Yeah, I read about some of the Lunar Gemini plans on Astronautix. I have to admit that I think it might have been a stretch--McDouglas trying to get any sort of spacecraft contract it could. Going that direction would have led to "feature creep", throwing in everything including a kitchen sink, which, to me, would have diluted Gemini's strength: A straightforward craft, potentially cheap to mass produce.

I think that a Gemini to the Moon in 66/67 would likely have been an orbital mission only--Grumman was still struggling with the LM. Great PR coup, but the stimulus might have gotten the Russkies to the Moon ahead of us, let alone Mars.

] that Brezhnev could have ordered the Soviet spaceprogram to go ALL OUT [money and resources no object] to send Soviet cosmonauts to at least loop around Mars in 1976 [your American bicentennial year] and return safely.

That would have stung in 76, but it wouldn't have ended there--the US would have responded with some even more impressive space coup. Given the stagnation of the last couple of decades in this universe, that alternate universe doesn't sound half bad.

--Robert