty much barring some ASB "alien" relics being found the actual political and public "will" to explore space will remain limited both in scope and organization. But the cost of access is directly tied to both utility and requirement so if the 'need' were there could not the price-tag be reduced? The answer is "Yes but it's complicated..." :)

As for "apathy" I will point directly to the overall "apathy" the public and government feel towards air-travel, ocean-travel, and surface-travel. None of them get the public or politicians 'excited' nor arguably SHOULD they until or unless something goes wrong. In every single one "early on" records were made, broken and then it all became routine and ordinary. Why does "space travel" require this to be different?

Partially this is because even after 50 years, (half a century folks) we are still very much in the 'early' phase of space travel, but mostly it is because it is so rare and expensive. 50 years after the Wright Brothers it was becoming common for "average" people to fly from one place to another in comfort and style if not perfect safety. The failure of that analogy is those people had places to go and things to do inherited from earlier forms of travel that space still does not provide. And while it can be argued that going into space can get people or materials to a destination faster it would be by no means more economical which is another point that "space travel" fails to compare to other forms of transportation. Each has an economic factor attached which "space" simply can't compete unless its utilized to a much greater degree.

Shevek23 wrote(A mini-rant which I re-post here :) *still applies :) ):
So in your ATL (Note Kolyma's Shadow) I'm guessing the probable time frame for first moon landing is the 2020s and there is no guarantee that even that would involve a slow and steady wins the race investment in infrastructure that would mean a more sustained and expanding human presence in space once this late moon race was won by someone. It might, but it might just as well be the same flash in the pan as OTL.

As Nixonhead notes in fact "Columbia" the US Lunar Effort in KS WAS in fact pretty much a 'flash-in-the-pan' in the manner of Apollo with no follow on but that is again BECAUSE it was, from the start, a very quick "on-the-cheap" effort with no follow-up planned. It was in fact a "stunt" program with all the 'unsustainability' inherent in such a program.

Don't get me wrong the "Minerva" is a solid, (no pun intended) LV, but it's still not as efficient a means to LEO as it could be or as the TL notes is 'required' for economical and/or political purposes. Eventually you have to get creative and get reusable or both, and in a 'slow-and-steady' TL the SOONER you do it the better.

It is argued that a more economical approach will pave a trail of institutional interests desiring to sustain it, but why should that self-interest be more effective than the larger-scale superhighway to the sky investments made OTL? If anything I suspect that Big Aerospace had more reason to institutionalize big NASA budgets OTL than smaller aerospace interests of a tortoise ATL would have the clout to do--a little investment is easier to disperse and shuffle the people off to consolation prize alternate jobs than the gigantic complex we built for Apollo, where cutting it back caused major industrial scale trauma. If Congress and Nixon could face huge billboards in Seattle asking the last person leaving the city to please turn out the lights, and survive the massive layoffs of NASA contractors of the early 70s in general, surely shutting down something 1/5 the scale is a matter of partisan political whim with practically no serious political consequences for them to worry about?

There's a huge amount of misconception embodied in this but let's start with the primary one; What "large-scale superhighway to the sky" investment? There wasn't any such thing done and in fact at best it got to be a "large-scale, occasional launch of a super heavy and expensive vehicle to deliver a couple three people and a hundred pounds of rocks back to Earth maybe once a year" The Shuttle was actually worse because while it was just as expensive it still only managed to fly at most a couple of times a year and had no destination or program until the ISS was built and then it STILL was the most expensive way to deliver personnel and materials.

Another misconception is "Big Aerospace" make the majority of its money from NASA. While it's arguable that in the US most big aerospace companies do in fact make most of their money from the government NASA is no-where near the main source. In fact NASA monies outside major development and support contracts like the Shuttle and to a lesser extent the SLS is lower than commercial sources and far below military sources. NASA doesn't buy enough launches or vehicles to be a large revenue stream which is why "commercial" launch operations had to be combined in the ULA company.

While it might seem 'logical' that something that has 1/5th the budget of a "major" program like Apollo would be easier to cut in fact it's not that linear of an issue. In many cases it depends on who is doing the 'fighting' for the program as can be seen in the NERVA program or more recently the SRB program which has transferred from the Shuttle to the SLS. More importantly it is what organizations and supporting programs can be enlisted to politically support a program. NASA space flight has since Apollo (arguably Mercury actually) been all about MANNED space flight with science and exploration a poor second and this shows in the budget and support given it by those organizations more interested in science and exploration.

This is the basis and contention of the whole "man-versus-robot" debate since it has been taken as a truism in NASA (and the government as a whole actually) that without people you don't need NASA. So it doesn't matter if it is true that robots are more efficient at some tasks than sending people, in the end the result MUST be people in place to justify having NASA and therefore having a space program at all.

Of course if you go back to the ocean which were early on compared and used as an analog of space exploration you immediately see how skewed this "argument" is and how useless because both humans and automation are used extensively and more importantly WHERE they are the most benefit and economic to do so. Then again we never had an "inner-Space Race" and a huge "National Underwater and Marine Agency" that had bet its entire existence on manned submarines, which is very much not the case for Outer Space.

The simple truth is that automation very early on takes a more prominent role in both exploration and exploitation and manned flight will always struggle to keep relevant. But just as early on man DOES have a significant role and if that role in enhanced but not forced that presence makes a perfectly logical sense in supporting and enhancing the automated systems. But only so long as you can get the people to and from space in a timely, economic manner. The R7 and Soyuz have shown it can be done even if no reusability is included but they also show that both flight rate and economics are important factors. As the former goes up reusability is the only way to keep the latter under control and the former HAS to go up to help bring the economics down.

It is only if one can justify a claim that a program could accomplish what Apollo did and more for substantially less money--not talking about saving 10 or 15 percent here, talking about slashing the price in half--that it seems reasonable to suggest such an ATL could come out ahead of ours. But what reason is there to claim that, unless one has a means of slashing the costs of launches to low orbit in general in half or to less? Another possibility is to suggest that a program with the same total price or higher is more sustainable if its cost per year is a lot lower. But here we are trading off money for time--even if we assume Apollo wasted a lot and a program that took twice as long would cost considerably less than half as much per year, still it clearly must take say 12 years to accomplish what Apollo did in 8, and those extra four years are all the more time for political winds to shift, and question why do this at all, no matter at how low a bargain basement price. Again, the very economy of it may make it more vulnerable to cuts as something marginal and optional!

Part if the problem with Apollo and all it's derivative, (including Mars Direct) programs is they do not in fact do anything to lower the cost to space let alone low Earth orbit. LEO is in fact a distraction a possibly necessary place to go 'through' on the way but neither a destination nor a goal but simply a check mark on the checklist of "getting" where you are really going. (Zubrin actually considers this a feature not a bug) So there is no incentive nor desire and certainly no planning to do anything to 'lower" the cost of getting to a 'benchmark' along the way to the destination.

The studies were pretty clear that barring a sudden switch to a program to build up and maintain a significant LEO and Cis-Lunar infrastructure the Saturn-V had only ONE job it could do adequately, (note, not "well" but barely adequately) and that was launch payloads to the Moon and occasional super heavy payloads to LEO. But if you wanted to keep anything from the Saturn-V development and production and you were NASA then the choice was pretty clear you needed to justify the Saturn-V or build an equivalent both of which they tried to do. The former failed and the latter became the Space Shuttle but without a clear program and/or destination it became a LV waiting on a payload/mission but without any actual justification or support. (This may sound familiar to recent history)

Yet the "choices" were less technical and more political and that's' what drove what we 'got' versus what we could have had. Much is made of the "LOR" decision but in truth of the three 'modes' the main REASON the choice had to be made was because of the politically required mission parameters given: 1) Land a man and safely return him to the Earth, and 2) Do so in less than a decade

Had these not been injected into the planning the ACTUAL plan was to build up capability, experience and capacity in LEO over the 1960s to 1970s before heading around the Moon by the mid-to-late 70s with a landing and exploration to start after that. This became the basis of the EOR (Earth Orbital Rendezvous) concept though it was highly truncated to fit the time table.

Had this been done the very first thing developed would have been an economical LV and ferry vehicle to support and supply LEO orbiting space stations. This might have been derived from the Saturn-1 or the Titan-III and a modified Apollo, (which in fact might not have been OTL's Apollo at all) incorporating mass production, high launch rates and eventually reusability to lower costs. From there on-orbit assembly and rendezvous would follow along with both automated and manned operations expanding along with it. This leads to a very different from OTL launch and orbital procedures and practices as well as trickling down to different commercial and government satellite design and operations procedures. In essence from early on on-orbit manned and unmanned operations become part of the process and not tacked on. The hard part to conceptualize is that this isn't what we know as a "space program" with every launch a first and every flight a media event it is much more akin to 'middle' Shuttle operations where the public was actually pretty bored with the whole thing. But you'd think that leads to...

To account for a persistent resolve to keep plodding on steadily, regardless of shifting political fashions and changing circumstances, demands that there is a consensually shared reason for the goal, and if one can conjure up a strong reason like that to secure a steady slow 12 year program, one can probably just as well justify a giddy fast paced 8 year program, and then sustain the high peak funding reached for that as an increasingly accustomed plateau. Either way the US taxpayer can afford it, it is pennies on the tax dollar, but a supersized, vainglorious, Mars or Bust with lots of Saturn V launches every year sort of epic program is both better circus for the public and a bigger gravy train for the contractors.

Or, the 'reason' is pretty simple in that we have a presence in space that as part of its overall function is the deployment, repair and control of satellites and space traffic. Much as we have such systems in place to monitor and control every other form of transportation we've ever developed. So may be 12 years before we send men around the Moon, so what? Is the Moon going somewhere we need to hurry? Sure the "enemy" may try and shortcut being 'first' but an initial argument that came up for space in general was which was more important? Being first? Or Being useful?

Sputnik and Gagarin tend to be presented as examples of "being first" being the more important but had Vanguard been successful and as Explorer One showed "being useful" has more long term effects and had Alan Shepard been the first man into "space" even though suborbital Gagarin would have only been the 'next first rather than THE first.

One of the problems with space specifically has always been that there tends to be set 'goals' that get the public and politicians excited and that excitement and the support it engenders fades once that goal is achieved. Which then requires a newer and bigger goal to be set just to generate more excitement/support only to see it crash again and therefor require another, bigger goal to keep coming along...
Meanwhile more general goals with no set time table or focused 'end-point' tend to keep rolling along with steady but unspectacular support over time. The ISS for example compared to the Apollo Lunar program.

Now as for that "enemy" you know with steady presence in orbit we can not only see what he's doing but are in the position to counter any 'desperate' move on his part. He manages to send a manned flight around the Moon directly from the surface? Nice, but then we use our infrastructure to put an orbital survey mission in Lunar orbit for a couple of weeks and bring back 10X the data... Balls back in his court :)
(Keep in mind the "reason" Apollo 8 went into Lunar orbit was in case the Soviets had managed to be first AROUND the moon on a flyby. WE went into orbit while they couldn't...)

All we lack is the reason, the rationale, the justification. Lacking that--what secures a slow and steady program from termination on a whim? And if that happens, where is the incremental improvement that so many assume bring any goal within reach given mere lapse of time?

The "reason" is it is NOT a 'space program' or "stunt generator" which is what OUR space programs have pretty much been since day one. You can cancel those on a whim but it's a lot harder when what is being done in space and on-orbit is part and parcel of your space transportation infrastructure. Despite the often canceled nature of NASA launch vehicles and new programs you might have noted that LV development has taken place and continues to be funded to support satellite launch both commercial and government? This is because it is not tied to NASA's manned space flight program, (and in fact most of the argument against using the Delta-IV and Atlas-V for Constellation was less about technology and more about the delays and costs of "man-rating" those launchers when they were needed for national security and commercial launches) and therefore it has a number of a OTHER applications that most NASA launchers/programs do not. They are not a "program" they are part of a transportation system and are therefore much more immune to political whim and waning public support. It can be argued that the US could save hundreds of millions a year if we simply shut down our Antarctic research bases and all the transportation and support operations they require. It's been suggested but in fact despite political 'whim' there is too much support and utility for such a suggestion to pass muster as a serious proposal.

Now imagine our 'space program' being like that rather than the "we need a new Apollo or we'll die" organization and activity it currently is?

This was the argument I alluded to your TL (Kolyma's Shadow again) as a thought experiment on. I think it is nice you assume NESSA, in charge of scientific space probes, will enjoy support superior to OTL unmanned space exploration at NASA, due to being insulated from budget raids by the Buck Rogers crowd, but really, what is the public interest (as perceived by hard-nosed politicians) to guarantee its modest budget? I'd fear that sooner or later, someone in Washington will axe it too, if not for fiscal than perhaps for ideological reasons.

Well for one the Air Force is still using some manned operations in space as is NESSA though both are getting harder to justify due to cost. The Air Force is trying to address this with Air Launch while NESSA looks to 'cheaper' Minerva type LVs but in the end there's really nothing other than momentum to protect that TLs space program. Less so since it IS a smaller program but I'll point out that even in OTL there is very much a "no further" feeling in retreating from space. No politician is going to come out and say we should give up manned space flight fully even though that's pretty much where we are now. Note they won't SAY it but they can still arrive at the same point by simply not funding or short-funding what we do have and that's pretty much what the situation is. But overall there has been a major pushback over the lack of US access and the politicians have had to listen to that which is where Commercial Crew has come about.

The idea initially was to control that too by carefully choosing who got contracts but in many ways it parallels the EELV program where the politicians had assumed that the LV they choose would be the only option but commercial forces proved that.. Well, they chose poorly :) (They pretty much forced the NRO/Air Force to "chose" the Delta-IV but the Atlas-V and Falcon-9 already had enough commercial contracts to 'survive' the selection process and the NRO/Air Force scheduled payloads for both the Atlas-V and Falcon-9 despite Congressional disapproval)

The major difference is political whim has MUCH more power when it directly controls and manages a program and far LESS when it only has ancillary and oversite powers.

It gets back to this thread's OP (Early ICBM development in the US leading to a more robust US space effort early on) in that, if the USA can push ahead to be several years earlier, but the Soviets cannot match the Americans--and this is plausible to me because the Russians were pretty strongly motivated, while the USA clearly was not firing on all available cylinders and yet was, overall and practically speaking, far ahead at every step--then Americans will be in a position to launch something earlier than the Soviets possibly can, and thus the OTL space race panic will not be operational.

Well it's as likely that US will actually panic MORE but on a shorter term to every Soviet 'first' as they reach parity and then begin to slack off only to suddenly 'panic' again over the next stunt. Keep in mind that the actual 'operational' uses of space were pretty much kept out of the public eye as much as possible and hidden behind "research" and "scientific" operations as much as possible. Then fully went 'black' as soon as they could be hidden in plain sight among the "other" space activities. (That's actually a justification for a very visible and public "space program" so you can hide the other one behind and within it :) )

I don't believe Kolyma's Shadow is conclusive proof than USA first to orbit must mean no space race ever, and it is also possible that without the whip of space panic, we might nevertheless match Apollo and improve on it, perhaps. But I wished to address the assumption that avoiding the Space Race quite automatically puts us ahead of the game.

TLs have to be worked out methodically to be plausible. You did that, and the results were kind of sad as far as HSF goes. Someone else might find a different path to be sure, but I think the widespread assumption that Apollo burned our bridges is based on faulty metaphors and wishful thinking, on the persistent fallacy of the grass being always greener on the other side of the fence, not on some proven analysis.

Well the grass IS always greener on the other side of the alt-history fence! Unless it's a dystopia TL that is ;)

I on the other hand DO believe that Apollo burned our metaphorical bridges if only because it has given several generations the idea that we can simply "do" space the moment we have the mythical 'will' to do so. It's only partially true because we are probably never going to have that level of 'will' again and by depending on having that level we guarantee we will never significantly move beyond where we have been.

Will is only a single element of what is needed and not as important as it is made out to be. What we really need is regular and economic access which will allow much lower levels of "will" and economy to generate more proportional output for the input given. As it will be vastly lower than that "Moon and back in a decade" a majority of people will not support or understand why we need to 'walk' all over again when we've already 'run' to the Moon. Never understanding that we in fact never learned to 'walk' in the first place.

Not having an Apollo moment does not guarantee a 'better' outcome but I do think it opens up a better chance for the possibility than any TL that contains an OTL type Apollo program simply because it does not raise the bar so high for the initial outing. (And lest we forget, MacNamara actually argued that "simply" going to the Moon was too LOW a goal and we should consider further targets such as Mars for our efforts :) )

Thoughts?

Randy
*And I mean that in the most sincere and respectful way possible of course :)
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