[Other] To The Cosmos We Go/The Second Space Race Universe

[Nicholander]

This is pretty much just an explanation of a alternative history universe I thought of, so it's not a book or video game or any of that stuff. So, without further ado:

Basics/Point Of Divergence: Khrushchev ends up being a strong democratic socialist, and after gaining power after the death of Stalin, started to de-Stalinize the USSR MUCH MUCH more faster and extremer the IRL, and this creates some power struggles in the Politburo, but Khrushchev ends up winning all of them, he is also never ousted, and stays leader of The Soviet Union until his death in 1971. The Soviet union becomes the 2nd nation to land a man on the moon in 1971. A semi-hardline premier Oleg Voronov takes power after Khrushchev's death, and starts reverting some of Khrushchev's democratic socialist policies. In 1986, Voronov is assassinated by a Ukrainian Nationalist, though the assassination was somewhat unrelated to the situation in the USSR at the time, it was happened when there were cries and voices demanding Voronov's resignation, as the fears of another Stalinist tyrant started to become real, as as his regime continued, more and more hardline. The Politburo then choose reformist Verochka Gagolin, who's "Reform And Compromise" policy quickly eased the rising tension between the US and the USSR because of Voronov. Mir-2 starts construction in 1992, and the Buran is also successful. Gagolin resigned in February 2002, as he was in his late 70's at this point and for his reason for resignation he said that the election of Republican George W. Bush in 2001 would result in a new era of tensions between the superpowers, and that he was incapable of dealing with it. He also choose that the 24 year-old Vladimir Chekov, a member of the Politburo, to be the premier. Also, a Republican wins the 2008 election due to what is universally considered the most election fraud in any election in US history, but Obama wins the 2012 election.

Also, you can find some stuff about this here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/88793-Realism-Of-A-Space-Thing-I-m-Writing

Basic Space Stuff: Because of Khrushchev's democratic socialism, many parts of the Soviet political system where completely changed and modified, all with centralization, efficiency, and getting officials and workers to cooperate, and in the Soviet space programs case, stop many of the things that ended up dooming the Soviet Lunar program, such as the "Reinventing of the wheel" problem, like on design team making something that does exactly what another design team is making, but they don't interchange anything they make. Korolev and Chelomi don't hate each other as much, so Chelomi decides to make the N1 engines that would have probably saved the N1. The USSR lands on the moon in 1971, and Korolev also doesn't die until late 1972. In 1975, the Soviet's also send a Jupiter flyby probe named "Yupiter-1", which is successful, and also manages to get a pretty close "Mini-flyby" of Europa. The US also manages to make Space Station Freedom, with the first module launched in 1988. The Buran program is a huge success, and all the missions are also called "BTS" (Buran Transport System). The US-Soviet relations during the Clinton era where quite good, and this lead to many anti-nuclear treaties, etc. It also lead to 3 international missions: Buran-Shuttle, the first Buran, Snowstorm, docked with Columbia in LEO, thus making the first international docking since 1975. There where 22 other missions, where the Buran docked with Space Station Freedom and vice-versa. The shuttle is still canceled in 2011.

That's all I'll put for now, but there are many more things that I'll put here in edits, such as the launch vehicles, more details on the spacecraft, the second space race (Partially documented in that link), etc.

Also, feel free to put criticisms, suggestions, and other stuff related to this if you want!

MODS: I don't know which forum this would go in, so I put it in here. If this is in the wrong place, please move it.