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I don't think so. I've seen a "baseline" number of $500 million per shuttle mission. SpaceX will be able to fit at least two and probably three Falcon 9 flights into that figure in a few years. When you factor in the higher flight-rate they'll definitely be able to achieve, and the greater...

Bingo. Let a hundred flowers bloom -- so we can mow them down ...

CHAPTER TEN New Casualty Figures Highlight Continuing Losses in China The New York Times June 20, 1952 The War Department released casualty figures in China for the first three months of the year last week. Forty-three Americans were acknowledged to have died in combat-related action...

I won't go into detail, as it will definitely get too far off-topic but, suffice it to say the assertion that "space isn't profitable until the government makes it profitable" is not something I agree with, and no magic ASB technology is required. Things just have to be done in the right order...

Regarding post-war space development (and not to get too far off topic), I think it's at least POSSIBLE for there to be a robust and interesting line of space development but, obviously, in a very different (and possibly much, much better) way than happened in OTL. On the positive side...

The short answer is no way. One can debate the reasons why, but the UK, holder of the "Palestine Mandate" for the League of Nations, was NOT inclined to push things in the direction of a Jewish state in the 1920s -- and even less so in the 1930s -- despite the Balfour Declaration.

As a child of the 60s, I can't help being a Beatles fan. I didn't realize how much until my wife started re-collecting all the Beatles albums again and listening to them non-stop. With one or two exceptions on each album, I keep thinking as I re-listen to their music how incredibly creative...

I can't tell you how many times I've said this since Obama came on the scene. My favorite way to sidle up to the subject is to first bring up the "one drop rule" with someone I know to be an avid Obama supporter, get them to agree with me how racist and backward it was, and then say -- "Isn't...

Yes ... but (isn't "if-history" always like that?) ... the broad structural problems the Arab world have had in dealing with modernity will still be there. The Ikwahan doesn't necessarily wither and die. The Indo-Pak conflict doesn't necessarily become less acute. Qadaffi doesn't necessarily...

The words you're putting into Taggert's mouth are utterly inconsistent with some very basic ideas espoused by Ayn Rand. But I assume you must know that and have a very good explanation for it, since you're premising your TL on an ideology you're calling "Randism."

I think f1b0nacc1's discussion is pretty accurate in military terms. Although the PLA was using terrain as much as possible to protect their small nuke force, it would have been extremely vulnerable to a first/surgical-strike at the time (which, of course, is why the topic came up in US-Soviet...

It does? :-)

First, do we assume that the recoil from use of chem-bio weapons after WWI stays in place? Perhaps not, if not reinforced by the advent of nukes, but probably so ... at least until all memory of the Great War is gone. You say "scourge of modern battlefields;" Does that mean anti-military...

I thought this part of the update was particularly interesting. In OTL, the seizure of near-complete records of the Nazi regime was considered (and probably was) historically unprecedented. As the years have gone by since 1945, we've seen how that unique turn of events brought about different...

I don't see it. Despite Mao's best efforts, China still had large reservoirs of entrepreneurial energy and tradition that it seems Russia lacked.

If Singapore can hold out through the time of Midway, doesn't that make the relative lack of Commonwealth resources in the Straits area much less of a problem, since the IJN at that point would have to make some MUCH harder decisions about how to deploys its forces on a strategic level? I...

CHAPTER NINE (continued ...) Ming Guo had been up for hours. He’d arrived on Weichou Island from Beihai the night before, and Comrade Liu had briefed him on the plan over a late supper of cold rice and fish. He would go out before dawn on a fishing boat that belonged to a friend. The boat...

I was thinking of WEB Dubois in particular, who basically worked very hard to undermine Booker T's efforts during the latter's last ten years or so, and then engaged in a campaign of character assassination and revisionist history against him after Booker T died. A good argument can be made...

Astoundingly insightful! Amazing how cultural blinders can keep one from seeing the obvious. That should have been the first example to come to mind.

If someone would pay me to write boiler-pot fiction instead of real-world work, I think I'd write that story (right after I finished my "Dreamland" AH). I have the whole thing plotted out in my head. There's even a long epilogue or second part that describes a rejuvenated East Africa that has...