The Moon

[Last Free Human]

So we made it to the Moon in the IST world, but aside from a brief mention of this in the timeline and the appearance of a spaceworthy super and the fact that the USA and USSR both have space programs that seem comparable to a slightly more advanced version of ours, there appears to be no mention of the Apollo program or any successors to it.
Did the IST world go to the moon and stay? Did things play out close to how it did in ours? Is their a Clavius base somewhere up there?

Any thoughts?

M
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
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[Stephen Mann]

IMO, Earth's militaries would want scanning bases on the moon as they know alien races are "out there". There has to be some benefit to being away from Earth's atmosphere and noisy radio bands, and military necessity makes for a better motivator than pure research (at least to the funding sources).

[robkelk]

So, the bases would be on farside ...?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Asta Kask]

If they are, please name them after Pink Floyd songs.

[Bob Schroeck]

The only space stuff I have in the timeline -- the 90s timeline, to be specific -- leapfrogs the Moon with an ESA deepspace ship and the first U.N. starship. (Oh, and a couple orbital habitats.)

But yeah, someone would put something on the Moon. If only a supervillain hideout.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Last Free Human]

Okay. Thanks for the feedback. I figured that with the bump in technology and the slightly more optimistic outlook of the IST world, maybe the scrubbed Apollo missions continued and the Soviets got a little more daring and we ended up with at least a pair of token moonbases up there, a couple of Skylab style habitats and such. Maybe the UN had a couple of ESA backed spaceworthy supers who helped set up a HE3 mining operation to support the fusion monopoly.

Mostly I wanted witnesses to the weird thing that happens there in my timeline in the late sixties that adds the word "parachronics" to the vocabulary of the Warehouse. Always nice to see if anyone else had done any prior art for the concept.

Cheers,

M
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
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[Bob Schroeck]

I've added moon colonies and a box on repurposing villain bases to the outline based on this thread. I hadn't considered extending Apollo, but I can certainly retcon that in.

Hm. As a kid I had a book about moon missions that had a list of planned Apollo missions going up into the middle 20s and what they were supposed to investigate, but I can't seem to find anything now that suggests NASA ever planned anything past Apollo 20. Well, I don't need to be limited by that...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

Have we already established that the missions were called "Apollo" in the IST world? Apollo was the god of the sun, after all - Selene, Artemis, or Hecate would have been more appropriate names. (I believe Hecate was the name used by David Pulver for the Technomancer manned Moon missions.) And there's bound to have been some research theologians in the IST world who would have warned NASA about getting the symbolism right... but did the engineers listen to them?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

You've got a point, but I'm going to keep them as Apollo because I've established that the timeline doesn't start wildly diverging until the 1980s.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Last Free Human]

From a quick bit of wikipedia research, looks like you were right about nothing planned past Apollo 20. I struggled with possibly having Artemis as the missions to follow on past Apollo, but it just didn't sound right to me. I'm guessing with a surfeit of gadgeteers the IST world could have tweaked some more juice out of rocket propulsion that would have made for cheaper, better and faster rocketry development.Heck, Nazi Super-Science could have been paper-clipped in to help out to (much to the chagrin of the more patriotic sort of WWII vets).

[excerpted from Wikipedia]
Follow-on lunar missions

NASA contracted to have 15 flight-worthy Saturn Vs produced. Apollo 11 achieved the first landing with the sixth Saturn V, leaving nine for follow-on landings. The following landing sites were chosen for these missions, planned to occur at intervals of approximately four months through July 1972.[2][3]
Apollo 12 (H1) Nov. 1969, Ocean of Storms (Surveyor 3 site)
Apollo 13 (H2) April 1970, Fra Mauro highlands
Apollo 14 (H3) Littrow crater
Apollo 15 (H4) Censorinus crater
The last 5 missions were J-class missions using the Extended Lunar Module, capable of three-day stays on the Moon and carrying the lunar rover:
Apollo 16 (J1) Descartes Highlands
Apollo 17 (J2) Marius Hills
Apollo 18 (J3) Copernicus crater
Apollo 19 (J4) Hadley Rille
Apollo 20 (J5) Tycho crater (Surveyor VII site)
As the later missions were up to three years out, little detailed planning was made, and a variety of landing sites were given for some flights. According to "NASA OMSF, Manned Space Flight Weekly Report" dated July 28, 1969, Apollo 18 would have landed at Schröter's Valley in February 1972, Apollo 19 in the Hyginus rille region in July 1972, and Apollo 20 in Copernicus crater in December 1972.
Other proposed landing sites and schedules for the last three missions included Gassendi crater (Apollo 18, July 1973), Copernicus (Apollo 19, December 1973), and Marius Hills or Tycho crater (Apollo 20, July 1974).[4]
As a number of ambitious Apollo Applications Programs were planned, it was still hoped in 1969 that further Saturn V launch vehicles could be contracted, allowing for more ambitious lunar missions.
In the NASA report "Scientific Rationale Summaries for Apollo Candidate Lunar Exploration Landing Sites" from March 11, 1970, Apollo 18 is targeted for Copernicus, and Apollo 19 is assigned Hadley rille (the eventual landing site of Apollo 15). The Apollo 20 mission had been canceled two months before, but the report still suggested its target, Hyginus rille, possibly as an alternative Apollo 19 landing site.[5]
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
GURPS IST Aleph Wordpress (http://istaleph.wordpress.com/)
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[robkelk]

(Looks at the list, notes the plans for Apollo 20)

Say, did we ever say exactly where humanity and the Meeranon met? Because it would be a nifty little in-joke to have humanity first make contact with alien life in Tycho.

(If the meeting site has been established, then "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that"...)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Actually, yes, the specifics of the First Contact have long been established. From page 38 of IST:

In June of 1987, four subjective months after its launch, one of the primitive Meeranar probe ships crash-landed in the River Thames several miles upstream from London, England. Besides the British Army, IST London was on hand to greet the awakening of the Meerananr ambassador, his excellency Lord Rheergar ss'shemmrar, Scion of Clan Tsamyiann, late of the court of Sssheemiaou IV, hereditary queen of all Meeranon.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

Ah, well...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Last Free Human]

But what about the official meeting with representatives from the Confederation?
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
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[Bob Schroeck]

Mmm. Possibly. I had quite forgotten that I'd put contact with the Confederation at the beginning the 1990s timeline; they just wander in and wander out again without saying a word. I'll have to fix that.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Last Free Human]

Oh, I dearly hope you find a spot for them. They figure pretty big in my post-Y2K war timeline, I used a lot of the GURPS Aliens species with a few "minor" alterations, such as the fact that the peaceful, benevolent Engai are actually biological puppets created and controlled by the Markann as part of the vast sociological experiment that is the Confederation. 
M
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
GURPS IST Aleph Wordpress (http://istaleph.wordpress.com/)
GURPS IST Aleph Twitter (http://twitter.com/IstAleph/)
Trek This! Wordpress (http://dthiller.wordpress.com/)
My Blog (http://lastfreehuman.wordpress.com/)

[Bob Schroeck]

I'll work them in. Don't worry.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.