…but not too late
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The Doclopedia #2,031
Well, That’s Different: National Park States
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On Earth 4-V in the current year of 2000, there are 123 states in the United States of America. That includes the 50 states we know, plus Puerto Rico, Guam, Baja California and 70 National Parks that are separate states within other states, sometimes sevearl in a single state, such as California with 6. These park states are home to and overseen by various Native American Nations. While independent, with their own Senators, Congressfolk and laws, they are also strongly aligned with the primary state they are found in. This is because they cannot have any industries that disturb the natural state of the park.
Thus, most of the “park states” rely on the mother state for anything they cannot produce. The mother state, in return, gains a portion of the money generated by tourism and certain other park businesses. This can be a considerable amount, with California again leading the pack..
The park states are sometimes considerably larger than the parks in our world. For example, Everglades National Park State was formed in 1872, before massive drainage projects could start. Because of this, the Everglades remain in near pristine condition and the park state covers the entire southern third of Florida, from just north of Lake Okeechobee south, including the Keys. The Seminole Nation is thriving.
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The Doclopedia #2,032
Well, That’s Different: MoonBots
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On Earth 2-L the US space program stalled in 1974 with the failed attempt by the Apollo 19 astronauts to set up a small permanent moon base. A rushed attempt by NASA to prevent the Nixon administration from shutting the whole program down, everything from materials failure to human error caused it to fail. Nixon shut down the manned space program in April, then in August, committed suicide by poison in the Rose Garden.
The Apollo 19 failure had stopped the exploration of the moon by humans cold, but it lit a fire under several high school students across North America. A few months later, several of them met at the National Science Fair. They stayed up late discussing everything from Star Trek (then nearing it’s final season) to science in general to how they would have built a base on the moon. That spawned hundreds of letters and the recruitment of other young science fans when most of them went to the International Science Fair in Paris during their senior year.
Eight years later, in 1984, several of these scientists got together to form a company called MoonBots Inc. Using advances in robotics, computers and materials, they constructed three robots and a 90,000 square foot chamber that perfectly duplicated conditions on the moon. They placed the robots and some prefabricted building materials inside the chamber and tnen invited 50 scientists, several senators and congressmen, all the major media companies, NASA officials and President Carter to come see how a permanent moon base could be built.
Over the course of two days, working 24/7, the MoonBots built a base large enough to comfotably hold 6 astronauts, several science experiment stations, two moon buggies and enough supplies of food, air, water and oxygen for a year. The robots also created a smooth and compacted landing space nearby.
Everyone who saw the demonstration was very impressed and the President told NASA to make a moon base their top priority. NASA did just that and the first moon base was ready for humans to outfit and move into 18 months later.
Now (current year: 2018) there are nearly 300 MoonBots and 10,000 people living on the moon. There are also 40 MarsBots and 200 people living on Mars. On Earth, a staggering 25,000 SmartBots are busy night and day repairing centuies of human caused damage to the planet.
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