Possible historical points of divergence for a true in-space economy by 2030-40s? [closed]

Question

And by in-space economy I meant one where there are bases (from science to mining) on the Moon and Mars, space stations (for scientific, residential, manufacturing, etc.) galore around Earth's orbit, maybe the beginnings of some prospecting in the asteroid belt for mines from some companies/nations. I'm not a history or politics nerd by any means but I think (in my very uninformed opinion) had NASA's budget not been gutted by succeeding administrations, more incentives for companies to go to space, greater collaborations w/ different space agencies or just having a good political will to keep getting to space in the years after the space race might do but I'm curious to see what others think.

I've been using this as my main resource: https://www.factoriesinspace.com/graphs/In-Space-Economy-2021_Erik-Kulu_IAC2021.pdf, which talks about all the stuff that an in-space economy should make up (commercial space stations, commercial human spaceflight, in-space manufacturing, surface bases, asteroid mining etc.) [don't really know if that's relevant to determining PODs (Points of Divergence) but I thought every little bit helps for clarifying].

So, what I meant to say after all that jumbled mess of words is: what are possible divergences in history that can lead to an accelerated progress of Earth's nations having an in-space economy?

Answer 1

What are possible divergences in history that can lead to an accelerated progress of Earth's nations having an in-space economy?

Personally, I think we are already on quite a fast track.

While many of the space "firsts" like the Lunar landing were done over 50 years ago, it needs to be remembered that these were in no way "sustainable" from a fiscal point of view, and were rather risky endeavors. Once the competition was gone (collapse of Soviet Union), there just wasn't that much appetite anymore to fund extremely expensive prestige projects like Apollo

This brings me to my first suggestion,

Prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union:

Now, this is a big ask. The reason the Soviet Union collapsed are multifaceted and, to many modern historians, an inevitable consequence of the system by which it functioned. Nevertheless, it is possible to conceive of an alt-history Soviet Union which did not collapse: one which made smarter choices, perhaps had a few of the more problematic figures die unexpectedly, etc.

In such a system, it would be conceivable that the race to the Moon was much closer than it was in reality (by the time the Americans were on Apollo, any early lead the Soviets had already been overtaken for quite a while). In this alt-history, where the Soviets had more money for the space program, you might get something like in the show "For all Mankind" which essentially explores this option.

With a stronger Soviet Union, it is conceivable that the space race does not die, causing both governments to continue pouring resources into their respective space programs, and this could easily result in a more developed space economy as of 2024.

Then, there is the scifi-fantasy suggestion,

Find something unbelievable on the Moon:

What if, when we landed on the Moon the first time, we found that the lunar surface was littered with room-temperature semiconductors or some similar magical more-valuable-than-gold "unobtainium" material that can't be found anywhere else? This would've surely put real energy into the industry, because it's no longer about footprints and science samples, but infinite energy or whatever you can get from the unobtanium. Costs would be high, but, in this scenario, worth it.

Similarly, conclusive evidence of intelligent alien life, such as a 2001-style monolith or alien ruins found on the Moon or in space in general would open up the space-program funding infrastructure to so much more, from religious groups to national security interests all contributing into the money-pot instead of just scientists.

Answer 2

I fully agree with @Dragongeek that the only way to keep the flame burning and the rockets flying is to keep the Soviet Union alive and well. Go upvote @Dragongeek's answer, as I have done. What I want to do here is to offer a concrete believable solution for avoiding the Brezhnevian Stagnation of the 1970s and 1980s, and the public relations disaster which was the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

1. (Real history) On 13 October 1964, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which was technically the collective head of state of the Soviet Union, led by Chairman Leonid Brezhnev held a special meeting where First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Premier of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev was strongly advised to resign his positions. He complied, and the Presidium accepted his resignations on the very next day, 14 October. Khrushchev got to live to 1971 is confortable retirement; his memoires were published in 1970. (The link goes to Amazon. Of course his memoires were published in the West; after his removal he was a non-person in the Soviet Union.)

2. (Real history) Anastas Mikoyan becomes Chairman of the Supreme Soviet (and thus nominal head of state), Leonid Brezhnev becomes First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Alexei Kosygin becomes Premier of the Soviet Union; the idea was to avoid concentrating two of the three topmost positions into the hands of the same person.

3. (First departure) Anastas Mikoyan uses his position as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet and successfully isolates Nikolai Podgorny, who won't make it to the position of Chairman of the Supreme Soviet and thus saves us a lot of difficulties further on.

4. (Real history) In September 1965 Premier Alexei Kosygin presents his ideas of economic reform to the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The economic reform, articulated by Evsei Liberman, economics professor at the Kharkov Institute of Engineering and Economics, called for the introduction of profitability and sales as the two key indicators of enterprise success; moreover, part of the profits were to be retained by the enterprises, to be used to reward contributors and to develop the operations.

   The Plenum of CC of the CPSU approves the economic reforms, and directs Gosplan to initiate the work for the Eighth Five-Year Plan on the new direction.

5. (Second departure) With the help of Anastas Mikoyan, Alexei Kosygin emerges victorious from the murky struggle for power with Leonid Brezhnev. Mikoyan and Kosygin support Yuri Andropov in his bid to oust hard-liner Vladimir Semichastny and his even more hard-line mentor Alexander Shelepin from their positions of control of the KGB, and in return Andropov opposes Brezhnev's attempts to strengthen the Party apparatus and muzzles all attempts to use the press, notably Pravda, to criticize the reforms introduced by Kosygin.

6. (Final departure) At the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the reformist faction defeats the conservative faction, and Alexei Kosygin is elected General Secretary of the CPSU. With hard-liner Brezhnev out of the way, the chances of success of the Soviet Union are greatly improved.

7. (Alternate history) The Eighth Five-Year Plan is a roaring success. (In real history it was not more than a modest success.) Production of consumer goods overtakes the production of capital goods, and most industrial enterprises become accustomed with operating in a controlled market economy.

   Victor Glushkov is appointed head of the Cybernetics Council replacing Aksel Berg, and his brain-child the National Automated System for Computation and Information Processing (OGAS in Russian) is fully implemented, actually achieving the objectives of increasing economic productivity.

8. (Alternate history) The Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko reaches a gentlemen's agreement with Alexander Dubček. The Soviet Union leaves Czechoslovakia to try to find its own path towards a developed socialist society; the 1968 invasion of the Czechoslovakia does not take place, thus avoiding the disastrous political side-effects and allowing a smooth transition to better economic relationships with the West.

9. (Alternate history) Knowing full well that he was on borrowed time, the famous Soviet rocketeer Sergei Korolev arranges that in the event of his death the leadership of the Soviet space program will go to Valentin Glushko. (In real history, it went to the useless Vasily Mishin.)

   Korolev dies in 1966 as in real history, but Glushko proves to be a much better manager than Mishin, has a better grasp of engineering, and in 1971 the third launch of the massive N1 rocket is a success. The space race is on again.

10. (Alternate history) The Soviet lunar program is restarted, and in 1978 work begins in earnest to build the Zvezda Moonbase, using an updated version of Vladimir Barmin's project developed in the 1960s.

Answer 3

As other answers have explored history, I will take a more science fiction approach.

A preventable asteroid impact detected years in advance.

Suppose the deep field antennas are up and we see a rock of moderate size coming our way. Maybe this is around 1970. The caveat is that it will not hit for 20 years.

Maybe its a comet that has a large elliptical orbit in the range of saturn. But we calculate that in some years, it will do a flyby of one of the gas giants and be directed at earth. Now deflecting is is an incredibly difficult achievement, but it is possible. Suppose there is a solution to deflecting it before the flyby.

In the face of total extinction, we can (in certain scenarios) assume that the world governments would put their differences aside and focus on preventing the disaster.

Construction of the mission would be in stages. If the ship that will reach the comet needs to be large, we will build it in space. However, we find out that microgravity for a large number of workers for prolonged periods of times is not medically viable. A better solution is to build an outpost on the moon and use it as a ship yard.

Additionally, we may find that shipping resources from earth to the moon is too expensive after a while due to our unforgiving rocket equation. But in our many probes past the asteroid belt, we have discovered some rocks ripe for mining. Its more dangerous, but requires less fuel. So we star mining them.

With the threat of certain death for a few decades, you can push our space program much faster. We would ignore many of the moral misgivings, and consider death in space as a heroic sacrifice.