DBWI: USA first on the moon

[flasheart]

As we all know on the 16th of September 1968 cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first man to walk on the moon. A full 11 months before Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin landed in Apollo 11.

Records released after the collapse of the USSR show just how close the space race really was, how the entire soviet moon program was always so close to disaster and how leonov's and Makarov's flight succeeded more through blind luck than anything else. To this day rumors persist of failed space flights and dead cosmonauts being erased from history (including rumor has it an attempted circumlunar flight).

What if for whatever reason (there were so many potential reasons) the famous soviet lunar mission had been delayed or indeed never even gotten off the ground?
What if the first man on the moon wore the stars and stripes on his shoulder?

 

[Zheng He]

Bragging rights for the USA but I'm not sure much of anything else. The USSR never went to the moon again and the US only went five more time. The whole program seemed to be kind of a dead end for both countries.

 

[Archibald]

The Soviet started a bit late (1964) but Chelomei had Kruschev full backing since Kruschev son Serguey actually worked for Chelomei since 1959.
a favorite of mister K, Chelomei was given Glushko and Korolev design bureaus, creating a large, centralized rocket organization that very nearly bet the Americans to the Moon.

Kruschev aparently very nearly thwarthed a kabal against him in October 1964, a coup led by Brezhnev (which may explains why Brezhnev was kicked out of the Politburo in 1965, with a handful of others apparatchiks).

After he escaped that coup Mister K took Apollo more seriously and gave Chelomei anything he needed to beat NASA to the Moon. Work on the Direct Ascent, monster LK-700 lander proceded full bore, at the expense of Korolev Voskhod and Soyuz and Chelomei Almaz and possibly a civilian variant, Salyut.

The USSR never went to the moon again

and they had a very good reason for that: Chelomei enormous UR-700 was filled with 5000 tons of toxic propellants, enough to sterilize a good chunk of Kazakhstan if it ever failed.

By pure luck it worked well in September 1968, but you can imagine what would happen to Baikonur had that monster failed after liftoff.

It actually happened to the UR-700 little brother, the UR-500 Proton, in April 1969 while it carried a lunar probe. The pad was heavily contaminated with 1000 tons of toxic compounds that were impossible to clean up - only heavy rains did the job later.

First stage of the UR-700 was ground-tested on an enormous bench that was expressedly located as far as Baikonur infrastructures as possible - it says a lot of Soviet fears of that rocket exploding.

Upper stages of the UR-700 were actually flown as the UR-500 Proton, so there ground-testing could be cut, and this is one of the factors that helped the Soviets winning the Moon race.

 

[Zheng He]

The Soviet started a bit late (1964) but Chelomei had Kruschev full backing since Kruschev son Serguey actually worked for Chelomei since 1959.
a favorite of mister K, Chelomei was given Glushko and Korolev design bureaus, creating a large, centralized rocket organization that very nearly bet the Americans to the Moon.

Kruschev aparently very nearly thwarthed a kabal against him in October 1964, a coup led by Brezhnev (which may explains why Brezhnev was kicked out of the Politburo in 1965, with a handful of others apparatchiks).

After he escaped that coup Mister K took Apollo more seriously and gave Chelomei anything he needed to beat NASA to the Moon. Work on the Direct Ascent, monster LK-700 lander proceded full bore, at the expense of Korolev Voskhod and Soyuz and Chelomei Almaz and possibly a civilian variant, Salyut.

and they had a very good reason for that: Chelomei enormous UR-700 was filled with 5000 tons of toxic propellants, enough to sterilize a good chunk of Kazakhstan if it ever failed.

By pure luck it worked well in September 1968, but you can imagine what would happen to Baikonur had that monster failed after liftoff.

It actually happened to the UR-700 little brother, the UR-500 Proton, in April 1969 while it carried a lunar probe. The pad was heavily contaminated with 1000 tons of toxic compounds that were impossible to clean up - only heavy rains did the job later.

First stage of the UR-700 was ground-tested on an enormous bench that was expressedly located as far as Baikonur infrastructures as possible - it says a lot of Soviet fears of that rocket exploding.

Upper stages of the UR-700 were actually flown as the UR-500 Proton, so there ground-testing could be cut, and this is one of the factors that helped the Soviets winning the Moon race.

True enough, of course people in the US didn't know it at the time. When the Soviets first got to the moon in 68 there was near panic, it was Sputnik and Cuban Missile Crisis and then some. But then when APOLLO XI got there and then the US had a few more successful missions while the Soviets never went again, it all subsided pretty quickly.

A really interesting WI is what would have happened if the Soviets had gone to the moon a few more times as well?

 

[Bahamut-255]

Well one reason I can think of for why the USSR didn't make a Solo Return to the Moon after their First, lay in the first stage engines.

Where the upper stages used derivatives of existing engines that could be verified quickly, the Core and Booster stages relied on the still-experimental RD-270. True, it had the highest Specific Impulse of its type (301s SL), but the high thrust nature made it prone to Combustion Instability, which was directly attributed to two of it's failed flights - thankfully already at substantial altitude and with a lot of it's N2O4/UDMH already consumed. A Problem that wasn't definitively resolved until the early 1970's!

A really interesting WI is what would have happened if the Soviets had gone to the moon a few more times as well?

The chances of a mid-flight failure with a Crew on board would be substantially increased, that much is certain. But if they could pull it off, it might very well have compelled NASA/US to push further. Say? LESA?

 

[Archibald]

(adapted from this )

The RD-270 combustion instability issues were a terrible problem which certainly explain premature death of Chelomei by heart attack in 1970. Without their chief designer at the driving force, impetus for further lunar landings floundered.

There is an urban legend that said that one of the botched RD-270 tests at NPO Energomash plant on the outskirts of Moscow reportedly ended with a massive explosion that sent a heavy metal cover of the troubled engine's turbopump several miles away concluding with an impact on the runway of Moscow's main international airport in Sheremetievo!
After that they prudently moved RD-270 testing into the middle of the steppe (and the middle of nowhere)

 

[Penny for The Guy]

Well, for One Thing...

If the Yanks had made it first, we probably wouldn't have all that ongoing (and ongoing, and ongoing) blather in the UN about who "owns" the Moon.

So, I am prejudiced. My personal belief is that the Joint French-UK Permanent Moonbase confers more ownership rights than who "got there first".

I am sorry about the fate of the last American expedition. We tried to get supplies to them in time, but it took time to stage the effort, and in the end, was "too little, too late." We do hold a memorial for them at the Mare Imbrium site every year, though.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

If the US Got there first then we would not have been all of those damned tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists who claim the whole thing was nothing more than a clever Andrei Tarkovsky produced fake!

Filmed in some giant hanger deep in the Russian wilderness

As if the man would not have blown the whistle after his appalling treatment by the USSR in the 80s before his death (which was also according to the same people a KGB 'hit' - apparently killing someone slowly of lung Cancer is the way they roll - and this despite allowing him to travel and work in the West for 6 years!!!!)

 

[Zheng He]

If the US Got there first then we would not have been all of those damned tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists who claim the whole thing was nothing more than a clever Andrei Tarkovsky produced fake!

I totally disagree. It's 2016 and the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories still have legs here in the US. I guarantee you that if the US had made it there first, we would still have tin foil hat wearing weirdos living in trailers out in Nevada claiming the whole thing was a fake to distract people from the war in Vietnam or whatever.

 

[OnlyAlb]

USA got First you filthy communist

OOC:

 

[Arkenfolm]

If the US Got there first then we would not have been all of those damned tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists who claim the whole thing was nothing more than a clever Andrei Tarkovsky produced fake!

Filmed in some giant hanger deep in the Russian wilderness

As if the man would not have blown the whistle after his appalling treatment by the USSR in the 80s before his death (which was also according to the same people a KGB 'hit' - apparently killing someone slowly of lung Cancer is the way they roll - and this despite allowing him to travel and work in the West for 6 years!!!!)

LMAO people still believe the Soviets actually made it to the Moon still? Commie shills, all of them.

 

[Zheng He]

I had a professor in graduate school who claimed that all of the moon landings (US and USSR) were faked and were part of a broader conspiracy by the leaders in both countries to use the moon race as a way to keep stoking Cold War fears.

 

[Alternate History]

LMAO people still believe the Soviets actually made it to the Moon still? Commie shills, all of them.

You know Ivan the Admin doesn't like conspiracy theories on this forum, right?

 

[flasheart]

It's interesting to think that if the USSR had never made it to the moon that could well have been the end of the space race then and there.

 

[Morty Vicar]

It could never have happened, you need a big government to put together a project that huge. The only reason the US did have manned space flights was because the USSR embarrassed them, and of course a lot of money was invested by private companies. But that aside, if it did happen it would have killed the US space program. The race to the moon had become an ideological battleground, but it was a dead end, there is no profit to be made, it costs huge amounts of money for something that is merely symbolic. And let's face it, getting to the moon was a big jump, but after that it's just more of the same. Being the first to Mars is never going to be as big a deal as being the first on the moon. I could see the USA claiming the moon and maybe selling parts off to private enterprise, someone like Will Gates might have the financial resources and enough interest in space to fund further missions, maybe even a Moon base which would be cool.

Another effect it might have would be to solidify patriotism within the Soviet Union. At the time people were aggrieved that so much money was being spent on the space program while people were poor and even starving, if it weren't for the space race then there wouldn't have been the Transcarpathia rebellion and other social unrest.

 

[Brundlefly]

As we all know on the 16th of September 1968 cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first man to walk on the moon. A full 11 months before Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin landed in Apollo 11.

NASA would have to get their shit together earlier, maybe with the Gemini program already having set the goal of actually landing on the moon.

Possible candidates for a first American on the moon? I'd say Thomas P. Stafford, Frank Borman or "Dick" Slayton.

 

[flasheart]

They could have possibly done it if it hadn't been for the apollo 1 disaster. Although the lessons learnt in the aftermath of that tragedy would probably have been learned the hard way further down the line with even worse consequences for the space program.