Earliest Plausible Manned Moon Landing

I would say get space as a focus during WW2. Maybe the Germans seriously try for orbital satellites for communication, photography, if not orbital bombardment. Which is a total ripoff of "The Tranquility Alternative".
 
What about the Russians?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_crewed_lunar_programs

They could have landed before Apollo.

If they started earlier and got really lucky sure.

But even if the Soviets start the race when Kennedy makes his speech (in OTL they waited 3 years), the best the Soviets can do is a circumlunar mission in 1967 or so. Maybe 1966 if everything goes perfectly (but things never go perfectly). An actual landing... Eeee. If everything went perfectly and the Soviets took big risks, they might be able to do a landing in 1969.

fasquardon
 
NHBL wrote:
A whopping big meteor impact at any time after we realize what they are could get things going. I actually started one based on a meteor striking Lincoln, NH on June 6, 1876 and blasting a hole a few miles across in the White Mountains. My plan had been for an increased interest in New Hampshire, and the USA in general, in defending against threats from the sky. My ultra rough outline had the first artificial satellite somewhere in the 1940's, perhaps earlier

As has been noted Sibera 1908 as Arthur C. Clarke put it, (paraphrased ‘cause I can’t find my link) “Saint Petersburg was fortunate by a cosmic coincidence of a few thousand miles and few seconds arc” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event)

Arguably the ‘results’ of moving the impact point would be more along the lines of “God’s justice” from most quarters followed by discussions of who and how the remaining pieces are divided among the ‘survivors’ rather than actual concern over future impacts. Keep in mind there was quite a bit of evidence that impacts happened (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_Crater, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impact_craters_on_Earth) it was more that the mindset of the times were adverse to the idea of such events being ‘relevent’ to Earth geology. (Granted a clear ‘impactor’ near or on a population center in the early 20th century SHOULD be convincing but, similar to OTL/current the ‘odds’ can be calculated to show the likely hood is pretty low)

Can the rest of the space-cadets on here help me out with recalling a suggested time-line where a (IIRC) South American scientist was more serious about fiddling around with rockets at the tail end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th Century?

As also noted the real “POD” is the why as much as the wherefore as it will take a huge amount of effort, resources and money to push forward getting to the Moon let alone space. Keep in mind little things like a ‘workable’ (let alone practical) space suit is ghastly difficult with Victorian technology and barely workable with 1920-ish technology.

As for an earlier “Space Race” keep in mind the main reason for OTL’s “Space Race” was in fact the shock of Soviet advances in missile technology which were based on the inability of the USSR to build a credible intercontinental bomber force to rival the US’s. Part of the reasoning behind the US push for a vast bomber force was in fact post-WWII cut-backs which focused US efforts on more ‘conventional’ ways to deliver atomic weapons whereas the USSR had to find an alternative method. Had post-war budgets been stabilized as suggested some ATL suggestions (“Dewey defeats Truman!”) US missile efforts would have been worked alongside the more ‘conventional’ manned bomber projects instead of being set-aside due to lack of funding. (Von Karman’s “Towards New Horizon’s” multi-volume report where he acknowledges rocket and missile technology but sets it aside in favor or more ‘near-term’ cruise missile and manned bomber programs didn’t help)

Had something like “Stalin’s Rockets” or “Megaroc” happened then yes the US probably would have moved forward with such project as well but they would probably have had LESS rather than more ‘pressure’ to achieve the next goal. Despite what a lot of people seem to think the main reason the afore mentioned projects didn’t ‘get off the ground’ was not technical but political and operational. (Fun fact: The Army during testing of the V2 was flooded with ‘volunteers’ to ride a manned capsule during the tests by people who were in fact working on the project! Think about that… These people KNEW how horrible the success rate of the captured V2s was and they still were willing to be stuffed in the nose cone for a chance to be ‘first’ to do so…) It was the Army and government who said “no” because the PR value was so low and the chances of negative publicity (and dead bodies generated by such a project) so high that it was not seriously considered. A ‘race’ for firsts in space would likely NOT focus on an earlier Moon flight simply because the base technology and capability would likely be actually less focused on being ‘first’ as being able to get there and back in a more controlled manner.

You wouldn’t see anything like a Saturn-V or N1 but more like what everyone “knew” at the time, (mid-30s or so) where an infrastructure and capability to launch numerous payloads into LEO is built up first, followed by a slow and steady movement outward as time, budget, support and resources became available. Von Braun for example was adamant that given support the US could put a man into space by the mid-to-late 50s and a man on the Moon by the turn of the century! He envisioned a man on Mars in bit less than a hundred years from the first man into space and at the time his advocacy was generally seen as rather radical J

His suggested ‘programs’ where he had short timelines and lofty goals were always based on heavy support and very high budgets. When being more ‘realistic’ he always defaulted to slower and more sedate program with a longer timeline.

Randy
 
What about the Russians?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_crewed_lunar_programs

They could have landed before Apollo.
-Korolev died throwing the project into management hell.
-Mishin was not a very talented man.
-Various projects running parallel to each other reducing focus on the moon shot.
-Low funding for it.
-Meddling by the communist party to have events happen at certain dates as a form of celebration.
-Lacking testing and quality controls.

That's basically all the problems they had.
 
I’m not sure if it could have happened much earlier than it did unless computer technology was also much further along than OTL.

You really don't need a lot of computing power for landing on the moon

Apollo Guidance Computer had 2k of 16 bit wide RAM of core memory, 39k in ROM, and operated at 2MHz. Plus it was getting out of stack space errors, from too much radar data.

That's why Buzz was reading out the data to Neil, after the computer put them 4 miles off their planned LZ. Neil was flying it down.

Apollo 13 did a burn 'by guess and by God' after getting burn time and on what vector from Houston
 

trurle

Banned
As also noted the real “POD” is the why as much as the wherefore as it will take a huge amount of effort, resources and money to push forward getting to the Moon let alone space. Keep in mind little things like a ‘workable’ (let alone practical) space suit is ghastly difficult with Victorian technology and barely workable with 1920-ish technology.
Yes, i tend to agree what workable space suit was the bottleneck of moon landing.
Effective rockets can be developed about 1916 if some perceived military application for them would exist (for example, delivery of biological warfare warheads). Life support was not much different from models used on submarines. For reentry, bakelite (which make a passable heat shield) was invented in 1925. Guidance..well, with full-manual control and a stock of experienced ICBM pilots (yes, WWI-epoch ICBMs must be piloted to have a decent probability of hit, with pilot may be jettisoning at final stage of reentry) i can imagine a hundred of qualified "rocket aces" lining up the space program premises by 1930. Then come the space suit problem. First space suits were developed for stratosphere jumps in 195x, and earlier models were extremely crude, likely not survivable in vacuum over 30 minutes even if not failing outright.

Edit: i would not try to manually land on moon without radar altimeter plus velocity-meter (analog readout is ok). Something with such functionality can be cobbled together and fit into lightweight capsule in 1942 IOTL though.

Moon crash-landing: ~1935 (successufl landing probability 1%)
Moon landing (with pilot dying on Moon due environment exposure): ~1942
Moon landing with pilot performing moonwalk and surviving the flight: ~1955
 
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You really don't need a lot of computing power for landing on the moon

Apollo Guidance Computer had 2k of 16 bit wide RAM of core memory, 39k in ROM, and operated at 2MHz. Plus it was getting out of stack space errors, from too much radar data.

That's why Buzz was reading out the data to Neil, after the computer put them 4 miles off their planned LZ. Neil was flying it down.

Apollo 13 did a burn 'by guess and by God' after getting burn time and on what vector from Houston

That's not much computing power NOW. But it was a heck of alot of power to fit inside a tiny capsule back THEN.

To get men on the moon before such computers are available, they'd be completely dependent on radioing back to Earth for the mainframe back home or the computers (those ladies) in the basement to do the calculations or on following a radio beacon that a robotic expedition had already placed.

No ability for the capsule to navigate on its own, the radio would HAVE to work.

fasquardon
 

trurle

Banned
That's not much computing power NOW. But it was a heck of alot of power to fit inside a tiny capsule back THEN.

To get men on the moon before such computers are available, they'd be completely dependent on radioing back to Earth for the mainframe back home or the computers (those ladies) in the basement to do the calculations or on following a radio beacon that a robotic expedition had already placed.

No ability for the capsule to navigate on its own, the radio would HAVE to work.

fasquardon
Angle information to Earth and Sun can actually be semi-automatically read with photomultiplier tube sensor (with 1935 tech, you would realistically need to turn two dials until the pair of balance galvanometers reads zero, and then read angle from dials). And stars angle could be taken with sextant.
Then feed the angle data to corresponding nomogram to get the navigation solution..
Nomograms are the very powerful computation tool for specific tasks, including orbital transfer calculations. Slide-rule is a special case of nomogram. For computer-less manned space capsule, the recipe for accurate guidance would be just "add more nomograms affixed to walls of capsule".
 
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That's not much computing power NOW. But it was a heck of alot of power to fit inside a tiny capsule back THEN.

To get men on the moon before such computers are available, they'd be completely dependent on radioing back to Earth for the mainframe back home or the computers (those ladies) in the basement to do the calculations or on following a radio beacon that a robotic expedition had already placed.

No ability for the capsule to navigate on its own, the radio would HAVE to work.

Like the Soviet Lunokhod rovers, or their plan for LK manned lander, didn't have computers, just fancy autopilot, a crude computer, but still counts
 
You really don't need a lot of computing power for landing on the moon

Apollo Guidance Computer had 2k of 16 bit wide RAM of core memory, 39k in ROM, and operated at 2MHz. Plus it was getting out of stack space errors, from too much radar data.

That's why Buzz was reading out the data to Neil, after the computer put them 4 miles off their planned LZ. Neil was flying it down.

Apollo 13 did a burn 'by guess and by God' after getting burn time and on what vector from Houston
Wasnt the guidance computer more of a luxury item? They were doing the calculations on the ground as well to compare what the computer on board of the capsule was doing because no one trusted that thing. Communications delay was 2 seconds or so, they could have done everything on the ground except the landing, which the pilots could and did do by hand.
 
At work.

Well OP did say "Earliest to Moon"

If they used a more 'Stepped' approach you put a station in orbit of Earth. A 'Cycler' between Earth and Moon. A station in orbit of Moon. Then a lander etc from that.

Cheers.
 
At work.

Well OP did say "Earliest to Moon"

If they used a more 'Stepped' approach you put a station in orbit of Earth. A 'Cycler' between Earth and Moon. A station in orbit of Moon. Then a lander etc from that.

Cheers.

Yes that is exactly what they could have done. The biggest issue would be fuelling the "cycler".
 
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