This is officially a Mass Effect - For All Mankind Crossover. The FAM parts are not that important besides the timeline.
[This was originally not drafted with a For All Mankind crossover and I did not finish the conversion before I scrapped this draft, so there may be inconsistencies]
The Space Race: 1957-2057
In 1957 Sputnik became the first man-made satellite in space. This craft sparked a race that advanced human technology more than the Industrial Revolution. The race almost ended in 1969, but it rose to new heights instead. When man conquered orbit and reached for the moon, it looked farther and tried to conquer Earth's satellite and reach the dead red world that humanity had its eyes on for millennia. Each new milestone brought more advances in almost every field and a new milestone to reach. By 1969 a man was on the moon, by 1973, a base. By 1995 man had reached the red planet and made it their home.
By the hundredth anniversary of that small satellite that sparked the race, humanity had gone all over the system, as far out as Saturn and the corona of the sun. A space station was built in Sputnik's honor, a massive international construct a thousand thousand times larger than its namesake, and crewed by over a thousand people.
The race changed Earth as much as the system, a global civilization once at its zenith, soo reaching a slow decline until it would fall, began to rise to heights unimaginable before. While humanity's world was not perfect, there was still injustice and evil and rot, it was far better than it would have been.
In 1995, the first human was born in space. He would not be alone by his 62nd birthday as countless people were born in space, though, if possible, mothers were moved to Earth, or at least Earth gravity, for birth.
By the end of the Space Race the worldwide human life expectancy reached over a hundred, with it being higher in some nations, though the inequality in life expectancy for different countries and wealth levels was far less than in the 20th century.
Not all was good, tensions were on the rise for decades, while the first Cold War ended two years into the third millennium, the second began only 30 years later. While the second millennium can attest to the first armed spacecraft, the third saw the first true warships brought into the void.
The system was a powderkeg, waiting to blow, and Hellios brought the spark to set it off.
The Discovery:
[Originally, Helios discovered the ruins on mars for this draft, but the original discovery was when horizon discovered it like some other drafts, so I scrapped this section, planning to construct it in a different form, before abandoning the draft]
The Second Space Race: Those who first discovered eezo were the first to test its effects, NASA, its budget increased many times over, tested the element in a thousand different ways, learning all they could of eezo and its properties. Only two years after its discovery, the first prototypes for devices using eezo were created. Of these two were most important, an Ion Engine that increased the mass of its propellant, allowing for far higher speeds, more fuel efficiency, and making more types of fuel effective for Ion Engine use. Another was created in partnership with SpaceX, a Falcon 9, already under construction in 2015, heavily modified with an eezo core and far smaller fuel capacity, using the mass lowering ability of eezo to allow for a nearly five times increase in cargo capacity for a lower cost per launch.
The launch of this Falcon 9 in late 2017 began the Second Space Race.
Almost every major nation puts billions upon billions into space programs, trying to be the first and best at exploiting space and developing new technologies using eezo.
Things progressed rapidly: by 2020, NASA has launched several probes using the new engines and eezo drives, some going to near-earth asteroids, some to planets, and some going as far as the Relay. By 2027, almost all major nations have new rockets, and the first new Space Stations are completed, with more planned to come.
The space race and the race to advance the knowledge of eezo both led to massive advances. Life support technologies advanced more in the 2020s than in the 30 years before combined, and that is only a fraction of the advances made. By the start of the Years of Burning in 2027, single-stage-to-orbit vehicles with capacities 30 times that of the Falcon 9 and a far lower launch cost are in service. The first Kinetic Barrier is proposed in 2020 by NASA as a way to save mass on heat shielding by lowering the mass of the air hitting the craft. The project is hijacked by the military the second they learn the Barrier can be used against projectiles, though NASA gets it partially back after several other groups start working on the idea. By 2024 the first craft with rudimentary kinetic barriers are launched, and by 2027, almost 30% of spacecraft that have to do reentry have them.
The first ideas for eezo's use in science and engineering were formed before 2015 was out, and the first working results started being used before the decade turned. Materials interlaced with eezo wires used to lower the mass for transport and make it mass many times higher to increase inertia, cars lighter than air. When the gravitic properties of eezo were learned of, even more ideas were explored: hyperdense materials produced in hundreds or thousands of Gs, zero G materials without going into space, gravitic drives are created. Though they are no faster than an even equal size pre-eezo ion engine (still far slower than an eezo ion engine) and cost an order of magnitude more, the Gravitic Drive
The Years of Burning changed the uses of space and its commonality. If not for eezo, humanity most likely would have lost space during the war, funds redirected, or the organizations and countries funding space travel collapsing, wiping out any chance of its continued use. The massively lowered costs created by eezo and the
The 20 Years War: The discovery that man was not alone and the expansion into space could not delay the inevitable for long. On the centennial anniversary of the end of the last Great War between the nations of earth, the next began.
The war's first few months and years were as bloody as expected, nothing in near earth orbit lasted past the first few months and millions died in just the first year, but the war began to slow. Manpower could be replaced easily, equipment could not. The facilities that produced the most delicate components of the latest war machines rained down on the earth in pieces, the zero g manufacturing stations too easy and tempting targets to not be destroyed. Space was cut off to humanity by the debris in orbit.
Even those facilities on earth could not produce new equipment faster than it was destroyed, and if just one facility building a part of a tank or ship or fighter was destroyed, they could not be built. The unity of the worlds economy was its greatest weakness when it tried to rip itself apart.
The destruction of the world economy caused far more deaths than the battles of the war. People starved without food being delivered and harvests in those places that could produce their own food shrunken without new equipment and pesticides. A thousand trappings of civilization withered away as humanity fought.
Those few pieces of equipment remaining were deployed sparingly as battles were once again fought mostly by infantry, guns being far easier to come by and the production of humans never in question.
Many of the large nations who started the war never made it out, destroyed by rivals or civil war.
In the end, no one won the war, it just ended when everyone got tired of fighting a war no one could remember the reasons for. The war cost the lives of over a billion humans.
Wounds to the Earth: As the war went on, scorched earth tactics began to be used more often, many times literally. The breakdown of supply lines lead to scavenging becoming the main way to supply armies. This also lead to destroying anything that could be salvaged in a area before it was taken being common. Something that was also common to destroy anything in a enemy area that could be used to support the enemy war effort, including natural resources that forests and organic populations. Humanity burnt the world to the ground to kill itself, and it was good at it.
Aftermath: While the war cost humanity dearly, it was not its death nail, and so humanity began to rebuild.
The colonies managed to survive the war, practicality meaning they were mostly self sufficient in order to lower costs. They proved vital in removing the debris from earth's orbit, giving humanity access to space once more.
While there was a struggle, humanity began to fix and replace all that was destroyed during the war, even improve it. The world burning to the ground allowed for the old to be replaced without many problems, weather infrastructure, or ideas.
Humanity was still as divided as ever, hundreds of surviving nation, new states, Warlords and more ruled over humanity, but they came to a understanding. While they commonly hated each other, they all did not want another war, the folly of the last one still visible all around the world. A new UN was created to keep this new order stable, to settle disputes when possible, force an end to the fighting when not. It also worked on unified world projects to benefit everyone.
The damage the war felt began to heal, albeit slowly. The wounds brought upon the Earth over the Bloody Ascension did not heal in such a short time, in fact it would take centuries of work to bring it back to even close, but the world was healing, like its people and civilization.
Genetic Engineering and Augmentation: the enhancement of humanity using artificial means has existed for a long time, but it really began to blossom in the 20th and 21st centuries. For the 20th and early 21st centuries it was small things, artificial limbs had existed for a while but were expanded upon. Machines, like pacemakers were added to the human body to help it, while the idea of genetic engineering was toyed with.
It really began to develop in the years leading up to the war and during it. The first mass production artificial limb was introduced in the 2020s, allowing for missions who lacked limbs to regain them in a form. Direct Neural Interfaces became common during the 2030s, with the IPhone Omega being one of the most common. Human Genetic Engineering had been toyed with for a while, but only began showing up in any form of frequency in the late 2030s, though many were still weary of it and restrictions were in place. Drugs that enhanced human capabilities have existed for millennia, but militaries in the 2020s onwards began to use drug routines that enhanced soldier capabilities substantially and permanently.
The war led to a proliferation of augmentations on a massive scale. Damage done to soldiers and civilians was repaired with artificial replacements. When available, soldiers were implanted with DNIs to improve their coordination capabilities. Augmentation were an advantage, so they were used. The first biotic amps were created during the war to enhance the capabilities of the biotics that had been born since the discovery of eezo.
Many states created genetic engineering programs or even used eugenics to improve their populations. Most of these programs did not bear fruit during the war, though they did have an impact after.
After the war augmentations became extremely common, and genetic engineering became relatively standard. While genetic engineering was commonly done, fears that it would balkanized the human race led to limitations on the level of engineering accepted, though the amount that could be done was extensive.
Discovery of FTL: Atlas Corporation was one of the largest investors in space exploration, with a primary focus on the Belt and Mars. The company was privately owned by Jonathan Harper.
In 2090, one of Atlas's subsidiaries, Atlas Mining, was searching for a vein of minerals when it made one of the biggest discoveries in human history, a crashed alien spacecraft.
The vessel, a supply ship massing a few hundred thousand tons, contained technology centuries or millennia ahead of what humanity possessed at the time. Among these wondrous technologies was a FTL engine.
Atlas moved quickly, creating a base on top of the wreck, ostensibly a fusion engine production facility for another subsidiary, and began reverse engineering the technology. One by one the technologies were cracked, each new piece of technology bringing extreme amounts of wealth to Atlas, until they were discovered. A UN investigation team learned about the ship while investigating Atlas for not paying their taxes. Due to the fact that technically, there were no laws against Atlas hiding the ship, but the reveal of the ship would still do massive damage to Atlas's reputation and standing with the public, and deal was made. Atlas "discovered" the ship under their facility and "informed" the UN. The UN gave Atlas a fee for turning over the ship, and the investigation into Atlas's millions of dollars of unpaid taxes went away for a few years. The UN then took over research into the vessel, and began to reverse engineer the remaining technologies, including FTL.
In the early months of 2107, the first human made FTL capable vessel launched, and broke the rules of physics.
The Golden Age: 2107-2317
The Golden Age is commonly considered to be the highest point in human history, though whether that is true is hotly debated, and it is often fantasized about. An age of exploration, advancement, and expansion, an age when all the mysteries of the universe seemed within reach, an age where the future looked bright, an age where there were always more worlds to go to, more systems to explore.
Early exploration: When the FTL Drive was released for use, the first to use it was the relatively newly created United Nations Exploration Corp. The UNEC began to use FTL capable transports to create and supply outposts in the Outer System, once an extremely expensive endeavor that the still recovering Earth could not afford easily. The most notable of these Outposts was Jump Zero, an Outpost created to study the Charon Mass Relay.
But quickly the idea of interstellar exploration began to become appealing. But it was difficult, the FTL Drives required that their static charge be discharged into something or the vessel would be destroyed, and early drives were slow, able to go a bit over a light year before needing to discharge.
But with determination, nothing is impossible, and so the UNEC began to plan.
Over a hundred probes were created in the first three years, and they were all set to one goal, more would come in the following years. Between the stars these probes searched within their merger range for asteroids between systems to discharge at. It was a slow process, even with a hundred probes space is vast. Even so, the first corador was found between Sol and Alpha Centauri. One by one, corridors were found and systems connected, until, seven years into the project, a corridor to Tau Ceti was found, and something shocking was discovered.
First was that the second planet from Tau Ceti was a Tier 8.6 Garden World, the first Tier 8 found by humanity and a colossal find. But it was surpassed by what was orbiting the third planet, a Gas Giant only a bit smaller than Jupiter. Within the system, another Relay was found. This shocked humanity and brought new interest to the Charon Relay.
At Jump Zero a researcher tried to put in the coordinates of the newly discovered Relay. After a few tries to give the information in a way the Relay understood, the Relay turned in its direction. This inspired more attempts to get the Relay to operate and, after months, something else worked. A probe with its mass sent in molecules of hydrogen was propelled to the Tau Ceti System instantaneously.
This momentous event in human history would be recorded for centuries, and hopefully for millennia to come.
Early Interstellar Colonization: Traveling between solar systems was hard. Discharge Points were commonly very small compared to planets so discharging could take weeks or months for actual ships, making travel very time consuming, often taking months or even years.
Most early ships carried its passengers in Stasis Pods, another technology retrieved from the wreckage of the Prothean Vessel.
The only exception to this was Tau Ceti, which was directly connected to Sol. This and the Garden World within the system, lead to Tau Ceti holding the first human interstellar colony in 2116 on the Garden World New Earth.
The second and third colonized systems were Alpha Centauri (2124), due to its proximity to Sol, and Lacaille 9352 (2126) due to the Tier 8.3 Garden World named Demeter discovered when the system was surveyed in 2120.
New Earth would prove to be the largest colony of the Golden Age, with it surpassing the entire rest of the interstellar population combined at the turn of the century with 700 million people, and, while not having the majority of the interstellar human population anymore, could still boast the largest population of any colony at the end of the Golden Age with over four billion people.
In order to ensure there was no fighting because of the Relay, the UNSA was given authority over the Relay and any others that were found.
By the time Arcturus was surveyed, over five dozen systems had been surveyed, with a dozen having colonies.
Arcturus: Human exploration was relatively slow due to the nature of its FTL capabilities, so it took until 2149 for Arcturus to be surveyed.
When the survey was conducted, not one but five Relays were discovered. Two of them acted like the ones in Sol and Tau Ceti, but three of them were different. While the others could connect to any other Relay like it within its range, the three different Relays connected to only one other Relay each, but they were thousands of light years away.
The Primary Relays went to the Exodus Cluster, Flame Nebula, and the Mkali Pool. Colonization began almost immediately due to the ease of travel using the Relays and that fact that two of the Relay Systems, Asgard and Izanami, contained Tier 8 Garden Worlds.
The second generation FTL Drive: Early Golden Age exploration was affected even more by the creation of the second generation drive than the discovery of the Arcturus Relay Hub. The second gen drives, first introduced in 2157, had a far higher speed than even the fastest first gen drives, with even average second gen drive able to cross six light years before needing to discharge. This allowed for the number of discharge points to drop, the quality of discharge points to increase due to more options, and some systems becoming accessible to some others without the need for discharge points at all.
Not only did the higher speed allow for shorter travel times, the longer range allowed for ships to hop from close system to close system, meaning a ship could travel sometimes as far as over a dozen light years without needing a interstellar discharge point, greatly increasing the rate of exploration.
The Gen 2 drives and the discovery of the Arcturus Relays opened up many more systems to human expansion and allowed for faster colonization of existing systems.
Birth of the Arcturus Authority: With the relays becoming an important part of human civilization in the later half of the 22nd century, they became a vital resource that no one wanted anyone else to control. Incidents relating to the relays escalated through the 2150s and 60s until things reached ahead. In late February 2169, Ethiopia attempted to blockade the Asgard Relays to prevent the escape of a terrorist who nuked the capital of the Ethiopian colony of Ezana, searching every ship trying to leave the system so that she could not reach the majority of her powerbase at Earth. This caused problems with multiple other nations due to the slowdown, and in March 2169, a joint fleet led by Germany attempted to force the Ethiopian fleet to stop. The event continued for five days until March 11th when one of the German Cruisers fired on an Ethiopian vessel attempting to search another ship. The Battle of Asgard Alpha saw the destruction of seven military ships (totaling over two million tons of warships), and four civilian ships in the area, causing 2000 military and 3000 civilian deaths.
The event and several other, less bloody, incidents led to the creation of the Arcturus Authority as an independent organization by the UN in 2170 meant to control the Relays. The Authority was funded mostly by tolls on the Relays. The Authority was made independent of the UN due to the increasing politicization of the organization during the 22nd century, the first recognized political party being formed in 2118, with many more to come. The 20 Years War broke most of the largest nations into fragments, unable to create their own power blocks within the UN by influence alone.
The AA was not liked much but was considered a necessary evil to keep things running.
Golden Age Augmentation and Genetic Engineering: The Golden Age saw the enhancements of the 21st century brought to whole new levels. The colonization of new worlds saw an even larger amount of the human population altering itself. Many thought humanity was not one species anymore; every world had its own or even multiple variations created by genetic engineering; some could live in extreme gravity, others could survive in low-oxygen atmospheres, and others could even breathe water. Many people were individually altered in even more extreme ways, with abnormal skin colors, glowing eyes, and extra appendages; many people altered most of their bodies into things with less in common with humanity than many of Earth's creatures did.
The deep space voyagers: Some wished to travel far into the unknown, either to get away from humanity or to see places that have only been seen from afar or in stories by humanity. The first major deep space journey was the Jacobs Expadition in 2120, a quarter million man fleet sent over 400 light years to the Hyades Cluster. The capabilities of the day made the expedition extremely slow, making it only a few dozen light years before a courier delivered the schematics for more advanced FTL Drives in 2160, and they spent over a year upgrading their vessels. After that, it only took them a few more months of travel before the expedition reached the Hyades.
The expedition settled on the Tier 7.7 Garden World of Foothold in the Delta Tauri System. The settlement expanded and reached over a million people by the turn of the century. Even before the colony was fully set up, many of the ships were repurposed to explore the rest of the Hyades Cluster. In 2215 a Secondary Relay within the innermost asteroid belt of the Gamma Tauri System. This created a path to the rest of Human Space.
The Pieadies Cluster was first reached in the mid 23rd century, then it was heavily colonized like Hyades due to its high density of Star Systems.
From the mid-22nd century to the end of the Golden Age, and even into the Age of War, hundreds of individual ships and even whole fleets travel into deep space. Tens of millions of people leave Human Space for the great unknown. Some colonies formed by these fleets are found in ruins, destroyed by infighting or accidents. Others were contacted decades or centuries after they left. Some are never found, their fates unknown to humanity at large.
Relay Exploration:
The Great Diaspora: As more and more worlds became available for colonization, people moved from Earth in the billions. Earth's population declined every year between 2160 and 2243 as more people left than were born. The people leaving led to more space on Earth, meaning for the first time since the 20 Years War, people could afford large families and were heavily encouraged to by their governments, which they exploited merrily. Families with 4 to 6 children were common at this time period, but it was not enough to stop the population decline. From 2160 to 2243, Earth's population drops from 10 billion to 5 billion, cutting in half in a century. Earth's population only recovered in 2400, over a century and a half after the Diaspora.
Humanities Numbers: The human population as a whole skyrocketed. At the start of the Golden Age in 2107, the human population was only 8 billion, actually less than it was before the 20 Years War; in 2257, the population was 20 billion. Most of the population, around 18 billion people, were split between the big