One of the most remarkable technological achievements in the twentieth century was the 1969 moon
landing, when NASA successfully sent Apollo 11 to the moon and Neil Armstrong famously
took one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind.
But how would history have panned out differently if this monumental event never took place?
This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if America
never went to the moon?
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For this video, we’re exploring the alternate timelines that might’ve happened had Apollo
11 never launched and the eagle never landed.
There have been various theories over the years that America never did go to the moon
- that it was faked - but those are for another video!
The moon landing was in many ways the culmination of two decades worth of tension between the
world’s superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union.
The space race began in the 1950s, partly as a way to publicly show off the increasingly
large rockets that both nations were making for the nuclear arms race.
In July 1955, America announced they were going to launch a satellite, and the Soviets
retaliated just four days later by saying they would do it first.
Ultimately, it was the Soviets who won this milestone, launching Sputnik in late 1957.
And, after that, the USSR achieved practically every other milestone first, too, sending
the first animal into orbit – Laika the dog – the first man into space – Yuri
Gagarin – and the first woman into space – Valentina Tereshkova.
Nevertheless, it was in the midst of all these rival successes that JFK made one of America’s
most famous speeches.
In 1962, despite lagging behind the Soviets, Kennedy announced that America would make
it to the moon by the end of the 1960s, not because it was easy but because it was hard.
With Kennedy’s assassination happening just a year later, achieving this became paramount
not only to winning the space race but to upholding his legacy.
If Kennedy’s death impacted America’s plans, though, then the death of Sergei Korolev,
a chief engineer in the Soviet space program, impacted Russia’s probably even more so.
It was Korolev who had been the driving force behind most Soviet space initiatives… but
he died in 1966, and the USSR lost its lead over the US without him.
With our alternate history beginning in 1969 - with the moon landing that in this case
didn’t happen - there’s no way for Korolev’s death to be averted… so, even if America
had failed to go to the moon, it’s perhaps unlikely Russia – which still has never
sent a cosmonaut in the decades since – would have gone in their stead.
If America doesn’t go in 1969, then, potentially nobody would ever have gone.
It’s not like the encompassing Cold War would necessarily have stopped as well, though.
It had been bubbling since the late 1940s, before the space race proper, and it continued
to some degree up until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991… so “not going to
the moon” wouldn’t likely have stopped America (or the Soviets) from continuing to
develop giant rockets, it would’ve just sent both countries along a different path.
Perhaps, in an alternate history, something would’ve specifically happened to block
the space race, or divert attention away from it - like a high-profile space travel disaster.
But, in truth, there have been many fatal accidents and mistakes in the history of space
travel, and there were various incidents before Apollo 11, so we’ve already seen how getting
to the moon was not without human cost… but how governments have been prepared to
carry on regardless.
As the moon mission became such a huge part of American culture in the 1960s, however,
what’s perhaps more likely is that NASA would’ve simply ran out of time.
As it is, Apollo 11 landed on the lunar surface with just five short months to spare in terms
of achieving JFK’s original remit, to get there within the decade.
Had America not gone to the moon in the ‘60s, then public interest may well have flagged,
and NASA’s state funding almost certainly would’ve dropped.
The Nixon and Ford administrations would’ve been faced with balancing incredibly costly
and ambitious missions with a general lack of return for the investment.
Even today, analysts debate whether there’s any profit at all to be made out of going
to the moon; yes, there are many useful resources up there, including hydrogen and aluminium,
but the prospect of getting there again and setting up a viable mining operation requires
billions and billions of government dollars.
Even as history was, with a successful moon landing, the Apollo program was cancelled
just three years later, and NASA’s funding was slashed to less than one percent of the
federal budget by 1975.
If America had never gone to the moon, then those cuts might’ve happened even sooner,
and even more severely.
That’s not to say that space would’ve been closed for good, only that the international
approach would’ve unfolded differently.
Perhaps we’d have seen the emergence of private space firms sooner, for example, but
we’d certainly have seen a general “tightening of the belt” across the industry.
History shows that we really did see a more cost-effective method of space exploration
take hold in the 1970s: with a focus on uncrewed lunar rovers.
Again, though, the USSR was marginally ahead of the trend.
While America sent more and more people to the moon up until 1972, the Soviets backtracked
and began sending robots - the first of which to land on the lunar surface was the Lunokhod
1, landing in November 1970.
Had a human moon landing never happened, the age of robotic and remote space exploration
may have emerged sooner and with greater gusto.
We might never have seen the Shuttle Program as it was, for example, as the want to put
humans in space may not have developed at the same rate.
We may not have gotten the international space station so soon, either, for the same reason.
Although far off machines arguably don’t offer the same space romanticism as manned
missions, they’re certainly safer and cheaper to operate, and they can run indefinitely
- as the Voyager probes continually prove!
Maybe, then, without space stealing so many of the headlines, we’d have seen more major
breakthroughs in other scientific fields - fields which captured public and official interest
even more so than space travel did.
Ending the Apollo program early would at least have freed up the federal budget for other
things and, while it’s impossible to say, it could’ve fast-tracked us toward a better
and quicker understanding of things like quantum physics, disease prevention or environmental
issues - all of which are major scientific priorities today.
Of course, the excess money might’ve also been funnelled into more nuclear weapons development
for the Cold War… but this actually wouldn’t have been in line with many of Nixon’s “détente”
policies, aiming to ease tensions with the USSR, so maybe not.
Instead, Nixon might have pledged the cash that would’ve been NASA’s toward domestic
policies and welfare reforms… or the Agency’s budget cut could have gone to further fund
more controversial endeavours, like the ongoing Vietnam War or the “war on drugs”.
Even today, when the percentage government spend on NASA is considerably lower than it
was in the ‘60s, there are plenty who argue that we’re still spending too much; that
the money we use on space could be better used tackling many other problems here on
Earth.
But, regardless of how and where (in this alternate history) the money saved on the
Apollo program did go, we’d clearly be missing a major cultural event.
Though it was America who went to the moon, as Armstrong said, the feat represented a
giant leap for all of mankind.
And it was something that what felt like all of mankind was tuned in for!
Coverage of the moon landing broke all sorts of records at the time and, for a while, was
the most-watched television broadcast in history, with more than 600 million viewers - around
one fifth of the global population when it happened.
So, if nothing else, if the moon landing never took place, then we’d never have had that
collective experience.
We surely would have saved some money and perhaps even some lives, but we’d be missing
a cultural touchstone like no other, a reminder of what humans are capable of when we’re
allowed to thrive.
And that’s what would have happened if America never went to the moon.
What do you think?
Is there anything we missed?
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