I was no doubt forgetting about this news in light of the fact that we’re having yet another GOP debate tonight – for my sins – but @CalebHowe reminds me that we’re going to have a sockeldanger of a solar storm tonight. So, if you’re going to be leaving Earth’s magnetic field this evening, be sure to pack plenty of extra radiation shielding!
…Dammit, three universes over that’s actually practical advice. Ah, for a time machine, a Stinger missile, a map of Kazakhstan, and a working knowledge of Russian and several Central Asian languages…
Moe – when you close with a tantalizing tangent like that, you have to give us a footnote.
‘Cause that sounds like a book I’d like to read / game I’d like to play / RPG scenario I’d like to check out.
Besides, you already have the Stinger. I mean, the map.
What? Isn’t it obvious? I’d effing light up Sputnik 1 like a Christmas tree and then run like the blazes. Delay the Russian program enough and we could have had a proper space program.
Sorry. It sounded like something out of Cardinal of the Kremlin.
And I have to be honest – we Americans only seem to get out of first gear when doom is imminent, or we think it is. Maybe we work better under pressure.
Without the threat of Soviet domination of space, we might still be launching monkeys. It was during Apollo we got lost – “Well, we made it to the moon. Now what?”
I read that Eisenhower wanted the Soviets to go first so they couldn’t complain when our satellites overflew their territory.