Space Warfare

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I remember reading about a time in a conference in which Robert Heinlein was speaking that he was asked about why he had warfare in his futuristic novels, to which he basically replied that it's inevitable. Basically, wherever goes humanity warfare with it goes also. So, is warfare in space actually inevitable (assuming humans do more than just twiddle around in LEO aluminum can laboratories and that's all that's done ever) or is it just that with all the warfare of Heinlein's time that such would seem inevitable?

Such will be so. Humans are the only species that wantonly decimate themselves.

I imagine if colonies ever happen on Mars, the Moon or elsewhere, there will be movements for autonomy eventually. Some might be violent.

Provided human civilization does'nt destroy itself before then.

There is a whole episode of the show "The Universe" dedicated to space wars. I think that you would enjoy watch that. There is also this book "Space Wars: The First Six Hours of World War III" ( http://www.amazon.com/Space-Wars-First- ... 919&sr=8-1 ) also seems interesting. We already have capability to shoot down satellites from the ground. I also watched recently the movie "The Right Stuff" and it is fun to watch because there is this cold war paranoia about the space race. The character says: "the romans ruled the world because they had roads, the English because they had ships, we because of the planes and whoever dominates the space will rule the world". In that the universe episode they show a prototype of a large "rail-gun". They also said that if someone detonates a nuclear weapon in space it would shut down all eletronic devices in an area the size of the United States. The episode is fun to watch, they bring the scientific consultant from "Battlestar:Galatica" to talk. . There is also one episode of "Dogfights" about future technology. They talk a little about the scramjet which would go to space horizontaly.

Well there have been many treaties to try and prevent war in space. The Soviets had a military space station in the 1960's that had a machine gun on it. Ultimately one has to realize how hard it is to fight when you're traveling 30,000 km/h or more. I see it as an inevitability that a war in space probably will happen though, maybe over the Moon or Mars, or maybe for future autonomy as someone else mentioned. However I believe it will be Earth that exports the violence. Early space colonies will be inhabited mostly by scientist and engineer types. It'll be the politicians on the home-world who initiate the violence, I believe

Warfare in space is kinda like a gang rumble breaking out among patients on life support in the intensive care unit of a hospital. Space colonist would be dependant on the constant monitoring of expensive technology to survive- just like IC patients. Its hard for me to imagine either of those two groups of people mixing it up.

We dont fight wars in Antarctica today. We dont even fight wars OVER Antarctica.

Space colonization will probably go through an Antarctica phase (just hundfulls of lonely scientiests and engineers).

Concievably space colonization could procede to evolve in ways analagous to the European colonizaiton of the New World. First you would have thousands of families of permanent inhabitants living beyond earth.
Then you would see terrestrial powers fighting over the moon and or mars- and doing some of the actual fighting on Mars or the moon ( like the French and Indian Wars). Then later the space colonist themselves might concievably fight for independence from earth ( Like Simon Bolivar or George Washington).

But I think that if future space colonization actually happens it will not really evolve in ways analgous to human civilizations expanding on earth because survival itsself is so problematic and so capital intensive in a non earth environment. It just would be too suicidal to kill and thus provoke others to kill you in such an environment.

Even if, say, Mars settlements become financially independent from earth ( say by strip mining metal ores say and exporting them at a profit) they would still not be self sufficient and be so hopelessly dependent upon Earth for actual survival that warfare would be like a rumble in the IC unit- it just would be too suicidal to be feasible for the people deployed in space..

And unless we actually succeed in 'terrafroming" other planets (which would take thousands of years anyway) colonists on other planets would probably remain politically dependent on earth for centuries to come.

Having greenhouses on Mars or orbital stations would be one method of food production. Recycling of water by distillation and osmosis works even now.

Uh can I ask why you are worried? dont you know space belongs to god and i doubt He will let any funny business happen there.