When has History "gone wrong" in securing a more progressive "Space Future" by our times? How could the present day be more advanced?

[baltur2]

For example in OTL, the 1960s saw huge advancements in both technological and social arenas, which made things like the Moon Landing and Woodstock possible.

The early 70s were okay-ish, but later things started getting worse and the last progressive product of this rapidly advancing technological-cultural ferment was probably the launching of the Voyager 1 in 1977 with its famous Golden Record.

After this attention turned Earthward, spaceflights only flew to Low Earth Orbit, the USA experienced increasingly dire economic setbacks, and the USSR and the East Bloc more and more Conservative and stagnating political leadership.

In the case of the East Bloc it is interesting to compare for example photos of Budapest, Prague, and East Berlin from the period of 1965-1980, with the period of 1980-1990. The former, in its cleanliness and newness looks almost Futuristic, like a setting from Star Trek: The Original Series, while the latter, post-1980 period looks increasingly dilapilated and rundown.


What changes would be required that the rapid space-related technological, and general social advancements of the late 60s-early 70s period would continue onwards, instead of the OTL late 70s stagnation, then 80s Conservative backlash?

 

[Sardar]

IMO, your best best would be to have no WW2, or have WW1 end in a stalemate or have the interwar period be generally less of a shit show for the major European powers, who will be the only ones with the ability to have space programs in the later half of the century. Especially Germany and Russia, preferably both avoiding there respective revolutions. In a no WW1 or less bad WW1, Germany would no doubt be way farther ahead of Britain or the US in pretty much every scientific field. A more multipolar space race would generate way more competition.

 

[fasquardon]

For example in OTL, the 1960s saw huge advancements in both technological and social arenas, which made things like the Moon Landing and Woodstock possible.

In general? We've been held up by insufficient resources being put into education and R&D.

Education has an absolutely massive positive impact on economic growth, health outcomes (education actually has a bigger impact on infant mortality and life expectancy than the state of a country's medical services do), political stability and interest in space flight. Especially the education of women since that impacts the health outcomes and the education levels of the next generation even more than the education levels of men do. Mothers are important.

R&D spending is a major factor in economic growth, especially the growth of already industrialized states. I read a paper once where a team of economists had calculated that most efficient amount for an economy to spend is somewhere around 5% of GDP on a mix of blue sky research and product development. To my knowledge, this has never actually happened - a very research-keen culture like the US or the USSR might approach 3% of GDP being spent on R&D. An "extremely high" R&D spend is somewhere around 2% of GDP. The UK at the time the paper was written spent 0.2% of GDP on all kinds of R&D.

And since bigger economies can afford expensive rockets and payloads better, as well as find ways to make both more efficient, total R&D spend is important for reaching space utopias.

In the case of the East Bloc it is interesting to compare for example photos of Budapest, Prague, and East Berlin from the period of 1965-1980, with the period of 1980-1990. The former, in its cleanliness and newness looks almost Futuristic, like a setting from Star Trek: The Original Series, while the latter, post-1980 period looks increasingly dilapilated and rundown.

Part of that was due to bad economic choices made in the mid and late 60s which compounded the bad economic choices made in the 30s and 40s. For example, the Soviet Union under Brezhnev had introduced too many planning goals (which no-one could hold in their brains, so they defaulted back to the much simpler Stalin-era goal of "use more stuff to make more stuff") and was indulging in examples of mal-investment like buying new machines to be put in old factory buildings - buildings which couldn't fit the new machines, so they'd be stuck in a warehouse and were never used. In Eastern Europe, the Communist regimes all tried some sort of debt-fueled export-led economic model, only their timing was terrible, so their shiny new exports hit the market in the early 70s when the West couldn't afford to buy them. And through political procrastination they defaulted into a downward-spiral of debt-fueled consumption until the debt burdens became unsustainable in the 80s, resulting in painful austerity measures across the Eastern Bloc.

But underlying all of those more proximate mistakes was the failure of the Soviet and Soviet-derived economies to switch from input-driven economic growth, where the economy intensified due to the efficiency gains of taking under-employed peasants and turning them into poorly educated but fully employed factory workers. So when the USSR ran out of excess peasants in the 1960s, the economy couldn't maintain the growth needed to sustain the political and strategic needs of the USSR. Let alone leaving some extra resources to fuel a space program even bigger than OTL's.

This is all stuff that could have been eased by more education and more R&D spending (especially R&D spending in the civilian sector) even though the systems would always be at a disadvantage compared to a free-market capitalist system that was spending as much on education and R&D.

fasquardon

 

[PorkNuggets]

What changes would be required that the rapid space-related technological, and general social advancements of the late 60s-early 70s period would continue onwards, instead of the OTL late 70s stagnation, then 80s Conservative backlash?

The biggest single POD, at least on the US side, would be to have someone with a bit more political acumen and common sense succeed James Webb as the Director of NASA. Thomas Paine expected NASA's funding to not just be maintained but substantially increased post-Apollo. This was not going to happen with a budget-hawk like Nixon in the White House. When the funding failed to materialize he was faced with a choice between continuing production/development of Apollo hardware through the Apollo Applications Program and funding his personal pet project, the Integrated Space Transportation System, he went all-in on the latter. I would argue that his efforts ultimately hampered US development in space through the 70s, 80,s and 90s. Sure the Space Shuttle has it's fans, but we missed out on the Saturn-launched space telescopes and outer planet probes that were already on the drawing board in the 60, and Skylab was allowed to fall rather than either being replaced with Skylab B or upgraded and expanded with additional modules as originally planned.

Regarding the social arena, you might actually need to pair things back a bit as people who were most supportive of the space program and scientific development were often opposed to the social developments of the 60s and vice versa. As a general rule, popular support for NASA in the 60s and 70s tended to come from conservative "hawks" (In Your Face Soviet Union! 'Murica! F*ck Yah!) while the more progressive "doves" complained that the government was "wasting money in space" instead of spending it on people.

Edit to Add:

IMO, your best best would be to have no WW2.

Removing WWII arguably strangles the Space Age in it's crib as without the 3rd Reich's quest for "wunderwaffe" Von Braun's research likely never gets funded. Without WWII there's a decent chance you might butterfly the Cold War away entirely, and with it the chief impetuous to develop ICBMs. No R-7 means no Sputnik, and no Sputnik means no space race. I imagine that someone would launch an artificial satellite eventually but I'd also expect it to be delayed by a good 10-20 years relative to OTL.

 

[Catsmate]

The failure of James Vandal's parents to survive their encounter with the Forty-Third Archonate and hence the lack of lyftrium for airships.

 

[fasquardon]

Removing WWII arguably strangles the Space Age in it's crib as without the 3rd Reich's quest for "wunderwaffe" Von Braun's research likely never gets funded. Without WWII there's a decent chance you might butterfly the Cold War away entirely, and with it the chief impetuous to develop ICBMs. No R-7 means no Sputnik, and no Sputnik means no space race. I imagine that someone would launch an artificial satellite eventually but I'd also expect it to be delayed by a good 10-20 years relative to OTL.

I'm not so sure. The Soviets were pretty interested in rockets before the war.

I suspect development would be slower without the V2 though, since the focus is likely to be on tactical rocket systems.

fasquardon

 

[kmmontandon]

What changes would be required that the rapid space-related technological, and general social advancements of the late 60s-early 70s period would continue onwards, instead of the OTL late 70s stagnation, then 80s Conservative backlash?

No Vietnam War.

Right there you eliminate a massive budget constraint, Nixon's fiscal conservatism, as well as a certain psychological exhaustion with externalities on the part of the American people in the '70s. Inward-turning hedonism was the name of the game in the era between Vietnam and Reagan.

 

[xsampa]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1299614926877597696

 

[Riain]

Big, manned space programmes seem to be the preserve of Superpowers, so have the Central Powers win WW1 to get 3-4 superpowers: USA, Greater German MittelEuropa, Soviet Union and the Anglo-French quasi-superpower.

 

[Wendell]

It's the standard guns versus butter equation, only they're ray guns.

 

[Simon]

This was not going to happen with a budget-hawk like Nixon in the White House.

To be fair to Nixon the American public, even at the height of the Apollo Program, always had something of a mixed attitude towards space. Once the goal had been reached and the Soviets bested people felt that there was better things to spend the money on.

 

[Riain]

Yes, there's a minimum price for entry into manned space programmes so bigger, wealthier countries can more easily afford the ticket price.

 

[RanulfC]

Sputnik flies as per OTL but Sheppard flies before Gagarin. No "Moon race" but the entire "Space Race" takes on a more steady and evolutionary nature rather than the spastic, to focused race that we got OTL. You may not have seen humans on the Moon until the late 70s or early 80s but they would have done the job right and built up the support and infrastructure to go there to stay from the start rather than single-goal programs with no long-term support.

This also drops the barriers for entry as the nature of such a race would allow more players being able to have economies that could support the basic surface-to-orbit infrastructure allowing a broader pallet of possible options for orbital and interplanetary mission types.

An European Space Agency, China, the Middle East, maybe a South American Space Agency, (bonus points if it spells out SALSA ) all tooling around in LEO at the very least by the early 2000s.

To be fair to Nixon the American public, even at the height of the Apollo Program, always had something of a mixed attitude towards space. Once the goal had been reached and the Soviets bested people felt that there was better things to spend the money on.

Nixon gets a lot of grief from Space Advocates over his decisions while JFK tend to by lionized but in truth they had similar basic notions about the Space Program with Kennedy actually being less supportive. Had Nixon tried to support the IPP/Paine he'd have found no support in either Congress or the American public and that was very clear at the time though NASA management ignored it. Apollo as it was OTL fundamentally changed how NASA operated and how it was organized so that by the time Apollo 11 landed on the Moon it was a very capable organization in focusing on a single goal to its conclusion with unlimited support and resources but it could no longer do anything LESS than that type of a program. At the same time while the Soviet Lunar program was an abject failure due to a lack of such focus and support it also never recovered the prestige it had prior to Apollo and never saw NASA as being able to be significantly challenged in a manner as had been achieved prior to Apollo. So I suppose it could be argued that the US 'won' the Space Race with Apollo and ruined spaceflight the next several decades for everyone by doing so

The most basic truth is that no nation has every had a comprehensive policy or plan for space beyond direct usage pertinent to essential political and military goals such as communications and reconnaissance satellites. Space 'science' outside those goals is always a distant secondary priority to those uses and manned space flight arguably an even lower priority under any normal circumstances. Early advocates and pioneers assumed that "space" would just be a continuation of the conquest of the air and other forms of transportation, something that slowly evolves in an organic and society/politically supported manned with no clear or single 'end-goal' in mind. I like to point out that Werner Von Braun's mid-50's predictions of a Manned Lunar mission by the late 20th century and a manned Mars mission perhaps a half-century after that were considered by most other advocates and experts as being WILDLY optimistic.

Sputnik caused a spike in public interest in the West, and Gagarin got enough attention that a general call to action was politically feasible but both public and political support dropped back to "meh" levels within a few years. Had Kennedy not been killed and the Lunar goal become a cause of a martyred President HE rather than Nixon would have likely been the one seen as 'killing' American space dreams. Apollo as we know it set a bar for space goals that is impossible for anyone to follow and that's been clearly shown by the American space program as a whole in the post-Apollo era. "Space" was never a priority to anyone and by making it so in such an obvious fashion it has taken us nearly almost a half century to recover and find a way to move on from that type of thinking. And we are not arguably out of the woods yet

Randy

 

[jsb]

but they would have done the job right and built up the support and infrastructure to go there to stay from the start rather than single-goal programs with no long-term support.

I question this considering the number of times that NASA(or new administrations) have changed its plans and ditched stuff its just done/doing/building/planning to go off towards the next cool thing would this not be just as likely ITTL? I also question if you can go to stay without a significant Luna/space industry that pays/justifies it?

Even the idea that Apollo was single use and ruined it is I think ignoring that its more just mindset than actual hardware, NASA/Paine ditched Apollo applications as fast as possible that could have done most of the build a space station etc like Soyuz with a LEO block III CSM on IBs (or more developed Saturn/Titan/new ELVs) to run off to develop the super new space airliner & delivery truck that would solve everything?

 

[Auseklis]

It seems minuscule, and maybe implausible considering the state of their space program, but what if the Soviets were able to put a man on the moon? Would that ignite something to "show up the Soviets" or would it just be considered them playing catch-up?

 

[fasquardon]

It seems minuscule, and maybe implausible considering the state of their space program, but what if the Soviets were able to put a man on the moon? Would that ignite something to "show up the Soviets" or would it just be considered them playing catch-up?

Personally, I don't think it would have had much impact. At least, not on Earth.

If the race is close, the US can establish dominance by demonstrating the greater capability of their system (which is very hard to avoid, even if we went back to before WW2 and somehow ensured that the Soviets made all the right moves - or even went back further and ensured that somehow the damage of collectivization were also avoided - the Soviet economy just can't catch up to the US economy by the 70s). In other words, if there's a race, even with the largest possible Soviet talent pool, largest possible Soviet economy and latest possible landing date, the US can apply a whole lot more brute force. Oh, and the US also has a commanding technological lead and some very fine engineers. If the US is serious about the race, it is hard to avoid them having the edge in capability. If the race is somehow not close, the problem is that the next big mile stone is an order of magnitude more difficult, more expensive and/or more dangerous. For example, the US might figure that a Venus flyby would do, but while such a flyby is about as expensive as a moon landing, if any sort of serious accident happens the crew are dead. Something like the Apollo 13 accident would be lethal when the crew have hundreds of days before they can return to Earth.

So I reckon about the best we could hope for is a few LESA-style "moon bases" where crews are spending a few months on the moon, and the Soviets and Americans both end the race saying they won - the Soviets because they arrived first. The US because they arrived best.

fasquardon

 

[RanulfC]

I question this considering the number of times that NASA(or new administrations) have changed its plans and ditched stuff its just done/doing/building/planning to go off towards the next cool thing would this not be just as likely ITTL?

Was this perhaps "post-Apollo"?
Because initially NASA was given the task of developing and implementing a US civilian manned space exploration program for which they developed the one-man Mercury as the first step and the three-man Apollo as the second step. Mercury would be used only for early test flights to see how man adapted to space and space-flight while Apollo would be a workhorse vehicle initially capable of long duration orbital work and eventually later Marks would be capable of operating anywhere in Cis-Lunar space. Note that there is no specific goal though there are a huge number of 'milestones' and proposed research and development side-programs also planned including nuclear and electric propulsion research, power, life support and constant upgrades to the Apollo hardware and booster systems. A series of small space stations was also in the plan along with a heavy series of interplanetary and orbital science probes and satellites but there were only early details of most of these. Couple things to note is there is NO Saturn V in the plan and only a possible new booster basted on the planned Saturn 1/1B stages with monolithic tanks and different engines. (Unlikely though given the general costs of the S-1 stage and engines) There was also no "Large" goal or projects planned with expansions of NASA facilities as needed during the process but total expenditures were planned to be maintained in the planned NASA budget.

Presidential and Congressional interest was enough this was an approved plan through about somewhere in the mid-to-late 70s with a 'flexible' budget attached.
This only changed when Gagarin went up and the Lunar goal by 1970 was decided and NASA was promised unlimited support and finances and given a top-priority.

if that hadn't happened then NASA would have stuck to the slow-but-steady course that remained in the main within it's own budget and would only have to go to Congress and the President for special request items that were above and beyond that budget.

I also question if you can go to stay without a significant Luna/space industry that pays/justifies it?

Antarctica
Keep in mind that the concept of sending a couple of men was literally only considered for a "rush" mission such as Apollo. Otherwise your FIRST landing would have included not only "pilots" (and not likely test pilots but by the time this was planned space pilots) but scientists and engineers with a planned stay duration of at least the full Lunar "day" if no longer. You're not landing a "LEM" you're landing what amounts to a Lunar Shuttle and you'll be spending weeks surveying and exploring each landing site on each mission. Planning called for the ability to construct some sort of "temporary" base camp at each landing site with an eventual decision, (and one of those things you'd need to get the Politicians to sign off on) to be made where to place a 'permanent' base at some later date.

Even the idea that Apollo was single use and ruined it is I think ignoring that its more just mindset than actual hardware, NASA/Paine ditched Apollo applications as fast as possible that could have done most of the build a space station etc like Soyuz with a LEO block III CSM on IBs (or more developed Saturn/Titan/new ELVs) to run off to develop the super new space airliner & delivery truck that would solve everything?

Once the "Apollo" we know came about it was designed and aimed specifically at the Moon in a short time and had pretty much reached it's limits doing even that. Saturn Application had some utility but it was clear by 1965 the budget for anything wasn't there and would likely not be there so most long-range plans were scrapped. (It wasn't NASA that killed AAP so much as Congressional budget cuts which meant all the contractors were aware that there would be no follow-on so began shutting things down. NASA had hoped to get a second run of Saturn-V's but Congress said no since they were essentially tied to a second series of Apollo landings with all that implied) The Saturn-1/1B was essentially discarded once the early flights were done and only kept for specific support of Skylab and ASTP. The Saturn V, which was designed solely for the Lunar Mission was too big and expensive to continue to use. There where plans to expand and improve the Apollo CM up to and including reuse and land-recovery but they would have essential required a complete redesign and rebuild. The Apollo CM was overkill for orbital missions and while it could be modified to carry five astronauts it wasn't going to be a very good orbital ferry. Similarly the LEM was planned to be expanded and used in other missions but as per the CM the effort would have been expensive and not all that effective. The main problem was that any continuation of the use of Apollo legacy hardware would have been asking Congress to approve a continued Apollo level outlay of funding which was specifically opposite of what the American people and by extension Congress and the President wanted from NASA.

Paine's "IPP" was in essence trying to go back and start over again from scratch and put in all the things that should have been in place before we went to the Moon and all that was needed to actually do the Moon right, along with all that was needed to go to Mars on top and all within the same time period as the original Apollo program. For a budget of about three times that of Apollo with no public or political support in sight. To be clear here pretty much everything from Apollo was already gone by this point. There would be no more Saturn's of any type, no Apollo CM's or LEMS. All that was already being shut-down even as Apollo 11 touched down and NASA had already agreed to that. They had to since they had neither the money or support to continue any of it. But at the same time NASA was unable and unwilling to accept any loss of prestige, priority or support and demanded another "Apollo" like commitment from the American Government and people. They didn't get it.

In fact of the whole "IPP" the only part they got was a commitment to allow them to build a cheaper means to access space but NASA had no idea how to do that so they turned even that into the "Program of Record" and ran it like Apollo all over again. And this is a pattern that has repeated every time NASA or Politicians have tried to recreate that one-time-only "Kennedy Moment". We don't and haven't needed another "Apollo" with it's highly limited and vastly expensive one-time use mission systems. We haven't needed a limited number of highly complex and expensive to launch and maintain "Space Shuttles" but we got them anyway. What we have needed is a economic means to access orbit that can be used on a regular scheduled basis that is both reliable and safe in eyes of the public and industry. From there you build up what you need for orbital infrastructure and industry and keep moving it outward as needed and desired.

Randy

 

[RanulfC]

It seems minuscule, and maybe implausible considering the state of their space program, but what if the Soviets were able to put a man on the moon? Would that ignite something to "show up the Soviets" or would it just be considered them playing catch-up?

Henceforth to be known as the "For All Mankind.." alternative

The rest is pretty much as fasquadron wrote, it's not going to cause the US to lose their mind as they'd done before and set some grand new goal and put NASA back on a priority. Given that it was clear the Soviets were far behind by the mid-60s the main fear was they'd manage to grab a few more 'firsts' like a flyby of the Moon or a sample return before Apollo sat down on the surface. While they could have made some hay with a circum-lunar flyby before Apollo 8 it would have been clear that the difference in capability was vast and similarly a Soviet landing would have been one-man for a few hours whereas the US was going to be at least two men for more time with more capability.
Arguably the Soviets could have opted for going second and doing more by use some orbital operations but that wasn't politically in the cards by that point.

And I'll address here some of the flak I've gotten previously about how this is 'different' than the outcome I suggest for having Sheppard fly before Gagarin not leading to the same outcome as OTL. The difference was that the US was both committed to and open about flying suborbital before moving to orbit flight as a program plan. The Soviets didn't of course make any similar plans open knowledge. OTL Gagarin's flight was a double-hammer blow to an already shaken Kennedy administration that demanded a response. While Sheppard flying only suborbital is going to be a point that the Soviets would play-up versus their going all the way to orbit, keep in mind the Soviet's OTL down-played the US Lunar Goal as overambitious and dangerous and that they would instead take a 'steady and measured' approach to reaching the Moon. This would have been the same answer politically from the US if Sheppard had flown first. We ARE going to orbit we just don't see need to endanger things by rushing it.

Now mind you there would have been SOME expansion from such an outcome but it would have likely been more of a push to utilize a "Mercury MkII" vehicle to bridge the gap between Mercury and Apollo much as "Gemini" turned out OTL. Apollo and Soyuz would both be used more for orbital operations than anything else and quite frankly I suspect that such a TL would have an ASTP rendezvous in Lunar rather than Earth orbit if not being a joint landing mission.

Randy

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Have the peace dividend extend from 1991 to the present day

Sir Patrick Moore once claimed or rather ranted that the cost of each year of the Iraq war could have easily funded 10 years on Mars!

 

[jsb]

Have the peace dividend extend from 1991 to the present day

Sir Patrick Moore once claimed or rather ranted that the cost of each year of the Iraq war could have easily funded 10 years on Mars!

Budget of NASA - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I don't see much of an end of Cold War peace dividend and with the cuts to DoD space stuff it's probably an overall cut? (the 89-93 bump is the post accident fixing the shuttle but to early for peace dividend and falls off anyway?)