Zond to the Moon

What if Soviet Russia launched the first men around the Moon?



Timeline
1912: British ship Titanic is set for transatlantic voyage. Before that the ship's second officer David Blair was removed from the rooster, but he managed to hand the key to the locker containing a binocular to his replacement. This would help Titanic to avoid icebergs and arrive New York safely.

1939: Johann Georg Elser wounded Hitler in an assasination attempt.

October 4, 1957: USSR launched Sputnik 1 into space, which is the first artificial satellite.

December 6, 1957: USA launched Vanguard 1 into space.

1958: NASA is formed, their spacecraft "Pioneer 1" is the first to escape the Earth-Moon system.

1959: USSR's Luna 1  is the first to impact the Moon.

October 1960: The twin missions Marsnik 1 and 2 is launched to the namesake target which is a success in this TL. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev displayed the models of the spacecrafts at the UN building afterwards, and eventually the twin probes will reach the target and send back first images of Mars.

January 1961: The U.S. launched the first hominid "Ham" into space.

March 24, 1961: NASA astronaut is the first man in space, with a suborbital flight of the Freedom 7 space capsule.



April 12, 1961: USSR's Yuri Gagarin became the first man to go into orbit.

July 22, 1962: U.S. spacecraft Mariner 1 is launched as the first American mission to flyby a planet. It will return first images of the planet Venus.



August 27, 1962: Mariner 2 is launched as a successor of the Mariner 1 mission.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">November 1963: OTL's Kosmos 21 is sent to Venus as well.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1965: Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1967: In this TL the Soyuz 1 tragedy didn't happen at all. Apollo 1 ends up in a disaster. Later this year a Soyuz Zond spacecraft carrying Alexei Leonov and Valery Bykovskiy made a free return trajectory around the Moon, shocking the USA.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1968: USSR made another circumlunar free return flight. Afterwards NASA's Apollo 8 is the first manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1969: USSR sent the first rover to the Moon and the first orbiter to Mars respectively. NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong is the first human to land on the Moon.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1971: Soviet Union's Salyut 1 is the first space station.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1972: After the conclusion of Apollo 20 with a landing on a lunar crater, NASA began plotting a LESA (Lunar Exploration System for Apollo) moon base.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1973: Launch of NASA's Skylab space station.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1974: Unlike in OTL, NASA launched Pioneer H into the interstellar space.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1976: First components of LESA moon base arrives at the surface between the Reinhold and Lansberg Craters in the Sea of Islands. Later on June, a group of three NASA astronauts, namely John Glenn, Frank Borman and Buzz Aldrin, arrived at the location. The 4th of July proved to be one of the most significant moment in American history when these astronauts greeted the peoples of the United States from their lunar base via television feed. They returned to Earth on 20th July and received a hero's welcome more grandiose than Apollo 11. Viking 1 successfully landed on Mars on this year.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1979: Soviet Mars 5M sample return spacecraft is launched to the Red Planet. The successful conclusion of the mission would bring more shock to NASA, the Martian samples are distributed to some Eastern Bloc countries and delivered to the U.S. and the UK as a goodwill gesture.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1980: NASA sent the first humans to go beyond Earth-Moon system and orbit Venus with a "Manned Venus Orbiting Mission ".

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1981: NASA launched the first space shuttle "Columbia".

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1984: Soviet space probe Vega 1 flew by Halley's comet.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1985: A NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) joint mission to Halley's comet is launched.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1988: Soviet space probes Phobos 1 and Phobos 2 is successfully commenced in this TL.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1989: NASA interplanetary probe "Galileo" is launched to Jupiter.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1991: The Soviet Union and most of the Communist World collapses.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1995: NASA's Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby mission is launched to Comet Kopff. Its penetrator/lander is the first to land on a comet.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">1996: NASA Mars probe Sojourner is launched.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">2003: Europa Orbiter is sent to the namesake Jovian moon with the aid of a Space Shuttle. Concurrently NASA launched Deep Space 4 to comet Tempel 1. Unfortunately the Columbia space shuttle tragedy happened as in OTL.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">December 2004: Pluto Kuiper Express is launched to Pluto, with an arrival in around 8 years later.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[1076,1156,0,0]}">2010: In this TL NASA's Constellation program is not canceled by the USA. Japanese spacecraft IKAROS became the world's first interplanetary solar sail spacecraft.