Early 20th century space wank to start. All sorts of advances in rocketry. Delay the Great War for a few decades somehow, yet keep the tension so that militaries (and thus governments) want to invest in rocketry and its development, and Oberth, Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, etc. find a lot more funding and interest in their research. Eventually, get to the state where launching people into space is just as prestigious as OTL. The US, UK, Germany, a developed Russia, and maybe France will be players in this for prestige. But instead of shooting for the Moon, more investment goes toward satellites and communications infrastructure and such [1]. The Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary have their domestic situations improve thanks to good leadership and economic investment--oil really helps the Ottomans out.
Finally, the Great War happens, around the time OTL WWI does. Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire face the British, French, Russians, Belgians, Italians, and Japanese. Unfortunately for the Entente, the aggressive actions of the Japanese and some misguided British commanders results in the United States entering the war on the Central Powers side, no thanks to the powerful German American lobby (and to a lesser extent, the Hungarian American and Polish American lobbies as well as Eastern European Jews, Finns, and other immigrant lobbies concerned about the Russian Empire). Canada is quickly defeated thanks to an ultimatum from the United States, which inspires Quebec and the Canadian West to take up arms against the central government. Internment of Ukrainians, other Eastern Europeans, Poles, and Finns results in backlash against the pro-British Canadian government. In the end, American intervention causes Canada to be split into three parts--the Republic of Canada, the Republic of Quebec, and the Acadian Republic (the Maritimes). Newfoundland soon becomes an independent republic as well.
Although the war in Europe is hard fought, American intervention helps turn the tide as American forces repel Allied forces on all fronts, starting with the Caribbean island-hopping campaign against the British and French. Space technology rapidly increases during the war as satellites--key for weather, communications, and intel--are shot down by various anti-satellite weapons. A new generation of rockets arises to launch satellites into higher and higher orbits to avoid the simpler ASATs shot from aircraft, including in geostationary orbit. In 1942, the German Empire launches a large rocket from Tanga in East Africa to place a simple weather station on the Moon. New rockets emerge to counter these satellites, and the key strategy of the "satellite war" becomes to place as many satellites as possible in orbit with a single launch, favouring rockets like the American "Sea Dragon" (basically the same as the OTL rocket). Some scientists even propose non-rocket spaceflight, like using "space towers" supported by streams of constant energy, or the "launch loop", likewise similar. The ultimate proposal is the orbital ring, combining proposals for a space elevator and a ring around Earth like Saturn, but considered (at the time) impossible thanks to its reliance on a huge amount of rocket flights and the need to deploy resources in space. Still, space resources are the subject of various proposals during the war. Motivated by the Tunguska Impact, some propose using a space probe (like those launched to the Moon, Mars, and Venus in the prewar era) to rendezvous with an asteroid and manuever it into an enemy city on Earth. One German proposal involves creating a mass driver on the Moon to shoot lunar debris at Earth. [2]
The budget given to some countries and their space scientists and engineers inspires many proposals like these. The greatest is perhaps the British Empire (and their French allies, as the Anglo-French Union is created by 1940), where JD Bernal, despite his questionable politics, is able to argue many engineering proposals and give his support for various space proposals. In a misguided effort, the Anglo-French focus on these instead of a nuclear program (put on the backburner), although they successfully create orbital weapons, where "rods from God" launched from Guiana attack various Central Power cities (mostly in the US) repeatedly in 1944 and 1945 before Brazil and Venezuela enter the war and attack the main rocket launch sites. These inspire immediate counter responses from the Central Powers, including their own "rods from God" and an acceleration of the satellite war.
In spring 1945, ICBMs--including nuclear weapons placed on an experimental American orbital platform- strike Tokyo, Saint Petersburg, London, Milan, and other cities, causing the end of the war. Despite the stalemate in Europe and the American failure to attack the Japanese homeland, the sheer destruction causes the end of the conflict. Poland, the Baltic States, Finland, India, and Malta are now independent while a great reorganisation occurs in Africa, intended to transition African colonies for independence. [3]
Horrified by the effect of nuclear weapons, as well as an early understanding of global warming, threats to the world, and Kessler syndrome (evidenced by the destruction of an American space station by space debris), the world notices space a lot more in the early after-war years. The biggest announcement is the German intention to shoot a man to the moon by 1960. International cooperation in space is established at this time, as countermeasures for the Kessler syndrome created by the Great War are developed. Nuclear weapons are nominally permitted only in space, in order to help clear our space debris. [4]
The Space Race of the 1950s is a free-for-all like the great exploration efforts of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Germany, the British Republic (Labour-led Parliament voted the last King, Edward VIII, into exile and declared a republic)--and France, as the Anglo-French Union continues in many ways, the United States, a reformed Japan, and the Russian Republic compete in space science and prestige. India, rapidly developing under Americo-German ally C. Rajagopalachari, soon joins the Space Race as one of its attempts to unite India (appeasing the large bloc of socialists and Islamic separatists in opposition to Rajagopalachari's government). China under Chiang Kai-shek similar develops, competing with India both economically and in the Space Race. Although nominally for science and humanistic purposes, the Space Race is very militaristic. Rods from god are deployed extensively to circumvent the ban on nuclear weapons and ICBMs. All manners of counter-defenses are launched and deployed to avert this destruction. [5]
In 1958, Alan Shephard and John Glenn land on the Moon, months before German counterparts land there along with some Russian counterparts in 1959. Yuri Gagarin discovers evidence of water there while on his moonwalk, later confirmed by other space probes. The Moon rapidly loses attractiveness to other space programs hunting only for achievements, causing asteroids to be the target for prestige instead. The Anglo-French shoot an astronaut ("spationaute") to 433 Eros in the 1960s, while the Indians launch an astronaut ("vyomanaut") to 1036 Ganymed not long after. [6] Meanwhile in 1965, Kinsei 6, a Japanese probe to Venus, discovers what it believes to be signatures of life on Venus as it floats in the clouds. Although very controversial, this discovery draws long-term attention to Venus as for decades, the hypothesis is either disproved or confirmed depending on which scientist is asked.
Energy crises and global warming combined become common themes in the 1960s, and several popular movies describe the threat to human civilisation from space. Paleontology is very popular in the same period, and the knowledge that the mighty dinosaurs were felled by an asteroid weighs heavily on humanity. In the political sphere, the threat of rods from god, including the development of missile bases on the Moon, causes further development in space. The militarised world continues building nuclear weapons despite the nominal ban, with breeder reactors--including thorium power--the main development in that field. The "nuclear revolution" occurs in the 1980s and 1990s, as thorium power begins to dominate the world and destroys the fossil fuels industries, causing global instability as well as a global surplus in power. One major benefit in this is the continuing advancement of space launch technology. Starting with the American Lockheed *CL-1201 in the 1970s, these massive nuclear-powered aircraft are used to cheaply launch space vehicles, including ASATs (their initial purpose). Rockets in the Great War, like the American Sea Dragon and foreign variants, continue to be used before being replaced by nuclear-powered variants. Von Braun Base, the first permanent Moon base, is created in 1969 by Germany, with Goddard Base following in 1970.
In this era, space is increasingly proposed as a solution to humanity's issues, in order to prevent the threat of "World War II". The Anglo-Irish scientist JD Bernal, who dies in 1971, devotes his later life to space advocacy within the Anglo-French space program. Gerard K. O'Neill publishes The High Frontier, presenting his vision of space colonisation which proves hugely influential in the 1970s, inspiring very popular science fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. American film director George Lucas's Star Wars (and sequels), portrayed a grand struggle in space, and the acclaimed The Empire Strikes Back included Cloud City, located above a blazing hellfire planet, seemed directly inspired by concepts of Venus colonisation [7]. Japanese writer and animator Yoshiyuki Tomino's anime franchise Mobile Suit Gundam, all of which frequently display O'Neill cylinders and the people who live there. Mobile Suit Gundam (and sequels) becomes internationally popular despite its initial lukewarm in its native Japan, and while the titular giant robot Gundam never becomes a reality, the space colonies frequently depicted in the franchise--nearly identical to O'Neill's--become an inspiration to many around the world, who through various pressure groups, form an important part of the space lobby [8].
Outside of pop culture, the environmentalist lobby proves a worthy ally. Despite the opposition of some environmentalists, the problems inherent to solar and wind power cause environmentalists to increasingly embrace space solar power as a solution to all of Earth's energy issues. Environmentalists likewise increasingly view asteroid mining and in-situ resource utilisation--exporting resources on the Moon or asteroids back to Earth--as the best way to avoid pollution on Earth. Fossils fuels were an obvious target, but also hydroelectric power--the Tennessee Valley Authority became a major target of the environmentalist movement in 1972 when the Kingston Fossil Plant, a major coal station in East Tennessee, spilled over 4.2 million cubic meters of coal ash into the Clinch River, a tributary of the Tennessee River, along with surrounding lands. Along with a few other major incidents in the 1970s in Appalachia, coal mining was viewed destroying not just the people (the miners often dying young from lung diseases) or environment (mountaintop removal), but ruining the region. The hydroelectric power of the TVA was viewed as destroying communities for little gain. "Yellow environmentalists", who viewed uranium and thorium mining as less destructive and nuclear powerplants as promoting employment and higher employment, gained an upper hand in the United States. American President John Glenn (elected in 1984), along with his Vice President Al Gore (a Tennessee local), helped target these issues and reform the TVA to focus on nuclear power, bringing the "nuclear revolution" to America and helping create many new jobs in the high-tech sector in Appalachia. Watched by the entire world, this approach was copied in Europe, China, India, and beyond. [9]
Briton Paul Birch, Russian Anatoly Yunitskiy, and American Keith Lofstrom all see their ideas regarding non-rocket spacelaunch increasingly investigated in the 1980s and 1990s. Birch's orbital ring concept becomes increasingly popular in space agencies and space advocacy. Presented as a developmental concept, it becomes popular in equatorial nations like Brazil, Peru, India, and the former colonies of Africa and Asia. In 1990, the Outer Space Development Treaty is signed, paving the way for the orbital ring and solving many of the legal issues. The initial rocket flights to build it occur in the 1990s, with materials from asteroids and the Moon used to supplement the initial construction. By 1995, the orbital ring is capable of moving cargo up its initial "beanstalks", used to continue the construction. At a cost of almost 2 trillion dollars, split between many nations, the orbital ring is attacked from all sides from fiscal conservatives to Marxists declaring it promotes neocolonialism, yet construction continues nonetheless. Wealthy businessmen buy up stocks in the new Outer Space Development Agency, a private-public United Nations agency, while many satellites are replaced by new slots on the orbital ring. Declared complete in 2000, the orbital ring has hotels and other tourist facilities as well as factories and other areas for processing space resources, as well as full self-sufficiency. Its many solar panels and "beanstalks" down to Earth help provide solar energy to the planet in order to help wean Earth off nuclear energy and remaining fossil fuels. [10]
In 2000, the United Nations launches the Millennial Space Development Goals, a program which by 2100 will move at least 1/4 of humans to space. Considered the solution to Earth's unemployment, it will help spur space development. The players of the Space Race--the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, India, China, Japan--along with new players like the Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, and Nigeria, once again gear up competitiveness. To live in space is considered a privilege (although many middle class and lower class people end up living there), and to build a space colony is considered an achievement no less than winning a gold medal in the Olympics. Environmental concerns encourage space colonisation.
In 2008, O'Neill, the first space colony, is completed. A small torus, it holds 10,000 people (mostly the workers and their family) and is incorporated as the O'Neill Territory of the United States. By 2010, the German Empire completes a mass driver on the Moon to help build their colonies and completes a "vase city" on the Moon, simulating Earth gravity, at Von Braun Base, which becomes Reichsland Von Braun. Tiancheng, the first Chinese space colony, is completed at Earth-Moon in 2011. Amaravati, India's first colony, is inagurated in 2012 [11]. Japan, aiming big, creates the first true O'Neill cylinder (albeit only 25% the size of O'Neill's design) in 2015, named Tomino after Yoshiyuki Tomino's tragic death earlier that year in honor of his science fiction anime and its pop-cultural influence on both Japan and the world which helped inspire the same sort of colonies which decades ago only animation could portray. [12]
By 2018, the space industry has become massive, no doubt having become a bubble--some economists predict it will burst within a few years and create a global depression. But it has created large optimism. The United States has created its first state in space, at Earth-Moon L1, consisting of 150,000 Americans spread throughout a couple of space colonies [13]. Similar attention to space colonies has occurred in other nations, although the more autocratic governments in Russia, Korea, and China haven't yet moved their colonies to such autonomy. The orbital ring has allowed unprecedented access to the "High Frontier" as it has been termed, and enriched equatorial nations immensely via foreign investment, flights to their airports (which link to the ring's beanstalks), and their own space industries. Astronomy, astronautics, xenobiology, and all space sciences and space engineering branches are increasingly important fields of study, and globally the educational system is oriented to churning out graduates in these. By 2015, even though life on Venus has been disproved along with life on Mars, and drilling on Europa, Callisto, Enceladus, Titania, and Triton found nothing but an empty ice shell ocean, space science is still hugely important [14]. The Hubble Space Telescope, a full-size O'Neill cylinder converted for nothing but use as telescope, can survey the galaxy and the universe. The HST has proven the Rare Earth hypothesis, but at the same time has shown hundreds of exoplanets and exomoons which are either Venus equivalents and even a small minority of exoplanets and exomoons which are relatively Earthlike and can be assumed to have microbial life [15]. *Planet Nine is a very impressive example of a captured rogue planet, and along with the Oort Cloud, is a popular target for space probes. Indeed, the first probe to Proxima Centauri was launched in 1979, albeit with Proxima as the secondary goal and the Oort Cloud and interstellar medium as the target, and the designers of the probe believed that later probes would beat it to Proxima. [16]
In 2018, space is both the Final Frontier and the High Frontier, with a population consisting of both the ultra wealthy along with the poor. The Earth-Moon Lagrange points are the main points of colonisation, along with the Moon itself and some Near-Earth asteroids. A few bases on Mars and Venus's atmosphere have been established. Research into using Mercury and places closer to the Sun for resources and solar energy (beamed using the same technology which is fueling an increasingly larger portion of Earth's energy) is increasing every year. Space tourism is huge, with travel to Earth's orbit no problem and travel to the Moon not much harder than a transcontinental flight. Going to a nearby asteroid or comet (like the visits to Halley's Comet in 1986) isn't much harder than going to Antarctica, and for the truly hardcore, voyages to any planet or moon in the Solar System can be arranged by contacting private spaceflight industries, assuming you are among the wealthy elite. Billionaire Elon Musk dominated headlines in 2018 for visiting *Planet Nine and its moons. [17]
While only 10 million people live permanently in space, and all of them live in the Earth-Sun system [18], the space population is a diverse mixture of the dominant nations of the world. The United Nations, increasingly subsumed by the Outer Space Development Agency, is funding the creation of more and more space colonies to move people into space. Combined with the geoengineering efforts which form a major part of the industry of space colonies, space has a bright future even after the bubble collapses.
[1] - The Moon landings were ahead of their time
[2] - Basically early space tech, countermeasures to it, and Wunderwaffe help develop the space industry
[3] - I'm biased against the British Empire since OTL was a British wank and I love the idea of the United States helping to destroy their "mother country" and its rule globallly. Regarding colonialism, the whole conflict ends in an agreement that colonialism is unproductive and needs to end, and that economic assistance will help to those effects. It's pretty much neocolonialism, but it prevents a lot of conflicts and such in those countries.
[4] - It's optimism which is subdued by cruel reality, like the League of Nations or United Nations.
[5] - Even though space weapons pose little threat in reality, the media helps exaggerates their power and provoke politicians to funding countermeasures.
[6] - "If you shoot for the Moon and fail, you land among the stars". If the asteroids I named aren't the easiest targets (with the delta-v required), then perhaps Earth discovers easier asteroid targets and space programs choose them to counter potential Moon landings.
[7] - TTL's Empire Strikes Back has Lando discussing how his Cloud City floats above the surface of a deadly planet (OTL Star Wars fans might compare it to Nkllon in the Thrawn Trilogy)--the obvious implication is that the planet is like Venus.
[8] - Gundam is a lot more popular TTL starting from the early 80s, and TTL has Gundam's dubs in all manner of languages being pretty faithful to the source material and not censoring much. Zeta Gundam is made on schedule.
[9] - Environmentalism TTL mostly shoots for realism, and eventually reluctantly embraces nuclear fission. This leads to a major hatred of hydro dams flooding the land as well as an even greater target on coal ash spills. Although incidents like Three Mile Island happen, a "Big Nuclear" emerges to help suppress these threats. The TVA TTL helps scholarships to local universities in nuclear physics and other subjects, and in general is a major player in reviving Appalachia.
[10] - The orbital ring, TTL innovated by numerous figures whose work in space isn't simply an engineer's hypothesis.
[11] - Most of these colonies are closer to Bernal spheres or Stanford torii.
[12] - TTL's Tomino has died earlier than OTL's Tomino will, but Gundam fans will be glad that TTL's G-Reco is far better than OTL's G-Reco.
[13] - The state of O'Neill, electing two senators and one member of the House--it's the 53rd state after Puerto Rico and the Bahamas.
[14] - I like the idea of life being rare, but I admit that it could be very common, and if an ice shell moon like Europe--easily explored in a TL like this--has microbial life, then logically so does many other places in this Solar System. Overall it doesn't matter to my scenario.
[15] - In a future of O'Neill cylinders, the same tech lets you cheaply build a telescope which makes the OTL Hubble and the upcoming James Webb telescopes look like the cheap Walmart "telescopes". No doubt this is what we'll find in many star systems.
[16] - TTL has Planet Nine as a reality, and engines to let space probes move at up to a few percent of lightspeed. At that rate, by 2400 we'll be at Proxima and the companion probe will soon be at Alpha Centauri itself. Sooner or later, Planet Nine will be explored to as great of a degree as we want, along with the Oort Cloud.
[17] - Let's say Musk said one too many stupid things on social media and is going on a quest to "redeem" himself and his brand by accomplishing an incredible feat of exploration. Like James Cameron visited Challenger Deep, Elon Musk has decided to be the first human to orbit *Planet Nine. He doesn't care he'll be over a light-week from humanity, he just cares about the glory such an expedition will bring him.
[18] - The Earth, the Moon, the Earth-Moon Lagrange Points, and Earth-Sun L1 and L2--the "Earth Sphere". Venus, Mars, and anywhere else just isn't appealing for anything but random bases dependent on the Earth Sphere.
