(At one point NRO had an entire Agena section, consisting of about 700 declassified Agena documents dating from 1958-1967. You can find this issue in the piles of Agena documents that have been declassified. The term "standardization" is a loaded one. It was a pretty fun excercise, I initially wrote it "because Big Gemini" but then the Agena stole its thunder and become the story main character. This makes logistics simpler and cheaper through standardization. Whichever country gets it hands on the Agena, gain access to the US station. In this alt-history the Agena flies on all three aforementioned boosters - Atlas, Thor, Titan - but also on all seven Saturn IB left by the end of Apollo (209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216 - the incomplete ones are completed) By ricochet the Agena becomes the station main logistic vehicle, also flying on Ariane, Diamant, the Japanese Thor (that become Thorad and not Deltas) and finally, Europa leftover Blue Streaks. Apollo without a SM as the lifeboat - And the Agena as an automated space tug (think FGB, but smaller) for automated docking of the modules to the core. Think Mir on steroids - Big Gemini as crew vehicle, Titan III-M to launch it. In place of the Shuttle NASA gets a more balanced "manned spaceflight package" - modular Skylab: NAR S-II + MDD S-IVB modules, 33 ft and 22 ft in diameter. Fletcher resigns in anger and George Low gets the job. I wrote once an alternate history where the Shuttle gets cancelled by Nixon OMB and PSAC late 1971. Competing mission requirements continue to defy launch vehicle standardization even to the present day, with NSSL's Medium and Heavy requirements, NASA's crew and cargo launch needs, and commercial satellite goals a prime example. STS was supposed to be the ultimate standardization, but the Air Force began to develop Titan 4 even before the Challenger failure. After the initial "interim" efforts, the Air Force strove to attain standardization with Titan 3B/3C/3D, but then NASA created its own custom adaptation with Titan 3E/Centaur. Meanwhile, NASA's Atlas-Centaur wasn't ready. Delta wasn't adequate for the Gemini missions for a variety of reasons, so Atlas-Agena was used. NASA tagged along, using Agena for some missions, but the Agency developed Thor-Delta for East Coast launches and Thor-Agena only flew from the West Coast. Each improvement added time on orbit and more miles of film. Titan 3B-Agena was developed for the follow-on Gambit-3, replacing Atlas-Agena. Atlas-Agena was the obvious next step, ultimately for Gambit. Thor-Agena evolved into the more capable TAT-Agena and finally Thorad-Agena. Thor was ready before Atlas, so Thor-Agena was selected for Corona. I think that part of it was timing, and the biggest drivers were the massive photo spysat programs.
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