Sat Oct 15, 2005 10:31 pm by Argh
At a guess... I'd say at least 3200. There's a lot of very vague history with very little in the way of date references that's mentioned in various places. For example, there was the war between the GMG and Rheinland, that seems to have resulted in a terrible defeat for Rheinland (and yet, the GMG is one of the lesser Powers, which makes very little sense, considering they control one of the most precious things in the FL universe- H-Fuel).
Liberty is very weak, militarily, because Rheinland and Kusari imposed a terrible peace treaty on them after they tried to fight a war without adequate H-Fuel supplies. Which is why all of their stuff sucks, apparantly.
And there are lots of other things, like the tales told by the Outcasts, which suggest that people have been in Sirius for a very long time.