Developments in Science and Technology
The 1990s brought many technological advances to the world stage, especially as innovations in the military field found their way into civilian markets.
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Air Travel made massive advancements during the early 90s into the beginning of the century. This became clear with the development of planes which achieved what was assumed to be the holy grail of air travel: Quiet Supersonic Transport (QST). As the Bundy Doctrine of foreign policy distanced Americans from Mainland Europe, America’s new dominant trading partners, including Australia and Japan, were beckoning from across the Pacific Ocean. The frequency of Trans-Pacific flights saw noticeable increases, while flights across the Atlantic to destinations in continental Europe and Africa simultaneously decreased. Because trans-Pacific flights on regular planes were particularly long, with flights from Melbourne to any destination on the West Coast taking a minimum of 14 hours, most passengers on such flights opted for supersonic airlines, despite the disadvantages of using them. Supersonic aircraft, despite their speed, were considered expensive to operate, and the great noise generated when their engines were operating, as well as cramped spaces, deterred many passengers from using them. This was a hurdle travel providers needed to surpass. Fortunately, innovations coming from Europe began to change the state of the industry.
Thanks to scientific investment led by President Cousteau in France during the 80s, France was the world leader in civilian supersonic aviation. The Concorde airplane, developed in the late 60s and heavily upgraded during the 80s, was the primary choice of those flying supersonic, at least up to World War III.
By the time that the war ended, many assets of the Soviet government, including the aircraft companies Antonov and Tupolev, were left without a customer and saw their resources spread across several newly independent countries. Their assets across the former Soviet Union were sold by its successor republics, who were more interested in covering state debts than military advancement, (though the Treaty of Geneva limited any Soviet successor state from building a large military anyways). Tupolev's factories and assets in Yakutia, Ukraine, and Samara, in particular, were sold to Boeing, who quickly used the old Soviet plans to build a clone of the Tupolev’s supersonic Tu-144 model. Since the transfer of ownership of the company in 1994, Boeing engineers, in conjunction with its counterparts in Mitsubishi, poached much of the company’s highly-skilled workforce, both to improve the aircraft’s engines, and to alter its wing-shape to reduce the impacts of the sonic booms. Much of the work was already done years before, as the American government began releasing into the public domain data acquired from then-classified research projects testing the feasibility of stealth aircraft that could exceed twice the speed of sound. (They were planned for a new bomber-class aimed at targeting Russian cities east of the Urals, through development halted after the Soviet Union surrendered.) Just as Operation Paperclip had supported American innovation post-WWII, plundered Soviet research now reached both American military and civilian markets.
By 1999, a few days before the dawn of the new millennium, Boeing HQ in Seattle announced that its new model, named Boeing 807 SuperCharger, was finally ready for widespread use. As of 2010, roughly 1,000 units are in operation, mainly used mostly by American, Japanese, Australian and British corporations. European nations soon followed, with a joint effort by the Concordat nations, via Aérospatiale [A/N: TTL it has taken the Airbus path and merged with several other European companies, though not including the German DASA], ending with their own model of supersonic planes. Called the A365, it was released in 2003. Most European firms today use the model, and its successor, the A365-Neo, remains popular among Southern African airlines. The newly-created U-04 plane, built by the German-dominated EuroLuft Company, added another model to the market of supersonic aircraft. Using the lion’s share of Tupolev’s skilled manpower and assets, along with the entirety of the Sukhoi, Yakovlev, Mikoyan, and Ilyushin companies, (all of whom had been privatized and sold to Central European firms under the watchful eye of the Free Russian Republic), the plane was a unique interpretation of the Tupolev Tu-144. Although the CECU nations had a much lower need for supersonic civilian aircraft, as they didn’t have allies in distant corners of the world, the plane was considered a quality product and is still in use by many non-CECU carriers worldwide.
Many still debate the immediate causes behind the sudden boom in carriers offering extremely fast flights, though a couple of factors are most obvious to many looking back. After the end of the Third World War, new advancements in military tech began leaking into the civilian field, which with expertise freed up by the sale of Soviet-owned planes and companies, made the engineering aspect of cheaper, less disruptive planes, possible. This was combined with an economic boom that left businesses and businessmen flush with cash to spend both on investing in new technologies and on overseas expansion (which necessitated fast trips), as well as an affluent American public willing to sacrifice comfort for fast and convenient flights to increasingly far-off, and increasingly accessible, destinations abroad. Additionally, while global communication had improved, it was neither advanced nor widely distributed enough to replace the experience of meeting colleagues or family in-person. Moreover, as technology improved, older supersonic aircraft would steadily become available at lower and lower prices, with even one-day shipping being done across the Pacific at supersonic speeds by the mid 00's.
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The rise in transportation that an increasingly interconnected world brought had gone hand in hand with advancements in materials science and industrial efficiency, led by the United States, France, and Japan. New techniques and increased mechanization of the smelting and casting processes reduced the cost of steel, aluminum, and copper. Meanwhile, Carbon Fibre technology, originally developed as low-weight material for mobile warfare in WWIII (E.G. gun casing, body armor, airplane parts) hit the consumer market. Consumer goods such as suitcases, electronic hardware, and prosthetics for amputees all saw increasing quality as new materials ensured that they were stronger, more lightweight, and cheaper than ever before.
Automobiles also began to employ new materials, as the race to develop faster and more fuel-efficient cars to ride the new Germany-style “Ameribahns” (highways without speed limits) hit the US market. Many of the SST transport used them to reduce fuel usage. Even construction firms began incorporating these new materials into the buildings that replaced those destroyed by the war. The very materials that made up the things that surrounded the Average American, Japanese, Zairean, etc. were rapidly changing.
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Even though Americans were beginning to use faster cars more regularly, this was not to say that Americans were not wary of wastefulness. The war had led to the rationing of certain goods due to Soviet activities and the Atlantic and the need to divert efforts towards the war effort. Top among ration supplies was gasoline. Appreciative of America’s dependence on foreign sources, especially fossil fuels, and want to decrease dependence on energy sources in far-off locations, people began looking towards alternative fuels. Environmentalism was a growing movement in America, helped along by the rise of the Global Green movement. The power of the American industrial sector and their influence on Capitol Hill meant that unlike Germany, the leaders of the environmentalist movement would not easily be able to blame manufacturers for problems like this. America would not be hit much by deindustrialization, though this meant that issues such as ensuring cleaner air and water would be left on the backburner.
The main alternatives to coal, oil, and natural gas, were various types of renewable energy and nuclear power. Chief among the former was solar power. Advances in photovoltaics and subsidies for their usage in states like Florida meant that solar panels became increasingly cheaper to produce and buy, as well as more efficient.
Because of the abundance of solar power and the falling prices of solar panels, many people believed the future of America’s power grid would be focused entirely on solar and wind power. However one of the biggest factors holding back solar power was the simple fact that they did not operate when the sun was hidden, meaning that clouds or day-night cycles could limit the amount of power available in the grid. Peak demand did not correlate with the supply provided throughout the day, and energy consumption was at its highest after sunset. The resulting sudden swing in demand often taxed local power grids, sometimes leading to sudden failures.
The infamous “Duck Curve” of Florida.
Contrary to popular belief, however, this was not the cause of California’s infamous rolling blackouts, which became national news after the end of the Bundy Administration, despite the promotion of this myth by then-Commerce Secretary and former-Enron CEO, Jeffrey Skilling. (Enron had also coincidentally expanded its scope in California’s power grid, lobbying against any and all adoption of alternative fuel sources, and shutting down existing nuclear power plants due to “radiation hazards”.) Use of photovoltaics, despite being in a prime area to use them, was limited for these reasons.
A potential solution to this problem would have been to rely on interstate connections between local power grids to account for times of surplus demand, though this would have limited sovereignty over local energy production to the federal government, which was unpopular. Moreover, although battery technology enabling solar+storage (solar systems with attached batteries that would store energy gathered during the day for use at night) was advancing, the resulting increase in costs and poor regulatory structure, made solar+storage systems unpopular, especially at the utility level. It was more common in rural areas with faulty grids and more off-grid type systems. In addition, much of the initial solar infrastructure had been installed during reconstruction when batteries were too poor and expensive to make sense, and retrofitting entire infrastructures was prohibitively expensive. Only Idaho would invest heavily in promoting solar with storage, in part thanks to lobbying from Native American tribes, but with no copycats. Instead, several states decided to capitalize on something which already contributed to energy production in states across the country, nuclear power.
Prompted by increased safety mechanisms that helped decrease the stigma surrounding nuclear power, as well as a corresponding decrease in regulations in the building of new power plants, many states saw a boom in production. This was ironically sparked by an initiative by Energy Secretary Skilling to “decrease reliance on foreign oil”, which was indirectly aimed at subsidizing domestic oil producers.
Some commentators, however, were concerned about the increase in the production of nuclear power plants. This included the usual fear-mongering which incorrectly assumed that reactor meltdowns led to nuclear explosions, and the nuking of Islamabad played heavily in the anti-nuclear propaganda championed by groups like Greenpeace. Most Americans, however, realized the discrepancy, and Greenpeace was later chastised for its misinformation campaign. The organization was doomed to obscurity in the aftermath.
Others were concerned due to the fact that many of said power plants were built by French companies. France had a reputation for its reliance on nuclear energy and had many companies in the energy sector specialized solely in nuclear power. Fearmongers and shock-jocks alike lamented this was part of a French takeover of the U.S. power grid, and an attempt to tie the nation’s destiny to that of France. This included known isolationist congressmen, notably including Senator Pat Buchanan. Buchanan claimed that giving French companies a stake in nuclear production would tie America’s fate with France’s, and in case a new regional war flared up, France could commit blackmail against the United States using these power companies as leverage.
These fears were of course, mostly unfounded, and most Americans agreed. While a suspicious amount of lobbying in favor of a proposed bill limiting energy production to American-owned companies, the hysteria came to nothing. While the United States would not shake off its dependence on fossil fuels, many states increasingly began using a mixture of solar and nuclear power, limiting their overall carbon footprint. In some states, including California and most of the American Southwest, the opposite occurred, and local governments doubled down on non-renewable resources.
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The biggest change in civilian communication during the ‘90s was the new devices known as pagers which began to hit civilian markets. They quickly became widespread, with each iteration to hit stores becoming progressively cheaper and advanced.
The first pager only provided a beep or a series of beeps that notified the device owner to call the service center to get a message left there. To send a message, the service center could be called, specifying the subscription number and the desired message. Later devices, developed during the ‘80s, enabled the transfer of numeric codes to subscribers of the service. They would then call the center to receive a detailed message from the sender, or if the numeric code was a phone number, call that phone to contact the person who left the message directly. Later devices included a small text display (usually one line only) on which the message sent to the subscriber appeared. During the ’90s, devices were modified to include a multi-line monitor, an option to send back messages, and the ability to receive multiple frequencies at the same time, thus enabling group messages for anyone on the group subscription. As the technology became widespread, regional and national stakeholders of large companies, and especially public utilities, began using pagers to send and receive information at a faster rate. This expanded to other sectors which required fast access to information, including journalists, police precincts and national guards. They formed paging groups to notify employees about urgent messaging and alerts. The main advantage of the pager technology was that it offered a cheap, reliable communication device, which worked as a convenient, no-frills, mobile communications device.
An early pager model
This was in sharp contrast to the mobile phone market, whose customers were mainly composed of military technology and executives. They saw phones as more secure and reliable and did not care about their bulky design and costs. (The first mobile phone to be released to the general public, a Sony product, was released to consumers in the year 1990. It had cost $4,000 and lasted for thirty minutes before needing to get charged.) However, both Motorola and Bell company focused more on installing their phones in cars, especially taxis, as it was seen as more manageable than “handheld” phones. Tech analysts assumed that future pager models would include a touchscreen, as some car manufacturers (notably DeLorean, whose target demographic was known for being technophilic) attempted to add a monochrome touchscreen to control the automobile's non-essential functions. Touchscreens, however, were notoriously imprecise, unreactive, and expensive, meaning their applications remained limited. As pagers trickled into the domain of the upper-middle class, new pagers began including primitive services, including simple video games as found in arcades, and calculators, though some complained that adding too many secondary functions would worsen the performance and the speed that it carried them out. While Motorola and Bell still rule the market domestically, they have faced increasing competition from French and Japanese corporations, including Alcatel, France Telecom, Sony, and Panasonic.
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