Luna: Earth II

Nuwathi, 4.6 neltew vineths mintu. Earth, 4.6 billion years ago.

4.6 billion years ago, our planet was impacted with a Mars-sized object that helped create the moon. The first main POD was that instead of the Moon's core being a mere 480 kilometers in diameter, it is 960 kilometers in diameter. With a larger core came stronger gravity, and it didn't take long for its own magnetic field to kick in. This was a great help to hold off deadly solar radiation, it was only a matter of time before millions of asteroids and comets carrying water droplets and microscopic life was brought along. It was as if the Moon was copying the Earth's creation story. This is Luna: Earth II.

Early History
4.6 billions years ago, when the Earth was just a young molten planet, a planet the size of Mars called Theia, (derived from the mythical Greek titan Theia, who gave birth to the Moon goddess Selene) impacted the Earth with enough force to let billions of tonnes of debris into orbit around the Earth. This formed a large ring around the Earth, and after thousands of years, gravity let the debris collect into a ball of rock, what the ATL calls Luna, or less often The Moon. Luna used to rotate around the Earth like the Earth rotates around the Sun, but because of the Earth's force on the moon, friction was created which slowed Luna's rotation down until it reached the state it is in now, where it always faces one side towards the Earth (the Near Side). This would cause problems later on for live to thrive on the other side when the far side of the moon didn't face the sun for 14 days, where temperatures would reach freezing points.

First Creation of Life
Over the course of millions of years, millions of comets and meteors bombarded the Earth along with Luna. All of these meteors and comets contained trace amounts of water, that after millions of years, added up to create lakes and oceans. But all of these lakes and oceans wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the magnetic field. In our universe the magnetic field doesn't stretch far enough to surround the Moon, but here it does. But water wasn't the only thing these meteors brought along. Minerals and amino acids were brought along too, and once the pools of water were created, they didn't crash onto the Earth's and Luna's solid surface, they landed hundreds of meters in the ocean.

These amino acids soon created microscopic life. They thrived underneath the cool temperatures hundreds of feet where the harsh sunlight wouldn't reach. While this bacteria was forming, stromatolites were also forming. These stromatolites were the same stromatolites that harboured Earth's microscopic plant life that used photosynthesis for nutrition, making oxygen as a byproduct. After millions of years, life started to thrive in the oceans of Earth as well as Luna. It seemed as if Luna was copying the Earth, except for Earth's many ice ages. Luna was evolving much faster than the Earth while the Earth was preoccupied. When the Earth was finally free of all the ice, Luna already had enough oxygen to create an ozone layer (this was because there was less amount of oxygen needed to surround the Moon.) This meant that life on Luna could evolve from the ocean to the surface, while Earth's life was only in the ocean. The major difference between life on Earth and life on Luna was gravity. If the animal species were too small, they would have a harder time walking on the surface without being too lightweight. Evolution made it so that the structure of animals and, eventually "lunans," would have enough mass to be able to walk and crawl on the surface.

The All-Knowing Lunans

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Unlike humans, the intelligent species which Earth calls "lunans" didn't evolve from primates, and there isn't just one type of lunan. Earth's classification of these two intelligent species are Lunan Type-A and Lunan Type-B. Both have similar bodies except for a few features and histories. They both average 11 ft. 2 inches in height (to cope with the gravity 1/3 that of Earth's) but the Lunan Type-Bs have different skin types (As have blue, black and white while Bs have blue, black and orange.) Lunan Type-Bs have different ears that are pointier for better hearing and reproduce differently. Instead of reproductive organs they have reproductive tails instead. The two tails are placed into each other and the fluids travel to the appropriate places for childbirth. The tails can be easily moved to the side or under the legs for easier sexual access. But the tail isn't always used for sexual reproduction. If the tail wraps around each other while not going through each other, the neural pathways in the brain can be linked up to send information through two lunans. This can then be used for three, four, five, or even a whole tribe of lunans to share information. Using this way of life, Lunan Type-B's advanced far more faster than Lunan Type-A's and even humans.

Lunan Type-As formed on the near side of the moon, while the Lunan Type-Bs formed on the far side of the moon. If the Type-Bs choose to live on the far side when the sun is not facing them, extra skin grows to keep them warm in the coldest conditions, which they then shed when the Sun faces them for the next 14 days. If they choose not to, many migrate to the near side for the 14 days or sometimes for life.

The First Tribes, Countries, Wars and Advanced Technology

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It is not known when the first tribe started. It is assumed that about 500 years ago when Lunan Type-As started thriving, many stuck together sharing what little knowledge they had. Together they had created a primitive language, and called themselves "Walkula," which rougly translates into the "Star Tribe," that lived on a small island in the Ocean of Life. They had also made their own religion, the only one in Lunar history. Their religion was similar to that of Christianity, except that each lunan male were all descendants of God and they implant their seed to fulfill their reason for being placed on Luna. They also believed the rest of Luna should be "implanted with their godly seed," so the men soon started exploring new lands after they noticed tree bark could be used to create boats.

After many years they finally found the continent Sciens, Latin for "knowing." They met with the Lunan Type-Bs and thought they were trying to kill them (who were really trying to communicate, but Lunar Type-B's language, "hello" meant "death,") so they had a war using what little weapons they had available. What little of the Lunan Type-Bs were left went to their hometribe on the far side of the moon when the sun was available and told them about the different life they witnessed and were almost killed by. The tribe migrated to meet with the different lunans and made first contact with the different life. The two merged into one country, called "Wilemuden," or "First Tribe," which was technically considered a country, and merged their languages to create the official language of Luna, Nuwathiki. While this was happening, other tribes were growing larger and larger until they were considered other countries. Throughout the course of 50 Earth years their world was fully discovered, mapped and colonized, with 12 known countries, each with similar governments.

Through the course of their history, the Lunans have had many theories about who they are, where they are, why they are there, how they got there, etc. Early books and tales have said that tribes believed that by looking at the Earth for 28 days, seeing new land masses every day, there was no way that Luna was flat if it was rotating around a spherical body. Scientific advances came easily to Lunan Type-Bs with brains two times larger than humans. And with the accessibility for the Type-Bs to share information neurally, it didn't take long for scientific formulas, theories and feats were accomplished easily.

Around 1600 AD, lunans figured out their ways of life could be much easier and more sophisticated. Lunans stopped living in tree huts when they discovered they could create cement using crushed rocks, and homes were made from that instead. They soon realized that left over iron meteorites that could easily be melted and turned into metal, which helped make buildings and improve housing. Ships were then made of metal instead of bark. The fuel for this started with fossil fuels, but the change in climate made the lunans realize it was killing their world. Around 1500 AD, they had discovered a powerful superconductor that came from several thousand meteors during the Great Meteor Shower, which made it easy for ships to float in the air and not just the sea. These ships could float up to 2 meters above sea level.

Early Findings
Primates had fully evolved into humans about 70,000 years ago in Africa and migrated for hundreds of years. It is unknown who was the first human to actually see Luna, and it was visible in the night sky, but it looked different from OTL. Instead of the white-grey moon we see everyday, they see a small blue and green ball in the sky, that sometimes couldn't be visible at night unless the light was reflecting in the water. Many Asian and European astronomers thought Luna was another planet that harbored life like the Earth. But ancient Babylonian astronomers realized that it couldn't be a planet if it was rotating around the Earth every 28 days.

In the 2nd century BC, Seleucus of Seleucia theorized that tides were due to the attraction of the Moon, and that their height depends on the Moon's position relative to the Sun. He also predicted that if the Moon had water that humans could faintly see, the Moon's tides were probably affected, too. Since the Earth's gravity is stronger than Luna's, the water tides are stronger and higher than they should be. Before the invention of the telescope, the Moon was increasingly recognised as a sphere, though many believed that it was "perfectly smooth," some believing it had water and few believing it was just an illusion, possibly Earth's water reflecting on the Moon.

In 1609, drew one of the first telescopic drawings of the Moon in his book Sidereus Nuncius and noted that it was not smooth but had mountains and craters (though not as many in OTL; most major meteors that make up most of the craters burned up in the Lunar atmosphere,) and it did in fact have water and land. Telescopic mapping of the Moon followed: later in the 17th century, the efforts of Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi led to the system of naming of lunar features in use today, though many were renamed after the First Contact. The more exact 1834-6 Mappa Selenographica of Wilhelm Beer and Johann Heinrich Mädler, and their associated 1837 book Der Mond, the first trigonometrically accurate study of lunar features, included the heights of more than a thousand mountains, and introduced the study of the Moon at accuracies possible in earthly geography. Lunar craters, first noted by Galileo, were thought to be volcanic until the 1870s proposal of Richard Proctor that they were formed by meteor collisions. This view gained support in 1892 from the experimentation of geologist Grove Karl Gilbert, and from comparative studies from 1920 to the 1940s, leading to the development of lunar stratigraphy, which by the 1950s was becoming a new and growing branch of astrogeology.

First Direct Explorations
Exploration of the Moon was always an interest for the world to explore the New World, but it had never been started until the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Once launchers had the necessary capabilities, these nations sent unmanned probes on both flyby and impact missions. Spacecraft from the Soviet Union's Luna program were the first to send three unnamed, failed missions in 1958, all which resulted in landing in the Moon's water. Thinking that this would happen to manned missions, they stuck to man-made objects instead. The first man-made object to escape Earth's gravity and pass near the Moon was Luna 1; the first man-made object to impact the lunar surface was Luna 2 which was destroyed on impact, and the first photographs of the far side of the Moon were made by Luna 3, all in 1959.

Then came the Apollo program, the United States spaceflight effort which landed the first humans on Earth's Moon. It was first conceived during the Eisenhower administration and conducted by NASA, Apollo began in earnest after President 1961 address to Congress declaring his belief in a national goal of "landing a man on the Moon" by the end of the decade and "possibly meeting with new forms of life" in the Space Race.

After learning about the four consecutive probe failures, NASA decided not to try to land on the Moon yet. Instead their first goal was for astronauts to remain in Lunar orbit, noting everything they see. This goal was accomplished on August 9th, 1965, and they took various pictures of the water on Luna and the land. There was even evidence of animals, but no intelligent life was seen from their altitude. After the success of the orbit, JFK decided it was time to try to send humans to the moon.

First Contact
Main article:  On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 was approaching the Moon. As the crew got closer and closer, they noticed more of the oceans and the land, and they and the 600 million people watching from home realized the Moon and Earth looked almost identical. The spacecraft safely landed on Luna at 20:17:40 UTC. Instead of landing in the Sea of Tranquility, they landed near the coast of the continent, not wanting to risk something going wrong and the crew drowning in the water. Once they got closer and closer to the landing site they noticed the various species thriving on the Lunar surface. They narrowly avoided landing on a family of wild "Kertunis," a species similar to panda bears. They walked out of the module and it was Neil Armstrong that was the first human to ever step on the Lunar surface. He knelt down to get a better look at the surface, covered with grass and moss, and uttered the famous line, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" six hours after landing. The astronauts had walked around the surface, discovering how its low gravity made it easier to get around. They had taken dozens of samples and rocks covered with algae and moss with possible traces of life and even taking insects that were never seen before on Earth, too.

They had walked towards the edge of the surface and planted the U.S. flag on the Lunar surface, this time having the flag waving in the breeze. had continued to walk with the camera until they found themselves at a cliff. "The view was breathtaking," Buzz Aldrin said later in an interview. "We were staring down the cliff thinking we would see a large forest, plant and animal life, and all we see are buildings! Actual buildings obviously made by actual people." Armstrong was skeptical at first, then he wondered if the atmosphere was breathable. It was then that Richard Nixon called them on a telephone-radio transmission, congratulating them on their discovery, hoping they would come back safely. Once this was done, Aldrin decided to take his spacesuit off. "There was a 50/50 chance I would survive. I had heard that there was oxygen if there was water, and I just wanted to be sure. So I took it off and I instantly felt weightless. It was like I was floating. It was just so amazing."

Armstrong stood speechless, watching Aldrin taking several deep breaths of air. He had smiled at the camera and said, "We found it, everyone, we found Earth's sequel; Earth II." Armstrong decided to keep his spacesuit on, just in case something went wrong, but Aldrin kept his off and touched the grass with his bare hands. Aldrin suggested that the crew should check out the various buildings in the distance, but Armstrong didn't want to interfere with the possibility of intelligent life. They continued taking samples of plants, minerals, and even vegetation found, suggested by NASA, just in case the crew ever stays for a long-term period of time, they could use a food supply on the Moon. The continued to do this for a few hours until it was time to head back to Earth, but not before Aldrin saluted the flag.

Current and Future Missions