Even after a 10-15 year set back for Von Braun to bring America up to speed before then having to continue at an American pace with Americans, instead of Germans, he still had a fully man rated nuclear propulsion system capable of hitting mars in 3 months, fully complete in 1968. Already scheduled to put a man on mars by 1978 or earlier... So no, we wouldn’t have colonies on mars already. We’d have realized it was a waste of time, had Cryo-stasis mastered and been half way to proxima centuri by now. With 90% of the white race planning to leave the earth to rest of them.
Mars could serve as a staging ground for interstellar travel
Maybe, but the Nerva XE would have been capable of such repeated launches for so cheap, it would have been making daily launches for decades putting all polluting heavy industry off world. Making asteroid mining and helium3 mining common enough that we’d have multiple mega space stations to launch from. There’d be no need to have terrestrial bases on shit hole planets like mars where launch dates are subject to its orbit. They’d just be stationary in optimal positioned for certain routes.
I suppose in this scenario there is no rush to escape the brown hordes, making Mars unnecessary as a short term solution.
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