As said in the tin. There is a simple POD for the lunar flights not to stop by 1972.
Back to November 1968, when Nixon was elected. As every president, he had a transition team and they wrote a report on the space program. The chairman was Charles H. Townes, who got the Nobel Prize in 1966 for the invention of the laser (so he was hardly an idiot !)
Townes happened to be a die-hard supporter of manned spaceflight.
He handled the report to Nixon on January 13 1969. And he pushed for continuing lunar missions, no shuttle, no big space station, no NERVA nuclear rocket to Mars.
Unfortunately (OTL) NASA shot itself in the foot, and got a bad space shuttle design, and nothing else. Paine was the Spiro Agnew of NASA (except he was not a crook)
ITTL Paine is not NASA administrator, but more importantly, Nixon decides the Townes report is good enough and will follow it. As he wants to cut NASA budget to less than $5 billion annually, he request them to fly only two Apollo per year. And he defers plans for a lunar base to an eventual successor. After that he does not care.
The neat thing with the Townes report is the date it was published. As of January 1969 Saturn V production line is stopped (since July 1968) but not dismantled yet (OTL it happened in February 1970)
Then Apollo 13 push the remaining missions well into 1975. If Watergate happens as per OTL and Ford become President, it is good news, as Ford was a sincere supporter of spaceflight - he was in the task force that created NASA in 1958. Then with a little luck, butterflies prevent Carter and Mondale from being elected. Either Ford or Reagan keep supporting Apollo (Reagan would love that, really, in place of SDI).
Back to November 1968, when Nixon was elected. As every president, he had a transition team and they wrote a report on the space program. The chairman was Charles H. Townes, who got the Nobel Prize in 1966 for the invention of the laser (so he was hardly an idiot !)
Townes happened to be a die-hard supporter of manned spaceflight.
He handled the report to Nixon on January 13 1969. And he pushed for continuing lunar missions, no shuttle, no big space station, no NERVA nuclear rocket to Mars.
Unfortunately (OTL) NASA shot itself in the foot, and got a bad space shuttle design, and nothing else. Paine was the Spiro Agnew of NASA (except he was not a crook)
ITTL Paine is not NASA administrator, but more importantly, Nixon decides the Townes report is good enough and will follow it. As he wants to cut NASA budget to less than $5 billion annually, he request them to fly only two Apollo per year. And he defers plans for a lunar base to an eventual successor. After that he does not care.
The neat thing with the Townes report is the date it was published. As of January 1969 Saturn V production line is stopped (since July 1968) but not dismantled yet (OTL it happened in February 1970)
Then Apollo 13 push the remaining missions well into 1975. If Watergate happens as per OTL and Ford become President, it is good news, as Ford was a sincere supporter of spaceflight - he was in the task force that created NASA in 1958. Then with a little luck, butterflies prevent Carter and Mondale from being elected. Either Ford or Reagan keep supporting Apollo (Reagan would love that, really, in place of SDI).
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