What if Alan Shepard beat Yuri Gagarin?

Shepard had the opportunity to beat Gagarin to space by a couple of weeks in 1961, but Wernher Von Braun and NASA wanted another test flight. What if Shepard had launched before Gagarin, I understand Shepard's flight was sub-orbital vs Gagarin's orbital flight. But would this change the space race and scrap Kennedy's pledge for the Moon?
 
The Soviets got so many firsts up to about 1965 that the US had a massive inferiority complex, which caused the US to shoot for the moon. If Sheppard was first in space it might take some of the heat out of the hysteria in the US , and perhaps effect the moon race.
 
Alan Shepard enter the history books as First Men in Space
Follow three weeks later by Yuri Gagarin as First men who orbit earth

In USA they will hail that achievement that beat the Soviets, but soon caught up by reality.
That was Short Suborbital flight of 15 minutes, while Gagarin stay 108 minute and Titov stay a day in space.
After Titov Vostok-2 flight, in August 1961 the entire Mercury Redstone program look pathetic.
Original planned would the seven Mercury astronaut do a Suborbital flight MR-3 to MR-10
and after almost disaster of MR-4 flight, were Grissom nearly drowned, Mercury-Redstone flights were canceled
All effort was put into Mercury-Atlas flights

Very interesting speculation is here:
With the success of Mercury Redstone-3 would do JFK "We shall go too Moon" speech ?
He could made fatal mistake and "He rests on his laurels", until soviet beat them in space ?

and For Soviets,
I think that defeated and humiliate Nikita Khrushchev will look to Moon in sky, them make a phone call to Vladimir Chelomei, his favorite Rocket manufacture...
 
Hard to say. While it is true that Alan B Sheppard achieving Sub-Orbital a few weeks before Yuri Gagarin's Orbital Flight would give the US some cheer in making it into space via a Rocket before the USSR, the fact is it's still Sub-Orbital versus a Full Orbit. Thus I can still see Khrushchev still claiming Soviet Superiority by way of achieving that which the US is still behind in.

I can still see Kennedy still feeling the need to make some kind of Grand Pledge as a means of ensuring that the US takes a clear lead, and one they can keep.

What the USSR does following this, I'm less sure about...
 
Like Michael and marahag said, Shepard being first in space makes little to no difference and everything would proceed as usual from that point on, apart from some minute difference like those Wikipedia articles on spaceflight history.

I think I had discussed about this topic before some time ago; just see my post history for it. To be fair a member Randy who's an air force vet believed that Shepard rather than Gagarin being first would cause the Moon Race to be much slower, but I think the concurrent "Bay of Pigs" incident that further humilated America was not taken account back in the discussion then.

If there was no Bay of Pigs then Randy's conjecture about the slower space race could be the case then, otherwise it's just the usual.

If either Pioneer 1 made it out past the moon or the Freedom 7 being orbital rather than suborbital that will be a different story.

EDIT: There's an article from Sealion Press about this now.

https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/the-launch-box-pod-2-alan-shepard-first-man-in-space

However one of the bones I would like to pick is the author hadn't thought about the concurrent Bay of Pigs humiliation either. It would entirely depend upon Soviet's reactions between Shepard's and Gagarin's, and/or after the latter's. For instance if the Soviets are pushing hard to boast about Gagarin then America would feel as humilated as OTL and the rest proceeds as usual, otherwise if they are less salty about it then as the author said, the Space Race would get slower.
 
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Many Russian firsts were in the nature of stunts. The Mercury Atlas was capable of launching people into orbit and keeping them there for a day as the Vostok and the Vokshod was a real heap of shit compared to the Gemini. If Al had been first in a sub orbital stunt I think the American people might be more willing to listen to explanations about Vokshod in particular; that it wasn't manoeuvrable in space, its crew were without space suits and unsafe, its airlock was inflable and dangerous. The American people might see Gemini for the successful step forward that it was.
 
Many Russian firsts were in the nature of stunts. The Mercury Atlas was capable of launching people into orbit and keeping them there for a day as the Vostok and the Vokshod was a real heap of shit compared to the Gemini.


If Leonov didn't do the EVA from Voskhod, I'd bet that Ed White would have stayed in the Capsule with his Gemini flight.

It's only a Stunt when you are behind, but have bigger plans.

There's not that much difference between Voskhod and Soyuz, and that's been with us for a long, long time. The Soviets were far behind in trusting the Cosmonauts to be more than Spam in a can, and give them real control once in orbit- so even Soyuz was pretty much an oversized Mercury, despite having a nice airlock and more seats
 
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