Alternate History

The Silent Stars Go By by James
White (1991). Artwork by Vincent Di
Fate

Introduction

We were robbed. By this point in time, we were supposed to have giant
wheel-shaped space stations, huge lunar bases in crater Clavius, and expeditions
to Saturn. Instead we have a few footprints on the moon, a few kilos of lunar
rock, an aging smallish space station nearing the end of its operational life,
and no space shuttles. And there has not been a man on the moon since 1972. If
only things had turned out a little differently.

Which leads us to the ever-popular "Alternate History" branch of science
fiction. Here SF authors make small but significant changes to the flow of
history, and predict the results. Some are not quite as nice places to live,
some are better, but all are very different from the history we are currently
living in.

As far as spacecraft based alternate history goes, most alter some point a
few decades back. Exceptions include James White's THE SILENT STARS GO BY, where
Hero of
Alexandria's aeolipile
survives the sack of Rome, resulting in the first starship being launched in
1492.

The Return of
William Proxmire

William Proxmire,
for all you too young to know, was a US Senator intent on furthering his
political career by exposing what he considered wasteful government spending
(see "Golden
Fleece Awards").

Proxmire earned the unending enmity of space advocates and science fiction
fandom for his opposition to space colonization, ultimately eliminating
spending on said research from NASA's budget. In response to a segment about
space colonies run by the CBS program 60 Minutes, Proxmire stated that; "it's
the best argument yet for chopping NASA's funding to the bone .... I say not a
penny for this nutty fantasy". Arthur C. Clarke and Larry Niven retaliated by
respectively writing the award winning stories Death
and the Senator and The Return of William
Proxmire. In a number of circles his name has become a verb, meaning to
unfairly obstruct scientific research for political
gain.

From
Wikipedia article William
Proxmire

WARNING! SPOILERS!

The Return of William Proxmire

In his Hugo Award nominated short story "The
Return of William Proxmire", Larry Niven writes of Proxmire funding the
development of a time machine. Proxmire's evil plan is a desperate attempt to
destroy the literary genre of "science fiction" altogether. Proxmire notes that
his efforts to abolish space travel are opposed by people who grew up reading
science fiction in general, and the works of Robert
Heinlein in particular. In our time line, Heinlein was in the US Navy but
was discharged in 1934 due to pulmonary tuberculosis. Proxmire travels back in
time and inject Heinlein with antibiotics, ensuring that Heinlein will stay in
the Navy and not become an author. Proxmire returns to the present, snickering
that he has destroyed science fiction and space travel.

Boy, is he disappointed! When he returns, Dr. Andrew Minsky tells Proxmire
the bad news.

"You were right, the whole science fiction magazine business just faded out
in the fifties, last remnants of the pulp era. Campbell alone couldn't save
it. Then in the sixties the literary crowd rediscovered the idea. There must
have been an empty ecological niche and the litcrits moved in.

"Speculative fiction, spec-fic, the literature of the possible. The New
Yorker ran spec-fic short stories and critical reviews of novels. They thought
Planet of the Apes was wonderful, and Selig's Complaint, which was Robert
Silverberg's study of a telepath. Tom Wolfe started appearing in Esquire with
his bizarre alien cultures. I can't remember an issue of the Saturday Evening
Post that didn't have some spec-fic in it. Anderson, Vance, MacDonald ... John
D. MacDonald turns out novels set on a ring
the size of Earth's orbit.

"The new writers were good enough that some of the early ones couldn't keep
up, but a few did it by talking to hard science teachers. Benford and Forward
did it in reverse. Jim
Benford's a plasma physicist but he writes like he swallowed a college
English teacher. Robert Forward wrote a novel called Neutron Star, but he
built the Forward
Mass Detector, too."

"Wonderful."

"There's a lot of spec-fic fans in the military. When Apollo Twenty-one
burned up during reentry, they raised so much hell that Congress took the
manned space program away from NASA and gave it to the Navy."

William Proxmire glared and Andrew Minsky grinned. "Now, you left office in
the sixties because of the cheese boycott. When you tried to chop the funding
for the Shuttle, the spec-fic community took offense. They stopped eating
Wisconsin cheese. The San Francisco Locus called you the Cheese Man. Most of
your supporters must have eaten nothing but their own cheese for about eight
months, and then Goldwater chopped the milk price supports. 'Golden Fleece,'
he called it. So you were Out, and now there's no time machine."

"We could build one," Proxmire said. Rescue Apollo Thirteen? The
possibility had to be considered.

Andrew remembered the twenty years that followed the Apollo flights. In one
set of memories, lost goals, pointlessness and depression, political
faddishness leading nowhere. In the other, half a dozen space
stations, government and military and civilian; Moonbase and Moonbase Polar;
Life photographs of the Mars Project half-finished on the lunar plain, sitting
on a hemispherical Orion-style shield made from lunar aluminum and fused lunar
dust.

I do not commit murder under any circumstances.

"I don't think so, Bill. We don't have the political support. We don't have
the incentive. Where would a Nobel Prize come from? We can't prove there was
ever a timeline different from this one. Besides, this isn't just a more
interesting world, it's safer too. Admiral Heinlein doesn't
let the Soviets build spacecraft."

Proxmire stopped breathing for an instant. Then, "I suppose he
wouldn't."

"Nope. He's taking six of their people on the Mars expedition, though. They
paid their share of the cost in fusion bombs for
propulsion."

From
The Return of
William Proxmire by Larry Niven (1989)

Death and the Senator

This story is a rebuke of William Proxmire that is a bit more savage. And
rightly so.

Arthur C. Clarke's was a big fan of J.
B. S. Haldane, calling Haldane "the finest intellect it has ever been my
privilege to know." Clarke was quite bitter about Haldane's tragically short
life due to cancer. Haldane once commented on how his life might have been
prolonged by living in the microgravity environment of a space station. Clarke
said this is one reason why he becomes incandescent with rage when some utter
moron says money spend on aeronautic research is a waste, the money would be
better spent here on Terra on something like medical research.

Which explains Clarke's reaction to William Proxmire in general, and
Proxmire's targeting NASA in particular.

"Death and the
Senator" features senator Martin Steelman, a thinly disguised stand-in for
Proxmire. Steelman in his "relentless pursuit of power" had no time for such
things as "the whole universe of art and culture", not to mention such
incidentals as his friends and family, where "love had been sacrificed on the
alter of ambition". He had been on the Senate Committee on Astronautics and had
built his reputation being a guardian of the public purse, a "hardheaded man who
could not be bamboozled by Utopian scientific dreamers" of NASA. It was not that
he had any particular feeling for space and science, but he knew a live issue
when he saw one.

Among other things, Steelman killed a NASA project for a fifty-man space
station, with a medical research lab.

Then, years later, this comes back to haunt him. Steelman, in a routine
medical check-up, is diagnosed with terminal heart disease. He has only six
months to live.

As Steelman is winding up his affairs and writing his last will and
testament, one of his political opponents shows him some interesting news. The
USSR had created a huge space station years ago; Mechnikov Station, the
Satellite Hospital. They have discovered the microgravity environment of the
station can arrest the progress of Steelman's heart disease, maybe even cure
it.

The Russians are only too happy to consider Steelman to be admitted to the
Satellite Hospital. What a propaganda coup!

However, Steelman has a rude awakening.

Before departing, he discovers the huge waiting list of patients who need to
go to the Satellite Hospital. Many of whom are quite young. Steelman jumping to
the head of the line means one of them will die. It is quite a pity the
Satellite Hospital has such limited patient space. If only NASA had built their
own space station, there would be room for more patients. But alas, NASA's
station had been axed by some senator named Steelman.

In the story Steelman at least has the decency to do the right thing: giving
up his slot in the Satellite Hospital and going back home to die in six
months.

Torch War

The man who goes by the name Grimjier of Hobby
FuZion is working on a tabletop game played with little plastic spaceships
called "Legend of Sol: Torch War". This is set in an alternate history where the
North American Space Command and the Supreme Soviet Cosmo forces battle in space
in the far flung future year 1960. The early American ships are based on the Boeing X-20
DynaSoar and Project
Gemini. The battleships are nuclear pulse Orion drive.

The plastic miniatures can be purchased from his Shapeways
on-line store. I recommend that you order them in the "Transparent Detail"
material, the "White Strong & Flexible" has a grainy look. Once you paint
the transparent detail it will be a nice crisp (opaque) model.

The actual game is still under development. You can follow recent
developments by monitoring the "Hobby
Fuzion Minatures" thread on the Starship Combat News forum.

Late news: alas, the game development appears to have stopped. However the
miniatures are still available for sale.

Man Conquers Space

Man
Conquers Space is an awesome movie project set in an alternate history where
the Collier's Magazine "Man
Will Conquer Space Soon!" predictions actually came to pass. It has it all,
the giant winged ferry rocket, the wheel shaped space ship, the lunar expedition
of tank ships; they are all there. Just like a Chestley Bonestell painting.

Do check out the stills
from the film and the movie
clips. My personal favorite clip is the Teaser
I (2001), it always brings tears to my eyes. We could have had this.

Late news: alas, the site has vanished, which probaby means the project is
dead. Looks like it vanished around March 2015. I set the links to point to the
archive on the Wayback Machine.

Deep Cold

Deep
Cold has images from an alternate history where the Cold War between the US
and the Soviet Union extended into space. All the rendered images are based on
historical fact. All the spacecraft shown were planned but never flew
operationally (some cancelled before they left the drawing board). They
represent a fascinating look at what might have been.

Late news: alas, the site has vanished, which probaby means the project is
dead. Looks like it vanished around December 2014. I set the links to point to
the archive on the Wayback Machine.

Eyes Turned Skyward

Rob Davidoff has a
degree in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Aerospace. In other
words, he is a rocket scientist. Ian Mitchell is a physics Ph.D. student at the
University of Houston studying experimental particle physics. Together they are
currently working on a fascinating alternate history of the NASA space flight
program called Eyes
Turned Skyward. It diverges from our history at the point where the
Apollo program comes to an end, and in our time line NASA decides to go with
developing a space station, instead of the Space Shuttle. The consequences of
not having a reusable launch vehicle in the 1970's are interesting, to say the
least.

There is a Wiki
with Eyes Turned Skyward Spacecraft
and Launch Vehicle Data and Artwork.

There is a forum
thread about making Eyes Turned Skyward mods for the game
Kerbal Space Program.

I assisted the team with some space related data. In
exchange Michel Van immortalized me on the moon and I was Tuckerized.

Imagining Another
Apollo

David Portree is the manager of the Regional Planetary Information Facility,
Astrogeology Science Center, US Geological Survey. His blog DSFP's
Spaceflight History Blog is full of great articles on the history of
spaceflight. But recently he has been applying his encyclopedic knowledge to
crafting an alternate history that he calls "Imagining
Another Apollo". Last I checked it was up to part 5, it is interesting
reading.

The Ministry of
Space

The Ministry of
Space is a graphic novel written by the legendary Warren
Ellis and illustrated by Chris
Weston, published in 2001. It is an interesting
alternate history where at the end of World War II the British instead of
the Americans got their hands on Germany's rocket scientists. This results in a
new British empire in Space. But it is all very scientifically accurate, abet
very Collier's
flavored.

Chris Weston's amazing British-Colliers-von Braun rockets are a real treat
for the eye. Warren Ellis story is believable, plausible, but mordant and
containing cutting social commentary. And there are some who wonder if Britain
can create a real Ministry of Space.

Voyage

WARNING! SPOILERS!

Voyage
by Stephen Baxter is an alternate history novel where president John F. Kennedy
was wounded but not killed in the assasination attempt in 1963. It traces the
history of a vastly expanded space program, though it does include a disasterous
manned test flight of a NERVA spacecraft that puts a stop to nuclear power in
space. "Boo, hiss" says the author of the Atomic Rocket website. But the rest of
the novel is fascinating reading.

Titan

WARNING! SPOILERS!

Titan
by Stephen Baxter is an alternate history novel where a strong tide of
anti-intellectualism in the United States (led by a fundamentalist president
who mandates that school science classes should give equal teaching to the
theory that the Sun orbits around the Earth) threatens the existence of
NASA. NASA is forcibly merged with the US military, so its budget can be
diverted into increasing defense spending. After the permanent shutdown of the
space program, a small team of NASA scientists hatch a desperate plan to
rekindle pubic interest in manned space exploration and combat the loss of the
pioneering spirit in modern US politics and culture. They create a manned
expedition to the moon Titan by recycling older spacecraft into new uses. Their
mission is sabotaged at all levels, but it takes new urgency when a Chinese
military stunt involving an Earth impacting asteroid goes terribly wrong.

On This Page

Introduction

The
Return of William Proxmire

Torch
War

Man
Conquers Space

Deep
Cold

Eyes
Turned Skyward

Imagining
Another Apollo

The
Ministry of Space

Voyage

Titan

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