I do agree that there were plenty of ways that opportunities that were taken in OTL could have been missed, and the OTL 1960s especially was one where space travel was developed at a breakneck speed for political rather than practical reasons, though I'd say that the chances of having better or worse progress in space was roughly 50/50. The main reason the US started pouring money into space in the late 50s and 60s was because the Soviets caught them off guard with Sputnik; they likely could have started earlier if motivated earlier or just decided independently to devote more resources into it. And things did mostly stall out after Apollo, at least outside of LEO, with no race to anywhere beyond the Moon and the string of bad luck with the Shuttle.
How ambitious can alternate space histories get?
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Certainly there has been no lack of sci-fi authors will to try their hand at it!
But then again, I am trying to think of how many were working 30+ years into the future and were really even remotely close to how it actually played out. I think even Wernher von Braun's series in Colliers has to be read as boosterism, or even grift, than a real effort at plausible prediction on von Braun's part. (And even if it were, it still sure looks a lot different from Apollo in key respects!)
Von Braun did write Das Marsprojekt in 1948, which was, as far as I can tell, a serious attempt at prediction, given that he doesn't really seem to have made a name for himself in the US outside of the military by then, and that it goes deeply into technical detail and physics required for the mission. It predicted a human mission to Mars around 1965 or so, in the form of a large Operation Highjump-esque expedition involving 70 crew members in 10 spacecraft built in Earth orbit by reusable launch vehicles. Of course, it was also a product of its time, being published before we knew that Mars's atmosphere is about a tenth as dense as they thought at the time (so the winged landing vehicles he designed wouldn't work), and that cosmic radiation beyond LEO is much higher than they expected. Still though, it's a great look at the requirements for space exploration and a lovely piece of retrofuturism.
I do wonder if Philip K. Dick knew of it, and why The Man in the High Castle (the original novel, that is), mentioned a German mission to Mars in 1962.
I suppose it depends on your point of departure. But that's always the first question in alternate history, right?
But even if your POD is 1960-61, it's still not easy to get there. 1) We needed Jack Kennedy, an idealistic young unproven president to get elected; 2) We needed a reckless, impulsive Soviet premier to keep goosing the Soviet space program; 3) We needed not just Sputnik, but also Gagarin making it to orbit first; and 4) we almost certainly needed the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs, or fiasco of similar ugliness and timing. And even with all these, if you read the transcripts of Kennedy's meetings, it was a close call. Kennedy was not actually enthusiastic about the space program at that point.
if Eisenhower, or Nixon, or Lodge, or Stevenson is president at that point, I just can't see it happening.
But I was thinking of alternate 20th centuries, in toto. We needed two world wars and a Cold War to goose all the necessary aeronautical and aeronautical-adjacent technologies in the right way to make a lunar program even theoretically feasible in the 1960's. As it was, Apollo (and its unsuccessful Soviet counterpart) were at the bleeding edge of the technologically possible. And they were both very high risk programs as a result. We lost no astronauts, outside the Apollo 1 fire, because we had a lot of super smart and super dedicated engineers, astronauts, and technicians, but also because we frankly just had a lot of luck. And NASA managers knew it.
So, sad as it is to me personally, it was probably just as well that Apollo had relatively little popular support, and even that much faded away after Neil and Buzz kicked up regolith in the Sea of Tranquility.
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Well, Dick was the first to admit that there was an awful lot about The Man in the High Castle that was in the outer fringes of plausibility!
But to get humans to Mars by 1962 . . . wow, you need a really early and a really out there point of departure for me to even think about that being possible . . . A Nazi victory in WW2 just won't cut it.
You need atomic rockets in the early 1950s which is a real possibility. Think nuclear thermal for a mars mission. Then you need a lunatic to push for an Orion drive for further out. Maybe even early asteroid mining. I could imagine a mission to Europa in the 1980s.
[assuming a POD or more in the beginning of the 20th century] I would argue the opposite, that the world wars had stunted aero & rocketry tech significantly, and if the first half of the 20th century was the same great power games as the latter half of the 19th century (i.e. mostly peaceful in the core, and most conflicts being fought elsewhere with relatively low stakes) there would be more, rather than less, advancements in technologies. The broken window fallacy is a fallacy for a reason, and all the trillions of bucks and tens of millions of lives lost in the world wars (and the revolutions due to said world wars) has made the world a poorer place.
Robots may turn out to be more practical, but there seems to be a lot more interest in the idea of humans going to or living in space.
If there was for example, a timeline that mostly focused on probes exploring space, people would call it "boring."
Which was an actual Japanese proposal in 2008.
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I detailed my thoughts on how aeronautical and space technology would develop in a world without the World Wars here, and in short, I definitely agree that a multipolar world would likely see a longer and more advanced space race, if developing along different technological lines than OTL. There was a lot of competition between the great powers in arms, technology, and prestige before WW1, and those would continue in a world where that geopolitical situation continues.
In a way, while the Cold War of OTL was good for space development in a lot of ways (having two rival and ideologically opposed superpowers competing for prestige and technology), I think it was still far from the best version of the 20th century for it. It was probably better than, say, a unipolar world (perhaps one where the USSR is defeated by Nazi Germany, which then loses to the Western Allies), where a single superpower has no competition, or a world where more than one superpower or great powers get along well (I sketched out a rough timeline for a world where all great powers are functional democracies by 1950 and couldn't really imagine them having anything to seriously fight over). But there were some disadvantages OTL had; while there was a Cold War, the superpowers were still at least on speaking terms and could hash out agreements, which brought the Outer Space Treaty and various nuclear and conventional arms treaties. These weren't bad things, but they did, among other things, kill the Orion project, resulted in very little impetus for military development of space, and prevented anyone from claiming territory. And the Cold War did end in OTL, causing the end of the Buran, Mir, Space Station Freedom, and other things.
If the Cold War had been more antagonistic, then competition in both military and scientific development in space could have been more intense. This map and linked TL shows a world where a more intense Cold War leads to a military arms race in space (culminating in a Soviet government-in-exile after its collapse occupying their orbital missile platforms and refusing to recognize the new Russian government). To turn the dial up even more, imagine perhaps an Axis victory, with the US-led Western Allies standing off against a Nazi-led Europe that defeated the Soviets. Such a cold war would likely be far more intense than the OTL one, where the two are unlikely to ever agree to any treaties, be it arms reductions, bans on nuclear weapons in space, or on claiming territory on celestial bodies. Against a rogue state that's a superpower (and who likely has a head start on rocketry compared to the OTL Soviets), the Allies would have no choice but to go all-in on space and carve out and protect their place in it, because there's nothing else stopping their enemies from doing what they want up there.
If you wanted to go further than the Oort Cloud, there are currently 5,000 exoplanets cataloged. Then there are 290 moons in the solar system, thousands of asteroids, rogue planets that are not part of solar systems, potentially vast numbers of icy bodies in the Oort Cloud. So far we have only seen one extrasolar object. There may be a lot more. Combining first robotic probes, then missions where there are interesting things for the humans to look at might be the way to go.
A completely different setting might be interesting. Something in a period after Jules Verne or H.G. Wells might be interesting.
A completely different setting might be interesting. Something in a period after Jules Verne or H.G. Wells might be interesting.
Ask and you shall recieve. Well, here's one that starts when Verne is alive and well, and H.G. Wells is too young. Reach for the Skies.
I find it a little worrying that, in a three-page long thread intended to make suggestions on how to do MORE space travel... practically two pages long are "ways to make the space program die early."
Personally, I recognize that in this field of space travel I prefer to go for the field of science fiction than for the field of realistic science.
The reason for this is that my experience as a reader has been much better in the scifi camp than in the "the author tries to keep the TL being what he thinks is realistic" camp.
This is because in the cases that I have tried to read, "trying to be realistic" has translated into all kinds of apocalyptic descriptions of scenarios so exaggeratedly catastrophic that it is difficult to believe that there is anyone left ALIVE, not to mention possessing space flight capabilities.
Or dense, complex rants about economics and politics that can basically be summed up as "because this economic and political theory that is totally marginal in OTL becomes the dominant force in this new world and everything works perfectly." Or exercises in speculative faunal construction that I probably wouldn't understand even if they were written in my native language.
I'm not saying this is wrong or that I think people should stop doing this. The work they put into developing these world-buildings is admirable... it's just not something I can read without getting bored.
Personally, I recognize that in this field of space travel I prefer to go for the field of science fiction than for the field of realistic science.
The reason for this is that my experience as a reader has been much better in the scifi camp than in the "the author tries to keep the TL being what he thinks is realistic" camp.
This is because in the cases that I have tried to read, "trying to be realistic" has translated into all kinds of apocalyptic descriptions of scenarios so exaggeratedly catastrophic that it is difficult to believe that there is anyone left ALIVE, not to mention possessing space flight capabilities.
Or dense, complex rants about economics and politics that can basically be summed up as "because this economic and political theory that is totally marginal in OTL becomes the dominant force in this new world and everything works perfectly." Or exercises in speculative faunal construction that I probably wouldn't understand even if they were written in my native language.
I'm not saying this is wrong or that I think people should stop doing this. The work they put into developing these world-buildings is admirable... it's just not something I can read without getting bored.
I think it started with this.
There is a difference between “realism” and “doomerism.”
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As I pointed out before, wars (and other such broken window fallacy situations) tend to consume resources and manpower for the destruction of more resources and manpower, some of which include resources and personnel for further research. Think of how many brilliant and promising young men (that we know of) whose careers and lives were cut short by the wars. Now think of all the rest of the dead. Sure, this is the same emotional appeal as the anti-abortion crowd (though that's really off topic) but the key difference is that we know those conscripted/volunteered to war are far more likely to be contributing members of society otherwise. Assuming a 1 in a million chance of a brilliant scientist and 1 in 10k chance of a great engineer then WWI killed off at least 40 such scientists and 4k such engineers.
Moving on from the direct costs wars also shifted R&D assets to the here and now, what's useful for the immediate future and the conflict at hand, often at the expense of long term items and potentials. The first jet powered prototypes flew before WWII, and then had to take a backset for a few years in both the UK & Germany due to the pressing needs of WWII.
And all this is compounding the earlier the POD is.
As for motivations in those fields in the absence of war (often trotted out by war as innovate side of the argument), the great power competition isn't going to disappear in the absence of a major war, and competitions of national prestige will occur regardless (witness how transatlantic liners were objects of national pride and having the best (whether it be the fastest or largest) was frequently a competition between companies and national governments). Thus in wealthier world as the then traditional fields of competition begins to cap out countries (and corporations, and even individuals) will look towards new scientific/technological fields to compete in.
The OTL space race was really the larger share of a much smaller pie. A more peaceful world will have a much larger pie even if the share of aerospace & rocketry gets smaller slices.
The space race could only occur because man had developed the most destructive weapon yet, nuclear weapons.
And this clearly results only from the Manhattan program - in the absence of war, nuclear power plants or ship propulsion would be the first to appear, later nuclear weapons will be developed. Probably sometime in the 1960s they will create bomb, and it is not known whether there would be based on Uranium or whether someone would consider plutonium.
Boldly Going has that European capsule going to the Moon in partnership with NASA but doesn't really do a lot with Japan because the Lost Decades are apparently destined to happen.
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I’m not sure where you’re getting this idea from, because the OP is just categorizing stories, and specifically notes that stories that have less space travel than OTL are uncommon. That offers an obvious invitation to consider such stories which is more lacking in other categories (realistic but better, mildly unrealistic, full-on sci-fi) since space buffs such as myself have already, you know, covered a lot of ground there. It’s not that there’s nothing that you can do, but it’s harder to come up with something novel when there are great stories discussing many plausible (or even implausible) PoDs there. Actually per an earlier mention I think it might be interesting to do a timeline focusing on an optimized probe program, but that’s a rather narrow scope (also I did consider this to some extent with Eyes)
Also, I don’t know where you got this idea of “the author trying to keep the TL realistic has meant apocalypse,” since when I think of realistic space timelines I think of the stories by myself, e of pi, Polish Eagle, or Nixonshead (for example), where nothing even remotely similar has been the case, but rather we try to keep the program reasonable in both technical and budgetary details compared to what is physically possible and financially reasonable. No nuclear wars or apocalyptic events in any of those, so far as I know.