Achilles wrote:
Basically the question is what if he had received enough funding early that he was able to more fully develop his rockets and the systems they needed to be useful and what he envisioned.
Yes that would have helped as would have wider recognition and support. Government backing during WWI and WWII helped a lot but the former was dropped immediately upon the end of the war which made getting him back for WWII that much more difficult.
It would probably include not getting such a negative reaction when he published his work,
Considering the New York Times didn't print a correction, (they never actually apologized) until Apollo 11 was on its way to the Moon I highly doubt it would be plausible. There was a good reason that people who worked in the field referred to rockets as a form of "jet" propulsion in the US even after Buck Rogers and such became 'popular'. The majority of people considered the subject interesting but not practical until far in the future.
...and somewhere I read that because of his tuberculosis he avoided working with other to avoid getting bogged down in conflict with others to more effectively use his time.
It also made it hard for him to speak or for prolonged time. He also wasn't very patient or trusting and tended towards secrecy for patent purposes which lead to often refuse to work with others or groups despite better funding
So if he is able to get the funding would he be able to match the achievements of the Germans (or if they really did steal his work would it inadvertently also bump them up) and be working towards a 2 stage rocket by the end of the war.
Funding is just one issue as they were building the tech as well. I'd note that unlike the Germans his work was specifically focused on smaller 'research' rockets so someone would have to convince him to build and test bigger rocket engines which he wasn't all that interested in.
Note he built a liquid, throttling JATO unit for the Navy in early WWII but there was no intention of building a bigger unit.
A "sounding rocket" like the Viking would be more of what he'd be focused on than a V2. He'd worked on a solid fueled, man-portable rocket during WWI, (to use to bust MG bunkers or blow holes in the wire) but dropped that direction to concentrate on liquid fuels. (The government kept the work and used it towards the WWII bazooka)
]If he does manage to achieve about what the Germans did what are the effects post war? Does the US still bring in Von Braun and company or do they end up elsewhere? Does this have any effect of the bell rocket planes producing them sooner so they iron out some of the kinks of going supersonic sooner? Would they use the solar concentrator he designed to power a satellite or use his ion thruster to move in space? Would these developments spurred the Soviets to a more cohesive or better overall rocket program?
I'm sure I have more I could ask but they aren't coming right now and getting some responses to any of the questions posed would be helpful.
Note that this would require a full commitment by with government level funding to match that of Germany. (In today's dollars they spent billions JUST setting up Peenemunde and the staff and whereas Germany had a plausible justification for doing so the US does not)
In answer to the questions the main one is of course "what doesn't the US put the money and resource into that goes to this?" That amount of money and resources is going to significantly hurt some other area of development.
In the scenario yes the Germans are still brought over as initially "Paperclip" was simply to bring the selected persons to the US, get what we could out of them and hold them till their knowledge wasn't useful anymore to the Russians. (There was a reason they spent so much time in New Mexico) The US already had scientist and researchers working with manufacturers to produce American rockets and missiles so if the US is on par or ahead, (post war we were very much on par but un-experienced whereas if we'd been on par at the beginning of the war we'd be ahead) then we learn what they know, compare it and probably let them go wherever afterwards. They may go to industry or military programs but if the US knowledge is as close as suggested then they really have a lot less to contribute directly.
Rocket planes may be a bigger "thing" simply because as noted 'something' had to suffer to get the advances in rockets so the US may be further behind in jet engine technology or development. Say the US has rockets and the world's best piston prop planes but we currently (1946-to-about-1950-ish) have to depend on British jet engines to power our early jet aircraft. We may invest heavily in mixed-propulsion aircraft more.
Frankly the US was well aware post-war of the potential for missiles and rockets but budget cuts and 'normalization' meant choices in priorities. The military pitched the benefits of large rockets and all branches did studies in and around 1947 to define that potential. The problem was the Navy didn't have a viable operation method to use missiles. (And V2 flights and "RUD" experiments on the effects to a ship scared them off liquid fuels if at all possible) The Air Force was interested but their science advisory board told them air-breathing cruise missiles were more 'near-term' to develop and deploy, So the only branch that could directly USE heavy rockets was the Army which is how they got Von Braun and team OTL. Really the same arguments apply in a TL where Goddard and the US was further along.
Guidance and control were the main issues of the day and even though it turned out just as tough to design cruise missile guidance and control as it would have for an ICBM that simply wasn't as clear. Further developing and deploying large aircraft bombers was a path capable of utilizing infrastructure and operations that were already in place and well understood. And it fit our "needs" as defined by the military and political leaders of the day. We'd have continued to develop more capable 'tactical' missiles but at about the same 'priority' as OTL so it is doubtful we'd see the US pulling ahead in development.
The USSR on the other hand was building much new infrastructure and industry so it wasn't constrained. Once it became clear that the US was going to be a future threat they needed a way to reach 'parity' in ability to attack the Continental US from Russia and like OTL they probably won't have the aircraft industry for it so again the ICBM becomes very attractive.
One interesting alternative that is possible here is that, for some reason the US becomes more interested in ICBMs than cruise missiles, (Von Karman is convinced that the guidance and control issue can be solved in the near future) then the US advantage may see less bombers and earlier and more missiles built. But you still have the barriers of politics and budget till around the Korean war.
The Soviets HAD "more cohesive or better overall rocket program" than the US as they started sooner and reached an earlier initial operating capability. Did you mean 'space program' because THAT was far less cohesive and suffered from a lack of overall planning and 'mission' from the start, but so did the US. The problem was "space" flight had few definable uses for the military and those were found rapidly to be better suited to automated rather than manned capability.
Marathag wrote:
Only way I see Rocketry getting a jump over OTL would be one of the air racers, like Roscoe Turner who wanted to fly fast and fly high, as was able to raise money to do that.
I'd actually done some notes on someone arranging a financing meeting between Goddard, Sanger, and Howard Hughes to pitch a cross-continent rocket plane concept. It wouldn't be "Silver Bird" but performance would have to be pretty high still.
Get him to hear about a rocket engine to do the above, have him fund development (he wasn't poor) and to have enough endurance to fly the 300 mile Thompson Trophy course at a better than 300 mph average speed
Here's the main issue with rocket planes; they don't do distances well due to fuel consumption. Especially 'turning' courses. The vehicle would have to glide most of the time only using short bursts to maintain speed. Gliding in a tight turn surrounded by powered aircraft could be tricky. Not saying it can't be done of course as this was the plan for the OTL Rocket Racing League. It would have gone a long way towards the development of an early and reliable multi-start engine.
Automan wrote:
I once dreamed of a timeline in which Robert Heinlein went to work with Goddard instead of going to California to write science fiction. He basically was the tub-thumper who got people enthused and Goddard was able to do some spectacular work.
Just a dream
Had to use a pre-1900 POD but I used Goddard's brother, (who died early) in this role.
Randy