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Fraknly I'd like to see Australia and Switzerland go at it. Besides being nearly inconcievable it would be awesome to watch.

If Aussie killer drop bears are transported to Europe, do they then fall, er, up? Who would win, Swiss yodelers or Aussie didjeridus?

purplefood wrote:

HonorHarrington wrote:I really have a hard time understanding what point Lord Cat is trying to make.

Something about Russia and China being allies with each other against the US or not being allies and fighting each other instead...
His points tend to wonder...

China spends a majority of its planning and training time to prepare itself with a land war with Russia. Trying to imply that they are allies is like saying that India and Pakistan are plotting against China. I tend to gloss over LCs posts, sometimes it seems like he has a point, then he says something ridiculous. I feel like maybe we are getting the bad end of a translation of a guy who actually has a really good point and whom Google Translate punks.

OT There will absolutly be a major war in the 21st century its just a matter of when. The big nations cant really afford to mix it up with each other because of the sheer loss of life and economic impact of a war between them. But the guys who are smoldering just below the line of first rate nations can and will ( I kind of rank China as in between those two; she's big and a war would probably devastate her growing middle class, but they will probably go all in anyways) India and China are taking steps towards fighting a major war, Israel is always on the brink, but what I really expect is Africa to explode. Who knows...sometime people forget how awful war can be

Robert Edward Lee wrote: It is well that war is so terrible; lest we should grow too fond of it.

purplefood wrote:

HonorHarrington wrote:I really have a hard time understanding what point Lord Cat is trying to make.

Something about Russia and China being allies with each other against the US or not being allies and fighting each other instead...
His points tend to wonder...

And tanks, and missles, and hydraulics: what does it have to do with a major war in the 21st century?

HonorHarrington wrote:

purplefood wrote:

HonorHarrington wrote:I really have a hard time understanding what point Lord Cat is trying to make.

Something about Russia and China being allies with each other against the US or not being allies and fighting each other instead...
His points tend to wander...

And tanks, and missles, and hydraulics: what does it have to do with a major war in the 21st century?

Like i said, his points tend to wander...

Anyone think there could possibly be a conflict in space? We'll probably have begun mining in some manner or another by the end of the century. I sort of doubt war would happen though, because there are so many resources available that it woulr make it unnecessary, unless a nation didn't want to develop the tech for themselves...

NASA is working on some sort of Ion propulsion system that could make a trip to Mars only take a few months.

Once that's up and running we should have a colony within a couple years.


Once Mars is established as a base of operations it's just a short hop to the Asteroid belt, not counting whatever we find on Mars and the Moon.

Although I doubt there would be much in the war of political struggles until Mars gets Terraformed or we start having some serious mining operations.



Mars wouldn't be completely terraformed for at least a hundred years after the process was started. Colonies could survive using Aquaponic systems to grow food and some plants could even survive on the surface. But for the planet to become livable we need to melt the CO2 in the Icecaps and cause the planet to heat up. At best it would be kinda like the Arctic Tundra. Grasslands and small trees. Animals would have to be able to live with the cold and thinner air. Cities would probably need to remain underground.

At this point there could be independent nations formed on Mars, which would create the possability of war.

Absolute minimum for a space conflict (barring alien assault) would be 100 years. I think it'll be at least another 50 years until we see a more effective form of space travel implemented on a multinational level.

Amaya wrote:Absolute minimum for a space conflict (barring alien assault) would be 100 years. I think it'll be at least another 50 years until we see a more effective form of space travel implemented on a multinational level.

OK arbitrary number guy.

For those interested, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17758-astronauts-could-reach-mars-in-2020s-panel-says.html.

"But the committee warned that without more money, NASA would be stuck in low-Earth orbit until at least the 2030s. "The Committee finds that no plan compatible with the Fiscal Year 2010 budget profile permits human exploration to continue in any meaningful way," the summary report says. Carrying out the Flexible Path programme or landing astronauts on the moon before the 2030s would require an extra $3 billion per year beyond the $18.7 billion planned for the agency, the report says."

Mars wouldn't be completely terraformed for at least a hundred years after the process was started. Colonies could survive using Aquaponic systems to grow food and some plants could even survive on the surface. But for the planet to become livable we need to melt the CO2 in the Icecaps and cause the planet to heat up. At best it would be kinda like the Arctic Tundra. Grasslands and small trees. Animals would have to be able to live with the cold and thinner air. Cities would probably need to remain underground.

I would like source of the figures on that terraformation. Last I heard (IIRC) the designed process was looking at a timetable of a few millennium (2-3 I think).

Absolute minimum for a space conflict (barring alien assault) would be 100 years. I think it'll be at least another 50 years until we see a more effective form of space travel implemented on a multinational level.

I have my doubts that we will ever have space conflicts. Way too easy to avoid confrontation. Way too long to communicate anything effectively. If we do, it's going to be horrible. Gundam horrible (the good ones), where billions of people die in seconds due to the bad choice of one pilot.

I'm just saying that we are a decade or two away from developing a significantly faster form of space travel. Then you have to tack on more years just for the development of space faring warships, if such vessels were even developed without an external threat forcing humanity to do so. Should we become a spacefaring race (in terms of intersteller travel) and not be a unified world I could see conflicts erupting over trade routes and raw goods.

I think this thread has taught us only one thing. World War Three will be okay if Ron Perlman narrates it.

GalacticDefender wrote:Anyone think there could possibly be a conflict in space? We'll probably have begun mining in some manner or another by the end of the century. I sort of doubt war would happen though, because there are so many resources available that it woulr make it unnecessary, unless a nation didn't want to develop the tech for themselves...

It depends on what you class 'war' as. Arguably the technology already exists for satellites to shoot each other down, and there were rumours that the Chinese have done this already.

The Chinese capped a satellite from Earth with a missle.

I tend to think that one of Jupiter's moons would be a more suitable candidate for human colonisation, given the liquid water...

Albatross wrote:I tend to think that one of Jupiter's moons would be a more suitable candidate for human colonisation, given the liquid water...

There's a few potential candidates. Mars is just the closest and most "Earth-like" and so that's the "go-to" planet when these conversations roll around.

EDIT: If you want a good read on terraforming read the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Very interesting series of books and very well researched. It's fictional, but there's a lot of science behind it and he raises some interesting points and potential problems.