re what if the ussr had reached the moon first in article apr zeus calpoly edu jgreen trumpet calpoly edu james thomas green writes suppose the soviets had managed to get their moon rocket working and had made it first they could have beaten us if either their rocket hadn t blown up on the pad thus setting them back and or a saturn v went boom the apollo fire was harsh a saturn v explosion would have been hurtful but the soviets winning would have been crushing that could have been the technological turning point for the us turning us from today s we can do anything we re the super power to a much more reserved attitude like the soviet program today kennedy was gone by the war was still on is the east i think the program would have stalled badly and the goal of the moon by would have been dead with nasa trying to figure were they went wrong 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 i speulate that the saturn program would have been pushed into the s with cost over runs that would just be too evil nixon still wins the shuttle was never proposed and skylab never built by the program stalled yet again under the fuel crisis a string of small launches mark the mid seventies by the goal of a us man on the moon is dead and the us space program drifts till the present day james t green jgreen oboe calpoly edu i believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth john f kennedy may
