Space WI: America Made Early Gains

The Soviet Union started the Space Race with Sputnik. The idea of a man made object whizzing overhead interested America. The fact that it was Soviet terrorized it. In the years after, the United States hoped to get a man into space ahead of the Soviets. Long term plans would be space, space stations, and landing on the moon by the mid-1970s. Once again, the Soviets beat Americans to space. Initially, America could only respond with a suborbital flight. While the US could tout this as achievements, the general mood was that the Russians were ahead of NASA, and were embarrassing the United States because of that lead. The Soviets also made the first spacewalk before the Americans could.

All these Soviet leads emboldened the United States to start and pursue it's Lunar program on a crash course. No longer would it be a long term side goal for some point in the decades ahead. It would be the goal, and dominate American space policy in the 1960s. However, what if it were the United States that made those early leads. Not necessarily a satellite before the Soviets, but what if the United States had the first man in space and took the lead from there? Would the United States have still been enticed to pursue a strong space program because of the newness and interest of space, and the competition with the Soviets? Or would we have been more apathetic? What would our space program look like if we put the first man up there, after the Russians had already had Sputnik? And how would the Russians have responded?
 
One POD in this scenario
is the launch of Alan Shepard as First human in space
had NASA overruled Von Braun demands for a further unmanned Redstone booster test.
Mercury MR-3A with Shepard is launch on 24 march 1961 three week before Gagarin flight.

it's suborbital flight, but that not matter Alan Bartlett Jr. Shepard, is the first human in space, point !
this would change JFK look on bigger goal like the Moon because that Americans beat soviets by launch a Man in space first.
NASA would focus to get Mercury into orbit and build Mercury Mark II a two men version of it.

although with this american success, would Soviets go for the Moon ?
at lease to fly a cosmonaut around it...
 
Doubtful, the American flight was a sub-orbital hop Gagarin's flight was orbital, so it's one up on Shepard's.
 
Well, off the top of my head... ;)

If the US took an early lead, there would be less perception/fear of the USSR pulling ahead, quite possibly dispelling the Missile Gap myth and thus tilting the balance of the 1960 presidential election (or maybe not - Nixon's still sweaty).

US successes would also remove the incentive for Congress to push for the creation of a civilian agency, NASA, as the military effort would have a proven track record of effectiveness. Spaceflight in the US would therefore likely stay militarised, at least initially.

The big question is how the Soviets would respond. Assuming their space programme isn't massively far behind OTL, they're going to be launching satellites in any case just as soon as they can (both sides were working on spy sats for many years before 1957), and their rocket throw weights (imposed due to the size of their bombs) mean they're going to be able to launch a man pretty quickly once they get the political go-ahead. In this situation, there'd probably still be a space race, and the engineers behind it on both sides will have the moon in their sights. At that point it's a question of how the politics plays out - and politics is so sensitive to butterflies, you can basically push that anywhere physics and economics will reasonably permit.
 
According the Deborah Cadbury's book Space Race (pp.150, 154), which I can recommend, the US Army team under Von Braun were ready to launch a satellite with the Jupiter-C in September 1956, a full year ahead of Sputnik 1. They were stopped at least partly because of inter-service rivalry, as the US Navy had a rival rocket programme. Perhaps a more forceful Army personality might have taken charge of selling the Jupiter-C in Washington? That would be an alternate PoD.
 
According the Deborah Cadbury's book Space Race (pp.150, 154), which I can recommend, the US Army team under Von Braun were ready to launch a satellite with the Jupiter-C in September 1956, a full year ahead of Sputnik 1. They were stopped at least partly because of inter-service rivalry, as the US Navy had a rival rocket programme. Perhaps a more forceful Army personality might have taken charge of selling the Jupiter-C in Washington? That would be an alternate PoD.

A MORE forceful Army personality might be counterproductive. President Eisenhower wanted a 'civilian' satellite. Of course, his choice was limited to Army vs Navy, basically....

Having a different President might allow von Braun to be allowed a working 2nd stage on his '56 launch, and some sort of orbit.


However, the US satellites were grapefruit sized. Sputnik 2 &3 weighed tonnes. (well, 3/4 and 1.5 or so). That is a HUGE difference in launching capability, so you could still have a (weaker) Sputnik moment when those go up.


Also, I'm not so sure 'first man in space' would be so important. Shepherd is almost totally ignored iOTL. If you ask people on the streets who the first American in space was, I'd bet less than 1% would say Shepherd. (The vast majority would say Glenn, but you'd get some saying Armstrong. Sigh.)

If you ask Americans who the first MAN in space was, even, you're about as likely to get 'Glenn' as an answer as 'Gagarin'.
 
The Soviet Union started the Space Race with Sputnik. The idea of a man made object whizzing overhead interested America. The fact that it was Soviet terrorized it. In the years after, the United States hoped to get a man into space ahead of the Soviets. Long term plans would be space, space stations, and landing on the moon by the mid-1970s. Once again, the Soviets beat Americans to space. Initially, America could only respond with a suborbital flight. While the US could tout this as achievements, the general mood was that the Russians were ahead of NASA, and were embarrassing the United States because of that lead. The Soviets also made the first spacewalk before the Americans could.

All these Soviet leads emboldened the United States to start and pursue it's Lunar program on a crash course. No longer would it be a long term side goal for some point in the decades ahead. It would be the goal, and dominate American space policy in the 1960s. However, what if it were the United States that made those early leads. Not necessarily a satellite before the Soviets, but what if the United States had the first man in space and took the lead from there? Would the United States have still been enticed to pursue a strong space program because of the newness and interest of space, and the competition with the Soviets? Or would we have been more apathetic? What would our space program look like if we put the first man up there, after the Russians had already had Sputnik? And how would the Russians have responded?

A little afraid to comment as when I do on this subject the thread tends to die... And on that note I'm guessing "name recognition" goes a long way on this site :) Ignore a shield-wolf but once an Emperor mentions it every one listens ;)

Pretty much everyone's "end goal" was getting to the Moon, but with a closer race I don't see it as having as much pressure as OTL and a lot less likely that someone could have gotten away with suggesting such a leap as came about.

(Michel; it was Ham's near fatal flight that delayed Shepard's. Butterfly that away and he would have been "first in space" which would have played a LOT better compared to Gargarin's orbital flight. Sure Yuri is still the first man in "orbit" but even a suborbital flight is closer than having nothing on the table at that point)

As I've pointed out elsewhere to keep even the USSR would have had to actually come up with a viable "plan" for competition or give it up. In OTL they simply tried to use what they had and keep putting up spectacles rather than a cohesive program like the American's and having America closer from the start would be much more incentive to do so I'd think. As it was they could bury their heads and cover their ears because the "lead" was so obvious to everyone from the start.

Eisenhower's general "response" that there was nothing to worry about and no cause for panic when everyone had ALREADY paniced and expressed very obvious worry was exactly the wrong thing to do on almost every level that it looks like he's completely out of touch with reality.

SPKACA: It wasn't inter-service rivalry but Ike's interference directly that prevented von Braun from being first. And given the circumstances and background with the development of spy-sats and over-flights it's really hard to fault the actual logic beyond Ike's dislike of VB's "Nazi" background. There's a good argument that America NEEDED to have the Soviet's put up a satellite first. Both to shake them from their complacency AND to have the Soviet's themselves "prove" the over-flight rights of satellites. Arguably though the US needed to have a more coherent program in place like having von Braun's team as an OFFICIAL "back-up" to the Navy, instead of betting everything on a single throw. The politics in the background is important too. At the time both the Army and the Navy were facing an environment where for all intents and purposes Ike had declared the Air Force the premier and sole provider of American security (New Look) and was simply tossing them scraps to keep them busy while he shut them down. Everything I've seen points that the Navy was given a go-ahead pretty much by default as the Air Force couldn't be "bothered" (the Atlas was finally given priority for development and the AF STILL was dragging its feet about development in the late 1950s but in any case wasn't going to be ready on the time table given) meanwhile the Army only had von Braun and Ike was very direct that he was NOT to be considered, which left only the Navy proposal. Being's it came from an office that could reasonably considered not "strictly" military Ike gets what he wants even if we don't manage to be first.

The problem was the Vanguard was no where NEAR ready or capable of what it was being asked to do and with von Braun's team specifically side-lined, well we got what we got.

nixonhead: Maybe on the military space flight program as the supposed actual purpose of NASA was two-fold. The first being to develop a "civilian" space program but technically the Navy Vanguard program was that because it could be argued that the NRL wasn't actually a directly "Military" program and second was to organize and consolidate the various "space programs" (the US had technically four or five at the time if you counted the Vanguard as separate from Navy development and the non-hardware stuff that NACA was doing) to be more efficient and avoid duplication. I'm pretty sure Johnson and other's in Congress were aiming in that direction and I"m pretty sure even if Nixon was in charge the consolidation would make a lot of sense. I think however that ARPA would have been a bigger component of such a program under anyone but Ike and what would be "NASA" would be more an agency rather than an administration under the circumstances.

To harp on my favorite butterfly/POD if the US had a bigger, more capable Atlas coming along I suspect a LOT of things would have been different. One thing though is without a direct and clear commitment to something like the Lunar Landing program I don't think the Saturn-V would have been developed.

Randy
 
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