After a chain of events in an insignificant parallel universe had caused a long time freeze in the real Auororaverse, the Second Foundation found it very hard to force its immersion back into the 1.11th Republic. So, it decided to move on to the 1.12th dimension... where it promptly found itself on an Earth where the US and its allies had "won" WWIII in the late 20th century, only to be eventually swept away by a global communist revolutionary wave in the post-apocalyptic chaos. After a drawn-out recovery from nuclear devastation, united, and fledglingly "trans-Newtonian" humanity in the 23rd century was under the rule of a Solar Soviet whose planned economy had managed to set off a serious Duranium shortage before founding any exoplanetary colony.
[Conventional start, moderately reduced research, survey and terraforming speeds, plus: a rather prohibitive gravity tolerance of >0.4g which means that it took a while to find any halfway decent place to colonize; Venus is inhabited as the only non-LG rock in the solar system besides the third planet; Boronide has become the next scarcest thing after duranium as LG infrastructure was initially needed for everything else.]
Following a solar perestroika under pressure from the first colonies, especially Io (100% Energy research bonus!), the subsequent lifting of all restrictions on private enterprise, and three decades of nuclear-pulse-ingly slow expansion to far-away places, the mineral crisis seems to have come under fragile control. But now, in the advanced ion age, enemies pop up on several fronts to blow up our audacious explorers: We just finished construction on the exploration pocket cruiser 'Curiosity'. It is already the fourth ship of that, by now: ill-omened name, but the Central Committee stubbornly insists that the vanguard and pride of the survey fleet accurately reflects humanity's (or its own) insatiable desire to explore the galaxy ever further. Curiosity can be dangerous in more than one way: In several systems, including Luyten's Star, Sol's gateway to half the galaxy, spatial rifts of an unknown nature have opened...