"Scientists discuss inevitability of war… in SPAAAACE!!!" Topic

link

War is gonna be really scary (and really short) for anyone living inside a glorified balloon.

Scientist says "watch The Expanse" to get an idea of what it will be like

I would tend to agree with him 😀

One thing they didn't bring up— In space, air ain't free. It's a commodity (and necessity) which has to be provided for and distributed by functioning bio or mechanical systems which require maintenance and power and material, all of which must be brought into space via some sort of transport vehicle (rocket or space elevator). Provisions must also be in place to scrub CO2 or other toxins from the spacecraft/colony air supply. None of that is free. Somebody has to pay something for anyone to breathe… and in the end, the Somebody who pays for you, is you.

Living in space is never going to be like living on a planet. Man of leisure? Ain't gonna be allowed. You can indeed be literally "a waste of air" in space— and that's going to have physical (possibly permanent) consequences. Vagrants in space? Not possible. If you want to even breathe, you have to work. Better get dirtside to a habitable Earth-like planet if you want to be lazy. In space, laziness is going to carry a death sentence— one way or another.

I think that radiation will sterilize any humans who try to get to Mars.
Any shielding to protect them will be so heavy, it will take years to get there.

Power is the only real limit.

Fission (or Fusion if it ever works…) provides enough power to do whatever you want to do.

Get to Mars in couple month or even weeks? Nuclear.

Space fighter? Nuclear is the only way.

Magnetic shield to stave off radiation? Easy to make, but you gotta have a lot of power…again, nuclear.

Killings in space; well, that's what happens when you give an undeveloped primate a weapon and too much brain, not enough sense.

+1 PArzival

Yes! There will be no freeloaders in space. This was one of my main problems with the book version of "The Expanse". Huge asteroid cities with all sorts of low-life, criminals, and scum? Not going to happen. Diseases like Syphilis? Not a chance. No one is ever going to be allowed to even leave Earth unless they are certified disease-free and have a paying job waiting for them at the other end.

Meh. "Radiation shield"= Water tank. (Or, for that matter, ice.)

You're gonna be taking the water along for the trip anyway as an essential life-support material. And you're gonna take a LOT of it— literally tons. Nifty thing is, it makes for good radiation protection. Just build the tank like a long donut, with the crew areas inside.

Parzival, Scott W
I'm not sure your thoughts on "no freeloaders in space" will hold true. Humans of the "non-productive class" will ALWAYS find a way to steal from the fruits of the producers. As a colony/ship size/etc.. grows, inequality in some form ("tribal," racial, religious, economic, gender) always rears it's head, and there will be the unscrupulous, the lazy and the truly victimized who will suffer and/or take advantage of that situation.
On a ship with a crew of 10-yeah, the lazy will likely be purged…on a station with 100,000 inhabitants? The 10% of non-producers will thrive…

Can't wait for the space colony graffiti: "The owner of this colony is a waste of air." "The administrators of the Atmosphere Bureau are wastes of air." Etc.

The Lunies in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" felt entitled to eject those whose Oxygen Tax badge was in arrears.

@Maggot— the thing is, Space is unique in that it is entirely unlivable in and of itself. It's not like Earth, where you can breathe pretty much anywhere, and food occurs in variable amounts and thus often over-available, and so forth.
A spacecraft or a space station is a very regulated environment. You can't sneak onto a spacecraft like you can stowaway on a sea-going ship. Indeed, there will likely be only a handful of entry ways into a spacecraft, all of which will be closely monitored. No climbing the anchor chain and slipping over the gunwale. In fact, if you even could sneak aboard, your mass will be detected as an anomaly. Anomalies and spaceships do NOT go together. Every kilo of mass has to be accounted for, and calculated into the fuel needed for propulsion. If that mass is off, so two will be the ship's acceleration and velocity. And that could be lethal for everyone on board, as the alterations affect the spacecraft's carefully plotted orbital transfer. "It ain't like dusting crops."

So too must the water, air and other consumables be accounted for. A space be vehicle or station is not a case where "Nature's bounty" applies. Stored food will be planned for the number of people aboard, and assigned and divided accordingly. Grown food will be in a controlled, protected hydroponics bay (or something of that sort), again with the mass of water and fertilizers and CO2 calculated as precisely as possible. Remember, EVERYTHING in space has to be brought along— and that includes the various sources of mass for plants in the hydroponics bay. Plants eat too. What they eat are nitrogen and other minerals, via their root systems, and carbon from CO2, and hydrogen from water and so forth. All of this has to be provided, and all of it has to be calculated. So the carrots served for dinner? Every last microgram of the mass of those carrots had to be brought up from a planet. That's not trivial.

There's just no room for a stowaway or a layabout. You can't hide to get to space. You can't hide once you get there. Your mass, your water usage, your breathing, your poo— all of it will be detected and calculated. If you refuse to work, you won't eat… and if you're obnoxious about it, you also won't breathe.
It's not the same as being on Earth.
The closest comparable thing on Earth would be living on a submarine. There would be no way to stowaway— there's only one or two ways in, and they're watched and sealed. There's no place to hide— it's just a big, long hallway with a handful of tiny spaces set aside for the captain's quarters, a handful of officers, and the heads. How you gonna hide? How you gonna be the lazy crewman, and not wind up having either the captain, the officers, or your own bunk mates come down on you like the wrath of God.
Lazy in space ain't like lazy on Earth. It's not allowed— either by man or by just the simple physics of it all.
Lazy in space=dead. One way or another.

So, no Doctor Smith?

Nope. More like West in Space: Above & Beyond, or Lieutenant Commander Finney in Star Trek: "Court Martial"

(Finney manages to stay on the Enterprise for a bit, but found very easily once the evidence is considered. But Star Trek is drama, not reality. On a real spaceship, his continued presence would have been detected almost immediately. The ability to look for tell-tale signs of a living being on board a contained vessel would in reality be very high.)