Possibly Fridge Brilliance, If Goddard was taken seriously by Heinlein, the German Rocket Club may have been cut off earlier from Goddard's research and so at the end of the war not nearly as well developed, denying the Russian's the German Rocket technology they used in the Space Race, so the Russians never got Space Travel and are trying to buy it, but denied because Heinlein is the rocket equivalent of Rickover.
Still a problem in that case. The US Apollo program relied heavily on the same German Rocket technology the Soviets used. Especially the scientists who headed the German program like Werner Von Braun.
