Terrorists eliminate Apollo 17

Reading the actual article, it appears that Black September was targeting the crew and their families, rather than the rocket stack.

Of course, that isn't the hypothetical that PE was posing. Which isn't to say they wouldn't have blown up the rocket - which would have made for one hell of an explosion - if they really had a chance.
 
If that's the criteria for something being ASB, then a great many of the threads on this board fall under that category. Personally, my view of ASB is that it requires things that are either physically impossible (for example an ISOT) or are so vanishingly unlikely that there's just no way to make them plausible (Hitler not being an evil bastard, perhaps).

In this particular case, I don't see any requirement for intervention from outside the laws of reality to make it happen. Is it ASB for a terrorist group to hijack airliners? Of course not, it's happened many times IOTL. What's needed is a bit more detail about why they decide on attempting to fly one into Apollo 17 and what the consequences of such an attempt might be.
The first part of that requires people to make decisions that they did not IOTL. We don't know exactly who or what decisions, but again it's not ASB to imagine people willing to fly an aircraft into a ship or building. There's plenty of historical and fictional precedent for exactly that. Why they come to that decision and what they hope to achieve are fruitful topics for discussion, of course, but hardly ASB.

Hijacking Apollo 17 is NOT hijacking an ordinary aircraft! The security is extremely tight around a US space vehicle. It is alot easier to get into an airport than a space center!!!!!
 
If that's the criteria for something being ASB, then a great many of the threads on this board fall under that category. Personally, my view of ASB is that it requires things that are either physically impossible (for example an ISOT) or are so vanishingly unlikely that there's just no way to make them plausible (Hitler not being an evil bastard, perhaps).

In this particular case, I don't see any requirement for intervention from outside the laws of reality to make it happen. Is it ASB for a terrorist group to hijack airliners? Of course not, it's happened many times IOTL. What's needed is a bit more detail about why they decide on attempting to fly one into Apollo 17 and what the consequences of such an attempt might be.
The first part of that requires people to make decisions that they did not IOTL. We don't know exactly who or what decisions, but again it's not ASB to imagine people willing to fly an aircraft into a ship or building. There's plenty of historical and fictional precedent for exactly that. Why they come to that decision and what they hope to achieve are fruitful topics for discussion, of course, but hardly ASB.

First of all, there is no proof there was really a threat. Just because an intelligence agency detected a threat, doesn't mean there actually was a threat. If Black September did not at any point considered this, then there is no point of divergence thus it becomes ASB. If Black September had considered this and started planning this, then the POD would be the point in which they abandoned it. The article provides no proof that there was a real threat, only an anecdote of increased security, and some history of real actions taken by Black September and the PLO.

Also, fly what? Why would Black September fly anything? When have they ever flew anything?
 
Hijacking Apollo 17 is NOT hijacking an ordinary aircraft! The security is extremely tight around a US space vehicle. It is alot easier to get into an airport than a space center!!!!!

I never said they were to hijack a Saturn V.

Only to crash an airliner into it.

@Evil Doctor: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/world/europe/05levy.html Granted, they only broke into the cockpit and held the pilot at gunpoint, but if they bring along someone who can fly a plane, they take the next step.

I know that that's not what the article described, but I was inspired to add "airliner hijacking" because of a recent increase in the number of 9/11 threads.
 
I never said they were to hijack a Saturn V.

Only to crash an airliner into it.

@Evil Doctor: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/world/europe/05levy.html Granted, they only broke into the cockpit and held the pilot at gunpoint, but if they bring along someone who can fly a plane, they take the next step.

Unlikely. You got to remember that these guys were communists, not radical Islamists, they didn't engage in suicide missions. The certainly didn't engage in arbitrary wanton destruction. It's kind of hard to set a list of demands and expect them to be met if a) you've already destroyed the target or b) you're already dead....
 
First of all, there is no proof there was really a threat. Just because an intelligence agency detected a threat, doesn't mean there actually was a threat. If Black September did not at any point considered this, then there is no point of divergence thus it becomes ASB. If Black September had considered this and started planning this, then the POD would be the point in which they abandoned it. The article provides no proof that there was a real threat, only an anecdote of increased security, and some history of real actions taken by Black September and the PLO.

Also, fly what? Why would Black September fly anything? When have they ever flew anything?

Well you realise that just because they hadn't had he idea doesn't mean that it requires the intervention of ASB's to make them have it! To write a TL where someone simply has a different idea at the time is not ASB. It would be ASB if they hijacked an F-35 and slammed into the moon landing. Making them consider crashing into a space-craft is not.
 
Well you realise that just because they hadn't had he idea doesn't mean that it requires the intervention of ASB's to make them have it! To write a TL where someone simply has a different idea at the time is not ASB. It would be ASB if they hijacked an F-35 and slammed into the moon landing. Making them consider crashing into a space-craft is not.

It's ASB when they have people engaging in behaviour they wouldn't otherwise engage in. If this isn't ASB then a successful Operation Sealion isn't ASB, because that is more plausible...

..plus once again...NO POINT OF DIVERGENCE!
 
It's ASB when they have people engaging in behaviour they wouldn't otherwise engage in. If this isn't ASB then a successful Operation Sealion isn't ASB, because that is more plausible...

..plus once again...NO POINT OF DIVERGENCE!

Isn't AH entirely based on the idea of people engaging in behaviour they didn't IOTL?
 
It's ASB when they have people engaging in behaviour they wouldn't otherwise engage in. If this isn't ASB then a successful Operation Sealion isn't ASB, because that is more plausible...

Sealion is ASB due to logistics. For Sealion to be successful, the British would need to behave in ways that would directly go against their inclinations and adversely affect their chance of survival. So, barring collective insanity, they wouldn't.

This scenario posits an unconventional attack that fits with the M.O. of the group in question. Perhaps unlikely, but NOT ASB, because it is a scenario which DOES NOT REQUIRE ALIEN OR MAGICAL INTERVENTION to come about.

..plus once again...NO POINT OF DIVERGENCE!

WHO CARES? When has that been a criteria for anything?
 
It's ASB when they have people engaging in behaviour they wouldn't otherwise engage in. If this isn't ASB then a successful Operation Sealion isn't ASB, because that is more plausible...

..plus once again...NO POINT OF DIVERGENCE!

Making Hitler have a moment of sanity and not invade the Balkans is not ASB. Making Stalin slightly less edgey and not as purge happy due to some minor tweaks to his personality growing up is not ASB.

Sealion is ASB because there is NO DAMNED WAY the Nazi's were going to set foot on British soil without the intervention of aliens. Making Stalin invade Western Europe is ASB because of the atomic bomb and general war stress.

Having terrorists decide to attack what they might percieve as a symbol of American pride or ideology is sadly not ASB. Look at 9/11

And the POD is, terrorists fly an airplane into a space craft!!
 
Isn't AH entirely based on the idea of people engaging in behaviour they didn't IOTL?

I'm sorry, I thought the whole point of the two main AHD's was to deal with realistic concept of divergence using real people making plausible alternate decisions and charting that actions of that. Fictional people making arbitary decisions go to ASB or AHWF.

But hey, if fictional people making arbitary decisions is the very foundation of alternate history then I apoligize...
 
Making Hitler have a moment of sanity and not invade the Balkans is not ASB. Making Stalin slightly less edgey and not as purge happy due to some minor tweaks to his personality growing up is not ASB.

Sealion is ASB because there is NO DAMNED WAY the Nazi's were going to set foot on British soil without the intervention of aliens. Making Stalin invade Western Europe is ASB because of the atomic bomb and general war stress.

Having terrorists decide to attack what they might percieve as a symbol of American pride or ideology is sadly not ASB. Look at 9/11

And the POD is, terrorists fly an airplane into a space craft!!

Right, because there is no logistics problems with that...:rolleyes:

First off you are confusing Black September with Al-Qaeda. Two different groups, two different ideologies, two different raison d'etre, two different methodologies.

And are you telling me this actually happened in real life, except in OTL the plane missed?
 
I'm sorry, I thought the whole point of the two main AHD's was to deal with realistic concept of divergence using real people making plausible alternate decisions and charting that actions of that. Fictional people making arbitary decisions go to ASB or AHWF.

But hey, if fictional people making arbitary decisions is the very foundation of alternate history then I apoligize...

No need to apologise. We're not talking about fictional people making arbitrary decisions in any case, so the problem doesn't seem to arise.

Did terrorist groups exist? Did any of them hijack airliners? Did any of those groups try to fly those airliners into buildings? Did they try such a thing in order to attract public attention to their cause? Well, my opinion is that they did. Since there appears to be a historical precedent for those things happening, I don't think we need ASB's.
What we need, as you correctly point out, is someone to make a decision that they did not IOTL. Again as you point out, this does not require ASB intervention. I don't know much about the terrorist groups that were active in 1972, so I'm not going to attempt to suggest which ones this idea might have appealed to. I find it hard to believe, however, that the massive publicity attending such an event would have been of no interest whatsoever to any of them if the idea had been suggested.

Even at the time there were terrorist groups which hijacked aircraft - presumably this is not disputed. So what we need is a POD in which an influential member of one of those groups decides that their goals will be best served by the attempt the OP puts forwards. This doesn't strike me as ASB, unless any case in which people make different decisions from OTL qualifies for the term.
 
Right, because there is no logistics problems with that...:rolleyes:

First off you are confusing Black September with Al-Qaeda. Two different groups, two different ideologies, two different raison d'etre, two different methodologies.

And are you telling me this actually happened in real life, except in OTL the plane missed?

There really isn't any complicated logistics of 'highjack plane and fly into building' if you have a skilled pilot.

First off I never said Black September, I said terrorists. Not unlikely that one group might try it.

And no I'm not saying this happened in real life and the plane missed. The POD would be "failed attack actually succeeds" just like a "WI 9/11 failed?" POD would. This is alternate history because we are exploring the "what if someone makes the decision?" not "Oh this has already happened maybe I can change something around and see what happens". It is experimenting with people making different decisions or even what happens if certain people are born in different historical circumstances.
 
It was my understanding that 20 became the lawn ornament in front of NASA.

There were two leftover Saturn Vs after all missions using them were completed IOTL. Both are currently on display in piecemeal condition at Johnson and Kennedy, as is part of the Skylab launch vehicle. Marshall has the complete dynamics test vehicle stack. In any case, this leaves one Saturn V theoretically free to conduct an Apollo 18 mission, as there will still be one for the backup Skylab launch should there be a failure then.

Thus, it is possible that an Apollo 18 will be flown, from the strict sense that there is a Saturn V available which will not interfere with Skylab and incomplete CSM and LMs which could theoretically be completed to flight condition. However, I don't think it would be particularly likely; the Apollo team was gearing down at the time and as I indicated most of the remaining lunar hardware was being scrapped or prepared for display while incomplete. Instead, all that will happen will be some tightening of airline security, security around the Cape (and Vandenberg), and a pressing forwards towards Shuttle and Skylab, as NASA wanted. It's possible that another orbiter gets built "just in case" of another attack (to ensure access is kept up), but not particularly likely. Restarting Saturn V production is especially unlikely since that stopped in 1968, before Nixon took office.
 
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