i used to have a very old full color science book from like the late 1930s and it was wild even then what they thought Venus and Mars were like on the surface
illustrations depicted Mercury as a volcanic moonscape of flowing lava and lava geysers. Venus was a windswept desert with sand carved plateaus and im guessing far more habitable then it is as we currently know it. Mars was depicted as a dry, seasonal Antarctic world with an atmosphere predicted to thicken in summer equivalent to the top of mount Everest. with possible simple surface life!
sometimes i think how much cooler our local planetary neighborhood would have been if our two closest worlds were even just slightly more habitable. a bit closer (or further) from the sun, a bit more mass, an asteroid or rouge planet to increase geological activity. anything could have happened. history would have been the same up until maybe the late 40s.
imagine a space race that never ends because if you can get a cosmonaut to Venus they only have to survive 2 atms of pressure and at worst maybe 100C temperatures. doable with Soviet tech and engineering.
or your Martian cosmonaut doesn’t even need a pressure suit, just warm clothes and oxygen.
Imagine a space race where the US had a revolution in 1932, and the space race was like a gentleman’s contest between the USSA, USSR, and PRC to find cool shit first to get the record book W before sharing it with all the nations of the world.
aaaaaa we would basically be an early United Federation of Planets by now
actual research colonies! exploiting resources just to explore further, not to make money! space industry, but just to build a United Earth fusion-powered interstellar probe!
i used to have a very old full color science book from like the late 1930s and it was wild even then what they thought Venus and Mars were like on the surface
illustrations depicted Mercury as a volcanic moonscape of flowing lava and lava geysers. Venus was a windswept desert with sand carved plateaus and im guessing far more habitable then it is as we currently know it. Mars was depicted as a dry, seasonal Antarctic world with an atmosphere predicted to thicken in summer equivalent to the top of mount Everest. with possible simple surface life!
sometimes i think how much cooler our local planetary neighborhood would have been if our two closest worlds were even just slightly more habitable. a bit closer (or further) from the sun, a bit more mass, an asteroid or rouge planet to increase geological activity. anything could have happened. history would have been the same up until maybe the late 40s.
imagine a space race that never ends because if you can get a cosmonaut to Venus they only have to survive 2 atms of pressure and at worst maybe 100C temperatures. doable with Soviet tech and engineering.
or your Martian cosmonaut doesn’t even need a pressure suit, just warm clothes and oxygen.
Imagine a space race where the US had a revolution in 1932, and the space race was like a gentleman’s contest between the USSA, USSR, and PRC to find cool shit first to get the record book W before sharing it with all the nations of the world.
aaaaaa we would basically be an early United Federation of Planets by now
actual research colonies! exploiting resources just to explore further, not to make money! space industry, but just to build a United Earth fusion-powered interstellar probe!