Eyes Turned Skywards

[Bahamut-255]

On the Apollo Block III - V, what is the main SB engine? I ask because I'm working on some art.

I recall E of Pi stating that the Block III - V SM Main Engine was adapted from the LEM Ascent Stage, being the right size for the LEO Job that Apollo was re-purposed for.

Which does raise a question I have. From what I can pick up, the LEM Ascent Stage Engine had severe issues with the N2O4/A50 Propellant Mix, meaning they could only fire the engine once.

So was this resolved ITTL? Or is one firing of the engine enough for them?

 

[Michel Van]

what impressing post, the Brainbin
a bitter taste post for fans.

no Buffy on TV, no Firefly, no The Avenger Movie, no Agents of SHIELD.
No Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Ponyo, The Wind Rises.
and the horror no South Park

a american influenced Dr Who.

 

[Workable Goblin]

I recall E of Pi stating that the Block III - V SM Main Engine was adapted from the LEM Ascent Stage, being the right size for the LEO Job that Apollo was re-purposed for.

Which does raise a question I have. From what I can pick up, the LEM Ascent Stage Engine had severe issues with the N2O4/A50 Propellant Mix, meaning they could only fire the engine once.

So was this resolved ITTL? Or is one firing of the engine enough for them?

It was resolved; one firing is not enough (at the very least they need a circularization burn and a deorbit burn; and for Block V they would need multiple burns in any case).

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Miyazaki!? NO!!!!!
This is officially a dystopia.

 

[Athelstane]

Miyazaki!? NO!!!!!
This is officially a dystopia.

Certainly without Firefly, it's turning out to be one (at least on TV)!

 

[Shevek23]

Oh mighty Brainbin, I never know quite what to do with you...

To begin with, WTF is all this formatting I have to strip out of your quotes, anyway? I have Soviet Engineering ideals for Internet postings...keep simple, let browser display, no barriers that can be avoided...sigh...

.....
...[2] Whedon adapted Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the small screen IOTL, achieving some small measure of success with that (and later projects, mostly in the same vein).....

You know what is almost capable of blocking me from reading an ETS post, even a Cultural update from The Brainbin? Coming to it while good and buzzed from watching 3 Season 5 Buffy eps (the very center and height of its excellence) to read about Joss Whedon getting butterflied away, that's what!

Just for the record, I don't know about what rating numbers BtVS achieved OTL; I never saw an episode until years after it had gone off the air myself.

IMHO, a not-so-small measure of success was that Buffy achieved something I was dreaming of for a decade or so before he did it...he brought the myths of Inanna into modern context, seamlessly. So much so it was only in the past couple years, after I'd adopted the show as my religion, that I realized he'd done it.

I've pontificated about this at sufficient length and more over on Garrison's BtVS revision storyline Reality Check.

The losses were many and widespread of course.

Perhaps with a Whedon-shaped hole in the world, others will fill it and do some stuff better. Whedon's people are too Hollywood pretty after all.

But that's part of the escapism package, isn't it?

I was not able to properly read this post in full; I'm saving sitting down with the full plot of the ITTL 3rd Trek movie and getting it from beginning to end.

OTOH I like the concept of the alt-Voyager mixed with a bit of DS-9.

I rather hope the Klingons of the ETS'verse are more like the TOS ones, oily and devious and mean and with no ridges on their heads. I feel turning them into honor-bound louts was a big mistake on Roddenberry's part. It would be quite something for a Federation captain to have to integrate the plotting, scheming, underhanded types from TOS into her crew! And find their worth as well as their liabilities.

I often felt OTL Voyager could have benefitted from a few Cardassians on board, open Cardassians that is, not just one secret one.

It will be some days before I can properly integrate this whole post.

Here's hoping for a late 1990s and 2000s that doesn't need a Firefly to comment on it the way OTL did.

 

[Athelstane]

I often felt OTL Voyager could have benefitted from a few Cardassians on board, open Cardassians that is, not just one secret one.

OTL Voyager could have benefited from a whole lot of things.

 

[Unknown]

You killed South Park!!!

You bastard!!!

And Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and Angel.

 

[Shevek23]

Just wondering, with a death toll in the middle 3000's--3413 to be exact counting practice exercises, is it actually likely that so many major cultural figures should be killed off?

I realize we can't directly compare the OTL 9/11/2001 attacks. Not only was the death toll lower (though of comparable magnitude) but only a small fraction of those killed were airplane passengers, and those were traveling in an unpopular time slot in a slack season. The majority of victims were people trapped in the WTC, and because of the early morning hour, the buildings had far fewer people in them than they could have, and I would guess the biggest big shots who would normally be there running various corporate offices had generally not arrived there yet; the victims would have been drawn from the lower ranks of the office workers, generally, and other support people like caterers, custodians and security guards.

Whereas, while I would guess that a very large percentage of the populations of developed nations, the USA especially, have flown on airplanes at some time or other, those who can afford to do so frequently (or can write it off as a business expense or get someone else to pay for the flight, routinely) would still tend to be the elite. So clearly the odds that a certain number of celebrities and creative artists with some cash, cachet or credibility as the next coming thing would be victims of TTLs Christmas Plot are much higher versus the M.O. of the OTL plotters.

Also the attack was on Christmas Day, a time when people who usually stay put during the year would be more likely to travel, for holiday reasons. That means a greater percentage of the hopeful travelers are more ordinary people, but it also means greater total numbers of air travelers than usual.

And they were long-range flights over the Pacific. Those have to be pricey and so the passenger lists would be more skewed toward the rich, powerful and famous than on domestic flights.

All that understood--is there some solid basis for the remarkably large number of high profile victims? Is it reasonable that so many cultural luminaries (including some who weren't very famous--yet, and so never would be ITTL) would be victims, or on the contrary is it easy to show that actually we might expect even larger numbers of famous victims and TTL really got lucky?

 

[e of pi]

Just wondering, with a death toll in the middle 3000's--3413 to be exact counting practice exercises, is it actually likely that so many major cultural figures should be killed off?

All that understood--is there some solid basis for the remarkably large number of high profile victims? Is it reasonable that so many cultural luminaries (including some who weren't very famous--yet, and so never would be ITTL) would be victims, or on the contrary is it easy to show that actually we might expect even larger numbers of famous victims and TTL really got lucky?

In 9/11, limiting to just the victims onboard the planes IOTL (for much the reasons you cite), there were just 246 passengers and crew. Of those, we identified two cultural figures who died, David Angell and Berry Berenson. There were also a number of near-misses. Among others, Mark Wahlberg was scheduled to be on the flight, but changed flights at the last moment. Seth MacFarlane was planning to take one of the flights, but due to a hangover, missed boarding it. Accounting for all this, and applying some of the filters you mention--passengers likely to be as you say "the elite," holiday travel, etc--we calculated that it wouldn't be out of line to have something in the neighborhood of 30+ culturally significant individuals die in an attack of this magnitude. We highlighted just nine in this post, so really this is a bit low, especially considering that in OTL we don't know who on the 9/11 flights might have gone on to have cultural significance.

Given that potential total, we tried to pick people who would have solid reasons to be on the planes, and who we knew would drive home the losses ITTL, as well as showing the breadth of the losses, both the international scope, and the cross-discipline nature of getting people from many walks of life, here shown by highlighting victims who were in a variety of high-profile fields (entertainment, music, political, sport, and so on).

 

[Shevek23]

That's a very solid basis for these projections.

Not that I expected anything less of the three of you--given that I'm not the only one grieving over the loss to the world of some of these people I felt I owed it to myself and others to ask the question anyway. It helps us face the realism of the situation.

I'm personally just shaken by the loss of Joss Whedon, but I can hope someone associated with him shared his vision of what BtVS was supposed to be about. Also, that in this already significantly butterflied and knock-on-effect modified timeline, the film he did have time to make was better, closer to conveying the essential concept; I know OTL he felt it misfired though I don't know precisely in which ways he means that; it isn't a bad movie.

For one thing the movie did not, OTL anyway, have Anthony Stuart Head!

I'm glad he finds a place in the ATL anyway.

 

[Clorox23]

(sees that the Christmas Plot killed Joss Whedon and Trey Parker)

...

(slams head down on table)

 

[Brainbin]

As we expected, the overwhelming majority of responses have been lamentations of those who were killed as a result of the Christmas Plot. I want to make it perfectly clear that the bloodbath was e of pi's suggestion, and that we carefully selected the victims in order to maximize the impact to our readers. I'm very pleased to observe our success in that regard In fact, e of pi proposed the two people who have spurred the most eulogies: Miyazaki and Whedon. Trey Parker, on the other hand, was mine (it's his own fault for being such a Japanophile), as was Jackie Chan, and I must remark that the complete lack of reaction from any of you regarding his death is probably what has most surprised me about these responses. I realize that (unlike the other three) most of his best work was already behind him by 1994, but it still surprises me, considering the depth and breadth of his fandom. To avoid repeating myself, I'm only going to respond to a few of your observations about those who died in the Christmas Plot...

Seems like that Gore not being as divisive as Clinton is a key reason as to why the Democrats regained the House in 1996, with Perot being squeezed out even more here as a result.

This was definitely our line of thinking, which we foreshadowed in the previous update as well. "Gore the Bore" just doesn't fire up the opposition as much as someone who conservatives perceive as personally morally repugnant in addition to "merely" being ideologically objectionable. But he doesn't have a cakewalk, either.

Doctor Who makes it into the US proper? Now that's not something I was expecting. I like it.

Well, we felt we just had to make the TV-movie venture a success ITTL - and I do have some experience in this area

Thanks, Brainbin.

No, thank you!

I've long thought that Lamar Alexander was the GOP's best shot to unseat Clinton in '96, though it would have been an iffy shot at that. He was the most attractive of a lackluster field in '96. Certainly better than Dole, who was clearly too old and too establishment for the job of nominee, winning it mainly by default.

I agree about Dole being too old. He ran for Vice-President 20 years earlier, and his campaign really had the feel of giving an elder statesman one last kick at the can (which may be why he resigned from the Senate - go big or go home, right?). Whereas, of course, Alexander went on to a Senate career which continues to the present.

2. I must say that Honor Bound sure sounds a lot more entertaining than Generations was.

I like to think it's the best of the three "relaunch" films so far; I deliberately tried to give it the big-stakes-yet-intimate-setting feeling that The Wrath of Khan had.

Disclaimer: I abhor Generations with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns

This is officially a dystopia.

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have... this timeline

Oh mighty Brainbin, I never know quite what to do with you...

If you don't know what to do, don't do anything (A wise man once said that - I've written a lot about his ex-wife.)

To begin with, WTF is all this formatting I have to strip out of your quotes, anyway?

I do apologize for that. Perhaps it's an artifact of my importing the text from a document that has a different native format than HTML?

Just for the record, I don't know about what rating numbers BtVS achieved OTL; I never saw an episode until years after it had gone off the air myself.

Well, IOTL, it aired on the WB, and then hopped over to UPN, which is the ratings equivalent of being rescued from the Titanic... by the Hindenburg.

I like the concept of the alt-Voyager mixed with a bit of DS-9.

Very good eye, Shevek! That's exactly how we approached Beyond the Frontier - as DS9-meets-VOY. (Hence the "lost in space on account of a wormhole".)

I rather hope the Klingons of the ETS'verse are more like the TOS ones, oily and devious and mean and with no ridges on their heads. I feel turning them into honor-bound louts was a big mistake on Roddenberry's part. It would be quite something for a Federation captain to have to integrate the plotting, scheming, underhanded types from TOS into her crew! And find their worth as well as their liabilities.

The Klingons are, sadly, going to get a more sophisticated makeup job than the shoe-polish-and-fu-manchus of TOV, but not quite to the level of the OTL movies, because they can't afford to go all-out like that on a weekly basis. However, there will be rubber on their foreheads. Personality-wise, however, they will indeed be remaining their old selves - any changes will be dictated in the wake of "Kitumba", the episode written IOTL for Phase II by TOS writer-producer John Meredyth Lucas, which ITTL airs in the first season of TNV. This allows the Romulans to remain their Roman-based honour-driven society, which eventually leads to Honor Bound.

As far as BTF is concerned, you're absolutely right that Captain Ryan has her hands full keeping everyone in line - though the factionalism isn't as rampant as over on Exodus.

OTL Voyager could have benefited from a whole lot of things.

Better writing, mostly. In fact, almost entirely. I actually liked the cast, and I really thought they did the very best they could (except for the people who obviously didn't care, like Beltran and Wang). There was executive meddling, of course, but every Star Trek show has suffered through that - it's no excuse.

In fact, we cribbed elements rather extensively from the OTL bible for Voyager which, for whatever reason, were abandoned when the show made it to air: Janeway's inexperience in command, and a far less harmonious integration of the Maquis (or in this case, non-Federation aliens) into the crew.

I'm personally just shaken by the loss of Joss Whedon, but I can hope someone associated with him shared his vision of what BtVS was supposed to be about. Also, that in this already significantly butterflied and knock-on-effect modified timeline, the film he did have time to make was better, closer to conveying the essential concept; I know OTL he felt it misfired though I don't know precisely in which ways he means that; it isn't a bad movie.

Whedon was a first-time film screenwriter. Prior to the production of that film, he had a few episodes of Roseanne to his name, and little else of import. His script will be changed from his original vision. It happens in the movie business - films are an inherently collaborative medium, especially when you're a nobody screenwriter. I strongly suspect that his OTL experience with the film drove him into the director's chair, but that's an opportunity he'll never have ITTL. In addition, nobody else is going to be making that television series - the original film on which it was based will become a cult classic with no associated franchise, much like many of its kind, before and after.

For one thing the movie did not, OTL anyway, have Anthony Stuart Head!

For the record, Anthony Stuart Head did not appear in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film ITTL.

(slams head down on table)

Be careful doing that, you might get brain damage

 

[Bahamut-255]

In fact, e of pi proposed the two people who have spurred the most eulogies: Miyazaki and Whedon. Trey Parker, on the other hand, was mine (it's his own fault for being such a Japanophile), as was Jackie Chan, and I must remark that the complete lack of reaction from any of you regarding his death is probably what has most surprised me about these responses. I realize that (unlike the other three) most of his best work was already behind him by 1994, but it still surprises me, considering the depth and breadth of his fandom.

Miyazaki, Whedon, & Trey Parker. I suspect that's why Chan was squeezed out, because the others had a bigger impact based on the responses.

 

[nixonshead]

As the first season progressed, British fans were mollified by the content of the show largely being the same as they remembered - although in terms of visuals, the transition from laughably cheap practical effects to laughably cheap CGI was notable.

Ah, the more things change, eh..?

I wonder how the earlier re-launch will affect the style of the writing. I can imagine that Steven Moffatt would still try to get involved to some extent (perhaps butterflying Coupling, which would be a shame), and Neil Gaiman could well have a guest writer slot given he's an established name on both sides of the Atlantic. But for me the big question would be Russel T Davies. Without him as the showrunner and main writer for the first few years the tone would be very different (and perhaps lacking such wide mainstream appeal), even before factoring in the much heavier US involvement.

OTOH, the American factor opens up more options for the Master - why settle for Downing Street when he could have a run at the White House?!

 

[Athelstane]

Hello Brainbin,

Better writing, mostly. In fact, almost entirely. I actually liked the cast, and I really thought they did the very best they could (except for the people who obviously didn't care, like Beltran and Wang). There was executive meddling, of course, but every Star Trek show has suffered through that - it's no excuse.

Oh, no question. The writing simply was not up to the levels of DS9 or post-season 2 Next Gen, on average.

But a lot of the problem was conceptual, and here Ronald D. Moore's criticisms are on point. There were all kinds of interesting possibilities in the original bible, as you say, that were quickly abandoned. Likewise, it was not only unbelievable that the ship could make its way through countless pitched battles and catastrophes in the Delta Quadrant and yet show up in the next episode without a scratch, it was a tremendous missed opportunity in terms of narrative.

And while the case was not bad, the characters they were given were, for the most part, uninteresting.

In fact, we cribbed elements rather extensively from the OTL bible for Voyager which, for whatever reason, were abandoned when the show made it to air: Janeway's inexperience in command, and a far less harmonious integration of the Maquis (or in this case, non-Federation aliens) into the crew.

Good moves, those.

 

[Torlek]

So, I've got a spacesuit question.

It's documented that NASA upgraded to the new A8 (basically an EMU it seems) for EVA work on Freedom and I presume there will be a slightly upgraded A8L variant for lunar work during Artemis. But what are they doing in terms of IVA suits? Have they kept the old A7L for launch/entry or have they switched to a LES/ACES equivalent (I'm presuming this NASA is smart enough to not completely ditch a pressure suit for critical flight phases)?

 

[sharlin]

I have to wonder something, I wonder what the folks at NASA would think of this story if they read it.

 

[brovane]

So, I've got a spacesuit question.

It's documented that NASA upgraded to the new A8 (basically an EMU it seems) for EVA work on Freedom and I presume there will be a slightly upgraded A8L variant for lunar work during Artemis. But what are they doing in terms of IVA suits? Have they kept the old A7L for launch/entry or have they switched to a LES/ACES equivalent (I'm presuming this NASA is smart enough to not completely ditch a pressure suit for critical flight phases)?

Why wouldn't they do what they did during Apollo and just use the Lunar EVA suit with some accessories left off for IVA suits?

 

[nixonshead]

Why wouldn't they do what they did during Apollo and just use the Lunar EVA suit with some accessories left off for IVA suits?

A possible answer to that is they don't want their Apollo CM contaminated with a couple of weeks worth of lunar dust. As I understand it, part of the reason that the Artemis Ascent Module (which doubles as a Mission Module) has a separate airlock (which is left on the Moon) is to have an area you can store the suits without getting quite so much dust around the habitat - it's a 'dirt-lock' as well as an airlock.
If they use the same suits as IVA suits, that would mean a lot of (probably ineffective) cleaning to stop the AM and CM getting dirty and causing respiratory and other problems.
Using the moonsuits for IVA could also make any damage to them sustained from a sharp lunar rock more critical (assuming it wasn't fatal in the first place). Rather than just taking one crew member out of EVA rotation, it could threaten their safety on the return trip. As a minimum it would make carrying at least one spare suit mandatory.
So overall it makes sense to me that there would be a separate, lightweight IVA suit for ascent and landing operations, with the surface suits left on the Moon with the airlock module.