Recent content by arkades

In OTL, there were joint missions between France and USSR. For example, the first french in space, Jean-Loup Chrétien flew to Salyut 7 in 1982 (also the first non US, non soviet extra-vehicular activity). So cooperation is possible, but I know in OTL, french relations with USSR were better.

My money is on Sarkozy, his adversaries are too mild for this TL For 2012 it should be Strauss-Kahn, who will be forced to resign when his sexual affairs are reveled.

Remember, the R-7 that sent Sputnik and Gagarin into space was designed to attack the USA. So no, the government and military reaction to Sputnik was total shock: the soviets now have the means to send an atomic bomb everywhere in the US without any plane or ship leaving the USSR, and nobody can...

I don't think ESA could or want to buy a shuttle, the price is too high, making Hermes will be cheaper. For Europe, a more interesting option is to give USSR money to pay for the shuttle maintenance, and ESA cosmonauts have guaranteed seats on the shuttle flight on MIR-2, and maybe 1 or 2...

Fun question : will Star Trek fans lobby to have an orbiter named Enterprise like OTL (one which will go to space this time) ?

Boeing could modify some old 747 like Airbus did with A-300 to make the Beluga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Beluga As the Airbus factories are all over Europe, the belugas are needed to transport the parts from one place to the other. The need is less for Boeing, but the Wikipedia page...

About that, in the sixties, Charles de Gaulle famously said: In 10 years we will be able to kill 80 millions Russians. I think you don't attack someone who can kill 80 millions Russians, even if you can kill 800 millions Frenchmen, if there was 800 million Frenchmen. The thinking was the same...

The Evian accords, which gave Algeria its independence, had a section that authorized France to conduct nuclear tests in the Sahara desert for a limited time. It is only after the expiration of this authorization that the test were conducted in the Pacific. If the bomb is produced in France or...

I'm surprised you killed the European space program. One of the objectives for ELDO/ESRO/ESA was independence from USA and USSR for space launch. I read somewhere that when France asked the Americans to launch its satellites, they agreed to launch only non military, non commercial ones. So no...

Some notes on nuclear power in France. The nuclear power plants were built for two reasons:energetic independence following the oil crisis in the 70's and production of nuclear material for the bombs. The current 58 reactors in use today were all built on Westinghouse PWR designs with slight...

On weapons in space, in the movie the satellite we see just after the pre-human throw a bone was supposed to be a nuclear weapons platform. The idea was to show humanity evolution from the first weapon to the ultimate one in just one scene change. It was changed to something more peaceful, but...

The success of the raid on the plane made the GIGN (the gendarmerie special forces )famous. If the plot to crash the plane on Paris succeed, some of the GIGN fame will be lost, they will not be as known to the French. The hijackers were from the GIA : armed islamic group. The same group that...

A famous episode from the first war (in France at least) is "les taxis de la Marne". On the 6 and 7 September 1914, for the first battle of the Marne, about 600 Parisian taxis (and some buses) were used to transport between 3000 and 5000 soldiers to the front lines. According to wikipedia, it...

Is a slightly different shuttle possible ? Expendable liquid boosters with F1 engines and J2 in place of SSME. With some engineers proposing a Mk. 0 with these engines, to be replaced by the OTL ones when they are finished ? Can it be sold to the congress saying the engines works now, Americans...

As I understand it, an orbit inclination change is useful for military actions. You launch at cap Canaveral at 20° so the soviet don't know what you are doing, then you go to Baikonour inclination at 50°, so you can intercept Russian satellites, study them on orbit, even pick them up and bring...