LibArc Blogs

Hello, all. I know I said I had many more articles planned almost a week and a half ago now that were coming in a couple days, but I went and got sidetracked. Had some fun writing a vector movement space fighter game in C++, which I will be posting soon on my website and announcing here on the blog (but if you want it now, I have a Windows binary up: here and you will also need the SDL library, which I have up here; both of those files in the same place, use arrow keys to move. I'll post source code, Linux binaries, and documentation later), and have started writing about the timeline and characters of my universe over on the Omniverse Zero forums, which has been fun. The coolest thing, IMO, I have posted thus far is a design for a long range research ship, with 3d models, a 2d diagram, and full specs. You can find that here.

Anyway, sorry about rambling like that. Let's get on with today's topic, which is the fourth in my war in space series: combat ranges. I will discuss some facts in general, talk a little about FTL, both in general in specifically for my universe, then discuss how the distributions and locations of colonies can change things, which will lead me into discussing probable space colony locations in the solar system and maybe even beyond, which will go to show the layout of my own universe, but should also make some sense to other universes, and even the real world. Let's get started.

I figure there will be four main deciders on what combat ranges will look like:

1. Initial position. If a nation on Earth is facing another nation on Earth, it will be different than a nation on Mars fighting a nation in Jupiter orbit (though, as I've said before, I think the latter war would be unlikely, since it would probably cost more than it is worth).
2. Speeds. If the gap can be crossed quickly, it might be. This should be the smallest of the factors: space is too big for most the gaps to be crossed in a significant time.
3. And the range with which you can have a kill. This is dependant on three things: 1) type of weapons in use and their power output / delta-v (in the case of missiles).
   2) Armor effectiveness.
   and 3) Magic forcefields if present in the fictional universe. (ties right into armor)
4. Targetting problems due to light speed lag. This one is a big one.

to touch on the easy ones first. Light speed lag is present all the time, meaning what you see isn't what is going on now, it is what was going on X seconds ago, where X is the distance between you and the enemy divided by the speed of light. This means there is always some uncertainty in what he is going. The amount of lag you can cope with, and thus the maximum range you can reliably engage, is dependant on what kind of weapons you have and how well the other guy can accelerate to get out of your line of fire.

With a laser, he almost certainly can't get out of the way without several seconds of lag. With a coilgun, light speed lag is miniscule compared to the time it takes for the projectile to cross most gaps, so light speed lag is a non-issue there. Particle beams have propagation speeds close to a laser, so they can be treated about the same here.

Missiles are a somewhat interesting case. Since they can adjust their own course after launch, the lag isn't likely to be a limiting factor for a long time, but it still can be. From initial launch, your missile must have the delta-v to match the target's movements as it approaches to stay on target. If you are several minutes away, the missile launch might be entirely in the wrong direction, and by the time it realizes you aren't in the direction it thought you were, you are long gone and it lacks the propellant to catch up to you. As a rough guess, single digit light minutes is probably the upper limit for missiles before they are too likely to miss to be worth firing.

Let's go back to lasers for a minute. Why do I feel seconds isn't good enough? Well, consider the target has an apparent area with the shape of a circle, with a radius of x. If you aim your laser at the center of this siluotte, he will have to have changed position by more than x, in an unpredictable way, before the laser arrives or you are going to hit. Let's give him a generous acceleration of 10 gees, and let's also generously say he can do this 10 g burn in any direction at any time. For simplicity, let's assume the laser is a infintesmal point. In reality, due to your mirror size and diffraction, it may have an area of many square meters at some ranges, which reduces the power per unit area, but also makes it easier to hit.

Distance moved will be 1/2*a*t^2 * 2 (the times two is because you have lag in seeing him, and lag for your laser beam to arrive). It simplifies to sqrt(visible radius / acceleration) = t. Let's give him an x (radius) of 5 meters. Plugging into that simplification gives t = .22 (remember, acceleration in meters per second (needed here) is acceleration in gees times about 10). Here, we can see at a range of .22 light seconds or more, he can reliably evade you, so to engage him, you may want to close to inside that. If he can reliably hit you at a longer range, you can bet he will be, and you will lose the battle. You will probably start firing before you have a sure shot, since if you get lucky at long range, it is better than going into a mutual kill zone. At long range, quantity of fire is more important than range - a shotgun pattern would increase your range possibly significantly.

While shooting before a sure kill and the bigger laser will make this limit not very hard, it is easy, so let's look at a slightly more realistic example. Let's give acceleration of 5 gees (which is still a very big number for spaceships) and a circle radius of 5 meters again. sqrt(5 / 50) =.32 light seconds. And now an even more realistic acceleration of 1 g: t = .7 light seconds. If you get any closer than that, it quickly leads to someone's (or both side's) demise to lasers.

And again, random shooting, spreading laser beam, bigger radius (5 meters is a little small for a space warship), smaller acceleration, and more predictable acceleration (his big burst can only come from one direction: his main engine, though an interesting ship design based on this idea might be a long cigar shape (to provide a small forward area, and a curve to spread out laser light over a larger chunk of armor) with the engine on one of the long ends instead of on the back... an interesting idea that I'll have to think about more) all will continue to make that limit bigger and bigger. So light speed lag for lasers should be a lesser deal than the laser's effective range itself.

I did touch somewhat on speed in the preceding paragraphs, but what about linear speed used to close on you instead of juke around? An upper limit on your space craft's speed relative to the other might be around 50 km / s, which is bigger than solar escape velocity at Earth distance. Also, getting up to that speed, and stopping so you can get home after the battle, is going to take quite a bit of delta-v from your tanks (though, the delta-v might be shared with different orbits and if both are accelerating at each other, remember velocity is relative). I see this kind of speed as being unlikely, but let's look at it anyway.

One light second is 300,000 km. 50 km/s is .02% percent of that per second; at that speed, it would take 6000 seconds to cross the distance - one hour, 40 minutes. All inside probable laser range - you will be a slag of metal before you get close. So, closing speed isn't likely to be a major factor (but, I must mention, throwing a beer can out the window at him as he goes by will be a potent weapon...).

This time to cross the distance is the main limiting factor on targetting coilguns and missiles. Above, I said light speed lag is dwarfed by this time, and you can see it right here: 1 second light speed lag, but almost two hours cross distance lag. Though, projectiles and missiles may be moving faster than this, it is still a much more significant wait than the one second for light.

Next, I will talk a little about the range at which your weapons can give a kill. For coil guns and missiles, this is irrelevant, if they hit (easier said than done, as said above, due to the fact they also take many minutes to hours to cross the gap, and in that time, you can see them coming and possibly be long gone by the time they arrive). Distance doesn't change their effectiveness: coilgun damage is based on projectile mass and relative velocity with the target, neither of which change if it is in flight for one second or one year. Missile damage is based on their warhead, which also doesn't change with distance. Particle beams and lasers, however, spread out with distance, so it is relevant for them. I am going to look at only lasers here, since they should have slightly better range than particle beams, so you can use the laser case as an upper limit for both.

Lasers are not subject to the inverse square law of most "normal" light, but they are subject to the wave property of diffraction. It is dependant on more things than the range alone though: the wavelength and power of the laser are also relevant, so we must answer those questions of what will be used.

I am running out of time tonight though, so I will have to save that for later. In part II of this essay, I will return to answer the laser questions, and take a look at armor, and discuss the fictional technlogy of shields and how they might change things. I still also need to discuss the possibility of how FTL can change things as well, which might be in part II or might wait for part III (depending on how long it takes me to research and write about the lasers). And there is the discussion of likely places for solar system colonies, so that might even go into a part IV, wow. My next post will probably not be Part II of this one though, but it might be; it might not come for a few days or a week. I have some other easier topics I probably will want to talk about first, and may post an essay I intend to write about space elevators soon.

In any case, it will be coming, and this will conclude today's writing (and my eyes are really hurting from staring at the screen all day!). Until next time, thanks for reading.

Some local animals have one strange trick for surviving cold seasons. They enter torpor and sleep until weather warms again. Hibernation. I felt cold and thought of trying hibernation myself.

Boring, boring, boring, boring, BORING!

I don't know how animals stand hibernation. I could not do anything! Now my schedule has all become crazy, backward, behind, and other prepositions and adjectives. But now I know about hibernation, so it's OK! ^_^

Have a happy day!

PS I also learned that green tea makes me jittery. It also makes my flagella feel funny.

Welcome back. I right now have 7 more posts, in addition to this one, that I am currently working on for the blog, with lots of goodness, but this is the first I have completed. Today's subject will be interstellar drives and power requirements, speaking just in general with only a small focus on my universe's specific FTL device.

I was crunching some numbers for how much energy would be needed for solar escape and noticed something scary. An object's gravitational potential energy relative to a point mass (a good enough calculation for a space ship around a star) is E = -Gm / r. G is the gravitational constant, 6.67 x 10^-11 N m^2 / kg ^ 2, r is the distance from the object, and m is the mass of the middle object. For our case, we'll look at the sun, which has a mass of about 2 x 10^30 kg. Energy is in newton meters per kilogram. A newton meter is the same as a joule, so that is joules per kilogram. To get the total potential of your ship, you would multiply that times your ship's mass.

You'll notice this number is negative. If you subtract it, to get the difference between two distances, you get the right sign. Negative will then mean you lose energy (thus, from point A to point B, your engine must give up this much energy - it must come from somewhere), and positive means you gain energy (as speed or heat or something - remember, it can't just disappear).

Let's say you have a Star Trek stylish warp drive - a continuous drive as opposed to an instant jump drive (which is what I use in my universe). The principles remain the same, but the continuous drive will make an interesting illustration for power requirements. Let's also say, for simplicity, that your ship and the sun are the only objects in the solar system. Lastly, let's assign a mass to your starship: let's again use my common number of 10,000 tons (10^7 kg), though you can use whatever you want using this same math.

Suppose you warped at the speed of light from Earth distance (1 AU, about 1.5e11 meters) to Jupiter distance (5 AU, about 7.5e11 meters). To aid in our calculations, I am going to pre multiply G, mass of sun, and mass of ship, so for the energy calculation, we just divide it by distance. G*m*M = 1.3e27 joules meters. First, determine the gravitational potential energy at both points: Jupiter distance = 1.3e27 / 7.5e11 = -1.7e15 j. Earth distance = 1.3e27 / 1.5e11 = -8.7e15 j. The difference is 7e15 joules.

For comparison, one megaton of TNT is about 4.2e15 joules. Making the trip from Earth distance to Jupiter distance, in a straight line, takes at least 7 petajoules (1.7 megatons) of energy (in reality, it would take more, since you also need a delta-v to get there and establish an orbit, but I want to ignore that for now). With a normal spacecraft, this is applied over a long time by the rocket (and of course, a real life Jupiter probe would mass way, way, way less than 10,000 tons), but let's look at our Trek style FTL again.

Suppose the starship was traveling at the speed of light: 3e8 meters per second. How long would the trip be? Well, the distance is 6e11 meters. Distance over time = speed, so distance divided by speed equals time: 6e11 / 3e8 = 2e3 seconds. 2000 seconds is about 33 minutes, but we want seconds anyway. How much must its power plant be outputting for the trip? Well, power = energy / time, so at the very least it must be outputting 7e15 / 2e3 = 3.5e12 watts (3.5 terawatts)! (Note that it wouldn't actually be constant power, this is average. The reason is that gravity gets weaker as you move out. A more accurate way to do power at any point would be to use integration, but this estimate is good enough for this example.)

That is about as much power as the entire United States uses, just for this one starship. Well, let's see if we can get a nuclear power plant that can output that energy in our 10,000 ton mass ship. A power plant might have a mass to power ratio of about 3 kWe / kg, which was suggested by Sikon in an email to sfconsim-l as a potential future possibility. (kWe means kilowatt-electric, which is how much electrical power can be gotten from the reactor. It would also generate heat, but it may or may not work for your magical warp drive). 3.5 terawatts is 3.5e6 kilowatts. For simplicity, let's call that 3e6, so we get a power plant mass of 10^6 kilograms, or 1,000 tons. Sweet, seems doable with these rounded numbers. For twice the speed though, the power requirement doubles, and three times the speed of light means three times the power, and so on.

What about the waste heat from this reactor? Let's assume, based on Sikon's numbers, that there will be 3x as much waste heat as power used. For the entire trip, the ship will need to get rid of 12 terawatts of waste heat, which is going to mean it must have huge radiators. I don't want to do the calculations for them right now, as it isn't quite relevant to my main point, but they will probably have to be several hundred meters long, and will dig into the mass of your ship. For your magic FTL drive though, you might use open cooling: shooting some plasma exuast from the ship as you zip by at warp speed that carries the heat away. But if you do, you can run out of coolant, making you unable to FTL away without melting, and it opens the interesting question of where does that plasma go when it leaves the ship? Since FTL is magic, it probably wouldn't stay with you nor would it likely be traveling at relativastic speeds, but it is something that would have possible consequences in your universe (maybe including combat at warp speed). Anyway, I digress.

Let me get back to the main point. What if you want to ignore this energy change? Well, now you are violating the principle of conservation of energy, which is REALLY throwing physics out the window (even with my handwavium, CoE must always stay in my universe). But, let's say you did, and see what the consequences might be.

The big one that comes to my mind is infinite energy. If you warp an object to the top of gravity, then let it fall, when it gets back to its starting point, it will have much more energy than it had, which you could collect with many means (hydroelectric facilites use the gravitional potential energy of water to convert into electrical energy - same idea here), having a cheap, unlimited, huge power source.

And with unlimited energy, you now have stupendous weapons. Warp a rock up gravity for free, and when it falls back down, you have a life extinguishing WMD with ease. Not pretty.

So, clearly, violating conservation of energy is undesirable from many angles, and if you can go up or down a gravity well without paying the potential energy toll, you are violating conservation of energy. (Note that a similar argument can be made against many forms of artificial gravity and anti-gravity, but I digress again).

If the ship moves even faster than the speed of light, or does FTL jumps that are instant, the energy need would remain the same, and the power requirement would go up. With FTL jumps, there would be points of peak power needed, with cool down periods in between. Since gravity does get weaker as you move out, the farther away from the star you get, the less your generators need to work. Interstellar space may go by quickly with a continous drive like described here, simply because there is not as much gravitional energy to worry about.

EDIT: A way around this gravity problem might be a magic jump drive, or magic portals (wormholes perhaps) that go between two points with the same gravitational potential energy. I considered this for my universe, but am currently leaning toward the model I explained a couple of posts ago. But what it would mean is your jump points would be at about the same distance from your source and destination star (assuming they have similar mass), and before and after, you have the same total energy, so CoE should be maintained by this. But, don't forget stars move relative to each other, so it might not be that simple when you also think about conservation of momentum! END EDIT

Well, I got interrupted when writing this, and lost my train of thought, so I will conclude here for now. My conclusion is basically any practical interstellar drive must necessarily point to big time power generation, unless you use the magic portals I touched upon in the edited in paragraph, which has consequences on your ship's military capabilities: the key components of the interesting stardrive could also potentially be the key components of WMDs, or the energy might simply be used as lasers. But again, interstellar drive = HUGE energy production on that ship, the consequences of which I will explore in subsequent posts, especially those on war in space. I will also return to this discussion in a later post to talk about how these facts affect my own universe's FTL capable ships. Well, I've got plenty more goodness to write up and post, so hope to see you back soon (next 2-3 days at most to next post). Until next time, thanks for reading.

I've decided to start a new Category in this blog. This is to showcase heroes that I feel have been ignored or left behind. Men and women whose efforts deserve more recogization then they have recieved and I'm gonna try to give them some. I'm starting with General Gavin, US Airborne, of WWII.

Life of:
James M Gavin was born in Brooklyn, 1907, March 22. We think his mother was one Katherine Ryan and there is debate as to whether James Nally or Thomas Ryan was his father. In any rate he was born with the name James N Ryan. We don't know any of the above for sure because at the age of 2 he was given up for adoption. He was adopted rather quickly by the Gavin's a coal mining family from Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. On his 17th birthday he ran away to New York City and sent his adopted family a telegram to prevent them from calling the police, it's believed that he ran away because he didn't want to be a coal miner. We should be thankful for that.

In March 1924 Gavin spoke to a military recruiter, an Army recruiter (my personal guess is that he couldn't find the Marine recruiter, our loss honestly who was more then happy to sign the young man up. But being under 18 he needed parental constent. Gavin told the man he was an orphan, in response to this the recruiter took him and a group of other young men to a lawyer and after signing some documents, the lawyer declared himself their guardian and gave constent (kinda puts all the screeching about current recruiting practices into persective don't it?).

Apirl 1st 1924 Pvt Gavin was sworn into the US Army and stationed in Panama. Basic training for him was done on the job on his first post on a coastal defense fort, a crewmen of a 155mm gun under a Sgt McCarthy, who descirbed him as a fine solder. He also served under a native American First Sgt "Cheif" Williams. Gavin spent of his time reading books, mostly biographies about great military officers, such as Hannibal. He also went on a number of expeditions into the local area studying the terrian as in effort to learn the best way to fight there. This impressed his First Sgt and because of this young Pvt Gavin made Cpl in 6 months (in comparsion it took me over 3 years). First Sgt Williams encouraged Cpl Gavin to attend a local army school, the best students of that school would get to attend West Point. Cpl Gavin enrolled in September 1924. With the help of his Lt. (one Percy Black) tutoring him, he passed all his exams and was allowed to apply to West Point.

Cpl Gavin arrived in West Point in the summer of 1925, in order to make up for a lack of prior education he rose at 4:30 AM and read his books in the bathroom, the only place with enough light (and come on how many of us do our reading in there?. He would graduate West Point in 1929 June, noted in the year book as a boxer and one of the few cadets with prior army experience. Prompted to 2nd Lt, he married a Irma Baulsir on September 5, 1929.

Lt. Gavin's first post was Camp Harry J. Jones near Douglas, Arizona and the US-Mexican border. This camp housed the 25th Infantry Regiment (one of the entirely African-American, Buffalo Soldier regiments). He stayed in this posting for three years. It was afterwards attending the US Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, Goegria that Gavin's gifts began to spring to full life however,the school was taught by Colonel George C. Marshal and Joseph Stillwell who led the Tactics department of the school.

These two were teaching a new doctrine, at the time the US Army relied on long lengthly written orders, Colonel Marshal and Stillwell instead suggested giving rough guidelines to field commanders and relying on their judgement and tactical thinking to fulfill the mission. This doctrine would grow in popularity in all the armed service over time, despite the sheer amount of hatred some politicans have been to have for it.

Gavin himself was qouted as saying this abut Stillwell "He was a superb officer in that position, hard and tough worker, and he demanded much, always insisting that anything you ask the troops to do, you must be able to do yourself." It was from this example that Gavin would develop and come to rely on his own style of command that stand him in good stead over the years.

While his professional life was going well, his personal life was not doing so hot. His wife Irma had moved out with him and grew increasing unhappy in the town and made sure that Gavin knew it. In 1932 after they spent Christmas with her parents, in Washington D.C, she decided to stay with them. She would become pregent with Gavin's daughter in 1933.

In 1933 Gavin was transfered to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, posted to the 28th and 29th infantry divisions under General Lesley J. McNair. He spent most of his time in the library where he would be heavily influenced by the works of J.F.C. Fuller. Gavin said about him: "[He] saw clearly the implications of machines, weapons, gasoline, oil, tanks and airplanes. I read with avidity all of his writings."

Gavin's daughter would be born with him still at Fort Still, Gavin would record that his wife and Mother-In-Law were both unhappy with him.

In 1935 Lt. Gavin achieved his first overseas posting, the Philippines. While there he realized that the 20,000 US troops stationed there were not well equiped enough to stave off a Japanese invasion, noting that much of their equipment was left over from WWI.

In 1938 he was reunited with his family and stationed in Washington, with the 3rd infantry Divison. He would be prompted to Captain and given command of K company of the 7th infantry divison later that year.

In 1939 Captain Gavin was ordered back to West Point. While there he studied the German Blitzkreig and came to realize that the US Army needed to upgrade, most of their equipment being just copies of German gear. He declared it was not enough to merely copy the Germans if the US wanted to ensure it's safety. For the First time on record Gavin spoke of Airborn Forces:

"From what we had seen so far, it was clear the most promising area of all was airborne warfare, bringing the parachute troops and the glider troops to the battlefield in masses, especially trained, armed and equipped for that kind of warfare."

He volunteered for posting in the new Airborn Unit in Apirl 1941. US entry into WWII was 8 months away. Unknown to Gavin the clock was ticking.

Gavin began his airborne training in July and graduated in Augest, he then served in an experimental unit. His first command was Commanding Officer of C Company of the newly established 503rd Parachute Infantry Battalion. General William Lee was convinced by friends of his to allow Gavin to work out the tactics and rules of Airborne combat, in order to allow him to do so, General Lee propomted Gavin to Major and made him Operations and Training Officers in Oct, 1941. Pearl Habor was now a mere 2 months away. Major Gavin didn't know it but he was racing to slide in under the wire.

Major Gavins first action was to write the book on airborne combat, FM 31-30: Tactics and Technique of Air-Borne Troops. He used information about Soviet and German experiences with Paratroopers and Glider troops, and also used his own experience about tactics and warfare. The manual contained information about tactics, but also about the organisation of the paratroopers, what kind of operations they could execute, and what they would need to execute their task effectively. Later, when Gavin was asked what made his career take off so fast, he would answer: "I wrote the book". While this was going on the US entered WWII.

In Feb 1942 Major Gavin ran through a condensed course on Staff work at the Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas which qualified him for serving in the staff of a division. He returned to the Provisional Airborne Group and was tasked with building up an Airborne Division. In the spring of 1942 Gavin and Lee went to the Army Headquarters in Washington D.C. to discuss the order of battle for the first US Airborne Division. The US 82nd Infantry division (stationed in Camp Claiborne, Louisiane) was selected as the first division to be converted into an Airborne division. Lesley McNair's influence led to the 82nd Airborne division' initial composition of two Glider Infantry Regiments and one Parachute Infantry Regiment, with organic parachute and glider artillery and other support units. One of those units add later to the unit under Gavin's command was the 555th Paratchute Infantry Battalion, an all black unit that would distinish itself fighting forest fires and disarming Japanese ballon bombs, earning the name Smokejumpers. The commanding officer of the unit Colonel Bradley Biggs, referred to Gavin as perhaps the most "color-blind" Army officer in the service.

Jumped to Colonel in Augest 1942, and was given direct command over the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Designing their training missions personally and leading them on it, Col Gavin started the tradition of Airborne officers being the first out the jump door and last in the chow line. This tradition continues to this day during Operation Urgent Fury the commanding officer of the 1st Ranger Battalion was the first man out the door.

In Feb 1943 the 82nd Airborne was chosen to lead the attack into Sicily for operation Husky. The 505th would be the first unit to preform a regimental landing. While waiting for operations to began in N Africa Gavin wrote daily to his daugther, but addressed no letters to his wife.

The regiment was transported to Kairouan in Tunisia, and on July 9 at 10:00am they entered the planes that would take them to Sicily. Their mission was to land on D-Day-1 to the North and East of Gela and take and maintain control of the surrounding area to split the German line of supply and disrupt their communications. One hour before the H-hour on D-Day they should link up with the US 1st Infantry Division and help them take control of the airfield at Ponte Oliveto. Gavin was the commander of the combat team, consisting of the 505th, the 3rd battalion of the 504th, the 456th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, B Company of the 307th Airborne Engineer battalion, a signals platoon, and some attached units (for example, naval gunfire observation teams). The Axis had 16 divisions in Sicily (two German and the remainder Italian), 14 of which were combat ready. Among these divisions were the Herman Goering Fallshirm-Panzer Division and the German 15th Panzergrenadier division.

During the combar Gavin would led his men from the front lines carrying an rifle as opposed to the pistols usually used by officers. By the end of WWII he would have taken command over the entire 82nd Airborn Division becoming the youngest Major General to led a division in combat since the American Civil War. The 82nd Airborne achieved a repuation of excellence under his command. Due to his slender figure he would pick up the name Slim Jim from his men, his fellow officers nicked him the Jumpin General.

Post war he led the discussion that formed the light wieght Pentomic Army Division which had lightweight, air-deployable M113 tracked aluminum alloy armored personnel carriers organic to Airborne and "straight leg" divisions for battlefield mobility even if nuclear weapons had devastated roads and trails. As Army Chief of Research and Development and author, he called for a "cavalry" in lightweight armored vehicles and helicopter. He would retire a Lt. General in 1958 and later in 1962 and 1963 serve as ambassador to France. He was awarded during his time of service the

General Gavin wrote 3 books. Airborne Warfare (1947) a recap of the development and future of aircraft delivered forces. On to Berlin (1976), an account of his experiences commanding the 82nd Airborne Division, and Crisis Now (1968), a proposal for the United States to exit the Vietnam War.

The M-113 is informally know as the Gavin in his honor.

Futher information on General James Gavin:

Wiki

Name the M-113 the Gavin I should note there's some clear leanings on this website, as they're trying to get you on board a movement. Personally I think formally naming the M-113 after General Gavin would be a fine thing to do.

Our host moved us to a different server, but I kept posting to the old server over the last week. If you could not see any new posts over the last few days, that is why.

I just did data migration, so we should be good now, and nothing should have been lost.

Welcome back. Last night, I was playing with my 3D model, and decided to add a warp drive array in the way I have described in previous FTL posts, and noticed something interesting while doing so: the warp drive as I have described it so far is detachable!

I have been trying to create a FTL drive that is a liability, so it wouldn't be seen on ships unless it was absolutely needed, but at the same time, I want bubble shields to block it to be simple so they can be almost everywhere, so if you do have a warp drive, it is generally useless anyway. This way, I can focus on more realistic space combat instead on FTL tactical space combat. But so far my descriptions have made a FTL /drive/ that is a liability, not a FTL /ship/.

I've said there are fragile, expensive coils that need to be in at least four places held outside the ship and protected by a casing that can also provide cooling. They are colored green in Figure 1. You can see they are rather large, and also have big sections to attach them to the ship, which with my current definition, might not actually be needed. In this picture, they extend from the same places as the radiators as to not actually interfere with their operation.

How cool is it having a picture called 'figure 1' in a blog? Heh. (Also, as an aside, I actually don't care much for how it looks with those giant warp struts on it, but it is somewhat like what would be a practical design in-universe EDIT: but you know, it is starting to grow on me looking at it now END EDIT). Anyway, the FTL drive, when activated, magically teleports the drive and the ship inside its frame to some new location. As I have it now, it doesn't require anything in the ship itself except for energy from its reactor. This leads to some interesting possibilities: 1) the warp unit being almost self contained, and able to be removed and left behind to be picked up later, and extending this logically leads to 2) a "warp ring" that isn't really a ship on its own, but could position another ship inside it and "carry" it on a FTL trip. Now, I'll explore these two possibilities in more detail, and discuss if it is desirable, and if not, how I might adjust the system to get rid of it.

Figure 1 is actually drawn to scale, and with some rounded off estimates of mass, the warp assembly would mass about half as much as the rest of the ship. I might make the warp nacelles smaller however; their width (5 meters) was almost arbitrary. I figured it would have to carry the huge warp coil, some cooling and control equipment for it, and armour / radiation shielding. Anyway, the mass is what is most interesting. If a ship could shed 1/3 of its mass before traveling in a system, or going into battle, it would be a very, very good thing, and any rocket ship commander certainly would want to shed dead weight even if just on principle.

So, supposing the warp assembly could be left behind, it probably should be left behind. This might mean a ship would fly to a base, pick up its warp drive, FTL jump to its destination system, leave it behind, then go about its business (first order would of course be getting to orbital or transit velocity for whatever orbit you want). It might leave the warp drive at whatever speed it had, detaching it before establishing an orbit. Of course, this means if it is going too slow, it is going to eventually fall into a planet or the sun, and if too fast, it is going to escape, but this would take a while, so if you don't intend to stay too long, it shouldn't be a problem. You would know its velocity and when you arrived, so determining where to find it when you want to go back should be no problem. EDIT: Also, this might make you jump to a certain location in system: wherever your velocity you have now would be orbital velocity may be a preferred destination END EDIT

Also depending on the duration of your stay in the other system, when you go to pick up the warp drive, you would be matching velocity with your home base (the FTL assembly would only have changed velocity due to gravity, and remember when you jump in, your momentum remains the same, so if you left your home at a slow speed relative to it, when you return you would still be moving slowly relative to the home base) at the same time, so the total delta v you must impart to the dead mass FTL drive in real space may end up being small. But also, if you are going into battle, leaving behind your FTL has two effects: 1) if there is no bubble shield in effect, now the enemy can use tactical FTL on you and you cannot respond, and more likely and more important IMO 2) your expensive and much required FTL assembly is sitting at a known point, defenseless.

I actually like all that. It is a simple tradeoff on taking your assembly with you, increasing your mass, potential options, and risking it being damaged in battle, or leaving it behind giving you better performance and ensuring it is not damaged by glancing hits on you, but leaving it vulnerable to someone shooting a long range missile at it (it is stationary and defenseless, easy missile prey). Of course, you might leave a ship behind with the warp drives to protect them from missiles, reducing some numbers from your task force. All interesting things the admiral would have to think about.

The option of building a FTL ship with a detachable stardrive is interesting, so I'll keep it. But what about a big warp "carrier ring"? This would be a warp assembly that is big enough to take at least one ship under it, maybe more (or even raw cargo if self powered), and jumping with it. It would be like the green in figure 1, but without the ship in the middle. The ring certainly follows from the above discussion, and it could get its energy either from an onboard system of some sort, or by connecting to the reactor of the ship (or one of the ships) it is 'carrying'. If it is self powered, one carrier ring might also make multiple trips back and forth, picking up another ship each time, dropping it off, and going back empty (or even with someone who wants to go the other way) for a second load.

Now, I could make this impossible simply by saying any FTL capable ship also needs some kind of equipment in the middle of the ship, otherwise it can't jump. Thus, a carrier ring would be near worthless - it could only carry a ship, and could not go back on its own for a second load. However, I suppose it might be able to carry in a big ship, then go out with a little FTL ship in the middle, but that requires some little ship to be there already, and now the big ship is stuck. So, this requirement really would make it nonviable. Well... a ship maybe could carry two of these cores and take one out to allow the ring to go back, but that is a hassle. (Note that even with this requirement, a detachable warp assembly would still be possible just like described above, just the ship would have some equipment in its main body that it would still lug around while leaving the external portions behind).

I do kinda like the idea of a carrier ring. A big one might be like a Spacing Guild heighliner from Frank Herbert's classic Dune, lugging many little STL ships to other starsystems and back. It certainly has many applications. And, of course, a heighliner like ship would still be possible even if I restricted it: it would simply be a big warp ring, with the FTL gizmo in the middle, and clamps around it to latch on to littler ships. It doesn't look like I can consistently make it impossible, but let me explain why I am a little bit opposed to it anyway.

In my warship type discussion, I explained I feel that there would only be two main types of space warship: the battleship and its smaller, cheaper brother, the frigate. I didn't discuss FTL in there, since I was writing it in general, and FTL discussions require a shared set of assumptions. In my universe, there would also be 'cruisers' as I called them, which are battleships or frigates with a FTL drive tacked on. Having this FTL drive added on would add to its mass and require its design to be a little different (such as lower thrust engine, since the fragile warp coils break under pressure). If the warp drive is detachable, this distinction fades. A STL battleship could just temporarily pick up a FTL drive, jump, then leave it behind to continue operations. Thus, battleships could be used for interstellar attack instead of just defense and operations inside their home system (keep in mind, in my universe, most everyone is in the same system anyway, so that is a bigger job than it might sound). Since FTL cruisers are outclassed by STL battleships, the defender would have an advantage in interstellar war. I rather liked it that way.

But, you know, as I am writing this, I am actually growing to like the detachable drive idea more and more. The fragility of the warp coils would still be a greatly limiting factor: they break under a battleship's acceleration, so they would /have/ to be left behind on a decaying / escape orbit (depending on where and from where you jumped in), which would mean the battleship captain doesn't have the choice the cruiser captain would have on taking it with him, and his operation time would be limited since he would have to get back to his FTL assembly before it is pulled somewhere he can't get back to it anymore, unless he makes a cruiser grab it and slowly adjust its velocity before leaving. It really does sound more interesting this way.

Yeah, I do like it. So detachable stardrives (note: stardrive = FTL, spacedrive = STL, I will probably be using this distinction rather often from now on) and FTL carriers are both possible in this universe, and probably common place. I guess I was getting worked up since I didn't want to change my preconceived notions, but again, that is what is fun about making up technology: seeing how it works even if not how you originally intended.

Speaking of made up technology not being what I intended, the energy shields are being a real hassle, but I think I am on to something. Of course, that is yet another post for another day. My next post planned is Space War IV: Combat Ranges, where I will discuss space combat ranges both in general, and the specific setting of my universe (short story: with most people massed between the earth and moon, ranges may be shorter than the theory says possible in general). So hope to see you there, and until next time, thanks for reading.

Hello. Over the last six hours, I have been trying to learn the free 3d program, Blender. I have actually been making decent progress, so I wanted to show off a little.

I decided to try and model something as a way to learn the basics, and after many failed attempts, I think I have it down. What did I draw? An atomic rocket, of course!

On this, you can see three glowing rocket engines, four slightly glowing heat radiators, a rocket body for fuel and cargo, and a habitation ring, that would rotate (or maybe the whole rocket rotates?) to provide artificial gravity for the crew and passengers. The ship would be powered by a nuclear reactor near the base of the rocket. The nose would be used for docking with other ships and stations.

I didn't actually draw this to any scale; again, it was just an attempt to learn blender, but I think it looks pretty cool.

Eventually, I will want to model my space ship designs for my sci-fi universe. What you see here is basically what I have in mind for a long term research or passenger ship, designed for comfort of the passengers over a long trip. Sadly, the model is not very detailed either (it should show some kind of cargo access ports and maybe a robot launch room, which might mean taking off a radiator, and these radiators might be bigger than needed for a research ship), but as I continue to learn how to do this, it should start look much better and detailed, and I'll be focusing on more realistic scaling in later 'real' models.

Well, I just wanted to show off a little and say more such concept models will be coming eventually. If anyone has any tips or comments for a newbie to using blender or 3d modeling in general, I'd love to hear them. I don't really intend to be /good/ at this, but being good enough to make some simple ship models is going to be really cool. Until next time, thanks for reading.

Hello, again. Over the months since I wrote my first post outlining my FTL technology for the universe, I have revised it greatly. It is still not finalized - there are still questions of energy I need to solve, however, I am for the most part happy with the effects right now. The purpose of this post is to quickly explain what I have now, and why I chose this. Like everything I say here, this is open to further revision as I learn more, but so far, I am quite happy with it.

From my list of possibilities last time, only three remain: FTL blocking (bubble shields), which has gotten more prevalent, FTL engines (warp drive), which has gotten less common, and FTL communications, which hasn't changed much from last post. I eliminated the Star Trek transporter since even with my limitations on it, it took a lot of fun out of things. One of my favourite scenes in visual science fiction is in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the shuttle is docking with the torus shaped space station. This scene takes some wrath from viewers for being about 8 minutes long and just showing the ship spinning into the station, but I really love it for a number of reasons (including the beautiful Strauss piece, The Blue Danube, played brilliantly thoughout this scene, and a shortly following scene of the shuttle going to the moon).

The scene shows many little things that I really love. The pilots in the cockpit with their computer assisted control and red lights. The rotation of the station for its artificial gravity, and how the ship matched rotation to dock with it, with both interior and exterior shots to demonstrate how motion is relative. The day to day life glimpse in freefall. Both the speed and slowness of the docking, which was entirely precise. A brilliant scene in almost every way, and it would have been impossible if Floyd simply beamed up to the station.

Transporters eliminate the need for the discussion of ways to get up and down from space. No need to think about rockets, space elevators, or mass drivers. Just beam up. They also have consequences in terrestrial transport, possibly rendering trucks and ships nearly obsolete. The story is far more interesting when the magic solve problem technology is kept to a minimum.

Now, since bubble shields did block transporters and I now have huge bubble spheres encasing the entire planet and most colonies, you could say they cancel each other out, so it would be ok to keep them around for trips to farther away worlds, but even that, I think is somewhat lame. The difficulty of landing and taking off from a new planet without support infrastructure is removed. This is a possibility, but I have pretty well decided against it. In universe, with the way the FTL drive works, you might be able to jump from GEO to the surface, basically beaming down, but that takes the whole ship and has other problems of FTL stability, which I will explain shortly (mainly, the warp drive is fragile and weak, it will probably break on the ground).

I really liked the idea for two things 1) the convenience and saving time getting up and down from places. It also looks cool to randomly have people sparkling into and out of a setting. 2) The cool factor of "beam me up!". I really love the exposition that 2001 gave, but the simplicity that Star Trek used has its advantages as well, but these were mainly in the universe's origin as daydreams - beaming out of boring classes to a starship never gets old, but in a more refined environment, it is not needed.

So the Trek style transporter is out entirely, leaving me to think in more real world terms thoughout the universe for transportation, which should be much more challenging, and fun. For the daydream beaming, I'll just break my rules :-P

Anyway, moving on, the other FTL tech that is getting the axe is the stationary jump point. The reason for this is mainly technical rather than personal / literary. The FTL drive conserves momentum, by my definition. Stars move relative to each other. Thus, someone going from one "stationary" jump point to another would in all probability actually be moving relative to the destination, which would be messy when he hits the destination jump station! Secondarily with the revised FTL framework, their utility is partially limited with the increased importance of the FTL cancelling bubble shields and I am also changing the requirements of FTL ships to have four warp cylinders attached to them, that jump with them. The stationary point would obviously not jump with the ship, thus it would not be possible with that change. (Prior to this revision, you could jump without an engine attached, which is what made both the transporters and jump points work (actually, I meant it to be transporters, but jump points were a logical extension of the principle), but since I am axing transporters anyway, that justification lost its use, so the magic tech disappears with it).

Jump points to make for some interesting plot developments, but I can certainly do without them, and the bubble shield can do the same thing plotwise, and is more original to boot (meaning I have not heard my specific implementation used in anyone else's universe, which is cool). So they are gone.

This leaves three FTL related magical technologies left: 1) The bubble shield, 2) the warp drive, and 3) FTL radio. I haven't changed them too much from before, so I will only briefly explain each one, focusing on the changes. Then I will write a little about warp coils in general, and close this post.

The bubble shield has been revised to be very big and easy to make. A solar powered satellite, no bigger than a starship, can make a bubble sphere with a radius of two light seconds. This sphere is opaque to all FTL tech: nothing gets in or out of it, and none of it works inside it, either (meaning you cannot jump from one point inside the shield to another point: it is a sphere rather than a shell).

EDIT: I wrote two light years in the previous paragraph before, which is very, very wrong! I have corrected it to two light seconds, which is what it is supposed to be. This distance is about 1/3 longer than the distance from the Earth to the Moon. END EDIT

Since a simple satellite can do it, it follows that a starship's attached warp drive can do it as well. A single warp cruiser can follow a STL fleet around, generating a shield to protect them from other FTL ships from jumping on top of them - they would jump in no closer than 2 light seconds. This is there to protect hard sci fi like battle, but the simple presence of FTL can still change things. I am trying to minimize this, however.

A warp drive now requires the warp payload to be 'enclosed' by the warp coils, meaning the FTL engine cylinders might end up looking like Star Trek ships, but also with two more sticking out the bottom. This complicates FTL ship design as it can limit the radiators when they need to jump (retractable radiators may be the trick), and it puts relatively fragile FTL engines out in the open. I like this, since it makes the FTL design more challenging, thus more interesting, and limits them in universe to only where they are needed.

The FTL communications haven't changed much. It takes a spinning warp coil pointing in the right direction of the receiver that magically sends a message over the distance very, very quickly. A bubble shield at any point between the sender and receiver will block the message. The signal propagates as a cone rather than a straight line, so it needs to be strong enough to be received over the distance. I have not yet made up the numbers for any of this. EDIT: However, I decide to remove the reflecting of these signals - thus, FTL active scanning is impossible.

Lastly, I have mentioned 'warp coils' time and time again, so let me quickly explain what they are. They are a magical material made in a magical way to give them the magical ability of being to do this FTL stuff when they are set spinning. They tend to deform under too much pressure, which limits how fast they can spin, and also limits the performance of the ship, and leads to them needing regular maintenance. And it puts size limits on ships that want to move quickly. In gravity, warp coils often break under their own weight, so they are manufactured and operated in space only. They also can't take high accelerations from a ship's rocket: a FTL ship's max acceleration is less than 1g, lest they risk breaking the warp engines.

This weakness also limits size, since as the coil gets longer (which it must, since it must be most the length of the ship), it can take less and less acceleration. While it is possible to make a huge enough engine to attach to a space colony, it is probably only going to be good for a very limited number of uses, and will only take pitiful accelerations (which colonies must anyway, due to their own mass). Naturally, and transport carrying warp coils must also accelerate slowly, driving up their cost more.

Lastly, them not supporting their own weight explains why they took so long to be discovered and refined: it took space experiments in freefall to accidentally (the researchers wouldn't be looking for an FTL drive: they are impossible in the real world, after all) discover them. Refining them to get better would be a slow, evolutionary process of perfecting manufacturing techniques and the correct shape for the coil.

They also get hot quickly, and due to conservation of energy, this can cause problems in getting into and out of gravity wells. To get in a gravity well, the energy must go somewhere, so they coils get very hot. To get out of a gravity well, again, the potential energy has to come from somewhere, so the coils must be heated to provide it. I haven't worked out the details of how this works, but conservation of energy is a must to maintain, and this seems one way of how to do it that also again, limits the usefulness of FTL, so it can be present while not horribly interfering with the hardness of the rest of the universe.

One question I am facing here is will the change in energy be a "before and after" thing or a gradual thing? Consider if a ship was in a solar orbit and wanted to jump to the opposite side of the sun (ignore the fact that his speed would be wrong for orbit over there and the other problems: let's just focus on solar gravitational potential energy). At both these points, since distance from the sun is the same, gravitational potential energy at both sides is going to be the same. The FTL drive is a magical teleport drive: the ship disappears from one point and instantly reappears at the destination, presumably magically traveling in a straight line from point A to point B in that infinitely small time. In this line, his potential energy would fall and fall until he was at the sun's center of mass, then raise back up until it hit the starting energy when it gets to its destination.

This means, for an infinitely small time as the ship is in the sun, the warp coils must be holding all the potential energy. If this is more than they can actually hold, does the jump fail? Does the ship instead jump into the sun as its coils burn out? Of course, I am dealing with magic tech, so I can just make this up. Let me explain the other possibility first.

If it is just before and after, since it is the same potential in both places, the ship would simply magically appear on the other side, with no changes at all to it. The coils are the same temperature as before, and no energy from the reactor was needed to satisfy the gravity (but energy was needed to spin the coils, this is miniscule though unless I add in some other magical requirement, which I am leaning against, due to CoE concerns). He could just spin up again and jump right back to where he was, no concerns at all (except for the sun's gravity changing his velocity vector, which would alter his orbit, which might be what the ship's captain wants).

Well, I prefer the former, again, since it makes the FTL trip that much harder, thus more interesting out of universe and more limiting in universe - what I like in my magic tech. The gravity gradients would make interstellar hops that much harder - they would probably have to be broken up into smaller hops, and also raises interesting problems when you also count for the masses of the planets. If you wanted to jump to Jupiter, but Mars happened to be in your way this time of year, you would have to deal with that gravity energy change as well as the solar, terran, and jovian potentials.

The last question is what happens if the ship does burn out mid jump. I'm willing to say the energy is transferred to the coils, which may instantly vapourize them, causing secondary damage. But does the ship make it to its destination, just destroyed, or does it magically stop its trip mid jump? I prefer the latter, since the former can be too easily weaponized (once again, if magic tech is potentially useful for more than I want, I prefer to axe it down to size). So our star pilot does indeed end up in the sun, or somewhere on his side of it, all burnt up instead of at his destination. It makes plotting jumps harder, but not impossible.

Another comment on warp jumping is I am playing with the idea of needing many minutes or hours 'spin up' time for the drive, during which time, you would be broadcasting your intentions to jump to your destination. This would be nice since it limits the whole sneak FTL tactics, but not sure just how I want it to work yet. I will probably have something like this in the final version, however.

I will be thinking about what kind of numbers I want to set as the limits on this in a later post.

I also want to quickly comment on one thing I find a pity. With the magic jump instead of continuous travel, you can't say "set course for Beta Alpha, warp 9, engage". I love Picard saying warp X, it was so cool. And someone chasing them trying to get every last ounce out of the warp drive. That would probably still work STL after a jump though, maybe. But alas, I am having trouble working it in with the rest of my parameters. Maybe a warp factor will be how fast the drive is spun up and how many risks you want to take, but still, that doesn't make much sense. But, as cool as it is, I can't win them all.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Hello and welcome back. In this post, I intend to talk a little about some motivations for war and how they apply in the sci-fi universe, and how these motivations will shape goals, which will then shape strategy.

First, let me list some potential motivations. Some of these might be a little bit of a stretch, and most of them will be gross simplifications, but I am hoping to be pretty much reasonable.

• Self defense - you are attacked, so you strike back.
• Pre-emptive defense - you see a imminent threat, so you take it out before it can attack you.
• Violations of treaties - you or your ally had a deal with someone who is not keeping up his side.
• Rescue - a country is being abused by a dictator, so you decide it is time for a regime change.
• Ideology and nationalism - you feel you should force your ways onto others or are tired of others forcing their way onto you.
• Revenge - you got the shaft in the past and want to strike back.
• Money - someone has something you need and trade is not working.
• Territory - you want something for other strategic purposes or just for expansion
• Economy - you start war to boost your economy. (This would probably mean you are very desperate, but might be related to imperialist ambitions) or you are being drained by taxation or piracy.
• Independence - you want to separate from the rule of your parent country, for probably a combination of other reasons here, such as economy or ideology.
• A misunderstanding. An honest mistake leads into war.
• Insanity - you have just gone mad and brought your people with you.

In reality, a war would probably be caused by a combination of these, and I'm sure, other, causes. But, since I can't cover everything, I will take a look at just these, and see how they might work. Let's get started.

First off, suppose you are attacked first, and you want to ensure that you are not attacked again. This is certainly something worth fighting for in any universe, so it will certainly be there. How this is fought will probably depend on the enemy's objectives - you will want to counter them. More details as we move on.

Next is pre-emptive defense. This might mean you see another nation doing something that can threaten you, or you encounter some new lifeform or civilization and you are thinking ahead to ensure your dominance. In the former case, it may be solved diplomatically or with trade sanctions. If those fail, orbital bombardment of their facilities will probably be enough. In the latter, you would probably want to simply exterminate the new aliens before they do the same to you. This would likely be done with something like asteroid redirection into their planet. It is important to wipe them all out though: if you are going to commit unprovoked genocide, you had better do a complete job lest they come back pissed off later. If this lifeform is a space force already, it becomes much harder to exterminate, so you might want to talk to them, and perhaps even backstab them. But failing that, relativistic kill vehicles, if available (which they may well not be due to the energies and engineering problems involved), may still be useful in blasting through their defenses.

Treaty violation. Treaties mean nothing without threat of force to back them up, so this is a rather likely cause of war in almost any situation. Depending on what kind of treaty it is and how bad the violation is, this would have different strategies and different objectives. It might involve blockading a world: using magic to nullify FTL and parking a few battleships in high orbit to blast anything trying to come up. It might involve assassins to eliminate the leadership in a coup. It might simply be bombardment.

Rescuing an oppressed populace. Assuming they want to be 'rescued', you should be careful to take out the oppressive government with little collateral damage. Assassins might do the job. Perhaps sending in special forces to train a local resistance army to do the fighting would work. Maybe orbital support from your battleships on larger in the open targets could soften them up so the locals can take over. After the existing regime has been eliminated, you would probably want to send in a relatively small number of troops and bureaucrats to help set up a new stable, and hopefully friendly, government. If you don't have support of the locals, this is probably doomed to failure. It also requires planet side troopers, which means you need to support them, which is a rather big logistical problem. Supply ships would have to be sent in, and this would get costly fast. That is more reason to send in smaller numbers of troops to train and possibly equip the locals rather than try to fight it all yourself.

Nationalism. This is like the previous, but presumably, the locals do NOT want what you are shoving on them. However at the same time, you want to them to adapt to your ways, not just die. This is going to be very hard to do, and is probably going to fail. It would likely include orbital bombardment of cities to soften up the civilians and make them more likely to surrender. If you send troops down, you are going to pay dearly for it - rather than local support, you are going to be dealing with resistance fighters mixed in with the civilians (something your orbital ships and drones almost certainly couldn't pick out) and attempts to disrupt your landings whenever possible. Not only will they try and stop troop transports, they will do whatever they can to cut off your supply lines from space. This would not be pretty, and any sane leader should realize this, and not bother trying.

Revenge. Suppose someone tried to pre-emptively exterminate you, but missed a spot, and you grew back up. You now want to return the favour, so it would be much like the pre-emptive genocide described above: relativistic kill vehicles if available, and asteroid drops and orbital bombardment with particle beams or nukes of your population, caring only about killing you all. If the defender loses the space battle here, he is finished. A warship can simply lob material at you from a distance over time and you would be unable to respond.

Money. This one I find unlikely. If you want raw materials or energy, just go get some. There is plenty enough to go around in the solar system for everybody, and with FTL, you could even go farther if you wanted and take whatever you want without a fight. Note I don't think FTL trade of material is necessary or economically viable (with my magic FTL drive: since FTL is pure magic and entirely arbitrary, your milage may vary) since you can get the material close to home in your own solar system, but it is an option to explore if needed. If it is manufactured goods you need, just build your own factory. The cost of war is almost certain to be much higher than just making it yourself, and if you do try to take it by force, their stuff will probably be sabotauged by the time you get there anyway. So war over money I don't think is going to happen.

Territory. This I also find unlikely. There are unlikely to be a strategic location in space except for your own stuff: there are no rivers etc to take; space is just a big empty place with plenty of ways to get from one point to another. If you need habitable room to expand, just make it. Just right habitable planets may be rare, but who needs them? I remind you of my Space Colonies I post where I argued even if a perfect Earth was available, which is unlikely, but even if it was, orbital colonies still offer many many advantages over a planet. Why fight over something when you can just make your own entirely to your own specs for much cheaper and closer to home?

Unless you are taking territory with some other significance, like it is your homeworld or it has religious value. In these situations, things get messy. You might want to start with lower power precision bombardment and assassinations to take out the existing government while limiting collateral damage, then perhaps irradiate rebellious civilians to soften them up before sending in your armies, and dealing with the logistical nightmare that is supporting them. You'd probably want to carefully exterminate their military capacity and then start colonizing the ground and taking them as they come to you. This is not going to be easy, and has high chance of failure.

Economy. Maybe a war machine would help your economy, so you pick a fight with someone. The best way to go about this might be like in the excellent comedy film Canadian Bacon (which was hilarious, by the way) and start an arms race with someone. I think that this is pretty unlikely in the real world: it made good comedy, but not so good real policy. If it does happen, it would probably be a propaganda war and sabre rattling rather than actual fighting.

Maybe you want to expand your market. The best way of doing this is peaceful trade. Lowering export tariffs will almost certainly give better economy boosts than destroying a potential partner!

If you are being over taxed, you might want to institute a government change in your own homeworld. Elections would hopefully work there, but if not, assassinations would probably be the next step. A rebellion is going to have a hard time succeeding, simply because government forces are going to be better equipped than the average citizen, even if he owns many guns and knows how to use them. Orbital support, if the government is willing to turn it on its own people, would crush one part of a rebellion quickly, but likely stir up another one somewhere else. This might tie in with the 'rescue' scenario described above, where foreign powers take a limited role in helping the locals get rid of their corrupt government.

Piracy. This would mean escorting or arming your merchant ships. Escorts would probably be frigates (small battleships, see my ship class discussion linked to a few posts down) to blast any unauthorized ships getting close, spotted by orbital telescopes so seen with plenty of time to react, limiting the needed size of the frigate fleet, while the battleships move in to "negotiate" with the pirate's home ports about putting a stop to it. This would be entirely fought by the space fleet or diplomats. I actually find this somewhat unlikely, since I think piracy will be limited in scope. If you want something, getting it legitimately is almost certain to be cheaper than operating a pirate ship - that everyone can see half way across the solar system.

Independence. To separate yourself from your parent nation, you would simply want to cut off contact with them for a while. This would mean taking a telescope and a space gun and watching for incoming supply vessels and blasting them. A rebellion might actually have a decent chance: colonies are expensive anyway and would offer little in return if it is interstellar, so the parent might simply let it go and start another one rather than fight over it. If you are an orbital colony close to home, they can always beseige you: threaten to shoot your mirrors so you freeze unless you surrender, so if you are still in the same system, you have less chance of winning. Certainly possible in a sci-fi setting, and IMO, somewhat likely to come up at some point.

A misunderstanding would be dependent on exactly what it is. It is certainly possible.

Insanity would be hard to predict, but if a leader has gone mad, he might be facing trouble from his own people. The best way to deal with him may be simply sending in an assassin.

So, plenty of reason for space wars to happen (which I find somewhat disappointing: I like utopian futures, but humans will still be humans), and if they do, they are either going to be quick surrender or bloodbaths, with whomever wins the space war pretty much setting the terms. Large scale planetary invasion is unlikely due to 1) not much need for it and 2) it being a logistical nightmare. Smaller specialized forces and assassins with orbital support is more likely than Grand Armies descending from above. I will almost certainly return in a later post to discuss war in more detail, but I think this is about the jist of things. As always, I welcome any comments, and until next time, thanks for reading.

I saw the Chinese food menu salesman today. He has window glass shard scars but appears otherwise OK. I wanted one check-up of his mental state but he would not come near this building. He went in and out of other apartments with menus to sell...oh no again! I forgot payment for mine!

Also, I completed broken window repairs, cleaning mess from repairs, cleaning mess from repair mess, and cleaning that mess also. So much work, keeping roommates less suspicious. I fell behind with my self-studies and projects. But now I know all about window repair, carpet cleaning, human stain perception (north wall has three big blotches, but only UV reflective so they do not notice), local plumbing techniques, ladybugs, microwave oven wiring, ice storm formation, hot sauce (very yummy), and post office operations. So everything worked out well.

Have a happy day!

Last night I watched both the Marine and Flyboys. I enjoied the Marine, it's a good action movie, with alot of violence, explosions and hot ladies running around without a bra. Check your brain at the door.

Flyboys believe it or not was the deeper movie. I was kinda hoping it would be about Frank Luke the Ballon Buster I had a comic about him when I was kid and he kinda stuck in my mind. But it's actually about the Lafayette Escadrille a unit of American volunteers who fought for the French Airforce prior to the US's entry into the war. It's a good movie and I highly recommend it has something to sit and watch be ye drunk or sober.

One thing sticks in my mind. The speech the American vet gives to our upright and earnest main character (who just wants to surivive go home and rebuild the ranch the damn bank took away) one night as they are mouring the death of fellow Americans and an honorable German foe. He states that he believes that no one will win the war, that it'll just end and everyone will have died for nothing, the surviviors will go home and that will be that. He fights to get back at those who killed his friends (everyone is hunting a dishonorable german pilot who has a black falcon painted on his plane) and make sure more German pilots die in vain than allies. He has no hope of an end that could be considerable meaningful or worthwhile.

Listening to the speech, I began to feel his speech was more about my war then his. These days I find myself on the edge of believing we will not carry through to victory. That we will... Not lose excaltly or win... We will just shrug and go home. Hillary's demand that Jr withdraw the troops before leaving office only pushes me futher towards that edge. There are many political reasons for her demand and I'm not trying to single her out. Plenty of politicians both Republician and Democrat have made that call. The bitter cyanic in me believes that it is because neither side wants to have a fight a campaign with the central issue being Iraq. The Democrats don't believe they can win that fight without getting painted with Vietnam colors again. The Republicians no longer believe that Iraq is a game winner for them. So I find myself looking a future where 3000 men and women died for nothing, just a grim and grisy punchling to a deeply unfunny bad joke. That I did what I did there for nothing. That fellow Marines sarificed limbs, health and even their lives for nothing... I guess one can understand why I find so much meaning in a 2 minute speech by a movie character.

I won't spoil the movie for those who haven't watched it. I'll just say my own maudlin ramblings aside it's a good movie with a decent pace and y'all should give it a sit down.