"Most scientists beleive that about 1% of the planets in the galaxy are suited for life and that doesn't include whatever species that might actually be intelligent life."

[run sarcasm.exe]

Hey, guys, listen up! I'm aware that we haven't left our solar system yet, nor have we discovered a truly practical way to travel through space, and thus don't know much byond our little neck of the galactic woods, but let's listen to the scientists making huge extrapolations. They're scientists, so they can't be wrong!

[terminate sarcams.exe]

My turn to post, yippy.

On polotics, humanities first mistake was inventing money, it is now a part of our very exsistence. kind of ironic how we have become dependent on somthing that, really doesn't exsist, its just somthing we made up in order to make trade easier. Now it has become the very core of our culture.
I am willing to bet, that this will not change, in the near or distant future. Eventualy we may reach a level at which we can practice perfect comunism (as all previous attempts have simply turned into tyrany) But thats still a ways off.
I suspect, that if we ever get off this rock, the whole colonization concept will be turned into an excuse to make more money. Because we like our money. And money is power, and we really like power.

As for space travel itsself. Once we said that humans cannot fly, now thousands of people "fly" every day.
We once thought the vast exspanse of the ocean was endless, now we have mapped nearly every square inch of the planets surface, and are working on seeing everything there is to see under water and under ground.
Once, the invention of the wheele was a great acheivement, now we are on the verge of developting nanotechnology and biogenetic engeneering. We can even create clones! somewhat flawed, but clones none the less. We aren't even far off from being able to decide how we want our children to look and what features we want to give them, before they are even born.
The problem is investing in somthing as theoretical space travel, as today, inventing stuff costs alot of money.
With no garranty that it will work, and no short term gain, or long term gain to be found that we know of, its kind of heard for a company to invest in somthing like this. If the gain doesn't come for another thousand years, why invest now? we won't get any of the money out of it?

So thats my view of it, if we ever bother to invent space travel, we will still be bound by money and greed.

And to the comment above. Railguns, not a good weapon in space. for one, you cannot fire "bullets" in space. at least not the way we do on earth. Two, objects moveing through space do not stop moveing, which makes them somewhat unstapble, as they could come raining down on a near by planet. Plasma sounds more correct, radioactive material would also work, as it would eventualy lose its energies after a while, and if it hit a planet, it would simply be absorbed.

"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."

Reminds me of Eve Online.

Knew this is irrelevent, just yammering.

Why don't we just leave them alone? ( 

To hotshot,

do you know how railguns work? most likely not, your not firing a bullet, it contains no explosives, no gunpowder, nothing of a mordern gun. It uses electromagnitic fields to propel a projectile up to mach 16. It also uses no moving parts. Also the current railgun tech on earth is quite amazing, even though the highest one we testet wasnt near the one they want, the projectiles being made for it are quite cool, you got a tungsten rod as a plain projectile and you also got one that will have a built in gps flgiht system that will make it a very powerfully smart projectile with a range of 500+ miles . I believe that these and missiles will be used in space quite often as they will be more available. Lasers and plasma based weapons will be heavily energy dependent and only large ships would have them. Even though a railgun needs energy as well to fire, its alot less than a laser or equivilent.

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.