Confederate Flag On The Moon

overoceans

With a POD no earlier than October 1957(Sputnik), get the flag now known as the Confederate flag planted by American astronauts on the moon.

Some restrictions...

- it has to be a full sized flag.

- it can be planted along with the American flag(possibly in a lesser position), but no more than those two. IOW you can't posit that the astronauts plant dozens of flags, and the Confederate flag just happens to be one of them.

- it has to be the full Confederate flag, not eg. a state flag that incorporates the Confederate flag.

- you can't wish the Confederacy back into existence, or even, for that matter, invest the southern states with any more formal power than they enjoyed IOTL. Though you can posit a situation where the rest of the country is more eager to flatter or appease them.
 
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marathag

marathag

Banned
US starts for a moon lander sooner, and Lunar Gemini 9 was expected to land on the Moon on April 9,1965 so would have three flags, to 50 Star Flag
at the center of two crossed flags, the Union 33 Star Flag and the Stars and Bars
 
Luath

Luath

Neil Armstrong develops a small and unnoticed brain tumour, it manages not to get him thrown off the program, but the increased pressure inside his head does start to have an effect on his mental state. He becomes increasing drawn into the backlash to the 1960s civil rights movements, his undiagnosed medical condition slowly unhinging the otherwise disciplined and scientific astronaut. He become secretly obsessed with making a statement against the 'race mixers' and 'communists' he now believes are everywhere, and hatches a plan to show the world the truth. On July 20 1969, Armstrong will make his mark on history, with a flag he'd managed to smuggle onto the Eagle, he has just about managed to keep his condition under control on the three day voyage to the moon. The mission controllers in Huston watch in stunned and shocked horror, as instead of the Stars and Stripes, Armstrong instead erects the Confederate Battle Flag and launches into a prolonged rant about the lost cause, and other... less savoury topics, until Buzz can get out the LEM and wrestle his deranged colleague to the Lunar Surface.

Apollo 11 goes down in history as a horrific farce and is forever a black mark on Nasa's record.

Is just about the only way I can see this happening.
 
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Mad Bad Rabbit

Mad Bad Rabbit

This is gonna be career-ending for any astronaut that pulls this stunt, and NASA is gonna look really bad for not inspecting their luggage before launch.

[ sorry lost-causers: try as you might, you can't burn a cross on the Moon ]
 
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Thisisnotausername

Have the US massively invest in space travel above and beyond what they did IOTL, to the point that by the present day private manned missions to the Moon are routine, if expensive. Some rich Lost Causer pays to have the flag planted there. Easy. Well, not really--I don't know how you'd get space travel so far advanced beyond what happened IOTL, although I'm sure that's been discussed elsewhere on this site--but a lot easier than getting NASA astronauts to plant the Stars and Bars there.

If you do specifically want NASA astronauts doing this, though, not just some rich racist with a rocketship, forget it. You could get someone sneaking a Confederate flag on board the lander and leaving it hidden there, but actually flying the damn thing isn't going to happen, not with a 1957 POD anyway.
 

overoceans

PNWKing said:
Maybe have some Georgia or Mississippi Senator insist that this happens.
Click to expand...

I was thinking something along those lines. More fleshed out...

NASA chooses an African-American astronaut for the moon-landing crew, preferably one who is outspoken on the issue of civil rights. This causes a lot of howling in the south, if only just from self-serving politicians looking to drum up controversy.

However, having made this big announcement to the world, NASA is hardly going to be in a position to backtrack in deference to some grandstanding yokels. So, to smooth things over, NASA offers to plant the Confederate flag on the moon, along with Old Glory. The southern demagogues figure that being viewed as the men who got the South's banner on the moon is as good a vote-getter as blocking a Black astronaut, and drop their objections.

And FWIW, I don't think this challenge is QUITE as ludicrous as some have argued. I'd be willing to bet, for example, that if in the late 1960s you had taken a poll of white southerners asking if they would approve of the Confederate flag on the moon, a majority would, at the very least, have had no objections.
 
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Hugh Third of Five

overoceans said:
Well, official usage of the Confederate flag did not stop after 1957, to say the least.

Mostly, though, I just didn't want this to be a CSA WINS time-line.
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Southern states used it. I'm not aware of the federal government ever doing so. I guess if you somehow get Apollo 11 to put up all 50 state flags, then you could do it, although how you would talk NASA into making it a mission to plant 50 extra flags is another matter.
 

overoceans

Thon Taddeo said:
https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2020/07/21143715/200721_confederate-flag_fullwidth.png

As late as 2015, half of voters thought the flag represents southern pride. That number surely would have been much higher in the past. If the flag is put on the moon sometime in 1970s, few Americans would be very upset.
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I agree. Dukes Of Hazard was a popular show all over the US, unhobbled by any significant objections to its promotion of the flag.

That flag was even generally considered okay in Canada. I saw semi-official usages(university club insignia etc) well into the 1990s.
 
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Mad Bad Rabbit

Mad Bad Rabbit

overoceans said:
I agree. Dukes Of Hazard was a popular show all over the US, unhobbled by any significant objections to its promotion of the flag.
Click to expand...

Oh there you go: NASA drums up interest for early 1980s robotic Moon rover mission by painting it to resemble the General Lee and having it jump over a small crater.
 

The Tai-Pan

overoceans said:
I was thinking something along those lines. More fleshed out...

NASA chooses an African-American astronaut for the moon-landing crew, preferably one who is outspoken on the issue of civil rights. This causes a lot of howling in the south, if only just from self-serving politicians looking to drum up controversy.

However, having made this big announcement to the world, NASA is hardly going to be in a position to backtrack in deference to some grandstanding yokels. So, to smooth things over, NASA offers to plant the Confederate flag on the moon, along with Old Glory. The southern demagogues figure that being viewed as the men who got the South's banner on the moon is as good a vote-getter as blocking a Black astronaut, and drop their objections.

And FWIW, I don't think this challenge is QUITE as ludicrous as some gave argued. I'd be willing to bet, for example, that if in the late 1960s you had taken a poll of white southerners asking if they would approve of the Confederate flag on the moon, a majority would, at the very least, have had no objections.
Click to expand...
It is never going to happen, period. At the very least, in a world where the government cares enough to have a Black astronaut, why on Earth would they have a Confederate flag? It doesn't add up.
 

Hugh Third of Five

overoceans said:
I agree. Dukes Of Hazard was a popular show all over the US, unhobbled by any significant objections to its promotion of the flag.

That flag was even generally considered okay in Canada. I saw semi-official usages(university club insignia etc) well into the 1990s.
Click to expand...
If you somehow get NASA to plant a flag from pop culture, it's going to be either a UFP flag or a Starfleet insignia.
 
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Colonel Zoidberg

Yeah, all I can think of is “Dukes of Hazzard gets insanely big and does a moon episode, and an astronaut plants a flag there as a tribute to the Duke boys. Also said astronaut is as much of a doofus on race issues as Lester from The Cleveland Show.”
 

overoceans

Mad Bad Rabbit said:
Oh there you go: NASA drums up interest for early 1980s robotic Moon rover mission by painting it to resemble the General Lee and having it jump over a small crater.
Click to expand...

I wasn't arguing that the flag would get to the moon BECAUSE of its association with The Dukes Of Hazard. I was using TDOH as an example of how respectable the flag was, well into the 1980s.

For the record, I was assuming that my scenario would happen around the time of the OTL Apollo 11 landing. A full decade before TDOH ever appeared on TV.
 
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