Challenge: Speed up technology by 20 years
- Thread starter Straha
- Start date
HueyLong
Banned
He's onto something actually.
A lot of technological advances have come through the space race, and ramping it up would help.
But this would need more push than that.
Maybe that 1824 viable steam engine someone posted about? Earlier transistors have been brought up too........
Hmmm, well this is posted in the before 1900 forum. So... how about a Roman industrial revolution? (winces)
Hopefully a faster advancing world would be no worse off than ours, and possibly better due to alternative energy sources, fancier gadgetry, and higher standard of living worldwide.
But, it could just as well be a dystopian scenario that just happens to be 20 years ahead due to advances in weaponry and other military technologies.
Hopefully a faster advancing world would be no worse off than ours, and possibly better due to alternative energy sources, fancier gadgetry, and higher standard of living worldwide.
But, it could just as well be a dystopian scenario that just happens to be 20 years ahead due to advances in weaponry and other military technologies.
The 1824 one is an internal-combustion engine, IIRC. I might 'adopt' that one too, it would probably not put the world ahead 20 years immediately, but in the long term it might.
Once you get a good fuel supply going, all bets are off. Technological growth will probably accelerate more rapidly at that point.
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy
Banned
The Babbage engine, an earlier theory of relativity, Tesla, Tsiolkovsky (OK, so that's after 1900), a telegraph in every home (thanks William Gibson and Bruce Sterling), earlier steam engines.
Post-War France falls under the sway of a progressive, vaguely technocratic government that advocates a mixed economy and government control of scientific and technological research. Similar movements crop up elsewhere in Europe, but never reach quite the same level of success. Despite this, the main parties change their policies on science and research so as to not loose out to the technocratic vote.
Fifty years down the line, and investment in sci-tech has increased dramatically, with a burgeoning European space program, a pan-European high-speed rail network (loosely akin to the Japanese bullet train), and a cure for cancer.
Fifty years down the line, and investment in sci-tech has increased dramatically, with a burgeoning European space program, a pan-European high-speed rail network (loosely akin to the Japanese bullet train), and a cure for cancer.
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In my "Afrikaner Superpower" TL, I have self-propelled torpedos in use in the 1840s and FOB nuclear devices (they go into orbit and come down, avoiding early-warning radars) being used in 2001. I believe tech in TTL is 20 years ahead of schedule, although I'm not sure why.
Two possible reasons:
1. The Afrikaners are mining the Witwatersrand in the 1600s, so the Protestants have a smaller-scale version of the Spanish plate fleet, and this gives them more resources.
2. The Afrikaners make it a priority in the beginning to invest in new and advanced weapons. This is because of their smaller numbers and the fact that they have a large subject population.
Two possible reasons:
1. The Afrikaners are mining the Witwatersrand in the 1600s, so the Protestants have a smaller-scale version of the Spanish plate fleet, and this gives them more resources.
2. The Afrikaners make it a priority in the beginning to invest in new and advanced weapons. This is because of their smaller numbers and the fact that they have a large subject population.
HelloLegend
Banned
Chinese invent a solar sail, they colonize Mars before we do.
Then they colonize moons of Jupiter before we do.
A long shot here, but if one of the nobles of Renaissance Italy (one of the Borgias? that era isn't my strong suit) had become da Vinci's technological patron as well as/instead of an artistic patron, probably a lot more of da Vinci's work would have been preserved/captured in a more usable form than those mirror-written notebooks. And from that basis, a lot of da Vinci's blue-sky ideas that were probably never tried would have been put to the test in an experimental fashion. Thus, it seems to me what you'd need is a gadget-freak Borgia (?) and you're on the road to a fairly substantial tech acceleration overall: the Industrial Revolution comes sooner, and the cascade effect from that is enormouse.
Yeah, I know it's a lot of hand-waving, but it's a start.
Yeah, I know it's a lot of hand-waving, but it's a start.
Frederik Pohl had a story in which the US developed a Typhus Bomb--the US spread typhus through Japan. So medical science was developed more, and the atomic bomb was never developed, so there was no nuclear fears, no fear of science, sf had a better reputation; Entertainment Tonight covers all the sf conventions in that timeline, and sf writers are often on various talk shows and different magazines.
Tesla marries into a wealthy family, who funds his research.
Stalin is overthrown and the USSR collapses at the end of WW II, with no Cold War, the military doesn't dominate NASA's planning, the space shuttle is never developed. But there's rivalry with the new military government of the USSR, but not the Cold War and Red Scare, so the space program starts earlier.
Heinlein's story "The Man Who Sold the Moon" was about a private entrepreneur and his own space program.
Harry Turtledove had a story, or novel, in which one member of a starship crew had the specialty of being familiar with many different sf works. So whenever they enounter a situation in space, she can compare it to some sf story's situation and come up with a solution to the problem.
So on one particular mission, they encounter a situation on a planet and she uses an idea from Heinlein's story to solve the problem.
Goddard teams up with Tesla and Einstein, and maybe the Rockefellers to start their own rocketry program.
The Depression is avoided but WW II takes place anyway; with a better economy, would corporate research and development have been more advanced?
NASA is established at the end of WW II, with or without the dominance of the military.
The British start their own version of NASA at the end of WW II.
Arthur C. Clarke came up with the idea of the telecommunications satellite during the 40s but didn't think of patenting it. That deserves its own thread....
Tesla marries into a wealthy family, who funds his research.
Stalin is overthrown and the USSR collapses at the end of WW II, with no Cold War, the military doesn't dominate NASA's planning, the space shuttle is never developed. But there's rivalry with the new military government of the USSR, but not the Cold War and Red Scare, so the space program starts earlier.
Heinlein's story "The Man Who Sold the Moon" was about a private entrepreneur and his own space program.
Harry Turtledove had a story, or novel, in which one member of a starship crew had the specialty of being familiar with many different sf works. So whenever they enounter a situation in space, she can compare it to some sf story's situation and come up with a solution to the problem.
So on one particular mission, they encounter a situation on a planet and she uses an idea from Heinlein's story to solve the problem.
Goddard teams up with Tesla and Einstein, and maybe the Rockefellers to start their own rocketry program.
The Depression is avoided but WW II takes place anyway; with a better economy, would corporate research and development have been more advanced?
NASA is established at the end of WW II, with or without the dominance of the military.
The British start their own version of NASA at the end of WW II.
Arthur C. Clarke came up with the idea of the telecommunications satellite during the 40s but didn't think of patenting it. That deserves its own thread....