Something that I'm working on, that I hope some of you might have suggestions for:
Work in Progress: Space Agencies of the Great Powers
USA: The National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics is not so much a space agency in and of itself, as a coordinating agency for the various US space programs (Army Rocket Artillery Corps, Naval Research Laboratory, NOAA Satellite Office (which mostly uses NRL launch vehicles), Post Office Department Rocket-Mail Service, et cetra), relaying information between them and making them work together. It is only the lead agency on big projects like the Moon Landing and Project Ares (preparing transportation and infrastructure for a retaliatory invasion of Mars), where the individual agencies each do separate parts of the work, to avoid wasting money and other resources on duplicated effort. <more stuff?>
UK: The British Interplanetary Society was originally an independent body of enthusiasts and a few gadgeteers, depending financially on donations and later on launch fees once they'd proven that artificial satellites were viable. In 1933, after Ming's attack, the BIS made an agreement with the incoming First MacAdder Government, accepting a significant amount of government money in return for allowing His Majesty's Government to appoint some members to the BIS Council, and thus strongly influence the Society's agenda (becoming what modern Homeline's UK would call a
qango). The MacAdder Governments ran things with a fairly light hand, but Chamberlain has become quite concerned since being informed that the Second Martian Invasion is on the way. He has appointed Winston Churhill and Lord Blackadder to the Council, neither of whom is particularly inclined to sit quietly. <more stuff?>
Germany: The SS-Raumabschnitt is the only national space agency that is technically responsible to a political party rather than the government, though by this point there is little difference between the Nazi Party and the government of the German Third Reich. <strong dislike between Luftwaffe and SS-Raumabschnitt; something about Mars plans>
USSR: The Soviet Rocket Forces are a full military branch, like the Red Army and the Soviet Navy, responsible for space warfare, and the military use of rockets considered too heavy to be carried by to men in the field. <more stuff; something about Mars plans>
France: The French Ministry of Space was founded in 1930, largely as a matter of national pride (which had been stung by the BIS getting a satellite into orbit). <something about space stations and Moon plans; something about Mars plans>
Italy has a complicated (but politically reliable) arrangement of space programs, theoretically under the Regia Aeronautica Italiana, though drawing personnel and resources from the Ministry of Public Works, Ministry of the Colonies, Ministry of Corporations, and lesser influences from anyone else who can find an excuse. The best that can be said is that they aren't working against each other. <more stuff?>
Japan has two rival space agencies, one run by the Imperial Japanese Army and one by the Imperial Japanese Navy (who hate each other to the point of actively sabotaging each others' programs and assassinating each others' officers), and no effective means of making them work together. This has left them mostly on par with Italy (despite having to functional space stations to Italy's one, as the stations they have are smaller), when a single program with the combined resources of the army and navy programs would be a match for the BIS. <more stuff?>
Thoughts?