Space race to Mars in 1979 alternate timeline help, please

[Anders]

Never mind. This is a tangent. Please continue.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Anders

Never mind. This is a tangent. Please continue.

Actually no, because of this:

Originally Posted by robertsconley

Actually you need nuclear weapons because that drove early rocketry. The R-7s, Atlas, Titans were built and sized to their nuclear weapons. They also just happened to be usuable as satellite launcher.

The whole reason that the United States was behind in the 50s was due the fact that Stanislaw Ulam figured out how to reduce the size of the hydrogen bomb in the early 50s. The Atlas and Titan programs were adjusted accordingly.

The Soviet didn't figure this out until later and thus their R-7 rocket was sized to life a much larger warhead. Which also meant they had capacity to spare for early space flight. In fact so much so that that the R-7 is still in use today as the core of the Soyuz rocket.

If you want a bigger and badder space race, keep Teller and delay Stanislaw Ulam breakthrough. The United States builds bigger Atlas and Titans (the backup program to Atlas) and butterflies ensue.

Teller was the driving force behind the Hydrogen Bomb, lack of him delays the program for years at least. With only the larger fission bombs US missile capacity has to stay huge, just as the historic Soviet missiles did. Bigger missiles, and more of them might mean an easier time getting into space and eventually racing to Mars.

Hydrogen bombs are developed eventually, but not until later, and can be used by the Orion craft. As well as threaten the world.

IMO science is driven as much by personality as any other human endeavor. Especially an expensive engineering project like weapons. Its belaboring the point to point out how Teller marshaled the program, destroying careers and people who got in the way.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Heinlein alludes to this in Stranger in a Strange Land, when the first human mission to Mars consists of four married couples, carefully matched up psychologically—but there's still an affair, a pregnancy, a death in childbirth, a murder/suicide, and ultimately an orphaned child to be raised by Martians. Perhaps this is Heinlein's view of what's to be expected from mixed-sex parties. He shows no such troubles arising on the second, all-male Mars expedition.

As I recall it, arguably that system failed because the captain cheated. When no viable crew was turning up, he got some inside information from the people running the selection database. He then proposed to a spinster with the right qualifications to make a couple to complete the team.

And as I recall it from the scraps of information we get, the expedition went bad because of conflicts over infidelity, involving one of the two in the marriage of convenience.



[Apologies if this is covered later in the thread and I missed it.]

[fifiste]

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php...&id=2036#comic

That's how its done! (Unfortunatley does not work with the other atmospheres of this era - should probably need some other major divergence points to make gay space race viable)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by fifiste

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php...&id=2036#comic

That's how its done! (Unfortunatley does not work with the other atmospheres of this era - should probably need some other major divergence points to make gay space race viable)

At most 15% of men are fully gay. And those prone to jealousy will suffer it from non-sexual reasons if sexual ones are unlikely.
I still think simply sterilizing astronauts shouldn't be seen as impossibly insane. Having children when over 35 is bad anyway, even for males.
It might seem more sensible if a time line didn't suffer from Nazis' idiocy with wrong headed eugenic science.
We allow couples with known horrible genetic disorders to mate yet not healthy related individuals. It's all irrational defended with pseudoscience.

Maybe I should temporarily change my sig. I have the worst cold I have ever had in over 10-15 years. So I'm prone to meandering and babbling. My apologies.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by fifiste

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php...&id=2036#comic

That's how its done! (Unfortunatley does not work with the other atmospheres of this era - should probably need some other major divergence points to make gay space race viable)

Gaying their way across the Eastern steppes.

Nice.