LBJ dies in what is probably the first publicly significant helicopter crash while campaigning in Texas.
The U.S. MIC and deep state and champagne liberals lose one of their top fellow travelers/enablers.
A far less embittered Nixon becomes president and follows Eisenhower's advice, namely to be careful with the MIC and also appoints George Kennan as U.S. secretary of state.
However, the military industrial complex is too large and significant to try and downsize, and the threat of China and the USSR is still there.
The US Navy and US Air force continue to work on their own space projects alongside the retargeted US MIC, which now turns into a powerful space lobby.
In 1962 NASA is dissolved and it's components and personnel are combined with those of the Navy and air force space divisions to form the U.S. space force.
Nixon settles the argument by saying that since "you use ships in space, anyway" part of the navy top brass will be moved over to lead the new branch.
1963 The law for the defense of nuclear family values is passed by a narrow margin in the Senate, stipulating that any and all assistance for children must be linked to the marital status of the parents.
Another, more controversial part at the time is the prohibition of advertising directly to teenagers and other minors.
1963 Notable science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein is made the Space Navy's civilian spokesman.
In 1964, project High Frontier is officially launched.
The U.S.A will be going to the moon, and it will be following a strategy of Assured Survival and Assured Revenge.
Using cheap, mostly automated rockets, the U.S.A. builds a large space space station, Space Port 1, officially commissioned in 1967, which will be used as a staging ground for Lunar and near Earth exploration and classified military purposes.
Travel to the moon will be done via space tugs launched from Space Port 1.
The additional capabilities become obvious a few years later, when the U.S. starts deploying ABM systems and nukes in space.
At this point, a large portion of the US military budget is going into space based projects.
In the mid 70s, the U.S. perfects its first, cheap kinetic kill sats, often referred to as rods from god.
1973 - the first permanent Lunar base is built, with resource extraction and transportation to Space Port 1 to start 6 months later.
The need for reliable, safe energy generation in space leads to a push for more research into novel energy sources, including space based photovoltaics and thorium reactors, with the first terrestrial thorium reactors going live in 1974 and solar cells becoming a source for backup and supplementary power in remote rural areas.
The USSR is, of course, not sleeping, and starts a large space buildup of its own, with the first capture of an in situ resource utilization worthy asteroid being executed by them in 1979, the harvesting of materials in space is prioritized to counter the U.S. advantage in holding the Moon.
The soviets, similarity deploy space-based ABM complexes and kinetic kill sats of their own.
1978 - the first experimental power sat co-sponsored by the U.S. department of energy, USAID and a giggle of public and private aid organizations and and national and international charities starts to beam power to a remote village in central Africa.
The USSR and China immediately cry "Death Rays", but are mostly ignored, but the technology does not become massive immediately due to a variety of concerns, including weaponization, efficiency and the lack of a critical mass of potential subscribers.
1980 Ronald Reagan is elected president, with a plan to open up space to more commercial interests.
1983 Soviet first deputy of the council of ministers Ivan Arkhipov opens up reactors 3 and 4 of the Chernobyl NPP during a highly publicized event which sees the going into operation of the first two large scale thorium reactors, with Arkhipov and other Soviet functionaries using the event to grandstand about the "peaceful, safe Atom" and once again lambast the West about its use of a "Dirtier relic technology that can poison the planet and be used to produce terrible weapons.", referencing of course the potential of standard nuclear reactors to breed weapons grade fissionable materials.
Reagan responds by pointing out the larger soviet stockpile of weapons grade fissionables and their sizable fleet of breeder reactors.
1984 First Lady Nancy Reagan sponsors the launch of Prosperity, the first thorium powered civilian cargo ship.
1989 first American astronaut lands on Mars.
1991 the USSR nears completion of its Tsiolkovsky spacecraft, which utilizes
magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters and a nuclear reactor, and is supposed to travel beyond mars and reach the asteroid belt and the Jovian planets.
A new race for the resources of Jovians is brewing.
2000 Luna colony, with a population of over half a million, some of which are now second and third generation 'Lunatics' that have never stepped foot on a planet, is officially acknowledged as the as the 51st state.
