I know this isn't much consolation, but I think it is *very* unlikely that a Mars follow-on to Apollo would have survived the 1970s. It's just possible that if Nixon had really pushed in 1968/69 he could have gotten it through initially, but between economic pressures to cut spending, the post-Vietnam distrust of technology or big government projects, the anti-nuclear movement that would have killed NERVA, and the post-Watergate desire to deny Nixon the legacy of being the president who got us to Mars, it would have come to a screeching halt, and probably left us with no program whatsoever. Along the way, it might well have devoured space science money to an even greater extent than Shuttle did (a point explored decently in Steven Baxter's otherwise terrible, terrible book _Voyage_), leaving us in 1980 with no shuttle, no Mars mission, no Voyager/Viking/whatever, no nothing.
Hell, my pet counterfactual is that we might not even have had moon landings if Kennedy had lived. By 1966 it was clear that we'd basically won the space race (even the Soviets could pull a few stunts), the Sputnik scare had been replaced with teh reality of Apollo budget, and Vietnam was starting to eat up money. "Honoring our slain president's legacy" was a nice political trump card, whereas if he'd still been in office, it could have just been attacked as Kennedy's moondoggle. I suspect not letting the Sovs get there first would still have won out, but the politics would have been close and you might have seen the program limited to a single landing.
Space/Science » in reply to I agree
re: I agree
The whole thread (44 posts)
- Mike Griffin's road map to Mars
- I think rocket technology is about as good as it's going to get
- Other good points
- I agree
- The 30+ years hasn't been a complete waist.
- re: I agree
- Could the shuttles be redesigned?
- I agree