If the Nova somehow derails the shuttle débâcle, which really disrupted the development and production of the smaller US rockets which the commercial sector needed, then maybe.
But most of the Nova designs don't really offer much to mission planners in the 1970s, indeed, most Nova designs are likely to be even more likely to be replaced by the shuttle.
And true interplanetary travel requires alot of work to identify risk factors and find solutions. The Apollo capsule was never more than a few days from Earth. A mission to even Venus or Mars, a human crew would need to be able to cope for months before they could return to Earth. That's alot more time for a problem to get worse in. I think if NASA had maintained Apollo levels of funding for 30 years or so, and followed up on the moon landings with a strong program of longer Lunar stays, space stations and robot probes to the rest of the solar system, they could perhaps have the experience to launch serious interplanetary expeditions a-la Mars Direct in the 90s. Now, such a serious space program would basically be akin to the US fighting a small war for 30 years, which is very difficult to sustain politically when Tommy's school has a leaking roof and crime is soaring in Chicago, etc. etc.
Of course, if you had the will to sustain such a large program for such a long time, then there'd be enough demand to keep the Nova (in whatever form it emerged from the design stages).
The US might be willing to commit so heavily to a space program in Earth-Moon space if the Soviets beat them to the Lunar landings. That's extremely hard to do without giving the Soviets outright miracles though.
And even if the Soviets do get their multiple miracles, if the US one-ups them and puts a Lunar base on the moon and maintains it for 10 years (for example), would the US necessarily be willing to continue that level of funding for long enough that they have the robust experience and data to seriously think about a Mars mission? Currently, after the ISS is closed down, it's looking unlikely that the US will be willing to fund a new space station. I think eventually, the space program would be scaled back (though it might succeed in doing some amazing things in the meantime and put mankind well in advance of where we are in OTL - I don't see any real paradigm shifts as being plausible though).
fasquardon
THE problem is Apollo is very much NOT a very good, (in fact it's awful) way of going anywhere. As an example lets use Columbus. Keep in mind his GOAL was to find a "short-cut" to China, (contrary to popular belief it was generally known among the educated class' that the Earth was round, the issue with Columbus was nobody believed his 'math' was correct on how big it was and they were actually right and him wrong
) so he took this big, expensive expedition across the Atlantic*, then takes one (1) other person with him in a long-boat to the beach of an island. They then spend about two hours gathering beach sand and sea shells from that beach and ONLY that beach, hop back in the long-boat, head back the the ship and then back home... He essential repeats this, lets say, once more then loses the Santa Maria on a reed the third time but makes it back home, (no beach sand or sea shells this time) and does it all 4 more time with no finding gold, no contact with any natives, on and this may be important, never getting to China...
In reality he lost a ship on the FIRST voyage and never found spices, China or really anything of value EXCEPT some gold the native told him was abundant, (and they wore and used a 'ton' of it so there's some truth here) and common a bit further west. Take the gold away and likely Ol-Chris isn't going to be getting a 'second' let alone third voyage and probably is remembered as the guy they strung up in for scamming the Queen out of her jewels.
For Apollo we were in a hurry and built a program where you wasted "anything but time" to the point where it ate the budget and produced a VERY goal-oriented and focused program that while it had some impressive technology and accomplishments was found to be difficult at best to pivot to other uses. And it wasn't sustainable not planned to be so and it arguably has created a 'paradigm' both operationally and expectation-ally that has stymied actual space exploration to today. My opinion is that a 'bigger' or 'extended' Apollo would have simply crashed worse the OTL rather than lead to an expanded space program. What would have been better by far was a program that incrementally built on itself in self supporting step which is both what most people assumed would happen and is much closer to the original Apollo concept before it was given the explicit Lunar goal and short time table.
(I seem to be in the minority but hey it generates some good time lines so I won't complain TOO much
)
The "Shuttle debacle" was pretty much inevitable after Apollo because it was both an attempt to 'step-back' and do things 'right' with less expensive and more regular access to space coupled with an organization that had been reshaped and restructured into requiring that any effort it made be a 'big' (and expensive) effort needing large public and political support spread over the whole nation. It was always delusional to somehow assume the latter could ever generate the former and pretty much every study said the outcome was going to be what we got. It had to be a 'big' program, therefore a 'big' vehicle, carrying a 'big' payload, supported by a 'big' network that rivaled the one that supported Apollo. All on less of a budget.
Of course most of us Space Cadet Space Advocates wholly approved of the 'big' shuttle because, (obviously
) that big cargo bay could carry a big passenger pod, (thus ensuring Challenger when it happens can't be used to say "Needs Another Seven Astronauts" see how helpful we were
) hauling hundreds of us to space every flight so we could live and work
Ya, going to upfront admit my 'logic' filter wasn't the greatest way back then
A medium sized launch capacity that was inexpensive and regular that COULD if needed be tasked with carrying a small personnel transport OR enhanced to carry larger payloads would have made vastly more sense but you can't get that from a 'national' space program. Not without some major policy shifts, far more public and political interest and probably NOT derived from anything OTL Apollo or TTL Nova.
That's NOT a given though I need to point out
Arguably any of the NOVA designs based on a reusable booster stage that could probably double as an SSTO, (Gommerrsal, NEXUS, Kraft-Erich Mini-Nexus S-1, etc,
http://www.astronautix.com/s/ssto.html) is possibly a basis for a high use medium to heavy lift system but it's not clear if it would be built or used anymore frequently than Shuttle/STS was with all the likely-hood of failure and cost.
Randy
