agentgonzo
Grounded since '09
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2008
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OK, so it's mostly debatable, but a large reason that Kennedy set the goal of getting to the moon by the end of the 60s was because the soviets were whipping the Americans' collective arses in getting into space and not exploding in a fiery mess on the pad. That massive goal would allow the Americans time to catch up and pass the Soviets. Anyway, whilst this point is debatable, if you want to debate it, please do so in another thread as otherwise this'll get into a mess and people will start flaming until someone invokes Godwin, so let's just assume that this is true - ie, that Kennedy set the goal because they were getting whipped by the Soviets.
So what-if? If the Americans would have put the first man into space/orbit in 1961 instead of the Ruskies, do you think that we'd have put a man on the moon by now? Discuss.
I'm not sure. I would think that Kennedy wouldn't have set the goal, which would mean that Apollo wouldn't have happened as it did. Mercury would have still gone through to completion, and Gemini would probably still have taken place along the same lines - achieving orbital rendezvous. America wouldn't have had the blank-cheque that they got for Apollo, so Gemini would have taken longer to achieve what they did - maybe by the end of the 60s. After that, with orbital rendezvous achieved, I would have thought that they would start building space stations - Skylab would be too big without the left-over Saturn V rockets, and so they'd have started developing a reusable spaceplane a bit sooner, which would probably end up like the Shuttle. The space race would have been for space stations - Mir vs Freedom. Both would have been bigger before the fall of the iron curtain would have lead to the ISS being somewhat the same as it is now.
However, with all this, I don't think that mankind would have made it to the moon by now. The resources needed to get there were (and are) so huge that it would have been too expensive to fund to get there and no government would have made the plunge to do it. The Americans would have no need to go there as they had already won the space race by putting a man in orbit, and the Russians would be leading the way in space stations due to their much superior heavy-lift capacity in the 60s/70s without the development of the Saturn V. We'd have stayed in LEO and dreamed of getting there. By the late 90s, with the retirement of the space shuttle looming ahead, Nasa would have set its eyes on the moon as it would still be 'virgin' from a human point of view and would be toying with the idea and there would probably be plans underway to get to the moon in a similar timescale that constellation has now, but it would eventually be canned as there is no 'need' to send humans there as robots can do 95% of the job for about 5% of the budget. Whilst people would still dream of going to the moon, I don't think mankind would have made it there by now. Russia wouldn't have the money to get there.
So what-if? If the Americans would have put the first man into space/orbit in 1961 instead of the Ruskies, do you think that we'd have put a man on the moon by now? Discuss.
I'm not sure. I would think that Kennedy wouldn't have set the goal, which would mean that Apollo wouldn't have happened as it did. Mercury would have still gone through to completion, and Gemini would probably still have taken place along the same lines - achieving orbital rendezvous. America wouldn't have had the blank-cheque that they got for Apollo, so Gemini would have taken longer to achieve what they did - maybe by the end of the 60s. After that, with orbital rendezvous achieved, I would have thought that they would start building space stations - Skylab would be too big without the left-over Saturn V rockets, and so they'd have started developing a reusable spaceplane a bit sooner, which would probably end up like the Shuttle. The space race would have been for space stations - Mir vs Freedom. Both would have been bigger before the fall of the iron curtain would have lead to the ISS being somewhat the same as it is now.
However, with all this, I don't think that mankind would have made it to the moon by now. The resources needed to get there were (and are) so huge that it would have been too expensive to fund to get there and no government would have made the plunge to do it. The Americans would have no need to go there as they had already won the space race by putting a man in orbit, and the Russians would be leading the way in space stations due to their much superior heavy-lift capacity in the 60s/70s without the development of the Saturn V. We'd have stayed in LEO and dreamed of getting there. By the late 90s, with the retirement of the space shuttle looming ahead, Nasa would have set its eyes on the moon as it would still be 'virgin' from a human point of view and would be toying with the idea and there would probably be plans underway to get to the moon in a similar timescale that constellation has now, but it would eventually be canned as there is no 'need' to send humans there as robots can do 95% of the job for about 5% of the budget. Whilst people would still dream of going to the moon, I don't think mankind would have made it there by now. Russia wouldn't have the money to get there.
40 years ago it was another way.
