Great Recession

The Great Recession was a major economic crisis which affected much of Mutter's Spiral, including Earth, during the 23rd century.

The resulting economic difficulties coupled with technical issues surrounding the planned atmospheric ionisation technique led to the Martian terraforming project being cancelled. Although the plan was altered so as to create several artificial suns and place them in orbit around Mars, it never got off the drawing board due to the high financial cost involved. (BFA: Deimos)