Earth

Earth is a terrestrial ocean planet located in the Solar System, the 3rd planet from the Sun. It is the home planet of humans, and is currently believed to be the first planet to sustain life, intelligent and otherwise, in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Geography

Earth's surface is predominantly water, at 71%, with the remaining portion composed of terrestrial land. This terrestrial land consists mainly of four continental landmasses, those being Afro-Eurasia, America, Antarctica, and Australia, along with hundreds of thousands of islands. This terrain features intense variation, consisting of mountains, deserts, plains, plateaus, and a myriad of other features and biomes.
Throughout most of human history, the ocean surface at Earth's polar regions would be covered by ice, which would seasonally vary in amount. This ice, in addition to bits of land, permafrost, and ice sheets, would form the polar ice caps, but human expansion has raised the temperature of the planet to a point at which these polar ice caps cannot form.
The natural chemical composition of Earth is mostly iron (~32% by mass), followed by oxygen, silicon, magnesium, sulfur, nickel, calcium, aluminum, and trace amounts of other elements.

Climate

Human activity has absolutely ravaged the planet's natural climate, and has had devastating permanent effects on the entire planet. Natural disasters of nearly all kind are commonplace; the human population that still resides on Earth is constantly subject to strong hurricanes, storms, floods, fires, droughts, heat waves, etc. The globe has gotten so hot that effectively all of the planet's ice caps and tundras have melted. Sea levels have risen, flooding thousands of populated cities beyond habitation, including New York, London, Venice, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sydney, and many more.

History

This alternate history of Earth is identical to real history, until July 20th, 1969. In real history, the Apollo 11 crew in their Saturn V rocket had launched from Cape Kennedy four days ago, and was minutes away from sending astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to detach in the Lunar Module. In our alternate history, at this moment, the Apollo 11 crew had suddenly stopped speaking with Mission Control, where they simultaneously lost all signal with the rocket's systems.
Apollo 11 had gone missing.

After Apollo 11's mysterious disappearance, the Soviet space program was reinvigorated. They took this moment of confusion for the United States as their chance, immediately beginning tests of their much heavier version of the Saturn V, the N1. As the United States frantically grappled with the sudden disappearance of the astronauts and a mission that cost 355 million dollars, the Soviets made their launch. With an incredibly fastracked plan, the Soviet Union became the first nation to send man to the Moon, on September 11th, 1969.
The Soviet Union's mission success came to a surprise to the American public; until then, the USSR had claimed that they were not trying to reach the Moon first, claiming that the USA was in a "one-nation race". At this point in American history, President Nixon's anxiety reached a point previously thought to be impossible. All of a sudden, he had to manage America's outrage of spending billions of tax dollars towards a program that ended in complete failure, not to mention to disappearance of three astronauts. In his frenzy, Nixon decided to multiply Kennedy's promise of putting man on the Moon. The Soviets' success at landing on the Moon, at that point, terrified the US. In the big picture, putting man on the Moon symbolized that the Soviets had controlled space. The only way that Nixon could prove that America owned space was to lap the Soviets; if they couldn't land on the Moon, they would have to colonize space.
On Christmas day, 1969, Nixon announced the creation of the Ares program: a program that would go on to span 17 missions and eventually put man on Mars, on August 9th, 1982. This was the United States' first achievement in space that they beat the Russians to, at which point the Space Age became immortal. The Milky Way became that age's American West, that age's New World: the last frontier. All countries, worldwide, raced to explore and conquer to cosmos, especially the world's two biggest superpowers. They built space stations, lunar bases, martian bases, and entire fleets of spaceships in the coming decades, but humanity's colonization of space would have cataclysmic consequences on its home planet.
Earth's biosphere was ravaged by the resource gathering required for the materials and fuel needed to push humanity throughout their star system. Globally, ecosystems collapsed. Rainforests burnt down, pollutants filled the atmosphere, oil spills poisoned the oceans, extreme weather destroyed millions of homes. The once idyllic planet that fostered the creation of mankind was unrecognizable once they were done with it. Essentially all of its natural ice had melted, leaving low-lying cities housing millions of people underwater. Despite their unforseen technological advancements and innovations in fields of all kinds, their planet was unsaveable.
In the year 2101, many humans who could afford it moved offworld, but the majority (and, consequently, the poorest) of humans still remain on Earth. The human population on Earth is about 11 billion people, and comparisons of birth and death rates indicate that it is dropping to 10 billion. Life on Earth is anything but comfortable; the very atmosphere is unhealthy to breathe. Extreme weather makes any home prone to annihilation. Diseases of all kinds run more rampant, both due to a more condensed population and to the heat making disease-carrying mosquitoes and other pests more able to spread across the globe.
Humanity's home has been irreparably ravaged. It may the most habitable place in the galaxy no longer.

Included Locations

• Acropolis Station

Related Historical Events

• November 23, 2010
  Formation of the United Nation Federation

Designations

Classification	Planet
Type	Terrestrial, ocean
Alternative names	Sol III, Terra
Adjectives	Terran, Earthly

Location Data

Star	Sun
Moons	Moon
Star system	Solar System
Spiral arm	Orion Arm
Galaxy	Milky Way

Orbit & Rotation

Rotation period	1 standard day 24h 00m 00s
Orbital period	365.256363 standard days 1 standard cycle

Surface Characteristics

Surface gravity	1 g
Surface temperature	67.6 °F (-134 °F to 152 °F) 19.8 °C (-91.9 °C to 66.6 °C)

Atmosphere

Surface pressure	1 atm
Composition by volume	78% nitrogen 21% oxygen ≤1% water vapor (climate variable) 0.1% carbon dioxide <1% other gases