IMO, the human race will have long destroyed itself (directly or indirectly) before travel between the stars (within a mortal lifetime)can be achieved.

If Human Kind lasts long enough to colonize other planets and develop coherent space ships that can fight, i figure it would be like airplane dogfights, but with out those freaking G forces and that pesky thing called gravity...

We don't have to move anywhere we could just move the universe around us!  

No siriusly!

EEEHAA NO MORE HUMANS YES!!!                

But what about inertia? it would take huge amounts of energy to just slow down, let alone stop these types of ships. Think how heavy they would be when you factor in armour, weapons, engines, fuel storage, power supply, ammunition and life support systems. There's also no air in space, so things like rudders and flaps used to control aircraft today would be useless, these ships would require reverse thrusters on every side to make them at least somewhat maneuverable, further adding to their weight.

Space combat would most likely be similar to how naval combat is today, large, very heavily armed weapons platforms with poor maneuverability blowing the living crap out of each other, even light fighter craft would perform more like say...an inflatable motorboat with a rocket launcher mounted to the front than X-wing from Star Wars.

Warfare between planets in space, assuming faster than light-speed (or even relatively close to light-speed) travel really is impossible, would probably never happen. Transit times between planets would be measured in months (or even years), early warning devices would pick up any approaching fleets well ahead of when they are due to arrive and the defending side would be given plenty of time to prepare themselves and add to their existing fleets. Look at it this way, would you launch an attack on a currently outnumbered enemy, knowing that by the time your forces actually get there, they'll have MORE ships than you? Unlikely.

The reality is almost no wars are fought for want of resources. The underlying argument implies that only resource starved nations or states (or planets) would or should be belligerents. While obviously, resource rich nations would have no need for war. Obviously, historically, that is not the case...exactly the opposite.

Take for example this: In 1991 Iraq (one of the worlds top oil producing nations with one of the highest standards of living in the ME) invaded Kuwait to among other things control it's oil fields as well. Clearly this was not a case of war caused by a "pressure for resources" since Iraq controlled many times the amount of oil as Kuwait did, and was nowhere near exhausting it's own supply.

By comparison modern Turkey has no oil fields and precious few other natural resources and hasn't been involved in a conflict since 1918.

If wars were truly fought over the "pressure for resources" or some other such dispute we would expect nations like Turkey to be aggressors not those like Iraq.

The only way resources become involved in the equation, is because the rich power elites of a particular nation have a desire to control and hence profit from the control & distribution of other resources beyond those they already control (usually in some other nation, often controlled by some other group of power elites).

When it comes to "fighting wars over 'strategic' resources" the operative term is "greed" not "need."

I call dibbs on half the galaxy! Its mine allllll mine!!!!!!!

My point war not that there was a need or pressure for resources. Just a want for them. And yes, usually you need to have good resources to be able to get more.
So, i agree with you.

What i mean is that if we manage to create technology (unlimited power with fusion tech, self replicating nano technology) that more or less, once implemented makes it possible to manufacture things virtually for free, large scale conflicts will be much less common. Given that this technology is evenly distributed, of course. And yes, i know we are nowhere near that today, and may never be.

I wonder if the real question here is whether the Sol-descended people who have these hypothetical interstellar transport and warfare technologies will seem even remotely human to someone from here and now.

We're already taking the baby steps twoards dividing or re-shaping our species at a genetic level. In SF, we have examples like Nancy Kress' Beggars series, which includes a "terrorist" action that changes millions of people, making them autotrophic (like plants, able to get a day's nutrition by lying on sunny ground for a half hour).

Would autotrophic people be "human" in your book, and would a longstanding heterotroph-autotroph conflict be about "resources" or "ideology?" IMO, it would be some of both, and the crucial resource would be sentient beings.

As a first, I really don't think it would be useful to talk about nations in todays sense anymore. Space travel and colonization would be an immense paradigm shift larger than or at least comparable to stuff like the agricultural revolution, the appearence of trade, or the industrial revolution. All these shifts has brought huge changes in how human societies work. An easy leap to make would be that the Tribe/Community "state" - City State - Nation State would be continued with something like Planet State or A few huge states. Another possibility is a fragmentation in different interest groups with loose alliances or ties working together in different coalitions until their temporary goals are met. And of course there wouldn't be any kind of universal human unity, at most very temporary ones if/when humanity would face external threats.

nooooooo!
not Hillary!!! lmao

Myrrdin is right, but what will really be curious is if space travel is as easy as what you guys are talking about, imagine how much groups of religous sects buy a ship and travel deep into the galaxy. Its happened before with the nina, pinta, and santa mariah to the new world (america) or the mormons traveling to the great Salt Lake (Utah)

Why do people seem so scared of Hillary? she seems to be a good choice for president.

She'd scare the hell out of the other Races in the Galaxy if nothing else

She certainly scares the hell out of me

Regards
Zy

First off, this post is talking about the future so try to keep current politics out of this, we dont want a spam war on who is better for the upcoming presidential election.

I can't remember who said earlier in this post about Fusion power, but he is correct about fusion except a few detials.

Fusion power does create waste, however it is only radioactive for about 10 years (alot better than current fission power). Also it wont be 50-100 years till we have it. I can't remeber which date it will be completed, but there is a international organization between USA, Japan, France and i think UK on building a workable fusion reactor. Currently they have done it however it requires more energy than it produces to keep it going, however they are building a new test facility to test a radical new design in France that should be completed this year or 2010, cant remember. If the design works, your looking at having it in a few years, if it doesnt, maybe 10 years.

As for space travel, scientists have actually figured out how to make a warp bubble like in star trek to protect the crew from faster than light travel and making that form of travel possible, the problem is as another person stated is power generation, one of there solutions is however Fusion power.

Combat in space will be highly complicated and intense. I beleive that we will see massive new battleship like ships fighting each other, I dont think fighters will come to be a effective role until alot better tech comes out (even in the future) as even with the larger ships, you have to deal with inertia and all that fun stuff and to have a computer small enough to calculate every little course correction during a fight for a fighter would be insanely difficult.

Weapons used will most liekly be railguns, missiles and lasers, and most likely plasma based weapons.

The conflict in the future space will most likely not be between nations but between corperations. As the US government today does not actually go get resources, it hires companies to do it. During the colonization of the new world, the mother countries did not control thier colonies at first, they were companies that were sent to the americas to strip them of resources to make them richer and the mother country richer as they provided protection and got taxes. only later did the mother countries actually take over the colonies, this was in response to the fear of losing thier economic gain from them and increased hostile colonial wars. So yeah in space it will most likely be companies fighting each other for resources while nations will provide protection for the companies withing thier so called territory.

thats my view