Sorry, Ron D. Moore... the Soviets were never going to beat the US to the Moon

[SunlitZelkova]

Not sure where to put this, but it has to do with science so I thought I'd post it here. I'm pretty sad right now. I just did a short research project attempting to see if the USSR could have realistically landed on the Moon before the US... and it's more grim than I could ever imagine.

Starting from this astronautix page here, http://www.astronautix.com/r/russiawhydisethemoonrace.html I went through the reasons and then tried to figure out how they could be resolved. I did this because I felt the author of that page, Mark Wade, 's final assessment that if only the USSR "started in '61, built the N1 to the original plan (24 engines instead of 30), and quote, had the full backing of the Soviet state" the USSR could have landed first.

Not only was the 24 engine N1 unlikely to be more reliable than the 30 engine one, but "had the full backing of the Soviet state" is literally the easiest thing ever easier said than done.

Summing up his reasons why they lost and trying to resolve them, I found this-

1. Poor management and quality control was an issue, but this was endemic to the Soviet system. Without literal magic, there is no way to change it.
2. Lack of political support is an issue, but even if Khrushchev got around the high cost of the program himself, the military was always going to be opposed because it was a distraction to the massive nuclear arms buildup. To provide an example, the first four Soyuz vehicles were supposed to be built in 1964 at a cost of 80 million rubles, Korolev only got 30 million.
3. Lack of focus from the Chief Designers on the Moon was an issue. This isn't too hard to imagine actually. If Gemini caused someone to think up Voskhod, and the Mercury 13's appearance in US media influenced the decision to fly Tereshkova, it's not that hard to imagine the Chief Designers properly responding in 1961. But then #2 gets in the way- cost and other priorities.
4. Poor decision making was an issue. For a counterfactual, I didn't see this as too much of an issue on the part of the civilian politicians and chief designers, but getting the military to agree is pretty much impossible.
5. The N1 itself was a major problem, and the UR-700 or R-56 would have been better. But Korolev had too much clout, and I think even if he died earlier, Mishin would have been able to push the N1 through to approval. No first stage test stand would be built due to lack of funding, and therefore the first stage was always going to have major issues.
6. astronautix listed "bad luck" as a problem. I didn't have a problem handwaving this away in my counterfactual, but Korolev's death was impossible to prevent without preventing him from being sent to the Gulag- and perhaps changing the course of the Soviet space program- and no amount of luck could get around a lack of funding.

I was really looking forward to a realistic counterfactual in which the Space Race continued. For All Mankind is borderline fantasy, IMO.

Sadly, this isn't possible.

I was thinking of turning to the 1990s to see if the Energia program could continue and lead to a lunar landing, but it seems pretty unlikely. No one really wanted to go to the Moon in the 20th century, even Apollo was a sort of "Kennedy memorial" rather than something people wanted to do (in fact, Quest magazine had an interesting counterfactual written by Asif Siddiqi, the author of the book I used as the primary source for my research, in which Kennedy survives assassination and goes on to cancel the Apollo program later in the decade due to it being too expensive).

Ironically, Siddiqi calls the outcome of the Soviet lunar program "not inevitable" in the coda of the book (Challenge to Apollo). But it's hard to see how the N1, or any 1960s Soviet crewed lunar program, could have succeeded.

I'm not quite ready to give up though. I'm gonna being working hard to create a compelling world in which the Soviets landed first.

Oh, and to elaborate on the title, Ron D. Moore, creator of For All Mankind, claims the Soviets could have landed on the Moon if Korolev survived his surgery. It was unlikely he could. The surgery was not "botched" as Moore claimed in an interview. Korolev was very sick and had been in poor health through the decade prior to his demise, with a lot of stress brought on by the myriad of tasks associated with running the space program. He had a tumor the size of a fist around his pelvis. The Minister of Health of the USSR himself operated on him, albeit short staffed. The operation was actually completed successfully, he died 30 minutes later.

[Nuke]

its an ok space show, its only down side is its dreamed up by people from the united states of california. the desire to edit history is just too strong for them.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

To provide an example, the first four Soyuz vehicles were supposed to be built in 1964 at a cost of 80 million rubles, Korolev only got 30 million.

Spoiler

"First time?"

 

[tater]

Yeah, the premise is a fun one, but not realistic. Also, the show went sideways, I never watched past season 1, I saw the trailer with the Space Shuttle (as flown in RL) in it, and never watched season 2 at all.

Eyes Turned Skywards would have been a better model, IMNSHO.

[Spaceception]

4 hours ago, tater said:

Eyes Turned Skywards would have been a better model, IMNSHO

I've been reading about that in the last couple weeks, and it's such an interesting timeline that a part of me was wishing could've happened. Getting back to the Moon probably would've been smoother if we had been maintaining/upgrading Apollo hardware.

As for the topic itself of the Soviets reaching the Moon first, could there have been any points (either actual or manufactured) where they would've taken a Moonshot program more seriously like the US? Maybe the US has its own Sputnik moment in the early 60s, and beats the Soviets to the punch in a few critical milestones (they were close behind already) that spurs the Soviets on. But a pattern I've noticed in these historical comparisons between US and Soviet programs is how the US overestimated the Soviets and built up programs that exceeded what they were capable of. Such as our response to the Foxbat.

And maybe they couldn't beat us to the Moon, but what if they eventually made it after? We abandoned the Apollo program within a few years of the first Moon landing, but could it have gone on for a little longer, or pushed NASA towards architechtures that supported a return to the Moon better if the Soviets had made a successful crewed Lunar flyby or landing? What events would have to happen for that?

Edited October 24, 2023 by Spaceception
Other thoughts

[SunlitZelkova]

11 hours ago, Spaceception said:

As for the topic itself of the Soviets reaching the Moon first, could there have been any points (either actual or manufactured) where they would've taken a Moonshot program more seriously like the US? Maybe the US has its own Sputnik moment in the early 60s, and beats the Soviets to the punch in a few critical milestones (they were close behind already) that spurs the Soviets on. But a pattern I've noticed in these historical comparisons between US and Soviet programs is how the US overestimated the Soviets and built up programs that exceeded what they were capable of. Such as our response to the Foxbat.

I don’t think the issue was them not taking the US seriously. If either Khrushchev or Korolev took Gemini seriously enough to build Voskhod, we might be able to stretch that and have them push for a lunar program in 1962~ or so, when mock-ups and stuff for Apollo started being displayed and it appeared serious.

The problem is that the military wrote the paychecks for the space program, and due to the focus on the nuclear missile buildup, they weren’t eager to fund anything properly. Soyuz started in 1963 but didn’t fly until 1967 because of a lack of funding.

11 hours ago, Spaceception said:

And maybe they couldn't beat us to the Moon, but what if they eventually made it after? We abandoned the Apollo program within a few years of the first Moon landing, but could it have gone on for a little longer, or pushed NASA towards architechtures that supported a return to the Moon better if the Soviets had made a successful crewed Lunar flyby or landing? What events would have to happen for that?

This was highly unlikely, because the Soviets felt that the dinky LK would look embarrassing compared to the two man Apollo. This is the reason why they never launched a crew on the Zond/UR-500 despite it being well tested by 1970 or so.

The launch of a Soviet lunar flyby before 1969 was unlikely to spur on further funding for Apollo. The US was actually expecting the Soviets to do a flyby first and then land sometime in 1971, and yet funding still got cut.

Now on the other hand, things change if the UR-700 was somehow better funded and more ready by 1969. Historically, Mishin was able to continue with his plan for uncrewed L3 lunar landings and then moving onto to the three man LKM lunar lander in the 1980s until Glushko seized control of much of the space program from him. So a UR-700 lunar program might have continued after Apollo 11.

The UR-700 was built in packets compared to the monolithic N1, allowing the testing of the first stage on the ground, and might have had a chance at flying by 1975 if the Soviets didn’t give up on the UR-700 after Apollo 11.

But what if the UR-700 had more funding by 1969, maybe getting started in late 1964 instead of 1967, or we had a bombastic, rather than calculating, leader, who still wanted to usurp the Americans in some way.

The UR-700 would be attractive for launches post-Apollo. It carried three people, and Chelomei even had a neat little lunar base proposed that could be landed in a single launch. “Leapfrogging” the Americans was discussed in the aftermath of Apollo 11. It would have been too expensive with the N1, but with a better funded UR-700, it might have been possible.

As for the American response, we might see the creation of the lunar base architecture utilizing the Orbital Transfer Vehicle conceived in the 1980s sooner. NASA would either get more funding for a space station so the station could be used as a spaceport for a lunar transfer vehicle, or perhaps a space station would be cancelled and the Space Shuttle would be used for building lunar spacecraft instead of a station. Historically Nixon technically did commit to an Integrated Program Plan with the following steps-

1. Space Shuttle

2. Space station

3. Lunar base

4. Mars landing

BUT, he only funded the shuttle and gave a politician’s promise for the other three. Maybe President Ford or Carter would get started on the lunar base part of the Soviets landed in 76 or 77.

You’ve given me some ideas, but it’s going to take a lot of reading on Kremlin politics. Thanks!

[SunlitZelkova]

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Now on the other hand, things change if the UR-700 was somehow better funded and more ready by 1969. Historically, Mishin was able to continue with his plan for uncrewed L3 lunar landings and then moving onto to the three man LKM lunar lander in the 1980s until Glushko seized control of much of the space program from him. So a UR-700 lunar program might have continued after Apollo 11.

The UR-700 was built in packets compared to the monolithic N1, allowing the testing of the first stage on the ground, and might have had a chance at flying by 1975 if the Soviets didn’t give up on the UR-700 after Apollo 11.

But what if the UR-700 had more funding by 1969, maybe getting started in late 1964 instead of 1967, or we had a bombastic, rather than calculating, leader, who still wanted to usurp the Americans in some way.

The UR-700 would be attractive for launches post-Apollo. It carried three people, and Chelomei even had a neat little lunar base proposed that could be landed in a single launch. “Leapfrogging” the Americans was discussed in the aftermath of Apollo 11. It would have been too expensive with the N1, but with a better funded UR-700, it might have been possible.

As for the American response, we might see the creation of the lunar base architecture utilizing the Orbital Transfer Vehicle conceived in the 1980s sooner. NASA would either get more funding for a space station so the station could be used as a spaceport for a lunar transfer vehicle, or perhaps a space station would be cancelled and the Space Shuttle would be used for building lunar spacecraft instead of a station. Historically Nixon technically did commit to an Integrated Program Plan with the following steps-

1. Space Shuttle

2. Space station

3. Lunar base

4. Mars landing

BUT, he only funded the shuttle and gave a politician’s promise for the other three. Maybe President Ford or Carter would get started on the lunar base part of the Soviets landed in 76 or 77.

 

Okay, I’ve examined this option and found it isn’t really feasible. Getting the UR-700 approved around ‘64 or ‘65 required keeping Khrushchev in power, which wasn’t really feasible. It ended up requiring a spin-off which led to Apollo not existing. That’s a bit too alternate for me, I was hoping for something in the range of where historically proposed space programs could get approved.

Spaceflight development would also be a lot slower in that world. Without Apollo, perhaps the Soviets would land first, but nobody was going until the 1980s.

[Spaceception]

10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

The launch of a Soviet lunar flyby before 1969 was unlikely to spur on further funding for Apollo. The US was actually expecting the Soviets to do a flyby first and then land sometime in 1971, and yet funding still got cut.

Personally, I feel like if the Soviets had a functional Lunar program and had Cosmonauts walking on the surface, the US would not have canceled the Apollo missions for fear of looking like they "ceded" the Moon to the Soviets, and any budget cuts would be quickly reversed. National pride and all that. 

So the Apollo program would last as long as the Soviets continued landing Cosmonauts on the Moon, we likely wouldn't have a base/long term missions, but Moon landings would've continued well into the 70s at least. Maybe even an instance where Astronauts and Cosmonauts walked on the surface at the same time, though not necessarily an Apollo-Soyuz type moment.

I do have other thoughts, but I don't want to break rule 2. However, I wonder if there was a way their space program could've been pared back to siphon funds to a Lunar program, without stepping on ICBM buildup. It likely would've risked short term losses and ridicule as the US started taking a lead earlier in milestones, but maybe the long term accomplishment of proving they can match the US's capabilities would've been attractive? I don't know.

This thread actually did hit me with an idea for a Apollo 13/Apollo-Soyuz type story where a Soviet Cosmonaut becomes stranded on the surface, and an Apollo mission, intending to launch soon anyway, is quickly pushed to make a rescue attempt.

[adsii1970]

23 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Getting back to the Moon probably would've been smoother if we had been maintaining/upgrading Apollo hardware.

Yes, it would have been. I've done considerable research on what NASA's "architects" for the STS system wanted to do, not considering the budgetary restraints imposed by Congress. The STS was only the first "stage" to a more permanent presence in space (excuse the pun). Von Braun dreamed that it would be used to construct a mid-orbital platform, a space station, and then ferry crews and supplies to that station. Of course, Apollo was the first stage of that program because it showed humankind could go to the Moon. Skylab, which made use of Apollo 18 and 19 "spare parts," showed humankind could do extended missions in Earth orbit. Now, the ISS has shown us even more. There can be extended missions in orbit, supporting Von Braun's visions and theories of the possibilities of what a much larger space station could do for our efforts at space exploration. Now, back to Von Braun's original view, the orbiting station...

From that station, continued missions to the Moon would be launched, then return to the station with Lunar samples rather than returning to the Earth's surface. Eventually, the Moon would be colonized, using that space station as the starting point. In Von Braun's mind, and the minds of his contemporaries at NASA, the Moon would then become the "launchpad" for the exploration and eventual settlement of Mars.

[Spaceception]

14 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Yes, it would have been. I've done considerable research on what NASA's "architects" for the STS system wanted to do, not considering the budgetary restraints imposed by Congress. The STS was only the first "stage" to a more permanent presence in space (excuse the pun). Von Braun dreamed that it would be used to construct a mid-orbital platform, a space station, and then ferry crews and supplies to that station. Of course, Apollo was the first stage of that program because it showed humankind could go to the Moon. Skylab, which made use of Apollo 18 and 19 "spare parts," showed humankind could do extended missions in Earth orbit. Now, the ISS has shown us even more. There can be extended missions in orbit, supporting Von Braun's visions and theories of the possibilities of what a much larger space station could do for our efforts at space exploration.

I watched a video some months back about what STS and everything that encompassed it was intended to look like, very disappointing that it never came to fruition. We didn't even get a full Shuttle upgrade out of it.

[adsii1970]

They decided to do away with the abort CERV, believing there would never be such a catastrophic failure of the STS. Sadly, that was not an engineering decision but one directly related to the budgetary constraints by Congress.

If that system did exist, perhaps the crews of both Challenger and Columbia might have survived.

[SunlitZelkova]

11 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Personally, I feel like if the Soviets had a functional Lunar program and had Cosmonauts walking on the surface, the US would not have canceled the Apollo missions for fear of looking like they "ceded" the Moon to the Soviets, and any budget cuts would be quickly reversed. National pride and all that. 

So the Apollo program would last as long as the Soviets continued landing Cosmonauts on the Moon, we likely wouldn't have a base/long term missions, but Moon landings would've continued well into the 70s at least. Maybe even an instance where Astronauts and Cosmonauts walked on the surface at the same time, though not necessarily an Apollo-Soyuz type moment.

The problem is getting the Soviets there in the first place. They (Communist Party) weren’t interested in using the L3 after Apollo 11, because landing one man on the Moon after the US landed two would look weak.

Also, by the time the N1 was getting close to flying successfully (1974/75) the government was more interested in military space applications, namely Buran. A lunar base has no military utility, so even if the N1 flew once successfully it might get cancelled anyways. Heck, we have a historical example of such a situation, where Energia and Buran flew once and got cancelled in 1993.

[magnemoe]

On 10/24/2023 at 5:28 PM, Spaceception said:

I've been reading about that in the last couple weeks, and it's such an interesting timeline that a part of me was wishing could've happened. Getting back to the Moon probably would've been smoother if we had been maintaining/upgrading Apollo hardware.

As for the topic itself of the Soviets reaching the Moon first, could there have been any points (either actual or manufactured) where they would've taken a Moonshot program more seriously like the US? Maybe the US has its own Sputnik moment in the early 60s, and beats the Soviets to the punch in a few critical milestones (they were close behind already) that spurs the Soviets on. But a pattern I've noticed in these historical comparisons between US and Soviet programs is how the US overestimated the Soviets and built up programs that exceeded what they were capable of. Such as our response to the Foxbat.

 

And maybe they couldn't beat us to the Moon, but what if they eventually made it after? We abandoned the Apollo program within a few years of the first Moon landing, but could it have gone on for a little longer, or pushed NASA towards architechtures that supported a return to the Moon better if the Soviets had made a successful crewed Lunar flyby or landing? What events would have to happen for that?

Part of the reason was that the Soviet was very good liars. First its much easier in an totalitarian state. US government know its limits on that they can lie about. 
Say the top speed of an common fighter jet, it will leak and other observe them. Problem is that US and the west tend to believe all other operate the same way. 
It was much easier in the Soviet Union to come up with wild claims who would be hard to disprove, and they lied to themselves to, so having an high ranking spy would also give the same values. 

Now lying to yourself has serious problems as you overestimate your abilities. This will bite you if you need all of them. 
 

[kerbiloid]

The RD-270, designed for UR-700, also had pentaborane RD-270M and kerosene RD-270K for N1 variants.

With RD-270K, N-1 would have just 8 engines.

***

The competition between the ICBM developers was much hotter than any lunar race.
Actually, N-1 (and its GR-2 version) was needed by Korolyov to stay on scene after his R-9 and GR-1 had being kicked out.

***

Every known detail show that the lunar programs were being focused on military needs, and were having two objectives: to build a lunar fortress, and to have a weapon to destroy the opponent's base before it gets able to destroy your own, or to prevent its building.

Just the priority was opposite.
It was obvious that the first lunar fortress would be American (it's what the US space studies had started in mid-1950s, while the USSR didn't have a serious plan even in 1980s, and the economical abilities were different).

So, the US were focused on the base building, then having a weapon to destroy a Soviet base if any, while the SU was on base destroying, then may be building own.

The American lunar experience has shown that the base was impossible even for US, while the Soviet lunar and Martian probes gave the equipment to destroy it even it was built.
The lunar topic had been frozen by both.

The N-1 was first of all a multimegaton ICBM and global ICBM instead of GR-1 and R-36orb.
R-56 and UR-700 were this as well.
As MRV were being replaced with MIRV, and the accuracy was growng, while the yield was decreasing, there was no more need in huge ICBM like N-1 and UR-700, while the lunar base destruction could be easily performed by Protons equipped with M-2 (bigger E-6), E-8/rocket and E-8/lunokhod, equipped with nukes. 
So, there was no reason in the monstrous rockets, and this automatically meant cancellation of a lunar flight program. Because actually it wasn't practically needed, and was just a spending of money.
Americans have bought the flag on the Moon for the price of the Manhattan Project (both for 25 G$), it was probably the most expensive flag in the world.
The Russians have watched it on TV for free and returned to daily routines.

The inspirational and ideological significance of the flag planting in the USA was probably great, though this inspiration wasn't so much visible on practice, as volunteers in the draft office, to go to the Vietnam War.

On 10/25/2023 at 6:46 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

If either Khrushchev or Korolev took Gemini seriously enough to build Voskhod

Voskhod is just two more instances of the unmanned spysat.

Up to 1000 Vostoks have flown, and just 8 of them with a crew.

Edited October 26, 2023 by kerbiloid

[Codraroll]

18 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

The problem is getting the Soviets there in the first place. They (Communist Party) weren’t interested in using the L3 after Apollo 11, because landing one man on the Moon after the US landed two would look weak.

Also, by the time the N1 was getting close to flying successfully (1974/75) the government was more interested in military space applications, namely Buran. A lunar base has no military utility, so even if the N1 flew once successfully it might get cancelled anyways. Heck, we have a historical example of such a situation, where Energia and Buran flew once and got cancelled in 1993.

There's also the question of whether the Soviet Union had the money for that effort at that stage. The old "if only they had received more funding" exercise tends to assume the funding was feasible in the first place, with all the other expenses that were racking up and the inefficiency of the processes that gathered revenue. With the inefficiency of the Soviet economy, and all the military programs that competed for what little money there was, the space program might never have had any real chance. See also: present day.

6 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now lying to yourself has serious problems as you overestimate your abilities. This will bite you if you need all of them. 

Ahh, the lesson that every authoritarian state only ever seems to learn in hindsight. The tendency to dismantle the mechanisms that can unmask a lie and correct the course of the national politics, really tends to be the downfall of Dear Leaders everywhere. Yet somehow, after their successor re-erects those mechanisms and the country starts prospering again, a new Dear Leader thinks he can secure his tenure forever by dismantling them again. The outcome is usually the opposite. See also: present day.

[darthgently]

23 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Ahh, the lesson that every authoritarian state only ever seems to learn in hindsight. The tendency to dismantle the mechanisms that can unmask a lie and correct the course of the national politics, really tends to be the downfall of Dear Leaders everywhere.

Couldn't agree more.  So thankful this appears to be a fairly reliable mechanism in human culture and psychology

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, Codraroll said:

There's also the question of whether the Soviet Union had the money for that effort at that stage.

The USA had. Any essential result but six flags there and a half-tonne of regolith here?

7 hours ago, Codraroll said:

With the inefficiency of the Soviet economy, and all the military programs that competed for what little money there was, the space program might never have had any real chance. See also: present day.

Present day: no lunar base, no lunar flights, Orion and weak SLS of unclear perspectives and weird halo-orbit (just planned), no lunar industry, no profit, no lunar science, martian/lunar Starship which will fly there just right as soon as possible this decade or maybe not.

Wasn't aware, that USA has Soviet economy. But the practical result is same. Maybe, not the economy is the reason...

Present day: you mean Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East today? Yes, maybe. But unlikely.

8 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Ahh, the lesson that every authoritarian state only ever seems to learn in hindsight.

US failed the space flight. Only former NSDAP member Von Braun saved it.

[KSK]

Apologies if this has already been mentioned and I missed it.

I’m thinking that a failed Apollo 8 mission could be a jumping off point for a Soviet first lunar landing alt history, possibly followed by a successful Zond free return flight. 

I think it would take something like that to set the Apollo programme back far enough that the Soviets could catch up and, more importantly, make them believe there was still a chance of catching up. Apollo 8 and the whole Earthrise thing was a much needed political boost for Apollo as well as a technical milestone.

The successive N1 flights did get… well less unsuccessful as they went on, if I recall correctly. It doesn’t seem completely impossible that they could have brute forced enough of the bugs out to get one symbolic  lunar mission out of it.

[SunlitZelkova]

38 minutes ago, KSK said:

Apologies if this has already been mentioned and I missed it.

I’m thinking that a failed Apollo 8 mission could be a jumping off point for a Soviet first lunar landing alt history, possibly followed by a successful Zond free return flight. 

I think it would take something like that to set the Apollo programme back far enough that the Soviets could catch up and, more importantly, make them believe there was still a chance of catching up. Apollo 8 and the whole Earthrise thing was a much needed political boost for Apollo as well as a technical milestone.

The successive N1 flights did get… well less unsuccessful as they went on, if I recall correctly. It doesn’t seem completely impossible that they could have brute forced enough of the bugs out to get one symbolic  lunar mission out of it.

One issue is that the N1 was never going to successfully fly until 1974/75, and then not with crew until 1976. I don’t think Apollo could ever be delayed that long.

[magnemoe]

On 10/26/2023 at 10:53 PM, Codraroll said:

There's also the question of whether the Soviet Union had the money for that effort at that stage. The old "if only they had received more funding" exercise tends to assume the funding was feasible in the first place, with all the other expenses that were racking up and the inefficiency of the processes that gathered revenue. With the inefficiency of the Soviet economy, and all the military programs that competed for what little money there was, the space program might never have had any real chance. See also: present day.

Who probably was an US strategy later on. Get the Soviet into high tech arms races as this was the US strength and they had the strongest economy. 

On 10/26/2023 at 10:53 PM, Codraroll said:

Ahh, the lesson that every authoritarian state only ever seems to learn in hindsight. The tendency to dismantle the mechanisms that can unmask a lie and correct the course of the national politics, really tends to be the downfall of Dear Leaders everywhere. Yet somehow, after their successor re-erects those mechanisms and the country starts prospering again, a new Dear Leader thinks he can secure his tenure forever by dismantling them again. The outcome is usually the opposite. See also: present day.

Yes but if its very dangerous to give the dear leader bad news the leader will not get bad news, this filter downward and corruption makes this much worse.  
 

[kerbiloid]

The USSR had developed several tens types of ICBM and SLBM of all kinds, had built thousands silos.

The N1 was cancelled because it was not acually needed.

Immediately after its cancellation, Energy/Buran had been successfully developed and launched.

Wet fantasies about autoritarism have no relation to the dull reality.

[TheSaint]

I think there are ways that the Soviet Union could have made it to the Moon first.

I've always said that if we want to thank one person for the U.S. winning the race to the Moon, we should thank Lee Harvey Oswald. I think that if Kennedy had not been assassinated Congress would have fought much harder against funding for NASA. The battle in Congress all through the Cold War was always "Guns vs Butter". NASA was neither of those. The only reason Apollo got the funding it did after 1963 was because we were doing it for Kennedy's memory. If there had not been those emotional heart strings plucked, sure, I think that Apollo could have been delayed past 1970, 1972, or later. Why do you think all the funding dried up after we landed on the Moon? Because we fulfilled Kennedy's goal. We were done.

I also think that different circumstances in Soviet leadership could have changed things on that side as well. What if Korolev had not been imprisoned by Stalin, and therefore never developed the kidney disease that ultimately claimed his life? What if Khrushchev had played his cards better and hadn't been ousted by Brezhnev? There's all sorts of possibilities on that side of the pond.

So there probably isn't one single inflection point you could tweak that would make it happen, but a number of different changes could make it possible. It just depends on how much you want to tweak history. Just remember: Ultimately, it isn't about technology. It's about politics and money.

[Codraroll]

On 10/27/2023 at 6:57 AM, kerbiloid said:

The USA had. Any essential result but six flags there and a half-tonne of regolith here?

Arguably, the Moon landing was more about a demonstration of capability than about the results. The capability to pull off a feat like that, with all it involves of technology, essential resources, and project management, resulted in more tangible results than the flags and footprints. But of course, the flags and footprints created a big moral boost too.

On 10/27/2023 at 6:57 AM, kerbiloid said:

Present day: no lunar base, no lunar flights, Orion and weak SLS of unclear perspectives and weird halo-orbit (just planned), no lunar industry, no profit, no lunar science, martian/lunar Starship which will fly there just right as soon as possible this decade or maybe not.

Wasn't aware, that USA has Soviet economy. But the practical result is same.

Oh, I wouldn't say "the same". The US is still developing capable rockets and have pulled off some rather impressive robotic space missions, much of it using the lessons learned from the lunar program. Contrast the sorry and ever-shrinking mess that remains of the Soviet space program these days. It's been decades since any meaningful innovations on the rocketry front (the last of which was left derelict and destroyed when its hangar collapsed due to a lack of maintenance), or any successful missions beyond Earth orbit.

On 10/27/2023 at 6:57 AM, kerbiloid said:

US failed the space flight. Only former NSDAP member Von Braun saved it.

The US didn't start spaceflight until Von Braun got involved, and they managed to design new types of rockets and successful missions after he retired. Contrast again how the Soviet space program stagnated after Korolev died.

8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Yes but if its very dangerous to give the dear leader bad news the leader will not get bad news, this filter downward and corruption makes this much worse.

Exactly, that's one such mechanism. If Dear Leader makes all the big decisions, and he discourages his underlings from giving him bad news, inevitably the big decisions will be made based on false information. Mao gave history some spectacularly awful examples of that in action ("Now that food production is up to hundreds of tons per acre, we don't need as many farmers anymore! Let's melt down the farming tools to make steel!"). And if the whole system is set up like this, with a pyramid of bosses who only promote those who please them, things will go pretty bad pretty fast.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Codraroll

[wumpus]

On 10/26/2023 at 4:53 PM, Codraroll said:

There's also the question of whether the Soviet Union had the money for that effort at that stage. The old "if only they had received more funding" exercise tends to assume the funding was feasible in the first place, with all the other expenses that were racking up and the inefficiency of the processes that gathered revenue. With the inefficiency of the Soviet economy, and all the military programs that competed for what little money there was, the space program might never have had any real chance. See also: present day.

Ahh, the lesson that every authoritarian state only ever seems to learn in hindsight. The tendency to dismantle the mechanisms that can unmask a lie and correct the course of the national politics, really tends to be the downfall of Dear Leaders everywhere. Yet somehow, after their successor re-erects those mechanisms and the country starts prospering again, a new Dear Leader thinks he can secure his tenure forever by dismantling them again. The outcome is usually the opposite. See also: present day.

Another point is that post Apollo funding for NASA withered and died.  Skylab was launched (and crewed) with Apollo hardware, and after that they sat around and designed a millstone to tie themselves to called "STS/Shuttle" (this lead to great political success with Congress easily budgeting for sunk costs, but often seen as a technical loss).

If Soviet rocketry had spent the money needed, how long could they maintain it?  And when the Kremlin/military was no longer interested, would they still be capable of creating all those space stations, crewing said space stations, and developing the Energia engines?

I think this also ignores all the things that could have gone wrong for NASA:  mostly involving the death of the crew  (especially after burning the crew of Apollo 1 to death) of Apollo 11 and subsequent unwillingness to continue trying.  NASA seemed to be blessed with sufficient contingency plans to allow major failures of any one project to be sidelined and replaced with another project (my favorite: the AJ260 boosters that were more powerful than the shuttle SRBs.  If they couldn't make the biggest stable combustion chamber ever for the F1s, the AJ260 could do even more).

I will admit that I'm blanking for many more ways for NASA to fail: it would probably require political games such as keeping von Braum out of the system (like with Vanguard).  The great thing about the Apollo project (including Gemini) was that it was effectively an entire new bureaucracy, built from the ground up to do one thing, and said thing had a sufficiently hard deadline to allow them to ignore meddling politicians.  There are plenty of ways for Artemis to fail that really wouldn't have applied to Apollo, and even Artemis was designed first and foremost to be resistant to being canceled by Congress (all technical decisions were secondary).

[magnemoe]

12 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Exactly, that's one such mechanism. If Dear Leader makes all the big decisions, and he discourages his underlings from giving him bad news, inevitably the big decisions will be made based on false information. Mao gave history some spectacularly awful examples of that in action ("Now that food production is up to hundreds of tons per acre, we don't need as many farmers anymore! Let's melt down the farming tools to make steel!"). And if the whole system is set up like this, with a pyramid of bosses who only promote those who please them, things will go pretty bad pretty fast.

Note that this is also serious true in companies, and worse in startups with an charismatic leader. Might even be worse as even deniers might join in to sell closer to the top. 
Benefit is that its just investors loosing their money, not famines so not an big deal. But the effect should be known. 

And none need to be evil in the investor case, most benefited from a housing bobble until it burst, the buyers the sellers the banks and the politicians, and the politician who tried to stop the bobble would been the villain crunching the housing dream for so many. Now I would blame the banks if they worked outside regulations. None feel bad for nationalizing some greedy banks who was way outside regulating limits even if limits had not been enforced for decades.