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Moreover, staying confined here has not prevented us from forming nations and waging wars... With the added drawback that all our eggs are currently in the same

Moreover, staying confined here has not prevented us from forming nations and waging wars... With the added drawback that all our eggs are currently in the same planetary basket. I'm not even sure that "space wars" will be that common. War is expensive, even more so when you have to do it on top of space travel. I think that, without either some extreme commodification of space travel, or some insanely huge reward, space wars won't be a reasonable option in most cases.

JetSpiegel 8y ago
> I'm not even sure that "space wars" will be that common. War is expensive, even more so when you have to do it on top of space travel. Using the example from the article, if Earth considered "Gliese 581 d" Space Commies or something and sent an army NOW at c/4, we would get a message saying "We're here, will engage" in 2118. That's beyond the life expectancy of anything but a small percentage of people being born now. Using xkcd logic, it was like WW1 Germans deciding "We will invade Russia", send his Pickelhaube corps and when they get to Moscow its 1998 and the Soviet Union has collapse already. They would be using Gewehr 98, they would be slaughtered by a single T-34 out of a museum. News of 1998 Moscow (and pictures of McDonald's on Red Square) would arrive to Angela Merkel. 100 years is a damn long time.
MrLeap 8y ago
Could be cheaper to wage war from space under certain circumstances. Some earth bound city giving you lip? Put a little ion engine a telephone pole sized rod of tungsten. Bye bye city. Industrially, building such a weapon for a spacefaring society is quite a bit cheaper than the equivalent terrestrial solution (nukes most of the time).