121–130 of 235 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once you fire a rifle, everything is also Newtonian and deterministic. You still have to move into position, decide which target to fire at, with what ammo etc What you describe is quite close to an actual weapon used in WW2, the SG 500: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdfaust
All of those things have mathematically optimal solutions given known information. It should be trivial to solve the system.
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If I could create wormholes at will, I wouldn't traverse the wormhole with the whole ship - just the bombs would suffice.
If you can create wormholes at will, you don't need bombs. Put one end of the wormhole in the target and the other in the center of the sun.
What about a neutron star? It's probably too exotic to consider how a wormhole would interact with a black hole.
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If I could create wormholes at will, I wouldn't traverse the wormhole with the whole ship - just the bombs would suffice.
Why waste bombs. If you can create wormholes at arbitrary locations just teleport piece of a star into a planet.
There are three fundamental problems I see here: 1) Why put humans on warships at all? Algorithms are probably better at it. Computers would obviously do the heavy lifting anyway (calculating burn times). An algorithm knows no fear, shows no mercy, and does not flee or surrender unless programmed to do so. The only thing left is target selection, and it doesn't seem worth bringing a human along just for that. 2) If y…
Beyond that I think it's a pretty well reasoned piece.
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Where is anyone talking about conflicts light-years away? I think we may be discussing different things. The article itself concentrates on intra-system conflicts, primarily because it is trying to deal with realistic space combat using current technology. FTL drives are not part of that paradigm. Yes, obviously if something is light-years away you would need to develop general purpose AI to make those decisions or s…
> The article itself concentrates on intra-system conflicts Neptune is more than 4 light-hours away, and the Oort cloud (discussed as a possible source of projectiles) a full light-year further. So I don't see how anything short of general purpose AI can be tele-operated for intra-system conflicts.
The two examples you cherry-picked are the furthest objects in our solar system. You've literally picked the outlying examples and made them the rule.
The same "problem" could be solved by sending a bunch of what are essentially missiles-carrying-missiles with algorithms that boil down to orders to shoot at any objects that are hot or fast moving or match certain radar signatures. This technology has been in place since the first heat-seeking missile... 1956! There are plenty of other solutions that do not require a general AI (such as sending command ships out).
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I postered a comment on the essay, I'll repost it here: You assume the interstellar species will be living on a planet . What if they hollowed out their planet of resources long ago and now live in a cloud of asteroids instead? Asteroids are hollowed out as giant fortresses in space, and a bio dome sphere thingy built inside. As they are living in an asteroid cloud, to prevent impact they would have to attach thruste…
What about a shotgun approach? Take a comet, accelerate it up to a significant fraction of lightspeed (after all, you you have lightyears in which to do so), and trigger a bomb in the comet to blow it apart into a few smaller pieces, each traveling at a significant fraction of c . Rinse and repeat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The article itself concentrates on intra-system conflicts Neptune is more than 4 light-hours away, and the Oort cloud (discussed as a possible source of projectiles) a full light-year further. So I don't see how anything short of general purpose AI can be tele-operated for intra-system conflicts.
Again, why does it require general purpose AI? The two examples you cherry-picked are the furthest objects in our solar system. You've literally picked the outlying examples and made them the rule. The same "problem" could be solved by sending a bunch of what are essentially missiles-carrying-missiles with algorithms that boil down to orders to shoot at any objects that are hot or fast moving or match certain radar s…
Space combat seems pointless to me. What exactly would they be fighting over? Presumably you want to reach space for resources, so asteroids, planets and moons with minerals, stuff like that. You might also want planets/asteroids/moons that are 'good' for colonization (easily terra formed or already life sustaining). You probably wouldn't see many fights where you are firing at the resource itself. No one with the mo…
If we assume space travel becomes relatively easy (that is to say it is used for more than initial colonization) there will be interstellar commerce. If there is unprotected commerce, there will be pirates. Any time there are pirates, protection will develop. Let us call these peace-keepers the Navy.
If you engage in commerce and you have a powerful Navy, you can influence or even control commerce.
Do you see where I'm going? Most wars are about resources. Commerce is about resources. Anywhere you have commerce, you are liable to develop conflict.
Space combat seems pointless to me. What exactly would they be fighting over? Presumably you want to reach space for resources, so asteroids, planets and moons with minerals, stuff like that. You might also want planets/asteroids/moons that are 'good' for colonization (easily terra formed or already life sustaining). You probably wouldn't see many fights where you are firing at the resource itself. No one with the mo…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Gotlib_Bloch#Research_and_a...
Sixteen years later, they had the first world war.