SpaceOrbisGaming wrote:
No I just used that date due to it being the end of the space race IMH. Sure we send up a few more people to the moon in the 1970s but the main goal was now met it was over more or less.
Yep, pretty much more or less though it’s always possible the USSR could get back into the game, once the US has done a round trip convincing them to keep playing is difficult at best. Especially since their Lunar Program even if it had been closer to success is so obviously inferior to that of the US. One possible POD I’ve considered is a different ‘take’ on a Soviet program where they forgo the “Big Rocket” paradigm and instead concentrate on orbital rendezvous and assembly earlier. Unfortunately that would take some major butterflies to get them the techniques and technology earlier as well as a better organized or at least less cut-throat system. But that way even if they DID land ‘second’ after the US they could demonstrate a broader and deeper program of goals and objectives which in turn would probably force the US to continue as well. The main issue though is neither program is likely all that sustainable over the long run unless you can bring costs down radically.
A few ideas for POD’s could be:
1-Sputnik is launched sooner than OTL prompting a much stronger US response
How much ‘stronger’ can you get than “sheer-panic-throw-money-at-people-and-demand-results” anyway?

The US was already aware of Soviet development in long range rockets by the mid-50s but the funding and support for missile development had been lacking. After Korea and faced with a more hostile USSR the US finally embarked on a missile development program around 1953 but did so at a very low rate. Sputnik jumped that into overdrive
The early lack of effort stemmed from two points after WWII; Firstly post-War President Truman had emphatically reduced military spending to the point the only branch that was getting funding was the US Air Force, (because the only way to deliver the A-Bomb was by bomber aircraft and it was assumed that any future conflict would be deterred or decided by the use of atomic bombing) and even then the amount was not very significant. (Truman’s budget policy post-War was to distribute all funding to domestic programs and then any money ‘left-over’ would be given to the military with the Air Force primary)
The second was an influential document commissioned by the Chief of the Air Force in 1945 H. H. Arnold to have Dr. Theodore Von Karman’s “Scientific Advisory Group” to outline the “best” course for the Air Force to pursue technology over the next 10 to 20 years. In that report (actually a multi-volume work) while acknowledging rocket and missile development as something to be pursued in the “future” Von Karman and company proposed that a more ‘near-term’ (less than 10 years) priority should be unmanned air-breathing missiles of both the subsonic and supersonic types. They felt that guidance and control of such missiles would be vastly simpler than that needed for a ballistic missile which turned out to be just the opposite in reality. That’s wasn’t actually clear but it could be argued it should have been.
These factors served to “kill” what had by mid-1946 been a very broad and advanced US program in missile development that had spawned the beginning of an advanced Air Force missile called the MX-774 which got as far launching both solid and liquid fueled test missiles along with advanced Army missile development which 'ended' up with the Redstone and arguably Jupiter. It was decided that the Air Force would work towards manned bombers of advanced types including supersonic and unmanned “cruise” missiles and the missile programs were dropped.
Now a this gives a couple of fascinating PODs when one considers that had Dewey in fact defeated Truman in 1948 Dewey’s platform was in fact proposing increased across the board military spending and most American's seemed Ok with that. (When Truman won he took it as a mandate to continue to cut military spending which was only reversed when the Korean war broke out) Arguably with Dewey now in charge both the Air Force and Army could then have afforded to continue some of the more advance research and development programs including solid fuel missiles and the precursor’s to the Titan and Atlas missiles of OTL.
Along those lines if “Towards New Horizons” had actually recommended ballistic missile research instead of the development of cruise missiles the Air Force would have kept Project MX-774 going along with the Army and Navy rocket development. Funding and support would be an issue still but it’s something to consider that the first Air Force Deputy Chief of Research and Development and as such he initiated and circulated the RAND Corporation report on “A World Circling Spaceship” and was an early advocate of missile development. This changed when he was put in charge of SAC but an earlier phase of technical and scientific support (Towards New Horizons) for ballistic missile development might have changed the Air Force and LeMay’s focus as well.
2-German rocket technology is more advanced in WWII. Some of it falls into the hands of the USSR thus the US falls behind
Not to disparage Dr. Von Braun and team but actually the US work by the end of WWII was pretty much on-par with the German work. While we launched captured V-2s using the Paper-Clip scientists by 1946 we were launching improved ‘home-made’ versions that were in some aspects more advanced that the V-2 under the MX-774 program. Arguably if Von Braun had not come to the US, died during the war or been captured by either the British, (“Ministry of Space” graphic novels) or by the Russians the US wasn’t going to fall all that much further behind than we did OTL as the ‘interest’ was there but not the support or funding. In fact the Russians’ didn’t really utilize their captured scientists very much and released them long before the American’s did. It is interesting to note that the USSR fired captured V2 as well as did the Allies but in general because they tore them down to see how they worked and then rebuilt them mostly without German ‘help’ they’re V2s tended to fly successfully whereas the Allies with captured German help tended to simply assemble the vehicles with all the sabotage and flaws still included and then have them fail in flight.
3-The public support is stronger than OTL
That’s tough because while public INTEREST has always been there for the most part “space” stuff has never been a public priority or that important to the average person. To get it to be so takes it directly impacting the average person’s life in a significant way. And despite what many might say even though it DOES do so today with things like communications, weather and such it is more an indirect impact because they don’t see the direct effect. Where is does have a more direct impact, (pardon the pun) like the Chelyabinsk meteor (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor) it is only a short term interest or effect. Arguably because it doesn’t cause any great disruptions which is to say had it actually HIT the ground it would have had a much greater (again pardon the pun) impact than OTL. Still probably not that much or that long term though. It has been suggested that greater access by the general public to space or near-space might increase support but I find that argument unlikely as only a small portion of the population considers space a ‘frontier’ of interest. It is vastly more difficult to get to and live in than anywhere on Earth and the incentive to make it personal is always going to be low even with increased cheaper access. It’s not even a ‘nice place to visit’ for the most part
Out of the three ideas I like 2 the most. So the POD is post-1945 that should give both sides time to do more with their space programs. I don’t much care who lands on the Moon first. I just want to see how far we can push the Space Race. But I will place a hard end date just in case this thing takes off. Yes that was a joke and I’m keeping it in so. That being 12-31-2099
Post-1945 works, as I said the main ingredient in keeping the Space Race going is first of all not to make it too much of a ‘race’ where one side or the other needs to put huge effort into ‘catching up’ because that quickly leads to the same situation as OTL. Second, (and hardest) is keeping both sides committed to moving forward which due to public and political variable support takes delving into politics and public opinion.
The less your program is in fact dependent on public and political support the better. For example I’d suggested that a slower paced and less well supported “Space Program” will tend to find ways to do things on the cheap with existing hardware and keep operations costs to a minimum. Take the development of the Saturn-1 OTL. It was made from “off-the-shelf” engines and tankage, very robust and took only a few infusions of funding to get to flight status. And it worked really, really well. Now build an entire “Apollo” orbital delivery system around it and with as little advanced development as possible. (You have to have some because the system needs both the hydrolox upper stage and a good orbital and reentry system. Maybe not the “Apollo” we know but something more like the Martin 410 Apollo concept {
https://falsesteps.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/the-martin-410-apollo-of-santa-ana/,
http://www.astronautix.com/a/apollomartin410.html} because it has some possible different utility than OTL Apollo. See below)
In essence you end up with a possible mostly reusable launch system that can make regular and fairly economic flights to LEO both to establish and support a space station and build up an orbital infrastructure. As I pointed out, in OTL we established that the H1 engines were recoverable, refurbish-able, and reusable so the main question is how much can we reuse the stage as a whole. It seems likely we could recover it as despite the general thinking a well-designed stage can survive salt water immersion pretty well. The second stage, (S-IVB) is less likely to initially be easy to recover, (Phil Bono of the stage’s builder Douglas suggested methods of recovery in a 1966 report,
http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/AD0758334{abstract}, or google book
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Saturn_S_IVB_Stage_as_a_Test_Bed_for.html?id=UsTOtgAACAAJ, which could be either on land or at sea and consist of a “kit” massing about 6000lbs/2721kg but his figures may have been a tad optimistic if you consider most of his work) so may initially be simply made ‘cheaper’ and expended.
OTL it was found that both the Gemini and Apollo capsules ‘could’ be refurbished and reused but the cost of doing so was pretty high because they hadn’t been designed to be reused. The Martin Apollo, specifically the M1 and M2 “Lifting Body” capsules actually WERE designed with recovery and reuse in mind. The idea being the outer reentry shell would be distinct from the inner pressure hull so that they could be separated and processed separately allowing easy access to all internal and external systems for maintenance and support. While the LB design allowed some maneuver during reentry and hyper/supersonic flight the lack of compromises that would have allowed subsonic flight as per the M2F2 lifting body are not included so a parachute landing is required. But this also avoids the subsonic and low speed handling and stability issues from cropping up.
Using this system to support a series of small space stations, (based on the Saturn Launch Adapter Section of SLA, see:
http://nassp.sourceforge.net/wiki/Future_Expansion#SLA_Workshop, Ignore the Gemini’s and Big Gemini’s for the moment but each “cone” is an SLA module
https://www.history.nasa.gov/SP-4011/p135.htm) which can be single or combined into a larger unit. Oh and as an informational note on the idea of building a ‘wet-lab’ from an on-orbit S-IVB stage let me point to this document, (
https://history.msfc.nasa.gov/skylab/docs/chronology.pdf) pages 25/26 where the then 56 year old Dr. Von Braun got all suited up and proceeded to ‘test’ entry and maneuver exercises and recommended additional handholds and tether points be installed. It isn’t EASY mind you but it’s not that hard either and for a cash strapped program…
How does this segue to into my original proposition of it being better to not NEED significant public or political support? How’s about this idea:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36040.msg1300793#msg1300793
Because “oddly” enough if you install some propellant tanks and landing gear on an SLA module and maybe fill up the propellant on-orbit you can, I don’t know, pretty much send it around or to land on the Moon and then ask for ‘forgiveness’ from the PTB if they didn’t really appreciate your initiative? (OTL Von Braun and company had a plan to “oops” a satellite into orbit around 1952 by adding a cobbled together ‘satellite’ to the fourth stage of a Jupiter-C missile during a flight test. Instead certain officials are alleged to have caused them to fill the fourth stage with sand instead of rocket fuel so it didn’t happen. It did however work for Explorer 1

)
The ‘thing’ is this might not happen until well into the 70s or early 80s without the ‘pressure’ of the “Lunar” goal such as OTL. But given the rather obvious contrasts in capability and capacity of the OTL LM and this concept of a Lunar SLA I’d think ANY landing would be vastly more efficient than OTL Apollo though…
Randy