Thank you very much. The presidential absence has been filled.
To be perfectly honest: I don't know. I didn't give them much thought, partly because this is an interesting world and I wanted to leave it open for future expansion or possibly even other TLs set in the same universe.
Just read this overnight--you can thank Jonathan Edelstein; I checked up on what he's been reading lately to see what I might be missing.
I wonder what happened regarding space travel ITTL.
I could make a case either way--that is, the Soviet-dominated Old World could very plausibly have a strong and expansive (99 percent Soviet!) space program, with the Americans trying to play catch up sporadically.
Or--it might not be implausible for neither bloc to have many achievements to speak of.
This is a bit unlikely both because the development of basic missile technology seems almost inevitable and that gives the capability of orbiting at least small satellites, and because Russian culture reinforced by Marxist-Leninist progressivism makes the dream of space travel quite respectable and mainstream; a strong, rich and progressing USSR seems just about certain to have a space program and for it to have cultural importance throughout the bloc.
However, if you like I could make the case for how both the Russians and Americans get deterred by a sequence of plausible developments and decisions to simply not go there and not have ever got around to it even by 2014. It would be a devil's advocate sort of thing for me to do since I like the idea of space travel, but it can be done here.
For instance, the Azores Crisis seems at a glance and with ironic mirroring of OTL to be a missile crisis--but it might not be; Joe Kennedy might have been trying to put bombers there. Or both sides might have intercontinental missiles all right, but they are airbreathing cruise missiles. Or they have ICBMs but have agreed to limit them--if the Soviets have a much bigger economy to play with and talent pool to draw from, they might match OTL US achievements in making warheads smaller, and thus didn't develop missiles as big and capable as Korolev's OTL R-7. If Americans manage the same achievements in miniaturization we did OTL, the step from ICBM to orbital spacecraft might not be taken by either side. Given the Americans backing down in the Azores crisis and then a likely subsequent round of formal arms limitation agreements, the opportunity might never seem to be quite at hand whereas taking that step might be seen as too provocative.
I have to run now but I'm subscribing to see if more is done with this later, here or elsewhere---if you do start another TL spun off this one, could you be so kind as to put a notice of it here?
