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Heavy is the head that wears the crown. I have often had similar thoughts about Truman and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--to take on the responsibility for killing some 200,000 non-combatants, or to abdicate my duty toward those who entrusted me with political power--my own...

This occurred to me back during season 1, in particular when thinking of Danielle. First black astronaut from either country on the Moon--not a peep about that. That should have been at least as important given the racial justice social upheavals of the 1960s as Mollie Cobb being the first...

Regarding the hangar in the last update, it is a touch disappointing that no space-rated seal can be thought of for the LH2 tank--working on Hubble in a shirtsleeves N2 environment with only an O2 mask would be a lot more convenient than bulky EVA gloves. But I can see why it would be deemed...

Turtledove had two short stories on that premise--"Forty counting down" and "Twenty-One counting up." They are two perspectives on the same event--a forty-year-old man wants to go back in time and prevent the breakup that he views as de-railing his life.

Yeah, same here. Was wondering if it was just my mind in the gutter, so it's reassuring that others have seen it.

Strictly speaking, they started in during WWI with the Paris Gun and their early bomber raids on London and Paris from zeppelins and R-planes. The idea was to get around the deadlock of the trenches by breaking the enemy's will to fight. This idea, like many WWI efforts to break the deadlock...

I’m liking the closeup shots of the LSAM we got this episode—and especially them making clear that the prop is hydrolox. The field of solar panels over which Tracy flies is a nice touch. Also liking the visual touch of Tracy not wearing the official jumpsuit for large parts of the...

Interesting--so Shuttle-II will be configured a bit like the DC-Y was supposed to be. Will Diana also be doing TEI/TLI burns, or will a suped-up Galileo tug be needed to bring prop from LEO to LLO?

Given that cowboy novels were actually very popular in Germany, we can actually refer to illustrated copies of those to see what a "Cowboy Uniform" designed by Germans would look like. Mostly deerskin suits with lots of fringe. Would still look really, really silly. While the recovery of...

Any chance that the British could somehow violate American neutrality during the Great War? Hard to see how they'd do so--unrestricted submarine warfare against Americans trading with Germany seems unlikely when the RN rules the seas. Maybe something profoundly stupid like sailing into New...

Why not horse-drawn trams? Even when still using animal propulsion, the benefits in smooth rides and reduced friction of iron wheels on iron rails are not to be underestimated. If you're paving the city streets, laying some iron rails doesn't seem like it should be that much more expensive.

The butterflies here are a bit steep. If you start changing things in the 10th century AD, there's no guarantee that the Turks will eventually take all of Anatolia from the ERE, let alone stomp their way through the Balkans--we might be talking instead about a Greater Serbia, or a Serbian...

Delightful update! I might have missed an earlier reference to LOX transfer in-orbit--is this a new tech? How are they doing it for Galileo--surface tension, paramagnetism, thruster-settling? Revolutionary breakthrough any way. I like the Quark cutout at the LSAM galley. Interesting...

Well, perhaps the Wehrmacht will end up avoiding the worst excesses of OTL Germany. One can hope, anyway. That prohibition on international business is probably not the best possible move Thailand can make. I wonder if they can pull off a Spanish Miracle later. Interesting post about the...

All I know about Gary Hart is that his defense advisor was a certifiable lunatic named William Lind (notorious for coining the term ‘cultural Marxism’ and his ideological screed ‘Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War’). I don’t expect this show to go that way, though.

In his novel Space, James Michener asked why there were no Catholics among the first two classes of astronauts (Bill Anders being the first), despite the fairly large number of those in the US and the relative absence of legal barriers (unlike, say, black Americans). He settled on the answer...

Nuclear shuttle defined as three times more powerful—gonna guess that refers to specific impulse. Timberwind-Class NTR, 1000 s ISP. LH2 to push a 100-tonne orbiter to the Moon and back would weigh about 66 tonnes and take up 950 cubic meters—more than the OTL shuttle lox tank. Pathfinder has...

You can easily split the Church into two competing camps (each styling the other an antipope) in the sixteenth century--have the 1527 sack of Rome go a lot worse with Clement VII killed. With Rome under Hapsburg occupation, there is no way the subsequent election is going to be treated as...

From the man who brought us: I have no doubt that you're right.

Elegantly done! I particularly like the part where TOPAZ is used on the Moon--could open the way for more TOPAZ reactor use in future flights (NEP probes, in particular). And wonderful artwork, as usual--though I wonder whether the habitank hatches could really have windows like that, or...