"Wars are often waged far from home, making logistics an important element in warfighting. This supply-train will be extended from miles to lightyears with the advent of war in other solar systems. Back on Terra, military organizations, especially navies, have constructed bases around the global to allow for shorter, more effective logistics and power projection. In space, the need will be the same, and one answer provide by fiction and reality is the space station. In this blogpost, FWS will examining the military space station in sci-fi, in the reality and in history.
Right now, there are two space stations orbiting our blue marble, the ISS and the Chinese Tiangong 1. These stations are places of testing the effects of micro-gravity on the human body and other Terrestrial lifeforms, being labs in space, and platform for testing equipment in the rigors of space. While the ISS is a place of the global community cooperating on forwarding science, it is a safe port for humans in space. One of the original ideas for the space station by Wernher Von Braun was to be a launching pad for a manned mission to Luna and Mars. Having an space station would allow easier access to the solar system, and less taxing launching for deep space missions. If and when we go to Mars, it has been proposed that a space station be constructed there, to extend the safe ports of humanity, allowing for deeper reach. One after another, a string of space stations will connect Earth to the outer reaches of the Sol System and beyond. Space Stations can also be a common meeting place, a waystation, like Babylon 5, for more empty sectors of space. Another element of the importance of space stations is that they are a way of bring our atmospheric conditions to the cosmos. Consider that we have yet to find an Terran atmospheric standard world out there, and space stations could be the only way to bring humanity to the stars until we locate and conquer an Earth-like world. What about the importance of space stations for the future spacefaring military? Like naval ports and international military bases, the military space station will be to extend the range of their military units, easier mobilization, colonial defense, and projecting power/ownership of outer space real estate. We could see space stations be divided, with one portion being civilian and other being military…"
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harvests scenario ideas from The Third World War.