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What If America Had Beaten the Soviets Into Space?
MarkWhittington writes "April 12 is the 50th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's first space flight. Coming less than four years after Sputnik, Gagarin's orbital space voyage galvanized the United States and led to President Kennedy announcing the race to the Moon six weeks later. The question arises: what if America had beaten the Soviet Union into space instead?"
That would imply that American ballistic missile program would have also went ahead of Soviet one. Which, I suspect, would mean some glowing rubble in place of Moscow and some other major Soviet cities.
I suppose I might as well start the game by saying nothing would have been much different. Getting first to the moon would still have been a matter of prestige, so why wouldn't that contest have happened? And would it change who got there first? IIRC the soviets weren't that close, having some issues with the willingness to back the project, and one of the main designers passing away. Here's a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Moonshot
No faked moon landing, and humans might have really visited the moon by now.
Would it really matter? I guess it helped us fuel other areas of advancement, but as far as space itself? All we've accomplished in the 42 years since we landed on the moon is sending out a bunch of probes and fancy RC cars. No doubt, the photographs from these endeavors are amazing and we're still acquiring knowledge. It's just too bad we've reached a point where we aren't willing to do anything that might put a person at risk of so much as chipping a fingernail, we've exhausted our shuttle program and are currently having to rely on transport from other nations, and are put off by spending any money on space at all, because we've got to save all that precious monopoly money to bail out corporations and foreign banks at a number that dwarfs the entire space program.
Don't get me wrong - I know that a lot of our advancements are being off-loaded to privacy industry and that we are making enough advances in other areas of technology and science so that whenever we really do make another massive push into space, we will be doing so from a more capable point (kind of like you might have been able to start a computer at the task of decrypting some data in 1980 and that same computer would still be trying to decode it in 2011, while a computer you got last month and set to the task of decrypting the same data would have finished by now).
However, can you really imagine people's responses in the last half of 1969 if you had told them "revel in this, because mankind won't touch the moon or any other soil or make it beyond our low orbit for the next fifty years"? They would have said you were a fucking lunatic.
I'm thrilled that the space race brought us the home computer and memory foam, but my mom was a little girl when we landed on the moon and I would love more than just about anything for us to have another world-stopping-all-eyes-on-television space-moment like that during my life time. I suspect I'll be long dead before that happens.
It is before my time but I seem to recall being told that the big wake-up call was sputnik. The first men in space was big as well but easily diminished because it was essentially a ballistic shot not a real space trip. Sputnik was up there a long time, beeping all the way, undeniable.
Anyway, the Americans were to focussed on giving nazi war criminals a cozy ride and failing miserably to realize that there was a reason the german lost the war, their tech sucked. Still American history teaches that german tech led to space conquest, forgetting that it was a shift away from this that finally allowed the americans to catch up. But hey, if you chance history perhaps you might want to go after those that allowed killers of american POW's to get of scot free.
What if America had been first?
It wasn't. Examine WHY this was the case before you go into fantasy land. WHY was a 3rd world nation that had suffered a decimating war ahead of a country that was swimming in money and the only effect of war had been fewer unemployed? Once you can answer that, you have learned a lot about the true nature of the US and might even be able to use to help explain the current mess it is in.
Don't treat the USSR beating the US as some kind of freak accident, EXAMINE your history as it is, so you can learn from it. Or do you want to soon ask the question "what if the US had beat China to a space colony?"
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It was 50 years ago, get over it.
The hang-wringing in the western press about this seems to me to be largely due to an inability to fit the event into the triumphalist narrative that has endured in government and media since the end of the cold war. The idea that capitalism, specifically our version of capitalism is best always, everywhere and forever.
Its disquieting to such dogmatists to be reminded of even a single success from an alternative way of doing things. Even if that way of doing things ultimately imploded on itself decades later, it makes a rational person question the absolutism of the narrative, and thus the narrators must try and dissect and blunt the impact of the threatening event.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
This is revisionist crap.
ICBM tests were ballasted to give other groups in the US (not staffed by Nazis) a chance to launch the first US satellite.
Also, the US was fully committed to the space race by the time of Vostok 1, which is the actual event being discussed here.
The idea that early Soviet successes were part of some cunning ploy by Eisenhower is utterly retarded. The public perception of the Soviet threat helped carry Kennedy in the 1960 election, so you are supposing that Eisenhower would deliberately sabotage his own party and his own vice-president. I am calling bullshit on this one.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
we would be on Mars by now instead of getting groped by TSA guards.
It is known today that even the CIA's estimate was too high; the actual number of ICBMs, even including interim-use prototypes, was 4.
So, let's see: Washington, New York, Chicago, Detroit? Or would they put San Francisco on that list? Los Angeles?
I don't think any leader in the world would risk losing his main four cities like that.
Apollo 8 was rushed and sent to the Moon (the first manned test of a Saturn V went to lunar orbit, not staying in Earth orbit), specifically to beat a manned Soviet lunar flyby planned with the Zond spacecraft. (I.e., the Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 missions were swapped; the reasons for this were kept secret at the time.) As we beat both Zond and the Soviet lunar landing program (Zond was more or less flight ready, with 2 unmanned test flights, the landing program, not so much) before the Soviets actually flew any people to or around the Moon, the Soviets were able to pretend that they didn't have a manned lunar program, which made it possible for the Nixon administration to kneecap manned space flight a few years later. NASA and the US have never recovered from that, and the USA has (to be blunt) never really done much with manned space flight since.
Arguably, if Apollo 8 had stayed in Earth orbit, Alexei Leonov would have commanded the first mission to circle the Moon, the "space race" would have extended to lunar operations, and humanity would probably have multiple bases on Mars at this moment.
We could learn a thing or two about capitalism from the Russians. We are retiring our fleet and will be hitching rides on Russian shuttles over the next 4 years. While I do think private and commercial space flight will play a major role in future space flight, I think NASA Is a bit optimistic in thinking that we'll have private rockets in place by 2015. I suspect we'll still be riding on Russian shuttles well past 2015.
+3 insightful? Really slashdot? Not only insulting to Americans, but Homosexuals too. How far this site has slipped.
The amount of butthurt USSR did to the USA amazes me. I still have a space encyclopaedia for teens composed by USA authors, which doesn't mention Gagarin or "Mir" space station. Actually, the chapter about space station only mentions some fictional US project to build one (which never came into fruition) , as if it had never been done before. Lulz.
(Decora, you are truly a genius, why didn't we do think of this long ago?!)
American tech was great (A-bomb, radar, penicillin, cryptography/computers)
A-bomb (American), radar (British), penicillin (British/Australian), cryptography/computers (British). Well, one out of four isn't bad...
You do know that the world's first working Aeroplane and Telephone were manufactured in America right? You could have actually mentioned some ACTUAL American tech.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
[Just] because something is MANUFACTURED someplace else doesn't make the place that it was MANUFACTURED imbued with some sort of superiority. I am guessing the design and creation of the chip is more important than the plant it was made in.
Yeah, unless you're interested in this concept called "money", a.k.a."profit", in which case the manufacturing guy has it all over the design and creation guy.
Never forget that design and creation are expenses, expenses that are only recouped by future manufacturing income.
Even as an independent contractor, the price you can get for your design or creation has to be less than the perceived gross profit from manufacturing it, or no one will buy it.
Plus, since the manufacturing guy is typically closer to the end user (and the technology needed to manufacture the device), he's better equipped than the design and creation guy to create Design 2.0. Just look at the transition of chip employment: First the chips were researched, designed and manufactured in the US. Then the manufacturing went to Asia. Now the design work is very much in Asia, and one is seeing the research nexus start to move, too.
Then the Americans would probably have made it to Mars before 1980. And then never bothered to go back again.
They can't get over it, as it is connected to some Western fears. The West and especially the USA are not that important anymore and the Chinese are considered to be commies (even if they are not). So the USA fears to loose against the commies after all. "We are all doomed!" This leads to the problem that the US think they are safe when they can control everything. But this normally piss of others. Now when they are getting closer to bankruptcy they feel other gaining on them. Even if this is just a normalization.
No, not smoking at all :) and I hope you'll agree.
Remember, what I'm trying to say is "Yuri Gagarin's flight in April 1961 was approximately as far ahead of Alan Shepard's flight in May 1961 technologically and timewise, as Apollo-8 Moon orbital mission in December 1968 was ahead of - cancelled - Zond mission soon afterwards".
I don't think that's too far from the truth. Let's review your objections and see.
In Dec 1968... Soviets were considering a flyby because they couldn't go into lunar orbit. (And the manned flyby was delayed multiple times because of safety problems with the spacecraft.)
True, I agree - but similarly in April 1961 Americans were considering a suborbital flight because they couldn't go into orbit. And delays on the American side early in 1961 had similar nature.
They didn't have, and never successfully tested a craft that could go into lunar orbit. Both attempts to test it (both in 1969) failed when the booster failed. (By December 1968, Apollo had flown twice unmanned suborbital, once unmanned orbital, and once manned orbital.)
Here I'm not sure what you're talking about. If you mean N1 rocket, then it was tested not 2, but 4 times - all unsuccessfully. If you mean Soyuz spacecraft, then - before December 1968 - it was flown manned twice, first time (April 1967) it was Komarov catastrophe, second time (October 1968) it was Beregovoi's unsuccessful flight. In addition to that many unmanned flights both of Soyuz and Zond happened before December 1968. For example, Zond 5 and 6 both flew around the Moon and came back intact - in September and November of 1968.
So, Russians were very close to ability to send a crew to a lunar fly-by mission. Not to Moon orbit, of course, but definitely to a fly-by.
They [Russians] didn't have a functional lunar lander - it's first unmanned test wasn't until November 1970. (By December 1968 the LM had flown once unmanned orbital.)
We're talking about comparison of American Moon orbital mission with Soviet Moon fly-by mission. Lunar landers don't matter that much here. They matter, of course, if we would compare the ultimate goal of Moon landing - and then the difference will be much bigger - but the difference was gradually accumulating.
They didn't have proven booster that could boost the spacecraft (that never did reach orbit) and the lunar lander (which never flew manned either) to the Moon. The first launch attempt wasn't until 1969 - and it was a failure. (By December 1968 the Saturn V had flown twice unmanned.)
Right, but again, we're talking about Moon orbital and Moon fly-by missions vs. Earth orbital and Earth suborbital missions. Russians didn't need N-1 to fly Zond, neither Americans needed Atlas to fly Freedom 7.
Overall potential of a program was definitely bigger for American one, but it didn't manifested itself yet by December 1968. Future events showed that delay accumulated, but it wasn't a given in December 1968.
In 1961, the US was only weeks behind - in 1968 the Soviets were years behind.
If you, as I do, compare Gagarin's flight with Shepard's - then I agree that US were weeks behind, but then I maintain that Russians were not that behind in their Moon fly-by flight after Apollo-8 flight.
If you compare Gagarin's first orbital flight with Glenn's first orbital flight, then US certainly was some serious months behind in April 1961.
The Soviets not only weren't even not close in December 1968, the were very nearly not even in the race at all. Between divisive internal politics and a very late start, they'd hobbled themselves right out of the gate. Their lag and defeat was so decisive that for decades their official line was that they hadn't succeeded because they hadn't even tried. (I.E. if a