8 ms·

If you like this subject, I highly recommend the show For All Mankind (on Apple TV). I don't want to spoil the premise, but it's an amazing alternate history a

If you like this subject, I highly recommend the show For All Mankind (on Apple TV). I don't want to spoil the premise, but it's an amazing alternate history along the consequences of investing in science.

thrown_22 4y ago
I strongly don't. It's an extremely presentist view of the 1960/70s. spoilers The idea that the US of the period would have cared about putting minorities on the Moon because the USSR did it is a fantasy. The USSR's first female cosmonaut flew in 1963, two years after Gagarin's first flight. By contrast the first US female astronaut didn't fly until 1983, 22 years after the first US manned spaceflight. The US of the 1960s didn't go for copy cat tokenism, their response to losing the Moon race would have been to start the Mars race. It's a sad indictment of current American mentality that this blindingly obvious escalation wasn't the response of the writers of the show. It's a side effect of living in a country which hasn't been able to build anything more complex than a sports stadium in 40 years. We have no new ideas and neither does our fantasy. end spoilers
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > a country which hasn't been able to build anything more complex than a sports stadium in 40 years. We have no new ideas and neither does our fantasy. What are you writing this on? If you flew out to L2, what would you see? Etc. Seriously, what forum are you in?
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    >What are you writing this on? A glorified BBS. >If you flew out to L2, what would you see? Nothing much since the 1960s plans of massive space stations never materialized.
  - Veedrac 4y ago
    You mean James Webb? That's a prime example of how we've failed. It's a decent $500m telescope with a moderate but not particularly ambitious scope, that overran its budget by a factor of 20 and launched fifteen years late. That so many people think unfolding a sunshield is a pinnacle of human achievement just underlines how much ambition we have lost. We could have had an in-space constructed telescope ten times the size, if the government still actually knew how to build things.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      > a decent $500m telescope with a moderate but not particularly ambitious scope So says someone on the Internet. We can make whatever claims we want if we don't have to back them up. That's the point of the JWST: gather evidence to back up claims.
      - thrown_22 4y ago
        >That's the point of the JWST: gather evidence to back up claims. The original cost of James Webb was meant to be $500m and it was meant to launch in 2007. The actual cost was $9.7b and it launched in 2021 and still isn't fully operational. We don't know how to build things any more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cost_and_schedule_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cos...
        wolverine876 4y ago
        We built it - do you mean our budgeting isn't very good? Was it better before? Were NASA programs on budget historically?
- generj 4y ago
  They immediately pivoted towards a moon base race in the series. Landing on the moon was just what had to be done in order to enable entering the moon base race.
mannerheim 4y ago
It's entertaining, but I wouldn't take the 'consequences of investing in science' too seriously. The idea of the Soviets managing to land on the Moon because one man didn't die is, when you take a critical look at it, as silly as the idea of the Nazis winning WW2 because a single battle went the other way. The Soviets were never able to land on the Moon for good reason, and I'd say for similar reasons their predictions on American technological development would be similarly too rosy. Alternate history is fun, but maybe best not taken too seriously.
- rockemsockem 4y ago
  Wait, who's this one man that didn't die in the show? The alt history takes the, unlikely due to inferior technology, path that the last ditch Soviet launch right before Apollo 11 (a launch that did in fact happen, but failed), succeeded. The show seems to make it clear that this was influenced largely by luck as the Soviets had not done any sort of "dress rehearsals" to the moon like NASA had.
  - philistine 4y ago
    The N1, in our real world, was never crewed. The last ditch Soviet launch you're talking about was a test. For All Mankind to have a successful Soviet Moon landing, things happened differently before that launch. I thought the show would be interested in exploring what those things are, but it never was the case. As for OP, presumably they're talking about Vladimir Komarov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Komarov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Komarov His death during Soyuz 1, the first space casualty, could perhaps be a hinge between our universe and For All Mankind.
  - mannerheim 4y ago
    Sergei Korolev[0], chief architect of the N1 rocket[1] which never really made it off the ground. I believe the show mentions him surviving heart surgery, and the show's creator points to this as the 'divergence point'. The rockets the Soviets use to land on the Moon in the show were N1. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)
gcanyon 4y ago
Since you didn’t, I won’t spoil it either, except to say that the first five minutes were an unexpected gut-punch. I knew the premise going in, but I was stunned at how much it affected me to see it happen.
sho_hn 4y ago
I wager there's quite a few stories exploring this premise. I remember reading Stephen Baxter's "Voyage" in the 90s, in which Kennedy escapes his assasination, the Apollo program ends rather differently and NASA subsequently stretches/evolves the hardware to put a crewed mission on Mars, rather than building the Shuttle. It's been a long time, but I think I recall enjoying the geeking out on the equipment and little historical details. (I've since read the novel has been widely criticized as plagiarizing the Cox/Murray book on Apollo history, which I read 20 years later and is an amazing achievement.)
robbiep 4y ago
I second the series, it’s amazing (for space nerds). Produced by the same guy who did the Battlestar Galactica reboot which was also amazing. I think the thing about For All Mankind that makes me sad is how it conveys the potential that the 60s really offered but failed to deliver on, in terms of progressivism, equal rights, womens roles in the workplace. Of course it’s a work of fiction, but science fiction has always been a mechanism for exploring different socio-political evolutions and it makes me feel like we missed something important that we’re only just on the cusp of today. Anyway, my 2c
- dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
  What in the epic hell are you on about? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    The first Black astronaut wasn't until 1983. Same for women. The show portrays a very different scenario as part of its plot points.
  - Bud 4y ago
    You might want to review the part about how most of the civil rights movement's goals were foiled or rolled back, and someone shot all the major figures, and then Reagan happened and we had another half-century of horrific racism.
    - dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
      - wolverine876 4y ago
        > you need to let this Russia shit go Some people certainly would like to silence any discussion of it, and they have every argument in the book. Disdain / contempt are a popular tactic.
loudouncodes 4y ago
I started watching it, but the whole thing turned me off because they took two fantastic women involved at NASA - Margaret Hamilton and Poppy Northcut, and combined them into one character that in the several episodes I saw was trending towards being a love interest. For a show that should have accuracy at the start, this was unforgivable given the need for strong women role models in tech.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Leaving aside the tendency to want to have love interests in movies, the two women didn't even work in the same place. Margaret Hamilton worked for a subcontractor (one of many) that was not introduced in the series. (There is probably also a tendency in general to make it all about NASA which, while obviously central to the whole effort, heavily depended on the aerospace industry and their network of subcontractors.)
- wolfram74 4y ago
  Wait, are you talking about the character margo? I'm onto season 3 and I'm not picking up on this love interest vibe you're talking about.
  - freeflight 4y ago
    The thing I'm picking up from her is how she seems to be one of the main driving forces behind NASA's success in the show, as hinted at by the fact how she spent years living in her office and gets problems solved trough her USSR contact.
guidedlight 4y ago
I highly recommend this too. For me it demonstrates what is possible if we continued to employ the risk taking attitude of those early space programs. It seems being risk adverse makes human progress very slow and expensive.

thrown_22 4y ago

I strongly don't. It's an extremely presentist view of the 1960/70s. spoilers The idea that the US of the period would have cared about putting minorities on the Moon because the USSR did it is a fantasy. The USSR's first female cosmonaut flew in 1963, two years after Gagarin's first flight. By contrast the first US female astronaut didn't fly until 1983, 22 years after the first US manned spaceflight. The US of the 1960s didn't go for copy cat tokenism, their response to losing the Moon race would have been to start the Mars race. It's a sad indictment of current American mentality that this blindingly obvious escalation wasn't the response of the writers of the show. It's a side effect of living in a country which hasn't been able to build anything more complex than a sports stadium in 40 years. We have no new ideas and neither does our fantasy. end spoilers

wolverine876 4y ago
> a country which hasn't been able to build anything more complex than a sports stadium in 40 years. We have no new ideas and neither does our fantasy. What are you writing this on? If you flew out to L2, what would you see? Etc. Seriously, what forum are you in?
- thrown_22 4y ago
  >What are you writing this on? A glorified BBS. >If you flew out to L2, what would you see? Nothing much since the 1960s plans of massive space stations never materialized.
- Veedrac 4y ago
  You mean James Webb? That's a prime example of how we've failed. It's a decent $500m telescope with a moderate but not particularly ambitious scope, that overran its budget by a factor of 20 and launched fifteen years late. That so many people think unfolding a sunshield is a pinnacle of human achievement just underlines how much ambition we have lost. We could have had an in-space constructed telescope ten times the size, if the government still actually knew how to build things.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    > a decent $500m telescope with a moderate but not particularly ambitious scope So says someone on the Internet. We can make whatever claims we want if we don't have to back them up. That's the point of the JWST: gather evidence to back up claims.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      >That's the point of the JWST: gather evidence to back up claims. The original cost of James Webb was meant to be $500m and it was meant to launch in 2007. The actual cost was $9.7b and it launched in 2021 and still isn't fully operational. We don't know how to build things any more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cost_and_schedule_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cos...
      - wolverine876 4y ago
        We built it - do you mean our budgeting isn't very good? Was it better before? Were NASA programs on budget historically?
generj 4y ago
They immediately pivoted towards a moon base race in the series. Landing on the moon was just what had to be done in order to enable entering the moon base race.

mannerheim 4y ago

It's entertaining, but I wouldn't take the 'consequences of investing in science' too seriously. The idea of the Soviets managing to land on the Moon because one man didn't die is, when you take a critical look at it, as silly as the idea of the Nazis winning WW2 because a single battle went the other way. The Soviets were never able to land on the Moon for good reason, and I'd say for similar reasons their predictions on American technological development would be similarly too rosy. Alternate history is fun, but maybe best not taken too seriously.

rockemsockem 4y ago
Wait, who's this one man that didn't die in the show? The alt history takes the, unlikely due to inferior technology, path that the last ditch Soviet launch right before Apollo 11 (a launch that did in fact happen, but failed), succeeded. The show seems to make it clear that this was influenced largely by luck as the Soviets had not done any sort of "dress rehearsals" to the moon like NASA had.
- philistine 4y ago
  The N1, in our real world, was never crewed. The last ditch Soviet launch you're talking about was a test. For All Mankind to have a successful Soviet Moon landing, things happened differently before that launch. I thought the show would be interested in exploring what those things are, but it never was the case. As for OP, presumably they're talking about Vladimir Komarov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Komarov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Komarov His death during Soyuz 1, the first space casualty, could perhaps be a hinge between our universe and For All Mankind.
- mannerheim 4y ago
  Sergei Korolev[0], chief architect of the N1 rocket[1] which never really made it off the ground. I believe the show mentions him surviving heart surgery, and the show's creator points to this as the 'divergence point'. The rockets the Soviets use to land on the Moon in the show were N1. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)

gcanyon 4y ago

Since you didn’t, I won’t spoil it either, except to say that the first five minutes were an unexpected gut-punch. I knew the premise going in, but I was stunned at how much it affected me to see it happen.

sho_hn 4y ago

I wager there's quite a few stories exploring this premise. I remember reading Stephen Baxter's "Voyage" in the 90s, in which Kennedy escapes his assasination, the Apollo program ends rather differently and NASA subsequently stretches/evolves the hardware to put a crewed mission on Mars, rather than building the Shuttle. It's been a long time, but I think I recall enjoying the geeking out on the equipment and little historical details. (I've since read the novel has been widely criticized as plagiarizing the Cox/Murray book on Apollo history, which I read 20 years later and is an amazing achievement.)

robbiep 4y ago

I second the series, it’s amazing (for space nerds). Produced by the same guy who did the Battlestar Galactica reboot which was also amazing. I think the thing about For All Mankind that makes me sad is how it conveys the potential that the 60s really offered but failed to deliver on, in terms of progressivism, equal rights, womens roles in the workplace. Of course it’s a work of fiction, but science fiction has always been a mechanism for exploring different socio-political evolutions and it makes me feel like we missed something important that we’re only just on the cusp of today. Anyway, my 2c

dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
What in the epic hell are you on about? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  The first Black astronaut wasn't until 1983. Same for women. The show portrays a very different scenario as part of its plot points.
- Bud 4y ago
  You might want to review the part about how most of the civil rights movement's goals were foiled or rolled back, and someone shot all the major figures, and then Reagan happened and we had another half-century of horrific racism.
  - dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      > you need to let this Russia shit go Some people certainly would like to silence any discussion of it, and they have every argument in the book. Disdain / contempt are a popular tactic.

loudouncodes 4y ago

I started watching it, but the whole thing turned me off because they took two fantastic women involved at NASA - Margaret Hamilton and Poppy Northcut, and combined them into one character that in the several episodes I saw was trending towards being a love interest. For a show that should have accuracy at the start, this was unforgivable given the need for strong women role models in tech.

ghaff 4y ago
Leaving aside the tendency to want to have love interests in movies, the two women didn't even work in the same place. Margaret Hamilton worked for a subcontractor (one of many) that was not introduced in the series. (There is probably also a tendency in general to make it all about NASA which, while obviously central to the whole effort, heavily depended on the aerospace industry and their network of subcontractors.)
wolfram74 4y ago
Wait, are you talking about the character margo? I'm onto season 3 and I'm not picking up on this love interest vibe you're talking about.
- freeflight 4y ago
  The thing I'm picking up from her is how she seems to be one of the main driving forces behind NASA's success in the show, as hinted at by the fact how she spent years living in her office and gets problems solved trough her USSR contact.

guidedlight 4y ago

I highly recommend this too. For me it demonstrates what is possible if we continued to employ the risk taking attitude of those early space programs. It seems being risk adverse makes human progress very slow and expensive.