to Zman, Have we ever been able to not leave someone alone? Crusades, Jihads, Pogroms, Inquisitions, Missionaries, ethnic cleansing, xenophobia, racism and "Liberators" throughout human history shows a somewhat straightforward trend. I believe the second scenario, (pre-emptive annihilation) is more likely.

railguns and normal chemically propelled guns are essentially the same, except that the momentum transfer is near 100% efficient in the railgun whilst some of the energy is imparted into the combustion gases in normal guns. The limiting factor of all such weaponry is limited to mass and thrust of the spacecraft so to limit the affect firing the weapon has on the attitude and trajectory of the spacecraft. Conventional aircraft's autocannon is feasible space weapon as the thrust generated by firing is insignificant compared to that of the engine (although slowing down when firing is a greatly noticeable effect in aircraft with powerful guns like the A10 Warthog). Unguided projectile weaponry will most likely be impracticable in space due to the complex calculations to plot an intercept over large distances compared to the relative ease of making an evasive manoeuvre. Missiles too require complex firing solutions if engagements occur in orbital space where changing orbital trajectories and height require vast amounts of propellant and even more if the firing solution is inefficient (consider the complications of current ASAT weapons and the difficulty in hitting stable orbiting objects). Nuclear weapons become more feasible in space and indeed, more important as low attainable accuracy of weapons will have to be compensated with large area of effect weapons. Lack of significant radiological threat is also a bonus. This might bring in turn nuclear-antimissiles or the obsolescence of "warships (platform centric warefare)" and more emphasis on individual self guided munition vehicles. Space warfare will be nothing like naval warfare, or any warfare fought on earth or simulated in any videogame on the market (because such a game is too complex to be fun, btw are there even space flight simulators like ms flight simulator apart from the ones NASA owns?). Battles and wars are most likely to be fought over planetary orbits instead of empty space because there are no choke points in space terrain and contested territories will most likely be planets (who wants to own empty space?) and it is near impossible to intercept a ship/fleet in open space. War in space without FTL capability will take years for a ship/fleet to get to where its meant to be (like a certain planet) and wars will most likely take decades to even be won over a spread out galaxy and the time form declaration of war to the initial clash might be years (its hard to be at war without actual fighting for so long, and chances are whatever caused the conflict will have been resolved).

again, railguns are not chemical propelled guns.
They work in space.

Since some of you cant grasp what a railgun is, look it up!

WWW Link

You can also check out this video of the US Navy testing a prototype railgun (to be used on a new destroyer class.)


WWW Link

This is the reason the creators of the current Battlestar Galactica are using projectile rounds instead of lasers compared to the 1970's Battlestar Galactica show.

Seriously... the Georgia Guidestones? Of all the conspiracies out there you pick THIS ONE to be our future. Heck, I prefer the doomsday moon colonization plan. Sustained Development is such a silly idea - using environmentalism to destroy humanity... pshaw!

I think we would have something like the caves of steel series by Isaac Asimov.

Bring on the Mega-Cities and Judge Dredd!!

For conspiracies sake why don't we include the Report From Iron Mountain for a future scenario WWW Link. The reason the "White Coats" imagine amazing scenarios of space-travel and colonization is because the reality down here is pretty grim and hopeless. Who doesn't want to imagine being able to leave it all behind?

The REAL reason is because they simply want to believe in it and imagine. It make them feel cozy and important.

I'm not a physesist, but i do think that involves recoil, as you are in a sence propelling somthing fowards. which, in space, would send you flying backwards.
They are quite impressive though, i agree.
But i could be wrong, we just have to wait 1000 years or so and see what kind of stuff we start putting on our ships. lol. unless we reincarnate to another planet, in another galaxy.

I'm not a physesist, but i do think that involves recoil, as you are in a sence propelling somthing fowards. which, in space, would send you flying backwards.
They are quite impressive though, i agree.
But i could be wrong, we just have to wait 1000 years or so and see what kind of stuff we start putting on our ships. lol. unless we reincarnate to another planet, in another galaxy.

you never ended it! Thats a different .exe!

The rail gun does cause recoil, in fact even worse then standard guns, the magnetic force forces the two rails in the gun (that conduct electricity) in opposite directions, in space that could cause the ship to begin spinning at the same speed the progectile is fired from the ship. which would make it highly ineffective as a weapon, until prouper gravity and anti gravity technology is invented, if ever.
Basicly you would need either beam weapons (which are rather complicated to make useful as weapons) and self guided missles, which propell themselvs, as they wouldn't directly effect the ship itself.

I'm pretty sure the forces are just perpendicular to the rails along the horizontal axis(pulling apart) so it shouldn't cause spinning. The problem today with railguns is engineering the rails to withstand multiple shots without warping or weakening from stress. If you have found a properly drawn force diagram then please correct me.

Actually both the Crusades and Jihads were a product of economics pressures.

Considering the relatively small scale of our solar system, stars, etc. in comparison with other in the galaxy that we only know are there through telescopes and mathematic calculations, I think the "1% of the galaxy can support life" theory is absolutely ridiculous. There are simply too many stars and planets in our galaxy for us to impetuously assume that we as living things are such a rare commodity in the infinite universe. We haven't even been able to travel to the edge of our own solar system!

Also, I think that given the implications of time and lightyears, the only way we would come across another species in space would be on the off-chance that they had superiorly-developed travel technologies and were primarily focused on space exploration. More likely scenarios would involve either us discovering intelligent life that was based on a planet, or intrepid aliens passing through our solar system to collect resources from our solar system before we even muster the technology for that kind of travel.

It's even feasible to think that this may have already happened, if what they theorize about past life on Mars to be true.

As far as wars, Humans would probably be stupid enough to develop their technology for something so impractical as space battles just to prove that it were possible.
It may very well be contact with other intelligent life that unites us as a species, but then we become racially-proud and seek out to destroy and control "alien scum".
The opposite could also happen, with those of us being utterly fascinated and desiring peaceful contact with alien species.

Such a thing could also cause a rift in our own species, as Humans tend to react to new cultures and discoveries in two ways; either fearful aggression, or awed fascination. Depending on the attitude of said intelligent life, this could either cause us to fight amongst each other in defense of the new alien culture versus our traditional pride, or it could cause those fascinated to be enslaved and the distrustful to fight the aliens in an effort to exact revenge for their lost brethren.

The possibilities are endless, based completely on the many facets of circumstance.

Spacepony you replied a while ago. the myans were primitive and confused about the future. the world will not end in december of 2012 just becouse our solor system passes thru the center of the Milky way. i do apolijize if i offend you but it is illogical to assume a primitive civ could predict the future so accuratly

A STRING THEORIST! RUNNNNN!!!!

Sorry for the double post, but...

For those of you interested in the probability of extraterrestrial life (that we can contact), read up on Drake's Equation. It makes some simplifying assumptions but the statistics turn out interesting!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

Personally, I think the answer to our problems is to build a giant space weapon of some sort (perhaps ring shaped) which when fired, destroys all life in the galaxy (or solar system) then the human race will have all its problems resolved.

Haha. Yea lets blow up the universe! Life sucks anyways, we'll be doing the universe a favor!

Hmm, yes...and then our problems will totally be solved, as we'll have only our own petty problems to focus on, much like now. (Not to mention that SETI would become an utterly dead project. And to any new life-forms that arise years later, we'd be the ultimate proprietors of genocide.)

That is if this mucho-destructive weapon doesn't cause something in our solar system to go off-kilter and send un-manned space craft to go careening into our atmosphere how ever many years later. A giant wave of space junk wipes out all mankind in some ironic twist of fated retribution.

Here's some of the possible futures for a united Earth, assuming we don't destroy ourselves first.

At one end of the spectrum is the entire planet united under a democratic world state, which isn't exactly on the horizon right now.

Second is a loose coalition of nations/superpowers united under a democracy leading the rest of the world, sort of like my Earth Federation.

Third is a aristocratic republic with somewhat tight governmental control on the population.

Fourth is a monarchy, a la the Terran Empire.

At the other end of the spectrum is a facist dictatorship.

Note: this was just speculation, don't over-anylise it.

Because humans are stupid!!!