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* * *The RaidAUTHOR'S NOTE: There is no official canon for Etheras. The story here does not preclude validity of other Etheras stories. Stories involving Etheras should be considered universes unto themselves with little or no carryover except for the character of Etheras himself. So please no "If this happened then how can Etheras have done this other thing?" Answer: Two different stories. Thanks!
Minister Terrol winced as he heard the shouts and clashing of metal upon metal echoing up from the halls of the lower decks. The sound seemed so far away as it vibrated through the thick metal walls and bulkheads of the starship. He glanced around to the other passengers of the space-liner. All looked concerned. Some hugged their loved-ones close, whispering gentle consolation, but all looked with bleak stares at the grand ballroom's elevator door... waiting for it to open - and dreading it. From there would emerge their fate, sure as the grave, and they all wondered and dreaded what form it might take. Terrol considered the irony of it all: the richest, most powerful people in all of the Unity worlds... individuals of such power and authority that a minor god would be envious, having swindled the ignorant masses with promises of equality and security and democracy... and here they flew on a tour of the core worlds, in this gorgeously constructed ballroom on a luxury-liner of a starship with its million-crystal chandeliers and gilded railings in their tailored suits and bright satin dresses made by the most famous designers in the galaxy, and yet they were here cowering in terror before a handful of outlaws.
Everything had been going according to plan until an hour ago. The space-cruise-liner Jewel Of The Stars had departed Spaceport Terra four days previous for a ten-day luxury tour of some of the oldest star systems of the Unity worlds. They were gorging on rich foods and complex and subtle drink, with shows and music and dancing. It was the evening of the forth day, and they were in their evening clothes, dancing to ancient classics and feasting on lobster and champagne when the alarm was raised. Terrol was spinning merrily around with his wife Ametha when a bass roar reverberated through the ship, making the floor buck. There was screaming - more of surprise and terror than injury. Terrol immediately knew that they had been hit by something... but what? A meteor? Space junk? Weapon fire? Could it be Pirates? No - It couldn't be pirates, the Jewel of the Stars was flying too far inside the security of the inner systems. So.. what was it, then?
He was making his way through the startled crowd towards the intercom to get a status update when a second boom shattered the apprehensive silence and the lights flickered and died, followed by the ominous red glow of the emergency lighting. It was then that Terrol knew it was pirates. It was rare enough for a space liner to collide with any objects in space, protected with its advanced sensors and LIDAR scanners and navigational AIs, but two hits in close succession? That spoke of intent. And it was just like the pirates... the first hit would have disabled their propulsion so that they wouldn't be able to maneuver away from the pirate's boarding skiffs. The second would target the powerplant to take down the ship's point-defense system. It's high-power short-range lasers would be a threat to boarding vessels. But now without power, those lasers were nothing but expensive hood ornaments.
But where were the Jewel's escorts? Of course Terrol already knew - they were all reduced to debris. This was the way of space combat. In space, it was almost impossible to know anything for sure. Space is not like it is depicted in movies and video games, since these chronically fail to take into account two vital truths: space is very big, and space is very empty. Because of these vital truths, even with warp-jump capabilities, ships need to move at incredible speeds to be practical. And because space is so large and empty, its easy to see one's enemy even millions of miles away. And if you can see them, they can probably see you too. And why wait to get close instead of engaging safely at range? But this presents its own problems; Even with some sort of hypothetical "perfect-precision" lasers and perfect calculations, hitting an enemy ship with an energy weapon is virtually impossible. The reason for this is simple: the target you are trying to hit is not where it appears. At such distances, the information your sensors are receiving is several seconds to possibly even a few minutes out-of-date. Additionally; while we all think of light as being fast, in terms of space combat its not nearly fast enough. Not only are you aiming based upon old data, but by the time the photons of your laser reach the target destination, the target is no longer there. One can extrapolate where the target should be when the photons are due to arrive, but since most targets do not want to be turned into space-dust, ships make tiny micro-adjustments to their orientation as part of standard flight procedure, and at such speeds, a fraction of a degree shift is hundreds of thousands of meters difference. Adding to this that the fabric of space is not quite flat, and at such speeds a laser miss of a thousand miles is a miraculously close shot. It would be like scoring a hit in a game of Battleship on a nearly-infinite grid. You're basically trying to hit an object the size of a bus moving near the speed of light twice the distance to the moon away with a beam the size of a dime - not very likely.
But in the way of life - no matter the obstacles, life will always find a way to kill other life, and Relativity-be-damned, life found a way. The only way for a weapon to destroy a target is for it to hit the target, and the only way to hit a target is to know where it is. Over large distances relativity prevents this, so the solution is to get closer. A suicidal notion, and far too risky - but computers can be programmed to control weapons that can alter their trajectory. As they get closer to the target, the more "up to date" their information is, and the more likely their warheads to eliminate the target. It may seem primitive to fans of traditional space operas, but the only effective weapons in real space combat are smart missiles and drones. That's not to say that directed energy weapons don't have their purpose, however. Even though they are useless as offensive weapons, they can be used defensively. If a ship realizes its under attack, point defenses activate and begin to target the incoming missiles and drones. In turn, the missiles have their own countermeasures, spraying a metallic aerosol from the nose-cone. This is a micro-chaff of highly-reflective aluminium crystals, which breaks up the integrity of the incoming beam. With no air resistance, the metallic cloud leads the missile, creating a "shield". The lasers try to shoot through the cloud. Photons have inertia, and can slowly blast the aerosol out of the way to try and reach the more-vulnerable missile hull. In return the missiles will maneuver and spray more chaff, while the lasers seek new gaps. The battle continues like this until the missile is destroyed, or until it comes within a few miles of its target whereupon the projectile will typically detonate its warhead - ... a nuclear detonation shaped in one direction; often inaccurately referred-to as a "nuclear laser", but it would be more accurate to call it an "atomic claymore". Such a blast is easily enough to destroy a fragile spacecraft even several miles away, provided that it is within the explosive's blast wave cone. Space warfare is really a contest between computers and programmers and engineers rather than pilots and gunners. The combat is simply too-fast, the margin of error too-small, and the distances too-vast for a live operator. The front-line soldiers of the future are engineers and programmers, mathematicians and chess-masters, designing measures and countermeasures, trying to predict the moves and capabilities of their opponents' new weapon-systems, and their counter-moves. For the most-part, a battle has already been decided before the first missile has been loosed.
Unfortunately for him, Minister Terrol reflected, the pirates had them massively outmaneuvered. The pirates had become outrageously successful, and with those successes came vast sums of capital. Everyone has a price, and with these bribes the Pirates would routinely purchase the loyalty of Unity's best engineers... buying insight into the tactics and capabilities of new weapon systems long before they were deployed, often back-engineering the designs, or simply stealing the weapons off of the ships of defeated adversaries. Additionally, despite significantly larger budgets, Unity had to finance enough military starships to garrison the a whole galaxy of space lanes and ports and trade routes, while the pirates invested heavily into their own individual ships. The result was that, on average, the Pirates were much better equipped than the Unity ships. The only exception to this was the massive lumbering mainline battlecruisers of the Unity Interspace Navy. Any one of these had enough firepower to take on an entire Pirate clan, but they proved to be a paper tiger. They were too expensive for widespread use, and their gigantic inertia made them unmaneuverable and slow to accelerate, while the nimble pirate ships could simply speed away unmolested.
But the pirates' greatest advantage wasn't one so tangible. The conscripts of the Unity fleet were the sons of factory workers and taxi drivers and the daughters of nurses and bankers. Even the enlisted spent most of their careers at space stations or planetside. They never formed a bond with their ships; their ships were never their homes. But the pirates lived in space. They understood space. It was even said that some pirate pilots could feel and ride the bumps and ripples of the fabric of spacetime itself. Their ships were their homes, and so they had a feel for every nuance and quirk she had. Similarly, they served with and lived with the same crewmates for years, and formed deep, lasting bonds with eachother... a feeling for eachother's strengths and weaknesses... And all of them wanted to be out there: among the stars.
Out HERE, Terrol corrected himself as the sounds of steel clashed and scraped closer. Swords tended to be used by boarding parties rather than guns because, as all trained shooters know, within 7 meters a knife is deadlier than a gun. And a sword is deadlier-still. Starships, even large luxurious liners like the Jewel Of The Stars are full of winding corridors, and the floor is constantly curving upward; a result of the centrifugal artificial gravitation system, reducing visibility to a scant few meters in any direction throughout most of the ship. This made the pirates' nano-blades the most effective weapons for boarding ships.
That was the way that star pirates operated. They would sometimes strike from the cover of an asteroid or the shadow of a moon... but such tricks were difficult to execute while remaining hidden, and required the cover to be present at a precisely correct time and place and vector - not something that one can often count-on with certainty. The usual tactic was to fly the colors of a particular local government or shipping union and pretend to be a merchant hauler or passenger-liner, and then fire their missiles once their quarry had passed them by. This was the best strategy because it is the most favorable from an offensive standpoint. The front and rear of a ship tend to have the least surface area, and therefore the smallest defensive cross-section to put weapons. Add to this the ship's engines, which are usually mounted in the rear, and you have the angle of least resistance. Another good strategy is to fire head-on. With relevistic missiles from a ship moving at incredible speed, the missile is moving nearly at the speed of light, aimed at a target moving near the speed of light in the opposite direction. The result is that the light from the missile's engines arrives only slightly before the missile itself, and the subsequent time-warping effects would compound with this to minimize the reaction time of the target and her crew.
In either case, the primary objective of a pirate is usually not to destroy but to disable so that they can safely board the ship, steal its contents, and perhaps kidnap a few of the crew for ransom of outright recruitment. Because of this, they use drones or swarm missiles rather than nuclear weapons... at least in terms of their objective. First, they would destroy the escorts, usually with torpedoes armed with nuclear lasers, fired from cover. But because ships fly far-apart in space (for safety reasons, as an exploding ship causes shrapnel, and with no air resistance the pieces never slow down, spelling doom for any ships close-by) its usually several seconds before a ship knows her escort is under attack, and by that point the pirate's attack is already on them as well. Weapons with conventional ordinances or drone energy weapons will target specific areas of the ship's subsystems. First would target engines or engine-control. This will prevent the ship from maneuvering to prevent boarding parties from cutting into the ship's hull and taking control, but before that happens, a second missile or drone will take out primary power too, in order to disable the ship's point defense lasers, which could be used just as easily to defeat boarding skiffs as it defeats drones and missiles. These defensive weapons require a significant amounts of power to send energy beams several miles with high enough resolution to burn through the metal hull of incoming missiles or drones - far more energy than can be supplied from backup batteries alone.
Once the ship is unable to maneuver or defend itself from boarding, small craft called 'skiffs' are dispatched from the pirate vessel to latch-on to the hull of their victim with large pressurized suction doors. Then plasma cutters are applied to the heavy rubber exterior of the ship's hull, and then through the titanium structure beneath. And once that happens? Up the ladders come, and the pirates with their nano-blades follow right after.
It was then that Terrol noticed that the clamor had ceased. His eyes squinted on at the large double doors to the elevator. From the digital readout, the car was coming down to the ballroom deck. And in a moment him and his compatriots would know their fate. He had a sickening feeling that it would be... yes...
The doors opened and out stepped four forms. Terrol's heart sank the moment he saw their outlines. The long coats and tri-pointed hats could only mean one thing: pirates. But his heart sank even further when he recognized one shape in-particular. The distinct grace of its curves, the small size of the form, the large bushy tail, but most-telling of all was the face - bright white fur adorning a slender effeminate muzzle, with large yellow eyes. He swaggered forward in his form-fitting plasti-leather outfit, showy but practical, and leaving little to the imagination, with the heavy coat of the pirates draped over it. This fox was known far-and-wide. It was the notorious "Prettyboy Etheras Lawbane, Beauty of the Stars" - the face of modern space-piracy, and the most-wanted fox in the whole galaxy. He was Captain of the Diamond Sun - the most formidable ship in the pirate fleet. Its no wonder the escorts were felled without even a gasp of warning.
Minister Terrol shrank back as Etheras the white fennec mounted a short flight of steps to the balcony overlooking the ballroom floor. "Ministers and spouses," he said in his high musical voice, "I'm sure you have guessed by now that this is a robbery. Your ship is under my control. Some of my lieutenants are coming around with bags. Please make it easy on yourselves and us and just hand over your valuables without incident. Yes that's right... in the bag so we can leave. You don't want us around any longer than we have to be, right? Right."
"You're not going to ransom us?" asked one scared and surprised voice from the audience.
"Ransom?" Etheras giggled "No.. no.. we're not here for you. There is a precious bit of cargo aboard that was our heart's desire. I doubt most of you were aware that it was even here." the fennec glanced knowingly at the minister of defense, who went pale. "And so, once we have padded our purses a little bit with your evening's adornments and petty cash, we will be returning you to your home."
Terrol was shocked and felt his mood lighten. "They're letting us go?" he asked the air in disbelief. And it seemed to be true! He felt a lurch as the ship's engines came back online and the stars outside began to shift. Before a large portal window Etheras gazed out, paws clasped behind his back as they approached this system's sun - the gravity well which they would use to launch the ship back into hyperspace to return to Terra.
Once the collectors had made a few circuits around the ballroom, making sure they had taken every valuable scrap of loot, Etheras returned to the balcony rail to speak to them all. The crowd seemed less nervous, and far more curious now. Terrol imagined that many of them might even consider this to have been a good deal. Oh the stories they would tell! A story unlike any other, and all it cost is a few pieces of evening jewelry? What a deal! He could just imagine his wife saying, 'And we were robbed by the infamous Etheras Dela Fay!' They would be the center of the party.
"Our work here is done," announced the fennec, "Unfortunately your navigator did not survive our boarding and we can't return with you to Terra without risking imprisonment, so we have programmed your nav-computer to take you the rest of the way. And now, we must leave. Have a safe trip."
And with that, they returned to the elevators. A few moments later, the skiffs detached and shrunk away, fading onto the darkness of space.
"We're going home!" Terrol thought with a sigh of relief as the hyperspace engines began to spool. The chatter in the ballroom rose as the spirits of the passengers lifted. And with a rumble the picture outside the windows changed, and they were back in the Sol system. The ship turned and headed outward at a higher orbit. They passed Mercury and then Venus, and after a few more minutes Terrol could see Earth so far-away. It was approaching fast. A little too fast, maybe. The pirates were well-known for their daring piloting, but the Earth authorities wouldn't approve of this kind of recklessness. Any moment now he expected that they would begin to slow. Now? No... Now? But... no, they were.... they were speeding up!
With a sinking feeling Terrol understood what was happening too-late. It would be several minutes for him to make his way up do to the navigation computer on the bridge and override the flight course manually, but they only had seconds. Terrol watched as the outer rings of the Terran Homeworld Defense Grid passed them by... and then the outer space docks, and the inner ones... and they were moving faster and faster now! And they hit the atmosphere. Far below, he could see the outline of northern Europe. Brussels was the seat of power for Unity, and Terrol knew that in a moment the dome of the Unity Central Government complex would be rushing up to meet them.
The impact of a large mass like the Jewel of the Stars, travelling fast and hitting a city, is similar in effect to an atomic explosion. But the Jewel had been accelerating ever since its jump into ths Sol system. When the Jewel hit, the impact was so powerful, it shattered the plate of Europe. Those places that weren't blasted into dust by the explosion caved-in and flooded as the sea rushed-in. Across the Atlantic, seaboard cities of the United States and Canada were also pummeled by a powerful tsunami wave. Terra had been prepared against this eventuality by the defense satellite network. Normally the IFF systems in the Homeworld Defense Grid would have vaporized a ship moving so quickly, but this one had valid codes for carrying the entire cabinet of the central government, which overrode the network's failsafe defensive subroutine.
The resulting chaos was felt across the galaxy as the mighty Unity fleet splintered. With the central government completely annihilated, there was no clear line of succession. The fleet's captains and admirals backed different successors and began to wage wars among themselves, while rebellions flared up in the periphery to fill the sudden power vacuum. And with whole regions of the galaxy waging war on other regions, nobody was watching a few pirates as they amassed more power and wealth, and gorged themselves on the chaos that followed.
* * *Hope you liked that!
Artwork by:
BrindleStory by:
Etheras * * *Repost Authorization Rating: FREE
Dunno what that means? Please be sure to read this:
http://www.sofurry.com/view/365517
... before reposting.
Category Artwork (Digital) / General Furry Art
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Read it for your self i think you do better than me
part 1 http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4554046/
part 2 http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4554792/
part 3 http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4557374/
part 4- Still working on it
part 1 http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4554046/
part 2 http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4554792/
part 3 http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4557374/
part 4- Still working on it
Europe had it coming..!
In all seriousness though, Unity is supposed to be a future United Nations gone horribly corrupt and power-drunk, so I was initially planning on making their HQ in New York. Only... crashing a spacecraft into a building in New York City hit a little too close to reality, and so I felt that would be insensitive. So the next-best bet was the HQ of the EU, which is Brussels.
In all seriousness though, Unity is supposed to be a future United Nations gone horribly corrupt and power-drunk, so I was initially planning on making their HQ in New York. Only... crashing a spacecraft into a building in New York City hit a little too close to reality, and so I felt that would be insensitive. So the next-best bet was the HQ of the EU, which is Brussels.
Well, I certainly like the rather hard sci-fi style of your writing, especially the part about space combat.
And while the killing of billions of civilians is something that makes a character shoot past the moral event-horizon, I assume this version of Etheras is a ruthless, ethic-free space pirate, so I guess it just fits the character.
Also, I love that pirate outfit design. Reminds me of Infinite Space for the DS and Legend of Galactic Heroes.
And while the killing of billions of civilians is something that makes a character shoot past the moral event-horizon, I assume this version of Etheras is a ruthless, ethic-free space pirate, so I guess it just fits the character.
Also, I love that pirate outfit design. Reminds me of Infinite Space for the DS and Legend of Galactic Heroes.
Thanks! I tried to think about what space piracy would actually be like. Centrifugal gravity, drone warfare...
... unfortunately I later concluded that space piracy probably would not involve people. The way it would probably happen would be for the capsules that attach to the side of the ship to pump poison gas into the ship... something really corrosive and nasty that would eat through filters. Then just walk aboard a dead ship and pick up valuables from the corpses.
But that lacks the dramatic flashiness of a frock-coat-and-saber 'swashbuckling' pirate that I kinda wanted to portray. In hindsight, I should have gone pure sci fi, or pure fantasy.
As for "killing billions" its a bit morally ambiguous. One has to judge these things in context. If he killed billions to liberate trillions from a parasitic totalitarian intergalactic government, and that were the only way for an outlaw like him to fight them, then one could argue that it would be immoral NOT to act.
Buuuut I prefer just to tell the story and not get into deep ethical discussions about it. :P
... unfortunately I later concluded that space piracy probably would not involve people. The way it would probably happen would be for the capsules that attach to the side of the ship to pump poison gas into the ship... something really corrosive and nasty that would eat through filters. Then just walk aboard a dead ship and pick up valuables from the corpses.
But that lacks the dramatic flashiness of a frock-coat-and-saber 'swashbuckling' pirate that I kinda wanted to portray. In hindsight, I should have gone pure sci fi, or pure fantasy.
As for "killing billions" its a bit morally ambiguous. One has to judge these things in context. If he killed billions to liberate trillions from a parasitic totalitarian intergalactic government, and that were the only way for an outlaw like him to fight them, then one could argue that it would be immoral NOT to act.
Buuuut I prefer just to tell the story and not get into deep ethical discussions about it. :P
Yeah, the problem of space operas is that you need to go soft to a certain degree. I like my scifi harder in general, but too much realism kills the genre. Like say, I love games like Mass Effect and Wing Commander, or the X universe. Concepts like space fighter craft have no place in hard scifi though, because smaller craft with less mass would accelerate slower than larger craft with more mass and bigger engines, and when every ship has laser weaponry that has ridiculous accuracy and damage output, sending out drones and fighters with the enemy point defense up is a waste of pilots and equipment.
As for the moral aspect, I did judge the thing in context. I know that the need of the many outweighs the need of the few in many cases. But we are not speaking about a hundred people here. Or thousand. Or a million. We are speaking of a whole planet full of innocent civilians, all killed. The planet itself is damaged to a point that it will take many years to recover from the damage done, IF it can recover. AND you put the stinger in by adding that now the former Union is in a state of civil war, which means more innocent will suffer, preyed on by rivalling warlords and unhindered outlaws, bandits and pirates. And not to mention that civil war pretty much ALWAYS comes with nasty things like ethnic cleansing and such.
BTW, I am not trying to bust you ass over this, just provide a different point of view. So don't worry, I dont judge you or the story on that, since like I said before, its in character for a space pirate that ultimately only cares about his and his crews gain.
As for the moral aspect, I did judge the thing in context. I know that the need of the many outweighs the need of the few in many cases. But we are not speaking about a hundred people here. Or thousand. Or a million. We are speaking of a whole planet full of innocent civilians, all killed. The planet itself is damaged to a point that it will take many years to recover from the damage done, IF it can recover. AND you put the stinger in by adding that now the former Union is in a state of civil war, which means more innocent will suffer, preyed on by rivalling warlords and unhindered outlaws, bandits and pirates. And not to mention that civil war pretty much ALWAYS comes with nasty things like ethnic cleansing and such.
BTW, I am not trying to bust you ass over this, just provide a different point of view. So don't worry, I dont judge you or the story on that, since like I said before, its in character for a space pirate that ultimately only cares about his and his crews gain.
I do take issue with your notion that drones are a bad idea. As noted in the story, energy weapons do not work over large distances. The ONLY things that would work are drones and missiles. And its not as easy to hit them as you'd think. If you have the ability to make "super-powerful lasers", you must also accept that the same energy can be put into something else, like engines. If you could get a missile going at say .999 the speed of light, a laser defense would not be able to detect it before its struck. Why? Any light or radar bouncing off the hull of the missile would not reach the laser's sensors until a millisecond before impact. It would be as if the missile teleported to the target and smashed it.
As for the ethics...?
My personal opinion is... a galaxy of free people might make war on eachother, but that's preferable to a galaxy of slaves without a choice or a future. Situations do exist where war is the proper solution. (World War 2 for example)
And I don't buy the "needs of the many" argument. If a mob of people are violating the rights of a single individual, then screw 'the many'. Individual human rights come first. In this story, earth is a den of oppressive and callous tyranny. It really doesn't matter to me personally if they were trampling on the rights of trillions or just one person. Doing something evil on a massive scale does not make it acceptable to refrain from the massive-scale and only violate one person instead. Like.. the holocaust. 6 million Jews. Industrial-level extermination. Very evil stuff. Would it have been okay if they did it one at a time? Of course not.
As for the ethics...?
My personal opinion is... a galaxy of free people might make war on eachother, but that's preferable to a galaxy of slaves without a choice or a future. Situations do exist where war is the proper solution. (World War 2 for example)
And I don't buy the "needs of the many" argument. If a mob of people are violating the rights of a single individual, then screw 'the many'. Individual human rights come first. In this story, earth is a den of oppressive and callous tyranny. It really doesn't matter to me personally if they were trampling on the rights of trillions or just one person. Doing something evil on a massive scale does not make it acceptable to refrain from the massive-scale and only violate one person instead. Like.. the holocaust. 6 million Jews. Industrial-level extermination. Very evil stuff. Would it have been okay if they did it one at a time? Of course not.
Wow, that escalated quickly. And here I was just trying to offer some food for thought and now we talk about holocaust. <.<
Well, as for the drone/fighter thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdUhfYIq8i8
I know energy weapons don't work over a large distance. But they work as point defense weapon. We were talking about hard scifi here, and in hard scifi, sorry, theres not FTL. In a setting like this that has softer notions, or a setting like Mass Effect, Fighters and such make more sense. But even ME limited this. Energy weapons produce HUGE amounts of heat. Thats why most races use them only as close range knife fight weapons against capital ships and point defense against missile weapons and fighters. You can only fire a laser effectivly only every few seconds, because the heat buildup is high, cooling rate is low and the energy needs to build up in the condensators for the weapon to even fire an effective enough beam. Thats why you send out mass waves of fighters in that setting, because you WILL lose a few, because advanced targeting software and a lightspeed weapon that can correct itself quick means you will pretty much always hit a fighter or a drone flying close to the enemy ship, which must be done in sub light speeds or else you would just shoot past it. And after a few salvo's, the weapon has to cool down for some time or fire at a lower intensity, lest the build up heat melts it.
As for FTL missile weaponry, that depends on how avaible, small and cost effective FTL drives are. The harder your Scifi is, the less likely it gets. If you go rock hard on the scifi scale, you don't have any ftl at all, or in case of like, say, Battletech or Wing Commander, FTL is achieved by jumping, which can only be done at certain points or along certains routes in space. Plus, FTL drives would have to be massive and eat up massive amounts or energy. Putting that on a missile? Not cost effective. Plus, targeting on a missile with FTL? Time dilation would screw that notion over, even with a targeting computer that can pretty much work at almost light speed. As such, missiles would have to fly at a speed that allows them to target and correct their course better, which would also make them an easier target again.
You see, I was writing on a rather hard scifi story too, but I stopped it because of above notions. You can go hard scifi, but when you do, space battles will become more and more logically redudant if you think about it, especially when ships travel at FTL speeds or even below that. Things like inertia that would crush the crew if the ship accelerates to fast, or heck, even comes to a fast stop. The fact that stopping space would mean that you would have to have a two way engine, one that can put out as much energy to the front of the ship as it does to its rear. Not to mention, how would you create artificial gravity, unless you turn your ships into giant flying tubes, which look ridiculous and not like anything you would call a "ship". And the notion of an FTL drive is screwed anyway in hard scifi, because as far as we know, theres no way to create gravity enough to bend space and time to allow you to screw over Einstein's laws.
As for the needs of the many argument...erm, I didn't bring that up. That was you.
One has to judge these things in context. If he killed billions to liberate trillions from a parasitic totalitarian intergalactic government, and that were the only way for an outlaw like him to fight them, then one could argue that it would be immoral NOT to act.
Also, excuse me, but I didn't understood what point you wanted to make with the whole holocaust thingie.
My point was that if you commit to something evil to beat a bigger evil, that still doesnt make your evil less evil. Destroying an entire planet, snuffing out its entire population to kill like, a building full of leaders of a government, say...1000 people, and then plunging the whole rest of the galaxy into a galaxy wide war that will be the death of many more billions of civilians, if not more if WMD's are used and things like food shortage set in. Thats like burning a whole garden to get rid of one weed in it. That kind of collateral damage is off the scale. He could've sent a smaller civilian ship hurtling towards the building. Or programm the ship to at least brake to some degree, so that only the city is nuked, not the entire continent and planet.
Well, as for the drone/fighter thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdUhfYIq8i8
I know energy weapons don't work over a large distance. But they work as point defense weapon. We were talking about hard scifi here, and in hard scifi, sorry, theres not FTL. In a setting like this that has softer notions, or a setting like Mass Effect, Fighters and such make more sense. But even ME limited this. Energy weapons produce HUGE amounts of heat. Thats why most races use them only as close range knife fight weapons against capital ships and point defense against missile weapons and fighters. You can only fire a laser effectivly only every few seconds, because the heat buildup is high, cooling rate is low and the energy needs to build up in the condensators for the weapon to even fire an effective enough beam. Thats why you send out mass waves of fighters in that setting, because you WILL lose a few, because advanced targeting software and a lightspeed weapon that can correct itself quick means you will pretty much always hit a fighter or a drone flying close to the enemy ship, which must be done in sub light speeds or else you would just shoot past it. And after a few salvo's, the weapon has to cool down for some time or fire at a lower intensity, lest the build up heat melts it.
As for FTL missile weaponry, that depends on how avaible, small and cost effective FTL drives are. The harder your Scifi is, the less likely it gets. If you go rock hard on the scifi scale, you don't have any ftl at all, or in case of like, say, Battletech or Wing Commander, FTL is achieved by jumping, which can only be done at certain points or along certains routes in space. Plus, FTL drives would have to be massive and eat up massive amounts or energy. Putting that on a missile? Not cost effective. Plus, targeting on a missile with FTL? Time dilation would screw that notion over, even with a targeting computer that can pretty much work at almost light speed. As such, missiles would have to fly at a speed that allows them to target and correct their course better, which would also make them an easier target again.
You see, I was writing on a rather hard scifi story too, but I stopped it because of above notions. You can go hard scifi, but when you do, space battles will become more and more logically redudant if you think about it, especially when ships travel at FTL speeds or even below that. Things like inertia that would crush the crew if the ship accelerates to fast, or heck, even comes to a fast stop. The fact that stopping space would mean that you would have to have a two way engine, one that can put out as much energy to the front of the ship as it does to its rear. Not to mention, how would you create artificial gravity, unless you turn your ships into giant flying tubes, which look ridiculous and not like anything you would call a "ship". And the notion of an FTL drive is screwed anyway in hard scifi, because as far as we know, theres no way to create gravity enough to bend space and time to allow you to screw over Einstein's laws.
As for the needs of the many argument...erm, I didn't bring that up. That was you.
One has to judge these things in context. If he killed billions to liberate trillions from a parasitic totalitarian intergalactic government, and that were the only way for an outlaw like him to fight them, then one could argue that it would be immoral NOT to act.
Also, excuse me, but I didn't understood what point you wanted to make with the whole holocaust thingie.
My point was that if you commit to something evil to beat a bigger evil, that still doesnt make your evil less evil. Destroying an entire planet, snuffing out its entire population to kill like, a building full of leaders of a government, say...1000 people, and then plunging the whole rest of the galaxy into a galaxy wide war that will be the death of many more billions of civilians, if not more if WMD's are used and things like food shortage set in. Thats like burning a whole garden to get rid of one weed in it. That kind of collateral damage is off the scale. He could've sent a smaller civilian ship hurtling towards the building. Or programm the ship to at least brake to some degree, so that only the city is nuked, not the entire continent and planet.
Well the guy's wrong, for the reasons I stated above. Not only do lasers lack the resolution, but they just don't hold up against things that move really fast, or really far away. So, they're at a fatal disadvantage against a ship that can attack at millions of miles away with weapons that can turn. I'm not saying "fighters" I'm saying "drones". In a fighter, maneuvering at that speed would leave you splattered all over the inside of your vessel. Even with a perfect "acceleration bed" your organs would be splattered all over your insides. But drones don't have that problem (or at least: not so much).
You don't need to go faster than light to beat a laser, just really fast. Lets say light is 300,000,000 m/s (round numbers). And you can accelerate to 299,000,000 m/s. Even on a straight line course, the earliest possible moment that they could detect you is when you're 1000 kilometers away, because that's when your photons would reach them. At that speed and distance you would hit them in 0.003 seconds. :P That's not a lot of time for a laser to detect, decide you're scary, swivel, charge its capacitors, and shoot. I'd say impossible, but lets say for the sake of argument its not. Then use two missiles coming from opposite sides. Or three. I think you can see how this ends. :P
As for the two-way engine... you don't need that. Just turn around mid flight and use the same engines to slow down. :P If you accelerate at a constant 1G, and you inverted halfway through the trip, and your crew quarters were a freely rotating spherical habitat with the "down" side heavier than the "top", you would have a constant earthlike gravity going in the same direction (from the crew's perspective) for the duration of your trip, except for a minute or two mid-flight while the ship re-orients. :)
The problem (conventionally speaking) with relativistic velocity is that you have to have massless fuel because the faster you go, the heavier your ship and its contents will become (that's relativity for ya!) But you can get around this by not carrying your fuel. If you're powered externally (solar sails, and a very powerful orbital laser orbiting near your home and another at your destination star, to give you lots and lots of juice) you could achieve relativistic velocities without too much trouble. You just orbit really really fast, dropping lower and lower, and getting a boost each turn from your satellite and then just FLING in the direction you wanna go. Course... you have to be careful not to miss, otherwise you're ... on a grand tour. ;P
Recommended reading: Forever War by Joe Haldeman. He describes a relativistic space war. Its fascinating, and the science is pretty good, other than the "collapsar jumps" and some of the technology near the end.
And... Rendezvous with Ramma by Arthur C Clarke. (That's where I got the orbital laser idea. In that book they make mercury a powerplant by covering one side with solar collectors and putting a giant laser on the back side to "transmit" the energy). Clarke's science is always pretty good... I mean... the guy discovered geosynchronous orbit! (that's why its sometimes referred-to as the "Clarke Orbit")
Anyway I'm totally nerding out on you. ^.^
As for the holocaust thing... I was trying to think of an objectively evil event. Not many can claim the holocaust wasn't evil. What I was trying to say is... was responding with military force, inadvertently killing civilians "evil" if it was necessary to stop Hitler? In this case, I think one has to consider the intent. Hitler was intentionally killing people and taking over his neighbors. The allies had to kill people, but it wasn't evil because we didn't really want to do it. We were forced into it by a psychopath.
As for the "needs of the many" thing, I have an interesting thought experiment for you. Lets say there's a horrible (but natural) disease that will cause 1000 people to die, but 1 man (lets call him Charlie) has the antibodies. For some reason, the antibodies cannot be synthesized, so you'll need a continuous supply to keep the 1000 alive. Charlie's body makes a continuous supply, so you _could_ hook Charlie up in a hospital lab and harvest his blood for antibodies for the rest of his life. Charlie is unwilling to have his body turned into a medicine factory, so you'll have to keep him in a coma the rest of his life. On top of this, Charlie has never committed a serious crime. He's "innocent". If it rested on your choice... What do you do?
You don't need to go faster than light to beat a laser, just really fast. Lets say light is 300,000,000 m/s (round numbers). And you can accelerate to 299,000,000 m/s. Even on a straight line course, the earliest possible moment that they could detect you is when you're 1000 kilometers away, because that's when your photons would reach them. At that speed and distance you would hit them in 0.003 seconds. :P That's not a lot of time for a laser to detect, decide you're scary, swivel, charge its capacitors, and shoot. I'd say impossible, but lets say for the sake of argument its not. Then use two missiles coming from opposite sides. Or three. I think you can see how this ends. :P
As for the two-way engine... you don't need that. Just turn around mid flight and use the same engines to slow down. :P If you accelerate at a constant 1G, and you inverted halfway through the trip, and your crew quarters were a freely rotating spherical habitat with the "down" side heavier than the "top", you would have a constant earthlike gravity going in the same direction (from the crew's perspective) for the duration of your trip, except for a minute or two mid-flight while the ship re-orients. :)
The problem (conventionally speaking) with relativistic velocity is that you have to have massless fuel because the faster you go, the heavier your ship and its contents will become (that's relativity for ya!) But you can get around this by not carrying your fuel. If you're powered externally (solar sails, and a very powerful orbital laser orbiting near your home and another at your destination star, to give you lots and lots of juice) you could achieve relativistic velocities without too much trouble. You just orbit really really fast, dropping lower and lower, and getting a boost each turn from your satellite and then just FLING in the direction you wanna go. Course... you have to be careful not to miss, otherwise you're ... on a grand tour. ;P
Recommended reading: Forever War by Joe Haldeman. He describes a relativistic space war. Its fascinating, and the science is pretty good, other than the "collapsar jumps" and some of the technology near the end.
And... Rendezvous with Ramma by Arthur C Clarke. (That's where I got the orbital laser idea. In that book they make mercury a powerplant by covering one side with solar collectors and putting a giant laser on the back side to "transmit" the energy). Clarke's science is always pretty good... I mean... the guy discovered geosynchronous orbit! (that's why its sometimes referred-to as the "Clarke Orbit")
Anyway I'm totally nerding out on you. ^.^
As for the holocaust thing... I was trying to think of an objectively evil event. Not many can claim the holocaust wasn't evil. What I was trying to say is... was responding with military force, inadvertently killing civilians "evil" if it was necessary to stop Hitler? In this case, I think one has to consider the intent. Hitler was intentionally killing people and taking over his neighbors. The allies had to kill people, but it wasn't evil because we didn't really want to do it. We were forced into it by a psychopath.
As for the "needs of the many" thing, I have an interesting thought experiment for you. Lets say there's a horrible (but natural) disease that will cause 1000 people to die, but 1 man (lets call him Charlie) has the antibodies. For some reason, the antibodies cannot be synthesized, so you'll need a continuous supply to keep the 1000 alive. Charlie's body makes a continuous supply, so you _could_ hook Charlie up in a hospital lab and harvest his blood for antibodies for the rest of his life. Charlie is unwilling to have his body turned into a medicine factory, so you'll have to keep him in a coma the rest of his life. On top of this, Charlie has never committed a serious crime. He's "innocent". If it rested on your choice... What do you do?
I'm not sure that made any sense, so let me rephrase.
The problem with the holocaust is not the 6 million jews they gassed and then burned in ovens, its that they gassed and burned anyone at all. If you think of it as a numbers game, then you have to draw a line somewhere. At what quantity of gassed and burned people does it stop being acceptable? 1 million? 3 million? Or just 1? The wrongness isn't in the volume; that simply amplifies it.
So a tyrannical ruler was violating the rights of some of its citizens for the good of The Fatherland (aka: "the many"). But if you attack, innocent civilians will die. Its inevitable. What do you do?
The problem with the holocaust is not the 6 million jews they gassed and then burned in ovens, its that they gassed and burned anyone at all. If you think of it as a numbers game, then you have to draw a line somewhere. At what quantity of gassed and burned people does it stop being acceptable? 1 million? 3 million? Or just 1? The wrongness isn't in the volume; that simply amplifies it.
So a tyrannical ruler was violating the rights of some of its citizens for the good of The Fatherland (aka: "the many"). But if you attack, innocent civilians will die. Its inevitable. What do you do?
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