Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the UK's Operation Backfire - their project to launch and evaluate German V2 rockets - convinced engineers at the British Interplanetary Society that this technology could help them realize their dream of building a spaceship. In December 1946, Society member Ralph Smith put forward a detailed proposal for his Megaroc design, an adapted V2 with a strengthened hull, increased fuel and replacing the one ton warhead with a man-carrying capsule that could launch on a parabolic trajectory, giving the spaceman in a high-altitude flying suit a few minutes in space to carry out observations of the Earth, atmosphere and Sun, as well as the chance to spy on Soviet territory. It's been observed that it was a practical design that could have been achieved in 3 to 5 years, with Britain routinely putting people into space by 1951 on a ballistic trajectory. However, Smith's design was rejected a few months later by the Ministry of Supply.At the end of World War II, visionary military officers saw that the future of United States military superiority was scientific research. General Henry “Hap” Arnold and others in the Army Air Forces started a project under contract with the Douglas Aircraft Company. This effort resulted in the first real, and perhaps most influential “Think Tank,” Project RAND (Research ANd Development) made up of top-level scientists and engineers. Although a wide range of subjects were planned to be addressed, the very first research project was to study the possibility and usefulness of a man-made artificial Earth satellite. This first paper was Project RAND Special Memorandum SM-11827, Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship,1 which was accomplished in an astonishingly short time and issued May 1946.
Back in America, in July 1946 the US Army conceived of the idea of a two-stage liquid fueled rocket by placing a WAC Corporal on top a V2, and on June 20, 1947, the Army formally approved a program called Bumper to develop and test such a rocket, able to reach altitudes neither rocket alone could attain. It's been observed that, had it actually sought to, the USA could have been the first to place a satellite in orbit, nearly a decade ahead of the USSR's Sputnik-1.
Even in the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolev sought to launch satellites and crewed spacecraft in orbit, but Stalin was more concerned with building missiles capable of reaching the US to counter the US Air Force's massive advantage in bombers. It was the same story in the US and the UK - funds were instead put towards missiles in the US, while the UK went for aviation and nuclear technology.
What push could there have been before or during World War 2 for the US and Britain to have instead approved Spaceship-1 and the Megaroc rocket instead of rejecting them? And how would this earlier Space Race have proceeded with a first American satellite and British astronauts, and how would this have pushed a still living Stalin to pursue a Soviet space program?