WI: Sea Race instead of Space Race

Krall

Banned
One thing that I don't think has been mentioned here yet is the possibility of anti-submarine installations under the sea. The fear of Soviet submarines was present in our timeline - part of the Royal Navy's job during the Cold War was to prevent Soviet subs getting through the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap; a series of underwater listening posts was actually installed in said gap in our timeline. If this fear of Soviet submarine warfare became more exaggerated and pronounced more funding could be thrown into making these underwater installations more sustainable and reliable, which might be a good first step towards making undersea military bases.

In terms of more commercial interest in undersea buildings, I think the myth of untapped deposits of great wealth under the waves could be as useful for getting companies interested as actual, real resource deposits. If some cultural notion of there being huge quantities of untapped resources appears then it could start to snowball, until people's visions of the future are not jetpacks and Moon casinos, but personal submarines and undersea dome-cities. This could help to draw attention away from space and towards the ocean.

"Discrediting" space travel somehow might also help inspire interest in the other great unknown. A series of unfortunate accidents could easily bring down people's confidence in space travel - if the first manned space flight were to go awry and the first man in space also gained the honour of "First man to explode in space and return to Earth as a spray of burning ash", then a lot of people would lose confidence in space travel as a possibility for the future. One accident with enough coverage and controversy might be enough, but several accidents could put people off of space travel for decades, in which time the funding has all gone into undersea research and development.
 
a sea race like this sounds more fitting for antiquity to me: imagine if the fate of rome and carthage hinged on who built the biggest and most powerful ships faster

That actually happened IOTL
But the OP was talking about building bases and whatnot under the sea.

pre 1900 POD

The Deep Sea Race happens between Spain and England:


Everything starts with Blasco de Garay who gets more money from the Spanish government for his inventions, which (well, at least not a lot) didn't happen in OTL

Blasco de Garay (1500–1552) was a Spanish navy captain and inventor.
De Garay was a captain in the Spanish navy in the reign of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.
He made several important inventions, including diving apparatus, and introduced the paddle wheel as a substitute for oars.

Garay himself sent the emperor a document setting out eight inventions which included:

  1. A way to recover vessels underwater, even if they were submerged a hundred fathoms deep, with only the aid of two men.
  2. An apparatus by which anyone could be submerged under water indefinitely
  3. Another device to detect objects on the seabed with the naked eye.
  4. A way to keep a light burning underwater.
  5. A way to sweeten brackish water.

Spain develops a tradition of underwater exploration for prestige and the search for lost gold.
England the Spains rival doesn't like to be behind so they seize their opportunity in form of Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel

He builts the first navigable submarine in 1620 (like OTL) while working for the English Royal Navy. Using William Bourne's design from 1578, he manufactures a steerable submarine with a leather-covered wooden frame. Between 1620 and 1624 Drebbel successfully builts and tests two more submarines, each one bigger than the last. The final (third) model had 6 oars and could carry 16 passengers. This model is demonstrated to King James I in person and several thousand Londoners. The submarine stays submerged for three hours and travels from Westminster to Greenwich and back, cruising at a depth of from 12 to 15 feet (4 to 5 metres). Drebbel even takes James in this submarine on a test dive beneath the Thames, making James I the first monarch to travel underwater. This submarine is tested many times in the Thames and starts a contest between Spain and England about who can build the most advanced under sea technology.

One of his most important discovery is a way to re-oxygenate the air inside one or more of these submarines (still OTL). He generates oxygen by heating nitre (potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate) in a metal pan to make it emit oxygen. That turns the nitrate into sodium or potassium oxide or hydroxide, which tends to absorb carbon dioxide from the air around. That explains how Drebbel's men were not affected by carbon dioxide build-up as much as would be expected. He accidentally makes a crude rebreather nearly three centuries before Fluess and Davis did in OTL. Drebbel had been taught by the alchemist Michael Sendivogius (1566–1636) (perhaps when both were at the court of Rudolf II) that warming nitre produced oxygen.

The race inspires literature genre of Deep Sea Tales. They mostly resolve around fighting giant seamonster, newly rich seaweed plantations owner, lost cities, and under water fortresses. One of the more famous example is the book Bioimpulsae, a thinly veiled satire about republican ideas, starring an expy of Niccolò Machiavelli.
 
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Post 1900 POD

The "space race" becomes one sided and boring. The soviet never get their thing together and US are the first to send a satellite into orbit and a man into space.
A three way sea race happens mostly fueled by America and Japan. The soviets stay in but don't play a major role.

Everything starts with Conshelf, short for Continental Shelf Station, a series of undersea living and research stations undertaken by Jacques Cousteau's team in the 1960s are build. The original design was for five of these stations to be submerged to a maximum depth of 300m over the decade; in OTL only three were completed with a maximum depth of 100m.
Much of the work was funded in part by the French Petrochemical industry, who, along with Cousteau, hoped that such manned colonies could serve as base stations for the future exploitation of the sea.
In this timeline Japan sees this as an opportunity to get ressources without coming into conflict with any other nations and they mange to entice Costeau away from France.

The US are aware of this development and plan for their own underwater habitats. Somebody who is part of the project has the great idea of asking Walt Disney to design an advertisement campaign. (ITL Wernher von Braun died in a car accident before anything like Man in Space and Man and the Moon in 1955, and Mars and Beyond in 1957 was produced)
Once again Disney is able to capture Americas imagination. The soviet union sees a hidden military purpose in these stations and they start their own habitats.

At the same time in the 1960's, Buckminster Fuller was commissioned by Matsutaro Shoriki, a wealthy Japanese patron, to design a city in Japan. This architectural marvel was to be a tetrahedron that measured two miles on each side, capable of housing one million residents, and would be located in Tokyo Bay. Not along Tokyo Bay, but in Tokyo Bay. Floating.

The tetrahedron shape provided many benefits as well, like maximizing the availability of outside living area, and protecting residents from potentially fatal falls off of the tall buildings. Unfortunately, Shoriki doesn't die as in OTL and the project goes ahead.

As in OTL the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development gets wind of the idea. So they commission Fuller or someone else to work on a scaled-down model for the US, called Triton City.
Triton anticipated a lower maximum population of just over 100,000 people, and was also to be the first fully organic city, complete with a desalination system to re-circulate ocean water. Schematics for Triton are sent to the United States Navy's Bureau of Ships, to check it for "water-worthiness," stability and organic capabilities, then off to the Bureau of Yards and Docks to see whether or not they can even build this thing, specifically at the cost they had projected. Both Bureaus give the thumbs up (as OTL), and the Navy's cost estimate come within 10% of Buckminster's. Triton: At every stage, it was going to work.
For whatever reasons the Vietnam war didn't happen and there is even more money to build it than in OTL.

Space is mostly used for commercial purpose and some scientific but unmanned research which isn't able to generate much interest in the public at large.
 
The best way to go IMO is spreading the belief that ground based nuclear missiles will likely get knocked out by a first striker thus leaving your nation destroyed and the enemy untouched.
Cue: Huge amounts of money going into submarines.

I don't see underwater cities as being too viable however.
Nor is there much point in them- a city say, in the high arctic, would be much more useful and much easier.
 
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