My plans that far ahead are very sketchy, but I have a vague notion that TTL's space race will play out in the 60s and 70s, with the first satellites sometime in the mid-60s and the first manned orbital flight about 1970. There will certainly be studies of rocketry well before then, and the futurists will plan for the conquest of space, but without a WW2-analogue to inspire military crash programs, the practical development of rocketry may be slower.
I agree with Shevek23 that war is not the primary engine of technical progress; however, it is a significant engine for cost-intensive projects that will take a long time to show a commercial profit but have much more immediate military utility. I suppose it's possible that someone could conceive of a communications or weather satellite - those are the space projects that pay for themselves the soonest - and then develop the technology to get it into orbit, but there are still huge start-up costs. Maybe a futurist government would do it in flush times - but even so, the flow of R&D money would probably be more moderate, and the project stretched out longer, than a wartime crash program would be. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but I'm still thinking 1960s-70s.
On the other hand, once TTL's people do get into space, it may be less of a prestige project and more of a long-term strategic commitment.
Tsiolkovsky is old enough to have an ATL-sibling, and given that Russia will be little changed during his childhood, he could end up following a similar career path. In any event, whether he or someone else pioneers rocketry, those ideas will certainly be there for 20th-century engineers to play with.
Russia is far from done with Tolstoy, and vice versa. He's the founding father of the new Russia, and his ideals are very much part of the political background - the current government pays only lip service to them, but there will eventually be the next two steps forward.
Things may get worse before they get better, but don't count Russia out.
He is. "Ma" is a Chinese name meaning "Mohammed" and is common among the Hui; in OTL, there was a powerful "Ma clique" of generals during the first half of the 20th century.
He's a Confucian sort of Muslim, though, and he doesn't plan to impose Islam on China, although his forcible collectivization and crash industrialization programs will be bad enough.
Orthodoxy will be the dominant form of Christianity, and will probably be at least as influential in TTL's Korea as Catholic and Protestant Christianity are in OTL's. But it will still have to share space with Buddhism (which is down but not out), shamanism and irreligion, so it will probably be a plurality faith at most.
Korea is definitely in a better position than OTL - Russian economic colonization won't be as disruptive as straight-up colonization by Japan, and it will have more of a say in its development.
Right now, the rump Qing are too weak to try to retake China, and Ma has higher priorities than to go after them. Manchuria is hanging on for now as a Russian satellite, although Japan has major commercial interests there too.
China, Russia and Japan will eventually have to sit at the table and decide what happens to Manchuria, although events might overtake them, given how quickly the Manchurians, Green Ukrainians and Mongols are coalescing into a hybrid nation.
The Japanese are just getting the hang of mass politics, and there are going to be false starts. Right now, the situation could go any of a number of ways: real democracy, equilibrium of the oligarchs, or populist dictatorship. There are many things going on behind the scenes, both at the political and the cultural level.
Sorry, RHW?
South Arabia is a bit complicated, given that it still professes loyalty to the Sultan as Caliph but is being drawn into Ethiopia's political orbit. Another post-Westphalian data point, I guess. And of course, at this point, Ethiopia is as much a Muslim empire as a Christian one, although the ruling class is still mostly Christian.
The Omanis will compete with it for the title of East African powerhouse, but it's certainly headed in the right direction for now.
Yes. China is already under increasingly totalitarian rule, and Japan and Russia aren't the only other countries in danger of the same thing.
Ethiopia has passed the midterm, but still has to take the final exam: there will be plenty more opportunities for things to go wrong. I'm not saying they will, but I'm also not saying they won't.
The Han in Manchuria are under de facto Russian protection, so they're all right thus far - there have been sporadic incidents, but nothing more.
I've mentioned already that Havana is having a "rumba age," and it will mostly stay out of metropolitan Spain's troubles during the 1910s. St. Petersburg is another cultural center - art is the safe form of dissent in the post-Tolstoy era.
Also, even the cultural centers that are common to OTL and TTL won't necessarily be the same; the Paris scene is quite a bit more African, for instance, and Rio has its Korean and Vietnamese grace notes.
The jazz age in TTL will be quite something.
I was thinking that Tigray would be included in Amhara, but now that you mention it, the better course might be to keep it separate - not only would the people be happier, but the Church and the ruling class would be more comfortable with a fourth Christian kingdom to balance out the two Muslim ones. Consider the amendment made.
But give global warming time: the rebound from all those melting glaciers is definitely going to do something.
