SunlitZelkova

That may be true about the Sarych, but he said designed to counter other ships. The Iowa class were designed to counter the Kongo class, certainly not the Pr.1144 which wouldn't exist for another forty years.

No. Warship classes simply have predecessors and successors. The reason "generations" of fighter aircraft came about was mainly because of the bird [lol, this is getting auto moderated and changed to bird] for tat development of aircraft during the Cold War. US develops F-100 to counter MiG-15, Soviets develop MiG-19 and 21 to counter F-100 (although bomber interceptor was the primary role), Americans develop F-4 to counter MiG-21, Soviets develop MiG-23 to counter F-4, Americans develop Teen Series to counter MiG-23, Soviets develop MiG-29 and Su-27 to counter Teen Series. (If the Cold War had not ended, perhaps we would be seeing sixth gen fighters entering service now, having gone through the F-22 vs. MiG-29/Su-27 and then MiG-1.44 or Su-57 vs. F-22 in the 2010s) A similar dynamic existed with tanks, which is why the M1 Abrams is a 3rd generation MBT. The Americans develop the M60 to counter the T-54, the Soviets upgun the T-62 from 100 to 115mm to counter the M60, the Americans develop the M1 to counter the T-62... later upgraded to counter the T-72. It kinda ended there though, which is why the Abrams' design dates to the 1970s. The Soviets had a 152mm upgunned T-80 in development called the Object 292, which perhaps might have kicked off the race for a 4th gen MBT in the 90s had it entered service, but it didn't escape the collapse of the USSR. Tanks like the Type 10 and K2 have been called 4th gen, but it is questionable because they are just better versions of third gen designs (namely the Type 90 and K1). In contrast, ships have not been designed to specifically counter other nation's ships since the 1930s. Since the end of WWII, new ship classes are mainly designed around carrying new technology for countering all ships, not just one specific class. Ships also vary greatly between nations, for example, with Russian ships focusing on the anti-surface warfare mission, American vessels on land attack and ballistic missile defence, and Japanese ships on ASW.

More like STS just came way too early. As I said in another thread, STS was the definition of something "ahead of its time." Rapid reusability wasn't lost back then because of lack of funding, it was lost because of technological limitations. No amount of funding would have made it work. Now is the time.

The way it is supposed to work is this: Tony is from Universe A (let's call it Track A). They journeyed to Tracks B, C, and D to get the stones. They use them in Track A to fix everything. Steve goes back to Tracks B, C, and D to return them. No paradox. There is a big "upset" but it is only in the form of the events past Guardians of Galaxy Vol. 1 (Track D) never taking place, because Thanos and his army from Track D have been snapped out of existence. But that doesn't prevent them from traveling back to B, C, and D to return to the Infinity Stones. It wouldn't have worked to "freeze" Thanos- which I assume refers to putting him in a time loop like he did to Dormammu. Yes everyone could live, but they'd be stuck reliving the same few moments over and over again. Dr. Strange said he looked ahead at all the possibilities of the coming battle, and probably realized Thanos' will was too strong and he would never give in. Thus the only way was the way he chose (let everyone die and then fix it with time travel). The first method you speak of involves something called the Novikov self-consistency principal. As you say, whatever you want to do in the past, you either already did or failed to do. The problem is this would mean not only is there no free will for sentient beings, it would mean everything in the natural world is "on clock work" too, by virtue of sentient beings being part of the universe. That means not only are you destined to say, go back in time but do nothing significant that causes anyone to notice in the historical record, it also means things like the exact moment leaves fall, when solar flares occur, the exact day winter occurs, etc., are all predetermined and cannot be altered. Put simply, there is nothing random in the world. Such a theory would be very depressing, as it means nothing you do has any consequence and there is no real choice. It would be mind boggling to think about and would lead to the erosion of morals and society. It does nonetheless have numerous proponents. The second method is sometimes said to invoke the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. The problem of Schrodinger's cat is solved. Rather than having to deal with the question of how a cat could be both dead and alive due to a particle being in two different states until observed, there is simply one "world"- again, I shall call it a Track- in which the cat is dead, and one in which it is alive. The problem with this for me is it implies everyday life in the normal flow of time is also akin to time travel. When you decide whether you want to have Coke or Pepsi, you "journey" into a different Track depending on what choice you make. This then raises the question of whether it is actually feasible to "journey" backwards at all. Because natural time travel, which goes forward, does not involve you physically travelling to another Track, you remain in your own body and outwardly experience nothing. So what would travelling backward even be like? Would you even truly be going backwards, or would time simply take a U-Turn for you and continue to go forwards, but outwardly appear as if you were travelling backwards? "Suppose... time is round."- a line from A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, 1977.

"Comrades, we can not allow a cereal gap!"

The company my dad works for has inventory at the Port of Baltimore. Their business will be impacted by the collapse of the bridge… it will be pretty bad

I think the designs were certainly feasible, they just would have been super expensive and at a total disadvantage compared to expendable rockets of the era. Zero point in reusability. When I was researching my “The Quest For Rapid Reusability” thread I found that the fly back booster for the DC-3 was planned to use the same TPS as the Shuttle. The booster was huge, if the IRL Shuttle took months to service to be ready to fly again, the booster would take even longer. So even with dangerous testing set aside, such proposals would not be economical. As I said in another thread; the discussion about how the Soviets could never have landed on the Moon ahead of the US, I believe that both in the USSR and US spaceflight proposals were completely out of touch with the economics of the time. Despite being the world’s two superpowers, they were still not developed enough to be able to support extensive, sustained space exploration. Maybe reusable spacecraft that actually are competitive with or better than expendable rockets could have been achieved by the 1980s, for example using my proposal in the Quest thread: just build so many vehicles you can have one ready to fly every week even if that means 20 are in processing at all times. But to support and sustain that architecture you’d need to somehow take the national economy from the 1970s into 21st century levels in the span of a decade. Otherwise there would not be enough to build and maintain so many spacecraft.

TIL. Reading more on Wikipedia led me to these too similarly shocking incidents- Pinnacle Airlines Flight 3701, where the pilots took it to an unsafe altitude for fun (to join the “club” of pilots who had done so), and Aeroflot Flight 6502, where the captain bet he could do an instrument only landing and thus closed the blinds of the aircraft. No passengers were onboard in the first incident, but both crew were killed. 63 passengers died in the second one and seven more in hospitals. The co-pilot had a heart attack shortly afterward but the captain survived and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but it was reduced to 6. All that brings to mind the 684th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, which was actually disbanded in 1989 because of an accident in July 1988 that killed civilians in Tiraspol. I don’t know the details but it must have been pretty serious to warrant such action.

Say what you want about old space but they were totally justified in knocking down this proposal. Shuttle showed that reusability with 1970s technology was not what it was cracked up to be. X-33 went on to show 80s and 90s tech wasn’t up to the task either. If Ariane group had tried to get state funding for this, I don’t think we would have gotten a European module for Space Station Freedom/ISS. EDIT- When it comes to quite a few decisions I think it’s fine to say, “Gee, would have been nice if it would be this way,” but to say that the people who made the decisions were dumb is to judge them with hindsight, which is unfair. Even everyone (ULA, Ariane… whoever else was looking to build a next gen rocket)’s decision to forgo reusability in the late 2000s and early 2010s even as Falcon 9 reusability dev was ongoing were justified IMO. Unfortunate, but made with reasoning that was sound at the time.

@sevenperforce, in the SpaceX thread you said fusion propulsion could be done with the political will to do so. Two questions- 1. Are there any good articles you know of that can introduce a laymen to this particular type of propulsion? 2. About how long has this been feasible? That is, what’s the earliest date we could have started working on it had the political will been there? Asking for my alternate history where there is more dedication to spaceflight in the 20th century and the political will might be there by the 2000s or 2010s.

https://x.com/isro/status/1770998585003512045?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A Indian test vehicle “Pushpak” undergoes more successful tests. India will soon join the club and both China and the US currently have small, unmanned space planes on orbit right now. We’re waiting for you Russia! Also, I bet if Japan was more militarily independent, we might have seen the HOPE-X spaceplane demonstrators evolve into an X-37B style platform.

Not necessarily. Back in the 80s planners were considering 400 mile expeditions using pressurized rovers. I think they will treat the rover as a spacecraft- just like in space, if your spacecraft fails you’re done, if the rover fails you’re done. But you don’t do pseudo-suborbital flights just for safety reasons instead of going to full orbit, and you don’t limit a rover’s travel range because of safety reasons either. The only reason Apollo had to remain with walking distance with their rover was because it wasn’t pressurized. Thus the endurance of the suit was the main limiting factor. The whole point of a pressurized rover is to basically have a spacecraft or base on wheels, so you can go as far as you want. Maybe in the early missions they would stay within walking distance for tests, but eventually they would expand to multi-day 100+ mile expeditions.

Lack of interest in doing things you usually enjoy can be a symptom of it though. On the other hand, watching mindless content and doing nothing are pretty normal methods of filling empty time.

I'd be wary of treating any sci-fi as having had "predicted the future." It could birth a habit of believing present day sci-fi works can "predict the future," thus leading to them becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. There's too much fatalism in the world. The future is in our hands, if we stop falling for dogmas and work together to fix problems instead of putting band aids over them.

That thing was cancelled. Japan will be developing a new pressurized rover with Toyota.

Sounds like depression.

If it succeeded they'd be forced to use it a little bit, but by cancelling it before it could have a successful flight they could write off the program as hopeless. It was probably a good thing though, because if N1 succeeded there might not have been Mir, only more failed lunar flights. I see what your thinking. Wasn't the R-7 mass produced though? There were like a thousand launches in the 70s because of that satellite mapping program I forget the name of. I think this is feasible if Stalin died a little earlier, and wasn't able to sign the decree authorizing the development of the R-6. Maybe Chelomei wouldn't have lost his bureau then too.

Thank you for the informative post. Good point. I think most of their plans were feasible in theory but matched up with neither the political commitment or economic feasibility, along with underlying issues with Soviet technology. I didn't know that, that's interesting to know. The N1 was mainly cancelled because the CPSU and military did not care for it after the Americans beat them. Three days before Mishin was even dismissed, Grechko signed an order forbidding further launches. Glushko also desired to spite Korolyov's work because of his bad relationship with him. Actual questions of whether it was useful played little role in deciding to cancel it. Former VPK head Smirnov said in 1991 that the leadership was afraid it would succeed, and that's why they cancelled it. Saturn rockets were so expensive they had to be cancelled, I think Delta would be a better example of industrialism. Even Titan wasn't launched that often. UR series is an example of industrialism, but we'll never know if Energia could have been because there wasn't a healthy economy to fund it. We'll never know if N1 was industrial or not. It was crafted in segments in Kuybyshev and then shipped to Baikonur for assembly. But they never really had a regular production line like Saturn did, instead producing a couple rockets at a time only. 15 Saturn Vs were ordered and all were built between 1965 and 1968, but 16 of the N1 were ordered and only three were on hand after 1966-1969, and then one at a time over the next couple years. The 10th one wasn't even complete by 1974. If it worked they would have used it for something, and the upgrades with better upper stages were viable. Blok SR could take 24 tons to the Moon. It still would require a docking though. Like I said, the 60s was barnyard rocketry. Saturn V, N1, Vulkan were all too ahead of their time. The economy wasn't there to support such a large program. Apollo and L3 might as well have been the GIRD-09s of the 1960s. They weren't feasible in the long term. Vulkan was a crazy proposal on Glushko's part considering he just cancelled a lunar base program. Even Energia was questionable for lunar missions. The Energia based Moon mission still had a separate LOK and LK, just like L3M, that needed to dock in orbit around the Moon. On the other hand, there was more experience with dockings from Salyut by that time, so maybe it wouldn't be as dangerous.

That’s difficult when you yourself have brought up political topics like how much a government can intervene in a family’s right to choose when and the debate on capitalism, which are literally politics. This has nothing to do with science or spaceflight.

I was gonna hold off on replying but I feel like this could be a fun discussion. So, Successful flight of the N1 might not have allowed a lunar landing (apparently all of the ones that flew but the last one did not even have a throw weight high enough to even carry both the LOK and LK), especially considering that given the L1 had all the problems it did with solar panels, who knows how many issues the LOK would have had with its fuel cells. On the other hand the LK was tested in LEO in 1971 and worked perfectly. But anyways, what a successful N1 flight would allow would be the launch of MKBS, the modular space station made of roughly two Skylab sized modules. So stations would not have slowed down, especially considering a number of DOS and OPS failed during or shortly after launch in the 70s. They had plans for the L3M complex, launched on a variant of the N1 with a hydrogen upper stage. Because of the death of Isayev and potential problems with fuel cells, it probably wouldn’t have succeeded, but in theory, the N1 could be upgraded. The 60s was basically barn yard rocketry anyways. Saturn V was never meant to be sustainable and neither would N1 be. They were both way ahead of their time. It’s very possible that even if the N1 did have a successful flight, say around 1971, it would have been cancelled anyway like the Saturn V was. So my 80s Moon base tale at the end of the post was a fantasy. But it’s fun to dream.

https://x.com/cnspaceflight/status/1770252121784701029?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A Queqiao-2 lunar relay satellite lifts off on a Long March 8 from Wenchang. Chang’e 6 lunar sample return mission to the South Pole will follow soon! The various parts of the Long March 5 have already arrived at Hainan for assembly.

Make love cat videos, not war artillery shells!

I feel like that was just a ploy for media attention. ”Beating Elon to Mars” is so vague it could mean anything. *FH launches probe to Mars* “Um, actually we meant humans.” *Starship launches humans to Mars* “Um, actually we meant building a base or colony.” *SpaceX builds small outpost on Mars* “Um, actually we were talking about how we already beat them to Mars by holding shares in ULA which launched Perseverance before Starship even flew lolololo.”

Apparently not a MAX, but an Alaska 737, also in the Portland area, arrived with at the airport cracked windshield. https://www.koin.com/news/portland/alaska-airlines-flight-cracked-windshield-safe-landing/

-snip- It got too political so I’ll PM you.