With out Vietnam War can Apollo go longer

If Vietnam manages to stablize or requires little U.S intervention, or the U.S just opts out could the $ saved allow more Apollo missions or other U.S.A space ventures.
 
as far as I know there were only another 2 Saturn V rockets built that were not used.
They would need to find a better way to get in to space.
Maybe some kind of space plane.
 

Delta Force

Banned
It doesn't have to be Vietnam, without Great Society there would be less pressure on the budget as well. Trying to do Vietnam, Great Society, and a large space program at the same time ultimately led to the failure of all three initiatives.
 
I agree , it was the Great Society that killed the space program from fulfilling its potential. The great sucking hole in govt. spending that we still live with was the reason it was killed. Much to our determent.
 
The Vietnam war has cost around 4 time more than the Apollo program.

next to the Great Society, is another threat to Apollo: US congress.
the Apollo 11 success and no response by USSR, if form of manned lunar activity.
the US Congress would stop the financing the Apollo program, because it had reach it's goal.
 
I'd like to bring up the fact that there were forces who opposed the space race and believed it was a waste of time, and that those funds should be send on things on Earth. Such people included William Proxmire and Walter Mondale. They could also be petty and vindictive, as was the case with Proxmire whose "golden fleece" mock awards undercut serious research which he, in his stupidity, thought was silly. Proxmire saw to it that not only was Apollo cancelled, but that all equipment to make the parts and components for Apollo/Saturn were destroyed so that they couldn't restart even if they wanted to.

Such men will still exist, so their influence in this alternate reality must be accounted for.
 
One trouble was the psychological aspect (outlined quite well in Michener's fictionalisation of the Us Space programme, imaginatively titled Space). Once the race to the moon had been won, psychologically the whole venture was less and less exciting and sexy. The race was won, the Us had beaten the Soviets to the Moon...so...what else. The programme just didn't have that Commie-beating factor to grab the attention of the Cold Warriors any more.
 
I agree , it was the Great Society that killed the space program from fulfilling its potential. The great sucking hole in govt. spending that we still live with was the reason it was killed. Much to our determent.

And so, a more polarised society whose lower classes and minorities like blacks and gays may suffer more. More costs in policing and all.

You have to realise Gov =/= Bad. By NOT doing this, the american society will suffer more, as the current state of the world show, rise of neoliberalism and all, privatise profits, publicise costs'.
 

Archibald

Banned
With or without the vietnam war Apollo was in trouble from the beginning - from 1963. the key issues are: it was done for the wrong reasons (fuck the Soviets) the wrong way (lunar orbit rendezvous) and it was a crash program (before this decade is out, or burst)

Technically LOR was the best mode to achieve JFK deadline. It was, however, unsustainable over the long term.
Had Von Braun EOR (Earth orbit rendezvous) been picked up, NASA would have had a space station, propellant transfer and smaller, less expensive Saturns. The whole thing would have been more sustainable. Propellant depot and transfer would have given the shuttle (had there be a shuttle in that ATL, which remain to be seen) a better mission.
 
With or without the vietnam war Apollo was in trouble from the beginning - from 1963. the key issues are: it was done for the wrong reasons (fuck the Soviets) the wrong way (lunar orbit rendezvous) and it was a crash program (before this decade is out, or burst)

Technically LOR was the best mode to achieve JFK deadline. It was, however, unsustainable over the long term.
Had Von Braun EOR (Earth orbit rendezvous) been picked up, NASA would have had a space station, propellant transfer and smaller, less expensive Saturns. The whole thing would have been more sustainable. Propellant depot and transfer would have given the shuttle (had there be a shuttle in that ATL, which remain to be seen) a better mission.

I've been giving myself a bit of a crash course in learning about space history but mostly focusing on the stations/bases aspect. If we went with EOR for moon missions, what kind of ship design would we be looking at for getting there and back? Some sort of advanced LM that puts all 3(?) astronauts on the surface and a module to get them back to the station? I'm assuming the shuttle also handles transportation with the alt-Saturns flying up separately by remote?
 
I agree , it was the Great Society that killed the space program from fulfilling its potential. The great sucking hole in govt. spending that we still live with was the reason it was killed. Much to our determent.

Man, if only America had done nothing about civil rights, we could have gone to the moon two more times! But that whiner MLK had to go and ruin it for everybody!
 

Archibald

Banned
I've been giving myself a bit of a crash course in learning about space history but mostly focusing on the stations/bases aspect. If we went with EOR for moon missions, what kind of ship design would we be looking at for getting there and back?

Some sort of advanced LM that puts all 3(?) astronauts on the surface and a module to get them back to the station? I'm assuming the shuttle also handles transportation with the alt-Saturns flying up separately by remote?

On the lunar ship side - the Apollo and LM somewhat fuse together, and the whole thing lands on the lunar surface. You have to figure a fatter LM with the Apollo capsule ontop of it.

As for the translunar stage (the S-IVB) it depends from the size of the Saturns that haul the propellant to Earth orbit.

To simplify, the S-IVB hold 80 tons of liquid oxygen and 20 tons of liquid hydrogen. Total 100 tons.

A Saturn V can lift that in a single launch, but it expensive.

Smaller saturns takes more flights but cost less to produce. There was a whole bunch of Saturns on the drawing board, with different payloads.

For example a couple of Saturn C-3 with a payload of 50 tons each also do the job. Or five Saturn C-2 with a payload of 20 tons.

They didn't knew how to transfer liquid hydrogen (damn cold), so only liquid oxygen woul be transfered.

The tendency as of 1962 was to go with the more powerful Saturns to reduce the number of flights. Surely, the more flight the more risk of failure. BUT the smaller Saturns would have been produced in large numbers, cost less and their smaller payload would have made easier for a shuttle to replace them on the long term.
 
Man, if only America had done nothing about civil rights, we could have gone to the moon two more times! But that whiner MLK had to go and ruin it for everybody!

Darn skippy. If not for him they could have landed a hot dog stand module up there and sent me up (after kindly waiting a few decades) on the second one so I could work there. Because of MLK, I can never put 'sold hot dogs on the Moon' on my resume. Enough about his dreams, what about mine?! Thanks for nothing!
 
Last edited:
On the lunar ship side - the Apollo and LM somewhat fuse together, and the whole thing lands on the lunar surface. You have to figure a fatter LM with the Apollo capsule ontop of it.

As for the translunar stage (the S-IVB) it depends from the size of the Saturns that haul the propellant to Earth orbit.

To simplify, the S-IVB hold 80 tons of liquid oxygen and 20 tons of liquid hydrogen. Total 100 tons.

A Saturn V can lift that in a single launch, but it expensive.

Smaller saturns takes more flights but cost less to produce. There was a whole bunch of Saturns on the drawing board, with different payloads.

For example a couple of Saturn C-3 with a payload of 50 tons each also do the job. Or five Saturn C-2 with a payload of 20 tons.

They didn't knew how to transfer liquid hydrogen (damn cold), so only liquid oxygen woul be transfered.

The tendency as of 1962 was to go with the more powerful Saturns to reduce the number of flights. Surely, the more flight the more risk of failure. BUT the smaller Saturns would have been produced in large numbers, cost less and their smaller payload would have made easier for a shuttle to replace them on the long term.

Okay, so the space fleet would consist of smaller Saturn rockets with the Apollo-LM hybrid and enough fuel to get to a LEO station for refueling, then sent on their way for the landing. For support we have supply/transport rockets to top off the station's fuel tanks that can shift to a reliable shuttle design as technology improves. Returning astronauts can handle re-entry within capsules or the shuttle. Potential for experiments would be very limited on the station with primary emphasis being on resupply/refueling/construction/repair. I suppose there could be a second station sent up to focus on science experiments, but that's entering no-go fantasy sky-pie territory when politics come into the picture.
 

Archibald

Banned
Okay, so the space fleet would consist of smaller Saturn rockets with the Apollo-LM hybrid and enough fuel to get to a LEO station for refueling, then sent on their way for the landing.
For support we have supply/transport rockets to top off the station's fuel tanks that can shift to a reliable shuttle design as technology improves.
Returning astronauts can handle re-entry within capsules or the shuttle.

Perfect !

Potential for experiments would be very limited on the station with primary emphasis being on resupply/refueling/construction/repair. I suppose there could be a second station sent up to focus on science experiments, but that's entering no-go fantasy sky-pie territory when politics come into the picture.

Indeed. The space station would be hardly manned - man-tended would be the exact term. Kind of space dockyard. Propellant depots hardly need permanent human presence.
Scientists hardly have any interest in a space station.
The good thing is that the propellant depot could be extended for Mars missions. Unfortunately a different lander would be needed there.
 
The best incentive: A Red Moon

soviet-lunar-lander.jpg


Vietnam and the Great Society were budget drains which worked against NASA, no question. Not least because they cost a lot more (whether you think either was a good idea or not) and because they met much more immediate and tangible national objectives - at least in the perceptions of some.

But even with Vietnam out of the picture, what you really need to extend the Apollo program is the very same thing that spurred it into creation in the first place: More Soviet space competition.

So imagine that Korolyev is able to find more political pull to initiate a Soviet lunar program earlier. That might have enabled them to pull off a circumlunar flight - recall that they even succeeded in sending a Zond around the Moon with animals on board before Apollo 8, so it's not out of the realm of possibility here - before NASA does. Perhaps we even butterfly away Korolyev's death due to surgical incompetence. (Admitedly, Korolyev had a bad ticker, and it's hard to say how long he would have lived had he survived the 1966 surgery; but even a few extra years could make a real difference.)

Such a feat would put more fire under NASA's kettle (and Congress's funding). More to the point, it would increase support from the Kremlin for extending the lunar program. They had achieved enough that a lunar program could no longer be hidden, and the possibilities of surface exploration would seem more feasible. So if NASA still beats the Soviets to a Moon landing, the Soviet leadership might still be willing to try upping the ante: All right comrades, we'll see your landings and raise it with a lunar base.

A Soviet effort to build a permanent presence on the Moon could not be easily overlooked or unanswered by an administration of either political party, especially since so much had already been invested in the necessary hardware.
 
Last edited:
One trouble was the psychological aspect (outlined quite well in Michener's fictionalisation of the Us Space programme, imaginatively titled Space). Once the race to the moon had been won, psychologically the whole venture was less and less exciting and sexy. The race was won, the Us had beaten the Soviets to the Moon...so...what else. The programme just didn't have that Commie-beating factor to grab the attention of the Cold Warriors any more.

As a counter to that point, though: It does not have to be sexy. It could be treated as mundane and it could still continue. Apollo already exists and, at the time, was the foundation for NASA: it was the first rocket that was specifically designed for what it was (the previous ones being for nuclear missiles) and it was what NASA was planning to use. And because it already exists, that means all the production and training are already in place and it's not expensive to make. Keep in mind, the major costs of Apollo/Saturn were mostly research and development and putting things into place for production. That was all set and in place so the cost was not a gobsmack and it would have been cheaper and easier than the cost and effort to develop the space shuttle.

Don't get me wrong: NASA having the Saturn go to Mars and Venus or making a rocket to do so, and making space stations and all that will require public support that will not be there in many scenarios, and certainly was not in the OTL. However, I do not see a reason not to maintain what was already there or making due with what was there (as you can see in "Eyes Turned Skyward"). I believe that would be especially true in this scenario where there is no Vietnam war since it removes pressures and a high blood pressure politics, and costs will be easier. The problem with the space program of the OTL is that you had a trifecta of American spending: you had the Great Society, Vietnam and the Space program. The Space program was the easiest one to cut.
 

katchen

Banned
The problem with Apollo was that the very public and governmental way we went about it turned it into the equivalent of Ming China's Zheng yi's Treasure Fleet of the 15th Century. Big, a government project and vulnerable to political pressure to shut it down.

In hinsight, we should have been making space exploration the private affair that we are making it now, with prizes appropriated for the first man in orbit, on the moon, to a near earth asteroid, comet, mMars orit, Mars landing, Jupiter orbit, ect.This was the way Europeans explored the Americas and it would have been a much more robust way of exploring and exploting space. Vertainly there would have been a lot more profit in space for a lot longer and costs would be a lot less by now.

Many of the libertarians who write a lot of the science fiction that gets published today believe that the space program was made the way it is by Ne Deal-Great Society liberals deliberately to be a boondoggle so that the plug could be pulled on it at some point, or at least space exploration could be severely limited, kept in the hands of governments in general and hopefully the US and USSR in particular. And there may be a lot of truth to that view. Im nt sure. :confused:
 
EOR isnt a help, probably.

Basically, to land an apollo capsule on the moon means a MUCH bigger LEM. So, instead of smaller Saturns, you end up with two of otls saturn vs. Which means each moonflight costs twice as much, which means tthe lunar program shuts down even sooner.
 
EOR isnt a help, probably.

Basically, to land an apollo capsule on the moon means a MUCH bigger LEM. So, instead of smaller Saturns, you end up with two of otls saturn vs. Which means each moonflight costs twice as much, which means tthe lunar program shuts down even sooner.

A combination EOR-LOR would solve that problem, with a reusable space-bus ferrying a command module to the moon and returning the command module. That introduces some overhead, since the spacebus needs to be maintained at a space station that would also need to be maintained, but that also gives us a permanent space station and propellant depot. Ultimately it would mean that a higher initial cost reduces operation costs later.

However, I get what you're thinking, and you're right. Pure LOR was the only way NASA was getting to the moon before 1970. My proposal would cost far too much in R&D to be viable at the time, and requires too many techs which are unproven even today (keeping propellant in a depot from evaporating).

EDIT: just for fun, here's my quick MS Paint mockup of what an E/LOR craft might look like:

E-LOR.PNG
 
Last edited:
Top