WI: Moon Landing Schedule Botched

Inspired by the old game Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space. While there are brownie points for landing on the moon ahead of schedule, there is also the part of the game where you've failed to get to the moon by 1970. It's interesting, because the game does not expect nor want you to get to this point. This is the point where the game recognizes your incompetence, kicks in with it's Easter eggs, and blasts you for thoroughly failing to complete Kennedy's schedule. Among the Easter eggs is Chuck Yeager as an astronaut recruit, because you need all the help you can get. I believe it goes to 1977.

Based upon that, what if the United States had thoroughly botched the schedule for landing on the moon by 1970?
 
Alright, let's say we get to the Moon by '74. Then the '70s aren't known only for turning inward, for self-help efforts which are innovative, creative and at times really zany and way out there, and for doing more with less economically. So, the '70s would have some tangible big-ticket items.

All the same, the United States and most of the Western world would still be well-advise to address the decline in middle-class jobs.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Kind of have to define "botched"

Inspired by the old game Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space. While there are brownie points for landing on the moon ahead of schedule, there is also the part of the game where you've failed to get to the moon by 1970. It's interesting, because the game does not expect nor want you to get to this point. This is the point where the game recognizes your incompetence, kicks in with it's Easter eggs, and blasts you for thoroughly failing to complete Kennedy's schedule. Among the Easter eggs is Chuck Yeager as an astronaut recruit, because you need all the help you can get. I believe it goes to 1977.

Based upon that, what if the United States had thoroughly botched the schedule for landing on the moon by 1970?


Kind of have to define "botched," as in "on track but landing and return is delayed from 1970" ("before this decade is out," after all) or "Apollo 7 lost at launch"?

Best,
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Sorry - is the schedule "botched" because

I apologize, but I'm a bit confused by the question.

Sorry - is the schedule "botched" because:

a) they're on track, but just running behind, so the first landing mission is set for 1971? or
b) they're totally off-track, as in no recovery after the Apollo 1 fire, or there was one, but somewhere along the way of Apollos 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 there was another loss of crew?

Best,
 
I recall reading somewhere that before the proposed moon landing plan in 1961, NASA originally wanted to have a monster space station as a way station on the way to the moon, all consistent with Von Braun's plans and scenarios.
 
Sorry - is the schedule "botched" because:

a) they're on track, but just running behind, so the first landing mission is set for 1971? or
b) they're totally off-track, as in no recovery after the Apollo 1 fire, or there was one, but somewhere along the way of Apollos 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 there was another loss of crew?

Or worst-case: c) an N-1 style launchpad explosion
 
Sorry - is the schedule "botched" because:

a) they're on track, but just running behind, so the first landing mission is set for 1971? or
b) they're totally off-track, as in no recovery after the Apollo 1 fire, or there was one, but somewhere along the way of Apollos 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 there was another loss of crew?

Best,

It could be any number of things. I work in general concepts. But it has to be delayed past 1970.
 
While we make a big deal about achieving the goal by 1970 now, IIRC at the time a bigger deal was to beat the Soviets to the moon.

I think we'd still call it a win
 
It could be any number of things. I work in general concepts. But it has to be delayed past 1970.

That would be hard to do I feel. You could just butterfly away the 'We Choose to Go to the Moon' speech, so pretty much staying in Low Earth Orbit, or not have Kennedy assassinated.

The way the hardware was lining up, the United States had three full attempts to do a lunar landing in 1969, 11, 12, and 13. 13 probably wouldn't have suffered the failure if both 11 and 12 had failed, in order to make sure everything worked right.
 
There were a lot of people who thought the Apollo program was a waste of money and I suspect that the Nixon administration would have cancelled the project if there was no moon landing by 1970. The failure could be placed on the democrats who conceived the idea in the first place and the money could be spent on the war in Vietnam or maybe on company tax relief.
 

Perkeo

Banned
The original purpose was to outperform the Sowjets, and so long as they manage that they're probably OK. OTOH if the Sowjets land on the moon before the US, the Apollo program will be called a failure even if they do manage to land before 1970.

BTW, doesn't the word "decade" technically refer to the time between 1961-1970 rather than 1960-1969?

To be cancelled, the goal has to be miss its schedule by a huge margin, just as the Sowjet program did IOTL.
 
The original purpose was to outperform the Sowjets, and so long as they manage that they're probably OK. OTOH if the Sowjets land on the moon before the US, the Apollo program will be called a failure even if they do manage to land before 1970.

BTW, doesn't the word "decade" technically refer to the time between 1961-1970 rather than 1960-1969?

To be cancelled, the goal has to be miss its schedule by a huge margin, just as the Sowjet program did IOTL.

A decade refers to both a XXX0-XXX9 period and a period of 10 years AFAIK.

So if they miss the 31/12/1969 deadline, they could shift the goalposts by stating that "this decade" meant the 10 years after Kennedy's Speech, but if they fall shy of that, the Apollo Lunar Programme will be in serious trouble.

The Soviets landing first is another possibility, but given the problems they faced, which made NASA's pale in comparison, that is at best extremely unlikely, even if you manage to botch the US Effort.
 
The Soviets landing first is another possibility, but given the problems they faced, which made NASA's pale in comparison, that is at best extremely unlikely, even if you manage to botch the US Effort.
No kidding. The LK wasn't tested and ready for manned flights until 1971, and the N1 was it's own separate nest of problems.
 
Emperor Norton I said:
Chuck Yeager as an astronaut recruit
LOL. And Crowley is Captain of Hell's NHL team.:p

Thing is, tho, as you'll see if you look for the several "screw the space program"-type threads, there are lots & lots of ways for Apollo to get f*cked over.:eek: You could do everything from a heatshield failure to a blown abort on LEM touchdown to a 13-type tank explosion to a pad explosion to a crew just plain going nuts,:eek::p without exhausting the possible (& different!:eek:) ways to delay things--all of which would require NASA, & the contractors, to carefully examine what went wrong, & why, & none of which would (necessarily...) uncover other flaws.:eek: Delay past 1970? Dead easy.;)
 
Last edited:
I recall reading somewhere that before the proposed moon landing plan in 1961, NASA originally wanted to have a monster space station as a way station on the way to the moon, all consistent with Von Braun's plans and scenarios.

Actually that was EVERYBODIES planned scenario, Von Braun just popularized it by talking to all the right people :)

Inspired by the old game Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space. While there are brownie points for landing on the moon ahead of schedule, there is also the part of the game where you've failed to get to the moon by 1970. It's interesting, because the game does not expect nor want you to get to this point. This is the point where the game recognizes your incompetence, kicks in with it's Easter eggs, and blasts you for thoroughly failing to complete Kennedy's schedule. Among the Easter eggs is Chuck Yeager as an astronaut recruit, because you need all the help you can get. I believe it goes to 1977.

Based upon that, what if the United States had thoroughly botched the schedule for landing on the moon by 1970?

Dead, (pardon the pun) easy to have happen; Apollo 1 doesn't burn on the pad but while in orbit. You just set NASA back even longer than Apollo 1 did since we now can't access the capsule to see what happened and we still had a crew die, probably MORE publicly and with a lot less capability to understand the whole circumstances involved. Bonus points if Kennedy isn't assassinated since he was having second thoughts about "going it alone" at the time.

Backing down would have been a hard thing to do and to justify but then again that's pretty much a politicians job description isn't it?

Randy
 
Top