From the Earth to the Stars: A US-German Space Race (The Full Timeline)

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"There is no easy way from the earth to the stars."
-Seneca the Younger (4 BCE-65 CE)​

1919-1949 (The first thirty years)

Setting the Stage
Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points were idealistic and perhaps exceptionally foolhardy, but the text's substance implies a utopian vision for the future. In our timeline, these points never passed the proposal stage and were never considered at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. However, in this alternate timeline, the Fourteen Points are implemented into the Treaty of Versailles, and this leads to a multitude of outcomes, including a Space Race between the United States and fascist Germany, albeit without the Nazis ever coming to power.

President Wilson's Fourteen Points present many movements of self-determinism to gain a head start even earlier than in OTL. Germany still gave up many colonies and paid significant reparations to the European powers. However, these consequences are "less harsh" than in our timeline but harmful enough to aid in the rise of the Volkisch Work Community and their leader, Otto Dickel, a fascist. A former artist and soldier named Adolf Hitler attempts to challenge Dickel for leadership of the movement but is rebuffed, and he fades into history as a footnote. Under Dickel's leadership as chancellor, beginning in the early 1930s, Germany reasserted itself as a key player in European affairs as Russia began to industrialize and rearm.

In Russia, Lenin dies but selects Trotsky as his direct successor. Trotsky launches a global campaign to spread communism by rapidly industrializing the Soviet Union and becoming an immediate threat to the German Republic by 1930. He felt that the only way to expand communism across the world would be in a global conflict against the capitalists in Europe and North America, and spent much of the 1930s in an arms build-up with the rest of Europe. Out of caution or fear, the Germans joined an alliance with the United Kingdom and France as a barrier against the Russian invasion of Europe. In the United States, President Roosevelt knew that a new global war was on the horizon as he saw imperialist attitudes brewing in Japan despite the Fourteen Points rules surrounding colonial claims. With this and the threat from the Soviet Union, he chose to wait until provoked.

World War II
On December 7, 1941, just like OTL, Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and served as the starting gun for the United States' participation in the Pacific War. President Roosevelt, needing allies, declared allegiance to France, Germany, and the United Kingdom in their efforts against Soviet expansion in Europe with their invasion of Poland. World War II began with the European Theater added to this world-spanning conflict. The Germans agreed to assist the United States in the development of their atomic energy program as a way to counter the Soviets. However, government and military officials in both countries began being more tight-lipped on specific details about the program. The Germans began developing their atomic weapons program, generally following the United States' program, as the Americans had better access to the bomb-making materials than the Germans did.

By the Fall of 1945, Operation Downfall, a planned amphibious invasion of the Japanese mainland, was enacted. At the same time, Project Manhattan completed three atomic weapons, which the Allies agreed would be dropped on the Soviet western border. On December 7, 1945, the United States successfully detonated one atomic bomb, referred to as a superbomb, in Minsk in the early morning hours. President Henry Wallace warned the Soviet Union that the United States would detonate one atomic weapon on a Russian city each day until their government surrendered and left Poland. Refusing to heed the warnings and calling Wallace's bluff, Trotsky and his acolytes were killed on Sunday, December 9, 1945, when America's third and final prepared superbomb was detonated in Moscow. Thus putting an end to the Soviet Union.

Three weeks later, on Monday, December 31, 1945, after learning of the effects of the three superbombs on Minsk, Leningrad, and Moscow, as well as increasingly withering supply lines, the Japanese finally surrendered. Hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were killed in the nearly two-month-long invasion of Japan. Concerns were raised by intelligence organizations that suggested that the loyalist Russians and Japanese would align themselves against the Allies, but this never came to fruition. President Wallace made it abundantly clear to the leaders of the Soviet rump state and the Emperor of Japan that both countries would be treated fairly when the time came for trials and post-war treaties.

The Post-War Era and the Space Challenge
The war ended with the dissolution of the Empire of Japan and the Soviet Union, and Allied occupation zones set to transition both countries back toward a republican form of democracy. In the Spring of 1946, the United Nations was founded as a successor of the League of Nations and later destined to be headquartered in New York City. The new constitutions of Japan and Russia were drafted and ratified in 1947. Both nations agree to relinquish their military forces and imperial ambitions to ensure world peace. The defeat of both nations delegitimized the concepts of communism and imperialism in the eyes of much of the world. Thus, the Republic of Japan and the Russian Republic were born.

Throughout the remainder of the 1940s, tensions increased between Germany and the United States. Germany was a fascist state led by the Volks, and the United States was a federal representative republic led by a president. Germany had Dr. Wernher von Braun as the head of its rocket science program, and at the urging of von Braun, Germany was making strides in developing crewed spacecraft. Von Braun had dreams of crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, and with the support of the Volk government, he was given a blank check to research and develop test beds for his designs. Meanwhile, the United States was still determining its aims regarding rocket science, and its operations split between the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy with no clear indication of who owned the assets being tested.

With the 1948 U.S. presidential election between incumbent President Henry Wallace and New York Governor Thomas Dewey underway, a significant campaign issue arose centered around concerns that Wallace would be too favorable to the Germans. Wallace was defeated in November, and Dewey was inaugurated the following January. President Dewey at the behest of his military and intelligence officials out of an abundance of caution against the Germans started Space Challenge 1, a military-based space program led by the United States Army, at first. In the Summer of 1949, Dewey signed the National Security Act of 1949, which established the Department of Defense (DOD), the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), and the United States Air Force (USAF). Space Challenge 1 was transferred under the auspices of the newly formed USAF, with the Navy having to relinquish its exclusivity of U.S. nuclear weapons.

 

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1949-1989 (The next forty years)

The Race to Space
Public interest in space travel originated in a 1948 publication of a Soviet youth magazine that US magazines promptly picked up. The competition began on July 30, 1949, when the United States announced its intent to launch artificial satellites and humans for the International Geophysical Year (July 1, 1957-December 31, 1958). The German Republic responded days later by declaring they would also launch a satellite "soon." Developments in ballistic missile capabilities enabled the launching of satellites since the end of World War II. The competition gained Western public attention with the "TS-1 crisis," when the German Republic achieved the first successful satellite launch in 1955. It gained momentum when the German Republic sent the first human, Bernhard Toth, into space with the orbital flight of MT-1 in 1959. These were followed by a string of early firsts achieved by the Germans over the next few years.

Following World War II, Industrialist William Winslow of Winslow Aviation, a major defense supplier to the Allies, began earnest efforts to maintain a monopoly on designing and constructing America's first capsules and rockets. He also became the owner and operator of America's first dedicated private space travel corporation in 1950 called Space Consortium, often abbreviated SpaceCon. The United States sought to have space travel remain the domain of military-trained pilots under the USAF and leave civilians to an auxiliary role as mission support as part of NACA. SpaceCon was also responsible for the development of the Liberty-Atlas Launch Vehicle.

The United States launched its first satellite, Eagle 1, in 1956. In 1959, the first apes were sent into orbit, and in the same year, a month after Toth, Herschel Bartlett was the first American to be sent into orbit. Project Liberty began in 1956 under President Dewey's Space Challenge 1 and involved five shots onboard newly designed Liberty-Redstone Launch Vehicles. The USAF selected five pilots to command the Liberty spacecraft, which was announced in 1957 concurrently with the German flight crews. Liberty-Atlas Launch Vehicles were developed for the three remaining missions of Project Liberty as a single-occupancy testbed for Project Pilgrim and its subsequent Project Selene. Project Liberty missions were launched from 1959 to 1960.

The Race to the Moon
Project Pilgrim was America's lunar space effort. They sought to build Titan III-C rockets, which were developed to cater to the project's goals of landing a human on the Moon's surface. In contrast, the development of the Saturn rocket family began but eventually canceled in favor of a new addition to the Titan rocket family when it was determined that the US had a better shot at the Moon by using the Direct Ascent principle as opposed to the other two options: EOR (Earth-Orbit Rendezvous) or LOR (Lunar Orbit Rendezvous). Upon this recalibration of US space affairs, Project Selene was canceled in favor of an extension to Project Pilgrim, referred to as the L-series. Pilgrim was originally a double occupancy capsule that could be expanded to carry more personnel. The Pilgrim capsule proved to be a versatile platform.

The Germans and the United States landed on the Moon in 1967, with American astronauts Frank Boone (the first Black American astronaut) and Wally Sawyer on Pilgrim L-9. Boone became the first American to set foot on the Moon at the insistence of his colleague, Wally Sawyer. The Germans beat the United States to the Moon by a matter of weeks. The Germans continued to develop their Mondrakete five lunar rocket, which landed on the Moon in 1967, along with their first astronauts. Both nations established bases on the Moon and stations in the orbit of Earth and Moon. German Chief Scientist Wernher von Braun escalated the race to Mars when he announced the next step in a televised broadcast before the German people.

The United States had been developing plans for a permanent lunar base since the 1950s, but its first moonbase was established in 1970, and the Germans in 1971. The first female US astronaut was an American scientist in 1970. SpaceCon continued its contributions to the American space effort by aiding in designing and constructing moonbases, space stations, and, eventually, a crewed Mars mission. In 1972, the United States began developing plans for a space station called Skylab and a reusable spaceplane known simply as the Space Shuttle Orbiter.

The Path to Mars
With Wernher von Braun declaring Mars as the next step in space exploration in 1967, both nations began drafting plans for a Mars mission. However, with the death of von Braun in 1977, the German impetus for a Mars mission began to wane as the costs started to spiral. A period of détente followed Wernher von Braun's death in 1977, resulting in a series of collaborative efforts between the US and Germany during the early 1980s. Project Ares is considered the final act of the Space Race, as two former enemies worked to achieve a technological milestone by landing humans on Mars. The disappearance of William Winslow in 1978 has been likened to the "death" of the American von Braun. In 1979, the Space Shuttle Constitution was launched under President Reagan's banner of the newly-established NASA.

In 1978, the US extended an olive branch to the German Republic so that both nations could cooperate on a crewed mission to Mars. Project Ares was an international cooperation between two dozen spacefaring nations that sent humans to Mars successfully. The first human on Mars was the mission's American commander, who won a coin toss. This event is considered the symbolic conclusion of the over thirty-year-long Space Race and cemented the view in the minds of many that Americans were the dominant spacefaring power. By 1983, Winslow Aviation and its network of space companies had been acquired by emerging spaceflight company Vega Aerospace.

The first humans landed on Mars in February 1987 after being launched from Earth orbit in 1986. Ares M-4 lasted approximately eighteen months in total. The Cold War was declared over during President William Morgan's acceptance speech in 1988. After World War II and the death of Otto Dickel, Germany shifted to a "moderate" form of fascism similar to Strasserism in our timeline. By 1989, over two dozen nations had achieved spaceflight capability. However, the United States and Germany remained at the top regarding technological sophistication and launch experience. For the first time in decades, the world was considered at peace.

 

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1989-2024 (The Last Thirty-Five Years)

Brave New World
As the 1990s began, the world balanced between two superpowers: Germany and the United States. Advancements in technology brought on by the global space effort had transformed the planet into a technological oasis, with environmental policy formulated around developments in fusion energy. Robotics technology also achieved a milestone with machines now capable of independent operation though still non-sentient. The world began a slow and challenging transition from fossil fuels to alternative energies like nuclear, solar, and wind. Some of these technologies were used to exploit Near-Earth asteroids, which helped augment heavy metal depletion on Earth as bases on the Moon began to mine lithium and water to help create self-sufficient space colonies. Private corporations began constructing space stations for tourists and specific scientific organizations, and the largest private space company, Vega Aerospace, led much of the development. Theoretical physicist Dr. Jean-Michel Gauthier developed his theory of faster-than-light travel, which later became a template for Gauthier Drive.

Following the American armed forces' Operation Fire Control in the white nationalist separatist state of South Africa, in 1991, Germany and the United States decided to work together at the summit of the Zurich Accords to reduce their nuclear weapons stockpiles to zero by the year 2000. Germany and the United States opted to reuse their joint nuclear stockpiles for peaceful space exploration. U.S. President William Morgan approved requests by the U.S. Congress to begin constructing lunar settlements on the Moon and space settlements in orbit of the Earth and Moon based on designs by Dr. Gerard K. O'Neil in his books The High Frontier and 2081. The Moon's Shackleton International Lunar Station (SILS) was established in 1995 in the spirit of cooperation.

In 1997, an asteroid was identified and discovered to be on a collision course with Earth by 1999. The dozen most advanced spacefaring nations helped contribute to an asteroid deflection mission. One of the American crewmembers was Wally Sawyer's son, Martin, who participated in the mission. In 1998, the asteroid was turned into the world's first asteroid colony as the method of deflection turned the object into a spaceship with movable thrusters. The effort was hailed as a triumph for international cooperation. In 1999, the international community established the International Space Treaty Organization (ISTO), which aided in the preservation of various space treaties and issues regarding commerce and transportation throughout the Solar System. Space Commission is also established under ISTO's umbrella as an international space exploration facilitator. The United States also established the sixth branch of the American armed forces with the United States Space Command (USSC); other nations established their space forces due to the thwarted impact to have the necessary infrastructure to stop the next one.

The New Millennium, or Saturn and Beyond the Infinite
In the 2000s, Vega Aerospace began constructing the first crewed mission to Saturn, a five-year mission launched in 2005. The spacecraft arrived in the Saturnine system in 2007. The mission consisted of exploration missions to the moons Enceladus, Iapetus, and Titan. Martin Sawyer was the mission commander. Highlights of the mission included a probe that collected particles of Enceladus' jets of water ice, the first crewed landing on the moon of a gas giant on Titan, and the first glider flown through the upper atmosphere of a gas giant based on technology developed for the first mission to Venus in the early 1970s. The mission concluded in 2010 with the return of the Vega spacecraft.

The United States underwent tumult in the energy sector as mass job loss and economic downturn affected millions of Americans, in addition to the increasing levels of automation in the American labor force. Economists suggested that these disruptive innovations may come at the cost of Americans believing capitalism has failed them, and they may seek out alternative socioeconomic frameworks like German fascism to alleviate the difficulties they are experiencing. Protests erupted on both coasts, expressing dismay and hunger for retribution against those who caused this economic challenge. An anti-space travel movement called the No Space movement emerged around this time. The 2012 U.S. presidential election was a litmus test for American democracy as the Republican governor of Michigan, John Hansen, was elected the 43rd president of the United States. Hansen promises a revitalization of the American workforce and a recalibration of American energy back to fossil fuels.

With the 2010s in full swing, the United States is generally regarded as having hit a stride with a period referred to as the American Return. During this period, the federal government incentivized suburban lifestyles and the reconstruction of the nuclear family as millions of Americans returned to the workforce with the creation of the American Civil Service Corps. Underneath this seemingly welcome return to stability, a simmering undercurrent of Americans began making their voices heard about the environmental effects of the return to fossil fuel use and America's receding on the world stage.

Ad Astra Per Aspera
By the 2020s, most Americans felt that the American Return had inadvertently caused the world to turn away from the United States and refocus on Germany. In 2020, Luke Nichols was elected on a platform he referred to as the American Tomorrow. He sought to redefine the American future by combining inspiration from the past with an American rebirth. The United States largely maintained its monopoly on transport across the Solar System, with Germany largely dependent on its infrastructure built by private industry. In the four years of Nichols' presidency, he began implementing near-dictatorial abuses in power, including the cancelation of the 2024 presidential election out of an abundance of caution regarding terrorist activities by anti-Nichols forces flying the flag of the American Iron Front.

Despite this, the United States and several other spacefaring nations participated in the crew selection of an experimental spacecraft called Pegasus. The spacecraft is designed to leave the Solar System using a method derived from Gauthier Drive. The mission commander is selected from a pool of six people, including Wally Sawyer's grandson, Frank. He is primarily favored as the top choice for commander. The mission is slated to launch in 2026 while Vega Aerospace completes the spacecraft construction in Earth orbit.