Purpose of this section - PLEASE READ

[overscan (PaulMM)]

This section "Alternative History and Future Speculation" is primarily intended for discussions about how different circumstances could have, or could in the future, affect what projects get built or cancelled. It is not intended as a general purpose "Alternative History" forum to discuss any conceivable topic. Try to avoid topics likely to provoke controversy or disputes.

 

[Archibald]

Basically - alternate ships tanks aircraft rockets or technology.
NOT alternate politics / social policies: this is for AH.com.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

This post got unstickied somehow. Pinned to top again.

So, just to be clear, this is NOT a general Alternate History forum. I'm not interested in topics on major departures from known history (Jet Aircraft of Rome or Carthage for example) or discussion of alternative history in and of itself.

This forum is for discussing how history could have gone a different path with relation to the core forum topics of "Unbuilt Projects, Military and Aerospace Technology".

Pure "alternative design" exercises might be better placed in the Aircraft Design topic https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forums/aircraft-design.74/

 

[C0de.R.E.A.M.]

love this idea! I think about alternative futures resulting from underfunded, political, poorly timed and overly ambitious technological opportunities all the time. One I will throw in here to start a discussion if anyone is interested in opining about is Lunex - the US Air Force's plans to have a lunar military base by the 1970s.

came across - https://i2massociates.com/downloads/SecretLunarExpeditionPlanLunex1961.pdf

I love thinking about where we would be if the AF had followed through on Project Lunex, we could have had a military moon base years before Apollo. Unlike NASA's approach, Lunex appears to have planned a direct lunar landing with a lifting-body reentry vehicle which is basically an early version of the Space Shuttle. The launch system they envisioned could've changed spacelfiht by giving the US a true heavy-lift capability wayyyy ahead of its time.

As the article shows, the timeline was wildly optimistic and just too ambitious. 1967 for a manned Moon landing sounds almost delusional given the tech gaps they had to overcome (unless there was some fancy tech that was recovered from UAP crash recoveries that various defense companies/agencies didn't want to share/disclose to fill gaps in problems, causing political bickering and delaying things unnecessarily ;-)). But if Lunex had been pursued instead of Apollo, could we have seen a military-run space program take the lead over civilian efforts and also expand military efforts in the solar system? Would space stations today look more like military outposts/waystations than the current look of research hubs? Curious to hear your thoughts!

P.S. Apologies if this has already been discussed somewhere, just saw this topic and couldn’t resist.

 

[Byeman]

just pie in the sky nonsense. Much like 10,000 Minuteman deployment. NASA was specifically create to prevent this.