Oh Parterre's thread looks really really interesting. I'm personally fascinated by the possibilities of a post-Shah revolutionary government that heavily tries to change class relations and reduce inequality in Iran but an alternate Pahlavi dyansty- as more of an MbZ style developmental, long...
One of the best Iran revolution takes I've read on here was like...15 years ago at this point? But the poster was saying that with a very limited democracy, powerful and shadowy security services, and the Shah acting as an occasionally very involved ultimate authority & symbolic figurehead, and...
I can't believe that this TL started with Skylab. I've seen a lot of space TLs come and go, a lot with sweep and ambition but very few have produced so much with such consistency and actually gone through with all of it. Absolutely incredible stuff.
Ali Shariati dying just two years before the revolution is an all-time POD. An anticolonial intellectual and Islamic Socialist, I actually have a pretty detailed outline for a TL where he lives just a few more years; there were longstanding rumors of poisoning. The butterflies are immense...
Opening a TL by annihilating Belgium is quite a move- the 20th century is going to be totally unrecognizable. The specific timing of this disaster is quite interesting as well; 1908 is just early enough that people will not just know what the disaster was but also realize that they can work...
Oh wow so Baochuán is a spaceship. That's absolutely wild. if the insides are fried it probably isn't worth fixing up but if they can get the design to work it has amazing potential.
so was Baochuán launched in a free-return trajectory? and was it chemical-powered only or was there also a SEP element? it obviously isn't going to fly again but I'm interested in the intended mission profile vs. what actually happened; it seems to be implied that Shenzhou flew in manually at...
Fantastic chapter, and I like how the human element is incorporated into the story. One technical question- how was the flight data brought back to earth? With the loss of signal during emergencies/aborts, and delay of transmission, do the MTV's have a cache-and-transmit system of data storage...
I love the thread so far. I'm super interested in how the longer term economics of keeping a heavy lift vehicle in the stable of a major space power will work out.
Haha, on man you read my mind. I'm philosophically interested in this TL because it would be about Ali Shariati living to become the figurehead of the Iranian revolution and fundamentally change both Socialism and Islamism in the late 20th century, as well as an Iranian revolution which led to...
Interesting- so not quite a status quo ante bellum, but a status quo to 1975? That kind of control over the Shatt Al-Arab, especially a de facto veto over Iraqi use of the waterway and a payment of tolls, would be satisfactory to the ATL Iranian govt. The Iraqi retreat from all territories and...
I have been playing around with the idea for a TL where the Iranian revolution plays out differently and the post-Shah government is an Islamic Socialist regime that is less immediately fanatical than Khomeini and more committed to pursuing long-term social change within in Iran. IOTL, Iraq sent...
I don't think by the 1980's a letter alone- or even an Islamic revivalist movement- would make many inroads with the ethnic russian population of the USSR. On the outside, maybe some of the Central Asian nations which have historically been in the Iranian cultural sphere (Tajikistan) may have...
A great post with a lot going on but there's something important buried in here that I wanted to highlight: the capitulations. While not as extreme as say, China, by the late 19th century the Ottomans had via losing wars and various financing missteps/ bankruptcy crises wound up with a whole...
Yeah I don't like "communism bad grey building bread lines lol" timelines and I don't think that's what you were doing at all. If you look at the history of US food quality and especially US beer your description of ATL whiskey production isn't that far off from the postwar hegemonic reign of US...