Imagine Wernher von Braun Had Won
Imagine the Apollo follow-on wasn't Skylab, it was the construction of a Mars ship. Back in the early 70s they had absolutely no appreciation for the radiation environment. Aerobraking on Mars was considered unworkable by some and trivial by others - Viking would prove both wrong but not until the mid 70s. Nuclear thermal was already a political dead duck but maybe it could have been resuscitated for an EOR mission configuration, but it's still impulse, ion engines were shelved in the early 60s as impractical, hall effect thrusters were secret Russian business. Long duration spaceflight was a backwater of scientific knowledge, as was most space medicine - some would say it still is - the bone loss problem was certainly an unknown unknown. In-situ resource utilization was a complete non-starter. So, the good news is they wouldn't try to build Battlestar Galactica. They'd go with a capsule and a lander, but bigger and heavier than the Apollo LM and with a heat sh...