re what if the ussr had reached the moon first jgreen trumpet calpoly edu james thomas green writes if they had beaten us i speculate that the us would have gone head and done some landings but we also would have been more determined to set up a base both in earth orbit and on the moon whether or not we would be on mars by now would depend upon whether the soviets tried to go setting up a lunar base would have stretched the budgets of both nations and i think that the military value of a lunar base would outweigh the value of going to mars at least in the short run thus we would have concentrated on the moon great speculation i remember being proud on behalf of all the free world you think that way when you are seven years old that we had got there first now i m almost sorry that it worked out that way i guess the soviets would have taken the victory seriously too and would almost certainly not have fallen victim to the complacency that overtook the us program perhaps stretching to match us efforts would have destabilized them sooner than it did in fact and in the tradition of marvel comics what if this destabilization in the brezhnev era might have triggered the third world war hmm maybe it was a giant leap after all internet pete extro su oz au accept everything uucp uunet mcvax munnari extro pete reject nothing
