What if: Hammer and sickle on the Moon

[FlyingPete]

Without a Space Shuttle to draw attention and money, Skylab flies for much longer. Around 1974, as USA-USSR relations thaw, Soyuz makes a visit to Skylab. A few years later (the DM still attached to one of Skylab's ports), DOS-5 becomes a permanent additional module, and Salyut-Skylab becomes an early International Space Station.

I think this is an interesting scenario- essentially a reversal of what happened IRL with the Shuttle-Mir program, with some Apollo-Soyuz elements thrown in. Von Braun was originally pushing for a 'wet workshop' adaptation of the Saturn V's second stage for Skylab rather than the converted third stage we actually got. I reckon, if the focus was on the AAP rather than the shuttle, we might have seen a modified version of this larger module added to Skylab, and later some Russian modules. ISS 20 years early!

[musicpenguin]

Unless the Ruskies took a completely different approach, They wouldn't of made it first.

[Camacha]

There is a very large difference between floating in space, and working in space. The US was the first to do more than float in space, or, essentially, work in space. Not a big milestone compared to landing on the Moon or being the first in space at all, but it's very important.

You decide you feel this is important, important enough to bring to the discussion, pretty much proving my point. Different people will pick different arbitrary way-points, so any discussion on the race these way-points would count for is going to be biased - and probably terrible. You feel EVA this is important, someone else feels EVA that is important, a third feels EVA is not important at all. No one is wrong, no one is right, and using these things are a measure of success is going to quickly break down as a result.

I mean, if I wanted to start trouble, I could say the same about the early Apollo landings. Those were mostly testing and prestige things and barely useful. When they got around to doing the extended stay missions, that started changing a bit. It is not hard to imagine what people would say about such a statement.

[Bill Phil]

You decide you feel this is important, important enough to bring to the discussion, pretty much proving my point. Different people will pick different arbitrary way-points, so any discussion on the race these way-points would count for is going to be biased - and probably terrible. You feel EVA this is important, someone else feels EVA that is important, a third feels EVA is not important at all. No one is wrong, no one is right, and using these things are a measure of success is going to quickly break down as a result.

I mean, if I wanted to start trouble, I could say the same about the early Apollo landings. Those were mostly testing and prestige things and barely useful. When they got around to doing the extended stay missions, that started changing a bit. It is not hard to imagine what people would say about such a statement.

If you put a lot of thought into it, having a person just floating there is useless, and completely different from an actual work load during EVA, as NASA learned. The Soviets get the first EVA, but that wasn't nearly as useful as NASA's perfection of EVAs.

And please stop bringing nonsense arguments. I'm basing this off of total usefulness to the program. Thus, an EVA that costs a large sum of money isn't as important as one that may cost a similar amount, but involves actual work. Similar to how the USSR had the first satellite, but the USA had the first satellite to deliver a substantial amount of data. The USSR had many lunar firsts, and the only big one the USA had was the manned Moon landing. Of course, anything in space is quite a triumph, but an EVA where a person does work is far more valuable than an EVA where a person floats.

Now, can we please take this elsewhere, as it is very off topic? Such as PMs?

[Camacha]

If you put a lot of thought into it

Please do not belittle people with the suggestion that they have not put enough thought into it. Some people disagree with your ideas even if they base themselves on the same information. You are going to have to accept that.

And please stop bringing nonsense arguments.

See, another matter of opinion. You call it nonsense, while I am pretty convinced it is far from that. Another substantiation of how different people view, measure and explain certain things in different ways. Abstracting a complex series of events like the space race into neat, clean cut way points just will not do.

[meve12]

(Snip)

Someone needs to write about this.

[Superfluous J]

The only thing different would be that it'd be Russia who hadn't returned to the Moon in about 40 years.

[DECQ]

If you put a lot of thought into it, having a person just floating there is useless, and completely different from an actual work load during EVA, as NASA learned. The Soviets get the first EVA, but that wasn't nearly as useful as NASA's perfection of EVAs.

And please stop bringing nonsense arguments. I'm basing this off of total usefulness to the program. Thus, an EVA that costs a large sum of money isn't as important as one that may cost a similar amount, but involves actual work. Similar to how the USSR had the first satellite, but the USA had the first satellite to deliver a substantial amount of data. The USSR had many lunar firsts, and the only big one the USA had was the manned Moon landing. Of course, anything in space is quite a triumph, but an EVA where a person does work is far more valuable than an EVA where a person floats.

Now, can we please take this elsewhere, as it is very off topic? Such as PMs?

No one will remember about the second satellite, nobody cared that he carried himself...

Everyone knows that the landing on the moon, it's just a show of strength and enormous cost, and if it did the military, they would not have the scientific equipment...they would not take with scientific equipment...

[mrfox]

The main objectives of the moon landings did not require EVA assembly work in zero G - only as a means of (backup) crew transfer between modules.

[RedDwarfIV]

Bill Phil, Camacha, a mod's already been here to say stop talking about who was better than who in the space race. Get over it, both of you.

I don't imagine there would be a lot of difference, although as some have mentioned, it might have resulted in the shuttle being ignored. The Shuttle was cool and all, but it was really inefficient and it never did meet its projected turn-around times. I imagine the US could have used the money on more productive things. The ISS might also be bigger, due to use of automated dockings rather than the EVA work forced by using the Shuttle.

We might have an L2 station by now, too.

[Tex]

From what I understand, the Russians never really could perfect their large Lunar-capable rockets. If nothing else changed except the Apollo program were delayed, I rather think that it would be an extremely close call, but then again anything could happen. Perhaps the Russians did get the N-1 to work, and got their systems to the Mun Moon. After all, we did still have von Braun, so perhaps we would have overcome our hypothetical setbacks and beat the Russians after all.

Anyone's game!

[billbobjebkirk]

From what I understand, the Russians never really could perfect their large Lunar-capable rockets. If nothing else changed except the Apollo program were delayed, I rather think that it would be an extremely close call, but then again anything could happen. Perhaps the Russians did get the N-1 to work, and got their systems to the Mun Moon. After all, we did still have von Braun, so perhaps we would have overcome our hypothetical setbacks and beat the Russians after all.

Anyone's game!

If the russians had gone with a two-launch profile using the original 70 tto N-1, they probably could've built it.

[xenomorph555]

From what I understand, the Russians never really could perfect their large Lunar-capable rockets.

Except Energia, but that was 20 years later and under Glushko.

[Kibble]

Except Energia, but that was 20 years later and under Glushko.

If they could have gotten Glushko to design a nice big kerosene-fuel rocket engine back in 1962 though...

[xenomorph555]

If they could have gotten Glushko to design a nice big kerosene-fuel rocket engine back in 1962 though...

That almost did happen but unfortunately things got a bit too tense between him and Korolev (K was a very specific man apparently when it comes to engines) so he went off to help the UR-700 team.

Then again if Glushko had helped would the Soviets have unlocked the closed cycle engine technology...

[asmi]

Then again if Glushko had helped would the Soviets have unlocked the closed cycle engine technology...

This is really good question as it was Glushko who perfected ox-rich staged combustion tech in RD-170. And big part of his motivation actually was "beating NK-33/43".

On the whole US/USSR thing I won't go into details as they poster who brought this up obviously doesn't know what he's talking about. I will just leave this link for those who doesn't know: http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/the-little-known-soviet-mission-to-rescue-a-dead-space-station/ I ran out of fingers when counting how many firsts (and many of them are "only's" too) just this mission had.