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Table of Contents
Points of Divergence : Spaceflight
Points of divergence dealing with alternate developments of spaceflight and spacecraft. All POD entries are sorted as chronologically as possible.
PODs
Challenge: Plausible reason for a tech-advanced ATL with no spaceflight technology
Earliest possible spaceflight ?
Challenge: An Austro-Hungarian space programme, oh my !
Earliest possible Space Program in the 20th Century
(Earliest) Capability for sending first satellite into orbit ?
What sort of space race would have developed without the two world wars ?
WI: Early Cold War air and space technology without the German rocket program
Challenge: 3-way moon race with a post-1945 POD
Challenge: As many manned, sustainable space programs as possible
Plausibility check: If mankind had taken space exploration even more seriously
Challenge: Earliest possible lunar landing
Which is the best location for a spaceport ?
NASA Wank (with a POD after 1950)
Earliest possible Mars landings with PODs in the early 1960s
Discussion about alternate developments of heavy launchers in the 1960s and 1970s
Alternate spaceflight projects and developments from the 1960s to the 1990s
Capsules versus alternative spacecraft
WI Gagarin flew aboard the ill-fated Soyuz 1 ?
WI: N-1 program started in 1961 ?
WI: Space Race focused on space stations
Plausibility check: More British involvement in spaceflight
A Commonwealth Space Programme
Challenge: EU-Commonwealth Space Programme
WI: Blue Streak not cancelled ?
Plausibility check: JFK proposing a joint lunar mission to the Soviets
Alternate American space program (mid-1960s onwards)
Plausibility check: USSR with a working Lunar Mission ?
DBWI: US Manned Mission to the Moon
NASA from Stephen Baxter's novel Voyage ISOTed To OTL
A plausible way to recreate the universe of 2001 : A Space Odyssey ?
Plausibility check: Space Elevator ?
Challenge: Pan Am Supersonic Transports and Space Clippers
Challenge: Routine Space Tourism
If Germany got a start in the OTL 1960s, could it today offer spaceflight for tourists ?
Plausibility check: WI Project Orion was launched in the 1970s ?
Alternate outcomes for OTL cancelled or undeveloped space probe projects
WI: Chinese Men to Space... by the 1970s
Challenge: Chinese to the Moon in the 1970s/1980s
More Canadian Space Agency firsts ?
A Space Race that never lost its tempo since the 1960s ?
WI: Shuttle uses Saturn V stages as boosters
WI the Sea Dragon succeeds Apollo
The Space Shuttle is not built
Ronald Reagan's Space Exploration Initiative alternate outcomes
Challenge: Skylab B + Salyut 6 = ISS in 1976 ?
Plausibility check: NASA astronaut in Soviet Interkosmos program ?
Challenge: Improve the Shuttle (1)
Challenge: Improve the Shuttle (2)
Possibilities with the Space Shuttle ?
Discussion on the Skylab and Space Shuttle projects being used concurrently
Plausibility check: Earlier, post-1980s NASA manned Mars mission ?
Challenge: Man on Mars by 1985
NASA's 1986 probe mission to Halley's Comet ?
WI: Space Shuttle Atlantis disaster, 1988
Space exploration in a continued Cold War
Challenge: ESA's Hermes shuttle flies
DBWI: ESA didn't develop the Aries ?
Plausibility check: Space Exploration Initiative succeeds ?
WI: The Russians sell the Buran shuttle in the early 1990s
Plausibility check: Post-Soviet Energia rocket
Challenge: (Plausible) ESA wank !
Challenge: Build a space base on the Moon by 1999
Advanced space propulsion systems in the 1990s
WI the Beagle 2 lander was succesful ?
Challenge: A continuation of the Apollo program
Brazilian space WI: The 2003 VLS-1 rocket accident doesn't occur
Discussion on the exploration, colonization and terraforming of Mars
Space travel and economies of scale
Know of any PODs or POD discussions ? Feel free to add them.