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The expression of my face resembled this, roughly:

Skylon is one of those projects which really excite me. I know that the chance of it ever getting developed is like 5%, but still... AFAIK they want to have a reusable upper stage in the payload bay, so Skylon could launch geostationary satellites with zero loss of hardware. A totally...

I am thinking more about a collapse caused by exhaustion of easily accessible natural resources (chiefly fossil fuels) combined with environmental damage, the effects of climate change, and exacerbated by overpopulation. But this is off-topic here, so let's not get into that. Oooooh I would...

Ha, I am more optimistic than that ;) I'd say 2080-2100. If our civilization lasts that long, that is. (A big if.) There is a set of enabling technologies we must get. You mentioned asteroid mining; I'd rather call it "resource extraction in outer space". Even more crucial is finding a...

(Great thread, I've been reading it over the course of a few weeks during various coffee breaks, and it's AMAZING work; the kind of hard, real-world based sci-fi I wish I could write, but alas, it requires people with greater understanding of the science, engineering and historical side of...

Did the Amerindians kill off the megafauna, horses, and other mammals that can be domesticated in this scenario just as they did in our timeline? Because if they did, they'll have a hard building a successful civilization. If Jared Diamond's theory as explained in Guns, Germs, and Steel is...

I don't think the world was aware of what was really going on with the Jews by 1943. Sure, people knew they were being heavily discriminated against and treated as sub-humans, but not until 1944/45 had the real scope of the Nazi "final solution" become clear. If the new German government...

Very good, as a start :) I see that in some things your thinking is close to mine, although some things seem a bit too stretched. Germany showing its own concentration camps to the world - why would they do it? To make people hate them even more? They'd probably quietly get rid of the camps...

Here's a list of things I've been thinking about. It's a bit incoherent, but maybe it will provide some inspiration, some things you could use and develop: I.) What do we need to make the Western Allies agree with a negotiated end to the war? -> I was thinking about a split between the...

POD: 13 March, 1943. Hitler assassinated by the conspirators, Wehrmacht's coup against the Nazis succeed (don't ask me how, and yes, I know this has been done to the death). (the map is a modified version of Qazaq2007's map of Europe in 1942) I need a semi-plausible outline of major...

About Brno (Brünn) - since it is my hometown, I need to help it a little :D It has been one of the most important industrial town of the monarchy, the population was a mix of Czechs and Germans (nearly 50-50, IIRC) and it was close to Vienna and Pressburg (Bratislava). It had all the...

Still, if there isn't anything comparable to OTL WW2 and post-war ethnic cleaning that utterly changed the ethnic make-up of Central Europe, the Czech-speaking population would be higher than in OTL. The German-speaking population would be substantially higher too. As for the Sudetenland -...

You mean if it survived to this day, OTL 2010? The population of OTL Czech Rep. is 10.5 million. I don't think the difference between OTL and TTL population would be 1.5 million as you've gussed for several reasons: a) Czechs have traditionally been very reluctant to migrate in search of...

Nuclear winter is a VERY DUBIOUS concept. There would be some cooling due to the dust and ash resulting from many thousands of nuclear explosions, but the idea of a world-wide winter caused by a nuclear war has always been far-fetched. At worst, a nuclear "autumn" would affect the climate of the...

Here you go. Basically, you need two things: 1) NATO conventional forces strong enough and reasonably confident they can stop the Soviets without using at least tactical nukes; 2) Warsaw Pact leaders sane enough to realize that the of nuclear weapons will inevitably result in an...

:D Yeah, what's happening in the last few months (the political deadlock after the elections) isn't really encouraging. On the other hand, it likely won't result in Belgium's dissolution. One thing that made dissolution of Czechoslovakia so "easy" was the clear cut borders between Czechia...

Gorbachev was a dilettante. His reforms wouldn't have worked, because he never accepted the need of abandoning Socialism in the first place. The result of his "reforms" was the collapse of the Soviet economy. Basically, the whole transformation of Russia would have to be directed by a very...

The advantage countries like Canada or Belgium have over Czechoslovakia are obvious - they haven't gone through forty years of totalitarian rule, they haven't inherited an unworkable communist-designed federal system and they have a long tradition of modern democratic statehood...

Well, yes, your arguments are valid if that's the way you choose to look at it. On the other hand, all totalitarian regimes start crazy (during and after the "revolutionary" phase), but as they mature they tend to settle down and become more pragmatic - not out of altruism, of course, but simply...

That's what I am going to do, surprisingly. However, since the author invited comments, I thought I should express my view.