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A short but brutal early conflict over Luna's southern polar deposits of Helium-3, sparked by an illegal occupation of corporate mining sites by the lunar surface forces of the Shanghai Cooperative Economic Regional Alignment (SCERA) bloc. It featured the first ever orbit to surface assault by infantry onto another celestial body when Marines of the United American Continental Federation assaulted SCERA occupied mining sites. It was also the first major space engagement in human history as the Lunar fleets of both SCERA and the UACF exchanged fire. The fighting concluded with a ceasefire and the evacuation of SCERA personnel from the Southern Lunar Polar Region. This would be the first of three major conflicts over Luna and it's resources during the 2100s.

A collaborative effort between private entities from both the UACF and EFEC, it is a modular compact fusion reactor design utilizing electromagnetic and gravitic containment and compression methods with direct thermoelectric and radio-electro power systems. It goes online successfully to serve as a central power plant at the Earth-Moon L1 Point. A high efficiency propulsion configuration is later tested in August of the same year. This lead in technological capability however is soon lapsed by less capable but still near copies provided by state and corporate espionage to the rival blocs.

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Dysomnia, the tiny body orbiting the dwarf planet Eris is discovered to be an extra-solar body, further examination finds a mineral not found anywhere else in the solar system. Upon testing it is found to have various miraculous properties including room temperature super conductivity. The expedition, being a consortium of different factions, sends samples to the various powers of the Solar System and more research is commissioned. The mineral is later named for the rock hopper who first extracted a sample, Callenite for Marvis Henry Callen, a citizen of the UACF's Jovian colonies.

An off and on conflict over the settlement and exploitation of Saturn’s largest moon. The petrochemicals that soak its surface and atmosphere are valuable for countless industrial applications throughout the solar system. As a result those that dwell within its gravity well have often found themselves at odds with one another, the conflict fanned by the larger entities to gain greater footholds on the cold moon’s surface. Either driven by an urge for finality or simply bluster, the larger corporate entities had taken a more direct hand in the more recent brush up of the conflict. Calling in more and more of their assets until finally the powers that be themselves stepped in, unwilling to stand down. Finally the war spilled beyond Titan’s and ultimately Saturn’s gravity well as official military forces became involved and began striking their opposite number’s assets and then finally industry.
In a world which is armed to its teeth with nuclear weapons, every quarrel or difference of opinion may lead to violence of a kind quite different from what is possible today. - Herman Kahn

The successful testing of a callenite based FTL drive.

It didn’t take things long to spiral, an errant guided weapon, a nuclear warhead too close to a habitat. Accidents leading to escalation leading to more targets being hit as nearly a century of military industrial progress and lethality was expended against the targets it was created to destroy. From Mercury to Pluto infrastructure was hit, habitats and cities destroyed by atomic, kinetic, or even chemical attacks. Even Earth wasn’t spared, its surface ravaged by nuclear and kinetic bombardment, the final nail for its biosphere being a redirected resource satellite impacting mainland Asia. In all it would take a month for the strikes and counterstrikes to conclude, arsenals expended or destroyed, or simply abandoned in case a counterstroke was on the way. Those minding them realizing the war was already over.

Of the thirty billion that inhabited the solar system in the previous year only twelve million remain alive, most were killed either directly by strikes or by the consequence of living in the artificial environment of space and terrestrial habitats as life support systems failed or consumable resources stopped arriving. Earth by now nothing more than a brown and gray marble as it entered a new ice age brought on by man. Those that remained gathered wherever there was fuel, air, or resources to survive. One of those places was the remote FTL research facility, who on the eve of the war had a breakthrough and tested their first prototype drive. Still slow by the scheme of galactic distances it nonetheless gave humanity a bridge to the stars when they most needed it.

Hello. Is anybody there? Anybody at all? - Joe Huxley, The Day After