Apartheid Superpower 4.0

MerryPrankster

Do y'all think I should include Project Orion in TTL?

The current incarnation of the TL (I haven't posted it) involves three Orion-type ships built in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They're used for outer solar-system exploration (the four year round trip to Saturn) but an accident nearly leads to WWIII and so the Orions are retired.

Thus, I figure the TL-ending space mission should be a return to the outer planets, perhaps using fusion- or even antimatter-powered ion-drive ships instead of a manned mission to Mars, since that would have been done before the Orions were retired.

Not to mention something like Orion in the 1950s and 1960s means more advanced space tech elsewhere. I've already upped both sides' #s of scramjets and given each of them LEO battle-stations for WWIII.

Y'all like? It's getting more Draka-like, but no pulse-drives, antimatter starships, or other unrealistic things.
 

Atom

Eh, I have my own problems with the Orion (Ian has an excellent article on them, on his website) but that sounds nice. I always like TL's with faster exploration of space. Oh by the way good job on the whole work, Merry Prankster. I like it.
 

MerryPrankster

Atom said:
Eh, I have my own problems with the Orion (Ian has an excellent article on them, on his website) but that sounds nice. I always like TL's with faster exploration of space. Oh by the way good job on the whole work, Merry Prankster. I like it.
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I've read Ian's article. He makes a lot of good points, and I've incorporated many of them into the story.

Nukes were used extensively in the last stages of WWII (the Afrikaners vs. the Soviets and US vs. the Japanese), so the US and the Afrikaners have got a notion of how destructive they are (EMP, environmental problems, etc).

Thus, the Orions are built in orbit (no ground-launch nastiness) and they don't fire their nukes until well away from satellites.

They're also expensive as all get-out, so they're used essentially for prestige exploration projects (a US-only voyage to Mercury and Venus and a joint expedition to the outer solar system, and that's about it). Scramjets and ion-drive ships will be the workhorses of the space programs in TTL.

Do you have any suggestions for other parts of the TL?
 

B_Munro

pacifichistorian

Banned
Dathi THorfinnsson said:
It seems to me that moving the history of torpedoes forward that far, that fast, without any explanation is ... a problem. Moreover, why is South Africa the first to develop such a weapon when the major industrial powers e.g. Britain, and France haven't?
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2d point, I agree. Early torpedo tho, you forget the Howell, which could've been built by some genius (Eircsson?) in the 1830s...
 

MerryPrankster

In the newest 1848 thread, someone came up with the idea that the newly-united Germans and Italians could be natural allies of Russia against Britain and France, if the Russians' reactionary ideas didn't get in the way.

Do you think I should have Germany (at the very least) and Italy (maybe) ally with Russia during the Second Crimean War, which I haven't really developed?

The other TL's situation involved the Italians joining up out of fear of the French, but in TTL, France is a big enemy of Germany. What would the Italians gain?
 
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