alternatehistory.com

Can we have a discussion of which recent technologies could have been butterflied away, and conversely which technologies that failed or were not developed could exist?

Examples:

1. It's practically a trope of the genre that airships could be the dominant mode of air travel if it weren't for the Hindenburg disaster.

2. Neal Stephenson has an article in Slate arguing that the space program could only happen because of the juxtaposition of several technologies from WW2 and the 1950s (V2 rockets, nuclear weapons, ICBMs) that were not cost-effective, even in wartime; an alt-WW2 might well fail to produce those technologies, making it impossible to later start a space program at acceptable cost.

3. Supersonic travel was brought down by the 1973 oil crisis, and by concerns over noise emissions. Both could have easily gone a different way - the oil crisis was the result of a specific political crisis, and so did the rules giving communities more power over infrastructure decisions in the 1960s.
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