Space program

[McPerth]

Besides, to a large extent, your capabilities define your TL. It could be said that the achievement of successful spaceflight would place the world at TL7 by definition.

Well, A TL6 world can have TL7 space travel. At least in MT (according to WBM) or MGT, in other versions I'm not sure the rules are clear on that, but, AFAIK they neither discard it.

 

[Icosahedron]

Some of the things that hampered TL change here, are not discoveries as such, they are inovations, or practaces.

Things like time and motion studdies, standerdisation, production lines, etc you can work out at any TL you don't have to wait until TL4 to "discover" these. And these type of discoveries will increase efficancies driving TL change forward faster.

And inovations like the paper clip. You could have the paper clip in the iron age, you don't have to wait 1900 years to inovate this product.

Other things you need to generate are wealth and population. Wealth to allow an amount of the population to expand the realms of knowledge (If you are all subsistance farmers you won't have any da Vincis), and population size (so you can have more than one da Vinci).

Another driver for TL advance (apart from war) is information sharing and peer review. If you can foster information sharing far earlier, you can advance TL quicker.

Best regards,

Ewan

Certainly there are many items that could be created at lower TLs, but there are also some things that can't - such as transistors.

However, the issue here is that whether TL7 is achieved after 5000 years or after a mere 500, you are still going to need TL7 (or at least TL6) in order to get into space.

A lot depends on how your TLs are defined, though. According to LBB3, the availability of lasers, hovercraft, spacecraft and (photovoltaic) solar power are the defining descriptors of TL7. If you have them, you are at TL7, if you don't, you're not. If you have some of them but not others, you can argue about whether you've reached TL7.

However, looking at the defining descriptors of TL6 - guided missiles, television, submersibles, and fission, these all seem to me to be essential precursors of spaceflight.. Without the knowledge gained from guided missiles, or the remote operations afforded by television, or the sealed environment functionality derived from submersibles, or the physics/electronics breakthroughs engendered by an understanding of sub-atomic particle interactions, I cannot see how manned spaceflight could possibly be developed.

Late TL6 appears to be an absolute minimum for spaceflight.
Throwing money at the project may reduce the time it takes to achieve the TL, but it won't reduce the TL required.

 

[Carlobrand]

Some of the things that hampered TL change here, are not discoveries as such, they are inovations, or practaces.

Things like time and motion studdies, standerdisation, production lines, etc you can work out at any TL you don't have to wait until TL4 to "discover" these. And these type of discoveries will increase efficancies driving TL change forward faster.

And inovations like the paper clip. You could have the paper clip in the iron age, you don't have to wait 1900 years to inovate this product.

Other things you need to generate are wealth and population. Wealth to allow an amount of the population to expand the realms of knowledge (If you are all subsistance farmers you won't have any da Vincis), and population size (so you can have more than one da Vinci).

Another driver for TL advance (apart from war) is information sharing and peer review. If you can foster information sharing far earlier, you can advance TL quicker. ...

Yes ... and no. TL advance is as much a cultural issue as a technological issue. The Greeks had the basic understanding to build steam engines 2 thousand years ago. What they did not have was any interest in or desire for steam engines. They were content with the way things were, education was limited to a relative few, and there really weren't all that many rewards for technological entrepreneurship when you could buy slaves to do the work for you - and a host of other reasons as well. Much of our modern drive for technological advancement derives from several wars and a great urge for change driven in part by population pressures and dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Time-and-motion studies, standardisation, production lines and so forth were responses to a desire for change: companies desired more efficient techniques to deliver more product. There's only need for more product if your market is growing, so that too speaks to change - a larger pool of potential buyers. Information-sharing and peer review can only occur when there are a large body of peers - i.e., when education becomes more widespread - and most important, when there is enough trust that you don't feel you're slitting your own throat by giving secrets to a potential competitor. The paperclip interestingly falls the same way - it came into existence when the need to clip papers grew large enough to warrant paperclips, and not a moment before.

 

[Strummist]

While we're on the subject of anachronisms, there's a great novel about a nuclear weapon built by the Victorians - according to a rather good physicist I know, the technical details were spot on - 'Queen Victoria's Bomb' by Ronald Clark.

(disclaimer - I read it about 20 years ago, so although I think it was a great book, it might not be - memory fades).

 

[E.D.Quibell]

Yes ... and no.

snip

I agree.

Hans is theorising about fast technology change in order to achieve space flight and I was pointing out how some aspects of tech advancment don't need a TL as such to be "discovered", and their discovery can speed the change.

As you say with us they happened as they did.

Best regards,

Ewan