Okay, here's the summary of my proposed timeline, called "Fire of Mercury:"
The core pitch for the timeline is Apollo to the max, using the classic AH pitch of "we needed the Soviets to do better to drive us further on the moon". However, I don’t really like that those always have to just make the Soviets do better, particularly when (as with For All Time) it means the Soviets somehow land first. I wanted a rising tide to lift all boats, some of the direction of "what if Apollo 1 hadn't put a damper on everything?" However, I also recognize that Apollo pushed pretty close to the edge of the feasible spending and progress a lot in OTL. For instance, the S-II is probably one of the most mass-optimized stages in history in order to make up for weight growth everywhere else, and had multiple stages fail on the test stand as a result. In fact, they had to invent and implement spray-on foam insulation for it mid-program!
The background for my PoD in the US comes from knowing that Apollo originally called for a two-gas environment, and that the original NAA capsule proposal still included this. It was only in mid-62 that NASA began to change their mind to a lighter and simpler single-gas system, though NAA fought them. Only on August 28, 1962 did NASA issue a change order demanding NAA switch to pure oxygen in the cabin.
The PoD itself happens
October 3, 1962. Sigma 7 is on orbit with Wally Shirra aboard. On his fifth orbit, he leaves tracking with the Cape at MET 4:47:27. He’s looking at a long, lonely coast 28 minutes to contact with the Indian Ocean Ship. However, in this timeline, shortly after losing contact with the Cape as he coast over Brazil, a loose blob of solder comes lose inside part of the spacecraft electrical system, and is knocked into someplace it shouldn’t be, creating a spark and a fire in the cabin. It’s in space, at low pressure, so the fire isn’t a catastrophic explosion of flame like Apollo 1, but it won’t go out and it’s inches from Shirra’s head. So he follows the only firefighting procedure a Mercury pilot has available: seal your suit, reach at the control panel, and pull the “cabin depress” handle. As the cabin pressure falls, the suit switches automatically to a separate consumables loop, and the fire will eventually die as there is no oxygen to burn.
Over the next 15 minutes, Shirra is able to diagnose the system and set up to repressurize the cabin, but the spacecraft is not healthy. His call down to the Indian Ocean Ship (IOS) at 7:06 PM will be legendary. A station crew expecting a quick status check with a healthy capsule in the final hours of a smooth mission instead hears a calm recounting of a litany of near-disaster heralded by telemetry—initially thought in error—showing a cabin pressure of zero: “I had some problems here. There was a fire in the capsule, the fire is now out. Cabin depress pulled, awaiting confirmation of go for repress from telemetry. I request confirmation of retro situation for deorbit on this rev at next communication window. The following systems are off...” Three minutes later, he fades over the horizon for IOS. The tension in newsrooms and at the Cape is suddenly higher than it was even when they worried if Glenn’s landing bag had rendered his spacecraft incapable of returning to Earth as they wait out another twenty minutes of communication silence. At 7:31 PM, he comes onto the air at the Pacific Ocean Ship, but there are only minutes for everyone to reassure themselves no new problems have developed before his retrofire mark at 7:33 PM. Fortunately for all, the issue does not recur, and Wally comes down in the rev 5-1 abort zone (basically the Rev 6 landing zone but approached from a different angle) at 7:54 PM, about an hour early.
In the aftermath, while re-evaluating global communications requirements and other preventative measures, NASA sends a follow-up memo quietly to NAA. On third thought, NASA has decided to switch back to two-gas for Apollo as the benefits of the two-gas system outweighing the added mass is probably worth adhering too…which is a long way of saying there’s no Apollo 1 fire. Gemini proceeds largely unchanged, though there's definitely more urgency in setting up ground stations and more concerns about contingencies for things like fire. It may end up testing two-gas atmosphere if NASA can change it in time, or it might not--I’d need to do further research to decide it. It’s not super-relevant to the timeline, it’d just be details.
While Apollo 1 makes a successful debut in the first quarter of 1967 aboard Saturn 1, the issue for NASA comes from North American’s
other projects. With two-gas Apollo comes two-gas LM, and just a little more mass everywhere in the system—more pipes, more tanks, more valves. It’s only a few hundred pounds all told, but it’s a critical few hundred pounds that have to go all the way to the lunar surface and back, and pounds on Apollo that have to go into and out of lunar orbit and all the way home. Every bit of margin gets pushed harder...and that includes the S-II second stage. Historically, they broke two S-II stages on the test stand IOTL before the third one worked, and here, they get pressured harder by NASA for mass reductions and they break their third one too. They have to redirect the first planned flight stage, intended for Saturn 501, to testing where it finally works. Saturn 501 is delayed to fly in the middle of 1968.
With no heavy lifter, Apollo gets a couple of the originally planned extended checkout flights in LEO, and to help drive home that Apollo is accomplishing things even with the Saturn V delayed, they run the plan for the original wetlab Orbital Workshop on Saturn IB in mid 1968. It works in the sense that they make it happen and the US manages a duration record and the title of “first space station,” beating Salyut 1 IOTL by about a year and a half, but it’s such a massive pain for so little return that plans for further wetlab derivative missions are canned. Efforts are redirected to dry lab stations. This is my compensation to the US for having to kneecap the Saturn program—they get a first they missed IOTL and avoid the Apollo 1 deaths, instead just nearly giving Wally Shirra and the whole team on the ground a heart attack.
However, I mentioned this is all the compensation on the US side for the Soviet advancements over OTL. See, Apollo 1 not failing was my compensation for a boon on the Soviet side in the same month or so. Soyuz 1 is still a disaster of a mission. After the planned rendezvous and crew transfer is scrubbed and Komarov is brought home solo, there is a single system on the capsule that finally works as intended: his reserve chute deploys and he lands as planned. The Soviets, too, have a working lunar capsule in 1967—if one they also have to work bugs out of with a few follow-ups of their own. It’s a major achievement for Michin, and it’s enough to let him get approval for a Hail Mary: although the Proton is no more reliable than it was OTL in '68, they finally after a try or two get up a “Kosmos” satellite that is revealed, after launch, to be a Proton-launched circumlunar stack. With the Proton finally succeeding, they fly a crew up on a Soyuz/R-7 to board the lunar-bound Soyuz, and send them around the moon on a flyby on the 50th anniversary of the Revolution. Michin has won the race to send a man
near the moon. Even if their cosmonaut couldn’t stop for more than a few pictures—this is no Apollo 8—they’ve caught up to the Americans on docking, and demonstrated multiple-launch assembly of mission equipment.
The problem for Michin (and the Soviet leadership) is that now they’ve formally admitted they’re in the race, and the debut flight of the N-1 goes little better than OTL in 1969. In the meantime, late in 1968 the Saturn V finally makes its way onto the scene. After all the trouble to get it to the pad, the rocket is still fundamentally working. An American lunar-orbital mission is certainly soon to follow, something the Proton-launched stack cannot do, and a landing soon after. Thus, while the US is running their abbreviated preparatory flights, Michin ends up having to pull a technicality they seem to have considered historically. They land a Luna probe, but modified with a larger sample return capability…by only launching the payload to lunar orbit, and with no heat shield for return to Earth even if it could break orbit. An N-1 launches with Soyuz, and a crew flies up on R-7 once it's clear the N-1 didn't explode. Once they make orbit (probably the second or third crew to do so, behind one or two American crews), the Luna launches its sample to orbit, and the Soyuz is guided to rendezvous. A cosmonaut goes EVA and grabs it, bringing home a few kg of moon rocks in the summer of '69 while the Americans are still "testing" their LM with their excess of caution. Can anyone ITTL deny the might of Soviet science, which has seen cosmonauts as first to the moon, and the first to orbit the moon and bring back moon rocks? They are getting tremendously lucky and working every technicality to the bone just to stay even with the American program, but their crew is the first to bring home a large sample of lunar material.
On the US side, while this is all embarrassing, they’re still fundamentally on track. The main effect is that though the space program is still unpopular and has a little egg on their face, they had a slower taper in funding from the 19676 peak with no high-profile post-Apollo 1 investigations, and the Soviet successes mean there’s less support for cutting the budget as sharply before the race is one—though never doubt it is cut. It’s perhaps $5-5.1 billion in 1968 and $4.5-4.6 billion in 1969, a few hundred million more than OTL. The landing in the fall of 1969, dramatically fulfilling the Kennedy pledge and sneaking under the wire of the next inevitable dastardly Soviet stunt catalyzes a brief moment of public support exceeding opposition and helps ensure acquisition of long-lead items for Saturn V Block II production continues.
1970 is the US's big year on the moon as 1969 was historically. While they managed a G class mission in the OTL Apollo 12 slot in '69, just squeaking in "before this decade is out," they have the next few missions lined up in close succession as IOTL. 3 H class missions are flown in 1970. The Soviets know they're in some trouble--the Apollo is a very capable system, and even the N1 finally cooperating in late 1969 is little help. However, they have a potential solution as far as I can tell from reading translations and summaries of the Michin diaries. If I understand right, they actually did have plans to use N1 mostly in a 2.5 launch profile even once man-rated:
- First mission an unmanned lunakhod on Proton to land and mark the site.
- Second launch is crew with LK to go and land using the LK as a radio beacon.
- Third launch unmanned with entire backup LK to land if the crew is unable to ascend from the surface.
With this, they know by the time they're looking at their first landing in late '70, the Americans are making the single LK stay of 48 hours for one guy look pretty pathetic. Michin or one of his engineers realize…hey, without a person aboard, that second LK could land with an extra 150 kg of consumables and surface equipment. If you land it
first you have your rescue ready on the site, and you can provide consumables for an extended stay right from the start. They manage a landing in late 1970, a four or five day stay with one crewmember aboard.
However, while the Soviets have leveraged N-1 and multiple launches to match the Americans temporarily, the US also have their Block II Saturn V coming. The US is, however, beginning to count the cost. The Block II is just the J-2S equipped version, that's enough to push TLI payload over 50 metric tons from 45 and doesn't require pad infrastructure changes. The budget's getting slashed, even without Apollo 1. We landed, right? We beat the commies. We’re
still beating the commies. Why the hell does this cost more than the Department of Education? And sometime in 1971, they have an Apollo 13-style close call.
So now the Gilruths in NASA are starting to also say, "Shouldn't we stop before we run the risk of losing a crew in space for real, or at least until we can make sure they're safe with enough gear to not run the risk?" What happens if a week into a month-long lunar mission the supercritical helium in their LM taxi ascent stage breaks its burst disk and they can't get off the ground? We'd need a month to send them a backup, and we wouldn't have it. So we either need to stop, or find a way to do it more cheaply so we can send more gear for more safety (oh, and heck, maybe more science while we’re at it if we have to). This leads to the cold warrior hawks saying we can’t back down from the challenge of the Soviets landing every few months and maybe having another new trick, but cheaper would be good, along the lines of the leadup to Shuttle IOTL.
The issue compared to OTL Shuttle is we can’t abandon production of some kind of superheavy Saturn V-class vehicle, not as long as the Soviets keep trying to one-up us in little ways. Thus, you get the flyback S-IC, and a reusable but stretched dual-engine S-IVB-derived stage based on SASSTO work. As we’ve mentioned, for "Space Shuttle" type missions, you stack them in the INT-20 style. (Ironically, while S-IVB's hand-assembled tiles of internal insulation was bonkers for the cost efficiency required of an expendable stage, having mechanically robust insulation inside the tank means fitting TPS to the exterior skin isn't that bad.) I ran the numbers again, and payload for the fully reusable version is still about 40 metric tons. For lunar flights, you can insert an S-II and get a lunar payload of about 45 metric tons—the improved engines on S-II and S-IVB basically cancel out all the mass wasted on recovery hardware for S-IVB and the wings and jets for the RS-IC, and any S-IVB stretch is just bonus performance. This gets selected and development on the two new reusable stages begun in late 1971, as the Soviets are beginning to really breathe down our back on the moon, along with a small (~25-30 metric ton) Flax-style orbital glider to launch on the two-stage fully reusable version.
This makes new problems for the Soviets in 1972. Hydrolox for N-1 can be online in the mid-70s, but that really only brings them up to matching Apollo on a launch-for-launch basis. To paraphrase a scene from the HBO miniseries
From the Earth to the Moon, if they make this a contest of heavy lift, which is all a moonbase race will prove, they will lose for at least the next four years. And if they get unlucky, they may not catch up before this new American vehicle means they can afford to just launch more rockets than the Soviets—the Soviets after all are mostly matching Apollo H class mission capability by using more flights. They know what two-launch Apollo missions could mean for their ability to keep up. They need to stop wasting money on the moon, and focus on developing their own vehicles for LEO. However, to do so without officially having a chance to declare they and the US are equals would be conceding the entire expensive exercise so far.
So in late 1972, with the US Shuttle and Space Lifter stages (why not reuse a good name?) NASA's being told to ease off the gas until they get their new low-cost Saturn V replacement which will mean they can fly longer missions safely by launching more mass, and more LEO missions more cheaply in general. Meanwhile, the Soviets want out of the race in general, and détente is in the air. So the Soviets come forward with a two-part plan. The first part is the Apollo Soyuz Test Project as we know it—a handshake in orbit to prove we’re all friends.
The second is more ambitious, the Soviet's way out of the race: a joint lunar expedition in 1976. A flight of the Soviet second generation system and the American's two-launch Apollo system to the same site, for two or three weeks of joint exploration in peace on the moon. Both sides fly up on their own, but it lets both sides call off the race without conceding. ITTL, there's certainly some Soviet equivalent in 1971 to go with Aldrin's salute of the flag, but that's less important than this image five years later that really indicates the end of the moon race: a pair of Soviet cosmonauts driving halfway along the 1 km distance from their LK Shelter to a landed LM taxi, and meeting the American crew there for a handshake on the lunar surface beneath both flags.
The Soviets are free. They can stop flying to the moon, they don't
have to beat Saturn V or reusable Saturn V, or at least not for a decade or so when Glushko swears he'll have his reusable vehicle flying to beat the Americans on cost. The Americans are free to slow down their flight rate and dramatically scale down any actual lunar use of the new reusable vehicle without worrying about being upstaged, to focus instead on ensuring the highest standard of safety during the few two-launch Apollo flights and the joint lunar mission and introduction of the new (and actually low-cost) LEO Shuttle and the heavy-lifting INT-20-style two stage RLV it rides to LEO. When the reusable vehicle is flying, maybe it'll be cheap enough they can go from man-tended outposts to permanent crews there, plus go from just the six or eight crews that flew to the two Skylab series stations (we learned our lesson in 1968 on preferring drylabs, but the stations are roomy once you launch them as drylabs) to a new permanent station, but that's a year or three away.
The history books will all record that mission as the end of the space race. Nobody won. Or rather, humanity won together. We came in peace, for all mankind. So ends the Moon Race, 1961-1976, and all because of the results of the “Fire of Mercury” (the timeline name in working draft form).
Any sequel/continuation would be dealing with the fallout from having the ability to put 40 metric tons of payload into low Earth orbit for the equivalent of a modern-day $1,500/kg, and six or eight crew or passengers in the same place for the equivalent of maybe $8-12 million per seat, not to mention the ability (using an expendable S-II) to put 45 metric tons on their way to the moon or 120+ metric tons in LEO for stations or Mars preparations for the equivalent of $350-450 million, basically a cost we know NASA IOTL was able to get Congress to pay for Shuttle as many as nine times in a calendar year or ten times in twelve months in the 80s (nearly eleven, but weather moved a launch just barely out of the window). A post-detente Reagan-era station probably is at least 16 crew (supporting not just science but the odd high-profile junket by educators, reporters, and congresscritters) or “only” a 6-8 person station combined with a small 3-4 person permanent lunar outpost reusing US lunar operations by the late 80s. There’d be Soviet reusable vehicles too, maybe reusable N-1, maybe a clean sheet design from Glushko. As for the 90s and beyond? Who knows!