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Old 07-11-2021, 11:00 AM   #31
Prince Charon
 
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Default Re: [Supers] A More Scientific Golden Age

Another article, perhaps a bit short, but I'm unlikely to add much more, unless someone has suggestions:

Divergences in Successive British Governments

'Governments,' in this context, also called 'ministries,' are the UK's equivalent of what the USA calls 'administrations' - the head of government and the Cabinet and other subordinates thereof. Prior to the 1930s, these were largely quite similar to those on Homeline, with small variations in a few seats, or an additional Minister or two. The earliest significant change from Homeline is generally regarded to have been in 1923, when the Earl of Greystoke replaced the Duke of Devonshire as Secretary of State for the Colonies. Of almost equal interest to observers from Homeline is the appointment in that same year of Dr Henry Jones, Sr, one of the three Members of Parliament for the Scottish Universities, as minister without portfolio, to serve as the PM's chief advisor on 'Esoteric and Ancient Sciences' (meaning all the weird stuff left over by long-dead Gadgeteers and such, that antiquarians and archaeologists keep uncovering).

A much bigger change came ten years later: In 1933, the failure of the MacDonald-Baldwin Second National Government to do anything meaningful against Emperor Ming lead to a Vote of No Confidence and a new election. WWI war hero and new (since 1932, just beating out George Lansbury in the Labour Party election) Labour Party Leader Ewart MacAdder became Prime Minister, forming the First MacAdder Government. The Conservatives were able to force a snap election in 1935, but they didn't pick up enough seats to form a government; MacAdder shuffled his cabinet and made a deal with the Liberals, giving them a couple of cabinet positions in return for their support (Second MacAdder Government).

MacAdder resigned as PM in 1936 - he had been relatively friendly with Edward VIII, but he disliked George VI, and wanted the precedent that would have been made by a king marrying a commoner (a divorced, American commoner at that), and staying king. Following a new election, Neville Chamberlain became PM (also making a deal with the Liberals for support), and has remained in that position. A comparison of his cabinet in this worldline with the First Chamberlain Ministry/Fourth National Government on Homeline shows a number of differences: firstly, the National Labour Organization and Liberal National Party had both collapsed earlier in the decade (which did not happen on Homeline until 1945 for National Labour and 1968 for the Liberal Nationals), leaving only the Liberals and Conservatives in the new government. Liberal Party member Geoffrey Shakespeare actually retained his position as President of the Board of Education from the Second MacAdder Government. Sir John Simon, also a Liberal, remained in the Cabinet but was moved from Secretary of State for the Home Department to Secretary of State for the Colonies. As on Homeline, Ernest Brown remained Minister for Labour, though he was by then in the main Liberal Party, not the defunct Liberal Nationals. Until they were moved to the BIS, the Lord Blackadder had been Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, and Winston Churchill was simply the Member of Parliament for Epping, though with a strong desire to be in government.


Thoughts?
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Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.

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Old 07-11-2021, 11:10 AM   #32
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A

Thoughts?
Sorry, too much obscure political stuff for an American even one with a Poli Sci degree who could have named most of the Homeline PMs for the period. I also didn't recognize many of your "new" names after Lord Greystoke.
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Old 07-11-2021, 12:40 PM   #33
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Sorry, too much obscure political stuff for an American even one with a Poli Sci degree who could have named most of the Homeline PMs for the period. I also didn't recognize many of your "new" names after Lord Greystoke.
MacAdder and Blackadder are references to a British comedy series, though that setting isn't just being dropped in (treat Blackadder Goes Forth as being a bit more similar to in-universe historical events in WWI than Dad's Army is to historical Home Guard units, with the other series often being much further from the truth than that). When I'm more awake, I'll go back and edit in links to the articles on RL British politicians, which I intended to do previously, but forgot (the article does already link to a list of British governments, but that probably doesn't help a lot).

EDIT: I've done some editing to the article, including adding a sentence that I'd meant to include earlier but forgotten. Still needs more links, but I'm tired, so they'll be added later.
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life.

"The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates."
-- Tacitus

Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.

Last edited by Prince Charon; 07-11-2021 at 01:36 PM.
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Old 07-11-2021, 02:02 PM   #34
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I'm not clear who MacAdder is? I don't recognise the name from the comedy series. This means I have no idea what effect his replacing Baldwin as PM will have. His judgement is very suspect if he knows Edward VIII at all well, because that king had the emotional maturity of a spoilt teenager, caring only for his own desires and pleasures.

Putting Blackadder in charge of the British Interplanetary Society is unlikely to work well. They were a very driven, enthusiastic bunch of eccentrics (I have met a couple of members from that period, now long dead) and his tentativeness and cowardice will annoy them a lot.
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Old 07-11-2021, 02:10 PM   #35
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I
Putting Blackadder in charge of the British Interplanetary Society is unlikely to work well. They were a very driven, enthusiastic bunch of eccentrics ot.
I have seen their plans for a moon rocket (thousands or tens of thousands of solid fuel rockets) and "enthusiastic" must be (I suppose) British understatement.
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Old 07-11-2021, 02:29 PM   #36
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They were a very driven, enthusiastic bunch of eccentrics . . .
Translation: a bunch of total nutters, but in a mostly-good way.
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Old 07-12-2021, 07:47 AM   #37
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I'm not clear who MacAdder is? I don't recognise the name from the comedy series. This means I have no idea what effect his replacing Baldwin as PM will have. His judgement is very suspect if he knows Edward VIII at all well, because that king had the emotional maturity of a spoilt teenager, caring only for his own desires and pleasures.
He's descended from a character in Blackadder the Third, who was described as 'the most dangerous man ever to wear a skirt in Europe.' It's mostly a reference that you shouldn't read too much into (I thought it was funny at the time and am now wondering if I should have bothered), as he does think his ancestor was a nutter, though he certainly is far braver than his cousin. A big part of why he liked Edward VIII so much was his opinion of what a king should be/was good for, which is why he so much wanted to set the precedent of the King marrying a commoner and remaining King.

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Putting Blackadder in charge of the British Interplanetary Society is unlikely to work well. They were a very driven, enthusiastic bunch of eccentrics (I have met a couple of members from that period, now long dead) and his tentativeness and cowardice will annoy them a lot.
Very important thing to remember about Blackadder's cowardice: it largely applied to his own person, and very much did not apply to others, so as long as no-one wants him to go up there, he'll get along with them fine (though he'll snark at them, and Churchill, a lot, especially when someone is getting too 'enthusiastic'; given how witty Churchill was, that's a big part of why putting them together would be amusing, though sadly I lack the skill to write their conversations). Largely, he's a restraining voice when people get too crazy, as Chamberlain was concerned that Churchill would get sucked in too easily (Winnie didn't have the best reputation at that point in his life).

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I have seen their plans for a moon rocket (thousands or tens of thousands of solid fuel rockets) and "enthusiastic" must be (I suppose) British understatement.
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Translation: a bunch of total nutters, but in a mostly-good way.
Exactly the sort who would take up with mad scientists, which is why they work so well for this. Also, to be fair to the BIS (and Clarke himself), the black powder rockets were what was readily available at the time. Having access to gadgeteers gave them far more options.


Will be adding more links to the article, today. EDIT: I think I've got all the needed links in.
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life.

"The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates."
-- Tacitus

Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.

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Old 07-12-2021, 11:57 AM   #38
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Also, to be fair to the BIS (and Clarke himself), the black powder rockets were what was readily available at the time. .
I think they had progressed to smokeless powder solid rockets by the time. Those were not as common before WWII as they were after though.

To my understanding, the reason they discounted liquid fuel rockets was that there was no way to get enough fuel into large ones. You can see thsi even with small hybrid rockets that are fed by pressurized tanks of oxidizer. Those are good for a single digit's worth of seconds only before you've lost too muhc pressure.

They didn't know about modern turbo-pumps of course and those actually do look like mad science. The ones for the Shuttle's main engines weighed 750 lbs (half of the engine weight) but delivered 75,000 horsepower. An utterly ridiculous piece of technology.
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Old 07-13-2021, 12:18 PM   #39
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I think they had progressed to smokeless powder solid rockets by the time. Those were not as common before WWII as they were after though.
I specified black powder because the version that I read said they were using that, due to it being used for fireworks (just remove the sparkly bomb on top, and you have a booster rocket). That's from RL, though, not this setting.
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life.

"The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates."
-- Tacitus

Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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Old 07-27-2021, 12:03 PM   #40
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A set of articles that I'm working on for this setting (which as you can see, still need a lot of work):

Working Title: Experimental Space Guns

As governments and military personnel have realized the need to shoot other people in low-pressure environments down to hard vacuum, and in lower gravities or microgravity, so they have had to consider what weapons they will shoot with, and what weapons others will shoot at them. Naturally, many mad scientists are only too happy to step forward with their ideas. Thus, all space stations have firing ranges of some description, and these ranges are frequently in need of repair from use.

<energy weapons (mostly reverse-engineered from Martian tech, thanks to gadgeteers; also some weird ones with little or no Martian tech), coilguns (railguns scrape the rails, so would either be very rare, or the rails might be part of the ammo), both mostly using the same bulky post-Martian ultracapacitors, or sometimes weird Earth-tech>

<unguided gyrocs, some 'normal' guns (graphite lubrication)>

<long eye-relief scopes, or scope built into helmet (probably weapon also built in, in the latter case)>

<check Pizard's equipment page & Atomic Rocket's sidearms pages>
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ___________

Working Title: Spacecraft & Stations

<rocket stacks, TL6^ with TL(6+1)^ or other superscience enhancements; some very superscience vehicles, like Dr. Zarkov's rocket>

<more details on existing & planned space stations>

<moon-landers; automated moon-lander 'with a weight hanging down to help with balance?'; auto-landers more expensive because they need more superscience>

<planned moonbases>
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ___________

Working Title: Walking Machines

<Spaceships 4: Fighters, Carriers, and Mecha may be used here (though I'm not confident in my skill with that system), along with maybe some websites, like ericthered's Robots as Spaceships series>
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ___________

Working Title: Life on Mars

<information on Martian environment and cities; maybe culture/politics?>

<vehicles and other technology>



Anyone have opinions or suggestions for any of these?
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life.

"The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates."
-- Tacitus

Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.
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