WI: Khrushchev announced launching space station

What if before Kennedy address to Americans about Apollo programme Khrushchev publicly announced that Soviet Union would sent a space station? Would Kennedy changed his mind and announce that US will too send space station or he will do his "We choose to go to the moon" speech anyway?
 
IMO Kennedy would still announce that the US would shoot for the moon. NASA figured the odds were the US would loose a space station race (as they indeed did in OTL).

What we might see however is the minimal stations proposed as spin offs to Apollo or Gemini hardware get a couple hundred million USD to get a station up by the first years of the 1970s.

Alternate WI: In response to Kennedy's moon speech, Khrushchev declares that the USSR is too focused on useful science to compete in such a silly race and one example of this will be the Soviet station that will orbit the Earth before the end of the decade.

I wonder what the US reaction would be to Soviets publicly saying the moon race wasn't worth their time?

fasquardon
 
I imagine something like this

Khrushchev: USSR will have an operational space station before the end of the decade.
Kennedy: Impressive Ruskie, but the moon would be ours by then
Khrushchev: Yeah? And what? Lunar base? Please you damm capitalist, my spies had already known that a moon base is not feasible, making the moon race unworthy of our time.
Kennedy: We will go further than you!
Khrushchev: And we have a permanent presence in cosmos. Question?

Still, it's only my imagination. This part of history is not my "taste"
 
Part of the problem with this, is that when deciding on making a Manned Lunar Landing before Decade's End a US Priority, they did so in the belief that they'd have enough time to leapfrog the USSR who at the time were "well ahead" with regards to their own spaceflight capability - though in truth this was made possible by the massively over-designed R-7 ICBM which didn't need a huge amount of work to make it a viable manned launch vehicle - and that if they'd likely be behind the USSR for at least the next 5 years.

For the alternate WI proposed by fasquardon, the Soviet Leadership I think could be more receptive to this idea, as it gives the appearance of them wasting massive amounts of resources on a Political Stunt - granted Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight was a stunt, but not a hugely expensive stunt.

In addition, with: a Space Station being a Soviet Goal; Chelomei's Three-Stage UR-500/Proton LV being well-suited to this task; And Chelomei being in Khrushchev's Graces at the time. I can see the three-stage Proton being a higher priority with subsequent funding, allowing more resources and opportunity to debug the launch vehicle which could substantially reduce its Initial Failure Rate of ~50% OTL IIRC.
 
WI: as part of this plan, Kruschev announces in September 1962 that Baikonur is just too far north -- Russia needs to build a "spaceport" in Cuba. Missiles? Nyet, these are peaceful launches: monkey, weather satellite, physics payload whose exact contents are none of your business; and soon the People's Glorious Space Station that will make Mercury capsule look like inferior capitalist crap!
 
WI: as part of this plan, Kruschev announces in September 1962 that Baikonur is just too far north -- Russia needs to build a "spaceport" in Cuba. Missiles? Nyet, these are peaceful launches: monkey, weather satellite, physics payload whose exact contents are none of your business; and soon the People's Glorious Space Station that will make Mercury capsule look like inferior capitalist crap!

Problem with that, well one of the problems (cost, distance shipping rockets, parts, people, hitting the US with launch failures, US recovering debris of failures....), the world would see the Soviet space/rocket program wasn't as impressive has it appeared.
 
HendrykPL wrote:
What if before Kennedy address to Americans about Apollo program Khrushchev publicly announced that Soviet Union would sent a space station? Would Kennedy changed his mind and announce that US will too send space station or he will do his "We choose to go to the moon" speech anyway?

It was assumed on the US side that the Soviets 'could' put up a credible space station by the early 1960s with 'assumed' progression on the lift capability they obviously had. There was no way the US was 'winning' a Space Station race and everyone on our side knew it. With the known lift capability demonstrated by Sputnik and Gagarin it was in fact assumed that the Soviets could beat us to a Lunar flyby, (probably not orbital though) by the mid-1960s even if we pushed ourselves. The Lunar Landing goal was the only 'viable' goal that would be seen as pushing far past the Soviets and establishing US dominance in space.

The back-ground history shows that Kennedy would have, (and was desperately searching for right up till the announcement) loved to find ANY other option than putting American on the path to a lunar landing but there simply wasn't one that could do what needed to be done. (Funny enough, McNamara, oh he of the gutting the military space program and killer of Dynasoar and MOL, was significantly worried that even THAT might not be a race we could 'win' and kept suggesting that the US set an INTERPLANETARY goal instead right up till the announcement. We didn't have a bit of the technology that would be needed to do it but he was pretty adamant about the idea anyway :) )

Considering that someone can 'claim' a space station with some pretty small vehicles/payloads there's really no way for the US to see a space station as "beating" the Soviets even if we could have done it. Kennedy had second thoughts about the Lunar Program and might, (had he lived) seriously suggested a cooperative effort between the US and USSR but it would have been unlikely to gain popular or Congressional support. US prestige and morale had taken too much of a beating between then end of WWII and Gagarin's launch to allow much of a 'rational' response. If the 'race' had begun and/or remained 'closer' then maybe but not with the background to that point.

Fasquadron wrote:
Alternate WI: In response to Kennedy's moon speech, Khrushchev declares that the USSR is too focused on useful science to compete in such a silly race and one example of this will be the Soviet station that will orbit the Earth before the end of the decade.

I wonder what the US reaction would be to Soviets publicly saying the moon race wasn't worth their time?

That's pretty much what the Soviets DID say OTL when they began to 'fall-behind' the US in space achievements so I don't see that 'officially' making it policy would change all that much. In the short run;
The US would play with this for all it's worth and it is in fact worth a lot. This would be said to indicate that the Soviets lack the knowledge and technology (and implied courage) to export their ideology beyond Earth orbit. That American's, who have always pushed and expanded new frontiers, (lot of "colonial American" and "old-west" references here) using American knowledge and technology, (and implied fearlessness and courage) and will would continue to push out into the new frontier of space and spread the ideals of democracy and freedom to the far stars!

Now beyond the rhetoric? Probably not a lot different as we'd still push to the Moon by the 'end-of-the-decade' since we can't be SURE the Soviets are really 'giving up' on the Moon. Don't forget a 'big' booster can not only launch a space station but also the parts for a lunar vehicle and there is no way to tell what a booster is going to launch until after its done so.

The USSR never actually made the "Moon Race" official and while Bahamut-255 has a point about the USSR wanting to take the 'cheap' route the problem is they did START the whole mess and they ended up in the position where they DID "lose" eventually despite desperately trying to match the American's even though it was 'on-the-cheap,' disorganized and ineffective. They were GOING to 'lose' the Moon race no matter what unless they became willing to 'commit' with the same intensity that the US had to the same goal which simply wasn't going to happen. (Note there ARE in fact ways to do it with what the Soviets actually had AND fairly 'cheap' for certain values of cheap BUT it would require EOR and orbital rendezvous and assembly technology and operations they had not developed and had trouble developing OTL)

"Saving face" earlier with an official "we'll go to the Moon when we're ready while the Americans can rush off all they want" would have probably been a bit more effective, especially once they can point at the Apollo-1 accident as what happens when you 'race' instead of slow steady progress towards the future. Having a stated 'goal' though requires a plan and political support which they Soviets did not in fact have. So you need that to come about somewhere along the line and while I think it might be feasible for Khrushchev to make such an announcement but he'd have to have not only support but a definite and viable PLAN in mind and while Chelomei had hired his son and proposed the UR500-et-al, Korolev's N series ACTUALLY made a bit more sense, and Yangel had the better overall "plan" with Glushko a wild, (and I do mean "wild" in just about every sense of the word here) card. The main thing that making it 'official' and having a plan in place would probably do is allow continued support after Khrushchev's fall though that's of course not a given, but it would seem harder to divert things with it being official policy and all.

Mad Bad Rabbit; as WCDouglas notes the operational as well as political issues are pretty major for a Cuban launch site. (He's a bit wrong though launch failures and debris will fall to the East, not the West so you'd probably here more on that from the Caribbean and Britain I'd think. Good place for a James Bond book/movie though... Oh wait :) ) As he also notes however the main problem is control as launches (and a launch complex) in Cuba make things VERY visible to the US which the Soviets wanted to avoid since they were well aware the capability they actually 'had' was much less than the US assumed they did and the longer they could keep it that way the better. Naturally they had much more 'control' over what information got out INSIDE the USSR than outside and any launch failure or accident, (imagine one of the early Proton failures here) is going to be open and visible with minimum effort to the US. Lastly if they DID start launching from Cuba it wouldn't be very compatible with anything launched from the USSR which would mean moving most of the support and materials launches to Cuba as well and while that MIGHT have some benefits for Cuba the down-sides for the USSR are probably far too many to seriously consider. Nice idea though :)

Randy
 
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