Star Wars

The weaponization of space is basically inevitable. It's happened with every environment Man has settled in...the land, the sea, the air. The area of space we can exploit is limited. Naturally, there are going to be wars in space. Mark my words...as soon as space travel becomes commonplace and we depend on space for resources...it's going to be a situation quite similar to the Age of Discovery. Lotta fighting going on in the New World after a while. But in this case, read "translunar space" for New World. What is beyond me is how it's going to be fought, and what kind of weapons systems are going to be used. I wouldn't be surprised if currently, there is a very highly black space weapons system in operation on a test basis.

i agree it's basically inevitable, but you have the wrong basic reasons. we have effectively infinite space to exploit in space, but resources are limited, though not much. i think that as we expand we'll find rarer and more valuable resources than we can imagine now and those, as well as habitable worlds (if we can manage to have fast enough travel to make it worthwhile), are what our wars will be fought over. and also you can't forget the chance of a hostile alien nation to fight too, which may be unlikely, but is still certainly possible given the sheer size of space. personally i think the chance of a black weapons program is slim to none, given the lack of special interest in manned flight. after all, why fight if you're not up there in the first place.

I Agree the weaponization of space is inevitable. It's all good and gravy to get the UN to implement rules of space weaponization, but we all know how well the military respond to rules;Iran contra, Bay of Pigs, Iraqi freedom....

The underlying reasons for war are the issues the world should be concentrating on. I recomend looking into the World Game Institute

http://www.worldgame.org/

They have possibly the worlds largest data bank of information of resources and statistics.

Using 1/4 of the worlds military budget (1 trillion dollars) we could end hunger, provide shelter, (using efficient building techniques and concepts) eliminate illeteracy, retire developing nations debts, provide safe clean water, stop global warming, stabilize the population, stop Ozone depletion, stop deforrestation, provide world-wide universal healthcare, prevent soil errosion, and stop acid rain after twenty years (ten years for most, dropping the subsequent budgettary needs)

One simple thing could completely change life in America. Legalize Industrial hemp. Hemp seeds are the most nutritous food found on earth. Seeds provide all twenty amino acids needed for cellular protein synthesis. It also provides raw vegetable oils that should be the basis for a healthy diet according to new studies into a correct food pyramid, without the biases of the agricultural industries.

Not to mention that all of our nations Petrolium needs could be replaced by hemp biomass energy using only 6% of our nations landmass. Would we have had to stir up the middle eastern wasps nest if Rockefeller(Standard Oil) and Rothschild(Shell) hadn't driven the nations pyrolytic biomass industry in to the ground with cheap(at that time) fossil fuels.

The only pyrolitic product that survived was the charcoal briquette. just because coal tastes nasty.

How quick would we go to war if the world had shelter for all of it's inhabitants, healthcare, Energy, and food for everyone?

The fact is war is just one of the many institutions to leach profits into the hands of the few.

Keep the people broke and occupied in the persuit of life gains and they won't pay attention to what's behind the curtain.

Thanx for the props spacecowboy

RBFFFF

Sorry about the long winded answer, but it's a complex issue. If you don't thin oil and war are intwined check out this graph.

http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif

BTW If anyone thinks cannabis shouldn't be legalized, bring it on. Just go to my cloud nine thread so we wont have to clutter this thread when I give you a logical bitchslap.[/u]

The military gave us the V2 and the ICBM. The ICBM gave us manned space flight.

There have been no space achievments so far outside of military interest.

Luckily we now have a multi-nation space race. It may go bloody but when the dust settles, humanity will span half a dozen planets.

The sad thing is that that half a dozen planets may not include earth if a space war breaks out.

Too true, mon ami, too true.

if we ever learn to teleport, then we will be off the earth with vacation spots. Literally.


Teleportation is not coming anytime soon, so I dont think we should get carried away with locations for teleport stations yet. But space travel for every one should come somethime soon.

Teleportation has an extremely limited range. Don't you watch Star Trek™

Whats a battle look like at orbital velocities?

Also with lowered space access costs it may make piracy quite attractive. You could pluck a spy satellite right out of orbit and sell the technology. You could take a spacestation full of researchers hostage.

The best part is no one has any jurisdiction in space, except possibly the U.N. and the U.N. has no police force.

teleportation != transporters, 'real' teleprotation envolves the entanglement of particles as a means of sending information. probably if we ever get far enough to teleport humans, that will mean sending via entangled pairs, the exact atomic configuration of your body at a point in time and then assembling it somewhere else, which might not even work. of course, there may be an easier way but if so it involves physics no one knows now.

as to the latter two questions, a battle at escape velocity+ would be very fast, and piracy would be attractive, but pretty soon everyone would start having defensive weaponry on their ships/satellites. in other words saying 'sure you can kill me, but if you do you're dead.' also, governments would soon set up a method of patrol to curb it.

Thats the important bit. The legal stuff gets a bit murky. Yes I have been reading http://www.spacemoot.org

Booby trapped satellites... or equipped with self-destruct bits could really put a dent in a would be thiefs day.

Hmm. For a weapons system, I have some idea...Probably a deriative of the old X-20 Dyna-Soar, which, in my opinion, is far superior to the Space Shuttle, at least in terms of flexibility, safety, and cost-effectiveness. Perhaps a NERVA-powered variant?

with space travel being privatized, it will only be a matter of time when many more will be able to fly in space. It is possible that star wars may occur amongst us humans, but what if there are other alien lifeforms that have far more advanced space aircrafts, weapons and technology. Time will tell.