What If the Apollo Program Had Continued?

proslack writes "The die had been cast years before Apollo 11 had even reached the moon. In the late 1960s, the Vietnam war was straining US finances. A fatal fire on the Apollo launch pad in January 1967 had blotted NASA's copybook. The Soviet moon effort seemed to be going nowhere. In the budget debates during the summer of 1967, Congress refused NASA's request to fund an extended moon programme. What if things had been different that summer? Suppose Congress had granted NASA's wish, then fast-forward 40-odd years..." A nice little what-if sort of story that makes sorta nostalgic for a non-existent present.

Comments

Re:If Apollo program had continued

[AKAImBatman]

8) SALT II would have long been abandoned and Earth would be surrounded by nuke armed stations.
9) No Cruise missiles. Why build a Mosquito when an Elephant would be cheaper.

Read up on the Revolt of the Admirals sometime. There's a good reason why we have cruise missiles and not nukes. It's not for want of orbital platforms.

Re:Bad news

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be retarded. It is precisely because of MAD and *intellect* and communication (UN is the forum there) that nuclear war was averted. If all you do is rely on "god" and your animal instinct, then hell, this is exactly what is driving suicide bombers to blow themselves up. Their beliefs in afterlife and lack of consciousness and the entire thing about the-end-justifies-the-means that they are so reckless and dangerous. If USSR was anywhere as fanaticisized as Middle East, there would have been nuclear war in the 50s not to mention 70s.

The Cuban missile crisis averted war precisely because,
    1. Kennedy agreed to remove missiles from border of USSR in Turkey - USSR got it a major concession for not deploying nukes in Cuba.
    2. A political officer on board of a russian sub denied retaliation for US surface ship dropping depth charges at the blockade.

All this was precisely because of *intellect* and not stupid "animal instinct". Animal instinct is the retards on board of that US ship that started dropping depth charges. If it wasn't for the unnamed political officer to stop the "animal instinct" of captain to retaliate, the world today would most likely not include myself.

Re:If Apollo program had continued

[MozeeToby]

By artificial gravity, I assume you mean using rotation to produce centrifugal force? I just don't see that being likely until we have a more efficient way than rockets to get material into space, or possible until we have a way to mine and refine metal from space.

Human physiology limits you to 2 RPM, any higher than this and motion sickness becomes very common. That means that to get a full G of apparent gravity, you need a station with a radius of nearly 225 meters. Obviously, you could probably make do with less than a full G. How much less while still maintaining muscle mass and bone density is an unanswered question so far. If a half G is enough, you're in a much better situation, the radius would only have to be 110 meters. If you don't care about everyone not getting motion sickness you could probably up the RPMs to 4, getting the radius down to 28 meters. Of course, that means that your head will be under 10% less force than your feet, which I imagine might take some getting used to.

Re:I'm sceptical.

[maxume]

So is the earth (it is the 7th most abundant metal). Titanium is expensive because it is expensive to refine. Wikipedia indicates that more titanium dioxide is produced than titanium metal (the dioxide is used as a white pigment) and that current reserves are on the order of about 120 years of current production:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium#Occurrence

!Tang

[dtmos]

According to The New York Times .