u/Dexparrow1

I've been following TNO for a long time (since shortly before release) and I'm in love with the decision to keep Apollo the exact same as it was IRL. It's tempting in a German-victory scenario to essentially turn the German space program into a copy of our world's American one, largely because of popular misconceptions about Operation Paperclip and the scale therein. It should never be said that the contributions of these ex-Nazis were unimportant, mind, but to give an idea I'll begin listing elements of Apollo designed primarily by non-Nazi engineers:

• The shape and design of American space capsules, originating from Maxime Faget for the Mercury program

• The Command and Service Modules, designed and built by North American Aviation

• The Lunar Module/Lunar Excursion Module, designed and built by Grumman Aircraft Engineering

• The Apollo EMU spacesuit, designed by several companies but primarily International Latex Corporation

• The Lunar-Orbit-Rendezvous mission profile, pushed for by a team led by engineer John Houbolt

There is a more compelling case that the Saturn program would not be developed with von Braun, but similarly specc'ed heavy lift launch vehicles would have been developed regardless. You could also argue a "Saturn V-like" vehicle (named something else) would still exist.

All this is to say I deeply appreciate the dev team's choice to stick with Apollo. I'm thinking about current TNO's "the Germans just do Apollo early" or Man in the High Castle's similar premise and how annoyed those made me lol. They work for a raw emotional shock, but aren't particularly realistic

Also I'm so excited for future reveals for Germany' and Japan's space programs. My money's on Germany going for a more "airplane cockpit" capsule, where I think Japan would go for something like a scaled down TKS/VA. This post is already too long to explain those though lol.