Leej said:
For Britain to be a serious contender in space you would need a much earlier POD, you need to keep the commonwealth more close nit at the very least, on its own Britain lacks the resources for a major space programme.
What "resources" are those, precisely? You need money, effort, science and engineering. Juding by their independent building of jet aircraft, their launching of a satellite (third nation to do so, in 1959), and their independent nuclear (weapons and energy) programme, the British had quite enough money, science and engineering to manage.
All they needed was the effort. And the response was, "why bother?" The Russians bothered because they wanted to impress the world with socialist science, and put the willies up the Americans. The Americans bothered because they wanted to match the Russians, and because such things help Presidents win elections. The British would bother because...?
So, really, you need a political PoD, or perhaps a strategic one. One which makes Britain feel more like a Great Power post-WWII, rather than a second-rate power like the French. Perhaps Arnhem actually works, and Monty takes Berlin in January 1945, while Patton et al linger about doing not much in Bavaria, staggering along like Pershing in the Ardennes in 1918.
This gives the British a larger section of Germany to occupy post-war, and a larger say in its governance. The Russians thus see them as more of a threat than they did historically. This encourages Britain in its industrial, military and scientific development, rather than being the junior partner to the USA.
Another PoD is the British Tube Alloys programme, their atomic bomb project. Historically, they had theirs long before the American one, with heavy water plants in Canada, etc. They rolled theirs into the US one, sending their European refugee scientists over to the US.
Let's suppose that the scientists' appeal to Roosevelt fails, he gets some bad advice that the programme won't work. So the British press on with theirs alone. This means of course it's not developed until 1947 or so, too late to affect the war.
This leads to Japan falling in invasion rather than simply surrendering, and Japan divided as Germany and Korea were.
With the British the first to acquire nuclear weapons, the Soviets second, and the Americans a distant third (since they'd return to their programme once they realised it was possible), if you couple this with Monty taking Berlin, this places Britain as the Russians' primary adversary in Europe, with the US their primary adversary in Asia.
This entices greater technological effort from Britain. Of course, this means less prosperity for the common Briton as the years go on, with aspects of the wartime command-economy continuing.
So when the Commies send up their sputnik and their Gagarin, it's the British who respond.
