TL-191: After the End

[Tom Kalbfus]

I see no good reason for the space race to be running seven years later than on OTL. Given that at very least Confed rocket technology was similar to that in our WW2, there is no technological reason for Germany and USA not to build ICBMs by the late 50s. In fact with the loose cannon of Imperial Japan still out there and with no close air bases for bombers an ICBM programme makes absolute sense, and if you have an ICBM you are close to putting to putting a satellite into space.

On the numbers in the space race, no one claims that it was three way on OTL in spite of there being a British programme. Therefore in TL191 I would expect Germany in the form of a slightly accelerated US programme, the USA in the form of a Soviet plus and Japan in a Soviet minus. Anybody else is going to be so far behind that they don't count.

The lack of a Cold War is one reason why there is no space race. Japan, unlike the Soviet Union, is not trying to replace Capitalism with its own system. Japan's Imperial Government is not very revolutionary, and there are no non-Japanese that want to live under Japanese rule, the brutal occupation of many conquered countries in the Empire of Japan has seen to that.

The Empire does not see the means to take over the World, being ruled by Japan under the Japanese Empire lacks the appeal that International Socialism has. I doubt there are many in Latin America who would wish to live under the Japanese, no matter how much they may detest the "Yanquis Imperialists" or "Yanquis Colonialism" because the Japanese brand is so much more worse and brutal. Japanese ideology doesn't spread much further than Japan and what the Japanese military can impose, for a Japanese citizen its great, but for everyone else, no dice. Nuclear Weapons has basically halted the Expansion of the Japanese "Coprosperity Sphere" as the Empire is euphemistically called. There is not much the Japanese can do militarily except consolidate its Second Great War Gains and build the economy of its Empire.

I think the Japanese Empire would be ruthlessly Capitalistic, at least for the non-Japanese subjects, there would be Chinese factory workers in Manchuria building "Japanese Cars" for low wages initially, but those low wages by Chinese standards would be pretty good and a better deal than working on the farm out in the country side. The Japanese Economic program would rapidly expand the whole Japanese Sphere, not just Japan itself, probably over the next 4 to 5 decades, it would raise substantially the standard of living of many a Chinese or Filipino subject as well as proper Japanese citizens. Calls for socialism in the provinces would go unheeded, or bring on a crackdown as revolutionary socialism would be seen by the Japanese as a threat to the Emperor's rule. So the Japanese economic policies have been shown to work OTU, so in this timeline they would probably be applied over the whole Empire, bringing on a much higher standard of living, probably more equal to the United States because of its greater population of conquered subjects than in OTU.

What would the population be of the Japanese Empire anyway? That is Japan plus all that it conquered in the Second Great War. I think if you add in part of China and the Phillipeans, that is a lot of people building cars and television sets.

 

[Polish Eagle]

The lack of a Cold War is one reason why there is no space race. Japan, unlike the Soviet Union, is not trying to replace Capitalism with its own system. Japan's Imperial Government is not very revolutionary, and there are no non-Japanese that want to live under Japanese rule, the brutal occupation of many conquered countries in the Empire of Japan has seen to that.

The Empire does not see the means to take over the World, being ruled by Japan under the Japanese Empire lacks the appeal that International Socialism has. I doubt there are many in Latin America who would wish to live under the Japanese, no matter how much they may detest the "Yanquis Imperialists" or "Yanquis Colonialism" because the Japanese brand is so much more worse and brutal. Japanese ideology doesn't spread much further than Japan and what the Japanese military can impose, for a Japanese citizen its great, but for everyone else, no dice. Nuclear Weapons has basically halted the Expansion of the Japanese "Coprosperity Sphere" as the Empire is euphemistically called. There is not much the Japanese can do militarily except consolidate its Second Great War Gains and build the economy of its Empire.

I think the Japanese Empire would be ruthlessly Capitalistic, at least for the non-Japanese subjects, there would be Chinese factory workers in Manchuria building "Japanese Cars" for low wages initially, but those low wages by Chinese standards would be pretty good and a better deal than working on the farm out in the country side. The Japanese Economic program would rapidly expand the whole Japanese Sphere, not just Japan itself, probably over the next 4 to 5 decades, it would raise substantially the standard of living of many a Chinese or Filipino subject as well as proper Japanese citizens. Calls for socialism in the provinces would go unheeded, or bring on a crackdown as revolutionary socialism would be seen by the Japanese as a threat to the Emperor's rule. So the Japanese economic policies have been shown to work OTU, so in this timeline they would probably be applied over the whole Empire, bringing on a much higher standard of living, probably more equal to the United States because of its greater population of conquered subjects than in OTU.

What would the population be of the Japanese Empire anyway? That is Japan plus all that it conquered in the Second Great War. I think if you add in part of China and the Phillipeans, that is a lot of people building cars and television sets.

So Japan becomes a synthesis of OTL Japan and China. Japanese cars and electronics, eventually, can reach OTL quality levels. However, a lot of subjects of the Empire will make livings in sweatshops building cheap plastic the way people do in China.

 

[area11]

The slower space race is probably down to the USA and Germany having to spend more money on reconstruction and Japan busy trying to invade China and a slow space race may be better if Kennedy hadn't said America would land on the moon before the decade is out then we would be landing on mars by now

 

[Saladan]

Psychologically, what would the effect of 5 consecutive victories have on the German people and military? At this point Germany has won the Second Schleswig war, the Austro-Prussian War, The Franco-Prussian War, and the First and second world wars. Not only that but you also have Germany beating Austria once, France three times, Russia and Great Britain twice. At this point Germany has beaten every single great power in Europe. Could this cause some serious case of victory diease?

 

[Polish Eagle]

The slower space race is probably down to the USA and Germany having to spend more money on reconstruction and Japan busy trying to invade China and a slow space race may be better if Kennedy hadn't said America would land on the moon before the decade is out then we would be landing on mars by now

What?

Nixon shut down the program and authorized development of the Space Shuttle, even as NASA was drawing up plans for Mars.

You need a 10-year space plan to get anything done in the USA. If you call for 20 years, the next president will cut funding and use it on something else.

 

[area11]

yeah thats the problem with America it has no patience

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

yeah thats the problem with America it has no patience

And China had too much patience when it came to exploring the oceans.
Patience can be seen as a vice rather than a virtue sometimes, some people would call it sloth. "Why do now what you can put off till later?" becomes the operative phrase. I think we could have had people walking on Mars by now, if it weren't for some other people advocating we walk the slow but sure route.

"Lets build the shuttle first, and not waste money on these expendible throw away rockets, lets build a solid foundation with the Shuttle first, and then we can go places like the Moon and Mars!" That was the line of reasoning in the 1970s, I don't see how its gotten us very far.

 

[IchBinDieKaiser]

yeah thats the problem with America it has no patience

I don't see the problem with not going into space. The only reason we even did it was to prevent the soviets from doing it first. Beside the possible threat of a missile attack from a satalite(which never came to pass) there is really no use for a space program. Most if not all space programs are a waste of the respective nations money.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I don't see the problem with not going into space. The only reason we even did it was to prevent the soviets from doing it first. Beside the possible threat of a missile attack from a satalite(which never came to pass) there is really no use for a space program. Most if not all space programs are a waste of the respective nations money.

It never came to pass in OTU, but a satellite laden with nuclear missiles was an idea pushed by Werner Von Braun, now I don't know whether he'll get a more receptive ear from the Kaiser than he did from the US President OTU, but what if Germany pursued a more militeristic space program with the goal of world domination from space? What if there was no space treaty and no taboo against putting weapons in space? The Germans would say, "Of course we'll put our military assets in space, after all didn't we build an air force and put our weapons in airplanes?" The Germans build a space force including piloted and unpiloted spacecraft ladened with weapons. Some space vehicles are seen as an extention of strategic bomber forces. Certian space craft orbit just above the atmosphere, and graze the atmosphere to change orbits at unexpected time to keep the adversary guessing, and ready to unload their orbital bombs at a moments notice. The German's would have to vastly expand their launching capacity for this, but with a military motivation, they'll find the funds. The US will respond in kind developing their own space force, with some scientific space probes as an after thought to the main military purpose.

 

[Polish Eagle]

Would be nice to see a world without an Outer Space Treaty. That treaty killed the Cold War drive for expansion into space.

 

[Faeelin]

Would be nice to see a world without an Outer Space Treaty. That treaty killed the Cold War drive for expansion into space.

Yes, if only we had had those nuclear missiles in orbit, things would be great.

 

[B_Munro]

Yes, if only we had had those nuclear missiles in orbit, things would be great.

I can't see what the advantage would be: if you want to do a sneak attack, putting things up where the enemy can continually track and monitor them_ seems rather useless. And you can't do much to stop _regular_ ballistic missiles, either. Frankly, it strikes me the reason they had that treaty in the first place was that neither side could see any advantages that would outweigh the risks of having megatons of nuclear firepower floating in orbit where regular repairs and inspection would be a bit hard at best, and the other side putting their fingers on the Button everytime they orbited past...

Bruce

 

[Polish Eagle]

Yes, if only we had had those nuclear missiles in orbit, things would be great.

No, I meant the part of the treaty where it bans claiming territory in space.

 

[B_Munro]

No, I meant the part of the treaty where it bans claiming territory in space.

Why, if it hadn't been for that evil treaty, the Moon would surely be full of grizzled prospectors, laying claims to all those lunar gold and diamond mines, not to mention the rich veins of cheese!


Bruce

 

[Faeelin]

Why, if it hadn't been for that evil treaty, the Moon would surely be full of grizzled prospectors, laying claims to all those lunar gold and diamond mines, not to mention the rich veins of cheese!


Bruce

Nah, but we'd assuredly have gotten a lock on He3 for those fusion plants I hear are only twenty years away.

 

[Emanresu11]

This Is An Amazingly Good TL. I Like The Republican ComeBack.

 

[Michael B]

Nah, but we'd assuredly have gotten a lock on He3 for those fusion plants I hear are only twenty years away.

Fusion power on OTL was twenty years away thirty years ago. No doubt it will be the same on TL191.

Back to the space race. Whilst there may not be any more incentive of putting a man on the Moon than going to the South Pole, there is an incentive for putting a satellite in orbit. Two actually.

One, you have a working ICBM. Given that your enemies know that you have sunbombs from the earthquakes/mess you have make with them, they will think twice about invading your homeland.

Two, put a camera on one and you can take not very good pictures of your enemy's military bases as well as that secret establishment that you are not supposed to know about. Japan is no friend of Germany or the USA and Britain is no friend of Germany. Th General Staff and the Pentagon will want to be able to keep tabs on them and spy satellites would help.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Yes, if only we had had those nuclear missiles in orbit, things would be great.

I detect a note of sarcasm, could be my imagination though, but consider this:
Would you want to live next to a ground based missile silo?
One of the objectives of the enemy in a first strike is to knock out all the missile silos before they can launch their missiles. Ground based missile silos nice and conventiently stay put, they are easy to target with 1964 missiles, but to ensure their destruction, multiple warheads will be launched at them, it would be a wonderful place to live knowing all those enemy missiles are coming you way wouldn't it?

If you base missile on submarines, attack subs will always shadow them, hoping to sink them before they launch their missiles. With the strategic bomber command, you could always shoot down the bombers with fighter planes. The fourth arm of the nuclear deterrent would be space based nuclear missiles, these you can launch from orbit to the ground, and unlike a strategic bomber, these can stay up indefinitely, the only way to destroy them in 1964 is by exploding nuclear warheads near them in space. Avionics are not so accurate that kinetic kill vehicles are feasible at this time, so old style ABMs with nuclear interceptors would be used instead. Now if your living on the surface of the Earth, then for you every nuclear warhead that explodes is space is one less nuclear warhead that explodes on Earth. If fact there could be an evolution away from ground based, air based, or sea based nuclear missiles - after all the point of a nuclear missile is to send warheads to their targets through space, so if the warheads are already in space, they have completed half the journey, you don't have to worry about whether the missiles will climb out of their silos before thge enemy can destroy them, and its a lot easier to send things from orbit to ground than from ground to suborbit to ground.

The doctrine of mutually assured destruction would work better with missiles in space. If one side has missiles in space, the other side will want them too, neither side will at any given time know exactly where all their enemy's nuclear assets in space are at any given time, so if one nuclear explosion destroys Washinton or Berlin, then as sure as the sun rising the next day, another nuclear explosion will destroy Tokyo, the enemy knowing this will therefore not try it.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I can't see what the advantage would be: if you want to do a sneak attack, putting things up where the enemy can continually track and monitor them_ seems rather useless. And you can't do much to stop _regular_ ballistic missiles, either. Frankly, it strikes me the reason they had that treaty in the first place was that neither side could see any advantages that would outweigh the risks of having megatons of nuclear firepower floating in orbit where regular repairs and inspection would be a bit hard at best, and the other side putting their fingers on the Button everytime they orbited past...

Bruce

Space is a big place after all, they can't track everywhere!
You can put nuclear missiles in elliptical orbits around Earth, for example, such that their farthest point from Earth can't be tracked by your advesary, it would a simple thing to change the orbits of these missiles while they are far out in their orbits, so the enemy can't predict which orbit they'll be inbound on. (All the more reason to develop ostensibly rockets that can reach the Moon like the Saturn V) In OTU, in theory such a rocket could release a cluster of nuclear missiles all at once in an extremely elliptical orbit that goes out further than the Moon. Once in space these rockets can maneuver and only tiny orbital thrusts can radically alter their incoming path towards Earth, or even hit the Earth if so desired! I know pretty well that no radar could detect these tiny objects in 1964, that are further out than the Moon. The rocket thrusters of these missiles would likewise be small. Not much thrust is required and only a tiny puff of the maneuvering jets can target any point on the Earth that is desired, they would take days to hit their targets of course, falling in from such a high point, it doesn't matter if one side completely destroyed the other with nuclear weapons, the warheads would still be coming in from far orbit to destroy the victorious nation. You see mutual destruction is actually assured, that is the point of a nuclear deterrent after all.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Why, if it hadn't been for that evil treaty, the Moon would surely be full of grizzled prospectors, laying claims to all those lunar gold and diamond mines, not to mention the rich veins of cheese!


Bruce

You can scoff at the notion if you like, but that's about the same as someone in a Soviet dominated world scoffing at the notion of Capitalism ever working. We don't really know what would have happened if there was no space treaty as we don't live in that history, we don't test it out because the space treaty is in effect acting as a deterrent to space mining.