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Space combat seems pointless to me. What exactly would they be fighting over? Presumably you want to reach space for resources, so asteroids, planets and moon
by ohyes 15y ago
Space combat seems pointless to me.
What exactly would they be fighting over?
Presumably you want to reach space for resources, so asteroids, planets and moons with minerals, stuff like that. You might also want planets/asteroids/moons that are 'good' for colonization (easily terra formed or already life sustaining).
You probably wouldn't see many fights where you are firing at the resource itself. No one with the money to fire at earth, will actually fire at earth, because it is more valuable as an inhabitable planet. If each side can obliterate whatever is being fought over, you basically have an instant MAD scenario.
Similar with moons/asteroids. I'm not going to fire a massive kinetic weapon at a moon or asteroid (and blow it to pieces) if my objective is obtain that object to profit from it. More likely I'll pay people very well to infiltrate and sabotage it, repeatedly. I wouldn't even bother trying to invade.
Why not an invasion force?
Well, you could send an invasion force, but that would be fairly pointless. It is easy to defend an entrenched position that your enemy does not want to shoot at (sabotaging just the defenses might be too obvious, and i think would have too high a possibility of failure). On top of this they can use massive force to repel you, and you cannot (you don't want to obliterate your objective). So an invasion fleet is probably not likely.
A far more likely scenario would be to simply drive your competitor out of business. If they keep getting sabotaged, it becomes unprofitable for them to operate (it becomes a 'cursed' outpost, wages go up, you have to make repairs). Then you can easily take their stuff (or buy it on the cheap when they are going out of business).
This gets you into interesting things, you would end up with extensive background and history checks, genetic tests to prove that you really are who you say you are, mental/psychological screening, mind-reading, brainwashing, complex hacking of the computers that do background checks, genetic 'doping' to make a person pass as someone else, brainwashing.
Your competitors will also likely try to assassinate you if they every figure out that you are the one ordering the destruction of their outposts (it should be easy to figure out, as there will be few entities with resources to profit from this).
- talmand 15y agoWhat if the goal is to eliminate the planet-side species? Plus I'm willing to bet you could obliterate the surface of the planet using kinetic weapons and still have plenty of resources left over.
- troels 15y agoWhy would that ever be a goal?
- dustingetz 15y agowe like trees, so we kill all the birds (etc) who live in the trees.
- jrockway 15y agoBecause people are irrational. Why did Hitler try to kill all the Jews? Because he felt like it and had the means to do something about it.
- absentbird 15y agoIt was for racial purity. At the time eugenics was a big deal, it stated that some genes which were exhibited as external traits were superior. Hitler was attempting to create a better world by performing artificial selection. As much as his ideas and methods were bonkers and would never work the fact that humans have stopped evolving naturally is something that some people still want to change. More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Development_and_execution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Development_and_e...
- onemoreact 15y agoPeople are still evolving. Evolution is adaption to existing conditions and is basically impossible to stop. In fact dispute billions of years of multicellular evolution the cells 'in your body' and given time will develop into cancer, then portable cancer inside your body, and given the right conditions portable cancer outside your body. PS: Humans closet genetic relative is a single celled organism whose species started from cultures of a woman's cancer cells. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa Tasmanian devils suffer from a similar disease of more natural oragin. http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/tasmanian-devil/ http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/tasman...
- dustingetz 15y agoi imagine each planet/unit of an inter-system civilization will not be self-sufficient. seige, baby. i think a study of earth's military tactics and goals will answer the questions raised by this post.
- atarian 15y agoYou should definitely play EVE Online. This is totally the kind of stuff that goes on in the major corporations that players set up.
- sliverstorm 15y agoYou can argue this over in your head a lot, but it's really quite simple in my mind. If we assume space travel becomes relatively easy (that is to say it is used for more than initial colonization) there will be interstellar commerce. If there is unprotected commerce, there will be pirates. Any time there are pirates, protection will develop. Let us call these peace-keepers the Navy. If you engage in commerce and you have a powerful Navy, you can influence or even control commerce. Do you see where I'm going? Most wars are about resources. Commerce is about resources. Anywhere you have commerce, you are liable to develop conflict.
- weavejester 15y agoI think you're looking at this with a 20th century viewpoint. There doesn't seem like there'd be a lot of physical matter that an advanced civilisation might want to pirate. Perhaps some form of exotic matter, like a black hole, might fit the bill, but that would be particularly hard to steal because everyone could see where you were taking it.
- sliverstorm 15y agoUntil you can fabricate matter in your MrFusion6000, material resources in some form or another will continue to be valuable. Once you CAN fabricate, Einstein tells us you will need a TON of energy to do so. So, even if that day comes, you will still need to acquire energy.
- weavejester 15y agoSure, but even today, raw material resources tend not to be the sort of things criminals target directly. You rarely get thieves trying to steal lumber, or iron ore, for example, because they have a low price-to-weight ratio.
- archgoon 15y agoI think you need to pay more attention. Lumber: http://www.northfulton.com/Articles-CRIME-c-2011-12-05-190412.114126-sub-Lumber-theft-thwarted-in-Alpharetta-neighborhood.html http://www.northfulton.com/Articles-CRIME-c-2011-12-05-19041... Iron: http://allafrica.com/stories/201112210073.html http://allafrica.com/stories/201112210073.html Steel: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11280/1180364-455.stm http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11280/1180364-455.stm Copper: http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/04/16/idUSLG73912 http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/04/16/idUSLG73912 http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/06/sheffield-copper-theft-national-rail http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/06/sheffield-cop... http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-06/copper-theft/2873346 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-06/copper-theft/2873346
- zeteo 15y agoPeople have been making the argument that war makes no economic sense, and therefore won't happen, since at least 1898: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Gotlib_Bloch#Research_and_analysis_of_modern_warfare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Gotlib_Bloch#Research_and_a... Sixteen years later, they had the first world war.
- wisty 15y agoIt didn't really make much sense, either. Nor the next one.
- stcredzero 15y agoYou probably wouldn't see many fights where you are firing at the resource itself. No, but if you can control travel to and from the resource, then you can park your forces there, and say, shut off the population's air supply. Better yet, threaten to do so, unless they all get onboard a shuttle. A far more likely scenario would be to simply drive your competitor out of business. If they keep getting sabotaged, it becomes unprofitable for them to operate (it becomes a 'cursed' outpost, wages go up, you have to make repairs). Then you can easily take their stuff (or buy it on the cheap when they are going out of business). Plenty of precedent for this tactic. It's been used by labor unions and informal groups of workers for nearly a couple of centuries now. Maybe someone can weaponize psychological disorders or sociological pathologies this way? It's harder to make a group work well together than it is to make a group that is dysfunctional. Maybe this is already happening?
- ohyes 15y agoNo, but if you can control travel to and from the resource, then you can park your forces there, and say, shut off the population's air supply. Better yet, threaten to do so, unless they all get onboard a shuttle. Sure, but the important part is perfect visibility. You and your opponent know exactly where each other are at all times. If you blockade, you will be a sitting duck for surface to ship weapons. You have to maintain a high velocity to avoid this. The alternative then is to intercept their transports, and even if you do that, you still have to refuel somewhere. (It seems like it might be better sending unmanned missiles to 'intercept' the transports anyway). And the refueling platform or space ship or missile platform will probably be a sitting duck at some point. Maybe someone can weaponize psychological disorders or sociological pathologies this way? It's harder to make a group work well together than it is to make a group that is dysfunctional. Maybe this is already happening? I think this is quite likely, you could even engineer people who are simply annoying and send them to cause trouble within in a small mining colony. For example, a person who chews loudly, has bad breath and terrible BO would put a huge strain on a group if you had to share sparse quarters and limited oxygen. Throw in a sociopath with a strong will to power and you've at least got an 8 part miniseries.
- vidarh 15y ago
- baddox 15y agoWhy are you always supposing that ships would be firing at valuable planets, then debunking that? Just extend the idea of a nation's airspace to a planet's "spacespace." Establishing space supremacy around a planet would obviously be a useful military tactic. You can stop extraplanetary supplies and commerce (think the blockade from Star Wars) and eventually take over a valuable planet by starving them out (assuming that the planet relies on space travel for a significant part of its economy, which is pretty much te assumption of this whole debate). That planet in turn will want its own space fleet to protect its spacespace. When the two forces meet, you have space battles. It seems simple to me.
- ohyes 15y agoWell, let's say I want to gather minerals from an asteroid. My primary defense would probably be to paste a big honking weapon on the asteroid and shoot anyone who wants to take over my valuable mining facility. If I put my defenses on something next to my planet, I'm an idiot. If he destroys my defenses, I want him to also have a high chance of destroying whatever he's attacking me for. So I build a big weapon as well as commensurate defenses. It isn't unimaginable that the destruction created by future weapons in order to penetrate future defenses would be immense. High velocity and mass will be the only way to do this... mostly in order to prevent deflection/destruction. You have accelerated a projectile to significant fraction of the speed of light in order to get it through the target's point defenses (think missile defense shield). Anything that can penetrate the missile defense system will have extreme destructive force, without needing a warhead. Generally the point of a blockade/siege is to starve out the opponent so that you can eventually take whatever they are squatting on. Your opponent has a big weapon that you don't want to shoot at (you aren't looking to destroy what you are fighting over). Your blockade would be a sitting duck unless you destroy the weapon, and you significantly reduce the value of the planet/asteroid if you destroy the weapon. In addition he also has perfect visibility due to the empty nature of space... he can see and shoot at you whenever he wants. If you intercept his transports, he shoots at you. If you stop to refuel, he shoots at you. If you start taking out his less valuable assets, he shoots at you. He can shoot your other assets too. Your space armada has to refuel at a fixed point in space... likely visible to his weapon. If there were a fight, it would likely be very short and involve both sides having their logistical assets completely annihilated... Which ultimately would defeat the purpose of attacking in the first place.