Scenario: Starting at the dawn of the 19th century all prideful subjects of the crown are galvanized with nationalist lust to get a living human on the moon. They seek to do this at all cost even if that means making it a one way trip. Can they do this, and if they can what is the earliest time they succeeded?
Scenario 2: the British people have tempered their expectations and just want to get their flag on the moon in any form.
The research into radiation from WWII was basically required to get good space travel safety equipment BUT they won’t know about the dangers of radiation, either. So yeah, with very sick astronauts in 45, but yeah
Yeh I’m assuming in a world where god is confirmed real they’ll stop caring so much about safety.
I don’t know if “care” is the right word, they just wouldn’t know to look for space radiation in the 1940s in the absence of all those war-based nuclear programs
Good call though - their ethics and priorities would definitely shift pretty dramatically
If you were like "Here's a certified 100% verifiable message from real actual god who created the universe and chooses if you live in a blissful no consequences heroin orgy for eternity or stabbed in the dick with a rusty butter knife for eternity. It says he wants us to get to the moon immediately. Do you want to go sit on this pile of explosives wearing a suit of armor so we can get to the moon?" I would be like "Everything I know is wrong and apparently I'm an idiot so yea lets do it.
Also, which god? Because genocidal wars have been fought over the flimsiest of minutia.
Doesn’t matter if it’s confirmed.
Even if it’s Ganesh I’m getting to the moon
Some of the worst events in history resulted from people manipulating or outright ignoring facts, willfully or otherwise. Even if the origin and contents of the message were provable and widely accepted, interpretation of it would vary wildly.
I have no idea, honestly. There are so many factors to consider.
But we know that Britain had massive resources to draw from at that time in history, and that it had a lot of clever people who were either born or about to be born before the Industrial Revolution, so I'm confident that they'd be able to reach the moon quite a few years before humanity actually reached the moon in 1969 if that was their sole focus.
OP:
Colonizing and making a suicide run on the Moon are very different things.
Colonizing means building a base and raising a child on the surface. I'm going to consider BOTH of these as goals, rather than try to edge case it. The UK also has an interesting buff with getting its subjects equally interested in the game. A lot of these scenarios would not have Hanover, of all things, become a super loyal and indepensible part of the UK's campaign, but here we are.
The UK begins a massive industrial boom and massive buy-in from far off colonial subjects; this is a reversal of fortunes for an Island nation that has, just thirteen years earlier, gotten ejected from the thirteen colonies.
Scenario 2 is almost too easy; they can just create an overlarge artillery gun, and shoot the Union Jack on the Lunar surface; this might be in the 1880s or so.
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It's worth fleshing out that this super unified UK is going to punch above her weight against guys like Napoleon and the aforementioned United States. Still, even with a sweep of wars and managing to put India and the Atlantic Seaboard back under her thumb, the UK has a long way to go to get to a suicide human on the Lunar Surface.
Pushing a single generation earlier (the 1940s, we could imagine a manned mission tot eh moon.) would take a religious level of investment and an engorged UK screwing around much than IRL. We can only imagine China being forced to buy opium in exchange for the UK getting Chinese explosives and rare metals. And with the UK playing hardball, much of the world is supporting their effort through their superloyal colonial administrators or direct vassalage.
Much of the world wants the UK to fail, but with a superloyal pact of Indians and Canadians behind, as well as Hanover, the UK does manage to stay on top. I think we'd eventually see a nightmare endgame where the UK gains nuclear primacy and is essentially blackmailing the whole planet to get the means to build a Lunar Colony.
Putting this in play, this much darker UK manages to put colonies on the Moon by the 2010s. And with the UK's conditions met, a very pissed off world waits for the UK to rip itself apart before declaring a gigantic coalition to declare independence/liberty or even just make a landgrab from everything from Hong Kong to Mosquito Coast.
It all depends on how they can speed up their scientific and technologal development, but I would say a bit before 1900.
Lots of the tech needed to get to the moon was developed and refined over the course of WWII, and from scientists completely unrelated to the UK and any of her colonies. How do they bridge that gap, especially pre 1900?
one thing to remember about science is that anyone can discover something if they have the means to do it. If they were religiously devoted to getting to the moon they my accidently acquire all these. or none of them.
depends how lucky they are
I doubt there's much that could be done to speed up the process. Most of the necessary technology won't be ready until after WWII.
WW1, WW2, and the Cold War were also integral in the development of technologies that would lead us to the moon. There's no saying how technology would develop.
There's a lot of possible diversions.
well science is hard to track. if they put all their budget into research they could do it a lot earlier. that or it changes nothing because they missed some important thing.
It's the Brits. 1970.
Fairly sure that would be seen as a demon's vision, since no more public revelations are supposed to happen until the return of Christ. But who can say?
Britain can't do it alone, and considering the rest of the word didn't get the message, they probably assume some kind of mass psychosis.
They believed their rulers were placed by God, but their enemies didn't.
They would still need the resources and considering how they tried as much expansion as possible for other reasons, and still lost their foothold on the world stage, I don't think this changes anything.
Later generations that didn't get the message wouldn't necessarily believe it.
I think it actually accelerates Britain's downfall.
A confirmed message from God?
If it’s provable then we go to the states and let them know god needs us to colonise the moon. We let the rest of the Christian world know too, most likely prevents both world wars.
Considering how long it took from flight to the moon I’d say we can bang it out before 1945 honestly. This is assuming that all the energy we put into war gets transferred to getting to the moon.