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Description
Howdy, Deviant Art!

After years of saying I would never, ever get a DA account, here I am *wowzers*. Anywho, wasn't sure how to get the ball rolling, so I figured I'd start from the beginning. Or as near to the beginning as I can. Best I can try for a first post, I suppose.

This is a map of...Earth, I believe, in the futuristic year of 1999. See, this isn't *any* 1999, this is the 1999 of my alternate history/science-fiction project, Overheaven. It's still a work in progress, and in fact, the parts of the map featuring Mars, Venus, Mercury, Luna, Neith, Phobos, Deimos, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, Io, Himalia and Amalthea are all conspicuously missing, because those are the most WIP parts. And yes, in this 1999, there are people living on all of these worlds.

The Story So Far:

Our main POD is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. In our timeline, the OST prevented the militarization of space an acquisition of extraterrestrial territory by sovereign states. Without it, the Cold War expands into orbit, as Moscow and Washington race to build the most orbital nuke platforms. This spurs the development of cheap, reusable launch vehicles, and the Space Race begins in earnest in the 1970's.

Apollo 11 still lands on the moon in 1969, but less than two months later, the Soviets plant their own flag on Luna, and begin construction of the first base on Luna, claiming the surrounding area for the Soviet Union, thus spurring a new colonial scramble for the stars. Robert H Lawrence, Jr becomes the first human to set foot on Mars on July 4th 1976, in time for the American Bicentennial celebration. The Ares-1 mission comes not just to plant a flag, but to lay the foundations for a permanent human presence on Mars, establishing the settlement of "Tesla, USA" in the highlands of Tharsis. The Soviets follow up with a partially-successful manned mission to Venus in 1978; while the "Niobe" lander successfully inflates its room-temperature oxygen balloon in the mild upper atmosphere of the "Yellow Planet", mission leader Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space), falls to her death in a freak accident. Still, Niobe becomes the first permanent settlement on (or rather, above) Venus. The first child born off of Earth's surface is a Russian girl on the moon, in 1977. Japan, China, Western Europe and the UK all establish colonies on the moon and in Earth orbit by the end of the 1970's.

Mars and Venus both boom in the late 70's and throughout the 80's, when Mercury and the asteroid belt are both colonized as well. In Earth orbit, the "Space Boom" sees a veritable industrial revolution high above the Earth, with tourism, manufacturing, space-based solar power and increasingly-ambitious rotating habitats. Reagan appoints Gerard K O'Neill himself to oversee the development of very large orbital habitats, and America's Lunar territories are consolidated into the State of Kennedy in 1988. In 1995, after ten years of construction, the first of the O'Neill cylinder habitats, Columbia-1, is completed, and is admitted as the 52nd state of the Union. Puerto Rico becomes the 53rd state in 1998.

The USSR narrowly avoided collapse in 1992, instead pursuing a successful series of New Union reforms, democratization and economic liberalization, evolving into the "Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics". Not everyone was aboard with this reboot, and the Baltic states, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia all jumped ship.

There's a TON of other details that are probably worth mentioning as it concerns the geopolitics of this 1999, but this is getting a little long.

This is part of a much larger project spanning 1967 to 2285.

Description
Howdy, Deviant Art!

After years of saying I would never, ever get a DA account, here I am *wowzers*. Anywho, wasn't sure how to get the ball rolling, so I figured I'd start from the beginning. Or as near to the beginning as I can. Best I can try for a first post, I suppose.

This is a map of...Earth, I believe, in the futuristic year of 1999. See, this isn't *any* 1999, this is the 1999 of my alternate history/science-fiction project, Overheaven. It's still a work in progress, and in fact, the parts of the map featuring Mars, Venus, Mercury, Luna, Neith, Phobos, Deimos, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, Io, Himalia and Amalthea are all conspicuously missing, because those are the most WIP parts. And yes, in this 1999, there are people living on all of these worlds.

The Story So Far:

Our main POD is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. In our timeline, the OST prevented the militarization of space an acquisition of extraterrestrial territory by sovereign states. Without it, the Cold War expands into orbit, as Moscow and Washington race to build the most orbital nuke platforms. This spurs the development of cheap, reusable launch vehicles, and the Space Race begins in earnest in the 1970's.

Apollo 11 still lands on the moon in 1969, but less than two months later, the Soviets plant their own flag on Luna, and begin construction of the first base on Luna, claiming the surrounding area for the Soviet Union, thus spurring a new colonial scramble for the stars. Robert H Lawrence, Jr becomes the first human to set foot on Mars on July 4th 1976, in time for the American Bicentennial celebration. The Ares-1 mission comes not just to plant a flag, but to lay the foundations for a permanent human presence on Mars, establishing the settlement of "Tesla, USA" in the highlands of Tharsis. The Soviets follow up with a partially-successful manned mission to Venus in 1978; while the "Niobe" lander successfully inflates its room-temperature oxygen balloon in the mild upper atmosphere of the "Yellow Planet", mission leader Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space), falls to her death in a freak accident. Still, Niobe becomes the first permanent settlement on (or rather, above) Venus. The first child born off of Earth's surface is a Russian girl on the moon, in 1977. Japan, China, Western Europe and the UK all establish colonies on the moon and in Earth orbit by the end of the 1970's.

Mars and Venus both boom in the late 70's and throughout the 80's, when Mercury and the asteroid belt are both colonized as well. In Earth orbit, the "Space Boom" sees a veritable industrial revolution high above the Earth, with tourism, manufacturing, space-based solar power and increasingly-ambitious rotating habitats. Reagan appoints Gerard K O'Neill himself to oversee the development of very large orbital habitats, and America's Lunar territories are consolidated into the State of Kennedy in 1988. In 1995, after ten years of construction, the first of the O'Neill cylinder habitats, Columbia-1, is completed, and is admitted as the 52nd state of the Union. Puerto Rico becomes the 53rd state in 1998.

The USSR narrowly avoided collapse in 1992, instead pursuing a successful series of New Union reforms, democratization and economic liberalization, evolving into the "Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics". Not everyone was aboard with this reboot, and the Baltic states, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia all jumped ship.

There's a TON of other details that are probably worth mentioning as it concerns the geopolitics of this 1999, but this is getting a little long.

This is part of a much larger project spanning 1967 to 2285.