Early space flight--how early can we reasonably go?

NHBL · Jun 1, 2010

With a POD no earlier than 66 years before the new timeline’s lunar landing, what is the earliest that a successful lunar landing could be achieved. (Successful means that at least one astronaut lands on the moon, gets out of the lander, plants a flag, scoops some moon rocks, and returns to Earth. He (or she) must live long enough to give a good report on the flight.

(For example, if the POD is 1800, the lunar landing must happen by 1863.)

I chose 66 years, since that’s the time from the first manned heavier than air flight until we all heard, “Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” That is a moment that I will never forget.

How much would that change if, for some reason, a major nation got infected with a desire to do the impossible, and go to the moon? I’m actually thinking of a strange POD that gets the United States obsessed with a moon landing at what might be considered implausibly early. Obsessed as in, the government gets behind it by popular demand in a time when getting a single battleship funded was a challenge. People know it’s a long term goal, as much a part of the national psychge as Manifest Destiny--perhspa even an expansion of Manifest Destiny, taking it to the sky.

Polish Eagle · Jun 1, 2010

Von Braun was planning large rockets in the late 30s. If that's your POD, then you can get a moon landing by 1960.

Further back, it gets difficult. Maybe with a POD in 1780, when Erasmus Darwin designed a hydrogen-oxygen rocket motor. At that rate, with the right supplies (aluminum is difficult, but if they can somehow engineer an air-breathing system, they can reduce weight) the Victorian British can do it by 1850.

sansahansan · Jun 1, 2010

Would it be too ASBish to 'accidentally' stumble upon a workable cold fusion for a power supply?

Then electrokinetics would be feasible & popular in the 1890's... about the time Presidential Campaigns were preaching 'manifest destiny' about pacific islands... just redirect that to the skies, then the heavens?

For that matter, the oldest possible flying machine?

According to Aulus Gellius, Archytas, the Ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and strategist, was reputed to have designed and built the first artificial, self-propelled flying device, a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of what was probably steam, said to have actually flown some 200 meters.[1][2] This machine, which its inventor called The Pigeon (Greek: Περιστέρα "Peristera"), may have been suspended on a wire or pivot for its flight.[3][4]

Detach the tether, create an airfoil concept, and give it to the Romans. Would that prevent the fall of the Empire? likely not, but could be a good story.

The 9th century Arab inventor, Abbas Ibn Firnas's glider is considered by John Harding to be the first attempt at heavier-than-air flight in aviation history.
Bartolomeu de Gusmão, Brazil and Portugal, an experimenter with early airship designs. In 1709 demonstrated a small airship model before the Portuguese court, but never succeeded with a full-scale model.
Pilâtre de Rozier, Paris, France, first trip by a human in a free-flying balloon (the Montgolfière). 9 km covered in 25 minutes. October 15, 1783

I'd go for the Greek

They had a toy steam engine in ~1AD without knowing what it was (Hero of Alexander), so a tethered steam rocket in ~125 is believable, at least.

Once up in the air, then start finding the thinning atmosphere, and combine a yearning for space flight

Oh - you want space flight in 66 years from the POD

That's a bit tough.
Back to the late 1800's then

At least they had electricity and the concept of flight, if not actual flight.

Workable Goblin · Jun 1, 2010

I don't think it's possible to move the first lunar landing much before the 1940-1960 period (at least given the restrictions you have--if the potential timeline is longer, then the date will be earlier. If you have a POD 2 million years ago, hell, we could have flown to Alpha Centauri by now!) The reason is the great technical difficulty in building rockets and spacecraft capable of undertaking the voyage, in particular the lack of really good automated guidance systems until roughly that time frame. Without automated guidance, launch becomes much, much trickier.

Cuāuhtemōc · Jun 1, 2010

A pod that has Christianity gone would work for starts.

Faralis · Jun 1, 2010

Sa'id Mohammed said:
A pod that has Christianity gone would work for starts.

Its true that Christianity retarded some tech, but mainly preserved it in the Medieval era in Europe so not sure what you refer with that ...

If you are talking about survival of the Roman Empire, i think it will fallen with or without Christianity ( probably falls faster )

I know that the Muslim world preserved better the knowledge, but also have problems with extremists so ...

I think that the ( a most probable ) earlier arrival is giving the Chinese a bigger ( and longer ) interest in rocketry ...

Polish Eagle · Jun 1, 2010

Sa'id Mohammed said:
A pod that has Christianity gone would work for starts.

It's this historical misconception that really pisses me off. Without Christianity (or some analogous religion that acted largely the same in the aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire), Europe would be behind where it is now. Without the monasteries and theological colleges to preserve Roman and Greek works, European society would have returned to the tribal societies of the Germanic conquerors, as happened in large parts of Europe. The Church opposed very little scientific development. True, the Scholastic tradition of the Universities of Europe probably harmed scientific development a bit, as did the emphasis on the Bible as Truth, but having absolutely no scholarly or monastic tradition in the aftermath of the Fall of the Empire would have been worse.

Cicero the Younger · Jun 1, 2010

Christianity did plenty to retard the development of Western science. Not just in the medieval period, but before and after as well. Of course, so did Plato and his asinine assertion that you can solve all mysteries through pure thought and that observation of the actual world is not to be trusted. Any system which says they already have the answers will stunt the development of science. The ancient Greeks had already figured out the basics of observation and testing hypotheses, and if they hadn't quite gotten to the scientific method yet, they at least were getting there. Plato and Christianity are but two of the reasons that discovery was delayed for so many centuries.

Edit: And all this is actually beside the point, because the OP didn't ask for a general way to get earlier space travel. The specific challenge was to find an earlier starting point that would get us from heavier-than-air flight to a lunar landing within 66 years. Erasing Plato and Christianity may well get us to heavier-than-air flight earlier than happened in OTL, but there's no reason to think that 66-year deadline to a lunar landing would still be met. Space travel requires more than just knowledge of how to fly; a lot of different scientific discoveries have to have been made before you can apply the one to the other.

Emperor Norton I · Jun 1, 2010

Faralis said:
I know that the Muslim world preserved better the knowledge, but also have problems with extremists so ...

Uh, the whole "extremists" deal came following the dissolving of the Ottoman Empire, when the great powers of the Allies essentially carved up their own little puppets and subject states and all, without much regard for ethnic backgrounds, religious sect membership, and basically all the things that make a nation. The wave of dictators that held power, promising modernization and westernization while subsequently enforcing harsh rule also led to backlash that created modern extremists. These dictators were also often supported by the west and the United States during the Cold war, which led to backlash against those entities. Actually, even not that many decades ago, the Middle East was much more liberal and open and western and modern. IIRC, Osama's teenage years were spent around night clubs in tight jeans and such, and women weren't forced to cover themselves in "traditional robes" (IIRC here, those "traditional clothes" have not much to do with Islam and came from traditions of the region before the adoption of Islam, btw).

If you mean the Medieval Islamic world had extremists, one word: "Crusades". The west was tit-for-tat with anything heinous the east was doing at least, and was doing it far more primitively. While the west crumbled and squabbled, the Middle East was preserving the heritage of ancient scholars, and expanding heavily on it. Really, if it weren't for the printing press, Europe would have been not much more than a dirty hovel trying to lift itself up. It was the Middle East, Asia, the Americas and maybe even parts of Africa who were making the innovations.

Tobit · Jun 1, 2010

Kill off Ghengis Khan and no Mongol invasion means no destruction of Persia, Khorasan, or Mesopotamia. That would do it. Either that or Song China develops market capitalism and an industrial revolution.

But the butterflies, nay MOTHRA sized changes that would result from these PODs means that Space travel is the least of the writers' problems.

Then you could also suspend the laws of physics and achieve some kind of Steampunk moon journey, with POD like a successful Babbage driven computer revolution.

The 66 year law, means that stopping WWI and saving the life of some super genius would do it.

fred_smith · Jun 1, 2010

Sa'id Mohammed said:
A pod that has Christianity gone would work for starts.

I don't see the relevance to this thread.

If you want to get rid of Christianity, you'd need a really early PoD. Far too early for space flight to develop for reasons not directly connected to the POD in 100 years.

Polish Eagle · Jun 1, 2010

Tobit said:
Kill off Ghengis Khan and no Mongol invasion means no destruction of Persia, Khorasan, or Mesopotamia. That would do it. Either that or Song China develops market capitalism and an industrial revolution.

But the butterflies, nay MOTHRA sized changes that would result from these PODs means that Space travel is the least of the writers' problems.

Then you could also suspend the laws of physics and achieve some kind of Steampunk moon journey, with POD like a successful Babbage driven computer revolution.

The 66 year law, means that stopping WWI and saving the life of some super genius would do it.

A steampunk moon voyage isn't ASB. Just really difficult, but not impossible. Erasmus Darwin designed a hydrogen-oxygen rocket in 1779. If we can get a small difference engine going, the only innovation necessary to get it off the ground would be an air-augmented engine. That would reduce the necessary weight of the rocket. If they could possibly get aluminum in mass-production, they might get it light enough. Unlikely, but not impossible.

Ariosto · Jun 1, 2010

Maybe have Tsiolkovsky become more renown outside of the Russian Empire. He made many discoveries that were not discovered until decades after he himself had found them, especially in regards to heavier than air flight. Also sixty six years before the historical landing when he was making those findings, so no problem there.

RMcD94 · Jun 1, 2010

Edit: And all this is actually beside the point, because the OP didn't ask for a general way to get earlier space travel. The specific challenge was to find an earlier starting point that would get us from heavier-than-air flight to a lunar landing within 66 years. Erasing Plato and Christianity may well get us to heavier-than-air flight earlier than happened in OTL, but there's no reason to think that 66-year deadline to a lunar landing would still be met. Space travel requires more than just knowledge of how to fly; a lot of different scientific discoveries have to have been made before you can apply the one to the other.

Only if you take that as the first heavier-than-air flight.

Anyway, do you have to get heavier-than-air before space?

What does heavier-than-air have that space needs? It doesn't rely on the same method of transport.

Maniakes · Jun 2, 2010

Uranium was first purified in 1841. Radiactivity was discovered in 1896 when Becquerel left a uranium sample out near an undeveloped photographic plate and followed up on the discovery that the plate was clouded. This was an accident that could have happened at any time after the purification of uranium, so let's move it up to 1848.

IOTL, neutrons, fission, and isotopes (the scientific prerequisites for attempting a fission bomb project) were discovered over the course of about 40 years from the discovery of radioactivity. TTL, there would be fewer resources available for research and less scientific groundwork in other areas, so we can expect research into radioactivity to go significantly slower without a big boost from somewhere else.

Enter the reason for my choice of 1848 as a POD -- the Revolutions of 1848. Europe in general and Germany in particular has seen a wave of attempted revolutions, King Fredrick William IV of Prussia has declined an Imperial throne offered "from the gutter" of the revolutions and has instead imposed a monarchist constitution on Prussia, and Otto von Bismark has been elected to the new Prussian Landstag established by FWIV's constitution (his first elected office) as a representative from Saxony.

Meanwhile, a chemistry student at the University of Leipzig had decided to reproduce some experiments he'd read about to purify uranium. He accidentally irradiates an undeveloped photographic plate, notes the significance, and brings his discovery to the attention of two of the physics professors at the university: Wilhelm Weber and Carl Gauss, who perform their own follow-on experiments and realize the vast potential of this discovery. Gauss contacts a few local Landstag represenatives about seeking government funding for the research, and Bismark in particular is intrigued by the possibility of channelling the rising feelings of German nationalism into pride in scientific accomplishment, and becomes a major sponsor of funding for research into radioactivity throughout his career.

Optimistically (in terms of pace of scientific advancement), TTL may realize the possibility of a fission weapon by the mid-1880s (35-40 years after TTL discovery of radioactivity), triggering a race between the Great Powers to develop such a weapon. Germany and Britain conduct successful nuclear tests within months of each other in the early 1890s, and both develop Teller-Ulman style H-Bombs by 1900.

Now, nukes are the hard part of a Project Orion-style space race. The vehicle itself is a significant engineering feat that may require a decade or more of well-funded work to fully develop, but the prerequistes for this work is roughly the technology needed to build a Dreadnought battleship. We have this know-how as well as the nukes by 1900 ITTL, as well as a cold-war situation between Britain and Germany to motivate a space race, leaving us 14 years before the 66-year window post-POD for this space race to land a ship on the moon.

mrmandias · Jun 2, 2010

Nonsense. This was an invention of 19th C. atheists and is largely discredited. It continues to be believed for polemical purposes only.

And are you really going to tell me that JC dies in childhood at age 1, or whatever your POD is, and by AD 66 the Romans are on the moon?

Cicero the Younger said:
Christianity did plenty to retard the development of Western science. Not just in the medieval period, but before and after as well.

mrmandias · Jun 2, 2010

Emperor Norton I said:
Uh, the whole "extremists" deal came following the dissolving of the Ottoman Empire, when the great powers of the Allies essentially carved up their own little puppets and subject states and all, without much regard for ethnic backgrounds, religious sect membership, and basically all the things that make a nation. The wave of dictators that held power, promising modernization and westernization while subsequently enforcing harsh rule also led to backlash that created modern extremists. These dictators were also often supported by the west and the United States during the Cold war, which led to backlash against those entities. Actually, even not that many decades ago, the Middle East was much more liberal and open and western and modern. IIRC, Osama's teenage years were spent around night clubs in tight jeans and such, and women weren't forced to cover themselves in "traditional robes" (IIRC here, those "traditional clothes" have not much to do with Islam and came from traditions of the region before the adoption of Islam, btw).

If you mean the Medieval Islamic world had extremists, one word: "Crusades". The west was tit-for-tat with anything heinous the east was doing at least, and was doing it far more primitively. While the west crumbled and squabbled, the Middle East was preserving the heritage of ancient scholars, and expanding heavily on it. Really, if it weren't for the printing press, Europe would have been not much more than a dirty hovel trying to lift itself up. It was the Middle East, Asia, the Americas and maybe even parts of Africa who were making the innovations.

Islamic innovation slowed significantly post AD 1000 or thereabouts. The Crusades had literally nothing to do with it.

mrmandias · Jun 2, 2010

Cool! But propulsion is probably the least of your worries. Guidance and control and life support are probably huger deals, and i think the first two at least are amplified with an Orion drive. Of course, if you have massive lifting power you can have massively inefficient and over-engineered guidance and control and life support systems, so maybe this POD does do the trick, if its plausible, which I do not know that it is. The empirical basis for discovering more about radiation earlier is certainly there, but I do not know that the theoretical basis is, and I don't think you will get to fission without a theoretical basis.

Maniakes said:
Uranium was first purified in 1841. Radiactivity was discovered in 1896 when Becquerel left a uranium sample out near an undeveloped photographic plate and followed up on the discovery that the plate was clouded. This was an accident that could have happened at any time after the purification of uranium, so let's move it up to 1848.

IOTL, neutrons, fission, and isotopes (the scientific prerequisites for attempting a fission bomb project) were discovered over the course of about 40 years from the discovery of radioactivity. TTL, there would be fewer resources available for research and less scientific groundwork in other areas, so we can expect research into radioactivity to go significantly slower without a big boost from somewhere else.

Enter the reason for my choice of 1848 as a POD -- the Revolutions of 1848. Europe in general and Germany in particular has seen a wave of attempted revolutions, King Fredrick William IV of Prussia has declined an Imperial throne offered "from the gutter" of the revolutions and has instead imposed a monarchist constitution on Prussia, and Otto von Bismark has been elected to the new Prussian Landstag established by FWIV's constitution (his first elected office) as a representative from Saxony.

Meanwhile, a chemistry student at the University of Leipzig had decided to reproduce some experiments he'd read about to purify uranium. He accidentally irradiates an undeveloped photographic plate, notes the significance, and brings his discovery to the attention of two of the physics professors at the university: Wilhelm Weber and Carl Gauss, who perform their own follow-on experiments and realize the vast potential of this discovery. Gauss contacts a few local Landstag represenatives about seeking government funding for the research, and Bismark in particular is intrigued by the possibility of channelling the rising feelings of German nationalism into pride in scientific accomplishment, and becomes a major sponsor of funding for research into radioactivity throughout his career.

Optimistically (in terms of pace of scientific advancement), TTL may realize the possibility of a fission weapon by the mid-1880s (35-40 years after TTL discovery of radioactivity), triggering a race between the Great Powers to develop such a weapon. Germany and Britain conduct successful nuclear tests within months of each other in the early 1890s, and both develop Teller-Ulman style H-Bombs by 1900.

Now, nukes are the hard part of a Project Orion-style space race. The vehicle itself is a significant engineering feat that may require a decade or more of well-funded work to fully develop, but the prerequistes for this work is roughly the technology needed to build a Dreadnought battleship. We have this know-how as well as the nukes by 1900 ITTL, as well as a cold-war situation between Britain and Germany to motivate a space race, leaving us 14 years before the 66-year window post-POD for this space race to land a ship on the moon.

Cicero the Younger · Jun 2, 2010

mrmandias said:
Nonsense. This was an invention of 19th C. atheists and is largely discredited. It continues to be believed for polemical purposes only.

Please. Any system of thought which discourages investigation on the grounds that we already have the answers we need or can seek the answers without making observations of the world will retard science. This is not atheist propaganda. It's a simple side effect of discouraging investigation.

And before you bore me and waste more of this thread by listing Christians who have been good scientists or non-Christians who discouraged science, I never said that this was either exclusive to or universal within Christianity or even religion in general.

And are you really going to tell me that JC dies in childhood at age 1, or whatever your POD is, and by AD 66 the Romans are on the moon?

If you had actually taken the trouble to read past the one single sentence you quoted from my post, you would already know that not only did I not say anything of the kind, I explicitly said that eliminating Christianity would not fulfill the terms of the OP and was therefore irrelevant to this entire discussion.

But I'm not saying anything in this post I didn't already say in the last one. I don't need to, because I've already said what I intended to say, and your knee-jerk reaction and the necessity for me to clutter up this thread with further derailment by repeating myself could have been avoided if you had simply read past the first sentence in my post to begin with. So, yeah. Thanks for playing.

Faralis · Jun 2, 2010

Emperor Norton I said:
Uh, the whole "extremists" deal came following the dissolving of the Ottoman Empire, when the great powers of the Allies essentially carved up their own little puppets and subject states and all, without much regard for ethnic backgrounds, religious sect membership, and basically all the things that make a nation. The wave of dictators that held power, promising modernization and westernization while subsequently enforcing harsh rule also led to backlash that created modern extremists. These dictators were also often supported by the west and the United States during the Cold war, which led to backlash against those entities. Actually, even not that many decades ago, the Middle East was much more liberal and open and western and modern. IIRC, Osama's teenage years were spent around night clubs in tight jeans and such, and women weren't forced to cover themselves in "traditional robes" (IIRC here, those "traditional clothes" have not much to do with Islam and came from traditions of the region before the adoption of Islam, btw).

If you mean the Medieval Islamic world had extremists, one word: "Crusades". The west was tit-for-tat with anything heinous the east was doing at least, and was doing it far more primitively. While the west crumbled and squabbled, the Middle East was preserving the heritage of ancient scholars, and expanding heavily on it. Really, if it weren't for the printing press, Europe would have been not much more than a dirty hovel trying to lift itself up. It was the Middle East, Asia, the Americas and maybe even parts of Africa who were making the innovations.

So this guys were created by the crusades? or the WW1?

I do not doubt that extremism was something in both "worlds" but this people damaged the science and the ( very cosmopolitan ) culture in their kingdom because their "interpretation" of "faith" ...

And is just an example ...

Returning to topic a bit, I still think that the Chinese are the best option for a faster exploration of the space, if not make the British more obsessed with control of the air ( maybe a more effective French air corps in the Napoleonic wars )