Wasn't there a post-apocalypse (book) series from the...80s? 90s? which featured the remnant US (I seem to recall the government having devolved in to a theocratic-personality-cult-dictatorship, but that probably doesn't narrow it down in these sort of stories) military traveling around in massive armored land-trains? I cant recall the title, nor does google submit to my will sufficiently to identify it.
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Advancements in technologies made obsolete before they were perfected IOTL
- Thread starter Meadow
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FriendlyGhost
Haunting history in a good way
The Amtrak Wars, maybe?
That would be it... funnily enough googling "Amtrack" didn't bring it up.
- Location
- Over the rainbow
A series I enjoyed a lot when I was younger, and was quite disappointed when Tilley never finished the remaining volumes.
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- NYC (né Falkirk)
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- he/him
Those last 30 seconds are a bit heavy handed foreshadowing about the ill influence of social media.
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- Sheffield
- Pronouns
- she/her
Those last 30 seconds are a bit heavy handed foreshadowing about the ill influence of social media.
This is a really interesting video for a number of reasons, of course, but weirdly the one that stuck out to me was the use of the word "sitting room", which is something I've only ever heard my grandad say, as I and my parents have always referred to it as a lounge or front room. Does anyone still refer to it as a sitting room outside of that older generation? If not, I do wonder why the name might have (seemingly) shifted over the years.
My family still uses it.
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- Sheffield
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- she/her
That's interesting; is it maybe because of circumstance in housing? Like, obviously for my family front room made sense because it was the room at the front of the house?
In the house I grew up in we had a combined lounge/dining room, which went across the entire length of the house, front-to-back, which we referred to as the sitting room.
Living room, sitting room, drawing room, lounge, front room, family room, "den": I think they all mean similar rooms which people do miscellaneous "stuff" in which isnt eating, cooking, sleeping or other essentials of life. Im not convinced there is a generational or regional split: I suspect a lot of these terms are down to the habit of individual families (my parents have the "green room"... it was a bedroom which had, when they moved in 30 years ago, been painted green. In those 30 years, it has been repainted (never again green) several times, had a en-suite bathroom added, and is now grey. It is still called the green room.)
TIL Ceefax wasn't alone and there was an Oracle too
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- NYC (né Falkirk)
- Pronouns
- he/him
"Oracle, which is what the Independent Broadcasting Authority calls their frankly inferior offering."
One of these things I've been thinking about (having the MC introduce in a historical reincarnation/isekai-style ongoing story I've been working on), is the Sailing Hydrofoil, or 'Hydrosail'. Only really developed and introduced since the 1980s IOTL; but imagine the possibilities if they got introduced a couple, or even several centuries earlier, during or even preceding the 'Age of Sail' (allowing these vessels to achieve speeds exceeding double the wind speed). And it'd be a damn sight easier, lower-tech and more plausible, as a first step on the foil technology ladder, than the use of aerofoils to achieve powered flight, as wound up being the case IOTL.
And if one thinks about it, there's very little in the way of technological obstacles to prevent the development/introduction of hydrofoils at any stage of history where woodworking's a thing; with the Chinese 'bamboo dragonfly' and the Aboriginal Australian boomerang already utilising the pre-requisite basal level of foil technology.
For instance, one can easily imagine an ATL where some random person from a coastal Aboriginal tribe, or even paleolithic Europe, came up with the idea of strapping a set of boomerangs beneath his sailing canoe to provide lift in the same manner, and developed the first hydro-sail several millennia ago (potentially even over 10kya). If you could achieve sailing speeds of 30 knots+ that far back (vastly shortening transit times, to be on a par with or quicker than those we only managed to attain at the dawn of the 20th century IOTL), how much more viable would historical trans-oceanic exploration and merchant journeys have been? And how much more metropolitan might the world have been as a result, so much earlier?
And if one thinks about it, there's very little in the way of technological obstacles to prevent the development/introduction of hydrofoils at any stage of history where woodworking's a thing; with the Chinese 'bamboo dragonfly' and the Aboriginal Australian boomerang already utilising the pre-requisite basal level of foil technology.
For instance, one can easily imagine an ATL where some random person from a coastal Aboriginal tribe, or even paleolithic Europe, came up with the idea of strapping a set of boomerangs beneath his sailing canoe to provide lift in the same manner, and developed the first hydro-sail several millennia ago (potentially even over 10kya). If you could achieve sailing speeds of 30 knots+ that far back (vastly shortening transit times, to be on a par with or quicker than those we only managed to attain at the dawn of the 20th century IOTL), how much more viable would historical trans-oceanic exploration and merchant journeys have been? And how much more metropolitan might the world have been as a result, so much earlier?
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Reviving this with something I just found/came up with: Ways (including giant vaccuum flasks) to make liquid oxygen for rockets either more storable or faster-filling, which were considered OTL. For launch vehicles it wasn't nearly as crucial, but for ICBMs it's essential. A variant of the R-9/SS-8 ICBM was basically the world's biggest thermos in terms of keeping its oxygen tank cool.
What obsoleted it IOTL was solid and storable liquid fuels becoming practical, but the concept is interesting.
What obsoleted it IOTL was solid and storable liquid fuels becoming practical, but the concept is interesting.
MachiavelliJr
Known to the Surgeon General of California
- Pronouns
- he/him
As the thread's been revived I feel like I can reply to this. Small hydrosails, dinghy size, could indeed come along at any time, and "somewhere in Polynesia" is a good guess for where because they built light and pretty strong, but it's a harbour toy that will break if you look at it funny. Building a big one, you're going to run into materials problems pretty fast; the strain on your foils trying to get something of 100 tons (low end of ocean-going size) up on the plane is going to be brutal even assuming you figure out a rig for one - I guess something not a million miles from Bermuda rig but that doesn't scale brilliantly, and you're going to have to be able to seriously throw it around if you want to go upwind!
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The UK came up with a method of express loading an IRBM or ICBM with liquid oxygen in only five minutes IIRC, but storable propellants were either on the horizon or being introduced so it was never used.
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Speaking of liquid fuel rockets, there are the proposals for liquid fuel boosters for the Space Shuttle, which would have avoided the Challenger disaster (some of them were suggested after it). They were all shot down in part because of the need for political support from Utah's Senators with the SRBs manufactured there.
My favourite mental proposal is instead of using boosters at all, just putting the shuttle stack on top of the first stage of a Saturn V (the 'Saturn-Shuttle'). This one was rejected because the resulting stack would be too tall for the VAB.
Although they were planning to put wings on the first stage to make it a recoverable flyback booster so it'd probably look more like this mockup:
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- UK
The Amiga 500, the BBC Micro and perhaps the Sinclair Spectrum had the potential to develop into an alternative to the PC with MSDOS. The BBC in particular was very flexible with the ability to run parallel boards accessible by the *command. Mine had a Word processor accessed that way. The Amiga 500 could do multitasking and had a graphic interface before Windows and I think before the LISA which preceded the Apple. None had the level of investment which went into the IBM PC. (The very first PC had a cassette tape)
Tbf the BBC Micro has ended up being arguably more influential than the PC.