Oh. I ran some numbers on your proposed "chain" of ships to keep in contact.

If we assume that the destination is only ONE lightyear away and each ship is spaced 1 million kilometres apart....

You'd need 9'460'730 there, and the same back. Add a zero for a 10 Lightyear chain.

Now if we space them by 1 AU apart (distance between earth and the sun) then you'd only need

63'241 .... each way, for 1 Lightyear.

So in total. To maintain a 1 million km ship chain over 10 Lightyears you'd need 189'214'600 starships.
In order to maintain a 1 AU ship chain over 120 Lightyears you'd need 1'264'820

No nation. In any Scifi. Ever. Let alone reality. Would be willing to maintain a MINIMUM fleet of effectively 1.3 Million Starships (replacements are needed for ones needing repair) for one single destination. Of which the majority of those starships will be spending between a quarter of a millenia to one and a half in transit, each way.

Kadaeux said

No I don't. Also note I have said VIRTUALLY impossible

.No it couldn't. It's completely nonviable unless your civilisation ALREADY has a vast superiority over the enemy. To even suggest that requires no longer discussing hard scifi. You're SERIOUSLY proposing that people perceive a 45 year trip as only a week or two.

I am proposing that there may well be technologies that enable people to alter their perception of time to make the trip seem like only a week or two even if it was really 45 years. Since it's all speculative it's pretty much open game of what technologies are and aren't possible, even with that "100% hard sci-fi" thing since hard sci-fi is limited to current knowledge.

Since 1900 humanity's advancements in technology has been a constant and VAST increase with spurts of even greater development that co-incide with conflict. To imply that an enemy who has forty years minimum advance warning your coming won't be advancing and spending big on its military is pure wishful thinking.No, it wouldn't. There would be no benefit in it of ANY sort.

True, in fact it's very much leading into my belief invading other star systems would be very hard to bother doing and even bordering on pointless as even spamming giant rocks is too easy to intercept because you can send a counter rock to blow it off course or annihilate it.

Culture trade is an absolute joke and isn't even really valid on one planet, just look at all the people who move from one country to another and instead of adopting the customs of their new country, just build little microcosms of their old culture.

So trade of the arts and ideas or stories is a joke? I don't see why everyone would isolate themselves just because of huge distances when even today we can send information using signals in distance of light years.

A polity capable of interstellar colonisation wouldn't NEED to transport biological resources. They'd have transported everything required for a self-sustaining colony with the initial effort.And people who "want to go somewhere else" is even more of a joke. Governments would not maintain multi-trillion dollar craft to transport a few idiots to somewhere half a century away.

Biological resources as in exotics- trade of alien critters and all. Each world is unique, no?

The only possible realistic trade would likely be purely digital transmissions. And even then it'd require stupidly powerful communications technolgies to make it work.
And you assume that spaceships that go interstellar are always going to expensive and that money will even be a factor far into the future.

O come on man, that sort of technology already exists today. SETI sends signals like that out all the time. A more advanced civ would have little trouble maintaining a information network between worlds regardless of the lag. Assuming humans, I don't see it as a far stretch that humans could modify themselves to tolerate times we see as insanely long as lengthy as a few days.

The time scale we currently operate on is not necessarily the timescale the future may.

I mean, just look at the example above, those lovely 50 year trips are assuming you're capable of building ships capable of .2c (without even taking into consideration being annihilated by a micrometeorite that crosses your path.

That problem does not sound like it is impossible to remedy at all. Regenerating hull, energy barrier or some other thing we, 21st century dwellers can barely grasp they may use. There is no reason why a barrier like "micrometeorites" would be impossible to deal with to the point where exceeding 10% the speed of light is unthinkable.

If we take it down to a known rough capability, say.Max 2'000km/s with an acceleration of 1g (Roughly 0.006%c) (Still an exceptionally generous figure)Max Speed: 0.006c Acceleration: 1 G Distance: 10ly Time spent Accelerating: 2.12 days Distance Travelled while Accelerating: 0 ly Time "coasting" at Max Speed: 1667.8 years Shipboard Time: 1666.67 years Observed Time: 1666.7 years Deviation: 0%So, without magical acceleration and speeds you'd spend over one and a half thousand years travelling to a star 10 years away.Make it 12'000 km/s and Max Speed: 0.04c Acceleration: 1 G Distance: 10ly Time spent Accelerating: 14.15 days Distance Travelled while Accelerating: 0.001 ly Time "coasting" at Max Speed: 250.13 years Shipboard Time: 250.04 years Observed Time: 250.24 years Deviation: 0.1%You've still got 250 years to cross that 10 lightyear gap. Not only do those low figures rule out trade UTTERLY, but that make the concept of war between two such powers BEYOND ludicrous

Those spaceship travel times are just plain pessimistic given there's already rocket concepts out there that reach .1c No one would send a spaceship going at "slow" speeds interstellar. They'd make a ship that can go the speeds necessary to take a several decades; which is nothing in the grand scale of time. Human civilization as we know it is a smote of dust in the grand scheme of things, it's so short that the vast majority humans have existed [only 1/500th a billion years] was spent being hunter gatherers.

Even those "long times" you depict as still nothing in the galactic scale of time. 1.5 thousand years? What's that? A black hole's wet fart? Light not even crossing a forth of a galactic arm?

. Yes practicality will even matter, seeing that yes the only factor is time, but when it would take half your life to get somewhere nobody except the most desperate are going to bother.

Assuming of course, the future peoples never try to innovate to make interstellar travel quicker. Not impossible of a idea, but time as a resource is more plentiful as well since "half your life" in the 21st century isn't "half your life" in the future, presumably. Of course in the far future everyone could only live ten years as well, but perceive infinity of life. There are quadrillions of possible futures.

And interstellar empire is simply not feasible or possible in a 100% Hard Science fiction environment, 100% Hard Scifi is boring.

"100% hard sci-fi" seems like a misnomer since everyone's idea of 100% hard sci-fi is different. I won't lie; I know with certainty I am likely wrong about things, but at the same time I can't imagine anyone being actually right about future civilization since it's all speculation regardless.

And as for saying hard sci-fi is boring... Well I guess it is since it is hard to make a 100% hard sci-fi without actually going to the far future to see what it's like. And as a result I personally just do soft sci-fi since I don't want to worry about technological realism much, even if I do attempt researching it since you can get some fun modifiers like "no hiding in space".

Then you would just make it an RKKV.

A manned RKV capable of intercepting, attacking and shooting more missiles.

I'd say it's a pretty good deal.

Kadaeux said
Oh. I ran some numbers on your proposed "chain" of ships to keep in contact.If we assume that the destination is only ONE lightyear away and each ship is spaced 1 million kilometres apart....You'd need 9'460'730 there, and the same back. Add a zero for a 10 Lightyear chain.Now if we space them by 1 AU apart (distance between earth and the sun) then you'd only need63'241 .... each way, for 1 Lightyear.So in total. To maintain a 1 million km ship chain over 10 Lightyears you'd need 189'214'600 starships.In order to maintain a 1 AU ship chain over 120 Lightyears you'd need 1'264'820No nation. In any Scifi. Ever. Let alone reality. Would be willing to maintain a MINIMUM fleet of effectively 1.3 Million Starships (replacements are needed for ones needing repair) for one single destination. Of which the majority of those starships will be spending between a quarter of a millenia to one and a half in transit, each way.

I don't think you need the spaceship chain that densely packed.

AlienBastard said I am proposing that there may well be technologies that enable people to alter their perception of time to make the trip seem like only a week or two even if it was really 45 years. Since it's all speculative it's pretty much open game of what technologies are and aren't possible, even with that "100% hard sci-fi" thing since hard sci-fi is limited to current knowledge.

Yeah, and current knowledge of what's possible doesn't include a way to alter human perception to make 45 years seem like only a week or two. Then there is the whole biological aging issue etc.

AlienBastard said So trade of the arts and ideas or stories is a joke? I don't see why everyone would isolate themselves just because of huge distances when even today we can send information using signals in distance of light years.

See the digital transmissions section :p

AlienBastard said Biological resources as in exotics- trade of alien critters and all. Each world is unique, no?

And if each alien critter or plant cost enough to buy a country you'd get no buyers. And considering the cost of transporting them, you better have a country's budget.

AlienBastard said O come on man, that sort of technology already exists today. SETI sends signals like that out all the time. A more advanced civ would have little trouble maintaining a information network between worlds regardless of the lag. Assuming humans, I don't see it as a far stretch that humans could modify themselves to tolerate times we see as insanely long as lengthy as a few days.

The time scale we currently operate on is not necessarily the timescale the future may.

And Seti's signals don't go nearly as far as most people seem to think. In fact, there are many who have given plenty of reason to suggest that Seti's broadcasts literally degrade beyond legibility not even half a lightyear from earth. And yes, the timescale we currently operation on IS necessarily the timescale the future may. That is how time works. You cannot modify something to perceive time differently.

AlienBastard said That problem does not sound like it is impossible to remedy at all. Regenerating hull, energy barrier or some other thing we, 21st century dwellers can barely grasp they may use. There is no reason why a barrier like "micrometeorites" would be impossible to deal with to the point where exceeding 10% the speed of light is unthinkable.

You're travelling at .2c for example (my constant example) at that velocity if you impact micrometeorite weight 100 grams it will release forty kilotons of energy (Actually your ship would since it's the one travelling at that speed.) Make it a kilogram and it'll be a 430 kiloton impact.

AlienBastard said Those spaceship travel times are just plain pessimistic given there's already rocket concepts out there that reach .1c and faster. No one would send a spaceship going at "slow" speeds interstellar. They'd make a ship that can go the speeds necessary to take a several decades; which is nothing in the grand scale of time. Human civilization as we know it is a smote of dust in the grand scheme of things, it's so short that the vast majority humans have existed [only 1/500th a billion years] was spent being hunter gatherers.

A: There is not one single realistic rocket concept that is capable of accelerating to .1c or faster. Anyone that told you so should be shot for the betterment of the race.
B: Decades of travel is a "vast" amount of time for a modern society. In mere decades we've gone from computers that required an entire building to computers in our pocket so powerful they could have run every single calculation those ancient computers did, simultaneously, without effort.

The "Human Civilization" being a mote of dust in the grand scheme of things is beyond irrelevant.

Even those "long times" you depict as still nothing in the galactic scale of time. 1.5 thousand years? What's that? A black hole's wet fart? Light not even crossing a forth of a galactic arm?

Beyond irrelevant. We're humans, we don't compare our travel times to universe-scale movements. We compare them to our relative point of view. Even some of our more macro-scale measurements are purely subject to human PoV. Light-Second, Light-Year. Year. Month. Day. Hour. etc are all based on human perspective.

AlienBastard said Assuming of course, the future peoples never try to innovate to make interstellar travel quicker. Not impossible of a idea, but time as a resource is more plentiful as well since "half your life" in the 21st century isn't "half your life" in the future, presumably. Of course in the far future everyone could only live ten years as well, but perceive infinity of life. There are quadrillions of possible futures.

And you're back into the realm of pure soft scifi. The point of hard Scifi is to discuss realistic knowns. Not postulate alternative theorems without any scientific basis in fact. If you want to go with that type of discussion I can simply declare my Interstellar Space Empire of 10 foot autonomous dicks and star-vaginas annihilates your empire instantly with a teleporting antimatter cat assault.

AlienBastard said "100% hard sci-fi" seems like a misnomer since everyone's idea of 100% hard sci-fi is different. I won't lie; I know with certainty I am likely wrong about things, but at the same time I can't imagine anyone being actually right about future civilization since it's all speculation regardless.

And as for saying hard sci-fi is boring... Well I guess it is since it is hard to make a 100% hard sci-fi without actually going to the far future to see what it's like. And as a result I personally just do soft sci-fi since I don't want to worry about technological realism much, even if I do attempt researching it since you can get some fun modifiers like "no hiding in space".

It isn't a misnomer. 100% Hard Science fiction is "Science Fiction possible within the known realm of science and physics without excessive speculation into other fields."

Eg: A novel written to be a realistic manned mission to mars is 100% hard Scifi.
A novel written to be a realistic manned mission to mars, but with telepathic microscopic life already there, is 100% soft scifi.

AlienBastard said A manned RKV capable of intercepting, attacking and shooting more missiles.

I'd say it's a pretty good deal.

And you'd be wrong. If you could do that you'd just strip people out entirely, get a ship that is lighter, can accelerate faster, do things it could not with a manned crew... in short, a drone.

Damn it.

It's already 11:00 PM where i'm at. I should be shutting down by brain now.

All in all, the idea of a empire ran by 10 foot tall dicks and space vaginas that shoot cats with anti-matter bombs strapped to them would be a funny thing to see in a space NRP.

Not to mention, if a drone kamikaze than who will die with honor serving the federation?

AlienBastard said
Damn it.It's already 11:00 PM where i'm at. I should be shutting down by brain now.All in all, the idea of a empire ran by 10 foot tall dicks and space vaginas that shoot cats with anti-matter bombs strapped to them would be a funny thing to see in a space NRP.

---> Not to mention, if a drone kamikaze than who will die with honor serving the federation?

The enemy. Durr.

An honourable man is willing to die for his nation.
An intelligent man makes the enemy die for his.

:p

Space combat?

None of this silly hippe commie battlestar trak wars: A new Enterprise hoo-haa,



The Orion Class Battleship. The bestest Cold War project ever, behind all the MBT-70, nuclear A2A missiles, etc.

Joshua15555 said
Space combat?None of this silly hippe commie battlestar trak wars: A new Enterprise hoo-haa,The Orion Class Battleship. The bestest Cold War project ever, behind all the MBT-70, nuclear A2A missiles, etc.

No... no it wasn't :p

Because right now we've only got one planet, a propulsion system based on nuclear weapons (While possessed of VAST amounts of thrust/specific impulse) is an absolutely terrible idea if you don't have a spare planet to live on :p

Kadaeux said
No... no it wasn't :pBecause right now we've only got one planet, a propulsion system based on nuclear weapons (While possessed of VAST amounts of thrust/specific impulse) is an absolutely terrible idea if you don't have a spare planet to live on :p

What would have happened:

Orion series commissioned,
Soviets try to counter,
Orion bombs Moscow, US nuclear superiority wipes out SFSR, NATO liberates Warsaw Pact.
China last commie wanna be left.

Sadly, I'm just vastly watering it down, its the jist of how things would have gone in the 1960s/70s.

Joshua15555 said
What would have happened:Orion series commissioned,Soviets try to counter,Orion bombs Moscow, US nuclear superiority wipes out SFSR, NATO liberates Warsaw Pact.China last commie wanna be left.Sadly, I'm just vastly watering it down, its the jist of how things would have gone in the 1960s/70s.

Not really. The US would have effectively annihilated itself launching the Orion. (Add in the fact it's main weapons were also it's main fuel :p). The moment the Orion began launching the USSR would have launched to eliminate it, and would have succeeded, though the US would have launched in reaction to the Soviets launching in reaction to the US's original launching.

We'd have had the whole nuclear exchange. End of the world Australians conquer the Earth :p

Guess who just woke up?

Kadaeux said
Yeah, and current knowledge of what's possible doesn't include a way to alter human perception to make 45 years seem like only a week or two. Then there is the whole biological aging issue etc.

What makes you think those technologies can't ever be discovered? You're like a medieval person saying that there is no way humans will on average ever live more than the age of thirty or that a gun that shoots at a rapid fire rate is impossible.

And if each alien critter or plant cost enough to buy a country you'd get no buyers. And considering the cost of transporting them, you better have a country's budget.

A country's budget is a widely variable thing. If you mean like NK's budget, i'd say it's pretty plausible seeing that the cost of spaceships as a interstellar society keeps making them would go down.

Cars once were slow moving and expensive, look at how widely used they are now. Technology progresses, the impractical eventually can become practical. Interstellar space travel is no different, it's just that interstellar travel is so far off from now that the challenge only seems unsurmountable. But one day, there will be a way.

Maybe you could say i'm a fool for thinking other wise, but seeing that going by my sense of realistic thought that interstellar travel is likely something centuries away and that the third millennia may focus more on colonization/terraforming of the solar system [where many engineering problems you try your best to make seem impossible just because of "look at this big scary number I calculated!" get sorted out as i'm sure micrometeorites and radiation are both issues that just interplanetary travelers will encounter] before a manned interstellar travel mission to another colony is attempted.

And Seti's signals don't go nearly as far as most people seem to think. In fact, there are many who have given plenty of reason to suggest that Seti's broadcasts literally degrade beyond legibility not even half a lightyear from earth.

Where;s your source for that one? Since that would really suck, or maybe be the best thing ever since that means no one actually hears us which means no surprise alien attack that wipes out all of humanity.

But still, if current tech goes half a light year, a better refined beam could go 100x that distance since future space men have future space technology. A guy from the 1850's alone only had the telegram, nowadays you got the ability to call someone from India daily.

And yes, the timescale we currently operation on IS necessarily the timescale the future may. That is how time works. You cannot modify something to perceive time differently.

So you can't modify the human perception of time to align better with cosmic time scales?

I don't see why. And that's the problem with "100% hard sci-fi" since while you can make some suppositions on the futility of stealth or how spaceships move in space, there's no telling what technologies could be used in the future. It's like a man from the 1600's trying to guess what a rocket to the moon would be like. What clue would you have had of computers or spaces suits/pressurized air or chemical missiles or telephones?

I'd say predicting what is possible is silly, regardless of how much effort you try since you'll always be wrong. Even Kubrick was wrong, and he was trying to make the most scientifically accurate thing he could.

You're travelling at .2c for example (my constant example) at that velocity if you impact micrometeorite weight 100 grams it will release forty kilotons of energy (Actually your ship would since it's the one travelling at that speed.) Make it a kilogram and it'll be a 430 kiloton impact.

430 Kilotons are what some nukes can do, and I am certain that a nuke would do jack all to a spaceship capable of interstellar travel, let alone a micro meteorite. Isue being that you'd need to repair while on the fly, but that's a solvable problem by using regenerating hull.

There's also the possibility of shielding. We already use micrometeorite shields and i'm certain those can be developed that going as fast as 1/5th the speed of light can resist a good deal of micro meteorites. Not to mention, since space is mostly a void how much of a problem will this really even be?

A: There is not one single realistic rocket concept that is capable of accelerating to .1c or faster. Anyone that told you so should be shot for the betterment of the race.

So nuclear pulse ships unrealistic? Says who?

And even assuming there isn't, there is no reason why it's impossible to make a ship go that fast.

B: Decades of travel is a "vast" amount of time for a modern society. In mere decades we've gone from computers that required an entire building to computers in our pocket so powerful they could have run every single calculation those ancient computers did, simultaneously, without effort.The "Human Civilization" being a mote of dust in the grand scheme of things is beyond irrelevant.Beyond irrelevant. We're humans, we don't compare our travel times to universe-scale movements. We compare them to our relative point of view. Even some of our more macro-scale measurements are purely subject to human PoV. Light-Second, Light-Year. Year. Month. Day. Hour. etc are all based on human perspective.

The current rate things go is not how humans always went at. Once it was hundreds of thousands of years of hunting and gathering, the pace could very well slow down again.

And you're back into the realm of pure soft scifi. The point of hard Scifi is to discuss realistic knowns. Not postulate alternative theorems without any scientific basis in fact. If you want to go with that type of discussion I can simply declare my Interstellar Space Empire of 10 foot autonomous dicks and star-vaginas annihilates your empire instantly with a teleporting antimatter cat assault.

That's why soft sci-fi generally tries having internal consistency, in Dune as strange and bizarre things get the rules stay consistent.

Besides, trying to be hyper realistic about space battles beyond interplanetary age space flight I don't see as remotely possible. Too many unknowns.

It isn't a misnomer. 100% Hard Science fiction is "Science Fiction possible within the known realm of science and physics without excessive speculation into other fields." Eg: A novel written to be a realistic manned mission to mars is 100% hard Scifi.A novel written to be a realistic manned mission to mars, but with telepathic microscopic life already there, is 100% soft scifi.

You can't predict the future, let alone the technologies used so I see every other tech I claim could exist as purely plausible until proven other wise since sufficiently advanced tech would be in play.

Hell, hard sci-fi I thought was the implications of technologies on society, not about trying to be super accurate to the point where a story is impossible to write. All the famous hard sci-fi authors wrote about pretty crazy shit, and I think that concerning yourself too much with realism limits one's creativity far too much since there's far more unknowns than knowns. Realism in fiction generally is a style more than anything else. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey used its hard sci-fi humans as a way to make the aliens in the movie that far more god-like.

So the whole talk of realism in space battles is kinda silly the more I think about it since how the hell can you be realistic about something we have little to know idea about? Calcs and theories?

But at this point we've entered a wholly different topic.

Kadaeux said
Not really. The US would have effectively annihilated itself launching the Orion. (Add in the fact it's main weapons were also it's main fuel :p). The moment the Orion began launching the USSR would have launched to eliminate it, and would have succeeded, though the US would have launched in reaction to the Soviets launching in reaction to the US's original launching. We'd have had the whole nuclear exchange. End of the world Australians conquer the Earth :p

The status of the Soviet nuclear arsenal in the 1960s and 1970s was horrible, mostly short-range tactical nuclear missiles, bombs and a small number of primitive ICBMs. Meanwhile, the combined NATO and US nuclear missile arsenal was on the verge of being OP'd. Hundreds of highly sophisticated, ICBMs followed by tactical nuclear missiles and bombs to be used during a ground campaign.

A nuclear exchange in this time would cost around 19-20 million American lives, while wiping out most of the Soviet Union's population.

Its a crazy thing really, most of the Cold War NATO could have won, though it would have not been so pretty in the end.

The skies raining ash for decades and perpetual global famine tends to not be so pretty.

Or the longterm political ramifications of "everyone will hate you forever."

AlienBastard said What makes you think those technologies can't ever be discovered? You're like a medieval person saying that there is no way humans will on average ever live more than the age of thirty or that a gun that shoots at a rapid fire rate is impossible.

No, that isn't how it works. To change a person's perception of time is a complete and utter science fiction concept, and on the soft level to boot. Not to mention exceptionally detrimental. "Hey we've modified this dude to experience 45 years as if it's only a week."

*Dude forgets to eat for what he thinks is only an hour. Dies of starvation.*

AlienBastard said A: A country's budget is a widely variable thing. If you mean like NK's budget, i'd say it's pretty plausible seeing that the cost of spaceships as a interstellar society keeps making them would go down.

Cars once were slow moving and expensive, look at how widely used they are now. Technology progresses, the impractical eventually can become practical. Interstellar space travel is no different, it's just that interstellar travel is so far off from now that the challenge only seems unsurmountable. But one day, there will be a way.

Maybe you could say i'm a fool for thinking other wise, but seeing that going by my sense of realistic thought that interstellar travel is likely something centuries away and that the third millennia may focus more on colonization/terraforming of the solar system [where many engineering problems you try your best to make seem impossible just because of "look at this big scary number I calculated!" get sorted out as i'm sure micrometeorites and radiation are both issues that just interplanetary travelers will encounter] before a manned interstellar travel mission to another colony is attempted.

No, I mean like the US's entire military budget. Add in that they wouldn't keep being made. There would be no economic benefit to do so. You would literally be burning money.

There is a VAST difference between cars and starships. A car wouldn't take an absolute minimum of 10.1 years to travel 10 lightyears (At .9c with a 100 gee acceleration)

And no, interplanetary travellers won't have to deal with micrometeorites and radiation, not in the same way. Interstellar travel at relativistic velocities, even slow ones, will not be able to see let alone avoid impacting anything on their route. Out in the void beyond the solar system, there is not enough light to reflect of something small, let alone while you're travelling at relativistic velocities. In fact. If travelling at .2c you will have 4/5ths of a second to notice it before it's destroying you.

AlienBastard said Where;s your source for that one? Since that would really suck, or maybe be the best thing ever since that means no one actually hears us which means no surprise alien attack that wipes out all of humanity.

But still, if current tech goes half a light year, a better refined beam could go 100x that distance since future space men have future space technology. A guy from the 1850's alone only had the telegram, nowadays you got the ability to call someone from India daily.

Woops. Got it wrong. Actually SETI isn't broadcasting anything, at all. But...

"If an extraterrestrial civilization has a SETI project similar to our own, could they detect signals from Earth?

In general, no. Most earthly transmissions are too weak to be found by equipment similar to ours at the distance of even the nearest star. But there are some important exceptions. High-powered radars and the Arecibo broadcast of 1974 (which lasted for only three minutes) could be detected at distances of tens to hundreds of light-years with a setup similar to our best SETI experiments."
/Source=Seti FAQ

AlienBastard said So you can't modify the human perception of time to align better with cosmic time scales?

I don't see why. And that's the problem with "100% hard sci-fi" since while you can make some suppositions on the futility of stealth or how spaceships move in space, there's no telling what technologies could be used in the future. It's like a man from the 1600's trying to guess what a rocket to the moon would be like. What clue would you have had of computers or spaces suits/pressurized air or chemical missiles or telephones?

I'd say predicting what is possible is silly, regardless of how much effort you try since you'll always be wrong. Even Kubrick was wrong, and he was trying to make the most scientifically accurate thing he could.

A: No you can't, the human brain simply doesn't work that way.

B: There is no "problem with 100% hard sci-fi" like that. The whole POINT of Hard Scifi is to take only what is known or theoretically possible.

C: "The Monolith" ergo Kubrick wasn't trying to make the most scientifically accurate thing he could :p.

AlienBastard said 430 Kilotons are what some nukes can do, and I am certain that a nuke would do jack all to a spaceship capable of interstellar travel, let alone a micro meteorite. Isue being that you'd need to repair while on the fly, but that's a solvable problem by using regenerating hull.

There's also the possibility of shielding. We already use micrometeorite shields and i'm certain those can be developed that going as fast as 1/5th the speed of light can resist a good deal of micro meteorites. Not to mention, since space is mostly a void how much of a problem will this really even be?

You don't get it do you, at that velocity the micrometeorite isn't generating the 430 kilotons. Your starship is. In truth the energy release would be much much higher. (Based on the starships mass instead of the micrometeorites).

This is not a "solvable problem" You can't make a ship that can resist a relativistic impact, especially when IT is the impactor. And it will be BEYOND simply a problem. Interstellar space is FILLED with stuff, including rogue planets.

AlienBastard said So nuclear pulse ships unrealistic? Says who?

And even assuming there isn't, there is no reason why it's impossible to make a ship go that fast.

Nuclear pulse ships are not rockets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)#Interstellar_missions

Also as you can see, your nuclear pulse propulsion isn't going to get you to .1c either. Indeed, it will, based off those figures, get you a best possible of 3.3%c

Or if we look at Project Longshot, we get 4.5%c

AlienBastard said The current rate things go is not how humans always went at. Once it was hundreds of thousands of years of hunting and gathering, the pace could very well slow down again.

Sure it could. If we got bombed back to the stone age. It was hundreds and thousands of years hunting and gathering because people back then would be considered barely functioning morons today.

AlienBastard said That's why soft sci-fi generally tries having internal consistency, in Dune as strange and bizarre things get the rules stay consistent.

Besides, trying to be hyper realistic about space battles beyond interplanetary age space flight I don't see as remotely possible. Too many unknowns.

Exactly. According to hard science fiction, and science as we understand it today, interstellar trade (except information transmitted) and interstellar warfare simply aren't remotely possible, it'd be literally just throwing money away.

AlienBastard said You can't predict the future, let alone the technologies used so I see every other tech I claim could exist as purely plausible until proven other wise since sufficiently advanced tech would be in play.

Hell, hard sci-fi I thought was the implications of technologies on society, not about trying to be super accurate to the point where a story is impossible to write. All the famous hard sci-fi authors wrote about pretty crazy shit, and I think that concerning yourself too much with realism limits one's creativity far too much since there's far more unknowns than knowns. Realism in fiction generally is a style more than anything else. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey used its hard sci-fi humans as a way to make the aliens in the movie that far more god-like.

1st Paragraph: You could claim that. But you also wouldn't be writing hard science fiction. You'd be writing soft scifi.

2nd Paragraph: No, Hard Science fiction is defined by strict adherence to known science within the story. Also note that, in fact to my knowledge, not ONE "Hard Scifi Author" has actually ever written 100% hard Scifi. All authors have to make concessions to soft science fiction otherwise yes you are constrained to something nearly impossible to write a story about.

AlienBastard said So the whole talk of realism in space battles is kinda silly the more I think about it since how the hell can you be realistic about something we have little to know idea about? Calcs and theories?

You take what is known and make the attempt.

In the end it's why pure hard science fiction always fails. It's BORING. And much too hard to actually work with.

It actually becomes massively easier if you just throw out "no FTL" even if everything else was hard scifi removing the no FTL rule vastly widens the scope of your sandbox so to speak.

Honestly man, all I see are challenges more than barriers. Barriers tend get broken anyhow and abiding by current science in a interstellar setting is silly to the point where even in this thread I think you're overdoing the whole realism thing and assuming the worst. For instance I thought interstellar space is so vast that you likely wouldn't hit a micrometer in the first place and even if its the ship causing the explosion I still believe it can be tanked because innovation.

I think you should tone it down to 80 or 90% hard sci-fi.

catchamber said
, isn't it? If anything, allowing FTL just makes things more complicated, because you have to resolve stuff like time travel paradoxes, and explain how you have FTL, relativity, and causality in the same universe.

No, it isn't really. No explanation is required. You can certainly choose to.

But it's the matter of utterest simplicity to simply keep a hard scifi, and utterly ignore all the implications of FTL travel.

The simplest being, we were wrong. FTL has no effect on time whatsoever.

OF course this is also most simply achieved if the FTL isn't "literally" faster than light, instead going for the Alcubierre drive.

Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime; instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space.[1] Although the metric proposed by Alcubierre is mathematically valid in that it is consistent with the Einstein field equations, it may not be physically meaningful or indicate that such a drive could be constructed. The proposed mechanism of the Alcubierre drive implies a negative energy density and therefore requires exotic matter, so if exotic matter with the correct properties does not exist then it could not be constructed. However, at the close of his original paper[2] Alcubierre argued (following an argument developed by physicists analyzing traversable wormholes[3][4]) that the Casimir vacuum between parallel plates could fulfill the negative-energy requirement for the Alcubierre drive. Another possible issue is that although the Alcubierre metric is consistent with general relativity, general relativity does not incorporate quantum mechanics, and some physicists have presented arguments to suggest that a theory of quantum gravity which merged the two theories would eliminate those solutions in general relativity which allow for backwards time travel (see the chronology protection conjecture), of which the Alcubierre drive is one.

Which is becoming more and more appraised as theoretically possible. To the point that NASA is re-examining it BUT

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/164326-nasa-discusses-its-warp-drive-research-prepares-to-create-a-warp-bubble-in-the-lab

I personally think NASA "re-examining the warp drive" as a dash-grab for its dwindling funding.

Going .2c you deem near impossible, but a warp drive is A-okay? What about the exotic matter?

If exotic matter is okay, than perhaps one could send a craft capable of making a wormhole across the interstellar medium that links up to the one at home if it reaches its destination. Than you can hop in and go bask under a alien sun. Ergo, interstellar travel just became a lot more practical since you only need to reach destination once. Losing connection with a worm hole would suck hard though.

And I think from here on out i'm going to think about interplanetary scale space battle since there's too many unknowns with interstellar stuff to be all realistic.

Orions arm is humanity under the yelm covered boot for ever and ever and ever.