The only hitch was that my Ironworks hammer city (Xian) turned out to be two tiles too far north to build the Space Elevator, so that had to go in Kyoto instead. Fortunately my capital spawned a Great Engineer to help with that.
Without further ado:
Space Race Victory in 1816 AD. I could have shaved off a couple turns by planning better - I prioritized Fusion second-to-last, before only Ecology, which was too late. The SS Engine is an expensive part at 1600 hammers without a resource doubler and turned out to be my bottleneck. The best path for the spaceship endgame techs is Fusion - Refrigeration - Genetics - Ecology. Then you have your #3 hammer producer start the 1600-hammer Engine early (while researching Refrigeration - Genetics), your #2 hammer producer the 1200-hammer Stasis Chamber (Genetics), and your #1 hammer producer start the 1000-hammer Life Support last at Ecology. Then all three should complete at the same time with the shortest critical path.
The following speaks for itself.
48094 game points, second in my hall of fame. Of course it's not legit to compare that to uncheated games, but it's still pretty good.
By the way, how far ahead was I exactly? Monty was tech leader among the AIs, and he lacked the following:
That adds up to a lead of exactly twenty technologies when I launched.
Well, what did I prove with this game, if anything? Well, I wanted the chance to try out Democracy from day one. Since Democracy is off the spaceship path, I never prioritize it until after the AIs get it. And by the time you get Emancipation, your cottages are fully grown anyway. And I usually stay with Representation for the extra happiness and beakers, instead of going to Universal Suffrage. Well, it turns out there's a good reason both of those civics are locked away in the late game: they really are that powerful. I wonder if a beeline to Democracy might be a good idea for typical race-to-space game plans?