Ares Program (Superpowers)

The Ares Program was a CCR (Conlegium Caelum Romanum) spaceflight endeavor that succeeded in establishing a Roman power base on the surface of the planet Mars. Founded as a counter to the Mayan Itzamna Program, Ares was started in 1960 once news of the Mayan space launch to Mars was reported. Though their rivals were met with failure, the Roman program managed to land a man on the Red Planet's surface by early July 1970.

As a far more ambitious program than its predecessor the Artemis Program, Ares hoped to immediately found a city and begin a rapid expansion across the planet's surface. The main advantage it had was that detailed plans were developed throughout the 60's in regards to the future of the project, and so each stage could rapidly go from one to the other with very little lag time in between.

Unlike a mission to the Moon, going to Mars came with problems that had never even been considered by humans before. These challenges included: long periods in the confined zero-gravity space ship, psychological trauma from isolation from Earth, and complete separation from Earth and its facilities. Whilst the Mayan program failed to completely account for these issues, the Romans had the perfect solution to the problem, an entirely unique vessel dubbed the Aeneas, the first fully functional interplanetary starship.

Itzamna Program
Started February 1957, the Itzamna Program was an extremely ambitious attempt by the Mayan Conglomerate to surpass the Romans in their decades long Culture War. Having already failed to colonize the Moon first, and falling behind Roman satellite technology, the Mayans believed that something which they believed required only extensive access to resources would put them on equal ground with the Romans. Unfortunately, the technical difficulties of traveling to another planet were far greater in number than they had originally anticipated, resulting in the total failure of the Itzamna flight.

The Itzamna's engine was its finest component. Utilizing controlled bursts from a fissionable fuel activated by a neutron laser, its engines were the most advanced piece of equipment built at the time, surpassing even anything that the Romans had built. The only defect inherent in this system was that the Mayans lacked the computational technology to properly control the mechanism, and if the neutron exposure was not carefully controlled, relative to the actual rate of fission of the material, it risked reaching critical mass and destroying the ship in a nuclear fireball. This fortunately did not happen.

What did go wrong however, was the life support system failed. This used a honeycomb like machine which contained a series of catalysts that could turn carbon dioxide back into oxygen, with the addition of perfectly distilled water. This last part was especially important as any impurities in the water would rapidly built up in the system and render it useless. It was exactly this issue with ended the mission and brought about the death of the entire crew. In both transport and storage of the water, minute amounts of their container flaked off into the water, slowly making it harder, eventually to the point that it overwhelmed the system.

Although another mission was planned for 1965, public opinion against the mission as well as lack of confidence from the engineering teams forced a complete cancellation of the program. With the Mayans now completely focused on the Moon, the Romans had free reign to travel to Mars on their own accord.

Aeneas
The Aeneas was the finest piece of engineering in all of history up to that point. Named after the legendary Trojan descendant of Romulus, the ship was seen as a beacon of a new era in Roman history, ushering in the glory of the Space Age. Though the program was not a driving force of the space age in itself, it was certainly a sign of things to come.

Construction started on the Mars Colonizer in December of 1967. Each component was to be built at different locations around the Empire and finally brought to the Space Elevator in Somalia to be transported to space for final assembly. In order to facilitate the final stage of construction, the Caelefactio was built. This structure was the first shipyard ever to be built in space, and still remains the largest facility of its kind.