Space Warfare For Dummies

[Ommanipadmehum]

Space Warfare For Dummies

Are you tired of cliches? Becoming frustrated with unimaginative tactics? Want to do something other than copy the latest sci-fi hit? Looking for new, exciting, but still pretty realistic ideas? How about having it explained in layman's terms? Well then, Space Warfare For Dummies is just the guide for you! I'm going to deconstruct a very popular aspect of science fiction, and see if I can't entertain you at the same time. You'll be reading about everything from gravity wells to laser guns, propulsion systems, stealth, and more! I'll even cover superscience technologies, and show how they drastically change the way wars are waged!

So, without further ado, let's get this guide going!

Entry List

1. Not Your Daddy's Universe
2. Big Brother's Watching You
3. Home On The Lagrange
4. The Need For Light-Speed
5. It's All Relative Anyway*
6. Faster-Than-Light And You*
7. Less QQ And More Pew Pew
8. Greener Grass Isn't Green

* Entry is about superscience technology.

[Ommanipadmehum]

Not Your Daddy's Universe

Space is weird. You may think you know it well, but it's highly likely you haven't grasped how big a mind-fuck it really is. This first entry is not about war, but about where you'll wage it. It's a primer for the guide itself, and a big reminder of just how incredibly alien and dangerous space is to us living things. So, fasten your seat-belts, and get ready to learn some stuff.

There are five basic things you need to remember before seriously getting into this guide. First, space is bigger than you think. Second, supersonic turds are out to get you. Third, calling space slippery is an understatement. Fourth, gravity is a fickle thing. Finally, a thermostat will save your life. Ignore these truths, and you'll die before you even meet your enemies.

Too Big For Words

The closest world to the Earth is the Moon, and it's got a hell of a restraining order. On average, it's about 240,000 miles away, which is like going from New York to Los Angeles and back 40 times. It's so far, if your voice could get there, the delay between you shouting and anyone on the Moon hearing you would be about two weeks. Let's not get started on planets or stars.

No, actually, let's talk about planets and stars. Venus, the nearest planet, never comes closer to us than 24 million miles; that's a sound delay of three and a half years. Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, is 25 trillion miles away; a delay that's millions of years long. Don't just nod and say, "I already know this." Let it sink in for a little bit, and realize how insane it is.

Mind The Feces, Will You?

You're probably thinking, "It's okay, I'll just go faster!" Nope. Space is big, but it's not empty, and there's more than stars, planets, moons, and asteroids out there. There's countless pebbles and snowballs zipping about much faster than sound, and they'll gladly ruin your day at the drop of a hat. For a moment, imagine driving really, really fast, and then hitting a 1-inch turd.

"It's okay, I've got a windshield to protect me", you say, but you're wrong. The force behind something that fast, be it a turd, snowball, or pebble, is like a shot from a handgun. There are lots of bullets out there, some bigger, faster, or both; so slow down, or get a lot more protection. While size is important, speed weeds out who lives and dies in space more often than not.

Cosmic Skating Rink

Speaking of speed, moving in space is nothing like sailing at sea or flying in the air. This is thanks to gravity, or the lack of it, but we'll get to that in a bit. For now, let's talk about friction, or the force that slows things down. Aside from gravity, pushing, or pulling, you're usually speeding up or slowing down because you're shooting stuff in the direction opposite of your destination.

This is because there's no air to slow you down, so you can practically cruise at supersonic speeds for all eternity. Before you think about changing speed or direction really quickly, remember that gravity is nonexistent out here, and everything in the ship will have to match the changes on their own. Basically, you're making short-lived artificial gravity, so hold tightly onto that porcelain!

Timmy's In The Gravity Well

Gravity is something we take for granted. It allows us to walk, lets us think in just two dimensions, and tends to keep shit from floating aimlessly. Without it, we push and pull on stuff to move, floors and ceilings are just extra walls, and Velcro stocks skyrocket. Artificial gravity is nice, but it requires lots of upkeep; lower gravity is also nice, but have fun bouncing instead of walking!

Having gravity isn't a good thing, though. Falling sucks, since you tend to crash once you stop, and you usually get pulled down faster the closer you get the source of the gravity. Getting away from a source of gravity is also tricky, since going too fast will just add lots of artificial gravity to the real deal, crushing both you and your porcelain before you even get into orbit.

IcyHot Is An Evil Bastard

Finally, we'll talk about temperature. We living things like to be warm, obviously, but empty space is barely above absolute zero; in plain English, that comes out to, "so cold, molecules stop moving". On airless worlds, whether on their night side or on worlds far from stars, it's just a tad bit warmer. Being near a star helps, but then lethal radiation becomes your new problem.

Death by cold is not the only danger; naturally, overheating will also kill you. This threat is constant, regardless of whether you're in the shadow of a world or far from any stars. Why is this so? Well, there is no air in space, so there's nothing slightly cooler than you to suck the heat out. Without any way to get rid of the heat, everything on board quickly becomes fried to a crisp.

Summaries and Stuff

You're still here? You're quite the trooper! So, now that you know the basics behind how hellish outer space is, you've taken the first step on the journey to becoming an expert in waging war within the final frontier. I hope this entry has been informative, and would love to get your feedback. Feel free to leave me a private/visitor message if you have any comments, questions, topic requests, etc.

See you next time!

[Ommanipadmehum]

Big Brother's Watching You

One of the first steps to waging war is getting information on the enemy, primarily on where they are holed up. Unfortunately, space is just plain ginormous, so you need to be close to get any valuable details. If you can see them, though, then they can see you, and that's bad form. You're probably thinking, "Easy, Omma, I'll just hide while doing my recon." But, I'm here to remind you of a neat fact: there's no stealth in space!

Remember, there's no air to absorb your heat, so it's going to radiate outwards and make you look like an inferno in the Antarctic. The difference between the vacuum and room temperature is pretty damn big; it's much like the difference between a nice day at your house, and the temperature at which paper suddenly catches on fire by itself. This is incredibly easy to detect from far away, and even from air-coated worlds like Earth.

Nowhere To Hide

"Can't I just shut everything off? I'll be invisible that way!", you suggest. Neat idea, but you can't do it without freezing to death. Even so, water's freezing point isn't that much lower than room temperature, so you'll still stick out like a sore thumb. Unless you're an alien with a very weird biochemistry, or a robot, this tactic just doesn't work. Even if you are one of those two, though, you're not quite out of the woods just yet!

Let's assume you're like a human, first. If you can't turn off the lights, you can stop yourself from radiating heat, right? Wrong. Since space is airless, all that heat is going to build up very quickly, and now your ship's interior is starting to melt away. You need some radiators, and the most basic of them are thin sheets that dump waste heat off their flat sides. The more heat you make, the bigger and/or more numerous they need to be.

Now, how can we design our radiators to make us harder to detect? Well, just make sure the flat sides don't face the enemy's sensors, and they're facing them edge-on. Which direction do you need to tilt your radiators to avoid detection? It depends on where the enemy sensors are. Since the lack of gravity let's us move in three dimensions, they can be looking at you from practically any angle. The best you can do is spot them before they spot you.

Nowhere To Run

Finding the sensors while staying hidden is hard, though. Smart enemies will make their sensors both mobile and scattered, so you'll need to keep tilting your radiators into the shifting, small angles that are safe. Which angles are safe? Well, you need to find their sensors to figure out that, first. It's a vicious cycle, but there's good news: sensors need radiators, too. "Then, I'll send in my own sensors to find them!", you say. Not so fast.

Every extra sensor you send in increases the chances of the enemy finding one of them. If they figure out they're being spied on, they'll start scanning all over the place for more of them, and now you're both searching for each other in an escalating game of 'hide and go seek with bazookas'. Both sides will start relaying their information to every other sensor, letting them know where everything is at a rate that quickly makes hiding pretty much unfeasible.

It gets worse. All of the above was assuming that you haven't fired your thrusters once you're in range of their sensors. After all, the very second you do that, you're shooting out hot material that's even more detectable than your ship, and the end of your thrusters get hot enough to be spotted. So, unless you want to crash into your target, or move so slowly that it'll take years to reach them, you'll eventually have to give up your position by firing those things.

Some Solutions

You're probably sick of the idea of hiding, at this point. I don't blame you, but you shouldn't give up that easily. There are some nifty ways to hide in space, but it just takes some creativity; this is one of the main reasons of this guide, after all. Let's start with you being a bizarre alien, or a robot; you have the advantage of saying "screw you!" to almost all of the above problems, since you can drift in the void at temperatures low enough to kill any human!

Say you're neither of those, though, and you still want to hide. Remember all those supersonic snowballs I mentioned in entry #1? Take one of the many big ones out there, hollow its center, stick your ship in there, and just drift to your target while all your waste heat slowly melts through the ice between you and the surface. But, don't coast at high speeds, or in large flocks, because that's very rare in nature, and your enemies will get suspicious.

Here's a crazier idea. Rather than staying cold, why not hide behind something really hot? If you're close to a star, the enemy'll need a good filter to pick you out from the enormous, raging inferno behind you. Even better, stars are huge, including the really small ones called red dwarfs. A downside to this is that you're easier to spot when you're not between the star and the enemy, but it's likely you'll have found them before that even becomes a problem.

Summaries And Stuff

I'll admit that I lied at the beginning of this entry. There really is stealth in space, but it's not as simple as putting on black paint and thinking happy thoughts. Of course, the methods that actually can hide you are quite temporary, and/or specialized to the point of rarely being worth the effort. On the grand scheme of things, you really shouldn't worry about stealth. You should focus more on whether or not you can outrun, outgun, or outlast your foes!

Until next time, cadets!

[Ommanipadmehum]

Home On The Lagrange

Now that stealth's been neutered, the next thing you need to figure out is territory. But, we're not talking about planets or moons this time around; those deserve more than just a single entry. Today's devoted to gravity wells and lagrange points, two often-neglected regions that are quite valuable. "Omma, I just want planets and moons. How could patches of empty space be worth more?" Because you can put stuff there, that's why!

Before we get into the details, here are some basic reasons why you should use gravity wells and lagrange points. For starter's, they can make moving through space cheaper and faster. Secondly, they are in practically every star system, and not using them will leave holes in your defense. Finally, they move with their respective worlds, so you don't need to thin your forces out to protect every little thing you own in each system.

Ring Around The Slingshot

Things with lots of mass make gravity, naturally, and less gravity pulls you the further you get from its source. But, this happens over such a short distance that, when graphed, the whole thing looks like a well. This 'well' also exists in all directions, so you can exploit it from virtually any angle. But, the two basic uses for these things are: putting something in orbit in them, and letting them change your speed and direction without needing to fire a single thruster.

But, first, we need to split the well into zones. The lowest of these is the world itself, from core to surface. Above it is the atmosphere, which thins out and becomes low orbit. Low orbit's "atmosphere" then thins out even more, becoming medium orbit, whose outer edge is an imaginary line called synchronous orbit. This line marks the distance where something orbiting the world will circle around as fast as the world itself spins 360 degrees.

Beyond all of this is high orbit, which is usually very big. Eventually, the well's edges are reached, and the gravity of whatever star or planet the world orbits pulls on you harder. Why are these zones worth mentioning? Well, you clearly can't orbit on the surface, and going too fast in the atmosphere can make you burn up and/or explode. Low orbit has much weaker friction, letting you place short-lived satellites there, as well as use air more safely to slow down.

Medium orbit is much like low orbit, except the thinner atmosphere doesn't slow your satellites as quickly, even if they're harder to reach. Synchronous orbit is useful for sensors, either pointing towards or away from the world. It's also the best place to end a space elevator, assuming the world spins relatively quickly, and you're building it close to the equator. High orbit is where you put stuff you don't want people easily reaching from the surface.

All of the above assumes you're orbiting in a circle, which is totally unnecessary and boring. You can go around a world in an ellipse, spending most of your time in a high orbit, and then quickly zip in through a lower orbit. This is ideal for stations that are restocked much more commonly than plain-old high orbit stations, and even crash back into the planet when they're decommissioned. But, what if you make the ellipse even wider? Slingshot.

In the first entry, I mentioned how not to escape a gravity well: going out fast and in a straight line. It's cheaper to fly out from the world in a spiral loop, and also includes much less artificial gravity from all the rocket firing. You can, however, save on more energy by doing elliptic loops, firing your thrusters only when you drop into low orbit. This speeds you up much faster, and can be used by deep space ships to cheaply change course mid-route.

The Many-Body Problem

Some worlds have worlds that orbit them, and their combined gravity wells balance each other out at specific areas of space. These are the often-ignored lagrange points, and there are five of these bad boys. What's so special about them? Well, you can build space elevators with tips at L1 or L2, or put stuff in a kidney-bean orbit around L1, L2, and L3. The last two points, L4 and L5, are massive parking spaces for whatever you can lug into them.

L1, L2, and L3 aren't stable, so it's rare to have stuff there. More stuff is usually parked in L4 and L5, but all that scattered gravity will eventually make their orbits unpredictable. This isn't a bad thing, since now your foes can't know where you'll be by the time they reach you. Another plus are Trojan moons and asteroids, natural objects that fell into L4 and L5 points long ago. The former exist around Saturn, while the latter go with Jupiter around Sol.

Some of Saturn's moons have stuff in their L4/L5 points, some of which are big enough to be their own worlds; these are Trojan moons. On a larger scale, Jupiter's L4/L5 points are near the asteroid belt, and they've managed to suck up a lot of asteroids over time; these are Trojan asteroids. To top it off, other planets have their own lagrange points with the Sun, and they can be populated with way-stations, defense platforms, sensor satellites, and more.

Did I forget to mention that lagrange points orbit with the worlds that form them? You don't have to send ships straight from Earth to Venus to invade; you could easily park something into L5, wait for Venus to come around again, then launch an attack from there. Even better, different worlds orbit things at different speeds, meaning worlds closer to the star will come into contact with each others' lagrange points much more often than outer worlds' points.

It Gets Bigger Than That

Speaking of larger scales, the gravity well of a star is the most vital space of all. A solar slingshot into interstellar space would be cheaper than using just rockets, and you can use the solar wind as a sort of 'atmosphere' to slow you down as you return from the void. More importantly, the worlds in a star system are defined by the gravity well, with heavier elements like iron being closer to the star, and lighter elements like hydrogen being farther away.

Most star systems in the galaxy have stars orbiting other stars. These systems would also have their own lagrange points, which would be home to everything from frozen planetoids to long-lost gas giants, icy asteroids, and even deep space sensors! The scale ends there, though, since a star-galaxy system would only have L1 be close enough to you to even be useful; the other points are much farther, and vulnerable to the gravity of nearby stars.

Summaries and Stuff

Why talk about gravity wells and lagrange points first, instead of something more valuable, like worlds and asteroid belts? Well, space battles will mainly be fought in space, you know. Not to mention, it's a general reminder that there are things about space that are easily ignored, some things that could be used for strategies that destroy this sub-genre's cliches. So, get to work on those tactics, and don't forget to suggest a topic for the next entry!

Take care now!

[Ommanipadmehum]

The Need For Light-Speed

Territory is neat and all, but it's useless if you can't go from place to place, isn't it? This entry is all about moving in space, and the neat and nasty side-effects it offers. Before we get into the thick of it, recall from entry #1 that you can only move by being pushed, pulled, or by throwing stuff away. This is the same for everything, from stars to planets to people and snowballs; but, what happens when we remember that friction doesn't apply in the void?

Without gravity to pull you down, you can fly for forever. Hold on, though! What about those snowballs from entry #1? The faster you go, the more powerful the impact with one will be! Doesn't matter if you hit it or if it hits you; unless you have protection, your hull will either get dented or shot up! There are trillions of these bullets in the Solar System alone, millions of them at least a mile wide. Well now, looks like we'll also be talking about weapons!

Ghost Ride The Solar Wind

So far, I've only talked about using rockets and gravity to move through space, but that's not the only way to get around. Gravity pulls, and rockets throw stuff, but what could possibly push you? Something hitting your behind with pebbles isn't effective, but what if we went softer? No, not liquids; nope, not even gas. What if you got a giant laser to push you forward? You heard me. Get a huge laser, point it at your ship's butt, and hold on tight as it fires.

Light from all parts of the spectrum is made of tiny stuff called photons, and they can push you pretty fast if there's a lot of them. Of course, you really need a lot of them for this to work, and a giant mirror, or 'sail', for them to bounce off of. The Sun gives off lots of light, called the solar wind, but the push it gives gets as weak over distance as gravity. You could still use the solar wind, but you'd just float around the Sun. So, get lasers!

Actually, forget the lasers. Electrons, other tiny stuff (but bigger than photons) that go around almost all atoms, are even better for pushing. How? Well, electrons are the reason magnets work, and magnets can let you float like this badass. So, unfurl that magnetic sail, turn it on, watch those charged particles near your rear, laugh as the sail's field pushes them back, feel yourself move forward, and enjoy the cheap ride into the depths of space!

Wait. You're getting pushed by magnets one way, but how do you slow down if they're not being fired at you from the other way? No problem! Just use the magnetic field of a star, or a world that also has a field, and you can safely slow down. Worlds' fields are much weaker and smaller than those of stars, though, so it's best to use them either for speeding up or stopping your already-slowed crawl. But, none of this compares to the freedom that comes from having a rocket!

I Am The Rocketman

At their simplest, rockets shoot stuff one way, so you can go the other way. A rocket that shoots more stuff per second will make you go faster, as will one that shoots the stuff out at higher speeds. All of this stuff, though, is fuel, which you'll eventually run out of. "I'll just carry a lot of fuel with me, Omma." Bad idea, because all that new weight needs to be pushed as well, making you need more fuel, which creates a vicious cycle.

How do we fix this problem? Basically, carry as little fuel as possible, and get rockets that don't waste it. Remember those magnets? Well, you can carry charged particles as fuel, and quickly shoot those buggers out one by one; this is an ion rocket. This engine isn't that powerful, even though it's very economical, so we'll need to think of something that gives us more speed per pound of fuel. Let's look at modern, nuclear, and antimatter rockets, shall we?

Modern rockets make long-lasting explosions in their gas tanks, and shoot the hot gas out like a torch. Unlike ion rockets, these speed you up really fast, but waste a ton of fuel in the process. Ever seen those big orange tanks attached to spaceships? They're spent just to get ships into orbit! Next up is nukes, which can make gas fuels explode much easier/longer, and also make charged particles that can be shot out like in an ion rocket.

Say the thought of riding nukes bores you; try antimatter! Antimatter gets destroyed with any normal matter it touches, turning all that stuff into photons, electrons, and charged particles that can speed you up faster on a per-pound-of-fuel basis than nukes ever will. Obviously, it's also dangerous, so you'll need strong magnets to keep it away from the normal matter. One pound of that stuff can make an explosion half as strong as the Tsar Bomba!

Let's Kill The Dinosaurs

The force behind an impact depends mainly on the speed of the bullet, with its size and weight being slightly less important. Combine this fact with the propulsion systems mentioned above, and the countless pebbles of varying sizes above them, and you've got yourself a cosmic shooting gallery! Impact weapons are some of the most terrifying things to use in a war, and they're so easy to make, they'll most likely outnumber actual attack ships in a space fleet!

These guys have simplified the math, and the numbers show that a typical, metallic asteroid that's 100 yards wide could kill everything within 2 miles on impact, and give everyone within 15 miles third degree burns. It should scare you to know that there are 1,250,000 of these floating inside the asteroid belt right now, in reality. What's worse, there are about 350,000 bigger ones out there; to top it off, these asteroids only make up 5% of the entire belt!

This is ignoring trillions of icy asteroids at the edge of the 'near' Solar System, the Kuiper Belt, and the countless comets beyond it. In short, it's easy to find and make a big rock smash into a world and kill people, even if the world is air-coated. The simplest defense natives have is firing lasers at the rock to deflect it, something that'll be detailed in a future topic. It's not perfect, though, cause you can shatter the rock with bombs and make it a shotgun blast from heaven, since they might not deflect all the pieces.

I did say that speed of the bullet was more important than its size and weight, though! Instead of shooting the whole rock, why not chip away at it for countless rounds! Using magnets, you can push and pull a metallic slug up to insane speeds in the friction-free void, and then launch it at whatever target you like. Sure, this is energy-expensive, more so for bigger rounds, but it'd be insanely effective against a world with little-to-no atmosphere; more importantly, few enemy ships could withstand that much force.

Summaries And Stuff

As you can see, space itself is already designed to kill us meatbags at the drop of a hat. It doesn't take much more than a few nudges for an asteroid to wipe out a city, or some hypersonic metal to level a colony, or break a spaceship. But, the same tech that can kill us can also take us across the void, and let us explore this wonderful universe at will. Which reminds me, maybe the next entry should be about faster-than-light travel!

What do you think?

[Ommanipadmehum]

It's All Relative Anyway*

What's that? You want to go faster, and think rockets, lasers, and all that other shit is too slow? You even want to outrun light, so you can casually cross the huge gap between star systems? Oh man, you've just opened up a big can of superscience worms, and it's going to take the entire entry to shut it. But, hey, what's the point of all this, if we can't have a little fun along the way?

Unlike regular entries, superscience ones like this will be about possibilities. Sure, physics is important, but it'll have to take a back seat if we really want to see the effects of all these fancy gizmos. Before we get to the good stuff, though, I've got to explain the biggest pain in the ass for anyone wanting to go incredibly fast: time dilation, better known as the universe's brakes.

Back To The Future

Let's say you've got a magic jetpack with infinite fuel, and you're going to run to Alpha Centauri and back for a quick vacation. You flip the sucker on, pass the speed limit, then the speed of sound, and start reaching fractions of light speed. You reach halfway, then flip your ship around to start slowing down. You finally reach New Hawaii, chill for a week, then come back to boring old Earth.

Once here, you turn on your radio and check your watch. To you, the whole thing took 7 years; checking the news feed, though, you realize it really took you 12 years. Holy Batman! Where did 5 years go? You lost it to time dilation! How? Well, to make sure matter stays below light-speed, the universe says "fuck you!" to fast things, and slows down how fast time runs for them.

It gets worse. The closer you get to light speed, the faster time is slowed, so you need ever-growing amounts of energy just to keep speeding up. Not to mention, you're throwing away everyone you know and love just to reach your destination within your lifetime. There are ways to exploit this, though, like putting money in the bank and letting time dilation give you quick interest!

And Then The Past

Let's say you meet a man with a gun that shoots bullets at faster-than-light speed. You have a spare jetpack, and he has a spare gun, so you both trade for each others' gizmo. But, you two argue about something, you insult his pride, and he challenges you to a duel. Here are the rules: both sides must fly apart at near-light speed for five seconds, then turn around and shoot.

The next day, you two fly into space and get to your positions. A referee tells you to go, and you both zip off in opposite directions. You smirk, knowing that time dilation should let you win, since the universe will slow down for you. You fly for five seconds, turn around, then fire at your slowed-down, still-flying opponent. He goes down instantly, and you won the duel! Or did you?

This is where it turns into a mind-fuck. From your foe's perspective, he shot you before your five seconds were up, since time slowed down for him as well. So, you both shot each other before five seconds passed for either of you. From the referee's perspective, you both flew for two seconds, then got killed by bullets from the future. Congratulations, you just caused a time paradox!

Summaries And Stuff

"Omma, that doesn't make sense. You're saying faster-than-light travel is time travel?" Yes. If you put together time dilation and faster-than-light travel, whether by warps, jumps, hyperspaces, wormholes, etc, you'll eventually cause a time paradox. How do we avoid that from happening? Limitations! Which ones work, and which don't? Well, it's best I save that for another entry.

See you next time!

[Ommanipadmehum]

Faster-Than-Light And You*

"Omma, come up with some limitations! Einstein's an ass!" Yeah, slower-than-light travel makes space wars kind of boring. Let's start with axing time travel; FTL drives won't work if time dilation is in effect, cause it either gets sent to some alternate reality's past, blows up, or just doesn't work. Time dilation is gradual, though, so we need a speed limit; let's pick 1% light-speed, for simplicity's sake.

Time dilation doesn't just slow down time, though. Energy is matter moving at light-speed times light-speed, which is a total mind-fuck, but means that going faster should increase your mass. More mass means more gravity, so going faster is really a new kind of artificial gravity! But, wait, doesn't gravity bend both space and time? Oh god, this means entire worlds and stars will cause time dilation!

What The Fu-BOOM

Don't worry, though, worlds' and stars' gravity wells won't block your FTL drive; only crazy stuff like black holes can do that. If that's true, then you could use an FTL drive practically anywhere, including the surface of a world. Congratulations, you've just invented teleporters, and should immediately prepare for World War 3. Why? Well, all it takes is one teleported antimatter bomb to wipe out your city!

"Okay, block FTL from the surface!" Alright, but this just pushes the problem under the rug. Enemies will appear above you without warning, and you'll have to teleport a supersonic bullet onto a collision course with them right when they show up. Sounds good, right? Wrong. The collision will cause tons of debris, which will stay in orbit for quite some time, and cause something known as Kessler Syndrome.

Here's how it works. The debris you caused will probably hit a satellite one day. That collision will cause more debris, which could hit other satellites, which'll make more debris, repeating the process over and over, until anything in orbit will be pulverized by a swarm of supersonic pieces of space trash. Some scientists in real life are trying to prevent this from ever happening, cause we keep throwing trash into orbit.

Of course, this scenario isn't all gloom and doom. Remember our talk on gravity wells and asteroids? Stuff in elliptical orbits will slow down and fall over time, and other stuff can get put into that kind of orbit by firing a laser at it to nudge its course. Really tiny stuff can just get vaporized with lasers, too, or hit something shielded. But, cleaning the whole mess will take a long time, unless you have a lot of lasers.

"Fine then! FTL only works outside gravity wells!" Good job, now lagrange points will be filled with bombs and lasers just waiting for a ship to drop in. You're also counting a star's gravity well, right? Otherwise, you could go to an asteroid, stick an FTL drive on it, then teleport it onto a collision course with a world! But why go into deep space at all, when you can teleport bombs inside of enemies' freaking ships?

Say you even block FTL drives from working inside a star's gravity well, though, and limit them to the very edges of a star system. Ships can still skip the void, but they'll also need slower-than-light propulsion systems to go in and out of a star system. This is probably the most 'reasonable' of set ups, since it's assumed that most of the action will take place within star systems, and not the vast, empty voids between them.

Warps And Wormholes

The above issues only apply if you're using a jump drive or hyperdrive, though; the former teleports you to your destination, while the latter sends you through some dimension where ships fly at the speed of plot! On top of this, it assumes your enemies can't see you coming, and we both know surprises can be deadly in space. What other options do we have? Well, we've got wormholes and warp drives.

A wormhole is a portal that lets you cross the void simply by flying through it. There are different kinds, but I'll just talk about two: networks and pairs. With a network, you push a button, a portal opens, and you fly through from Earth to New Hawaii. Normally, networks are made up of stargates that make these wormholes, so you can't travel to a star system that isn't part of the network, or lacks a stargate.

Paired wormholes, on the other hand, are a bit weird. Unlike networks, they're generally open and connected at all times. The really weird part about them is that time dilation can make one end further in the past than the other without making it time machine, so long as the difference in age between them is less than the time it'd take for light (or an FTL system) to cross the space between them.

One of the 'better' things about wormholes is that you can only get in or out from one point, making them perfect choke-points. For defense, just place tons of bombs and lasers around it, and wait for some hapless enemy fleet to just try and break your blockade! But, if it's the only FTL system you have, have fun waiting decades for the wormholes to be transported across the void at slower-than-light speeds.

Now, instead of the ship going beyond light-speed, what if we made the space around it do that? This is the warp drive, which usually uses artificial gravity to warp space into a 'bubble' like this. The space in front of the ship is shrunk together, pulling it forward, while the space behind it is expanded outwards, pushing it forward. Also, I lied in the last entry. Warp drives don't cause time paradoxes!

There are, of course, some problems. The bubble makes lots of gravity, which can rip apart stuff that gets near the edges. Even worse, stuff that gets inside won't leave until the drive shuts off, so collisions are still possible. Much, much worse is the chance that the dip in the front is strong enough to keep stuff in it during the trip, crushing it until it's plasma, which'll bathe you in radiation when you stop.

Summaries And Stuff

I hope all this talk of FTL didn't scramble your brain! After all, these were just the most basic forms of faster-than-light travel I've seen thrown around, and make up just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the possibilities. But, I think I'm done with superscience for a while. It's time I finally covered laser weapons, and then something more meaty, like the many different kinds of worlds in the cosmos!

Take care now!

[Ommanipadmehum]

Less QQ And More Pew Pew

Now that we've got a basic grasp on out-running light beams, let's see what happens when we can't. What's that? You think some piddly little photons won't do your supercarrier any harm? Think again! You're about to be bombarded by the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and there's nothing in the universe that can save you. That's right, the most powerful weapon in the universe is a magnifying glass!

See, stuff is made of molecules, which are atoms that are joined together like legos. This is all thanks to electrons, which make atoms click together and stay that way. Photons, on the other hand, have this lovely little ability to make electrons pop out of place; make enough of them pop out fast enough, and all your stuff literally breaks apart. To make matters worse, this event causes lots of heat.

Exploit The Rainbow

Before you go arming all your ships with lasers, remember our talk about heat being deadly. You see, lasers are made when you focus light into a very tight, powerful beam. This process needs a lot of energy, and makes a ton of waste heat, so you can't permanently spam your enemies with those cannons. Of course, this is assuming that your ship is making the light, rather than something else.

If your lasers are, say, on an air-coated world or somewhere that you can dump a lot of waste heat, this isn't a problem. You also save big bucks if the light source is your local star, and your laser cannon is more like a magnifying glass. Even if you can get rid of the waste heat, you can't stop the cannon itself from getting so hot it melts apart, so you'll need to give it time to cool down every now and then.

Alright, time for good news! Unless the laser beam is strong enough and going through matter on its way to your target, it is pretty much invisible. Did I mention that the beam itself is moving at near-light speed? Even if your enemies are super-fast robots, there's no chance that they'll dodge it if they're close. How close is close? Let's just say that the beam could reach the moon in around a second!

Even better, your beams don't have to be of visible light. This here is the electromagnetic spectrum, containing everything from boring radio chatter to black lights to the aged rays of dying stars. Long story short, the higher the frequency, the stronger the laser. Don't count out low frequency beams, though! Lots of exposed electronics are vulnerable to microwaves, which include sensors, radiators, and weapons!

So, you've blinded, crippled, and outgunned your enemy, and there's no way they're going to escape. You fire your lasers at their hull, and watch as it punches through the shielding like a screwdriver into a cheesecake! Don't believe lasers can do that? Well, we've got some industrial-grade ones these days that can bore through an inch of stainless steel in 4 seconds! Unless hulls are stronger, they are no match for lasers.

But Will It Blend?

Enough military talk for now. Let's see what else laser beams can do, shall we? Remember entry #2, and how we talked about sensors messaging each other across the void? Well, wouldn't you know, the best way to do it would be through lasers. After all, the beam is practically invisible to everyone but the sender and receiver, so one of the few ways to stop a laser-based conversation is to block the beam.

What about power sources? You could slap a laser onto a solar power satellite, and use it to relay energy to the night side of a tidally locked world, a space station in the outer solar system, or the ice caps of a frozen world like Mars. You could even use it for propulsion, as mentioned in entry #4's talk on solar sails. Speaking of transportation and lasers, I didn't forget about our discussion on redirecting asteroids!

So, beams can super-heat matter pretty easily, quickly turning solid stuff into gassy stuff. If you fire a laser at an asteroid headed your way, you boil some of its surface, turning it into a jet of gas that pushes the asteroid back and slows it down. You could do the same to the other side, though, which will speed the sucker up. A similar, natural example of this is how comets get a tail when they near a star.

Before you go ahead and get trigger happy, remember that laser beams don't magically stay as a beam for forever. Space isn't just stars, worlds, asteroids, and snowballs, after all; it's also made up of gas and dust! As water weakens the beam to a laser pen, this gas and dust will gradually weaken and expand beams fired across the void. Assuming you've got a reason and the technology to shoot that far out!

Summaries And Stuff

Just because we've covered lasers, doesn't mean we're done talking about energy weapons! While lasers are very nifty, there are many more ways to make photons give our enemies a bad day. In fact, you could even combine laser weapons with other, freaky technologies to get an even bigger bang for your buck! But, that's best saved for another time. Next stop, a layman's guide to alien worlds!

Bye for now!

[Ommanipadmehum]

Greener Grass Isn't Green

Yes, I know, I've neglected this guide for a long, long time. The truth is, I kept trying to squish all the information needed in this entry together, which made it very hard to get its point across. So, I'm going to split the topic of alien worlds into multiple entries, while keeping everything as vague as possible. It's the only way I can talk about the near-infinite possibilities without making my brain explode.

So, let's define what is and isn't a world. Brown dwarfs blur between stars and worlds, but an absolute line between them is whether or not self-sustaining nuclear fusion is happening. Dwarf planets blur between asteroids and worlds, but an absolute line between them is whether or not its shape is rounded due to its mass. Worlds, in short, are big, round spheres of non-nuclear-fusing stuff.

The Space Stork Visited

Before we get into all of this, let's talk about world formation. Star systems are born when giant clouds of gas and dust use electricity to charge themselves, come closer together, starts spinning, then collapses from gravity. Soon, the massive ball at the center goes nuclear, and a star is born. Lots of the remaining gas and dust gets boiled out via the solar wind, while small chunks of it form into tiny worlds and asteroids.

These zip around the baby star, crashing together or flinging each other into deep space. The survivors become bigger and bigger, until only a couple remain, leaving you with planets and gas giants. This is where the similarities end. Many star systems don't have the setup ours has: planets closer in, gas giants further out, both of which zip around a star in neat ellipses, going in the same direction the star spins.

Not to mention, the cloud that formed the system in the first place might not be like the one that formed ours. The clouds are mainly the guts of dead stars that created lots of heavy elements, which didn't exist when they themselves formed. So, the mix of elements in the clouds can be different, which gives you different stars and worlds. For example, metal-poor stars can't make metal-rich worlds like Earth.

Speaking of elements, in entry #3, I said you'll find heavier elements close to stars, and lighter ones further away. This is a general rule, since light elements heat up and "boil" off a world faster than heavy ones. Many exceptions exist, but they're mostly due to changing the boiling point. For example, a gas giant close to a star; it won't boil quickly because gravity increases the air pressure, which raises the boiling point.

Simply put, where worlds and elements will end up during the formation of a star system is anybody's guess, since there's so many interacting variables that make it all borderline impossible to predict. But, how do we figure out what elements and worlds can exist at a certain distance from a given type of star for a long period of time? It may seem complex, but it can be simplified into three words: orbit, gravity, and rotation.

The Planetary Cookbook

All matter, regardless of the elements that make it, can exist in four basic states: plasma, gas, liquid, and solid. These four states are just elements at certain temperatures, with plasma being so hot that you usually only see it in stars, while the last three can be found on all worlds. Temperature is first determined by stars, though, bringing us back to the general rule of distance from a star deciding the resident elements.

Orbit isn't just distance, but distance over time. In entry #3, we also talked about ellipses that bring satellites near their parents for a little while. This adds a new level to the "distance determines elements", because a wide ellipse is going to make the range of temperatures much higher than a world orbiting a planet in a near-circle. Too wide, and your light elements alternate between freezing and boiling.

Gravity's up next, and lots of it can prevent elements from boiling away. Gravity brings things together, which creatures pressure, and higher pressure increases the temperature needed to change an element's state. This is more true for "loose" states of matter like liquid and gas, which don't transfer heat as well as solid matter. This is partly why our moon doesn't have much air, even though it shares our orbit.

Finally, rotation. Usually of an entire world, but it can be just about surface elements. Venus is closer to our star, it has less gravity, and hardly spins at all. Yet, it still has air, partly due to the dense air itself moving from the warm and cold sides fast enough to prevent any of it from boiling off or freezing. Earth's air is less dense, but it spins fast enough to circulate the heat throughout most of the atmosphere.

"Omma, I don't like any of these changes. They sound deadly!" You're right! Partially, anyway. Remember, since many different types of worlds can exist in a given star system, it's not implausible for there to be a world with more than one of these changes. "That just makes it worse!", you say. Maybe, but some of these changes can actually balance out to create worlds that life, let alone humans, could inhabit.

Imagine a world with normal gravity, orbits close to a star much cooler than the Sun, and spins at the same speed it orbits this star. On the surface, the differences between it and Earth is that the main star is bigger-yet-dimmer, there's no change between day and night, plants are redder, and the "sunset" region is the easiest to inhabit, if a bit windy. It's not a copy of Earth, but it can definitely be colonized!

Imagine a world like Earth, only bigger, less dense, covered in LOTS more water, spins faster, and has an elliptical orbit around its Sun-like star with an average distance of 1 AU. Faster rotation bulges the equator more, making gravity at the equator Earth-like. The day is shorter, but the oceans and rotation keep the climate Earth-like, especially during the orbital "seasons". Also not an Earth copy, but habitable.

Summaries And Stuff

This is just scratching the surface, really. There's many more variables, which I'll cover in another entry. But, for now, remember that inhabitable worlds can take many different forms, even if only their temperature and gravity needs to be like ours to be colonized. Technology can mimic day and night easier than gravity and temperature, so you really don't need your capital world to be near-identical to Earth!

See you next time.