French Guiana stays Portuguese/Brazilian

yofie

Banned
In 1809, combined British and Portuguese forces invaded Cayenne, and the Portuguese kept it until it was given back to the French in 1817. If the Portuguese and then Brazilians had kept French Guiana for good, what would happen to things like the Devil's Island penal colony and the Kourou spaceport?
 

archaeogeek

Banned
If it wasn't handed back in 1817, I suspect another "Pastry War" with France, as Portugal was fulfilling treaty obligations from 1814 (which confirmed french possession of it)... Quite simply, unless they had had Britain backing them, Brazil had only three or four million people and lacked the economy to fight France.

It would probably be just as much of a poor colonial backwater as part of an enlarged state of Para as it was as part of France. Kourou would probably be "Les Saintes" or another of the smaller islands around Guadeloupe instead.
 
"Devil's Island" probably becomes New Caledonia, to which France ended up shipping a good number of political prisoners in OTL anyway.

As for a space program, assuming that butterflies don't flap too hard, one wonders about the effect this would have on places like the Sahara or French Polynesia.
 

yofie

Banned
I'm thinking now that the penal colony functions carried out OTL in Devil's Island would take place ATL at least mostly in New Caledonia.

As for the spaceport, I'm at a loss because when Kourou in French Guiana was selected as the spaceport's site in the mid-1960s (after agreeing to withdraw from its previous base in Algeria after independence there in 1962), it was the clear favourite out of 15 possible sites. This was because French Guiana a) is quite close to the equator (thereby facilitating launches), b) already had port and airport facilities (just waiting to be improved), c) has had political stability due to its being politically a part of France. In this scenario, the last part is butterflied away (being a part of Brazil), and after all, Belem had also been considered for the spaceport site but was eliminated as a choice largely because of political stability issues.

The next best choices for the siting of the spaceport - Darwin, Australia; Belem, Brazil; Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia; and Trinidad - all had issues related either to political stability, vulnerability to hurricanes, or were simply too far away from Europe. Other choices included a couple of sites right around Guadeloupe (a French dependency in the Caribbean), Madagascar, the Marquesas (in French Polynesia), and Mauritania.

In short, if OTL French Guiana is a part of Brazil, whither the French/European spaceport?
 
Well if other international sites are being considered why not use British Guiana which is just down the coast? The Kourou site was chosen in 1964 and British Guiana received independence in 1966, two year gap should be enough to negotiate a deal similar to the Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus to build and run a space launch centre. Politically they seem stable enough, the area they might fall down on is infrastructure which I don't know about and can't see anything for from a quick search.
 

HJ Tulp

Donor
Well if other international sites are being considered why not use British Guiana which is just down the coast? The Kourou site was chosen in 1964 and British Guiana received independence in 1966, two year gap should be enough to negotiate a deal similar to the Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus to build and run a space launch centre. Politically they seem stable enough, the area they might fall down on is infrastructure which I don't know about and can't see anything for from a quick search.

Or Suriname. It's ridiculously easy to keep it Dutch. Just not have Den Uyl elected or just cure him of his idiotness and you are done. Maybe not VERY political stable (Surinamese politics have been poisoned ever since they got the first sliver of autonomy) but with the Dutch garrison and political intervention easy and always near it should be stable enough.
 

yofie

Banned
Well if other international sites are being considered why not use British Guiana which is just down the coast? The Kourou site was chosen in 1964 and British Guiana received independence in 1966, two year gap should be enough to negotiate a deal similar to the Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus to build and run a space launch centre. Politically they seem stable enough, the area they might fall down on is infrastructure which I don't know about and can't see anything for from a quick search.

And did the French not leave behind similar sovereign-base type areas in any of their ex-colonies after the latter's independence the way the British did?
 

yofie

Banned
Or Suriname. It's ridiculously easy to keep it Dutch. Just not have Den Uyl elected or just cure him of his idiotness and you are done. Maybe not VERY political stable (Surinamese politics have been poisoned ever since they got the first sliver of autonomy) but with the Dutch garrison and political intervention easy and always near it should be stable enough.

Whereas Guyana has a coastline that slopes southeastwards (just like French Guiana), Suriname has a coastline that goes directly east. What that means is that while there is water north and east of the Guyana coast, there is water only north (but not east) of the Suriname coast. Ideally, rockets should have the option of going east over the water for geostationary orbits, and north over the water for polar orbits. I'm emphasizing water because that avoids going over populated areas in the event of a catastrophe. So if that was the only consideration, I'd choose Guyana over Suriname for installing a spaceport. What do any of you think?
 
Whereas Guyana has a coastline that slopes southeastwards (just like French Guiana), Suriname has a coastline that goes directly east. What that means is that while there is water north and east of the Guyana coast, there is water only north (but not east) of the Suriname coast. Ideally, rockets should have the option of going east over the water for geostationary orbits, and north over the water for polar orbits. I'm emphasizing water because that avoids going over populated areas in the event of a catastrophe. So if that was the only consideration, I'd choose Guyana over Suriname for installing a spaceport. What do any of you think?
Very good point. Yes, you want to launch rockets due east most of the time (unless you have a specific, usually polar, orbit you need to reach). Guyana and French Guiana both work, Surinam doesn't. As you say.
 

yofie

Banned
Also OTL in the mid-1960s, somebody had been comparing the costs and feasability of placing a spaceport in the south of France (latitude just below 45 degrees) with French Guiana, and the latter obviously won. However, in this case, ISTM that in choosing between something like Guyana and southern France, more weight would have been put on the ease of equatorial spacefights than political stability. So maybe southern France would have lost in any case, even if Guyana was less than stable?
 
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