# What is the biggest what-if in the space race?

> Cancelled programmes, dead designers, rockets that never worked. Each one moved a deadline that is still moving.

*By YPB Team · Published August 23, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-biggest-what-if-in-the-space-race*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **The Cancelled Apollo 18, 19 and 20** — score 1000/1000
   Three funded lunar landings were scrapped, and the hardware ended up in museums.
2. **Apollo 8 Flying Without a Lunar Module** — score 927/1000
   The mission was rewritten months before launch into a risk NASA had never planned to take.
3. **The Cancellation of the Constellation Programme** — score 800/1000
   A planned return to the Moon was shut down in 2010, delaying the next crewed lunar flight by more than a decade.
4. **Apollo 13's Oxygen Tank** — score 600/1000
   A damaged tank ruptured 200,000 miles out, and the landing became a survival problem instead.
5. **Gagarin's Fatal Crash** — score 466/1000
   The first person in space died in a training flight in 1968 at 34, having been barred from flying again.
6. **The Space Shuttle Instead of a Moon Base** — score 466/1000
   NASA spent the 1970s building a reusable truck to low Earth orbit rather than staying at the Moon.
7. **Von Braun's Mars Plan** — score 466/1000
   A crewed Mars expedition was sketched for the early 1980s using Apollo-derived hardware, and never funded.
8. **Skylab's Re-entry** — score 466/1000
   America's first station was abandoned after three crews and burned up in 1979 with no replacement ready.
9. **The Soviet Moonsuit** — score 466/1000
   The Krechet suit was built and tested for a landing that was cancelled before anyone wore it beyond Earth.
10. **The Apollo 1 Fire** — score 300/1000
   A cabin fire during a launch rehearsal on 27 January 1967 killed Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.
11. **Korolev's Death in 1966** — score 300/1000
   The Soviet chief designer died during routine surgery, and the lunar programme lost the only person able to hold it together.

Tags: 60s, space, nasa, rockets