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Say it's 1850. Could the world build a Panama Canal within the next 25 years?

-- Almost certainly not. The necessary technologies weren't there yet, and neither was the necessary critical mass of experience. If someone had tried to do it during 1850-1875, they'd have just ended up with a big muddy hole and tens of thousands of dead workers. It would be like de Lesseps' attempt in the 1880s, except worse.

Okay, say it's 1875. Could the world build an Empire State Building within the next 25 years?

-- Almost certainly not. Again, the necessary technologies weren't quite there -- high quality steel and concrete, elevators, steel framing, curtain walls. All of these underwent rapid development after 1880, but even by 1900 they weren't quite ready. (Also lacking: a critical mass of skyscraper builders and engineers. It took two generations of building huge buildings all over America before the trades were big and sophisticated enough to build an ESB.) You could maybe have a MetLife Tower by 1900 -- OTL it was built in 1909 -- but the MLT's tower is less than half the height and one-tenth the mass of the Empire State Building.

This came to mind because of the recent thread on space exploration. Given a POD no later than 1960, at what point could the world send a manned mission to Mars and back?

I don't think it could plausibly have been launched before 2000 at the earliest. We're so close to it that it's hard to be sure, but... Materials technologies, experience in space, knowledge about Mars, life support technologies: no matter how much money you threw at it, it's hard to see this happening in less than a couple of generations.

More generally, ISTM there's a broad category of "big complicated projects that require certain technologies plus a critical mass of skilled technicians". These are to be distinguished from pinpoint innovations which could plausibly have happened much earlier. You could have had a printing press in ancient Rome; some bright spark might have noticed the cowpox-smallpox connection a century before Jenner; Mendelian inheritance could have been discovered any time after 1800. But with a POD after 1900, you couldn't have had an Apollo Program much earlier than iOTL.

This is more thinking out loud than anything else, I suppose. What think you?


Doug M.
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