Earliest possible Moon Landing

the USA landed on the moon in the 60s, but i have wondered if it was possible for the moon landing to occur earlier. if it is possible, please specify some Changes in history that could allow this to happen and when this would happen.
 
The Apollo mission was very cutting edge, but with the right POD, maybe just after WW2 leading to earlier development of ICBM's, then maybe it could take place a few years eariler.
 
Probably more or less around when it actually happened in OTL. The space race between the USA and the USSR was exactly the kind of thing needed to put in the necessary material assets to make the ideas of men like Goddard and von Braun a reality. Had the Americans been less concerned with the safety of their astronauts like the Soviets were, they could possibly have landed slightly earlier, but a difference of no more than a year or so would have resulted.
 
With a post 1900 PoD? I think the only way to maybe speed it up would be if China can avoid getting so messed up. There's got to have been plenty of potential rocket scientists and whatnot who instead were left as struggling peasants.

That or if you can get the Entente-CP issues to turn into a cold war rather than a hot war, saving millions of lives and having a potential science race going on there.
 
Depends on how early the POD is.

With a POD as late as 1961/1962, the US could have been on the Moon a few years earlier.
gemlmlun.jpg

If the US had gone with an architecture utilizing an open-cockpit lunar lander, a Gemini capsule and two Titan 3 launches, they could have landed humans on the Moon as early as July 1967!
http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/gemnilor.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/bygemoon.htm

If you want something much earlier, you're going to need to push back the POD further. Perhaps have the Germans win the second world war and then have a space race between Nazi Germany and a surviving world power (US? Surviving USSR? Both?) although that would require the V-2 rocket technology leaking to another surviving superpower. I don't see the Nazis visiting the Moon on an expensive propaganda mission without some kind of competition (They nearly killed Von Braun for joking about reaching the Moon, they clearly were only interested in developing rockets for practical military purposes). This would also require Hitler not cancelling the rest of the Aggregate rocket series.
300px-A9_A10_%283D-cutoff%29.jpg


I could see a development plan along the following lines.
A-4: suborbital (first successful flight, 1942)
A-9: manned suborbital (first successful flight, 1946)
A-10: manned intercontinental ballistic missile (first successful flight, 1949)
A-11: small unmanned satellite (first successful flight, 1950)
A-12: large payloads up to 10 tonnes into LEO (first successful flight 1955, first manned flight 1956)
A-13: superheavy launcher equivelant to the Saturn V of OTL (first successful launch 1958)

That's about the only way I could see a manned Moon mission happening before 1960.
 
you need transistors

I'd guess solid state electronics - esp. transistors were essential. First commercially available in the mid 1950s. So you'd need to push that back too. Again, military industrial complex is very useful at accelerating product development. So ...

Maybe its okay to fire someone (or a dog) into low earth orbit with military-grade vacuum tubes in crucial, but non-critical systems... but much further would be ...dangerous...

For instance I'd bet Mercury astronauts could have done a successful re-entry without communications. They'd have no idea where they'd land. But that's probably ok. 75% chance of landing in water, right?

But without onboard computers to calculate telemetry, then communication is critical beyond low earth orbit. Remember "Apollo 13"? Course corrections were run on a main frame and radioed in; the pilot checked it with a slide rule. That was stretching the limits of prudence.
 
Depends on how early the POD is.

With a POD as late as 1961/1962, the US could have been on the Moon a few years earlier.
gemlmlun.jpg

If the US had gone with an architecture utilizing an open-cockpit lunar lander, a Gemini capsule and two Titan 3 launches, they could have landed humans on the Moon as early as July 1967!
http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/gemnilor.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/bygemoon.htm

If you want something much earlier, you're going to need to push back the POD further. Perhaps have the Germans win the second world war and then have a space race between Nazi Germany and a surviving world power (US? Surviving USSR? Both?) although that would require the V-2 rocket technology leaking to another surviving superpower. I don't see the Nazis visiting the Moon on an expensive propaganda mission without some kind of competition (They nearly killed Von Braun for joking about reaching the Moon, they clearly were only interested in developing rockets for practical military purposes). This would also require Hitler not cancelling the rest of the Aggregate rocket series.
300px-A9_A10_%283D-cutoff%29.jpg


I could see a development plan along the following lines.
A-4: suborbital (first successful flight, 1942)
A-9: manned suborbital (first successful flight, 1946)
A-10: manned intercontinental ballistic missile (first successful flight, 1949)
A-11: small unmanned satellite (first successful flight, 1950)
A-12: large payloads up to 10 tonnes into LEO (first successful flight 1955, first manned flight 1956)
A-13: superheavy launcher equivelant to the Saturn V of OTL (first successful launch 1958)

That's about the only way I could see a manned Moon mission happening before 1960.
+Rep, triumphant Germany is probably the only way. Perhaps having Germany win WW1 could do it too.
 
But without onboard computers to calculate telemetry, then communication is critical beyond low earth orbit. Remember "Apollo 13"? Course corrections were run on a main frame and radioed in; the pilot checked it with a slide rule. That was stretching the limits of prudence.
Yeah, fitting a computer onboard the landing module is critical, and making that happen in 1969 was a stretch. The POD would have to give us earlier computers, as well as an earlier drive to land on the moon.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
With history as it was to (say) 1936

the USA landed on the moon in the 60s, but i have wondered if it was possible for the moon landing to occur earlier. if it is possible, please specify some Changes in history that could allow this to happen and when this would happen.

With history as it was to (say) 1936 and a Nazi Germany in (more or less) control of continental Europe by the mid-1940s (Soviet collapse in 1941 akin to 1917, stalemate in the Med, "Peace of Amiens" type fait accompli with UK by 1945 or so, US defeats Japan in a Pacific War analogue) puts the strategic landscape for a Nazi-US Cold War in place by the end of the decade; the need for strategic reconnaissance is obvious, which leads to a HSF-centered orbital recon "race" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Anglo-Americans vs. the Germans; that could push the technology so by the mid-1950s an EOR-assembled lunar flyby is possible, with a landing by the end of the decade, basically advancing the historical timetable by a decade.

Al Boyd takes "one small step for man" in July, 1959; Homer Boushey and Roland Beaumont are his crew mates. Jimmy Doolittle is the program director.;)

That's about the most I can see.

Best,
 
Let's face a TL were Werner Von Braun work on Moon landing based on A4 (V2) is doomed, why ?
The A4 was far from space worthy, low specific Impulse do Alcohol Oxygen propellant, it flight computer were a joke to today standard, the fuselage not cope speed over mach 6 and disintegrate.

Von Braun had to make allot changes on A4 Hardware to launch satellite or even Human.
The Flight computer relays & Radio-tube have to be replace by Transistors.
Propellant change to kerosine Oxygen, replace the heavy turbo pump system, by one that use propellant to drive the pump. (A4 used extra hydrogen peroxide for that)
Next to that Von Braun had to deal with fuselage and Heat problem if rocket extend Mach 6
it take Years and allot of R&D and Money to solve all those problems until first satellite can be launch.
and i have my doubt if the "Fürher" has any interest in Space flight after "Endsieg"

Von Braun 1952 plans
it's more advance that A4 but it got also some problems
He still use extra hydrogen peroxide for turbo pumps but this time he goes for Hydrazine and nitric acid as propellant.
his Space Shuttle is based on 1950 aerodynamics what serious overwork in 1956.
but his biggest problem is the Time table, Von Braun estimate that it take around 8 years until program goal one is complete: the Space station in 1960
then again around 10 years for manned Moon program that would land in 1970 and manned Mars program in 1980s

note this 1952 program would have allot of setback, first rocket aerodynamics and hardware need serious overwork,
The planned station orbit are to high and must be lower, but that better for Space shuttle size and payload.
 
The key here is "do the astronauts need to survive?" I bet if everything went right and the US was struck with the lack of care for the lives of astronauts, then early 1960s.

Incidentally, it would be a very interesting way of purging a political opponent or two by sending them to the Moon if you're the Soviets, although that sounds more like something North Korea would do.
 
Let's face a TL were Werner Von Braun work on Moon landing based on A4 (V2) is doomed, why ?
The A4 was far from space worthy, low specific Impulse do Alcohol Oxygen propellant, it flight computer were a joke to today standard, the fuselage not cope speed over mach 6 and disintegrate.
Well, were the US to work on a moon landing based on their 1942 rocket hardware, they'd be equally doomed? Throwing up hurdles to overcome is well and all, but I don't think anyone suggested the A4 was supposed to be the final lunar rocket design.
 
Galactica-sized ASB

But, If Germany wins WW2 (Big ASBs), and Hitler is convinced a big swastika on the moon would be a Thousand Year Propaganda stunt (Bigger ASBs), and von Braun (or whoever) can manage to build a moon rocket (Monstrous ASBs), then, yes, you could get up to 88 miles an hour.:eek:
 
We have had a thread on this question before, actually.

It is worth quoting e of pi (who plays an aerospace engineer in real life) on the difficulties involved:
To pull off an absolutely minimal moon landing (and return--the Atlas one skimps by not worrying about how to come home), you need about 90 metric tonnes in Earth orbit. That means large turbopump-fed engines, large lightweight tanks, and the stuff to guide a rocket to a safe landing--gyroscopic inertial measurement systems, at least simple computers to allow the pilot to control the spacecraft (it is very, very difficult--nearly impossible, really) to command a spacecraft entirely manually. Even in "manual control" of Apollo or Shuttle, there were two or three layers of software turning their commands into actual valve and gimbal motions.

That technology was just barely in infancy by 1950, and a lot of the advancement had been quite recent. It matured over most of the early 60s to the point where it became at all conceivable, which combined with political focus and will finally by the turn of the decade it was ready. I could see some slight advancement if somebody was to decide that it was a priority worth spend billions and billions of dollars on in 1950, but there's levels of development you have to pass through to even understand the next problems that need solving.

If you take an early enough point of departure, a major power sufficiently advanced in key technologies (rocketry, computers, etc.) needed *might* be able to move the date back somewhat from 1969 (perhaps several years) if they're willing to throw enough money at the problem. And we are talking a lot of money. For the United States, with the biggest economy by far, with the advantage of technologies developed at breakneck speed in World War II and the Cold War along with a bushel-full of captured German rocket scientists, had to spend about 0.75% of its GDP for several years to pull it off. Germany in the late 30's had an economy something like a third that of the U.S.; even augmenting it with conquests of other parts of Europe, it is still going to have to spend a lot more of its economy pulling this off. The same would be true of Russia, in whatever form.

But, for the reasons e of pi gives, I am skeptical that you can move it back all that much from 1969, unless you take a much earlier point of departure, i.e., something that accelerates the industrial revolution a good deal faster than occurred in our history. Computers will be arguably a bigger critical point than rocketry, and it is hard to see how you can pull it off without transistors, given weight issues. And it will be a considerably higher risk venture than even Apollo was (and Apollo was real high wire stuff as it was).

The fact is that Apollo represents a rather amazingly early historical date for a Moon Landing to occur. It's not even seven decades removed from the first powered flight, not even three decades removed from the first jet flight, barely a decade from the first unmanned orbital flight, and only eight years after the first manned orbital flight. Without the Cold War, we might still not have managed the feat. It took a massive act of political will, in the context of rapid development of missile, electronics and materials technology in a Cold War struggle for geopolitical supremacy, to make it possible at all.
 
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NoMommsen

Donor
Computers will be arguably a bigger critical point than rocketry, and it is hard to see how you can pull it off without transistors, given weight issues. And it will be a considerably higher risk venture than even Apollo was (and Apollo was real high wire stuff as it was).
Got a question : how much of 'computers' had the russians on their crafts ?

What I think of regarding computers :
There was a 5 years gap in their development from 1945 to 1950, when the Z4 (Z for Konrad Zuse), build 1945 came first time operational. If you also count in, that Zuse's work wasn't of high priority during the war (even though quite advanced and important in airodynamics development) ...

Maybe let him be better and earlier supported and at least this problem could be shifted about ... 7,8 ..10 (?) years ahead ?
 
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