Space exploration without a Cold War

[Paul Spring]

What would human activity in space have been like if there had been no Cold War? Supposing that history is the same until the end of WWII, but that no Cold War tensions develop between the USA and the Soviet Union, when would the first satellites have been launched? When would the first humans have gone into space? When (if ever) would humans have gone to the moon?

From what I can tell, military and geopolitical rivalry between the two superpowers was the major driving force behind the both unmanned and manned spaceflight, especially in the earlier stages, so what would have happened without that rivalry? Without a cold war, there are still some good reasons to launch satellites, such as communication, weather, civilian and military reconnaissance (Military reconnaissance would presumably be on a smaller scale than in a cold war world, but there would still be a motive.) It seems likely, though, that without the sense of urgency that the cold war competition gave, it would be left to the military and private industry to launch satellites when and if they considered the cost justified. This probably means the earliest satellite will be launched somewhat later, and there will be fewer launched, at least until the 70s or 80s.

Manned space missions are much more problematic. Without either national prestige or military necessity to justify government funding, or any perceived economic benefits in the short or even intermediate term, will they ever happen at all, and if so, when, and who would fund them? The same thing applies to an even greater degree, of course, to manned missions to the moon or anywhere beyond earth orbit.

Also, what about unmanned missions with pure science and exploration focus? Would there be any equivalents to the unmanned scientific missions like US Pioneer, Mariner, Viking, Voyager, Galileo, Cassini, or their numerous Soviet, European, Japanese, etc., counterparts? If there were, who would fund them, and how?

Might some wealthy nation or group of nations end up supporting a manned space program or an unmanned scientific/exploratory program one reason or another even in the absence of anything like Cold War rivalry? In OTL, of course, other nations or groups of nations besides the USA and Soviets ended up supporting such missions, but the Japanese and European Space Agency didn't start sending their first unmanned probes beyond earth orbit until the 1980s, and of course the Chinese became only the third nation to independently launch a man into space in 2003. Does this suggest that without a cold war, the first unmanned science probes beyond earth orbit might not have come until around 1980 or 1985, and that the first human in space might not have flown until the beginning of the 21st century?

 

[Michel Van]

in this TL space flight would constrict only to sounding rockets
and that are cheap littel rocket,
because governments consider the V-2 a too expensive waste of time...

WW2 was hour of birth of Space Flight but it was Cold War who made it grown-up

 

[Mr Qwerty]

Most of the value of satellites was unknown at that time. Science and military recon only (at first). I think this might turn out well, with many more players in a smaller scale game. It would take a number of extra years before satellites are launched, but when they are costs won't be so insanely exaggerated as OTL. Manned flight would probably be delayed until the 70's, maybe 80's, but would, when it began, take off, as it has not OTL. Tortoise to OTL's hare, perhaps.

Bear in mind that military competition would still go on, albeit with a lot less fearmongering. Many high-cost megaprojects might not be undertaken that were OTL.

 

[PMN1]

One thing that might happen is the lack of a rush for ballistic missiles may allow a resuable system to be developed.

 

[Astrodragon]

Remember though that the drive to get the first satellite in orbit was the national Geophysical year.
And even with no cold war, there is going to be rivalry.

 

[Michel Van]

Remember though that the drive to get the first satellite in orbit was the national Geophysical year.
And even with no cold war, there is going to be rivalry.

that true, but there is littel problem to that
the first satellites were launch on top of ICBM or MRBM !
wat was considert by military as good opportunity/pretext to test them

in TL without Coldwar there no need for R&D for ICBM or MRBM

 

[Paul Spring]

*Bump*

Any other ideas?

Would rockets capable of lifting satellites still be developed by the early to mid-1960s, either as part of smaller-scale military project (like Astrodragon said, there will still be some rivalry), or for entirely civilian uses?

 

[Workable Goblin]

*Bump*

Any other ideas?

Would rockets capable of lifting satellites still be developed by the early to mid-1960s, either as part of smaller-scale military project (like Astrodragon said, there will still be some rivalry), or for entirely civilian uses?

There was interest in sounding rockets, regardless, and both Vanguard and Juno (I) were partially based on sounding rockets, so the chance of having the ability to place a payload into orbit by the 1960s is very high. All-solid launch vehicles were first demonstrated with the Scout in 1961, so assuming even a modest level of technology development it's pretty likely they could put small satellites, at least, into orbit by the mid-60s.

Once people actually start using them the value will become obvious pretty quickly--even an Echo-type system (very lightweight and compact) will be pretty useful for communications, and I could see that expanding quickly (not to mention of course that Clarke had come up with the idea in 1945, so it's pretty likely there will be people around who know these things). Recon and military communications will be clear applications at that point, and sci-fi people had already thought of navigations and probably weather satellites (certainly weather satellites were one of the very first attempted applications by the US OTL, only losing to military recon--ITTL, I expect it might win out). Sending probes to other planets will be delayed by low lift capacities, but I expect larger purpose-designed launch vehicles will be built relatively soon, simply because sounding-rocket based designs are so limited in launch weight. These might, as PMN1 stated, allow for a proper reusable booster to be developed; there will be more research before construction starts into shapes and so forth, and the existing designs will be more expensive and specialist than IOTL, since they won't be repurposed ICBMs.

I concur that crewed and interplanetary flights will likely be delayed until the mid-80s, though since the lack of a Cold War might slightly retard computer development, they might need to launch people sooner to do tasks we would (and did) do with computers. They are likely to follow the pattern of Japanese, Chinese, and European flights in being rather slow and cautious in crewed/interplanetary activities. Prestige and scientific purposes make it rather likely (IMHO) that they do eventually start both, again as the non-superpowers did IOTL. One loss is that the Grand Tour opportunity will probably be impossible to exploit, making it harder to probe the outer Solar System (especially Uranus and Neptune).

Essentially, this TL is likely to slow down exploration a bit and rather hurt planetary science, but ultimately a similar or greater level of activity will be taking place in Earth orbit. Without the pressure of a space race, it seems reasonably likely that something more like von Braun's original ideas take hold once people start getting really interested in space and the shuttle-station-Moon-Solar System gets a hold of people as the best way to do things (Mars Direct and Moon Direct suffering, the former from a lack of data and no Apollo example, the latter from no Apollo example and poor robot returns).

So by 2000 it seems fairly likely that there are one or two decent size (say Salyut or early Mir) stations in LEO, the US (probably) is talking about maybe going to the Moon soon-ish, no one is really talking about Mars, yet, except a few diehards, and there is a decent Shuttle-like (but reusable, probably smaller thus cheaper) vehicle being used at least by the US, a similar system probably by the USSR/Russia, and perhaps by Europe or Japan. Scientific probes have ventured to the nearer planets and a number to the Moon, there has maybe been a Galileo-type mission to Jupiter, and perhaps a Cassini-type mission to Saturn is in progress, and possibly a few mission to comets and asteroids (Halley being a good opportunity, actually; it's likely the OTL armada is even bigger, though perhaps less advanced). There are probably a couple of space telescopes, mostly in higher energies or infrared and most of them pointing towards the Sun (spaceflight is pretty much required for high-energy observations and is very useful for infrared and Solar observations). The very distant outer planets have only had telescopic observations, though, and while it's pretty likely at least some scientists want to send probes out there, they're probably at the back of the line for funding.

 

[danderson]

*Bump*

Any other ideas?

Would rockets capable of lifting satellites still be developed by the early to mid-1960s, either as part of smaller-scale military project (like Astrodragon said, there will still be some rivalry), or for entirely civilian uses?

Probably not, at least for purely civilian uses, unless you get someone who doesn't care at all about risk with a lot of money involved. The aerospace industry today is very risk averse, generally avoiding trying technology that isn't already well established. Normally when they do it's because the government asked and for some reason one of their labs doesn't have the right skill set to make it happen.

Now maybe it was different back then, but I doubt it.

For the military, I still have my doubts, least without the need to throw nukes across continents. There are spying applications, but I doubt they would be worth the enormous cost of developing launch vehicles, not in a fairly friendly environment.

 

[Workable Goblin]

Probably not, at least for purely civilian uses, unless you get someone who doesn't care at all about risk with a lot of money involved. The aerospace industry today is very risk averse, generally avoiding trying technology that isn't already well established. Normally when they do it's because the government asked and for some reason one of their labs doesn't have the right skill set to make it happen.

Now maybe it was different back then, but I doubt it.

For the military, I still have my doubts, least without the need to throw nukes across continents. There are spying applications, but I doubt they would be worth the enormous cost of developing launch vehicles, not in a fairly friendly environment.

Again, sounding rockets were advancing all the time, and it would have required minimal modifications to make one capable of launching a small payload to orbit. Someone is going to try knocking an orbital launch vehicle together sooner or later. It would actually be pretty cheap.

 

[danderson]

Again, sounding rockets were advancing all the time, and it would have required minimal modifications to make one capable of launching a small payload to orbit. Someone is going to try knocking an orbital launch vehicle together sooner or later. It would actually be pretty cheap.

I suppose. I still find it hard to imagine there would be much political will for really big rockets. I guess maybe eventually you'd see stuff like the Atlas or Delta, but not for a long long time, and even then maybe. Sure there is a market for communications sats, but the cost of developing the infrastructure needed to get them there is so high.


Also you might see alternatives to satellites for some of these roles. Say a tethered balloon for communications, although to cover a large area you'd need a pretty impressive cable. Also there is the possibility of long endurance aircraft, although I suppose in many ways they are even more difficult then big rockets.

 

[Workable Goblin]

I suppose. I still find it hard to imagine there would be much political will for really big rockets. I guess maybe eventually you'd see stuff like the Atlas or Delta, but not for a long long time, and even then maybe. Sure there is a market for communications sats, but the cost of developing the infrastructure needed to get them there is so high.

Not really. The Delta, if you will recall, actually developed much the way I was suggesting; a combination of an MRBM and some existing upper stages; in TTL, what would happen would be that someone would take an existing sounding rocket and throw on existing upper stages or other small rockets (as IOTL several upper stages were developed out of small military rockets, eg. JATO units which will still be developed ITTL), allowing them to launch small (<100 kg) payloads into LEO. This is fine, though, because the first satellites were really rather small IOTL--Telstar, the first active communications satellite (spearheaded by AT&T and the British/French national telephone agencies due to clogging of transatlantic cable lines), for instance, weighed a mere 77 kg--and the possibilities will be obvious enough that people will invest in it (as they did IOTL).

Such a development would be cheap but allow the vistas of very large rewards to open up, very much large enough that governments and private firms would start to invest in developing larger rockets to launch better payloads, which like IOTL would probably level off at 20t/LEO or so.

You are simply vastly overestimating the difficulty and cost of developing a minimal satellite launcher (and, I might add, vastly overestimating the difficulty and cost of designing a medium-sized launcher as well). Certainly their development was, IOTL, greatly accelerated by DoD requirements, but they were not particularly expensive or difficult to build (at first).

Also you might see alternatives to satellites for some of these roles. Say a tethered balloon for communications, although to cover a large area you'd need a pretty impressive cable. Also there is the possibility of long endurance aircraft, although I suppose in many ways they are even more difficult then big rockets.

Very much so. And as I just said, you don't really need big rockets to get things going--the sort of thing I'm talking about would be in reach of a fairly small group today, say a university research department (they DO launch full-fledged missions today, using subsets of their resources, although of course achieving relatively little and hiring time on more "professional" launchers). Even a Goddard-esque group could, perhaps, demonstrate an orbital launch capability at some point. But that is more than enough for people to start exploiting the possibilities.

 

[Paul Spring]

Interesting - it sounds like my relatively uninformed hunch is more or less correct - relatively small, cheap rockets capable of launching small payloads into low earth orbit could be developed by government, private industry, or even academic institutions by the 1960s, and there would be enough uses (communications, weather, reconnaissance) to justify further investment, even if not on nearly as large a scale as OTL. Crewed spaceflight and interplanetary probes would have to wait another generation or more to get going, and when they got going the pace would be more like the ESA or Japan for interplanetary probes and China for crewed spaceflight.

If there aren't interplanetary probes until the 1980s and nothing beyond Mars until the 1990s or even 2000s, some of the discoveries that the Mariner, Pioneer, and Voyager made in OTL will probably be made by improved telescopes on earth or an analogue to Hubble if that gets launched. On the other hand, the first interplanetary probes are going to have much more powerful and sophisticated instruments and computers since they are built a generation later, so each one will be able to send back more information than several of the early probes in OTL.

 

[TxCoatl1970]

Boring Ditto Bump W Comments!

I think the urge for a smaller, broader-based aerospace development is spot on. Basically, I echo the previous posters. IOTL our big pushes for rockets were to lob bombs, and as we shrank the gear necessary for electronic surveillance, spy sats, then as we developed more powerful rockets, lobbing people for propaganda purposes. Without the Cold War to spur those on, rocket development and MSF as we know it would've proceeded at a snail's pace compared to IOTL.

Before WWII everyone thought Goddard was a crank. If the Peenmunde crew didn't accomplish anything noteworthy during WWII, rocket research might be totally stalled for decades. I'm completely down with the supposition that unless we were building lots of bigger, better ballistic missiles, rockets would be a curiosity at best ITTL.
I see the postwar period being rather prosaic for 20-30 years, doing small-scale stuff on the cheap while Europe, Japan, Russia, et al recover from the nightmare of WW II and America gets complacent.
We might have done atmospheric research in the 1970's, the orbital survey stuff of the moon and so forth in the 1980's and the flyby explorations of the planets launched in the 00's, if we funded it like deep-sea research, say.
Without funding and a sense of urgency, you'd probably see something semi-orbital by 1985 or so, satellites by the 90's, maybe longer. MSF would most likely not even have occurred yet without the US-USSR pissing contest or it'd be like a joint Antarctic expedition that wouldn't be news particularly. How excited are we about ISS crew swaps now?
There'd be butterflies the size of Mothra in science, technology, economics, and politics because of no Cold War that would completely distort things from what we consider ordinary but I'm sticking to the OP.