Shevek23 wrote:
In order to get a substantial jump on the operational date of USA's first missile, I would suggest a dual POD. One element is that indeed the MX-774 program is funded and extended without hiatus. However glancing at the history the OP provides, which is backed up by others such as at Encyclopedia Astronautica, it seems to me that Convair actually lost little time in the gap, which was not more than 3 years before the program leading to OTL Atlas was authorized, by 1951 in fact. In the three years between the tests of the 3 HIROC models that were the outcome of MX-774 and the Air Force's renewal of the development contract, Convair continued to work privately on the ICBM concept. Furthermore in 1955 Atlas was given top priority; perhaps if it had that from 1951 it might have gotten to the various stages of development somewhat earlier, but vice versa this does suggest that overall it was being pushed nearly as fast as possible all along. Considering how rapidly relevant state of the art, in rocket engines and in control electronics, was advancing that decade, we might question whether it was possible to push success many years farther back. And indeed as late as the Mercury orbital phase in 1961 and '62, the Atlas boosters available to NASA were still somewhat prone to failure! Eventually they became quite reliable indeed, but bear in mind that the first "operational" Atlas base at Vandenberg was rushed into service for political reasons in the wake of Sputnik, and was not actually operational for some time after that.
More than one POD may in fact be required as it wasn't "just" the funding/support hiatus that was an issue but the initial decision to concentrate on air-breathing "cruise" missiles as a "logical" extension of existing manned aircraft as the most 'near-term' missile type. On top of that was the propellant debate of "operational-versus-efficient" for missiles, and the question if along with everything else being 'accelerated' does Parsons cast-able-double-base solid propellant breakthrough come earlier as well? Guidance and Control, (GnC, or G&C depending on how terminological you want to get

) was primitive and though for some reason it was expected that development and production of GnC for cruise missiles would be more 'near-term' ICBM GnC was just about as tough in the short term to develop. And while continued funding and support would have undercut the rivalry for the same within the Air Force it might be questionable that this would lead directly to a more vigorous overall support for ICBM development. While the ICBM had advocates both in and out of the Air Force they were not in positions of power prior to around 1953 to where they could 'force' a compromise and get development started. (Even then it took to 1955 and pretty much and act of Congress/the President to get the program going as an actual, rather than just paper, priority)
"A" primary POD would be having Von Karman finding much more validity to ballistic missiles as a 'near-term' weapons system. As it was in "Towards New Horizons" he had MUCH more faith in 1) Manned Supersonic Bombers, 2) Air Breathing Supersonic Cruise Missiles (as an adaption/extension of the same technology) and finally while admitting the Ballistic Missile could be the most important weapon he ranked it last because he felt development of the various required elements, (propulsion, airframe, GnC and support systems) would be protracted and lengthy compared to the first two weapons systems.
Our hind-sight would tend to say that's wrong but given the actual operational 'utility' of a Big-Atlas, (required if we don't assume as rapid an advance for atomic and H-bomb research which technically never lost support or funding along the way but did suffer several set-backs and wrong turns along the way) was minimal and would have filled an 'operational' role very similar to the Russian R7 missile with just about as rapid a phase out and short service life. And then there's the question of would TTL followed OTL with an earlier history? While innovative the pressure supported design wasn't widely accepted which is why Martin was given the go-ahead to begin the design process on what became the Titan as a back-up. More so we can also look at the fact that two other "main" players were not involved in ballistic missile design ONLY because they were already pursuing "higher priority" work on intercontinental CRUISE missiles instead! (North American and the Navaho and Northrop and the Snark) And in Boeing's case they had both the BOMARC, and the B-47/52 in or going into production and no spare capacity...
Change up the priorities and support and the US main ICBMs could easily have been based on something totally different!
By the way the idea that earlier success with a more or less functional ICBM would buy more time for early Space Race launches to be on better shaken down, more reliable vehicles assumes that the Space Race itself would not be pushed forward by that very success! OTL, after all, the Soviets launched Sputnik pretty much as soon as they could; fortunately it was the International Geophysical Year, which would not be the case earlier, and Sputnik flew in the context of American boasting about its plans to launch Vanguard in the course of that 18 month "year." But if in fact either the USA or USSR had an ICBM of R-7 or OTL Atlas capabilities operational, why doubt that they would follow through, within a year or so at latest, with a satellite launch? If the USA did it first, very possibly there would be no "Space Race," or something called that perhaps might be a leisurely and gentlemanly affair compared to the US panic at Soviet successes of OTL. Many people then suggest that without Sputnik/Vostok panic, causing Kennedy to set a self-imposed deadline for a crewed Lunar mission, the US program would develop methodically and sustainably, on a modest but solid budget constraining the program to build carefully and that at some point this ATL would overtake our overall accomplishments OTL, for we are allegedly severely damaged by NASA developing a dysfunctional institutional culture, poisoned and spoiled by the Apollo glory days.
Unless you change the 'politics' (who's President at the time) Ike is going to delay launching a US satellite and he's going to still go with the Navy "Vanguard" program as it was a very integral part of his policy to AVOID confrontation with the USSR where he could.
And specifically he was against turning "space" into another battleground which made no sense to just about anyone else as it was pretty clear the USSR didn't have any such idea. Vanguard was clearly not a weapons platform and as clearly had little "utility" as either a missile or a satellite launcher and Eisenhower was adamant that the US maintain that posture.
From there it's arguable that if Vanguard had been ready first if he would have found other ways, (he'd already significantly slowed and hindered the program by withholding support and funding) to delay an actual launch so the Soviets would be first. (For the given reasons of avoiding political or territorial protests having the Soviets launch first makes all sorts of sense as they can't protest what they are already doing. And there is a very real possibility that the USSR backed into a corner will push the right to 'engage and destroy' overflying spacecraft even if doing so heavily interferes with their own plans. There's a TL for you! A "space age" where everyone and anyone with the capability takes 'pot-shots' at overflying spacecraft and satellites. In order to get the most chance of a 'successful' overflight you need to launch from 'off-shore' with a "low" {just outside the atmosphere} and fast trajectory to get across before an intercept can be set up. That's an ugly set up

)
A lot of the 'panic' could have been avoided with a successful US satellite launch soon after Sputnik. As it was the US had a string of 'failures' even after "Explorer 1" flew and topped off with the USSR putting the first man in orbit and the Kennedy "Lunar" goal is pretty much inevitable. Anything 'closer' and despite public and official pressure there would be a lot less support for a billions of dollars/short time table way to 'prove' the US is equal to or superior to the Russians.
Frankly assuming an R7 like booster available around the same time to the US and as long as any US 'response' is within a few months of a Russian "first" the level of 'panic' should remain fairly low key. Have an American be the first person in space, (Sheppard almost was) even if it was suborbital and while the USSR will publicly point out the 'difference' the public perception, especially in the US will be vastly different than OTL.
It is possible that if the TL goes on the tortoise strategy advocates will get their fanservice at last with some sort of space station program that evolves and never terminates, leading to sustainable and never ending Lunar missions maybe. But the plodding, which far from seeming sustainable to me seemed to stagnate and stumble all too plausibly, suggests to me that the more realistic expectation is that without something like Kennedy's panic, a slow and incremental sideline space program might simply deliver less. The idea that Apollo burned us out may be wrong; it may be that the high intensity took us to a high water mark that indeed we are dithering on surpassing, but perhaps without that surge, we'd be even farther behind.
Sputnik was the initial impetus to jump-starting the US space program and had the US not the USSR put a 'man-in-space' first it is likely the US would have stuck with Apollo being the follow on to Mercury and aimed at servicing and supporting a LEO space station with a planned upgrade program to give it circumlunar and/or lunar orbital capability by the mid-70s as was planned in 1959/60.
Using recoverable variants of the Saturn-1 booster to loft both Apollo missions and space station components the 'lead' would tend to switch back and forth between the super-powers over time and it's also possible that interest would wane over that same timeframe as the public lost interest. It's hard to see that happening though because even at its lowest the public 'interest' has been pretty high and costs spread over time tend to appear lower than they are. I suspect it WOULD appear 'stagnant' compared to OTL perception but that's again tainted by OTL Apollo program, and while it might even appear to be more vulnerable to political or public periods of active opposition the apparent cost and effort IS in fact going to be looking lower and more "sustainable" than anything during the Apollo era and probably more so than the Shuttle era as well.
"Surpassing?" At this point in time we seem to be dithering on even keeping the status-quo let alone equaling past achievements and there's an obvious reason for it in that we can't seem to imagine doing anything on any scale less than 'repeating Apollo'. And the sad part is the most recent "burst" of activity prior to the SpaceX ITS, (and that hasn't generated as much overall 'interest' as the previous plan) was based fully on the idea of "doing" Apollo again BECAUSE Apollo "worked" so well with some minor changes thrown in! It is hard to imagine that by the mid-to-late-70s with an Earth orbital infrastructure of stations and/or support that at least a joint mission to the Moon would be planned to happen. It would be the 'perfect' time for such a mission and while politics could derail it I would think it unlikely at that point. What is hard for most people OTL to imagine is NOT having the 'monster' boosters of the N1 or Saturn-V but in truth you really don't NEED them to have a viable orbital and beyond program.
As to what happens if the US accelerates their ICBM program I think it likely that the USSR would as well and most likely it would run into many of the issues it did OTL but it might NOT lead to the same outcomes. Then again the actual details might be 'worse' and/or 'better as well. Yangel almost died in the Nedelin disaster along with some other top engineers so what if they do so in TTL? For one thing it puts Korolev in a more secure position but also constrains him to develop militarily 'useful' rockets rather than "space launch" vehicles which might butterfly away the R7 as we know it. And don't forget several 'high level' politicians were there as well which could cause a re-thinking of the rush to get service. (Probably not but...)
The development of solid propellant is a under-reported history, (I have a paper in fact from a couple of years ago that points out that very issue, I'll see if I can find a link for it) but almost all who've studied it agree that they keys were the missed opportunities and research early on which had to be repeated and rediscovered mainly due to attitudes of secrecy and scorn for both researchers and research. Goddard, like the Wright brothers before him, was so insistent on patent rights and secrecy over recording and sharing knowledge that most of the work he'd done on solid propellant prior to WWII had to be re-invented by other researchers all over again. And this applied to much of his liquid propellant work as well.
I've mentioned the American general attitude towards "rocket" research in the early 20th century and it was for this reason Goddard actually shared MORE information with people outside the US than inside! That he feared patent and knowledge stealing from organizations and people inside the US was the main reason he did not work with or more closely with groups such as GALCIT or MIT. He simply didn't trust them to take his work as seriously as he felt they should and if they DID take it seriously he was afraid they were going to steal it...
In the end several things have to happen and while some are pretty basic and came early, like the discovery of double-base, castable propellant (1942 OTL with added developments during the war) and the adoption of the internal burning 'grain' booster (@1948-ish) some were very non-intuitive, (such as added aluminum which "common wisdom" and math had shown only worked up to 5% but really when much higher proportions and finer grain particles were used the ISP went through the roof but that wasn't found out empirically till the late 50s) and frankly were pretty much "hard work and a lot of luck" finds in the US and more so with the Soviets. (Again there's some evidence that a lot of this stuff was researched earlier but nothing came of them and the research was probably 'lost') Part of MX-774 was solid propellant and even with the Minuteman coming along in the late-50s getting it PRIOR to that point is probably not going to happen without some major early butterflies that just don't seem in the cards.
(Not the history I was looking for but here's one for solid propellant and Aerojet: file:///C:/Users/Randy%20Campbell/AppData/Local/Packages/Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe/TempState/Downloads/ADA406104.pdf)
On peroxide:
As you know this is one of my "peeves" as I don't think the stuff has gotten nearly the respect, (and that's actually part of the problem as it doesn't and therefore people tend to have accidents with it, sell below) it deserves as an oxidizer.
The problem with peroxide is it tends to decompose spontaneously or at least that's the observation. Truth is yes it does but less so at higher purities which being this is seen as "unstable" certain 'stabilizers' are added which dilute the H2O2. Get it 'low' enough (average below about 40%) and it stops decomposing for the most part. Thing is get it near "high test" levels, (over 90%) it ALSO pretty much stops decomposing, even more interesting is if you chill it to around 5 deg. C (41 deg. F) it also does not decompose. Note that decomposition is NOT an issue if you have a vented storage container. Outside storage of a vented 55 gallon drum of 90% H2O2 over 17 years resulted in a drop to @84% over the time period with no incidents. (The same facility stored another vented drum of 90% in "chilled" storage over the same 17 years and the drum last tested as 90.5% which is probably due to more accurate test instruments. But note there was NO degradation or decomposition)
(
http://www.hydrogen-peroxide.us/history-US-General-Kinetics/AIAA-2005-4551_Long_Term_Storability_of_Hydrogen_Peroxide.pdf)
In the US especially H2O2 has a bad reputation and mostly it's the users fault. For example during WWII the US Army gave out a contract to a research organization, (my notes say GALCIT but I can't find my confirming citations and besides for those notes I "need" it to be them so take it with a grain of salt

) to test HTP as a propellant. As the R&D organization didn't WANT to get involved with HTP, (having a higher interest in solid propellant and their own liquid designs) they had built and installed on the Army test range an UNVENTED storage container for HTP and had it filled. Needless to say over the weekend the un-vented tank 'failed' to contain the "spontaneously decomposing" HTP by catastrophically having a structural failure and, so they explained to the Army, you see why you don't want to have anything to do with this stuff? Once German and later British results for HTP were examined some in the US again became interested in it as an oxidizer. And they were so confident that it's 'stability and reaction' issues were overblown they 'floated' several hundred pounds of it on a similar amount of kerosene to show how 'stable' it was. As they noted there were only a 'few' spots of mixing and ignition but it self-regulated so was not an problem. Till they tried it again several weeks later and it, (due to contamination, weather and other factors) self-ignited as soon as they started pouring! Well OBVIOUSLY it's all the HTPs fault!
And on and on of course. The thing is it has to be respected which LOX is (mostly because it's cryogenic) and hydrazine is, (because it's toxic) but we must admit that it also is a bit less efficient than LOX as well which is why it got a down-check for operational use. Couple that with the inability to store it for long periods of time, (again we know a bit more NOW but they didn't then) and as an 'operational' weapon propellant it's not much better than LOX. Some changes due to a specific POD and this might change...
Randy