The Final Frontier: History of Alternate Space Race

== Overview ==
An alternate space race where the USA launched the world's first satellite and where the USSR detected the van Allen belt.
== Timeline ==
1912: British ship Titanic is set for transatlantic voyage. Before that the ship's second officer David Blair was removed from the rooster, but he managed to hand the key to the locker containing a binocular to his replacement. This would help Titanic to avoid icebergs and arrive New York safely.
1917: After being deposed by the Russian revolution, Czar Nicholas II and his family emigrates to the United Kingdom.
1956: On July 4th, 180 years since the formation of the United States of America, a Project Orbiter satellite is launched into orbit, making America the first nation to launch an artificial satellite. At the same year, the Hungarian revolution ends peacefully with Nagy in power. NASA is formed concurrently.
1957: On May 29th USSR sent their first satellite ISZ-1 into orbit. It detected OTL's van Allen belt which was named Vernov Belt in this TL.
1959: Cuban revolution ends peacefully when Castro is elected as a centrist leader in the island nation. In the meantime USSR's Mechta spacecraft is the first to escape the Earth-Moon system.
1960: Richard Nixon won the year's presidential election.
1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is the first man in space and in orbit, spurring the US president to set a national goal to land on the Moon.
1969: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the Moon.
1991: The Soviet Union dissolves.