What would have been the blow to American society had the Russians landed on the moon 1st?

More so the psychological blow to American society. My understanding is both Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin had large impacts on American society with elements of both hurt national pride and paranoia.

If the Russians somehow landed on the Moon first the event in otl that de-facto ended to space race what impact would have been felt?
 
Next stop, Mars ? With NERVA nuclear-heated rockets ?? Or, at least orbiting Mars, 'docking' with one of its moonlets, dropping landers to Martian surface...
 
A lot might depend on whether we declared a space race on, as OTL, or not. JFK, to manage the Vostok-Gagarin crisis, decided to promise we'd win a Moon race he just made up, and also set a definite time limit for us to accomplish it first by. If we had blown that one, especially if we failed both hurdles--missed the 1969 deadline (or if our politicians were really persuasive, 1970) and then the Russians beat us before we could manage the landing ourselves, we'd be in pretty bad shape I think. Perhaps we'd be in the throes of a cultural revolution of some kind and either bow out of the race on the grounds that our new Enlightenment says that was stupid, or tender the excuse we were distracted and busy.

But if we had said nothing at all, I suppose it depends on how we handle things after Sputnik and Vostok. Would we gradually back away from the arena, telegraphing that we should be loved for aspects other than our technical prowess? Demonstrate the latter in ways obliquely or not at all related to moon landings, such as economical SSTs, functional nuke plants delivering power, if not too cheap to meter, than anyway cheaper than the chemical fuel competition? Should we laugh at space as an expensive rathole to pour money into? If we can sell ourselves on those kinds of attitudes by 1969, then perhaps we can watch a Soviet moon landing with equinanimaty.

And maybe we can convince ourselves we have a different sort of space program that is better because it is more efficient and systematic or something.
 
After being second in the satellite race and second in the man-in-space race, being second to the moon would be a heavy blow. There would be paranoia, anxiety, diplomatic consequences and heads rolling. However, after short landings on the moon there really aren't any spectacular firsts left for the US at a price that I can see any politician being willing to pay. Especially as they've spent enough money on the space race to fund a small war and that hasn't worked.

The US could very well see diminished funding for their space program.

There are a few less ambitious goals that may appeal to the US that aren't Mars or Lunar bases - space stations, space shuttles, temporary mini-moon bases (like the 90-day LESA I), or intensified robot exploration of the distant planets.

I suspect that the space shuttle is likely the path that will appeal the most, since the promise of cheaper access to space will be one way to break the seemingly implacable stranglehold that the Soviets have on space superiority. With more determination that the US "must catch up", the shuttle could even get the development funds it needed to be more than an especially long test program.

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Next stop, Mars ? With NERVA nuclear-heated rockets ?? Or, at least orbiting Mars, 'docking' with one of its moonlets, dropping landers to Martian surface...

Von Braun was pushing for Mars, although it would have been prohibitively expensive and required decades of planning.
LBJ wasn't very much into space exploration personally and anyway after the OTL Moon race had been won, there was no point in upping the ante.

In this scenario, things could go both ways wrt space exploration. If funding had been cut, the cold war could have become warmer due to the need of scoring a win in some other field.
 
Here's a thought: how much would the culture of American aerospace be changed by being defeated in the moon race?

Alot of skilled engineers put in unpaid overtime (often to the detriment of their personal lives) and the companies they worked for often under-charged NASA for the work they did (basically counting their work for the Apollo program as a loss leader to get a piece of the post-Apollo aerospace market). Losing the race is going to be shattering for some of these people and demoralizing for many of these companies.

Might this make for a smaller and more conservative aerospace industry in the US?

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