Comments from E-Mail about the previous posts. First, from Mike Lonie about the Alternate Jutland scenario.

Michael Lonie wrote:

France will want Alsace and Lorraine back. Absent a definite land defeat for Germany she won't get them. Gallia irredenta.

If Italy was upset after the real war at how little those 13 battles of the Isonzo earned her, how mad will she be here? Looks like promising ground for Benny the Moose and his Fascisti. Italia irredenta.

Neither Russia, nor Germany nor Austria-Hungary want a revived Poland. Absent a clear land victory by the allies there won't be one.

The US Army will remain a frontier constabulary fit only for chasing Indians and Mexican bandits into the 1930s and 40s.

Germany will try again in twenty years. "We weren't defeated, it was the Navy who let us down." "Next time we'll do it right." The reform of the German constitution will allow more populist parties to enter the Reichstag, including a small one representing artisans disturbed by economic changes and resentful of the "unnecessary" defeat of the Great War: the National Socialist German Worker's Party.

Is there a Revolution in Russia? The original Revo was intended to make prosecution of the war more effective since the Empress, with her "German sympathies" was impeding the war effort. With what might pass for a victory, and a negotiated peace conference coming up in the Spring of 1917, that would be nipped at the bud. No Lenin and no Bolshevik Revo. Now THERE's a happier prospect. With no alienated Russia separated from Europe Russia can play a constructive part in any new round of crises.


Or maybe an unconstructive one. Maybe the Krauts and Russkies would find their way to a Rapallo anyway.


America marches off into the jazz Age and the Roaring twenties while Europe stagnates because all the belligerents want to go back to the gold standard at prewar rates (which is what Britain did ). No League of Nations, no multilateral economic institutions. Rise of protectionism earlier than in our world. Diminution of trade versus prewar, due to protective tariffs and unrealistic exchange rates. Bad for the Brits. Internally deflation in all the countries keeps economies slowed, leading to labor unrest and low agricultural prices.


For Britain Troubles in Ireland. So what else is new?


Muslim uprisings all over the place in 1919. This actually happened. The Mad Mullah in Somalia fought the Brits, Afghanistan invaded India (now there's chutzpah), trouble in French colonies. Probably even the Turks would have troubles from people like the Wahhabis (Ibn Saud captured Mecca, and massacred the populace there, in 1925).


There will be no end of fun in your world.

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Granted, all of it. I never said it would be a better world, just that it was different. If they didn't solve the problems of Europe in 1914-1919, they won't in this world, either. Some minor points:

No Revolution in Russia. That is one pleasant thought. It is possible that the Grand Duke Michael becomes the heir shortly after the end of the war. He was the Tsar's brother as I recall.

There would have been the Easter Rising in Ireland, so, yes, troubles. What the Brits do about it is another question.

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Now from Colin (and my reply) about Space Habitats.

Looks good.

I hope some more people volunteer their informed comments to our discussions.

It would be really great to hear from scholars, field workers and others with hands-on knowledge about technology, historic scenarios, etc.

I'm pretty sure you're doing useful things with your "spare" time these days, rather than wallowing in new technology reports like I do.

Thus, I wonder if you have access to the same sense of advancing developments that I do, and I have to keep prodding at our "optimism/pessimism" discussion.

Bluntly, as far as "optimistic" versus "pessimistic" I just don't see any "there" there.

When I suggest that all sorts of really nifty technology will happen long before the first large long-term space habitat can be constructed, that does not seem like optimism to me. It's a functional requirement. First, and foremost, lots of fancy tech will be required to work and work well before it is even possible to build the habitat. Second, in the time it takes to develop habitat technology, many other technology fields will be leveraged forward by develpments in habitat technology. Third, there is always a continuing general advance of technology, even in the utter depths of WWII or Stalinist postwar Russia.

Time equals progress. It's that simple. You cannot have "X" years pass without "X times TechDevRate" progress.

Treat it as an absolute that there will be no time in the next century when technology does not advance much faster than any of us can truly grasp.

Again, that's not optimism for me. That is observed events extrapolated logically.

For the purposes of story writing, it might be useful to consider that who benefits from developments in technology is entirely separate from who creates the developments.

If you need obnoxious bureaucrats like Sir Humphrey, you have to give them power. Do so. We can both imagine the sort of nation that might produce that future history. Then deal with the frictions the "Sir Humphreys" inevitably create with their fearful, power-seeking ways.

It is not necessary to create a "dark future" in order to have dark actors, dark powers and dark fates.

The world is a big place.

The solar system is a bigger place.

Many different futures will codevelop and exist side-by-side.
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While I wrote "my sandbox, my rules", I think some clarification is in order. I'm not pessimistic about the future. What I am pessimistic about are the institutions we have in place that deals with the changes roaring down the pike. Some of those institutions have a great deal of money and clout. The best example to hand is the X-31. The people making the decision chose the one design that needed a lot of unproven technology and vaporware to work right the first time. Not going to happen.

My personal view is that private enterprise in space is the way to go. But we are going to have to have additional places other than the US and its legal climate. An example is the Arlington Air Show held every summer at Arlington Airport here in Washington. Last year there was a crash. The family of the victim has filed a lawsuit alleging various problems that contributed to the fatality. The large sums of money that they are asking for will put the Airshow out of business. BTW, the lawyer gets 60%. The aircraft was experimental, and accidents happen. The NTSB found the airport and the airshow not culpable, but even defending against this suit will drive the airshow out of business.

The first crash of a rocket plane carrying passengers will be trumpeted by the media, and the lawyers will circle the wreckage like vultures. General Aviation was virtually killed by lawsuits; when a plane crashed, every manufacturer of any part in the aircraft was sued. The theory is that most will settle out of court. The result was that people abandoned General Aviation in droves. Only after a version of tort reform was pushed through by the FAA and the NTSB did this change and Piper, Beech, Gulfstream and a couple of others resume making General Aviation aircraft. But what used to cost $20,000 (or $40,000 in today's dollars) now costs $250-400,000 to guard against the lawsuits that still come.

Tort reform, however, will die as long as at least 40% of the Congress is Democrat - they won't vote to kill their biggest contributors. This does not apply in jurisdictions outside of the US, as has been documented by various Space blogs.

There's also the "for the good of all mankind" clause in the Outer Space Treaty of 1968. My take is that the socialists want nothing to do with Space as it will open things up that they can't control. Their response will be to try to milk it for everything that it's worth. I think of the unelected aristocracy of the EU. They've begun dropping their complaints about Microsoft now that Bill and company have started contributing to "studies" and other lucrative contracts that filter through friends and into their pockets. The best example I've found for a view of the EU is the Mafia.

SSDD - Same Shit, Different Day.

This is the basis for the 'pessimism' that I occasionally show. I have a number of suggestions to end it, but it is better to change the sandbox completely and leave them with their hand out and no way to get a piece of the action.

Now for story purposes, I thought the future outlined in "Fallen Angels" to be a valid one for starters. And that includes the glaciers that suddenly advance despite all of the screaming of the Global Warming crowd. That's part of the background for the habitat of Brin.