Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran
Could anyone help with my TL 7 Mars colony idea?
I want the space race to keep going with Orion drives and get boots and an outpost on mars by 1979.
Maybe a Soviet successful moon landing/probes first could push America into pushing harder and longer to Mars.
I want it as realistic as possible physically if not necessarily politically.
Though avoiding the Viet Nam debacle somehow could free up a lot of resources, economically as well as cultural enthusiasm-wise.
|
Check out
False Steps, a blog by Paul Drye. Hopefully it will be a book someday. It details the roads not taken in the early space race.
As Astromancer and johndallman point out, you need a slightly different history. A long commitment by a better equipped Soviet Union, and a lesser fear of nuclear war, are needed.
I'm of the school that believes the Space Race was all about showing the other guy you could launch the biggest warheards directly into the heart of his country with great accuracy. So you still need that aspect.
Say Edward Teller chokes on a chicken bone in 1942. Fermi has ideas about a fusion bomb, but with no competent supporter, the idea is left behind in the hard work just to make a fission bomb. Space Race/Arms Race go off as planned, but there is no hydrogen bomb program in the 50s, just refinements of fission weapons, especially as Oppenheimer was opposed to the H-bomb on technical and political grounds.
Fission bombs can still do a LOT of damage, but "end of the world" weapons don't appear. And it turns out the Soviet version was based on American designs (big surprise)- so in this timeline they don't have fusion weapons either.
The idea of fusion is still floating around, thanks to von Neumann, but its not put into practical use until the 70s with the Orion project.
How and why the Soviets, or even the Americans, have a more comprehensive space program doesn't seem to stem from this event, however. That seems like a different divergence point.