If it was the Second World War, who do you think would launch to the first satellite

[DerekL1963]

As a point for the Allies I would like to point out Operation Aphrodite. Building a remote control guidance system using TV cameras is a promising start for guiding a rocket probe, and with the Allies' advances in radar technology with enough funding they could definitely develop a control system that could control the rocket from the ground, not a trailing control aircraft.

It's worth pointing out that radar/radio control is *exactly* the approach the US took for early ICBM's and to update the guidance and navigation systems of the early sea launched cruise missiles. The decision, in the case of the Atlas, to rely entirely on inertial systems was not taken lightly and without some trepidation. Inertial guidance, despite not suffering from the doldrums that other missile technologies did post war, still took a great deal of work to bring to an acceptable level of precision and reliability.

If you haven't read Mackenzie's "Inventing Accuracy", it's a pretty decent history of the development of guidance and navigation systems from the end of WWII to the mid 80's.

[chrischambers]

it would have been Germans, cos the USA take all the research and equitment back to the USA and build theh Apollo project on the back of the research, the same way the USA do's today.

[Seret]

Building something that's so overcomplicated and beyond your infrastructure is the North Korean approach to a space program, and isn't going to get something into orbit.

I agree with your points, the Tiger was probably not a great analogy. But the fact remains that the Germans did manage a rocketry programme that routinely achieved the right result (although the did also manage to produce some heroic padsplode; some great videos online). As some other posters have pointed out, their rockets weren't really any more sophisticated than they needed to be. Whether they could have produced more sophisticated ones, who knows? I would put money on yes, they had talented people who were able to achieve impressive stuff in the face of incredible practical obstacles.

All up though, the whole premise of this thread is a bit out there. It's so hypothetical there's no "right" answer, and most of the stuff that would have to have happened differently are such fundamental departures from reality that it's really just wild speculation.

[Apotheosist]

The Germans had like radio beam guidance they used to bomb certain places in Britain. They would beam two different signals from different points on Europe, from France I think, using big radio transmitters. The transmitters could transmit radio beams in a straight line, like a lazer. The Germans had receivers on board bombers, they would follow these beams using headphones to listen to the beam signal, and where the beams intersected, the bombers would hear the different signal, and drop their bombs. The British spent a lot of time trying to figure out/find the frequencies the Germans used, and tried to transmit their own signals to interfere with the German signal so that the German bombers could not find their target. Wernher would have liked to have used this radio beam system to guide his rockets, but the Luftwaffe had priority on it. The Germans certainly had advanced guidance technologies. They could have used radio beam guidance to guide a rocket to obit.

[Van Disaster]

The British also had radio guidance systems like that ( Oboe, GEE, G-H ) plus a bit of a lead in radar work, so that is no advantage to the Germans. Orbital launchers are a bit of a world away from even ICBMs, so I am somewhat inclined to think the side with the largest science & manufacturing pool would win - but mostly in WW2 science was driven by need, so probably whoever had the most urgent need would do it first.

[Wallace]

Not entirely sure what the question is saying, but I'm assuming it to mean if the war had continued as a stalemate and there had been no big geopolitical change as a result of the end of it.

Funny thing is, a lot of people are saying the Germans because they got a head start, however, the US was the first to get to the German's V2 building facilities and took all the best tech and tried to destroy the rest leaving the Soviets with just a few scraps and with operation paperclip they got hold of most of the top German scientists, so the early US space program aquired most of the early start advantage from the German rocketry program. Yet despite that the Soviets completely dominated in the space race until the late 60's, so apparently all that German tech and expertise didn't really help the US much at all.

[Brotoro]

Deutschland, über alles.

[wasmic]

Weell, the germans had by far the most advanced rocket technology. However, had the war dragged on, Berlin would have been nuked, and the war would have ended, producing about the same result, that is, the USSR being first. If the nuke hadn't been invented, Germany would have been the first to launch something into space (and they wouldn't have used their rockets to launch nukes, as their nuclear technology was inferior - they had only gotten to controlled fission at the time that the US had gotten to "controlled" chain reactions, IIRC)