Warfare in Space, Part 3

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,


   This is the third and final in my series on space warfare.  It has been an exciting ride, between conventional warfare in space and inertia-negated warfare, but it's time to bring it to a close with my third and final assumption, one that occurs in many of the time streams I study:


One or both of the belligerents have invented a means of traveling faster than the speed of light.

  I do not mean a vehicle that moves between points A and B while passing all the points in between, because that's going to be lead to all kinds of causality violations.  Rather, I am talking about devices that utilize either teleportation or wormholes to transfer a craft between one point in space and another in faster time than it would take for light to travel between those two points.  Ideally, the transfer would be instant.

   So, how does that affect warfare in space?

Warfare in Space, Part 2

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

  I have taken it upon myself to write a short series on warfare in space, given some attention that topic's gotten lately around the Internet.  The first in this series dealt with warfare using technology contemporaneous to you, and this second piece will operate under a different assumption.  The third, and final post in the series, will show up later in the week.

   Let's take the technology a little further into the imagination in this post.  Last time, we were bounded by the nasty problem of inertia.  Objects in motion prefer to stay that way, in the same direction, and that ruled out the kind of combat that is seen in movies like Star Wars.

   But what if you could eliminate inertia?  Would that mean we start to see X-wings that swoop down over vast battleships?  Today's assumption: A device has been invented that allows you to negate the inertia of a space vehicle.   You'd be surprised what that assumption does for the overall layout of the space battlefield.

Warfare in Space

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

   I think that in the future, the direction of this blog will be less oriented towards provision of primary sources, and more to the discussion of relevant topics in futurism, alternate realities (to yours), and alternate histories.

   That's not to say that I will stop sharing my research with you, but in this format I can share more possibilities with you at once, freed from the restrictions of a primary source.

   Therefore, today I want to discuss how warfare will change when the primary arena of combat changes to be outer space.  There are a variety of different options, which all depend on how the societies in question have advanced their technologies.

   The spacecraft that you are used to are incredibly simple.  They are unable to withstand the wide variety of attacks that your militaries have come up with, and certainly would not be able to stand up to more advanced weaponry.  Let's not dress it up: space warfare in your time stream is a neglected area of research.

   Really, I find that kind of refreshing.  Wars in space are nasty things, and it is good that so far your society has managed to keep space a peaceful zone of international collaboration and economic competition.  However, I do not believe that even your contemporaries expect that situation to continue forever, especially as more private interests enter the space arena.  This article should provide you with some idea of what space combat will and won't look like, given a few assumptions.

   Just so that we're all being realistic: space warfare is not going to look like STAR WARS.  The action depicted in STAR WARS, probably your most memorable imagining of space combat, is also woefully ignorant of what space is actually like.  No matter what assumptions are made, I can't find a time stream wherein space combat resembles World War II-era naval air combat.  In no small part because there isn't any air resistance in space, so the long, banking turns you see in such films are wholly unnecessary.
  
  There are, however, a few different frameworks for space combat.  Each has a prerequisite technology associated with it, so I'll go through one by one, in a series of posts.

Friday Seminar Series: Exoplanetology

Neil DeGrasse Tyson; Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,


   This Friday Seminar is a special one, written given the buzz from Gliese581g, which has found its way to me from my time-normal Twitter friends Exoplanetology and Intellectual Pornography.  They've both kept me up to date on advances in your time stream's understanding of this world has expanded.  I'll stick to what you know in discussing it.  Gliese581g is interesting for a variety of reasons, the one that I'm most focused on being what it means for human expansion.


   A lot of words get thrown around at times like this.  In the words of time-normal astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, this should be seen as "...an important turning of the page..." in the search for planets like Earth.  However, it "...doesn't mean there are oceans and beaches and resorts..."  Gliese581g isn't exactly Earth.  You don't know that much about it.  I see words like "habitable" and I'm inclined to remind time-normal science journalists how little you really know about life within, let alone outside of, the solar system.  Habitable?  The odds are low.  Inhabited?  Well, I'll leave that for you to discover on your own.

   What this represents, and what I mean to discuss, is that discovery.  Gliese581g isn't likely to represent a second chance for humanity.  The gravity there may be a little too high, depending on the precise composition and density of the planet.  It's a ribbon world, which limits its settlement potential.  There are...issues, to say the least.

   One issue I shouldn't have to remind you of is that it may already be inhabited!

   Instead of being a complete critic, however, I want to take this in a productive direction.  Every scientific discovery, in astrophysics, anachronism, or biology, has two effects.  First, it tells us something we don't know before, installing a firm rung for us to step on as we ascend the ladder of knowledge.  Second is all about that ladder.  Think of it as a tall, tall ladder in the midst of a vast wilderness.  With every rung, our lantern casts more light, even farther, so that we can see newer and newer things.  Some of these things, the edge of these things, are encased in shadow, left for us to ask questions about.  Those questions are the edge of knowledge, the things that will be answered to build the next rung.



  You must not look at Gliese581g and say, "this is a new thing that we know."  You must look at it and ask, "What new questions can we ask?"  You must turn the new page that Dr. DeGrasse Tyson talked about.  I'll suggest a brief list:

• Does Gliese581g have a breathable atmosphere and/or liquid-phase water?
• Is there life on Gliese581g? (The link leads to an article about the discovery of a strong signal coming from the Gliese581 system)
• Can we communicate with Gliese581g?
• Can we get to Gliese581g?
• What are the ethical hurdles that come into play when we reach a possible contact with Gliese581g and its potential inhabitants?

   These are the questions that you have to answer, time-normal Earth.  There's a lot of conflicting information on this one.  I wish you the best of luck.  Please leave thoughts in the comments on this one.  I'll be watching it closely.

   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The Freedom to Die

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Dear Readers,

    I know it has been a little while since I last wrote to you.  It was considered best that we evaluate our communications with your time stream more carefully before we proceeded with this project.  There are larger concerns, now, especially with the war on.

    I am writing today to talk about an issue that might seem foreign to you, that of "Freedom of Death."  In your time stream, there's much ado about end of life procedures and assisted suicide, but this is a little different.

   When you are effectively immortal, and you can go to the library and cross-reference your achievements in thousands of different time streams, the ideas of life and death become somewhat more nuanced.