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  1. Workable Goblin

    How ambitious can alternate space histories get?

    Meh, it's hardly amazing (especially with 1970s-era solar cells, though granted those were improving fast), but then conventional power plants of any type have rather dismal efficiencies overall. Combined-cycle plants are the best, but those didn't really exist at the time, and maybe wouldn't if...
  2. Workable Goblin

    How ambitious can alternate space histories get?

    There were a number of other issues with the SPS concept (one notable one is that it would produce a lot of space debris in GEO), but some kind of "SPS program goes to full development" is probably among the most interesting, if difficult to justify, sci-fi-type scenarios available for a more...
  3. Workable Goblin

    How ambitious can alternate space histories get?

    It is also objectively a fact that the space program has never been especially popular in the United States. If you had a prolonged period with no human spaceflight activity or a shift in perception so that it is seen as mostly dangerous and pointless instead of prestigious and cool, then it is...
  4. Workable Goblin

    How ambitious can alternate space histories get?

    No one was saying anything like “suddenly all of the other countries lose interest in spaceflight” except for the nuclear war scenarios for obvious reasons. It’s simply a fact that Russia in the 1990s was only able to keep flying humans into space because of U.S. money, for instance, so if the...
  5. Workable Goblin

    How ambitious can alternate space histories get?

    I’m not sure where you’re getting this idea from, because the OP is just categorizing stories, and specifically notes that stories that have less space travel than OTL are uncommon. That offers an obvious invitation to consider such stories which is more lacking in other categories (realistic...
  6. Workable Goblin

    How ambitious can alternate space histories get?

    The effects of a WWIII with nukes very much depends on when this war takes place, because the relative balance of power and number of nukes in existence varied dramatically over the course of the Cold War, and up to today. For example, between about 1945 and 1955 a WWIII with nukes would look...
  7. Workable Goblin

    How ambitious can alternate space histories get?

    The problem I see with this scenario is actually that the budget of NASA is too small here--it's still doubtlessly expensive, but you're starting to get into similar budget territory as, say, the Antarctic or particle physics programs, and those have never been at serious risk of being shut down...
  8. Workable Goblin

    How ambitious can alternate space histories get?

    One I've contemplated in this vein is if Columbia catastrophically fails on STS-1 through failure of the body flap, and then Challenger (most likely) fails on STS-2 due to an SRB failure or RCC puncture on the leading edge. This would surely kill the Space Shuttle program, and given that it's...
  9. Workable Goblin

    How ambitious can alternate space histories get?

    People have, in fact, put “their money” on the line to go find out what is at Jupiter (and Jupiter’s moons), quite a few billions once you add up all of the spacecraft that have primarily been aimed there. Enough for a human mission? No. But if human missions were sufficiently cheap to do, or...
  10. Workable Goblin

    Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid: A More Radical American Civil War

    More likely, anyway, the U.S. becomes inconsistent, with pro-labor developments at home matched by anti-labor developments in foreign branches. It's worth remembering how the 1950s saw the apex of U.S. worker success while at the same time the U.S. was supporting violent suppression of labor in...
  11. Workable Goblin

    Solar Dreams: a history of solar energy (1878 - 2025)

    You can also use fireless locomotives there, which was popular IOTL for industrial railways and briefly for city railways (before being replaced by cable cars and electric trains). The relative balance will probably depend on how rapidly liquid air systems spread for industrial applications...
  12. Workable Goblin

    Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid: A More Radical American Civil War

    Certainly not always, at least not by the standards of the time. I've been reading the Homeric epics (and am currently reading the Aeneid), and that furnishes plenty of examples of "beardless youths" (i.e., children, by modern standards) going into battle and either being passed over lightly and...
  13. Workable Goblin

    Solar Dreams: a history of solar energy (1878 - 2025)

    The best point of comparison would seem to be to be fireless locomotives, which work on fairly similar principles (a reservoir of steam/compressed air from an outside source powering an otherwise fairly conventional locomotive). They saw pretty limited use, mainly in applications where there was...
  14. Workable Goblin

    The Cuban Missile Crisis: How many hits does North America take?

    Note that I specified terrorist action, and carefully did not say anything about state involvement; I was rather thinking about groups like Al-Qaeda or ISIS, which have not evinced much problem with morale or willpower despite heavy military defeats (and often quite severe economic issues in...
  15. Workable Goblin

    The Cuban Missile Crisis: How many hits does North America take?

    In 1962 China does not have nuclear weapons at all, in fact (their first test was about two years after the crisis), so the only thing they can do militarily is try to shoot down American aircraft. I suppose they could also theoretically try to carry out terrorist attacks against the United...
  16. Workable Goblin

    Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid: A More Radical American Civil War

    That being said, some aspects of the stronger civil rights laws will probably still percolate down; it was, after all, the 14th Amendment that was behind the Wong Kim Ark case.
  17. Workable Goblin

    Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid: A More Radical American Civil War

    I mean, from the point of view of the 19th century it doesn't seem evil at all...
  18. Workable Goblin

    Alternate Planets, Suns, Stars, and Solar Systems Thread

    In fact, Kepler deduced his laws from observations by Brahe, which did not use telescopes (they had in not been invented yet). Now, this doesn’t mean that the Greeks or other early peoples could make the same discoveries, because Brahe used extremely sophisticated techniques in his measurements...
  19. Workable Goblin

    The Cuban Missile Crisis: How many hits does North America take?

    It's gonna be nukes, especially since they know that the Soviets have nuclear weapons there. That makes up for a lot of sins...
  20. Workable Goblin

    Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid: A More Radical American Civil War

    I mean, even IOTL Lincoln has been regarded as a leftist icon in certain circles at certain times, and there have definitely been leftist interpretations of the Civil War and reconstruction (mostly because there have been leftist interpretations of pretty much every historical event). I don't...
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