I Rewrote Starfield's Timeline | Starfield Lore Rework

I've been getting myself worked up over Starfield's stupid timeline for the past few weeks, so I decided I had to rewrite it, in order to make the game make a little more sense.
Bethesda's Timeline:
2112 - Cydonia is founded
2156 - New Atlantis is founded
2167 - Akila City is founded
2187 - Neon is founded (as a city)
2189 - Freestar Collective is established
2196 - Narion War begins
2203 - Earth rendered uninhabitable
2216 - Narion War ends
2240 - Serpent's Crusade begins
2263 - Serpent's Crusade ends
2308 - Colony War begins
2311 - Colony War ends
2330 - Starfield begins
My Timeline:
2232 - Cydonia is founded
2244 - New Atlantis is founded
2251 - Akila City is founded
2252 - Narion War begins
2268 - Neon founded
2269 - Narion War ends
2273 - Earth rendered uninhabitable
2274 - Serpent's Crusade begins
2299 - Serpent's Crusade ends
2310 - Colony War begins
2320 - Colony War ends
2330 - Starfield begins
Patreon: / badcompanysarge
Discord: / discord
Twitter: / badcompanysarge
#Gaming #Starfield #Rewrite
I Rewrote Starfield's Timeline | Starfield Lore Rework

[@BADCompanySarge]

What would you change about Starfield's timeline?

[@Phoenixguyver]

Definitely make the overall time-line shorter with the conflicts being longer. It's the opposite of Star Wars' time-line issue, there too much happens over a short period.

[@publiusdos5925]

@@Phoenixguyver I'd make it longer, but I'd also rewrite the background of the entire setting. The real issue with the timeline is it's really just there in service to setting up the game's factions, and not much else.

[@StarfieldWX-tb42]

@@publiusdos5925 the background of Earth and the timeline to the stars did bug me a little. Like if we have grav jump tech, we definitely have a LOT of other major tech advancements. I get that some stuff may have been lost to time like how the Dark Ages destroyed and even set back scientific advancement. We'd already be in space by probably 1600AD if the Church (not one single denomination, lots of people to point fingers at back then) hadn't tried to become the de facto king of the world and staunched scientific pursuits out of the fear that their gods would be disproven. I can totally see a war wiping out a massive portion of the population (think 60-80% like the plague did in the middle ages) causing a significant stagnation and even loss of some of those techs that got us to the stars in the first place. I still love the gameplay and love how casual-friendly it all is, how there are systems that increase in complexity as you play more, learn more, and become more familiar with the game (skill points, crafting gear, building ships, outpost creation and interfunctionality therein). I'm not even touching outposts yet. But I'm really excited to start figuring out how to make decor for my swanky new apartment when I finally get around to finishing the Vanguard storyline. I'm still focusing on Barrett for now. Anyway, great video Sarge, and I think you made the right choice to condense the time spent in space. We did go from horse and buggy to space ship in less than 100 years, after all.

[@hydrowolf1]

All of it in the trash fire the story dude gets someone else not as many planets make the people makeing the code and gameplay works together never let lodeing be as bad as it is add aliens in a space game the story is meh needs to be reworked and finally add different different races and robot and plant then make it

[@GoalOrientedLifting]

more cities, bigger cities, and outposts(smaller cities) close to the large ones. thats litterally it.

[@publiusdos5925]

Part of what killed the game, at least in the world building, for me is I kept having moments of, "Y'know, it would have been cooler and made more sense if you just..."

[@BADCompanySarge]

That's always a feeling which is going to occur, but the more often it shows up, the worse it gets each time

[@Nebular66]

300 years wasn't enough time to make much technological progress, but long enough for every other person to become a space pirate.

[@BADCompanySarge]

The game does make it seem like 90% of humans have become ecliptic, spacers or crimson fleet, which could be funny if it was worked more in to the lore, rather than just a by product of needing there to always be enemies to fight

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

@@BADCompanySarge Like Skyrim 99% of the population are criminals while a small amount are innocent people.

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

@@BADCompanySarge If you look at a ship model in a museum on Earth you’ll notice it has a 2 deck Nova Galactic Cockpit which is just baffling, why is Nova Galactic still building cockpits that were design 3 hundred years ago that makes no sense. People weren’t driving Model Ts for a hundred years because designs change over time. Having StarField being a hundred years after 2050 would make more sense because the first one hundred years your going to have a slow start but over the 3 hundred years people are going to adapt and get more advanced, but still ship designs are going to change a lot within a hundred years. With settlements their going to have a rough start in the first one hundred years but after 3 hundred years their going to be as big as Toronto or any other large city due to people adapting and doing better over time. Having StarField take place after a hundred years from the year 2050 would have made a lot more sense especially since all four cities are very small, in 3 hundred years a city isn’t going to remain small, it is going to adapt and grow over time.

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

@@BADCompanySarge Bethesda seems to forget how Humanity works, the Nasa Punk thing would make sense a hundred years from now but not in 3 hundred were a lot of things can happen.

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

@@BADCompanySarge Besides New Atlantis, Neon, Akila and Cidonia (forget how to spell that one) feel to small to be cities their more like a small village then a city which would make more sense a hundred years from now due to their size alone.

[@thegethconsensus393]

I like Starfield but its universe is a bit dull. There’s no aliens, no Eldridge horrors beyond comprehension, and the history is paper thin. It’s such a bizarrely small setting for a space game. Starfield’s emptiness really struck me while I was replying Mass Effect 1. Mass Effect came out of the gate swinging with dense and interesting lore on their first game. Starfield has no excuse for being so shallow.

[@BADCompanySarge]

It does feel wild that they mage such a huge game, but then failed to fill it out. It feels like there's the same amount of content/lore as in a more standard open world, but they had to spread it out over 1000 different planets

[@Scoots_McBoots]

You did a great job making things somewhat workable. The emptiness *really* bugs me, especially given that they bragged about having 1,000+ planets.

[@BADCompanySarge]

The 1000+ planets just feels like a full on mistake at this point. Sure, you can make a game with that many planets, but it doesn't serve any real purpose

[@GoalOrientedLifting]

look im not saying its great, but they litterally said it would be empty....

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

People wanted a few well thought out worlds with a lot of places to visit with a lot of unique dungeons, instead we get a thousand bland planets with 10 identical dungeons that are copied and pasted on a thousand world as if the game developers are trying to insult our intelligence. We the players wanted 10 or 20 well thought out worlds, people say LESS IS MORE for a reason, less worlds with more detail and content. A game development company should not insult the intelligence of its customers.

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

And what’s the point in building a ship you can’t really use, except in combat in an aquarium box of space that one can not leave, it is mostly just a personalized cut scene/ loading scene, we wanted to actually fly our ships from planet surface to moon surface physically with joysticks and buttons. It is a Sci-fi, after all the space ship should be the main focus not be treated like a Skyrim Horse. In StarField you can build a ship but you can’t really use it like I said. Outer Wilds doesn’t have loading screens when you get into your ship I should know I watched a VTuber play Outer Wilds, there was no loading screen when she got into the ship of hers, just walked right in.

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

A space game should also be like a flight simulator were you actually get to fly your ship from planet to planet, the vehicle should never be treated like Skyrims Horses they should always be the main focus in a game.

[@rbutga]

This makes much more sense. That and Chunks must have been putting contraceptives in the food. People seem to have nothing but time on their hands but there are very few children.

[@BADCompanySarge]

I genuinely kind of love that Chunks idea, either as an intentional ploy by the CEO for some reason, or as a side effect that occurs by their cost cutting methods

[@Fuar11]

This is explained in the game partially. After the Narion war the governments sign the Treaty of Narion of the Centaurus Proclemation. Which decreed that both governments were not allowed to expand beyond their 3 solar systems. This is actually just a lore excuse for BGS to not develop more cities than they did because.. development reasons I guess? Same reason why the cities are so small and there's no more major settlements. They very much built the story around the game development, not the other way around. However I notice a distinct lack of settlement in the Narion system, where are all the people that rebelled against the UC living there? The FC owns that system now. There should be more settlement. Especially Sumati Same with independent systems, corporate groups would've settled them. Like the Olympus system

[@RobotWithHumanHair.]

well to be fair the lore about Narion is that it was nearly made uninhabitable due to one of the wars which is why there little to no settlement, the space London city was also a once major city that was destroyed before the game start, i wish we saw more cities and settlements destroyed like space london

[@Fuar11]

@@RobotWithHumanHair. that was Niira. But Sumati is still a habitable planet

[@BADCompanySarge]

The Treaty of Narion feels like it was put in place for that reason, but it just limits them to settling three systems, which still would leave plenty of room for cities or smaller settlements across the other planets. I do wonder how much back and forth there was between the team writing and the team developing and working out how big the game would be, as there does feel like a bit of a disconnect between the two.

[@Fuar11]

@@BADCompanySarge There's a lot of inconsistency across the board likely for that reason

[@WisteriaDrake]

The explanation is stupid. Two governments agreed not to... spread out and claim completely different uninhabited planets? This makes sense on Earth or a single world, where space and resources are limited. It's beyond stupid to be like, "You see those billions of free real estates? You can't use them. Aliens don't exist, there's only humans, but you're still not allowed to use them because we're too lazy to make more than one example of each dungeon." The truth of the matter is that Bethesda only knows Fallout and Skyrim. In Fallout, having centuries go by without any real change makes sense, and is kinda the entire point. In Fallout, having like, 100 people in a city makes sense. In Skyrim, having pointless wars that result in bizarre decisions... doesn't make sense, actually, but that's the Civil War questline. Plus dragon shouts.

[@thewhizbang]

I always rationalized the low population of Starfield due to the hellish exodus of earth pretty much setting humans back to the middle ages just with fancy technology. I imagine it was apocalyptic at best. Just like most natural disasters a lot of people choose to stay at their homes and I’m sure most if not 75% of the population of earth was forced or chose to stay because it was their home or just plain financial situations. The citizens of Starfield are the descendants of people who had enough to purchase a ship or a secure a spot aboard a passenger ship to colonize New Atlantis. There might even have been programs similar to expeditions to the Americas in the 1700s that allowed lower class citizens to work in indentured servitude. Billions of people must of died on earth, which I feel Starfield fails to mention. Especially most digital media probably was just lost and erased. I imagine Starfield has been at one of the lowest population points in human history. The graph drive which they rely all trade transport and exploration is based off of “future timeline magic.” That the common person doesn’t even understand. Most peoples ships are like their vehicles that they just take to get serviced and don’t really know anything about whats going on under the hood. It’s a miracle that society has stayed so connected honestly. Even considering the fact that instant communication does not exist outside planetary orbit or on a planets surface. Grav drives are faster than light speed. Which instantly put couriers back in business. Messages and communication do not get back to other settlements or solar systems for years. It’s simply easier to just fly there yourself physically just like in the middle ages where it was easier for someone to just ride a horse to you or send a pigeon. So even though humanity is in the stars, flying spaceships, we’ve almost gone backwards, not in technology, but in communication and coexistence. This is why a radio technically isn’t in Starfield because you wouldn’t be able to listen to a transmission unless it was decades or even hundreds of years old. They should’ve had cassette tapes that you can make playlist of songs that you add to certain tapes or something to music but that’s neither here nor there. This is also the reason why news reporters will ask for your information on current events or situations happening in the settled systems. Information only travels as fast as the people do. Much as the time, when European colonies were sailing to America and making their claim and pirates were were able to take advantage of the gap in time it took for authorities to retaliate. Starfield shares similar properties where you are just in the wild west or the open seas, but now the black ocean of space. Just you and your vessel. Just like people the New World.

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

They should explain the exodus of Earth a lot more and explain why the cities are so small after 3 hundred years. When populations grow so do cities, so if the cities remain small over the 3 hundred years well they should explain the birth control problem if that is the case. In 3 hundred years cities should be the size of Toronto due to a population growth, but if there is a problem with births over the years causing the cities to remain small well they should explain that.

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

Since ships have grav drives one should gain access to many resources on many worlds which would mean development would accelerate in a way, they shouldn’t really be stagnating. If you notice in a museum on Earth the first Grav Drive ship has that Nova Galactic Two Deck Cockpit, which means they have been building that cockpit design for over 3 hundred years which doesn’t make any sense. People didn’t drive a Model T for a hundred years because things change and technology improves, why is Nova Galactic still building models that were designed 3 hundred years ago, that just doesn’t make any sense.

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

They should explain the stagnation in technology over the 3 hundred years, explain why humanity has entered a second dark age in the time of space travel. They should explain why their still building designs that were design 3 hundred years ago especially with Nova Galactic, is Nova Galactic a dead company but their fabricators are still around with designs still programmed into them because that would explain it a little at least.

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

With grav drives you would gain access to many resources across many worlds so such settlements should be thriving.

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

Sorry for repeating myself, I’m just baffled about StarFields lore and logic.

[@lemonlimetime286]

Great video sarge! I'm glad you want to make this a series and I would like to see you do the companions quest line next

[@BADCompanySarge]

Thanks! I feel like companion storylines are often better done than many other quests and the like, so nothing immediately springs to line, but I'm sure there's some for a game out there that I'd rework after looking in to

[@revanamell1791]

The exodus from earth probably knocked humanity down to a few million people. Maybe. Then two wars. On top of that, the grav drive technology probably wasn't always how it is in the current date. I try not to think about it too much though.

[@BADCompanySarge]

I wish these events had more solid numbers on how much they whittled down the population. It's all so vague in a way that both doesn't make sense within the world and also doesn't benefit with any sort of mystery

[@WisteriaDrake]

The grav drive thing is the cherry on top of the nonsense. The guy who invented it LITERALLY got the idea from a person from another universe in the future. That person either didn't tell him that the grav drives would destroy Earth, or the guy just ignored that. And either way, the Starborn could have totally given him the perfected drive so Earth would be fine. Adding the multiverse to your setting only to try to arbitrarily limit it is why people groan when they hear about multiverse or time travel. Hardly anyone understands the implications, and then write themselves into a corner.

[@00TOYZ]

@@BADCompanySargenot everything needs to be explained

[@revanamell1791]

@@WisteriaDrake I hate multiverse stuff myself. Cannot stand it and it's far and above my biggest dislike about the game. Thankfully I can ignore it. MCU nosedived going in on the multiverse.

[@PlayerJay425]

Isn’t it stated in the game the population of all the systems is in the billions. Even then we’ve seen how fast the world population can grow in the matter of 50 years now imagine that plus a post war baby boom.

[@00TOYZ]

I think what people are forgetting that is this isn’t sci fi, it’s low fi. That’s why there’s no aliens like mass effect.

[@PlayerJay425]

There’s space magic. That by definition is going to make it regular sci fi, if not high sci fi since everything points to the magic being actually magic and not really advanced tech.

[@BADCompanySarge]

I think the whole attempt to make the game somewhat grounded and "realistic" in a certain sense reduces the overall sci-fi feel. Makes it extra weird to me that there is the sort of space magic stuff going on with the powers, as it feels in direct contrast to the tone of the game world the rest of the time

[@emperorofscelnar8443]

@@BADCompanySarge A contradiction in other words.

[@lazilycatharticone4191]

Personal thoughts, BGS has picked trash timelines for the past three games. F4, F76, and now Starfield. In Fallout4, the more interesting conflict between the CPG and the institutes sabotage happened before the SS unthawed. In SF the colony war started and finished before the player started the game. In both scenarios, there's infinitly more potential in the lore than the actual game.

[@BADCompanySarge]

I think 76 is an interesting example, as the lore and events have unfolded since the release of the game. It started out with not much local history (besides the great war/bombs dropping) but then has had a whole bunch of interesting stuff happened since Vault 76 opened. That's one way Starfield could improve the overall stroy and lore, by making it so the start of the game is just a precursor to more interesting events which come to pass in future updates

[@WisteriaDrake]

The issues with Starfield's timeline is because it's just Fallout. Bethesda are such unimaginative morons that they literally can't make a new IP. You can just tell that at some point they were like, "Whoops, too much Fallout, let's throw some Skyrim in there!" because of the shouts. Starfield is literally Fallout + Skyrim IN SPAAAAAACE! ffs Todd, just retire already. No one cares about your dumb jacket.

[@gaiusfulmen]

This is a considerable improvement.

[@BADCompanySarge]

Glad you think so

[@kaelell4697]

we might as well just remake starfield at this point

[@PlayerJay425]

That’s what I hope modders can do because the game is so terrible story and gameplay wise that the only thing I could think to actually make me want to go back is a complete overhaul done by one of these mod teams that seeming do things better than Bethesda’s whole staff.

[@peterd9698]

Watch a bunch of starfield reviews made me wonder about modders just adding a lorefriendly settled solar system to Fallout 4. There were apparently battles on the moon before the big war, and hints that the real purpose of vaulttech was research for an interstellar ark, so there could have been small colonies isolated from earth for about 250 years. I think modders could handle this. Just have several FO4 sized maps representing interesting off-earth locations. Bases would be similar to vaults. One or two locations could be the unfinished arks. I can think of several ways of presenting interplanetary travel to the player that I think modders could handle.

[@BADCompanySarge]

That would be quite the big project to undertake

[@peterd9698]

@@BADCompanySarge could happen incrementally though. The starting point could be just a single new location and a teleport pad. It could even be completely empty, just “wtf, I’m on the moon!” Someone pointed out that Skyrim might have more diverse terrain elements though. Have you seen the “wanderers” Eric Wernquist short film? Had some good location ideas.

[@wyattbailey7620]

I think the somewhat workable reason that technology has stalled and that there are so few settlements is that an apocalypse level event happened with Earth dying. I imagine so much low of human life, industry, and infrastructure would set things back quite a bit.

[@BADCompanySarge]

I really wish there was more information, focus and consequences shown in-game for the destruction of Earth as we know it. It is such a huge event, and could have serious impact on things, but instead we get very little info on it within the game itself. It's really just limited to a single mission, and even then we don't get a lot of details as to the actual end of the planet itself

[@PlayerJay425]

With the advent of books and videos they wouldn’t have lost that much. The only real knowledge they should have lost was the tribal knowledge of how to survive on earth which would be basically useless now since it’s gone. There’s no good reason for the tech of the worlds to have stagnated the way it did. They more or less landed and haven’t done anything of note besides make mechs - and new bio weapons for 8+ generations

[@IanB3rry]

Bethesda has come to the point where they believe their “game formula” that really took off with Fallout 3 and Skyrim is what made it successful, where it’s like the supermutant orders from Fallout 4 “kill, loot, repeat”. Fallout 3 and Skyrim were revolutionary for the time, they were made at the right time and in a niche, beautifully crafted stories, great endless side content to get lost in, repeatable quests and good aesthetics and immersion. Every game afterwards, they began to sacrifice the story and “flavor” for an increasingly bland, cookie-cutter formula to just have lots of enemies to shoot, loot them for ammo, craft upgrades, endlessly repeat. The story now is just a poor excuse to move you to the next shooting gallery, less and less RPG mechanics, and over reliance on modders to fix their own games. It’s like a catch-22, where the corporate suits demand Bethesda make the game more casual with every entry to appeal to a wider audience, but if was the dedicated fans and amazing lore and worlds that got people enticed and buying the games in the first place who have been turning away from the games, and more and more these games are not really made for anyone (casual players or dedicated fanbase) if that makes any sense.

[@Hero_Of_Old]

They haven't really made that formula since though. They've slowly leaned more and more into quanity over quality. It wasn't the amount of endless quests we liked, it was the content itself.

[@Phoenixguyver]

Bethesda should hire Sarge as a story editor. Take their ideas and make them just work.

[@BADCompanySarge]

It would be great to get hired by them, and then promptly be fired when I demand the switch from the legendary system to uniques

[@Phoenixguyver]

​@BADCompanySarge they should listen to you on that as well. In a single player game with mod support making players grind for items is insulting. Give us guaranteed uniques from quests, or a few for purchase, not RNG bull

[@PlayerJay425]

@@BADCompanySargewhy not have both?

[@Hero_Of_Old]

I wish they went with a sci fantasy setting, not hard sci fi. Could have been so much more interesting.

[@BADCompanySarge]

I feel like the powers touch a little on the fantasy side, but everything else seems to be going for "realistic" sci-fi. Does kinda such, especially as some of my favourite RPGs take the sci-fantasy route (mainly thinking of Final Fantasy VIII and Chained Echoes) and it can be a real fun way to mix and match different styles and concepts

[@wolftaco5975]

Dam man you did some homework 😂

[@BADCompanySarge]

Had to make sure I knew what I was talking about

[@Phoenixguyver]

​@@BADCompanySargesarge is always prepared, unless it's a segue in the Pipcast.

[@GoalOrientedLifting]

if you make a new world/universe, you kinda want it to be open ended, cause it allows you discover and correct mistakes later on. and i think we see why AAA studios dont make new IPs. cause its not as easy as making a game in an established world. The low amount of people could be explained if the wars were absolutely devastating, but i cant recall it being that way in the lore. so its kinda confusing. it has flaws, and i expect a lot of it to be ironed out as DLCs drop. by the way, they dont have to have gigantic hiveworlds of 40k. if they just added modern birthrates into the lore it could easily explain the lack of people. however. the cities are still too small and too few. the game should also have ruins of major cities. theres only like 1

[@BADCompanySarge]

Hopefully the DLC will help cover some of the more obvious cracks in the lore. Part of the reason I went for the timeline as my first focus point was because it feels like it wouldn't really take all that much to make it make more sense.

[@mrmotchmaster]

Much ado about nothing.

[@downix]

We have people who are nursing resentment over wars that ended decades ago. That doesn't even make sense to me. This timeline handily addresses this, shortening the time to the "nostalgic" area. I really like this.

[@downix]

Random thoughts this morning: Make Neon established not for drugs, but for food production for the war. The discovery of the addictive nature of Chasmbass oil was done after the war; when Bayu's daddy/granddaddy had this giant fishing platform, but suddenly demand was no longer on a war footing.

[@BADCompanySarge]

Making it so that a lot of significant events happened within the lifetimes of characters in game is something I always like to see. Rather than it just being something to read about in history books, you can actually interact with the people who lived these events

[@GoalOrientedLifting]

there are people whos nursing resentment over wars fought 50 years ago, today.... the reason putin got diehard followers is cause he resolved the chaos 25 years ago.... there are so many things to complain about, but somehow yall find the worst examples

[@username1660]

Dude people are still upsetti spaghetti that the South lost the US Civil Car 150 years ago. There's a lot in Starfield that don't make sense but people holding on to grudges longer than they need to absolutely isn't on of them. ~30 years ago is recent enough to have happened within the majority of the population's lifetime.

[@downix]

@@username1660 There is a gap between "The Southern Honor must be upheld" and "My uncle died in that war!"

[@colinator6828]

bethesda should make this canon

[@BADCompanySarge]

I'd certainly be happy if they did

[@DaHALOSHOCK]

Bethesda Was good at world building, 16 years ago, not so much anymore.

[@BADCompanySarge]

I think both Fallout and the Elder Scrolls benefit a great deal from all the previous games, which each have built upon the lore. With Starfield they decided to make such a big game, with hundreds of years of history, but without any benefit of prior established lore

[@WisteriaDrake]

@@BADCompanySarge As a hobbyist writer, I can tell you straight that Bethesda is full of absolute morons. Give me 10 minutes, and I can craft an entire universe worth of lore. No joke, I do this all the time. It ain't that hard, they're just too lazy and obsessed with firing every staffer capable of having a thought. Don't try to defend them, they're a corporation that makes billions of dollars. If they feel threatened, they can hire lawyers.

[@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo]

​@@WisteriaDrake starfield's lore is such op canon, that it escapes many a pony

[@NeutralMilkFan]

Can you please make a fallout 2 build?

[@BADCompanySarge]

Might be worth checking this video out if you're after that sort of thing: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ameXgIBpbrOGnpY

[@habinations]

look at our own timeline with space.then the think about the video you just made... and um who made you the boss of this? seems like you shouldnt be imo.

[@RobotWithHumanHair.]

we aren't a society actively living in space for around three hundred years you fool also literally WHEN did he claim to be the boss of anything???

[@BADCompanySarge]

I did look at our own timeline, I even bring it up briefly in the video

[@WisteriaDrake]

In July 1955, the US government announced their plan to launch a man-made satellite into orbit. In response, one month later, the USSR announced the same. In August 1957 (2 years later), the USSR created the first ICBM. In October, they put Sputnik into orbit. One month later, they put the dog Laika into orbit. In 1958, the US put up the first solar-powered satellite. In January 1959, the USSR: sent a spacecraft outside of Earth's orbit, did a fly-by of the moon, and put a spacecraft in heliocentric orbit. In August of that year, the US took the first photo of Earth. A month later, the USSR crashed an unmanned vessel into the moon. In October, they photographed the dark side of the moon, developed the pictures in space, and returned the vessel to Earth. August 1960, the US recovered the first intact satellite from orbit, and the USSR recovered the first living animals from orbit. In 1961, the US sent the chimpanzee Ham into orbit, the USSR sent the first human into space, the US did the first pilot-controlled flight, the USSR did a fly-by of Venus, sent a multi-man crew into orbit, achieved ship-to-ship radio contact, and had the first human do a spacewalk. I'm not gonna get into the rest of the developments because there's so friggin many leading up to July 20 1969, when the US put the first humans on the moon (and this wasn't even the end of the space race). Now delete Earth from the equation, and humans are forced to focus exclusively on space travel, and tell me again how doing literally nothing for 200 years make sense?

[@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo]

The thing is, with what the nasa guy saw, this kind of future could be one such possibility. It's just going to suck his time