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Space Exploration II: Always Looking up

Christina Koch's POV of the "Pink Pony Club" radio wakeup in space.


The "Yes! Wait, where's the chorus? NO! Call them!" is absolutely sending me. 😂
 
Just because SpaceX sucks doesn't mean Blue Origin also doesn't suck.
aplwq5.jpg
 
How can you not be romantic for space travel after some of the views from the Artemis?

 
For lack of a better place to put this…

In watching For All Mankind and its upcoming spinoff Star City, everyone loves the whole “what if the Soviets beat the Americans to the Moon” premise. But I saw a more intriguing premise: What if the US had beaten the Soviets in putting the first man in space?
 
For lack of a better place to put this…

In watching For All Mankind and its upcoming spinoff Star City, everyone loves the whole “what if the Soviets beat the Americans to the Moon” premise. But I saw a more intriguing premise: What if the US had beaten the Soviets in putting the first man in space?
I had to stop watching that after just the 2nd season. One premise that I could not ever get over was the idea of totally unlimited budgets, since that is what it would have cost to put a base on the moon back then.

When they put a Korean War vet on Mars when he had to be eligible for Medicare just ended it for me.
 
I had to stop watching that after just the 2nd season. One premise that I could not ever get over was the idea of totally unlimited budgets, since that is what it would have cost to put a base on the moon back then.

When they put a Korean War vet on Mars when he had to be eligible for Medicare just ended it for me.
They actually answered the budget question pretty cleverly. Basically, in FAMK, NASA gets to hold onto to its patents and the profits from licensing said patents to companies.

Back to my original question though…
 
They actually answered the budget question pretty cleverly. Basically, in FAMK, NASA gets to hold onto to its patents and the profits from licensing said patents to companies.

Back to my original question though…
That *might* have covered one rocket engine for the Mars mission. But there wasn't enough time to put that base on the moon. Let alone abandon them there for a long time. Or put a astronaut back in space when he had mental issues from being on the moon for a really long time... Edit- let alone having NASA profit from their work is very communist. Imagine the US government owning an EV maker....

But it's drama, I guess.

To your original question- not sure it would have changed much, assuming that the paths taken stayed the same. The biggest issue for development time was the paths that were taken- the Soviets used well known ICBM missile engines to get into space- using a lot or a WHOLE lot of them given the rocket. Whereas the US were developing new motors- which is where Mercury really struggled. But in the end, what was learned turned into the program to develop to develop the massive J-2 engines to power the Saturn V- which flew without a launch failure.

But I don't see the Soviets being able to change much in their program- once committed to the group of ICBM motors, a change would have set them back years. But in the end, the chest thumping was to show the world which country could actually make the best missiles. Which would have kept the Soviets in the space race.
 
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