Talk:United North American States/@comment-5870856-20141021210252

I was just thinking - if we make this strictly futurology, it will be outdated in the near future. Besides, althist and futurology is the domain of IH. How about we do something a bit different here? Perhaps we could use a concept envisioned by Robb for the Atra Mors project (link) where the integrated circuit was never invented, causing von Braun's plans for space travel to go ahead rather than be shot down by the creation of unmanned artificial satellites and thus causing international space exploration cooperation to collapse? To put it more clearly, here's yet another link explaining what I'm talking about. Second paragraph down. I'll just copy it here:

''Oh, Werner von Braun had it all figured out in 1952. In six issues of Collier's magazine he laid out a plan to send men to Luna and Mars. First you build a space ferry as a surface to orbit cargo transport (which was the great-grandfather of the Space Shuttle). Then you use it to make a space station.

And it was going to be a beauty of a space station, too. Three decks, 250 feet in diameter, and a crew of fifty. Makes the ISS look like a tin can. This outpost in space was where the Lunar expedition fleet would be constructed.

It would pay for itself as well. Meteorologists could plot the path of storms and predict the weather with unprecedented accuracy. Radio and TV signals could be transmitted all over the globe. Not to mention observing the military activities of hostile nations.

In other words, it would be MacGuffinite.

Why was this marvel never constructed? Because some clown invented the printed circuit. Freed from the tyranny of fragile and short-lived vacuum tubes, technologists could make unmanned satellites for Meteorologists, radio and TV signals, and watching hostile militaries. Such satellites could be assembled and launched at a fraction the cost of a manned station. They also did not require constant resupply missions to keep the crew alive.

If we had followed von Braun's plan, we would have ended up with a fleet of space ferries, a titanic manned space station, a large lunar base, and men on Mars. Instead, we have four overly complicated space shuttles near the end of their operational life that have been retired, a four man space station due to be de-orbited and destroyed in 2016, and a few bits of space trash on the Lunar surface. And we haven't been back to Luna since 1972. So it goes.''