2102: Zero Point Field Theory

Hugo Foscolo’s groundbreaking discoveries concerning Zero Point Field Theory result in the development of the reactionless displacement drive, which allows quick and cheap space travel within the Solar System. The first mission to Mars on a ship powered by the Foscolo RD drive takes a mere 17 days.

2107: The Colonisation of Mars

Initial construction is completed at Viking City, the first Martian civilian colony. The city is located in and around the Mie Crater, a large basin formed by asteroid or comet impact in Utopia Planitia. Initial population numbers 936. With a population fast approaching 10 billion, food riots in most countries and a biosphere contaminated by the burning of fossil fuels and use of dirty nuclear power (i.e. fission), the colonisation of the solar system is seen as the key to the eventual regeneration and uniting of Earth.

Advances in solar energy technology results in development in lower latitudes of the world. The Central African Bloc is established.

2110: Project Ceres

Hallidor Corporation presents Project Ceres to the United Earth Federation Space Agency - a bold plan for the colonisation and mining of the asteroid belt out beyond Mars. The plan is approved. Hallidor launches two prototype deep space mining craft, Rameses I and II, the same year.

2112: Evolution of Man

An article is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, offering proof of the existence of telepathy. The UEF establishes the Metasensory Administration Agency (MAA) from the Committee on Psychic Phenomenon (CPP), headed by Senator Paul Fox, to oversee the Telepath situation.

Research undertaken verifies the existence of Telepaths. This begins a major panic.

Hugo Foscolo dies ages 82.

2115: Flight of the Foscolo

Using a Foscolo Star Drive (F-Drive) powered by the rare element Ununpentium (Element 115, later dubbed Foscolium), the UEFSA spaceship Foscolo makes the first interstellar flight to Alpha Centauri by opening a portal into F-Space, traversing this region and emerging at pre-calculated coordinates. At a distance of 4.39 light years from Earth, the Foscolo makes the journey in just over one Earth week. After a week-long communications blackout, the first news from the Foscolo crew reports a successful F-Space journey, which deposited the ship at the edge of the Alpha Centauri A planetary system. After several days of realspace travel inbound to the system, the crew report the discovery of an Earth like planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A. This sparks the first wave of mass interstellar colonial expansion from Sol, now known as the First Exodus (2115 - 2135), as thousands of people seek to escape from the troubles on Earth to the new 'frontier'. Suddenly space exploration becomes a commercial industry, and several of Earth’s larger corporations begin to fund space exploration and colonisation efforts. As interstellar distances increase, cryosleep becomes a necessity of interstellar travel. Ununpentium mining becomes almost as big business as Helium-3 mining.

The early years of space exploration see a rapid increase in the power and influence of multinational Corporations (now referred to as Megacorps or Metacorps). They are not defined by country, society, or ideology. In industry, in business, and in the media, the multinationals become ever more powerful and more visible.

2118: The Jovian Project

The UEFSA Jovian Project establishes colony bases on the Jovian moons Callisto, Ganymede, Io and Europa. The primary objective of these bases is to serve as supply bases for a fleet of mobile mining platforms being constructed to mine Jupiter's Helium-rich upper atmosphere.

2127:

Early success in the Jovian mining operations and a large influx of migrants from Earth causes the colonies on Ganymede and Europa to expand much quicker than initially projected. Construction begins on what will eventually become the Hanging Cities of Europa.

2134: Development of the Fecundity 5 vaccine.

A scientific breakthrough by Zen Medical enables the repair of damage done by the Sterility Plague at a genetic level. With fertility restored, Earth suffers a minor population explosion.

2136: Territorial Disputes on Mars

During the early decades of the 22nd Century, land-grabs by competing megacorps on Mars lead to territorial disputes, the largest and most famous of which is now known as the Tharis Dispute. The Tharsis Dispute is sparked by an incident on the Tharsis Bulge, when fighting breaks out between corporate security teams from rival megacorps EnerTek Corp and Cheung Corp. Both corporations immediately begin hiring and transporting military assets to the red planet.

Worried that the violence will spread, the UEF sanctions the deployment of peacekeeping troops to Mars to act as a buffer between the two megacorps mining the Tharsis Bulge.

2140: The Colonial Act

The Viking Treaty of 2140, signed at the Mars Colony, brings an end to the fighting at Tau Ceti after almost 18 months of conflict. The breaking point for the UEF came when mercenaries in the employ of Cheung deploy tactical nuclear weapons against opposing EnerTek forces at Kow-Lang, resulting in the deaths of over a thousand civilian colonists unable to escape the war-zone. The security council sanctions the despatch of a UEAF taskforce to Tau Ceti, to protect the civilian population and to contain and stop the fighting. The peace accord is brokered by the UEF, and though neither of the protagonists is entirely satisfied with the outcome, prolonging a war that shows no sign of victory for either side is financially unacceptable. Anjuna is policed by a large and permanent UEAF garrison.

The end of the Tau Ceti War sees many unemployed mercenaries and mountains of military equipment disappear into the Outer Colonies. The conflict also shows that the UEF is simply not organised or equipped to police and govern the every growing number of colonies and shipping lanes out beyond the Core Systems.

The Colonial Act of 2140 places Earth's extrasolar colonies under the control of the newly formed Interstellar Colonial Authority (ICA). Each colony under UEF control has an ICA presence. On some of the newer colonies it is little more than a small Settlement Welfare Team office with a handful of representatives. On larger, more established colonies e.g those at Alpha Centauri, there is a large established ICA administrative presence. Larger colonies also sometimes have regional ICA headquarters.

Interstellar distances have to allow for a necessary devolution of certain powers to local leaders, which allows the elections of local officials by the colonial population. Despite this, the local ICA Administrator is able to dictate policy should he/she see fit. It is common practice for megacorporations with invested interests in a colony start up to have representatives on local councils.

The ICA is backed by the Colonial Security police force (ColSec), a new arm of the Federal Law Enforcement Authority. In addition to this new colonial police force, a new arm of the UEAF is created: the Interstellar Colonial Marine Corps (ICM). An Interstellar rapid deployment force, the ICM is designed to be able to mobilise quickly to resolve military disputes and keep the peace in the Colonies.

To regulate interstellar commercial shipping, the WTO is expanded and remodelled to form the Interstellar Trade Commission (ITC). All commercial flight crews must hold an ITC licence.

The Tau Ceti star system is absorbed into the Core Systems, over which the Federation continues to maintain direct control.

2147:

Break-up of Microsoft Corp by it’s CEO Tabitha Gates. The biggest company formed from the break-up is ‘Artificial Life Incorporated’. This company spearheads groundbreaking research into artificial intelligence.

2148: Last stand of the Butcher of Kow-Lang

The UEF succeed in tracking down Tiberius Lee, ex-commanding officer of mercenary unit the Star Tigers. Lee is held responsible for ordering the tactical nuclear strike during the Tau Ceti War that resulted in the deaths of almost 1200 civilian colonists at Kow-Lang on the planet Anjuna.

Lee is arrested after a fierce 10 hour battle with Colonial Marines at his fortified compound on Titleman’s Rest in the Ross 780 star system.

2164: First commercial use of android technology

AI Inc develops it’s first generation of commercially available androids - humanoid machines running the latest in intelligent software design. Androids are always programmed for non-combat roles, such as piloting, driving, tactical assistance, or medical staff. Their capabilities are deliberately limited by behavioural inhibitors based on Asimov’s famous 3 laws of robotics. Over the next decade, AI Inc sells licences to several corporations, allowing them to develop and produce their own models.

2168-2178: The Phobos Project

In the wake of similar projects on Earth nearing completion, and with the Second Exodus in full swing, the construction of a Martian space tether is seen as essential to the continued economic development of the Mars colony. A space tether would dramatically reduce the cost of moving stuff up and down the planet's gravity well. With the technology already tried and tested on the two Earth space tethers, a consortium of corporations involved in the Mars colonisation programme gain UEF backing to initiate the Phobos Project.

Building the Martian space tether would be a herculean engineering effort and a unique challenge – primarily because of the choice of the Martian moon Phobos as the tether anchorpoint. Until the construction of the tether Phobos was in a low orbit, intersecting the equator regularly (twice every orbital period of 11 h 6 min). It is decided early on that a collision between the elevator and the 22.2 km diameter moon would have to be avoided by moving the moon itself out of the area, and if they were going to move the moon, why not use it as the anchorpoint?

Within months of the project being greenlit, rockets and mass drivers are attached to Phobos, and begin firing. Slowly the moon's orbit is arrested and its orbital distance increased. Within eighteen months it arrives in a geo-stationary orbit over the Martian equator. Automated manufactories on the surface of the moon begin using the moon-rock to construct the bundles of carbon nanotubes that will become the tether. The caverns created by the tunnelling will later be pressurised and form part of the subterranean portion of the expanded John Carter Space Port.

It will be another eight years before the tether touches down at the base station atop Pavonis Mons on the surface of Mars. Anchorpoint, the town that grows up around the base station, quickly becomes a large transit facility and the second largest colonial settlement on the planet.

2197: Russian Civil War

The Aral Sea Conflict, coupled with the failure of the Russian potato and wheat lead to food riots in St. Petersburg. The Russian government declares that because of declining economic fortunes it cannot afford to pay it’s troops in the Volga-Ural regions and in the outer colonies. As a direct result of this action, General Poborski, leader of the Volga-Ural military, declares himself military governor of the region, with 70% of the armed forces under his command backing him. His first action is to block all tax revenues bound for Moscow, threatening the complete collapse of the fragile Russian economy.

Within days, government troops have clashed with the rebels, and fierce fighting is reported in and around the city of Yekatarinburg. By the end of the first week of fighting, with government forces gaining the upper hand, the civil war turns nuclear when General Poborski orders strikes against aerospace-bases surrounding Moscow. Five bases are destroyed using aerospace launched tactical nuclear missiles. Tens of thousands of people die in and around the bases.

Premier Zakharov immediately orders an escalation to strategic nuclear weapons. 14 STGBMs are fired from an orbiting spacecraft against rebel military targets inside the Volga-Urals. The death toll is estimated in excess of 250,000, with 80,000km² contaminated by radioactive fallout.

UEFSC meet in emergency session. A ceasefire holds, mainly because of the threat of a nuclear strike against Moscow itself by General Leonov, Russia’s Far East Region military commander. Elements of the UEAF EuroCorps and ChinaCorps land in Volga-Urals and in Moscow, as part of a stabilisation force to make sure the ceasefire holds.