[BRIEF NOTE] The Race into Space
Nov. 28th, 2005 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI downloaded the 1992 computer game Buzz Aldrin's Race into Space last Sunday. It's an amusing simulation game that places the human player in command of one of the two manned space programs of the Cold War--the American by default, the Soviet if you want--and racing to see who can make a successful manned lunar landing first. I've only played two sustained games so far, though, and both times the Soviet computer has beaten me. The online strategy guides do suggest that I should prioritize manned missions over unmanned, and argue correctly that the failure rates for the various technologies are much higher than reality suggests. Who am I to complain, though?
I mentioned that the Soviets beat me to the Moon in two separate games, once arriving in 1970, the second in 1974. The game ends abruptly for the player, a picture of the Moon (northern hemisphere of the Earthfacing side, I think) in the background and a short alternate-history text in the foreground. What's interesting is that these alternate histories examined not the scientific or colonial consequences of an American failure--no moonbase, no manned Mars mission--but that the consequences were entirely Earthbound. The 1970 timeline featured a US recession and a stronger showing by Communists internationally; the 1974 timeline used the Soviet moon landing as a prelude to a radical coup in Moscow and an intensified Cold War. Space didn't enter into these alternate histories on its own terms, space was only a theatre, a background.
Yesterday![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nhw reviewed The Dying Days. I remember being pleasantly surprised by this Doctor Who novel when I came across it in a remaindered-books bookstore. Since it's the Doctorverse it's slightly alternate-historical, depicting a Britain otherwise like our own with an ambitious manned space program fat with the proceeds of North Sea oil that's capable of shenanigans on an habitable and inhabited Mars. Space, in this alternate history, is attractive on its own terms, a destination to be sought out eagerly. Would that our own solar system, with its barren ancillary worlds and brutal economic realities, have become so attractive.
I mentioned that the Soviets beat me to the Moon in two separate games, once arriving in 1970, the second in 1974. The game ends abruptly for the player, a picture of the Moon (northern hemisphere of the Earthfacing side, I think) in the background and a short alternate-history text in the foreground. What's interesting is that these alternate histories examined not the scientific or colonial consequences of an American failure--no moonbase, no manned Mars mission--but that the consequences were entirely Earthbound. The 1970 timeline featured a US recession and a stronger showing by Communists internationally; the 1974 timeline used the Soviet moon landing as a prelude to a radical coup in Moscow and an intensified Cold War. Space didn't enter into these alternate histories on its own terms, space was only a theatre, a background.
Yesterday
nhw reviewed The Dying Days. I remember being pleasantly surprised by this Doctor Who novel when I came across it in a remaindered-books bookstore. Since it's the Doctorverse it's slightly alternate-historical, depicting a Britain otherwise like our own with an ambitious manned space program fat with the proceeds of North Sea oil that's capable of shenanigans on an habitable and inhabited Mars. Space, in this alternate history, is attractive on its own terms, a destination to be sought out eagerly. Would that our own solar system, with its barren ancillary worlds and brutal economic realities, have become so attractive.
