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Reach for the Skies

 Reach for the Skies
type
TVTItem
 Reach for the Skies
label
Reach for the Skies
 Reach for the Skies
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ReachForTheSkies
 Reach for the Skies
comment
The year is 1876. The United States is expanding westward. Technological and industrial progress are changing both America and the world as a whole. In Washington, President Grant struggles to prevent the death of Reconstruction as his presidency nears its end. As the USA approaches its centennial, all seems more or less normal.Naturally, it's at this point that, by pure chance, a small asteroid collides with the Earth, blasting a two-mile-wide crater into the White Mountains of New Hampshire and wiping out the town of Lincoln.As the dust settles (metaphorically and literally), changes ripple across the country. The State of New Hampshire's response to the emergency leads to the creation of a new kind of fighting force. Grant's leadership during the crisis leads to political changes that start small, but may well have major ramifications down the line. The Dartmouth College professor who was the first to understand what had happened finds himself becoming a figure of some importance - and his daughter is inspired to seek a way to reach the stars.The United States of America has a new question on its mind: "If this happens again... how are we going to prevent it?"Welcome to the world of Reach for the Skies: A Space Mad USA in 1876, an Alternate History Web Original series posted by user "NHBL" on the AlternateHistory.com forums. The premise is straightforward: in 1876, an asteroid impact motivates the USA to start heavily researching space, and thus rocketry, several decades earlier than OTL. They're limited by the technology of the time, but the development of technology, and of geopolitics, will over time be significantly altered as a result of America's newfound interest in space.
 Reach for the Skies
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2024-03-06T22:46:48Z
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2024-03-06T22:46:48Z
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Dropped link to StarTrek: Not a Feature - ITEM
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DBTropes
 Reach for the Skies / int_128e4ba8
type
Gatling Good
 Reach for the Skies / int_128e4ba8
comment
Gatling Good: The original Gatling Guns are put to good use by the Rangers at the Battle of Case Shot Hill.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_17257125
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The Wild West
 Reach for the Skies / int_17257125
comment
The Wild West: A subplot occurs out west at one point, surrounding the discovery of Macmillan Crater (OTL Barringer Crater). Understandably, given recent events ITTL, it incurs a fair amount of interest.
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Different World, Different Movies
 Reach for the Skies / int_258a5cfe
comment
Different World, Different Movies: The USA's space mania has resulted in Science Fiction dime novels taking off in a big way.
 Reach for the Skies / int_258a5cfe
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Regional Redecoration
 Reach for the Skies / int_28d73447
comment
Regional Redecoration: The impact leaves a two-mile-wide crater where Lincoln, New Hampshire used to be. Afterwards, the Crater is filled in by nearby rivers and creeks and becomes a lake. The area later becomes New Hampshire's first state park.
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Stuff Blowing Up
 Reach for the Skies / int_31a2a33c
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Stuff Blowing Up: Naturally, not all of Lynn and Professor Houston's rocket experiments go well. The Cosmonautics Department quickly learns the value of proper shielding.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_32da548d
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Arch-Enemy
 Reach for the Skies / int_32da548d
comment
Arch-Enemy: The Rangers have two main nemeses: the Pinkerton Detective Agency, who are often hired to cover up the corruption the Rangers are trying to root out (and who do not like Christine Peckham), and the Southern Confederate revivalists, who hate them both for being Yankees and for their egalitarian nature (the New Hampshire Rangers are famous for allowing women and non-whites into their ranks and treating them equally so long as they prove themselves).
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Government Agency of Fiction
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Government Agency of Fiction: After the asteroid impact, Grant founds a new branch of the US government: Skywatch, whose responsibility is to detect, and if possible prevent, further threats from above.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_3537d6df
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Alternate Techline
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comment
Alternate Techline: After only a few years, Lynn Houston is leading a revolution in rocketry, and the demand for better number-crunching devices to do the math needed for rocket science and asteroid tracking has spurred renewed interest in the likes of the Difference Engine. The USA's newfound space obsession is also going to affect the progress of astronomy as a science - America has already become one of the world's biggest buyers of telescopes.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_35fb9016
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Gratuitous German
 Reach for the Skies / int_35fb9016
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Gratuitous German: Following a mishap with a glider, a first-year German student at Dartmouth and one very unfortunate pig, any animal being used as a test subject for a flight experiment is known as a Luft.
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Big Badass Battle Sequence
 Reach for the Skies / int_37b5c1b0
comment
Big Badass Battle Sequence: The Battle of Case Shot Hill. The New Hampshire Rangers, and the Louisiana Rangers they've been training, defending the plantation they've turned into a training camp/fortress against several hundred angry neo-Confederates. Despite significant casualties, the Rangers successfully defeat the assault.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_5517f7a5
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Just Think of the Potential!
 Reach for the Skies / int_5517f7a5
comment
Just Think of the Potential!: The Navy is very interested in the possible applications of the technology Lynn Houston and the rest of the Dartmouth College Department of Cosmonautics and Aeronautics are working on, such as gyroscopes and rocket propulsion.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_558245a7
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Redshirt Army
 Reach for the Skies / int_558245a7
comment
Redshirt Army: The neo-Confederates are actually called "Redshirts" in some cases, since they really do wear red, and ITTL they live up to the meaning of the trope by dying in droves to Case Shot Hill's Gatling guns.
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One-Man Industrial Revolution
 Reach for the Skies / int_5773777b
comment
One-Man Industrial Revolution: Averted. Lynn is no Omnidisciplinary Scientist, and even the advances she makes in her field, while undeniably major and impressive, are limited by the technology and resources of her era.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_5ac34441
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Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp"
 Reach for the Skies / int_5ac34441
comment
Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": The term "cosmonautics" is used for what we'd commonly call astronautics - to quote The Other Wiki, "the theory and practice of travel beyond Earth's atmosphere into outer space". Mars' moons, which were discovered in 1877, are also named differently: rather than Phobos and Deimos, they are Romulus and Remus. Thanks to some popular dime novels on the subject of aliens, "Romulans" become a go-to alien adversary in early science fiction, much like how OTL uses the idea of Martians. note The obvious Star Trek reference is likely intentional on NHBL's part. Barringer Crater is discovered by someone else, so in this timeline, it's called Macmillan Crater. When a rocket explodes, or otherwise catastrophically fails, it's called "jigsawing," because you have to piece the rocket together like a jigsaw puzzle afterwards. Instead of "Ignition" or "Liftoff," the signal people use when they're launching a rocket is "Contact!"
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Bunny-Ears Lawyer
 Reach for the Skies / int_61b8f9e2
comment
Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Played for Drama. Ulysses S. Grant is not cut out for politics at all, and he knows it. But when leadership is needed in an emergency - such as an asteroid impact - he immediately takes charge and provides that leadership. Those who served under him in the Civil War take notice:
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Working-Class Hero
 Reach for the Skies / int_73f8d546
comment
Working-Class Hero: Jason Niles is an ordinary locomotive driver on the Franconia Notch Express who happens to be heading a train bound for Lincoln when the asteroid hits. He does everything he can to help the passengers on his train in the aftermath, along with anyone else displaced by the impact, and ends up becoming a leading figure in the village of Matley's Crossing, the closest surviving town to the Crater.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_7464705c
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Arc Words
 Reach for the Skies / int_7464705c
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Arc Words: "Marching to the sound of the guns" comes up multiple times in reference to the Rangers.
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No One Gets Left Behind
 Reach for the Skies / int_7969f21e
comment
No One Gets Left Behind: Whether alive, wounded or dead, the New Hampshire Rangers are absolutely insistent on this.
 Reach for the Skies / int_7969f21e
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Training the Peaceful Villagers
 Reach for the Skies / int_79fa704c
comment
Training the Peaceful Villagers: A variation - Louisiana decides it wants its own Rangers, so the New Hampshire Rangers go south to train them. They're subsequently put to the test when the neo-Confederates attack the bootcamp at Case Shot Hill.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_8a05db3a
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The Gilded Age
 Reach for the Skies / int_8a05db3a
comment
The Gilded Age: The story opens in 1876, and is currently updated as far as 1879.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_8ad43dc9
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Ragtag Bunch of Misfits
 Reach for the Skies / int_8ad43dc9
comment
Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Rangers started as this. Experience is rapidly turning them into a Badass Army.
 Reach for the Skies / int_8ad43dc9
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The Tunguska Event
 Reach for the Skies / int_8ce7eec0
comment
The Tunguska Event: Confirmed by Word of God to be happening on schedule in 1908, currently a few decades in the future of the TL. It will be the entirely mundane asteroid impact we know it to be in real life, but it will also lend America's concerns about asteroids a lot more international credibility.
 Reach for the Skies / int_8ce7eec0
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 Reach for the Skies / int_91e894b4
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Apocalypse How
 Reach for the Skies / int_91e894b4
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Apocalypse How: Class 0 - Societal Disruption, Local Area. The town of Lincoln is completely annihilated, but the rest of New Hampshire is able to get back to normal. The cultural impact, on both the state and the nation, is a very, very different story - and thereby hangs the tale.
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Apocalypse Wow
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Apocalypse Wow: At the time, the explosion caused by the Lincoln Impact is the largest ever recorded. It's actually large enough to produce a mushroom cloud, which multiple characters are duly impressed by.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_a059270
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Gratuitous Greek
 Reach for the Skies / int_a059270
comment
Gratuitous Greek: Quite a lot of terminology relating to the Difference Engines is in Greek.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_a0edf122
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Good with Numbers
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Good with Numbers: One of the reasons Lynn Houston makes such a good rocket scientist is that she's very good with numbers: she's been working on Fermat's Last Theorem in the past, and can tutor college students in calculus, nonlinear algebra, Fourier transforms and non-Euclidean geometry.
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Deliberate Values Dissonance
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comment
Deliberate Values Dissonance: Social attitudes towards women and ethnic minorities in 1870s-1880s America are about what you'd expect, though the success of the Rangers has begun to change that - indeed, women end up getting the vote in New Hampshire half a century ahead of schedule.
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Rank Up
 Reach for the Skies / int_b1ed0e0c
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Rank Up: After the Rangers' Captain is killed during the Battle of Case Shot Hill, Christine Peckham, then a Lieutenant, temporarily takes command. She succeeds in leading the surviving Rangers to victory, and is thus fully promoted to Captain afterwards.
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Colony Drop
 Reach for the Skies / int_b3eecaae
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Colony Drop: A (canonically, at least) natural and unintentional example is what kicks off the plot: somewhere, somehow, long ago, an asteroid was set on an orbit that, on June 6th, 1876, resulted in it falling on New Hampshire.
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Science Hero
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Science Hero: Lynn Houston, one of the main protagonists of the story. College-age genius, fiercely independent (especially considering she's a young woman in the 1870s), and America's first rocket scientist.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_bcb452a9
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Weirdness Magnet
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Weirdness Magnet: Things just happen to Dartmouth College's wind tunnel. At least one pair of students have been caught Making Love in All the Wrong Places in it, and a squirrel was accidentally turned into Ludicrous Gibs by the fan.
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Teen Genius
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Teen Genius: Lynn Houston. Even before the asteroid, she's recognized as a scientific and mathematical prodigy, and her newfound focus on space and how to get there actually disappoints some people because it means she'll give up trying to solve Fermat's Last Theorem. Many, if not most, of the college students she effectively teaches at the Cosmonautics Department are older than she is.
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Elites Are More Glamorous
 Reach for the Skies / int_d5c7b415
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Elites Are More Glamorous: General Buller pretty much accidentally invents Special Forces several decades early in founding the New Hampshire Rangers. The pulp fiction of the time loves them.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_dae5c997
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Action Girl
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Action Girl: Any of the female New Hampshire Rangers, but especially Christine Peckham.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_dca70c44
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Reasonable Authority Figure
 Reach for the Skies / int_dca70c44
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Reasonable Authority Figure: Richard Buller, Adjunct General of New Hampshire, proves himself one in the immediate aftermath of the impact. When he realizes that the governor was in the impact zone and the rest of the state government's out of town, he decides "Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!" and mobilizes the militia to respond to the crisis immediately, indirectly founding the Rangers in the process.
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Kukris Are Kool
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Kukris Are Kool: Rangers have a fair amount of leeway in their choice of weapons. It is noted that one of them wields a kukri.
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 Reach for the Skies / int_f86eb054
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Call of the Wild Blue Yonder
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Call of the Wild Blue Yonder: A recent subplot involves Dartmouth students experimenting with manned gliders.
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Right-Wing Militia Fanatic
 Reach for the Skies / int_f98356f
comment
Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: The 19th-century equivalent - the "Redeemers," bands of Southern men who mostly didn't fight in the Civil War, but who resent Reconstruction and wish the Confederacy had won - figure heavily in the story thus far. Needless to say, they are very much Politically Incorrect Villains and considered fair game by most Yankees.
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Shown Their Work
 Reach for the Skies / int_ffad4e9f
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Shown Their Work: NHBL clearly does their research when it comes to the time period, the local geography and the relevant science.
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Reach for the Skies

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