"Why not starfighters, but starships?" Topic

If you want to be super realistic, ditch the fighters *and* the starships. There's nothing in space to fight over and in the real world we'll never have the means to get there anyway.

There's nothing in space to fight over now. Give humans a few hundred years or so. We'll find something to fight over it for.

Hmmm, heavy metal asteroids, comets for the potential water, helium3 deposits, cheese…

The heck with that, orbital space is worth fighting over just for the positional advantages it gives you. Even without future-sci kinetic strike technologies, being able to deny an enemy satellite communications and recon by controlling (or at least threatening) the key altitude belts is the subject of quite a bit of present-day military thinking. Start building lunar industry and chemical factories in the LaGrange points and there's plenty to tussle over.

comets for the potential water

It's starting to look like Luna may be a better source than cometary bodies for H2O. Plenty of it up there and easier to get at, although schlepping large quantities out of the (shallow) lunar grav well might make a comet interception worthwhile yet.

The Oort cloud & passing comets would be great sources of fresh water, with appropriate tech for intercept/slowdown/orbiting, and when has humanity needed an excuse to fight over anything, anyway? <BIG SIGN ON EDGE OF SOLAR SYSTEM – WARNING: THIS SPECIES DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS!>

Ninjasaurus Rex: "There's nothing in space to fight over and in the real world we'll never have the means to get there anyway."

What's out there? Everything!

And it's mostly just getting enough stuff into orbit to start a mining operation on the moon. After that it's cake.

As for getting stuff into orbit:

link

If you want to be super realistic, ditch the fighters *and* the starships. There's nothing in space to fight over and in the real world we'll never have the means to get there anyway.

There's *how* much solar energy in space? Ignoring the silliness of 18m tall land weapons systems, Gundam 00 has a really good point. Assuming that we can build orbital elevators (the materials science is high on people's list of things to figure out). 3 orbital elevators, each connected to a big array of solar-power-generation satellites.

Gotta find something to replace oil for a power source, after all!

There are plenty of alternatives to oil, but the only ones they seem intent on developing are those that keep people dependent on government and their controlled power companies. The orbital elevators in Gundam 00 are not a new idea, but seems to me they're going to need something more than electricity to push those Union FLAGs through the air like they can.

But there is much more than just solar energy in space. I think that is already known. And there are plenty of other reasons humans will turn space into a battle field that involves more than just resources.