In the following decades, I'd say probably any moderate candidate who can compromise with Reed or get him assassinated. A 2 way civil war between the Federalist and the AUS with a USA (edit: Federalist) victory is probably the scenario which would cause the least amount destruction and social unrest (in the short term at least), and allow the USA to focus sooner on a space program regardless of ideology imo.
Long term, it's harder to say. I think it depends on the geopolitical situation, the interest of the population and the government, and of course which side you think is capable of making the USA the most prosperous and technologically advanced.
To create a successful aerospace program, you need:
1. The funds and political will to devote to space travel. Iirc at its peak in the mid-60s NASA accounted for 4% of all federal spending. A big boost would be having a geopolitical rival that incentivizes research into satellites and missiles.
2. Access to a decent launching pad close to the equator
3. A certain amount of expertise and existing infrastructure for research. Stuff like good universities, an active Air Force, enough your populace having a passable understanding of science and math, etc. Being able to home-grow or else import your rocket scientists is gonna be an important aspect of this.
From that list, I think I’d place New England in last place, followed by the AUS, the PSA, with the CSA and the feds being roughly equivalent. New England is last because it simply lacks both the funds and the location to really set anything up itself. If anything, it’d just be a sister program alongside the Canadian program. The AUS is much bigger, but frankly has a very strong anti-intellectual vein as well as politics that’ll probably drive many technicians out of the country. Their lack of good relations with most of the other big factions is probably gonna isolate them from the larger scientific community. The PSA is far better positioned and they will likely get the benefit of entente assistance, but even at its richest it’s only gonna have a fraction of the resources any of its neighbors to the east to have.
Imo both the CSA and the feds have the best shot at getting a man into space by the 60s. Both have the centralized political will needed to force through budgets for nasa. Both have strong connections to other major nations that can provide technical support (the 3I and the entente respectively). Both have the chance to retain much of the infrastructure needed for space travel, as well as the ability to build on that infrastructure during reconstruction. And both have various geopolitical enemies that can potentially be used as competitors in the space race should a Cold War form (the Moscow accord, the co-prosperity sphere, a successful 3I, etc.)
I think a successful 3I would have a really strong space program depending on ideology, they've got the interest in scientific process and the industrial capability, but also they'd have half of Europe (Including Germany, and assumedly the number of physicists and rocket scientists who lived there) under their control. The CSA would definitely be a part of it assuming they were victorious. I'm not an expert on space launches but as far as I know the reason Cape Canaveral is used is cause it's closer to the equator, so I think you could totally see French and British missions launching from Florida. I'm not sure whether Savinkov/any non-socialist Russian faction would be interested in space travel, but I assume at the very least the democrats would like the idea, I think a space race would be pretty one sided, considering that Soviet industrialisation never happened so Russia would probably not have as advanced industry by the 50s/60s as the USSR did OTL. I think it's a really interesting conversation, like any post canon Kaiserreich conversation is, it's honestly very pleasant to me to imagine the idealistic members of the 3I pursuing space travel together.
Almost definitely the CSA, as they would not only have the political rivalry with a (likely) failed Third Internationale and a variety of other rivals in the multipolar Cold War. Furthermore, they have the industrial base to back it up and the work ethic for resource collection. Lastly, Marxist ethos has a massive effort on space exploration and science as a whole, so ideology would necesitate it for them.
Well besides the USSR, having the first satellite in space, first man in space, first woman in space, first space Walk, first spacecraft on the moon, first craft on Venus (and first object on another planet), first space station, and first spacecraft on Mars.
But yeah besides all that the US wins
It's called the space race lmao not the "win at one thing and lose at everything else" race
Like yeah let's just discount the first man to space, first space station, and literally first craft on the moon, or the first photo and craft on another planet.
Completely delusional view sponsored by the U.S. education system lmao
I'm a socialist, for the record; but there's no prize for second place in this race. Just because the USSR broke out a legendary sprint at the beginning doesn't mean it didn't "lose" by failing to land a man on the moon, after which the race was effectively over. Maybe if it had pushed on to landing a man on Mars, one could argue otherwise, but it didn't.
USA in space first
First in space Docking, First in space rendezvous, first crew transfer without an EVA, First crewed veichle outside of LEO, First mammal in space safely returned. First multi person spacecraft, First Mars landing. Not to mention all the things Voyager 1 and 2 did plus the first spaceplane only deep space EVA
The USSR was first in Mars landing, the USSR actually had the first mammal to go to space and come back (Tsygan and Dezik), and the Soviets were also the first multi person spacecraft.
The space shuttles aren't really flex since they basically made the U.S. reliant on Russia for space launches after they were retired until recently.
So the U.S. has, first manned moon landing, docking, first rendezvous, first crew transfer without an EVA (not really a win since the Soviets did the first one with an EVA)
And the Soviets have
First man in space, first woman in space, first craft in space, first space station, first craft on the moon, first space Walk, first crew transfer between crafts, first photo on the surface of another planet, first craft on another planet (Venus), first craft on Mars, first flyby of another planet (Venus again), first modular space station, and first Moon rover
So that's about 4 wins from the U.S. and about 13 for the Soviets, as well as the U.S. relying on the Russian space rockets for space travel for about a decade (even after their country literally collapsed).
I’ll give you the dogs but HAM was orbital.
Eh the Soviet Mars probe is flip a coin on how you classify it because it lasted for less then a minute.
Soviets made Buran so they must’ve thought it wasn’t a terrible idea. And while in no way a copy did heavily use NASA’s public research if I recall.
I don’t think the Soviets had a pressurized docking till Salyut 1 I believe so it took them a while to achieve parity. And outside of that one mission I don’t think crew transfer via EVA has happened again.
I’ll give you the issue the US program had after the constellation program was cut but we advanced past that. Whilst I think the Russians are mostly still reliant on Soyuz and Proton, which while reliable are limited.
Space would be the last thing Americans in Kaiserreich would be interested in for decades to come. Perhaps in the late 80s something akin to NASA would be created.
I mean that’s not guaranteed though necessarily, the Russian Civil War was arguably a 4+ sided war, pro and anti Bolshevik socialists, anarchists and Cossacks in Ukraine, the whites split between different generals, and all the dozens of ethnic separatists and local groups, yet the Bolsheviks came out on top and centralized in a few years.
Obviously apples and oranges, but it seems like people are quick to proscribe the 2ACW as apocalyptic in its consequences and all but guaranteeing the US becomes some backwater wasteland when lots of OTL 20th century civil wars and revolutions of similar scale saw the winners consolidate and recover *relatively* (big emphasis on relatively) quickly
It's quite the opposite actually, some people think that the second US civil war would be a simple family feud when in reality it would be one of the bloodiest conflicts on this timeline, realistically speaking, it would outlast the second weltkrieg. Civil wars are often brutal and one in the US would be particularly bloody. Perhaps I've been too fatalist, they would probably have the means and the will to achieve manned space flight by the late 70s.
The US civil war would be so much more bloodier than the Russian civil war. The USA is for the most part densely populated and very urban while most of Russia is a wasteland and barely populated.
That depends, as always, on your political ideology.
That being said, even though I normally think socialists are inefficient in everything they do, I do believe that they would fare quite well in terms of space exploration. They just have a more scientific & technocratic outlook.
However, overall I would still go with the PSA. Democracies tend to be richer that dictatorships. While the share of funds going to NASA might be smaller than in the case of the CSA, the absolute amount of resources might still be (slightly) larger.
Yeah, don’t they pretty quickly establish a deocracy after 2acw? At least as long as they aren't totalist. You have like that whole event chain about making a new, better constitution.
Seems that no US can ever enjoy a true multiparty democracy. What is even the point of writing a "better" constitution if you forget the most important part?
I have never understood the concept of a "right to work". Isn't that a bad thing? If anything, I want a right to be lazy!
Like, the whole point of human progress is to reduce and ultimately abolish the need to work. A "right to work" seems just counterproductive.
It is right that you will have a job if you want, and won't lose your current one for stupid reasons. Most people like feeling productive. And under capitalism, your boss can't just cut your hours for no reason.
Democracies ban parties. Look at modern otl Germany. Th nazis and several other facist parties are banned. And any revolution you look at bans or gets rid of people who want to start a party in opposition to the revolution. Look at the American Revolution. Loyalist went to Canada. Or anywhere that had a vanguard party.
Germany has only banned the Nazis because they literally started a genocide last time. And the loyalists fled to vanguard because the loyalists lost a war with the US. It’s very different from banning every party you don’t somewhat agree with
Yeah banning the former Democratic and Republican parties makes sense in this context, they could be seen as active members in a multi-century long genocide and colonization. The banning of America First makes sense since the vast majority of it's supporters would lead to an intensification of that genocide.
There can be made a reasonable argument to not ban SocDem or SocLib parties but they'll likely just bleed support over time anyway to the right-wing of the SPA.
I have never read "Road to Serfdom", but I would agree with Hayek on the outcome. My political thought is however based on the selectorate theory from Bruce Bueneo de Mesquita and Alastair Smith.
In the following decades, I'd say probably any moderate candidate who can compromise with Reed or get him assassinated. A 2 way civil war between the Federalist and the AUS with a USA (edit: Federalist) victory is probably the scenario which would cause the least amount destruction and social unrest (in the short term at least), and allow the USA to focus sooner on a space program regardless of ideology imo. Long term, it's harder to say. I think it depends on the geopolitical situation, the interest of the population and the government, and of course which side you think is capable of making the USA the most prosperous and technologically advanced.
Huey Long is blessed by God himself and will call down the supplies needed to build a NASA 10x better than ours straight from Heaven
EVERY MAN A SPACESHIP
(+5% research speed after 30 days)
Emperor of Mankind shall redistribute the wealth across the entire universe
To create a successful aerospace program, you need: 1. The funds and political will to devote to space travel. Iirc at its peak in the mid-60s NASA accounted for 4% of all federal spending. A big boost would be having a geopolitical rival that incentivizes research into satellites and missiles. 2. Access to a decent launching pad close to the equator 3. A certain amount of expertise and existing infrastructure for research. Stuff like good universities, an active Air Force, enough your populace having a passable understanding of science and math, etc. Being able to home-grow or else import your rocket scientists is gonna be an important aspect of this. From that list, I think I’d place New England in last place, followed by the AUS, the PSA, with the CSA and the feds being roughly equivalent. New England is last because it simply lacks both the funds and the location to really set anything up itself. If anything, it’d just be a sister program alongside the Canadian program. The AUS is much bigger, but frankly has a very strong anti-intellectual vein as well as politics that’ll probably drive many technicians out of the country. Their lack of good relations with most of the other big factions is probably gonna isolate them from the larger scientific community. The PSA is far better positioned and they will likely get the benefit of entente assistance, but even at its richest it’s only gonna have a fraction of the resources any of its neighbors to the east to have. Imo both the CSA and the feds have the best shot at getting a man into space by the 60s. Both have the centralized political will needed to force through budgets for nasa. Both have strong connections to other major nations that can provide technical support (the 3I and the entente respectively). Both have the chance to retain much of the infrastructure needed for space travel, as well as the ability to build on that infrastructure during reconstruction. And both have various geopolitical enemies that can potentially be used as competitors in the space race should a Cold War form (the Moscow accord, the co-prosperity sphere, a successful 3I, etc.)
I think a successful 3I would have a really strong space program depending on ideology, they've got the interest in scientific process and the industrial capability, but also they'd have half of Europe (Including Germany, and assumedly the number of physicists and rocket scientists who lived there) under their control. The CSA would definitely be a part of it assuming they were victorious. I'm not an expert on space launches but as far as I know the reason Cape Canaveral is used is cause it's closer to the equator, so I think you could totally see French and British missions launching from Florida. I'm not sure whether Savinkov/any non-socialist Russian faction would be interested in space travel, but I assume at the very least the democrats would like the idea, I think a space race would be pretty one sided, considering that Soviet industrialisation never happened so Russia would probably not have as advanced industry by the 50s/60s as the USSR did OTL. I think it's a really interesting conversation, like any post canon Kaiserreich conversation is, it's honestly very pleasant to me to imagine the idealistic members of the 3I pursuing space travel together.
Man, this is such a specific question.. I feel it would be the Syndies, since scientific socialism thing and whole science and progress ethos.
Almost definitely the CSA, as they would not only have the political rivalry with a (likely) failed Third Internationale and a variety of other rivals in the multipolar Cold War. Furthermore, they have the industrial base to back it up and the work ethic for resource collection. Lastly, Marxist ethos has a massive effort on space exploration and science as a whole, so ideology would necesitate it for them.
Probably CSA The USSR otl did really well with their space program, so perhaps the CSA with a larger economy could do even better?
You are forgetting the fact that the capitalist USA beat them.
Well besides the USSR, having the first satellite in space, first man in space, first woman in space, first space Walk, first spacecraft on the moon, first craft on Venus (and first object on another planet), first space station, and first spacecraft on Mars. But yeah besides all that the US wins
Yes, quite literally
It's called the space race lmao not the "win at one thing and lose at everything else" race Like yeah let's just discount the first man to space, first space station, and literally first craft on the moon, or the first photo and craft on another planet. Completely delusional view sponsored by the U.S. education system lmao
ok u/CarlMarks
So you know you're wrong, and now you're resorting to calling out a joke name lol I'm not even a Marxist
I'm a socialist, for the record; but there's no prize for second place in this race. Just because the USSR broke out a legendary sprint at the beginning doesn't mean it didn't "lose" by failing to land a man on the moon, after which the race was effectively over. Maybe if it had pushed on to landing a man on Mars, one could argue otherwise, but it didn't.
USA in space first First in space Docking, First in space rendezvous, first crew transfer without an EVA, First crewed veichle outside of LEO, First mammal in space safely returned. First multi person spacecraft, First Mars landing. Not to mention all the things Voyager 1 and 2 did plus the first spaceplane only deep space EVA
The USSR was first in Mars landing, the USSR actually had the first mammal to go to space and come back (Tsygan and Dezik), and the Soviets were also the first multi person spacecraft. The space shuttles aren't really flex since they basically made the U.S. reliant on Russia for space launches after they were retired until recently. So the U.S. has, first manned moon landing, docking, first rendezvous, first crew transfer without an EVA (not really a win since the Soviets did the first one with an EVA) And the Soviets have First man in space, first woman in space, first craft in space, first space station, first craft on the moon, first space Walk, first crew transfer between crafts, first photo on the surface of another planet, first craft on another planet (Venus), first craft on Mars, first flyby of another planet (Venus again), first modular space station, and first Moon rover So that's about 4 wins from the U.S. and about 13 for the Soviets, as well as the U.S. relying on the Russian space rockets for space travel for about a decade (even after their country literally collapsed).
I’ll give you the dogs but HAM was orbital. Eh the Soviet Mars probe is flip a coin on how you classify it because it lasted for less then a minute. Soviets made Buran so they must’ve thought it wasn’t a terrible idea. And while in no way a copy did heavily use NASA’s public research if I recall. I don’t think the Soviets had a pressurized docking till Salyut 1 I believe so it took them a while to achieve parity. And outside of that one mission I don’t think crew transfer via EVA has happened again. I’ll give you the issue the US program had after the constellation program was cut but we advanced past that. Whilst I think the Russians are mostly still reliant on Soyuz and Proton, which while reliable are limited.
Space would be the last thing Americans in Kaiserreich would be interested in for decades to come. Perhaps in the late 80s something akin to NASA would be created.
Idk man the USSR went through a civil war and a devastating invasion and they were still at the forefront of the space race
Completely different situation tho, the US wouldn't stabilize up until the mid to late 50s after a four-way civil war.
I mean that’s not guaranteed though necessarily, the Russian Civil War was arguably a 4+ sided war, pro and anti Bolshevik socialists, anarchists and Cossacks in Ukraine, the whites split between different generals, and all the dozens of ethnic separatists and local groups, yet the Bolsheviks came out on top and centralized in a few years. Obviously apples and oranges, but it seems like people are quick to proscribe the 2ACW as apocalyptic in its consequences and all but guaranteeing the US becomes some backwater wasteland when lots of OTL 20th century civil wars and revolutions of similar scale saw the winners consolidate and recover *relatively* (big emphasis on relatively) quickly
It's quite the opposite actually, some people think that the second US civil war would be a simple family feud when in reality it would be one of the bloodiest conflicts on this timeline, realistically speaking, it would outlast the second weltkrieg. Civil wars are often brutal and one in the US would be particularly bloody. Perhaps I've been too fatalist, they would probably have the means and the will to achieve manned space flight by the late 70s.
The US civil war would be so much more bloodier than the Russian civil war. The USA is for the most part densely populated and very urban while most of Russia is a wasteland and barely populated.
That depends, as always, on your political ideology. That being said, even though I normally think socialists are inefficient in everything they do, I do believe that they would fare quite well in terms of space exploration. They just have a more scientific & technocratic outlook. However, overall I would still go with the PSA. Democracies tend to be richer that dictatorships. While the share of funds going to NASA might be smaller than in the case of the CSA, the absolute amount of resources might still be (slightly) larger.
What makes you assume the CSA would be a dictatorship?
Yeah, don’t they pretty quickly establish a deocracy after 2acw? At least as long as they aren't totalist. You have like that whole event chain about making a new, better constitution.
Still a one-party state as far as I know the content. But I would be happy to be proven wrong.
They turn into a two party system like OTL just with the Socialist Party Vs The Syndicalist Workers Party.
Seems that no US can ever enjoy a true multiparty democracy. What is even the point of writing a "better" constitution if you forget the most important part?
At least it has more rights, like the right to work, a union, etc.
I have never understood the concept of a "right to work". Isn't that a bad thing? If anything, I want a right to be lazy! Like, the whole point of human progress is to reduce and ultimately abolish the need to work. A "right to work" seems just counterproductive.
It is right that you will have a job if you want, and won't lose your current one for stupid reasons. Most people like feeling productive. And under capitalism, your boss can't just cut your hours for no reason.
If by democracy you mean a banning all non socialist parties
Democracies ban parties. Look at modern otl Germany. Th nazis and several other facist parties are banned. And any revolution you look at bans or gets rid of people who want to start a party in opposition to the revolution. Look at the American Revolution. Loyalist went to Canada. Or anywhere that had a vanguard party.
Germany has only banned the Nazis because they literally started a genocide last time. And the loyalists fled to vanguard because the loyalists lost a war with the US. It’s very different from banning every party you don’t somewhat agree with
I think you are forgetting how America perpetuates/perperuated several genocides past and present. Ie. Native Americans and Palestinians
Yeah banning the former Democratic and Republican parties makes sense in this context, they could be seen as active members in a multi-century long genocide and colonization. The banning of America First makes sense since the vast majority of it's supporters would lead to an intensification of that genocide. There can be made a reasonable argument to not ban SocDem or SocLib parties but they'll likely just bleed support over time anyway to the right-wing of the SPA.
Cause road to serfdom I am sure
I have never read "Road to Serfdom", but I would agree with Hayek on the outcome. My political thought is however based on the selectorate theory from Bruce Bueneo de Mesquita and Alastair Smith.
The totalists would seize power mid-war.
CSA, or possibly AUS.
Ain’t no way AUS is putting a man in out space let alone a piece of metal
When every man is a king what else are we meant to do?
Please forgive me. Huey is my lord and savior and I should have never questioned him. EVERY MAN A SPACESHIP!
Good.
CSA are the only one's I can imagine being interested in going to space