posted 04-04-2006 05:56 PM               

They led us in something trivial, like rocket thrust.

posted 04-05-2006 02:10 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by carmelo:
In yours opinion if Richard Nixon had been elect President in 1960,would have chosen to send a man on the moon like JFK ,or would have preferred an orbital station and a reusable shuttle?

---

I think the moon was an obvious goal by 1960, even if unstated as such. If it wasn't the goal of the United States to shoot for the moon, I would wager it was a goal for the Soviet Union. If the US didn't make an effort to reach the moon, it would've appeared to be "giving up" to the Soviets.

Where Kennedy's goal was unique is that he set an actual deadline to meet the goal. And he chose to verbalize the goal early on, making that an official aim to reach for...other than an inferred program that will eventually work itself to the point where it would go to the moon.

That did a couple of things:

1. It helped the nation forget about temporary "losses" to the Soviets, since we had a larger goal to concentrate on. Kennedy knew it would take some time to surpass the Soviet technology, so a far-reaching goal offered the greatest promise. As such, the fact that the Soviets had other firsts, such as the first space walk, really appeared to be less significant overall (at least when compared to the impact of Sputnik or Gagarin's flight).

2. The set deadline really pushed the program along...at a pace that forced continual progress at a rapid pace. Without the deadline, things might have progressed at a more "comfortable" rate, but then would've allowed the Soviets more time to make a landing before the US could. Keep in mind that the deadline also forced the Soviets to work at a more rapid pace too, also putting them under a lot of pressure. And I don't think their program was capable of keeping up the same pace...because the Soviets didn't have the same ability to outsource development of components to several private firms like the US did (North American, Grumman, etc.), so they were forced to develop most things within the confines of their space program infrastructure. The US could hand off the engineering and development of certain key elements to private contractors. To me, that was a huge advantage...especially under a tight deadline.

Back to the question of whether Nixon would've made the moon a goal or not... I think he would have had to commit us to go to the moon no matter what, because that was the direction the Soviets were eventually headed. If the Nixon sat back and said "we'll build a space station instead of going to the moon" I think public reaction would have been very negative...especially when those first photos of a Soviet flag on the lunar surface were published. They had to know what a terrible blow to national pride that would be.

The real question, to me, is whether Nixon would have publically stated the moon as a goal as early as 1961 and if he would have set a similar tight deadline. If he hadn't, I think there would've been a real possibility of losing the first moon landing to the Soviets.

posted 04-05-2006 10:58 PM               

Added to this, is the point that the manned space program began under President Eisenhower, with RMN as his Vice President. Also, by his own recollection, Nixon was an early proponent of increasing the U.S. missile and rocket programs. When Sherman Adams publicly dismissed Sputnik as a stunt, Nixon's public response was "we could make no greater mistake than to brush off this event as a scientific stunt of more significance to the man in the moon than to men on Earth."

posted 04-06-2006 12:24 PM               

Would we have gone to the moon if RMN was president? Would we have gone to Viet Nam if RMN was president in 1960? Both very good questions that would have effected the future of NASA. Ike wasn't a big fan of the program. Nixon and Johnson were both concerned about getting ahead of the USSR.

Interesting question - no possible way of knowing the answer.

posted 04-06-2006 05:40 PM               

Therewould have been no Bay Of Pigs invasion and no embargo on Cuban goods. Nixon would have known such tactics don't work. I think Nixon would have realized that Castro was going to be there and that we would have to deal with him. I think under Nixon there would have been dialog with Castro and normal diplomatic and trade relations.

No Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets thought Kennedy was a pushover. They had met with Nixon when he was Vice-President, they knew what he was like, knew he wasn't a pushover. With no Bay Of Pigs, and with Nixon as President they wouldn't have put missiles in Cuba.

Nixon had met Kruschev. He would have dealt with The Soviets and with Kruschev the same way later in OTL he dealt with The Soviets and with Brezhnev. Yes Nixon was a hardline anti-Communist. But he dealt fairly with the Communists and he dealt with them as they were, realistically. Yes Nixon and the Communists disagreed politically. But they respected each other, they earned each other's respect and that's why Nixon was effective in dealing with them.

Viet Nam. Yes there would have been American advisors. But either no military intervention or a much scaled down military intervention compared to OTL. Viet Nam was largely Lyndon Johnson's war. It was Johnson who escallated the war militarily. Neither Kennedy had he lived, or Nixon would have let it go to the extent it did. Nixon handled Viet Nam in the 1970's because of what Johnson had made of the war before Nixon became President.

My senses tell me that under Nixon there would have been a negotiated settlement to Viet Nam much like the way Korea was settled in 1953. I think in later years the two Viet Nams, North and South would have between themselves negotiated a reunification. But in the 1960's I think Nixon would have found a way to avoid outright war.

With no Viet Nam war there would have been no war protests the strife and what that did to American society and culture.

Nixon would still have reached out to China, and that reaching out would have been accepted by the Chinese. I think Nixon would still have been the first sitting President to visit China and that visit and normalizing relations would have happened while Mao Tse Dong was still living.

I believe Nixon would have easily been re-elected in 1964. There would have been no Watergate or anything like Watergate had Nixon been elected in 1960 and re-elected in 64. That means the synicism and distrust Americans got about our government because of things like Viet Nam and Watergate would not have come into the American political psyche.

Domestically Nixon turned out in OTL to be more moderate and at times even liberal than he was expected to be. I think we would have still had Civil Rights and made the same strides in Civil Rights we made in OTL, perhaps even more. There would still have been some definate strife from this, but not as much as we had under Kennedy/Johnson.

I don't think we would have had anything like Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty that just spawned government programs that just gave everyone everything and made people dependent on government for everything. That's not to say we wouldn't have dealt with those social ills, but we would have dealt with them in a different manner.

We would still have landed the first men on the moon in the 1960, I'm guessing about 1967. We were headed in that direction even before Kennedy's setting of that goal.

We would have gotten the Environmental Protection Agency about 1966, with OSHA or similar programs beginning about 1967.

There would not have been the hippie and yippie movements of the 60's, the disestablishment movements and such.

Under Nixon, the 1960's would have been a quieter decade than under President Kennedy and certainly than under President Johnson. In that respect the 60's would have felt very much like a continuation of the Eisenhower years of the 1950's.

With a quieter decade, we would have turned our attention more to science, invention, and technology. Also to humanitarian development, to improving the overall human condition here and around the world.

Congress would still have been controlled by the Democrats and Lyndon Johnson would have remained Senate Majority Leader. John F. Kennedy would have continued as U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. For many years the Kennedy Brothers, Jack and Teddy from Massachusetts and Bobby from New York would have been a U.S. Senate Icon working for Civil Rights and human justice.

As I said, domestically Nixon turned out to be more moderate and even liberal than expected. In 1968 we would turn to another Republican, but who was more conservative and one campaigning for smaller government, then California Governor Ronald Reagan. In OTL we first saw Reagan on the national political scene in 1968, and had Nixon been elected in 60 and served two full terms, I feel the Reagan years would have come some10 to 12 years earlier than in OTL.

That's what I feel would have happened if Richard Nixon had been elected in 1960"-
Bob.

posted 04-06-2006 05:56 PM               

Carmelo, you have it all figured out except you forgot one thing......

THE BEATLES!

posted 04-06-2006 08:55 PM               

I dunno - the 60's would've been quite dull without the hippie movement.

No Kennedy=No Johnson. Having lived through that era, the thought is mind boggling.

posted 04-07-2006 04:30 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by carmelo:
We would still have landed the first men on the moon in the 1960, I'm guessing about 1967. We were headed in that direction even before Kennedy's setting of that goal.

---

Why would we have gotten to the moon two years earlier if Nixon was president? Was there something magical about Nixon that could've accelerated hardware development by two years?

Kennedy announced the moon goal only a few months after he took office, thus getting the ball rolling very quickly. That allowed focus to quickly shift towards building the hardware for the moon landing. Yet, the Saturn V wasn't ready until late 1967...and even then probably was launched earlier than the Von Braun team were comfortable with.

While I think Nixon would've eventually been forced to accept a lunar program, I don't think he would've initiated it as soon as Kennedy did. And I don't think we would have made the landing in the 1960s, let alone 1967 as you suggest. I simply think a 1967 would have been impossible (even without the Apollo 1 fire), no matter who was president.

I also don't think the 1960s would've been as rosy and wonderful if Nixon were president. They would have been quite different, to be sure, but in what regards...well, that's for conjecture (and probably strays too far off topic to really spend too much time on).

posted 04-07-2006 09:54 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by mjanovec:
Why would we have gotten to the moon two years earlier if Nixon was president? Was there something magical about Nixon that could've accelerated hardware development by two years?

---

posted 04-07-2006 08:05 PM               

quote:

---

Therewould have been no Bay Of Pigs invasion and no embargo on Cuban goods. [SNIP]I think under Nixon there would have been dialog with Castro and normal diplomatic and trade relations.

---

I would have to disagree with the above statement. Nixon was the "Political Action Officer" working with CIA to plan the Bay of Pigs invasion. Sources have reported that Nixon was very much in favor of the invasion.

After four years as Ike's VP it's hard to believe RMN's first Presidential action would have reversed Eisenhower's invasion plans. This would obviate any immediate plans for "normal diplomatic relations."

Tom

posted 04-07-2006 08:12 PM               

Nixon was a hard-liner at that point. He came to prominence by exposing Communists. He was also a VERY hard liner on Cuba - the Bay Of Pigs was actually his baby. I think if the US had invaded Cuba, the Soviets would have taken Berlin.

There might not have been a Missile Crisis, though, because the matter of Castro would have been settled by then.

I really believe that the Cold War would have been a much colder one with Nixon in the White House if we didn't die in a suddenly hot war.

Who knows what he would have done in Viet Nam? In 1954 the Dulles brothers, Ike's foreign policy team, vetoed the Geneva plan for countrywide elections in Viet Nam and maintained its partition. Further, they installed the (minority and French-aligned Catholic) Diem brothers as rulers in the South. So, there's no telling what the nature of Nixon's foreign policy would have been.

Johnson was trapped by Korea and the Republican charges of only 15 years previous, that Democrats had "lost China".

It may seem counterintuitive, but Lyndon Johnson was arguably the most progressive President in US history. Imagine a Senator from Texas - heck, anyplace - today who would even SUGGEST Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start, school breakfasts and push the Civil Rights legislation Johnson did. In fact, when he signed the Voting Rights Act Johnson told an aide, "I just made the South Republican for the next 50 years."

I honestly don't believe Nixon would have had an Apollo program. We might have gotten the Shuttle sooner, and a station because he was friendlier to the military. Back before 1960, the main difference between Republicans and Democrats was the Republican antipathy to big (thus costly) projects.

Then again, I could be fulla beans.