A/N - I don't own Quatermass, let alone The Expanse or Lost in Space.
Professor Bernard Quatermass was one of the first space travel pioneers in the 20th century; although authors like HG Wells and Jules Verne dreamt and envisioned of ways of getting into space, scientists and engineers were only truly able to experiment with rockets both before and after the Second World War. Thanks to working with a forward-thinking government, who had listened to Quatermass talk passionately about the prospects of exploring outer space, which he believed was essential for the human race's ultimate survival. Impressed by this and the potential benefits like new resources, the British government provided him with the base necessities and essentials for his future experiments, Professor Quatermass formed the British Rocket Group which made use of an old RAF base and began his experiments into rocket science.
They had many successes and many failures, but with each experiment came greater successes and knowledge was brought forward each day a rocket probe was sent up and returned to Earth in the form of data and photographs, which proved to be of great importance. However, the government were hounding him for results, expecting a moon base to be under construction soon enough or space stations or satellites. To hurry him along, the new government administration took the reigns of the whole British Rocket Group and put their research under more militaristic dogma.
Despite this and an incident in London, the details which are still scarce to discover, Professor Bernard Quatermass eventually put a three-man team of scientists into orbit around the Earth and added modules to the craft, building the first space station. The modules and the capsule were composed of an ultra high-tech alloy and the module idea had come from several of his scientists, who realised if they sent up just one vast mass, it would take so much space and cause so many delays and problems with the rocket formula to take the increased mass that it was impractical…unless it was broken up and sent up in segments and reassembled.
The idea took three years to complete with extra training laid on in deep water pools to simulate the low gravity and practice manoeuvres which had never once been attempted in the past. But when the Space Puzzle as the craft was called was put together, the newspapers and television and radio stations heralded it as a great achievement, and many called it a great step for humanity's space age. They didn't know of the British government's militaristic plans until it was too late as it was used as a military-science post.
But other countries took notice of the numerous projects.
America began recruiting Nazi scientists to begin their own rocket program. They willingly made a deal with the devil but they lacked the expertise and the experience needed to begin work on rockets. They did think about approaching Quatermass or one of his own scientists, but they were worried about causing a diplomatic incident. But thanks to the Nazi scientists, who were kept under a very tight leash so their fascistic propaganda wasn't spread, the Americans gained a lot of ground.
Other countries like Japan, China, Russia, France, Germany, and even Spain began experimenting with putting rockets out into space. The British had inspired a massive space race, and what some of those countries lacked in experience and expertise, they made up for with ingenuity and ideas which only helped to inspire other countries to begin experiments into atmospheres, new alloys and electronics.
Finally the British approached the Chinese, the Japanese, the Russians, and the Americans and the French with a proposition. For years, the ageing Professor Quatermass had been watching as so many countries joined in the space race, hearing about their successes and triumphs such as Japan's Pacific Module which was launched into space from an island in the Pacific and orbited the Earth for a week before returning to the planet, and America's work in putting satellites into orbit in the name of Landsat which began comprehensively mapping every square inch of the planet which only added to their knowledge, to Germany's space telescope which was a rocket which went out into a wider orbit, painstakingly photographing everything near Earth and scanning for different forms of radiation using high-tech sensors while other rockets took up specially prepared plants in modules and monitored to discover the extent of how low-gravity and enclosed environments affected life. With each new experiment, and every new result, humanity's knowledge of space improved and increased and Quatermass saw no reason why Britain, a world-leading space exploration country, should be left out despite their own contributions over the years, especially since their operation was extremely small and each new experiment they carried out was largely inspired by others. Some countries had military ambitions, but that was to be expected.
Quatermass worked for years tirelessly to get the British government to open a dialogue, a deal to join several countries and go to the moon and perhaps to Mars. The government didn't like it at first believing they would be losing their edge, but as time passed and more and more countries joined the race Britain's original rocket group inspired 6 aerospace companies who began experimenting with ways of creating an aircraft which could leave the atmosphere and go into space, and new administrations came into being, Quatermass was taken seriously especially when he told them of the benefits of going to the moon.
Britain joined with several of the leading countries in space exploration, and together they conceived of a fleet of nuclear-powered space planes which would travel to the moon. The countries joined together eagerly in the hopes of gaining new ideas, and eventually, the moon was explored and there were plans to settle it.
When Professor Quatermass died, he had no idea that his dreams of space exploration would be taken to such heights and it was a pity that he never saw the age of the Epstein drive, but he died happy knowing that humanity was going out into space and the moon was being fully explored and probes were being sent deeper and deeper to chart the solar system. Developed by the physicist Epstein, the fusion engine was the latest generation of its kind.
With the Epstein drive, explorers and later colonists travelled to Mars and even beyond. Ten years after Mars was colonised, a radical plan was put together, to design, build, and launch colonisation ships into deep space in the hopes of continuing the human race and exploring the rest of the galaxy.
They were never heard from again.