Most magnificent space race ever???

What would it take to have a most magnificent space race. In this TL the Soviets would have to do better to force the USA to keep spending and both sides would have to have more money to keep going.

What changes would have had to happen to have this take places and what kind of things could have happen realistically (moon bases, manned mars missions etc..)

For starters maybe:

1) No vietnam war (or minimalized vietnam war), both sides have more money.
2) Soviet Rocket designer Korolyov lives

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Korolyov

Soviets are at least able to get cosmonauots in moon orbit by early 1970s with some sort of robotic only landing and sample recovery mechanism pushing the USA to keep going to establish a moon base.
 
If the Soviet space program is more successful, they might have a manned mission to the moon planned and almost ready to go by the time of *Apollo 11's landing. Canceling it after that would be one humiliation too many, so away they'd go.

Tit-for-tat investment in the space race is almost certainly a more productive use of resources than the arms race, so one might see more practical aerospace innovations and useful spinoffs if it continues through the Cold War.
 
well, if the USSR goes to the Moon in 1970 or so, look for a Mars mission taking off by 1980. Then maybe a Jovian mission by 2000 or so. Moon bases and space stations come into greater and greater prominence. By our time I could see a series of commercial moon and space stations with a military/NASA presence much larger than that. Lifting technology would be a barrier and some of the social services in place today might not be there.
 

Archibald

Banned
no space shuttle will help. Shuttles were red herrings, and totally derailed the space program; even today we are still paying a high price to that folly.

I like Apollo as it is, but indeed a decent soviet answer would be a good start.

In 1969 the Space Task Group submitted a "wish list" to Nixon - none of it was achieved minus the shuttle. each option however had a soviet counterpart
Von Braun Mars plan: the soviets had Aelita, a nuclear electric Mars ship.
More Apollo to a lunar base: again, the soviets had a competing project, the L3M big lander followed by the DLB lunar base.
Space station: 100 men space base for NASA, MKBS for the soviets (with nuclear power and artificial gravity !)

Korolev died in 1966, and his successor Mishin was overwhelmed by the task. Yet as of 1972 he was back on tracks; and yes, the N-1 might have worked, if it had been continued past 1974.

An interesting space race was still possible past Apollo; just not with the shuttles...
 
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