No moon landing
- Thread starter tom
- Start date
Garrison
Donor
Shepard flies before Gagarin so there isn't the pressure on Kennedy for the grand gesture so he goes for a more conservative program focused on projects like the MOL and X-20. The N-1 is still a clunker and by the late 70's economics and politics have closed the window of opportunity.
This is certainly the best way to avoid people landing on the Moon in 1969 (particularly if combined with earlier American success in the Space Race, for example by having Vanguard succeed and the Soviet projects be delayed or fail), but I'm not sure that this would prevent people landing on the Moon in the long run. In fact, I would make the argument that it is actually more likely to end up with people landing on the Moon and staying than our actual timeline, since the development that would be undertaken as part of a pre-Rice Apollo program*, the X-20 program, the MOL program, something like the MORL or LORL program, and so on would tend to make it cheaper and easier to go to the Moon.
Apollo was being explicitly designed as early as 1960 to fly around the Moon (like Zond) and enter lunar orbit (like Apollo 8). Only a relatively minor modification, adding a lunar descent stage (or, as IOTL, a descent spacecraft) would have been needed to conduct the landing mission, and that was expected in the post-1970 period. It would also have been involved in a civilian space station project (the aforementioned LORL or MORL) starting in the late 1960s that would have greatly clarified how the human body works in long-duration flight and what human needs are for space travel. Both could have been used to develop a more complex but more sustainable design for off-planet habitation than was actually developed in post-Apollo planning and the Integrated Program Plan that was part of that.
As for the X-20? That's the prototype for a space shuttle--literally, in fact. Many critics of the space shuttle have, quite rightly in my opinion, pointed out that it would have made much more sense to develop a series of smaller and cheaper vehicles to test different aspects of the vehicle's design, rather than jump to a clean-sheet "operational" system. The X-20 would be one of those smaller and cheaper vehicles in any timeline where it got built (provided the DoD was willing to share results). It would prove "hot structure" (also often cited as a possible improvement to the Shuttle's design) and metallic, reusable tiles, give a baseline for the amount of maintenance needed for a reusable spacecraft. It would also show the issues and advantages of winged spacecraft, although those are only useful in low Earth orbit (returns from BLEO destinations hit the atmosphere too hard).
Above all else, the rush to land men on the Moon also forestalled a series of more complex and interesting scientific missions, not only to the Moon but also to other planets (indeed, even astronomical observatories were affected the "race" mentality). Look up "Ranger Block IV" or "Surveyor Block II" or "Project Prospector" on Google or (better yet) NTRS, the NASA Technical Resources Server. Before Kennedy's big speech, JPL was going to send more Rangers, carrying a wide range of scientific payloads to the Moon, even some survivable hard-landing payloads (they would have been cushioned by balsa wood). The Surveyors would have been larger and more complex, and there would have been a kind of Surveyor Orbiter carrying a wide range of scientific experiments. It might have** discovered lunar polar ice deposits a good quarter-century before Clementine if the Moon program and the consequent gutting of robotic missions in favor of astronaut support hadn't intervened. Last, but very far from least, the Prospector missions would have landed rovers and sample collection missions on the lunar surface, and might have led to designs for stages intended to land humans by and by.
Therefore, without the Apollo program, it's plausible--even likely--that by the late 1970s a workable small shuttle, really just a crew transport with light personal cargo might be in service; a permanent space station would have orbited; Apollo might have been used for several lunar missions; and robotic missions to the Moon would have discovered many items of interest and deserving of follow-up by human explorers. By using existing systems, with only minimal new development, a human lunar expedition could then have been launched quite easily, or in the 1980s (when OTL you will recall that Reagan and Congress committed to a space station...at, admittedly, an underbidded cost, but here it actually wouldn't be all that bad). Human lunar expeditions, whether by Apollo or Constellation only look expensive because they don't use existing infrastructure and designs, whether because there isn't any (Apollo) or because of mismanagement and political pressure (Constellation). If you have an existing system that can support lunar missions with only a few development items needed, then it really isn't so bad.
* The Apollo program started in 1959 or so.
** I am not completely sure what payloads were anticipated for the Surveyor orbiters, so they may not have been intended to carry the systems needed to discover water. However, given that permanently shadowed craters had been identified as interesting as early as 1959 (!!!), I am sure some attempt would be made to explore them.
I'm sure there would be, there are people IOTL who claim NASA's put astronauts on Mars and covered it up.
Too bad NASA couldn't actually run itself as effectively as it manages to cover all that stuff up, huh?
Pretty much DoA. It also doesn't help that NTR's terrible reactor mass means that even the ISp improvements offered barely cancel in the full analysis.
Yeah, or a big asteroid comes along and wipes out humanity in 1968. No moon landing then.
Garrison
Donor
Yes but the N-1 was only one of the problems afflicting the Soviet program. By the mid sixties they were lagging well behind in flight hours and developing the skill set needed for Lunar missions. Added to which Brezhnev was far more cautious than Krushchev and demanded much higher safety standards before he would risk cosmonauts in flight. Overall the chances for a successful Soviet mission aren't good.
A good friend of mine believes in this, quite stridently. The version she accepts as true is that NASA went secretly to Mars after getting an invitation from aliens (from somewhere called Sirius-IV) who have facilities beneath the Martian surface. She also insists that David Icke is really an agent of those aliens and is spreading confusion before the USA and the aliens reveal their alliance and its meaning for Earth.
But I like her.