I often wonder how things might have panned out had things like Vietnam and the cold war not happened?
why no space colony - Did we go to the Moon for the wrong reasons??
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Not in any form we'd recognize. The value of rockets for land use, weather, and astronomical studies would be obvious, certainly. But those were a handful of very tiny markets, and always would be. There would be some long-range ballistic missile research, since the logic is everything that makes strategic bombing attractive and at lower risk to the bombers.
If we grant something like the International Geophysical Year to happen, then that would encourage high-altitude sounding rockets or even earth satellites, as actually happened with Project Vanguard. But suppose we grant a non-threatening Pleasant Soviet Union to be in place. Even if the Pleasant Soviet Union manages to launch a satellite first, then it's hard to see that producing a rivalry.
Goodness, in the 1930 Soviet pilots set pretty much every aviation record, to the occasional shrug of ``maybe someone ought to do something about that, someday'' in the United States. I have trouble seeing why what would probably be seen as scientific and aviation records being set by the Pleasant Soviet Union would set off much response from the United States, and you need at least two partners to have a race.
Of course, ``no cold war'' is a huge thing to ask for; a more thoughtful analysis has to say what kind of no-cold-war is there. Is it one where there's no cold war because the Soviet Union collapses in the Second World War and gets rebuilt around a non-threatening government? Is it one where the Soviet leadership doesn't set off so many deeply-held fears in western leaders? Is it one where the Soviet Union retrenches so hard after the war that it can't threaten the west however hard it tries? Is it one where something stranger happens? All these have different implications.
IMO, had there been no WW1 and consequent Russian revolution there would always have been a cold war going on of some sort - even if it were between some combination of the USA, the British Empire, Republican France, Tsarist Russia, Imperial Germany and Imperial Japan. Humans, particularly of the male variety, probably can't help being dickheads whatever their political stance. Greed for the control of resources and a desire for economic supremacy are also probably indelible in most societies. Communication satellites would become a necessity for establishing commercial hegemonies and spreading cultural memes, and, as these satellites require reasonably powerful lifters, manned spaceflight and even space warfare would follow without a catastrophic upheaval such as WW2 giving birth to the UN and international treaties. Others might disagree - fine - historical contingency is hot air.
Depends who you are and what kind of culture, people and attitudes to science and exploration you have, I can name a few rich nations, they got lots of money but are people who do not bother with space programs
While I do agree the male variety of human is responsible for much violence or much of the 'dick' moves through history, before we all become some kind of modern-super-femininist let us not forget 'females' are also able to contribute to human misery. I have seen enough violence and crazy in my life to known sometimes women can equal men in this regard, maybe even behave worse on some occasion, so before we fix the human race by giving everyone breasts and vaginas let us remember names like
Tashfeen Malik, Myra Hindley, Judith Neelley, Anna Marie Hahn, Hayat Boumeddiene, Aileen Wuornos , Nanita Jacks, Hasna Aitboulahcen, the blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory and many other names through history
Yes males are more violent but its not as if the human race will become perfect if you change everyone's sex to the female variety
I think it would have come more slowly, people did dream, they did write science fiction
The Coldwar made it a must, Kennedy knew he could not allow the Soviets to get ahead with Sputnik and other Russian designed programs
And just think: if Nazi Germany had survived WWII, the Moon probably would have been a major battle front of WWIII.
Not this again. STS was a de facto HLV and we perfectly sustained over 100 of those.
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/dreamingadifferentapollo/
APOLLO DIDN’T DIE; it was killed. The Apollo Program might have continued for many years, evolving constantly to achieve new goals at relatively low cost. Instead, programs designed to give Apollo a future beyond the first lunar landing began to feel the brunt of cuts even before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. By the time Apollo drew to its premature conclusion – the last mission to use Apollo hardware was the joint U.S.-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) of July 1975 – NASA was busy building a wholly new space program based on the Space Shuttle. Throwing out the Apollo investment and starting over with Shuttle was incredibly wasteful both in terms of learned capabilities and money.
No--my guess is that von Braun and his whole rocketry program would have been put out to pasture.
STS wasn't the Saturn V. It also didn't send a payload to the moon. In fact, even as an HLV, the shuttle accomplished very little that actually REQUIRED the capabilities of an HLV; a space shuttle orbiter less than half that size could have performed most of its orbital missions just as well. You may recall that one of the main considerations for making the shuttle as large as it was involved the Air Force requirement for the high cross range needed to return the shuttle from a polar orbit in the event they decided to use it to capture Soviet Spy satellites.
And no, Saturn-V could NOT have been evolved into something sustainable, clickbait blog writers notwithstanding. The Saturn-IB probably could have, as a medium lift vehicle with performance superior to the R-7 family and probably capable of sustaining a higher flight rate. Regular service to Skylab could have kept the station operational longer, and with a little patience -- staged orbital assembly, for example -- Skylab or something like it could be reconfigured for use as a command module for a longer-duration lunar mission.
Direct ascent is a "get there fast, get there first" approach that ceases to make sense after it works the first time. If anything, NASA should have retooled after Apollo 14, launched 15 as a Skylab style dry workshop and then once it was operational, sent up a fully fueled SIVB to dock with it and start the mission.
It's more than likely the Germans would have kept Von Braun around to build new generations of missiles for the Cold War; V3 and V4 rockets that would have been equivalent to the American Redstone and Atlas rockets. Von Braun fully understood the potential capabilities of space warfare as well, and while most of his theories went right over the heads of his peers at NASA (fortunately), the Nazis probably would have taken him more seriously.
This is so. The most plausible alternative post-Apollo plan I've heard of, that still retains the option of landing on the Moon, comes from space historian Henry Spencer. He proposed a scheme in which there would be two to four Saturn I-B launches per year, nearly all of them to Skylab or successor stations, with one Saturn V launch a year. Most years it would be to the moon, but some years it would be to launch a Skylab-class workshop. Long-term research work would be done on making Apollo modules more capable and, yes, more reusable, and perhaps even replacing them --- or the whole S-IVB stage --- with a reusable rocket-plane or the like.
The prima facie case for a space shuttle is reasonable enough, mind you. That it was beyond what could be done at the time (and probably is still) doesn't imply that the program was stupid or negligent or the like. And given the technological and political climate in which post-Apollo programs were to be developed it's hard to see something very different from the shuttle we got being made. Space is harder than people thought then, and it's probably harder than people think it is now.
From everything I have read, NAZI Germany was doomed to failure. Their economic miracle, touted in the first series, was leading the nation to bankruptcy. If there had been no invasion of Poland in 1939, the nation would have to declare bankruptcy that year and be unable to pay for the loans from the United States. Our country financed many of the industrial projects of this country in the 1930s.
The space race was born ouf of a competition between two competing ideologies. However, there wasn't enough there to keep the citizenry engaged in the effort. When the end goal was achieved, the landing on the moon, the citizenry turned their attention elsewhere. Since then, save for marvels of engineering triumph and tragedies, NASA has failed to engage the citizenry. It does not help them that our educational system, which could be used as a tool for promoting and inspiring science and mathematics, has been in decline since the 1960s. And, how can NASA inspire optimism in their programs when their mantra has become, "We will be sending humans to Mars decades from now, and we working on the technology that will get them there in the meantime"? This has been the mantra since my childhood. Yawn.
Unlike the previous colonization efforts, which over time, had an immediate effect on the citizenry as the dream of settling new lands was attainable by those who had the will, the determination, and the means of doing it, and the ability of acquiring immediate profits, relatively speaking, from government and business investment was great, the colonization of space has failed to become attainable to the citizenry and the ability of immediate profits has not materialized.
It is my beilef that the new Vietnam will be climate change. I am reading articles about nations planning massive long-term adoptive projects costing hundreds of billions of dollars. This projects are based on the known knowns. The costs of known unknown and unknown unknown events, and adopting to those events, have not been considered, to the best of my knowledge. In summation, there is no money for space colonization.
Someday, in the far future, humans may colonize the Sol System. When that happens, I do not think any of us will be alive. For those living, I think we have to be contented with the knowledge that humans did travel to the moon for a small number of years and, for a brief period, we did colonize another body. And, I think it is our role to remind the children that were born in the 1990s and this century that these great events did transpire.
Although I do not agree with much that Adolf Hitler said and done, there are things that he said I can agree to as i have seen it in my lifetime.
He wrote,
"The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous Consequently, all effective propanganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."
The space race was born ouf of a competition between two competing ideologies. However, there wasn't enough there to keep the citizenry engaged in the effort. When the end goal was achieved, the landing on the moon, the citizenry turned their attention elsewhere. Since then, save for marvels of engineering triumph and tragedies, NASA has failed to engage the citizenry. It does not help them that our educational system, which could be used as a tool for promoting and inspiring science and mathematics, has been in decline since the 1960s. And, how can NASA inspire optimism in their programs when their mantra has become, "We will be sending humans to Mars decades from now, and we working on the technology that will get them there in the meantime"? This has been the mantra since my childhood. Yawn.
Unlike the previous colonization efforts, which over time, had an immediate effect on the citizenry as the dream of settling new lands was attainable by those who had the will, the determination, and the means of doing it, and the ability of acquiring immediate profits, relatively speaking, from government and business investment was great, the colonization of space has failed to become attainable to the citizenry and the ability of immediate profits has not materialized.
It is my beilef that the new Vietnam will be climate change. I am reading articles about nations planning massive long-term adoptive projects costing hundreds of billions of dollars. This projects are based on the known knowns. The costs of known unknown and unknown unknown events, and adopting to those events, have not been considered, to the best of my knowledge. In summation, there is no money for space colonization.
Someday, in the far future, humans may colonize the Sol System. When that happens, I do not think any of us will be alive. For those living, I think we have to be contented with the knowledge that humans did travel to the moon for a small number of years and, for a brief period, we did colonize another body. And, I think it is our role to remind the children that were born in the 1990s and this century that these great events did transpire.
Although I do not agree with much that Adolf Hitler said and done, there are things that he said I can agree to as i have seen it in my lifetime.
He wrote,
"The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous Consequently, all effective propanganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."
The Human Condition is Timeless and unalterable. Hitler's ability to note that is no different from Gandhi's ability to note that. Nothing changes, people simply follow. Hitler could control information, because it came mostly in the form of books, and to a lesser extent, by radio. Information is instantly available, now. It's very difficult to suppress. As is the dream and desire to explore The Great Beyond. George Bush once noted that exploring Space is not an option we choose. That "... we are the part of Creation that seeks to understand all of Creation." He also noted that this desire was written upon the Human heart. I find that sentiment to be a very hopeful one for the prospect of future colonies in space ... and beyond!
The funny thing is that Hitler was for most of his life part of that dull, uneducated mass and by circumstance, some effort and luck he became dictator of Germany. I have to laugh at how unself aware people are, especially those at the top, though I guess I shouldn't be surprised about Hitler. A question though, what is the point of space travel when we'll only get as far as the solar system and planetary science is a case of diminishing returns? Astronomy yeah, but landing probes on the same planets/moons gets old fast. And so what if we discover microbes on Mars? What does that prove other than that there is life elsewhere in our solar system, something we can reasonably assume to be the case elsewhere in the universe? It's not like we're going to discover sentient life on the scale of a dolphin or dog so it seems rather pointless to land people on Mars for that purpose.
Why, you ask? Why not? 
I'm guessing "Because it's there" won't satisfy you either. So I'll just say that some of us strive to discover the answer to life, the universe, and everything (unfortunately it's not actually "42"), and every tiny shred of new information we find, no matter how insignificant, gets us closer to that.
I'm guessing "Because it's there" won't satisfy you either. So I'll just say that some of us strive to discover the answer to life, the universe, and everything (unfortunately it's not actually "42"), and every tiny shred of new information we find, no matter how insignificant, gets us closer to that.
What's the point though? All the low hanging technological fruit has been harvested and most of our technology is incredibly primitive as it is, a nuclear reactor is just a glorified boiler and cars run on dead plants. Up until a hundred years ago monkeys (us) were riding horses and that was considered cool, animals riding animals, and our spacecraft are just Chinese fireworks on steroids. You can map every bit of data on Martian soil or whatever but it's not particularly significant data. Why not just invest more in particle accelerators and blue skies research in the hope that we actually discover a practical way of navigating space because the lack of enthusiasm and interest is down to the fact that it's waaay too difficult to exist up there and everything is wwaaaaayyyyy too slow (this is the biggest problem).
Why, you ask? Why not?
I'm guessing "Because it's there" won't satisfy you either. So I'll just say that some of us strive to discover the answer to life, the universe, and everything (unfortunately it's not actually "42"), and every tiny shred of new information we find, no matter how insignificant, gets us closer to that.
If Man's Conquest of Space is in fact inevitable, then, why is it necessary to make any effort to that end? It'll come sooner or later, whatever we choose to do.
These are some valid questions. But a living Martian microbe would create a revolution in medical research, genetics ... not to mention exobiology, because of the ability to finally compare our Life to other Life. The potential is such that I can't even pretend to know how profound an impact it would eventually make. Personally, I don't get the impression that Mars was ever able to support Life, of any kind, because of its own surface chemistry. And should we visit Mars and my instincts proves correct, was it all an incredible waste? Not when the stakes are that high. No.
I never thought about it like that. I'm willing to bet that if they find bacteria it will be relatively similar to Earth bacteria at a fundamental level. Aliens if they exist most likely look like us and carbon based life is more than likely the only form of naturally occuring life. Who would think that because of budget constraints, Star Trek may even have got aliens right along with all its technological predictions.
Whoa, that would be like the biggest discovery ever. If we found life on Mars and could determine that it is not related to life on Earth, it basically tells us life should be everywhere in the galaxy. Right now a lot of people think life is out there, but they have no proof that it is likely. We have no empirical data on how common the evolution of life is. If it happened twice, independently, in the same solar system it would be a big "HOLY CRAP!" moment.
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