RttS: Human History Lore (Patreon)

I've avoided developing deeplore for humanity's history, both because I don't feel terribly qualified to divine the fate of current political tensions and because of the overwhelming sense of dread it gives me to speculate about the future of the human race... but, unfortunately it is necessary for telling the tale. Runaway to the Stars is an alternate history with a recent divergence from our universe, here is a very brief rundown:

• 2000: humanity figures out fusion power. It's easier to do than in real life because (insert black box technology reasons)
• The first fusion powered spacecraft are built, dramatically cutting the time it takes to travel within the solar system
• Space colonization pushed forward by billionaires looking to escape (and/or distract from) the coming climate disaster
• First Luna colony
• First post-natal genetic and body modifications for humans that are not strictly medical
• First humans on Mars
• After a lot of legal litigation, the first GMHs start being made for low and microgravity work
• Lunar industry takes off, enabled by GMHs
• Martian colonization. The global north is now transparently about 3 corporations in a trenchcoat
• Martian terraforming begins.
• The global north starts to flee off earth to Mars. Luna remains mostly industry
• Jovian and outer planet colonization begins for hydrogen and asteroid mining
• At this point, most human populations have aesthetic and/or functional GMH genes floating around in their genepool. Gene therapy for microgravity tolerance is standard medical care off-earth.
• Media oversells Mars/Luna’s independence from earth
• Earth's equator is now largely uninhabitable. The climate wars begin.
• Surprise, the inner system colonies were highly dependent on the Earth supply chain
• Jovians actually fair the best of all the planets in the war because they were designed as independent work sites instead of being habitually parasitic of Earth’s global south
• War wraps up, Mars is splintered into several countries and is no longer dominated by capitalists. Luna is a GMH run colony.
• Jovian system declared independence during the climate wars, but in practice is more like a unionized group of work outposts financially tied to Mars
• Enter bug ferrets, who pop in and drop a wormhole station at Jupiter’s L2 point before humans can object
• First contact is between the ferret miners and spacebuilders who had no idea the system was inhabited, and the miners and spacebuilders living in the Jovian system. It's friendly but very chaotic
• Jovia is now sitting at the doorstop to the rest of the universe, and become massively more powerful as they begin trading with aliens
• A second wormhole station is established at Earth's L5 point
• Human expansion into the rest of the galaxy lead by Jovia, smaller independent space colonies, reproductively separate GMH populations, and Earth countries who missed out on grabbing territory in Earth's inner system

This is subject to me fiddling with it and expanding details (you can tell I am especially dreading going into details on the climate wars) but it's a stronger backbone than it was before.