On 7/26/2019 2:27 AM, William Elliot wrote:

If weren't for thea Russian Sputnik, would US have a space program?


An interesting question. I would say, yes, but it would have looked very
differently from what we remember and it would have been primarily a US
Air Force program working in conjunction with the NACA.

Sputnik was inevitable, but the *real* story is that Von Braun's team
was ready to add a small 3rd kick stage to the Jupiter C rocket a year
or so *before* Sputnik, that would have put a satellite into orbit, but
Eisenhower nixed the idea. Why I'll never know. Had that been done,
likely no panic, no NASA and no moon program.

Given that alternative history, knowing that orbit was possible there
would no doubt have been a push within the USAF to add a booster kick
stage to the air-dropped X-15, and made its own engines re-startable in
order to get it into orbit and back down. And the public would have
never known about splash-downs as it would have glided down and landed
at a runway, probably the dry lake bed at Edwards.

Where it would have gone from there is anyone's guess. Maybe a manned
orbiting "spy" er "laboratory" platform. There was the USAF Dyna-Soar
program aka the X-20 that would have launched on a Titan-III but that
was cancelled. That is a close as I know of to an *alternative* US space
program.

Dave