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Per Aspera (Space Agency Plan Quest)

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Vehrec said:
Something that is revealed to you after taking five dry grams of magic mushrooms, going to a dark room, and speaking to the universe.
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[X] Jack Parsons

The man reminds me of Kary Mullis (Nobel winner that discovered PCR dna amplification and testing). Mullis wrote the idea for PCR down on a napkin while he was on his way to burning man (back before it was an influencer hell).

A little crazy leads to the best kind of discoveries.
 
C_Z said:
Turing is noted as being "socially inept" and "prone to focusing on his own projects". Putting this man in a managerial position where he can't spend time on his pet projects and insetad has to deal with people all day sounds more like a punishment than a reward.
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I would like to vote Turing but this changed my mind. I do not want to hurt a man with such potential.
[X] Jack Parsons
 
John W. Parsons, handsome 37-year-old rocket scientist killed Tuesday in a chemical explosion, was one of the founders of a weird semi-religious cult that flourished here about 10 years ago ... Old police reports yesterday pictured the former Caltech professor as a man who led a double existence—a down-to-earth explosives expert who dabbled in intellectual necromancy. Possibly he was trying to reconcile fundamental human urges with the inhuman, Buck Rogers type of innovations that sprang from his test tubes.
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[Parsons] treated magic and rocketry as different sides of the same coin: both had been disparaged, both derided as impossible, but because of this both presented themselves as challenges to be conquered. Rocketry postulated that we should no longer see ourselves as creatures chained to the earth but as beings capable of exploring the universe.
Similarly, magic suggested there were unseen metaphysical worlds that existed and could be explored with the right knowledge. Both rocketry and magic were rebellions against the very limits of human existence; in striving for one challenge he could not help but strive for the other.
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[Parsons] had witnessed the blinding overnight successes achieved by the government-by-terror totalitarianism of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. He had the foresight to see that [the United States of] America, once armed with the new powers of total destruction and surveillance that were sure to follow the swelling flood of new technologies, had the potential to become even more repressive unless its founding principles of individual liberty were religiously preserved and its leaders held accountable to them.
Two of the keys to redressing the balance were the freedom of women and an end to the state control of individual sexual expression. He knew that these potent forces, embodied as they are in a majority of the world's population, had the power, once unleashed, to change the world.
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Adhoc vote count started by Shadows on Sep 26, 2024 at 7:11 PM, finished with 51 posts and 41 votes.
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Big milestones this update: First item sent to another celestial body, first multicellular organism sent and returned safely to/from orbit. Feels good man.

[X] Jack Parsons

I've been convinced that Alan Turing is best kept in a place where he can hyperfocus on computer stuff instead of having to do general management, so this dorf-y lad is the only other option!

Shadows said:
In theory, all of this work was useful progress towards such science fiction ideas as the spaceplane - but, primarily, just served to improve the aircraft that were already in use.
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Would there be significant amounts of supersonic aircraft currently in use? It's not practical for general aviation, and the whole world revolution thing probably means military bird development has not gone far.
 
General_Urist said:
Would there be significant amounts of supersonic aircraft currently in use? It's not practical for general aviation, and the whole world revolution thing probably means military bird development has not gone far.
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At the very least, supersonic aircraft are useful for rendevous with certain sorts of skyhooks.
 
The Concorde was started in 1954 in OTL. So it would be useful to their ongoing studies*

* This assumes that some cooperative is working on supersonic aircraft in this timeline.
 
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General_Urist said:
Big milestones this update: First item sent to another celestial body, first multicellular organism sent and returned safely to/from orbit. Feels good man.

[X] Jack Parsons

I've been convinced that Alan Turing is best kept in a place where he can hyperfocus on computer stuff instead of having to do general management, so this dorf-y lad is the only other option!


Would there be significant amounts of supersonic aircraft currently in use? It's not practical for general aviation, and the whole world revolution thing probably means military bird development has not gone far.
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The process of learning how to go supersonic most effectively and efficiently has tailing effects on learning how to better design subsonic aircraft as well.
 
Also, we have to remember that the global war ended with a prolonged nuclear offensive.

I don't think there were any supersonic bombers, but there would have been preliminary research into it, to get ballistic missiles to work, or maybe for a rocket powered interceptor.
 
Shadows said:
The process of learning how to go supersonic most effectively and efficiently has tailing effects on learning how to better design subsonic aircraft as well.
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not to mention the wind tunnel technology developed in pursuit for supersonics will probably come in handy when we start sending probes to like, Jupiter or Saturn
 
If you're gonna launch a possible manned mission to land on Mars before 1980, or build a space station to mass-manufacture satelites in orbit, then SSTs aren't that improbable.
 
Also would like to thank whoever put the new Space Centre in Singapore. SG Can finally go to spaceeee!!!!
 
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