No Fixed Nitrogen Made By Man.

Starseed

Banned
What it says on the tin.

How does this affect the 20th century? Could advanced technology (other than that directly related to the Haber-Bosch process) still evolve to the spacefaring age?
 
Goodbye the Kaiser...

...No nitric acid by 1916 as Germany can only use ancient extraction of nitrates from midden wastes. The Western Front collapses and it's also possible that the Imperial Russian Army invades Germany. No need, therefore, for Weitzmann to make acetone by fermentation - no need for Britain to support Zionism in return.

The future of Western Europe would change. Butterflies are immense.

...However, the existence of Goddard and other geniuses like Oberth and Von Braun should ensure that rocketry at least starts. Britain has Lubbock and the petrol/lox one-tonne rocket engine by 1942. That gives Britain a head-start on the USA, which then only has the Private and Corporal rockets:D. And guess which nations have gas-turbines? Britain has PowerJets and Whittle, Germany has Jumo and Heinkel.

The British Rocket Society and Verein fur Raumschiffarht inherit space!
 
I agree on the consequences to WW1. Germany is screwed...:)

However the processes will come along. They are basic Chemistry, after all, and by the 30's they had the basic Chem theory down pretty well.
 
Fertiliser...

Much of modern farming's productivity depends on synthetic fertilisers. In the absence of nitrogen fixation, there would have to be a lot more crop rotation with legumes, alfalfa etc, plus treatment and distribution of sewage slurry...

IIRC, much hard-rock tunnelling and mining uses an inexpensive, nitrogen-rich explosive slurry instead of solid dynamite. Working practices would have to be different...

Uh, check out guano mining and guano islands, which were considered a 'strategic resource' in the late 19th century, as their deposits, up to 150 feet thick, were a convenient source of nitrates...

There were nearly wars fought over access to such islands' vital resource, and USA hastily annexed assorted Pacific islands: Had synthetic nitrogen fixation NOT come along, those islands would have been scraped bare and a terrible shortage would follow...

Uh, one butterfly might be that the USSR's efforts to grow cotton across vast swathes of land near the Aral Sea might have failed before so much of the area became a polluted, desertified waste...
 
However the processes will come along. They are basic Chemistry, after all, and by the 30's they had the basic Chem theory down pretty well.


This.

The chemical theory is already there, the need for nitrates growing, and the market just waiting for any supplier. There's just too much money waiting to be made for the problem not to be solved.

And there were other ways to skin the cat besides the Haber Process too. They were even more finicky than the Haber process, which is something when you remember the original Haber process utilized a high pressure, high temperature steam laced with a gaseous uranium compound. That's right, uranium gas.

Industrializing Haber's lab process still took years, but the pilot plants were operating in 1913 and Wilhelmine Germany was able to increase production via a crash construction program without too much difficulty once the war started.
 
This.

The chemical theory is already there, the need for nitrates growing, and the market just waiting for any supplier. There's just too much money waiting to be made for the problem not to be solved.

Until then, Guano islands remain very, very important as do both Chile and Peru for their saltpeter.
 
This.

The chemical theory is already there, the need for nitrates growing, and the market just waiting for any supplier. There's just too much money waiting to be made for the problem not to be solved.

And there were other ways to skin the cat besides the Haber Process too. They were even more finicky than the Haber process, which is something when you remember the original Haber process utilized a high pressure, high temperature steam laced with a gaseous uranium compound. That's right, uranium gas.

Industrializing Haber's lab process still took years, but the pilot plants were operating in 1913 and Wilhelmine Germany was able to increase production via a crash construction program without too much difficulty once the war started.
There was also a Norwegian plant producing nitric acid from air, IIRC, but it required bucket loads of cheap hydroelectricity to be economical. Germany, faced with war might throw economics out the window and use that. So instead of collapsing in 1918 (OTL) or 1915 (no nitrogen fixing) would be somewhere in the middle.
 
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