Reagans public talk of space weapons is, initially, just that: talk. In the latter half of the 1970’s, the USAF has no plans for space based weaponry, and is initially taken aback by Reagans public discussions. There are some ill-prepared DoD denials of such programs made by various officials; these denials only serve to convince the Soviets that the US is, in fact, developing space weaponry. So, Soviets being Soviets, they have to get there first. The CIA keeps a careful watch over these developments.

By 1980, the CIA can confidently report that the Soviets are in fact testing space-based weapons platforms, intended both to destroy space assets such as communications and recon satellites, and also to drop nuclear warheads onto ground targets. This is, of course, in violation of treaties banning nuclear weapons in space. But the Soviets are convinced that the US is ahead of them in this race. The failure by the US to publicly display their own space weapons confuses and dismays the Soviets; they read this as the Americans being confident due to a massive superiority over the Soviets. When, in fact, the US has almost nothing to show.

The Soviets launch their first Polyus space battlestation in summer, 1980. This terrifies the US public, much as Sputnik did, especially in light of the past several years of Communist advances around the world. After the early US withdrawal from Viet Nam, South Viet Nam was left vulnerable; within 8 months the armistice had broken down and the North Vietnamese Army had swept south, conquering the South. The US did nothing to stop this, being simply tired of the war and too busy with other matters. The Soviets and Chinese saw this as weakness, American unwillingness to really stand up to them. So Communism was aggressively pushed: several nations in Africa and all of Southeast Asia are under Marxist regimes by the election of 1980. The Philippines are in open civil war against a well-funded Communist insurrection; Australia and New Guinea are looking at a Communist Indonesia. Italy, Spain and France are teetering on the edge of becoming outright Communist states.

So, by the 1980 election, the world looks ready for a new global war, one likely to be fought in the heavens. The Polyus, an enlarged dual-module Salyut station armed with, supposedly, guns, rockets, lasers and nukes, is seen orbiting overhead by the US public. Reagans idle talk of space weapons now seem vitally important; his Democrat opponent, Walter Mondale, who had been publicly lampooning Reagans talk of space weapons, suddenly looks really bad. The election is a cakewalk for Reagan, and a mandate for space weaponization.

The Space Shuttle has been flying since 1978, carrying small payloads and, more importantly, crews to the various space laboratories and Space Station I. The Saturn rockets have been launching heavy payloads such as space labs, lunar missions, unmanned probes to the planets and commercial platforms. And now the Neptune comes on scene, with first launch in the spring of 1981. The first launch is officially to be merely a test launch; the initial plan was to simply carry about 800,000 pounds of water… modestly useful as an orbiting payload, but more important just as a proper mass simulator. But in the months before the launch, the water tank is replaced with… something else. What replaces the water is not clear to the public, and the President, NASA and the USAF aren’t talking. Organizations keeping an eye on events, from news media to the KGB, are only able to put together a few confusing details… whatever it is, it’s heavy, consuming the total 1,000,000 pound payload of the Neptune, while being relatively compact. Thus, it’s dense. Blurry photos taken through a hangar door show a USAF insignia on the side of a large metal cylinder. At the  same time, Aviation Week reporters start putting together a few disparate facts: several Minuteman ICBMs have been recently removed from their silos; the upper stage and their nuclear payloads have been removed. General Electric was working on a prototype of a new generation space nuclear reactor, capable of putting out in excess of one megawatt of electrical power; the prototype has disappeared from the Nevada test site. Other details come together to indicate that whatever the Neptune is launching, it is going to be impressive. Several clumsily and hurriedly planned espionage efforts are detected and  stopped. In April of 1981, with Reagan watching from the stands, the first Neptune launches, sending it’s payload into a 300 nautical mile orbit with a surprisingly high inclination for a Florida launch. Officially, the payload remains merely a “mass simulator,” but nobody believes that.

Ground based telescopes show a compact structure, bristling with sensors, antenna, solar panels, one nuclear reactor that seemingly has not yet been turned on, and doors. Lots of doors. This “mass simulator” looks like the most dangerous thing in the solar system, and it terrifies the Soviets. Any plans they may have had about using Polyus to take out American space assets are put on hold; the US space battlestation is a monster compared to the USSR’s relatively pitiful space platform. Especially since the Soviets know that the Polyus was hastily assembled, and most of the engineers who put it together are uncertain that half the systems will even work if called upon.

What the Soviets don’t know about the American “mass simulator:” That is, in fact, all it is. A mockup made from a million pounds of aluminum, with a few spare RTG’s to provide a little bit of power and neutron radiation, to make the lights blink and the phony sensor stalks to open up. The inside of the shell is merely a tightly-packed structure of spot-welded aluminum beams. Some off-the-shelf Apollo RCS systems give it the ability to orient itself, to make it look  like it’s doing something important.

The 1980’s begin with the Soviets and the Americans staring at each other across the oceans, each convinced that the other is further ahead in the race to weaponize space than it really is. But the race is now well and truly on: the “mass simulator” bought the US time to really get going; the Soviets are not willing to pull any stunts so long as that monster is overhead, but they, too, are plowing ahead at full speed to perfect weapons systems and platforms.

At the same time, NASA has plans for the Neptune booster: real lunar bases, manned missions to Mars, asteroids and Venus, and solar power satellites. But now it looks as if the American manned space program, so long a supposedly “civilian” program, is about to be overtaken by military needs. Will NASA be forced to share resources – launch vehicles, launch sites, personnel – with the USAF? Will the USAF  run the space program? Will the USAF fracture, forming a US Space Force, perhaps with a portion of the US Navy?

To be continued

Nixon has taken office under a cloud. Many are calling for RFK to be tried and imprisoned; many others believe that the released files and recordings are in fact hoaxes, and that Nixon actually stole the election from Kennedy. With that start, things look dire.

Over the next four years, a series of decisions are made that differ from Actual History. For starters: Nixon makes more of a push to get out of Viet Nam sooner; the war is massively unpopular, even more so than IRL due to the collapse in faith in the American political system. Popular opinion on the war collapses catastrophically. By late 1970, the US is on the way out.

Apollo 11 happens as IRL in July, 1969, but to slightly more public enthusiasm (due to it being something good in  a sea of bad). It is immediately decided that this should be built upon. Some voices that IRL called for Apollo to be curtailed are now not as loud: Teddy Kennedy, part of the Kennedy clan that is now under much greater media and legal scrutiny, has been arrested for the drunk-driving homicide of Mary Jo Kopechne on July 18. Soon he is out of office and sent to prison for a term of several years. Others, such as William Proxmire, remain as opposed as ever, though due to the recent collapse in popularity of politicians as a whole, he has less of a public platform . The decision by the Johnson administration to cancel Saturn V production is reversed; Apollo missions to at least 24 are pushed through.

Due to Nixon Administration pressure, Apollo 12 is pushed up by one month with negative consequences; on the way to the moon in October, 1969, a propellant tank aboard the lunar module ruptures. While the crew manages to return safely to Earth, this delays the following Apollo missions. It has the effect, however, of spurring interest in the space program. A disaster that results in the survival of heroes, right at the height of interest (right after Apollo 11), makes both the public and Congress more interested in space. This is aided by Walter Cronkite: just as he had talked down the war effort in Viet Nam after the Tet Offensive in January, 1968, here he talks up the space program. In the general malaise gripping the US after the 1968 election, Cronkite turns Apollo into a point of pride.

As Viet Nam ramps down and Apollo continues on, further plans are put into place. The Apollo Applications Program IRL led to Skylab; it does so in Alternate History as well, but it is joined by plans for lunar bases by 1976 and manned Mars missions by the early 1980’s. The NERVA program is pushed ahead; the Space Shuttle program also proceeds, but as a smaller vehicle (25K lbs payload, limited crossrange, reusable manned first stage, second stage equipped with expendable external tanks). Plans are put in place to revive the Post-Saturn launch vehicles planned a decade earlier, in 1963: in 1971, a design contest is held among major contractors and General Dynamics/Astronautics wins with an improved version of their earlier Nexus launch vehicle. A long development plan is put into place to develop this as the “Neptune” booster.

The Presidential election of 1972, between Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, is both a landslide and a bore. Humphrey goes into the election under the cloud of the Watergate scandal, even though he was uninvolved; Nixon trounces him soundly. But the turnout is the lowest on record.

As IRL, the Yom Kippur War breaks out in 1973. The war plays out as IRL, with the Israelis repelling the Arab attack. As IRL, the Arab oil producing nations respond with an oil embargo against the US. However, things play out slightly differently. With the enhanced space program requiring nuclear power and nuclear propulsion, the nuclear industry is slightly stronger and much more popular than IRL. A consequence is that the OPEC oil embargo leads to a speedup in the approval and construction of nuclear powerplants. By the Three Mile Island incident of 1979, nuclear power is growing, and is seen as not only vital, but patriotic. The collapse of the American commercial nuclear industry following TMI as IRL does not occur. Much of this is due to the events of 1976…

To be continued

One of the first major historical events to follow the April premiere of 2001: A Space Odyssey was, on June 5, 1968, when Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Democrat Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. The assassination is one of those things that could have *easily* been avoided; it was only made possible due to a late decision to take RFK out of the Abassador Hotel after giving a speech by walking through the kitchen rather than the ballroom, supposedly a shortcut. Had the decision gone the other way, RFK very likely would have walked out of the hotel without incident. While he was then behind in the polls to Hubert Humphrey for the Democrat Presidential nomination, it is very possible that events following his non-assassination would have led to his nomination.

So, it would then have been a race between RFK and Richard Nixon. In Real History, the election of 1968 was marred by riots; these likely would have still happened had RFK been the Dem nominee rather than Humphrey. It’s hard to tell how an RFK/Nixon election would have gone, but it seems reasonable to assume that it would have gone much the same as the Humphrey/Nixon election that actually happened, with Nixon winning a narrow margin in the popular vote.

But remember, this is a Kennedy vs. Nixon election. History had seen one of those before, in 1960. That was another close election, one that JFK won, in part, due to his close wins in Illinois and Texas. But then as now, it was known that the Democrat Party Machine was in full swing in Illinois, and Illinois politics is some of the most corrupt in the nation. Additionally, JFK’s VP candidate, LB Johnson, was one of the most immoral men ever to achieve high office in the US, and may well have helped fraudulently skew results in his home state of Texas. See a discussion of all this HERE. Whether or not this *actually* happened, many, including Nixon, *believed* it had happened. Importantly, it is by no means an unlikely scenario, and the Kennedys have hardly proven themselves paragons of honest and ethical politicking.

So: by November, 1968, RFK is polling slightly behind Nixon. Nixon assumes that RFK is going to cheat. Nixon was, it seems, on good terms with J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI. Hoover, however, was not on good terms with the Kennedy clan. There have been rumors over the years that the reason why JFK did not fire Hoover when he took office was because he knew than Hoover had the dirt on *him.* So… Nixon assumes that RFK will be involved in chicanery in the upcoming election. And Hoover assumes this as well. And so on November 5, 1968, the election is held…

To be continued