Probability of continued Moon landings?

There's a nugget of conventional wisdom that most timelines have a more successful space program than ours. But how realistic is this, actually? Or, to ask more precisely (and with more focus):

With a POD after the return of the Apollo 11 mission to Earth, what is the probability that a human would walk on the Moon at some point in the period 2001-2010?
 
The big problem with Apollo is that it just wasn't economically sustainable. I think to get people back to the Moon by now, you'd have to find a way for private sector space travel to develop faster than it has so far in our timeline. If you can get the launch costs to LEO cheap enough, you're halfway there. You might get to the point where a moon landing sponsored by one of the big film studios becomes practical (with the crew taking along IMAX 3D cameras).
 
There's a nugget of conventional wisdom that most timelines have a more successful space program than ours. But how realistic is this, actually? Or, to ask more precisely (and with more focus):

With a POD after the return of the Apollo 11 mission to Earth, what is the probability that a human would walk on the Moon at some point in the period 2001-2010?

Chinese get at it earlier (say if Intelsat 708 doesn't crash? though that's probably too late for a POD) and generally go quicker (especially if whatever early-2000s bill seriously hampered NASA doesn't pass, leaving the Chinese some rivals to race with); instead of the OTL-planned 2024, they get a manned moon landing in 2010. ;)
(IMHO plausible - it took only 12 years from Sputnik to Apollo 11, and 12 years from Intelsat 708 is in 2008. Rather unlikely, though, given the OTL 2024 figure.)
(EDIT: It seems that India and Japan both plan manned lunar missions for 2020, earlier than the Chinese; I don't know anything about those space programs, though, so can't comment.)

Alternately, within the OP bounds (and what the OP seemed to mean): the Soviets succeed in 1970 or '71, keeping the space rate on; it does peter out at some point (because there's no real goals after Mars, for one) but like as IOTL there's still the ISS even after USSR failure (which IMHO was inevitable by 1969 without a WW3, but that's only my opinion), ITTL there is still a moonbase. :)
(Anyone cares in fleshing out? I don't know much about post-1965 Soviet space program.)



...So what, how? :)
January First-of-May
 
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Thande

Donor
I actually drew up a way they could have done it in the 90s the other day using shuttle and Shuttle-C. It would be very expensive just to basically re-do the 60s missions, though. The only thing I can think of is them doing it as part of a millennium celebration: maybe Bush's push for a Mars mission gets scaled down to a moon landing rather than scrapped altogether in favour of the space station.
 
There's a nugget of conventional wisdom that most timelines have a more successful space program than ours. But how realistic is this, actually? Or, to ask more precisely (and with more focus):

With a POD after the return of the Apollo 11 mission to Earth, what is the probability that a human would walk on the Moon at some point in the period 2001-2010?

Oh there are many ways. You could have the Space Exploration Initiative of Bush Sr. actually work, for one. Probably by strangling the 90-day report in its cradle, and having something more along the lines of direct earth-moon transit without any low-earth-orbit assembly. That way, you have a Return to the Moon by 2010.

Or you can sustain the Soviet Union somehow, with the energy that otherwise went to the Buran programme go into Energia applications. IOTL, the Soviet engineers pleaded with the leadership to not order a Shuttle, but the Soviets insisted, thinking that the Shuttle had all sorts of bizarre military applications and that they needed one to compete with the USAF. So, TTL, the Soviets develop the Energia system into a proper 100+ tonne to LEO system, and go to the Moon by 2000 on that, which prompts and American response of Mars by 2010.

Or you can just keep Apollo going somehow. Have Nixon approve the second production run of Saturn V rockets, and use up the hardware. 25 or so Saturn Vs are produced, enabling Apollo missions into the early-to-mid 20s (as in Apollo 24, 25, 26) and perhaps an extended Skylab series. The Saturn V production lines are intact until the Reagan Administration and its massive spending boost for military applications reopen it for the military purposes of SDI and the civilian prestige of a moon base and Mars mission.
 
I think you need to find something on the moon we really want, right now. Or something we don't want somebody else to have (or only have).

Blockbuster movies may take tens of millions of dollars investment and are a well-known process even if financially risky, but a moon program for imax would cost billions and would not only financially risky, but also has massive technical risks as well as being uncharted territory in terms of legality, regulation, health+safety, etc.
 
There's a nugget of conventional wisdom that most timelines have a more successful space program than ours. But how realistic is this, actually? Or, to ask more precisely (and with more focus):

With a POD after the return of the Apollo 11 mission to Earth, what is the probability that a human would walk on the Moon at some point in the period 2001-2010?

Realistically, only two programs have a significant chance of being able to go to the Moon between 1970 and 2010 (I assume you would be fine with a return to the Moon in the '80s or '90s), NASA and the Soviet program. However, the latter was in a funk for most of the '70s, was consumed by developing the Buran/Energia combo during the rest of the '70s and the '80s, and then kinda disintegrated with the USSR, so they're less capable of doing so than the US. A surviving USSR with the Energia/Buran combo would be relatively able and likely to do so, however, since they have a high-performance launch vehicle which has neatly sidestepped the problem with most SDLV proposals ($$$) and a reason to actually launch a mission (pissing on the US, more or less).

Now then. For the American program, the best way forward is to kill the Shuttle before it's approved by the White House, say in 1970. While I like the idea of the Shuttle and think the thing is cool, there's no way around the fact that (despite the substantial theoretical potential of the components) it effectively retarded the US space program for 40 years and limited it to LEO-only missions. It was not as cheap as was hoped due to unforeseen limitations in a variety of areas (and the over-optimism of NASA's leaders), and in any event has sucked up a huge amount of cash since it's beginning, inhibiting other worthy programs. Despite some very clever later planning by NASA people, it didn't really have the ability to launch a lunar mission without on-orbit assembly and probably fuel depots, which would basically need NASA to build the first version(s) of Freedom...which cost too much money and so kept getting canceled by Congress (ironically increasing the cost, but I digress). Even then, propellant launches would be too expensive (and way too dangerous under post-Challenger safety rules) to put on the Shuttle, so it would need multiple supporting expendable vehicle launches to actually do a mission. With those limitations, which would you rather have: a Shuttle that costs as much or more than most expendable launch vehicles (and needs some to actually do the lunar mission) to launch a mere 20-30 tons into space (needing, BTW, a crew of 4-7 on board for any flight, even a totally routine satellite launch or fuel delivery), or...the expendable launch vehicle with the same payload and the same or lower ongoing costs, and a much lower development cost, but man-rated and able to carry a capsule with 3-6 people into space? Canceling the Shuttle would save NASA quite a lot in development and maintenance costs (especially if they use the Titans, which are supported by the Air Force as well, maybe convincing them to do it by scheduling a couple of "Blue Apollo" missions), which would be very useful for developing the technologies needed for going back to the Moon.

Fundamentally, though, the problem is that put forward by SunilTanna: Going to the Moon is expensive, for a dubious return, and would take a while for any country to develop the needed hardware from the word "Go". Additionally, most people don't really care about the Moon or space exploration; they like the pretty pictures from Hubble or Spitzer or Kepler finding other Earths or whatever, but they neither want to increase nor decrease the budget of your space agency of choice. So the only way to go back to the Moon is to make it cheap enough and easy enough with what you have that it's not that big a deal, budget-wise. That means things like fuel depots, medium-life vehicles, and so on, and a great deal of, essentially, infrastructure development, before any trans-Earth missions. It's boring, but any other way is likely to end up like Apollo: Quick, cool, and canceled after the first couple of flights when politicians realize they're spending loads of cash for no return and can score some cheap political points by not going to a place no one (in relative terms) cares about.

@Thande: NASA planners probably invented something similar back in the '80s or '90s...you should look as astronautix or this NSS list of '90s lunar base proposals. You'll note the one I linked you to has some startling similarities to Constellation...you should look up the guy who was in charge of the Office of Exploration back then...
 
I think you need to find something on the moon we really want, right now. Or something we don't want somebody else to have (or only have).

Blockbuster movies may take tens of millions of dollars investment and are a well-known process even if financially risky, but a moon program for imax would cost billions and would not only financially risky, but also has massive technical risks as well as being uncharted territory in terms of legality, regulation, health+safety, etc.

Well, that's why Prospero suggested there would need to be very low launch costs, first. On the order of a few hundred dollars per kilogram, at most (the range they were shooting for with the Shuttle or some of the '70s era ultra-low cost launch vehicles for SPS ideas) That would push it more into the tens of millions of dollars range, especially when you consider that such low launch costs would probably lead to a lot of LEO activity first which would help clear up a lot of the non-technical issues, and would more than likely lead to a government mission prior (probably with IMAX cameras on board, though, given previous activity--space makes for pretty visuals).

That's not something that's going to happen by 2010, though--more like 2110!
 

Bearcat

Banned
I think you need to find something on the moon we really want, right now. Or something we don't want somebody else to have (or only have).

its ASB, but the one thing I can think of is, something artificial is found. Put there at some time in the past by someone not from Earth. That would get everyone's attention. Nothing else is going to do it.
 
Well perhaps if Carter picks Glenn instead of Mondale for VP in 76 ?

Then we have a resource scare of some kind that prompts fears we could be denied vital minerals, so the decision is made to make a moon base a national security priority.

Start it under Nixon/Ford, continue it under Carter with Glenn and then have Reagan pick it up as patriotic mission.
 

Bearcat

Banned
Well perhaps if Carter picks Glenn instead of Mondale for VP in 76 ?

Then we have a resource scare of some kind that prompts fears we could be denied vital minerals, so the decision is made to make a moon base a national security priority.

Start it under Nixon/Ford, continue it under Carter with Glenn and then have Reagan pick it up as patriotic mission.

There is nothing on the moon that can't be had many, many thousand times cheaper on the earth. Except helium-3, and nobody knows how to actually build a fusion plant that can use that.
 
There is nothing on the moon that can't be had many, many thousand times cheaper on the earth. Except helium-3, and nobody knows how to actually build a fusion plant that can use that.

Even discounting the transport costs, the stuff on the Moon is in lousy shape for extracting anyways. It's basically just huge chunks of rock (or actually, tiny bits of rock. But you get the idea). Not ores or anything...just rock. Some of it, admittedly, is rock that's relatively rich in certain resources, like titanium. But nothing that would get anyone excited. The only destination lunar resources make any sense at all for is space...which obviously becomes a chicken-and-egg problem.
 
Even discounting the transport costs, the stuff on the Moon is in lousy shape for extracting anyways. It's basically just huge chunks of rock (or actually, tiny bits of rock. But you get the idea). Not ores or anything...just rock. Some of it, admittedly, is rock that's relatively rich in certain resources, like titanium. But nothing that would get anyone excited. The only destination lunar resources make any sense at all for is space...which obviously becomes a chicken-and-egg problem.

If you can get to the Moon, you can get to a Near Earth asteroid. Extract resources there instead. And you can use a rail gun to shoot cargo back to Earth, or wherever you want it to go. Maybe Gerald O'Neill pushes the idea of space-based solar power much more successfully in the late 70s and the U.S builds a moon base to build the solar power plants to achieve energy independence (well, in electrical power, anyway, unless we get really high-capability and lightweight batteries sometime in the 70s or 80s)?
 
If you can get to the Moon, you can get to a Near Earth asteroid. Extract resources there instead. And you can use a rail gun to shoot cargo back to Earth, or wherever you want it to go. Maybe Gerald O'Neill pushes the idea of space-based solar power much more successfully in the late 70s and the U.S builds a moon base to build the solar power plants to achieve energy independence (well, in electrical power, anyway, unless we get really high-capability and lightweight batteries sometime in the 70s or 80s)?

Delta V would presumably be much higher for the asteroid? So I'm not sure about that.

I think the best way for moon colonization would be if the industrial infrastructure were already up there and waiting for us when we sent colonists. How? By using self-replicating robots to build the infrastructure.

There was a proposal along these lines in the 80s. Some NASA types heard that Reagan was going to make a big announcement about space, and genuinely expected him to announce this program, of course he didn't... the speech turned out to be Star Wars / SDI.
 
If you can get to the Moon, you can get to a Near Earth asteroid. Extract resources there instead. And you can use a rail gun to shoot cargo back to Earth, or wherever you want it to go. Maybe Gerald O'Neill pushes the idea of space-based solar power much more successfully in the late 70s and the U.S builds a moon base to build the solar power plants to achieve energy independence (well, in electrical power, anyway, unless we get really high-capability and lightweight batteries sometime in the 70s or 80s)?

Well, then you're not going to the Moon. And like I said, the Moon is lousy for getting materials, even for SPS.

Delta V would presumably be much higher for the asteroid? So I'm not sure about that.

No, not necessarily. NEAs often have windows that require the same or less delta-V to reach them as you need to expend to reach the Moon. Admittedly, these windows are much less common than lunar landing windows, but delta-V is not a problem.
 
I'm not asking how to continue the program. I'm asking whether people would.

Nice discussion, but it's not in line with the OP.
 
I'm not asking how to continue the program. I'm asking whether people would.

Nice discussion, but it's not in line with the OP.

The probablity is low, frankly. As I said, there are really only two programs worth looking at. In a surviving Soviet Union TL, the Soviets might take a shot at it, which might cause the US to do a round 2 (Shuttle or no). If the US doesn't adopt the Shuttle, they might have a round 2 in the '90s or '00s. But the Soviets had major structural problems, and NASA was pushing so hard for the Shuttle that you have to pretty much handwave their giving up on it. NASA did have some good ideas in the '90s (despite the criticism I just put forth), so it's possible that under someone other than Clinton, or someone other than Goldin, or if they hadn't screwed up SEI so badly, that they would have flown up there instead of thinking so much about the ISS and Mars missions.

Even then...well, the Moon is kinda boring. As Puget Sound correctly pointed out, the Near Earth Asteroids are a much better source of materials for just about anything you might want to do in space than the Moon, which has very little in the way of easily extractable volatiles (despite the famous polar ice). Scientifically the Moon is perfectly interesting, and indeed has major advantages in some areas (astronomy in particular), but science alone probably isn't enough to get people to go to the Moon unless it's very cheap. It's enough to get probes up there, if people are feeling especially flush, but not enough to send people. And it's just plain hard to see what else is going to do it.
 
how to continue the Moon landings ?
for USA and USSR is only in Cold-War period
like USSR get to Moon with UR-700/LK-700 Hardware or a early Lunar Energia project.

China could play a role but only in late 1980 If there take decision for manned Space program in 1970s
that could trigger India for a Space Race with China

and there other Nation like Japan or Brasil with ambition for Space Program
 
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