I made
these two
threads before remembering that this thread exists, oh well.
The conclusion of the outbreak of third world war in 1982 following the Warsaw Pact's pre-emptive strike in response to NATO's "Able Archer" exercise, which was seen from the Kremlin as NATO's preparation for their own recreation of "Operation Barbarossa", devoured earth in a nuclear firestorm. Descending into a over a decade long radioactive nuclear winter, during which majority of the world governments perished on their own or were conquered by the hurt but still functioning Soviet Army, whose doctrine had prepared it for a nuclear war unlike their opponents. Historians still argue whether the war ended after some of the surviving leadership of NATO members declared surrender, in January 1983, or when the last NATO military elements in Spain were destroyed in summer, 1989.
In one of the remaining "Closed Cities", one particular research complex near the shattered radioactive remains of the Ural mountain range. The research of the nuclear war's effects to atmosphere discovered some neutrons behaving erratically. Theories explaining this were created and shot down, testings followed and observations were made. Until weeks later, a startling conclusion was made; these "neutrons" were a completely new element, an element that defies laws of physics. Test samples could be accelerated to a fraction of a light-speed instantly. These new elements that defies everything the Newton had taught were fittingly named as "Trans-Newtonian" elements.
Unfortunately, this discovery could not be exploited until 24th of December, 2032. When the global situation had stabilized to the point that reconstruction and feeding the people didn't demand all of the available resources. "Molnya-O" Space rocket constructed almost completely out of trans-newtonian elements was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which carried a payload of a single "Kosmos" Geological surveillance satellite. Propelled by four powerful 3T94 solid-fuel rockets, the rocket reached it's destination, earth's moon, in mere minutes. While the Warsaw Pact's first space mission in decades failed to find any trans-newtonian elements on the moon, it's still regarded as the turning point when humanity had completed it's recovery from the war and began the unstoppable march of progress.
Since then, several space missions were launched, trans-newtonian mineral deposits were found on Mars, Venus and several asteroids. The following decades saw a lunar colony established, mars colonized and terraformed. This growth was stumped however, when the Duranium deposits on earth were exhaused and demand of it only grew. Only large sources were Venus and Titan, of which the former saw the launch of a terraforming program with several terraforming installations constructed on it's hostile surface.
After years of enormous effort and intense research into terraforming technologies, it was realized that it's colonization would be too cost-intensive to be justified in a hundred year, and in all quietness the Saturn's moon "Titan" had a gulag established to mine the desperately needed Duranium deposits it had. It took decades of tried and failed terraforming which only succeeded to remove the lethal methane gas from the atmosphere, but leaving the surface still lethally cold. By 2083 the environmental and life-support systems had been advanced enough to make Titan's "colony" sustainable to the point that less than 76% of the colony population could be directed to mining works rather than keeping themselves alive with environmental maintenance and hydroponics. However, despite the best of soviet technological sciences at the time, the colony could only sustain so many people before the needs of environmentals increased, thus cutting on the workforce available for the mines.
Fuel harvesters were constructed to improve the logistics of expanding a maintaining the colony, not to mention providing a refueling spot for the freighters coming and going.
With various breakthroughs in fields of mining technologies, gulag's annual duranium output peaking at little more than 3,000 million tons. To alleviate the situation, asteroid mining vessels were constructed and organized under new "Asteroid Mining Division" of the Bureau of Logistics and Colonization. Shortages prevented further construction efforts and these new asteroid miners while still helpful, couldn't increase the total duranium production together with the civilian mining sites to solve the chronic shortages. Mere 4,400~ million tons total a year would set the limit on the march of progress for the Soviet Union for almost a century.