Space Half Wank

[wkwillis]

What if there is no "space race" in the first man into orbit, first man to land on moon sense?
Say we just build a standard 90 ton solid rocket, 9 ton pressure fed monopropellant, and one ton payload module with only very small maneuvering capability cold gas jets?
We still get LEO comsats and camsats. We still can relay phone calls and television across the oceans, though the satellite dishes have to be mobile.
The cost is much lower.
Space probes to the outer planets aren't going to happen till much later. You need solar sails or magnetic sails or radioisotope powered ion engines to get out there, plus long time reliable spacecraft.
The space program winds up about as big and important as the US Coast Guard.
POD? Wallace takes over and doesn't bother to have a cold war? No Korean War?

 

[Michel Van]

for that TL wank works
must be no "Cold war" (very unrealistic with Stalin, Mao and co)

Space Flight would be reduce to science satillite in Low Orbit and Comsat.

Low orbit Comsat ?
you got radio black out as one sat move out of range and next sat move in.

GEO Comsat came very fast in OTL 1960s
in this TL also

 

[alt_historian]

How is this even a "half-wank"?

If anything, OTL was a half-wank: what happened between 1957-1975 was the wank but, and the rest was not.

You don't need 'no Cold War' for this - all you need is for missiles to be seen as less reliable MRBMs/ICBMs than OTL, enough for development of these to be shelved, and the money invested instead in bombers for long-range nuclear delivery, despite their inconveniences. Remember that both the US and Soviet manned space programmes came off the back of ICBM programmes.