Voyage
In a parallel world where JFK survived the assassination attempt in Dallas, as the Apollo programme reaches its triumphant goal the former President encourages NASA to build on this success and send men to Mars.
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- There is great sci-fi novel Voyage from Stephen Baxter which describes such minimal mission. It is alternative history where NASA landed on Mars in 1980-ties.
- Read Voyage and Titan from Stephen Baxter. He was an astronaut candidate and write two great books about NASA.
- The 1950s/60s NERVA program that the blog post mentions in passing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA
Project Rover: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Rover
For hard scifi buffs, check out Stephen Baxter's space-program-alt-hist novel Voyage, where (among other things) NERVA is revived for a manned Mars shot.
I'm kinda surprised to see this; I thought that public acceptance of nuclear-related programs would be at a low, after Fukushima. Heck, I remember when people were kicking up a fuss over Cassini's RTG back in 1997.
Are we going to revive Project Orion next? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propul...
- "Voyage" by Stephen Baxter is a very good hard sf alternate history novel about what could have happened if the US had pushed on to Mars after Apollo.
Not much about the actual exploration of Mars, but a good imagining of the technology and politics needed to get there.
- I love this book and read it at the same time as reading the book “Voyage” by Stephen Baxter that has some similar sections with teams of people quickly building advanced aerospace projects.
Because of this two books are interwoven in my brain, it’s a weird mashup.
- I wager there's quite a few stories exploring this premise.
I remember reading Stephen Baxter's "Voyage" in the 90s, in which Kennedy escapes his assasination, the Apollo program ends rather differently and NASA subsequently stretches/evolves the hardware to put a crewed mission on Mars, rather than building the Shuttle. It's been a long time, but I think I recall enjoying the geeking out on the equipment and little historical details.
(I've since read the novel has been widely criticized as plagiarizing the Cox/Murray book on Apollo history, which I read 20 years later and is an amazing achievement.)
