How powerful could a hard sci-fi civilization be?

[Formless]

What's really funny to me about the whole idea of a "Hard Sci-Fi Superciv" is that it completely misses the point of what Hard Sci-Fi represents. Here, allow me to let Stanley Schmidt, former editor of Analog, explain it for me:

While, in one sense, I’m proud to keep Analog as hard science fiction, I also sometimes wish that term would go away. So many people use it in a way that they think is what I mean by it, and it’s completely different from what I really mean. Recently I got a story by somebody who said, ‘So and so said I should sell this to Analog because it’s full of clanking hardware.’ I have no intrinsic interest in clanking hardware. What I mean by ‘hard science fiction’ is actually pretty simple: there’s some element of speculative science or technology in it, which is so integral to the story that you can’t take it out without making the whole story collapse.

The second requirement is that there should be some attempt to make the science or technology speculation plausible. When I was teaching the science fiction course, one of the stories that I had people read was ‘Flowers for Algernon’ (one of my all-time favorites). It’s the quintessential example of meeting the requirement that there has to be some speculative element that you can’t take out without making the story collapse. Everything that’s important to Charlie comes out of that operation. And yet, because there are no rockets or robots and very little is said about the medical details, about half the students in my course were surprised that I even considered it science fiction. On the other hand, everybody thinks of Star Wars movies as science fiction, but they’re what my dad calls ‘really good Westerns with terrific special effects.

Now, quibble if you like about Star Wars status as sci-fi or fantasy (I er on side of both because fuck you), but I like to think the whole idea of "Hard Sci-Fi = rocketpunk with super-duper compooters and other contemporary elements of futurism" just reveals a kind of jealousy for the soft sci-fi writers who can sit back and have fun with it, or the Golden Age writers who didn't have a half century's worth of space missions informing the readers expectations on the likelihood of ever seeing manned missions to other planets again. Really, take some of these Hard Sci-Fi settings that fit the stereotypical STL and rockets formula and ask yourself "does this story really have to take place in space? Does any one technology or scientific concept hold the plot together? Or is it just a retread of Golden Age sci-fi without the historical context that Asimov et. al. were writing in? Or worse, an attempt to one-up Star Trek by taking away the magic lightspeed engines and rubber forehead aliens?" It seems like a lot of people shoot their creativity in the foot by trying to satisfy only the criterion of plausibility-- and at that, only satisfying their own ideas of whats plausible while actually ignoring a lot of science and engineering realities that keep their futuristic technologies on the drawing board in real life. They should sit down first and ask themselves what exactly they want to write about, and whether or not it even needs the standard sci-fi setting, or whether it could simply happen today here on earth.

How does this relate to the thread at hand? Simple. What kind of technology is plausible for our hypothetical civilization? Answer: it depends on the perceptions of each poster who has advocated the Hard Sci-Fi civ's side thus far. That includes the OP and his mistaken belief that warp drives and wormholes are not true Hard Sci-Fi despite all the other things that get a pass in the hard sci-fi world, like spacecraft that can survive the stresses imposed by an STL relativistic drive. The instant you say "The only limits on its technological advancement are our current understanding of laws of physics and inherent engineering limitations," you have not described an interstellar civilization, or even an interplanetary one. You have described modern Earth, because we don't yet know if the kinds of civilizations Hard Sci-Fi likes to wank on about are actually possible within the realms of physics and engineering as we know it, let alone future history considerations like "will we avoid climatological disaster in the next fifty years?" or, "Will space colonization ever get off the ground or become appealing enough to society to actually happen?" All "Hard Sci-Fi" that involves space colonization makes implicit speculations about technological and social progress that cannot necessarily be taken for granted no matter how much time you give them to accomplish it in. So the answer to the OP's question is either "no one can know because the assumptions are subjective" or "None, because we don't even know if we can overcome all significant threats of our own extinction yet."








Now I would like to see someone write the story of how the speed of light was exceeded, and how that effects people. Not shoved into the backstory of a space opera, simply as a story of its own. THAT would be interesting science fiction.

[Formless]

[Ghetto edit: tl;dr: any time someone starts trying to divvy up speculative technology or scientific discoveries into "Hard" and "Soft" camps, they are revealing far more about themselves than the nature of the genre or its themes. And this is terrible.]

[easydoesit1]

First off, can we get some independent verification of this other than the Wiki? I know its not in the ICS, and its not in any sources I've seen or known of. So unless it cropped up in the Essential Guide to Warfare or something, I'm not sure about the 'shield behaving like thermally conductive material' or that it diffuses or reradiates back, for that matter.

I haven't read The Essential Guide to Warfare but it is listed as a source for the article. One option is to start a thread and ask someone who has read it.

And how pray tell did you arrive at a 20% figure? And 20% of what (eg terms of yield, weapon, etc.)

If the shield can dissipate energy at 1*10^24 j/sec then that equals 1 gigajoule/femtosecond. I am shooting 5 gigajoule femtosecond pulses at 1000 pulses per second. Hence the shield can dissipate only 20% of the energy I'm shooting at it.

All I'm seeing is alot of pointless or redundant verbiage padding out this statement, aside from your obsession over wattage alone. I mean its not as if anything else will *possibly* be a factor to shields other than power!

Please stake what else is a factor. I am talking about using brute force to overpower your shield. Hence, my obsession with power.

We have no idea. Are you talking about 'activate to full power from complete deactivation' or what?

The response time from when the shield gets hit to the time that the radiators kick in. It will not be instantaneous. There will be a delay. For example, your computer control system will probably be involved. That means the processor has to take a fraction of a second to process the need. Plus the processor would have to get the information in the first place. Then the radiator would have to be sent the command and then the radiator would have to respond to the command. All of this takes time. So how long does it take?

Wait, you just asked about this particular property of the shields, and then automatically assumed it COULDN'T simply because of 'arbitrary numbers?' I'm just guessing you took the speed of light and divided it by a femtosecond and then arbitrarily decided that was all that mattered. Nothing about other parameters (number of pulses, energy per pulse, and so on) because.. well.. BECAUSE.

I'll also note that while we don't know what you asked, we DO know from the ICS and various other sources that they employ quite a few massless beam weapons (at least one variant of laser/turbolaser weapon, for example) and they have particle beams as well (which are for the most part not going to be vastly slower.) So I'd wager we need to know alot more than 'how fast the beam moves' or how fast your hypothetical uberlaser is pulsing.

Actually energy per pulse and number of pulses are exactly what I'm talking about. Since the laser is affecting the shield on the femtosecond scale, your control system that is controlling your heat sinks, radiators and shield has less than that long to respond to the pulse. If your control system is optical then the information can only travel less than 1*10^-7 m during the duration of the pulse against the shield and that involes everything from getting data that the pulse hit being transmitted to your processor, processed, and commands being sent to your heat sinks and radiators. So all of the above has to be less than 1*10^-7 m apart. Hence any reaction to the pulse by the shield must take place in less than a femtosecond. I already specified in the thread a 5 gigajoule femtosecond laser operating a 1000 hertz. I also mentioned the same laser operating at 100 hertz. The information that you are requesting was already mentioned. I also asked earlier in the thread why would any advanced race waste energy on creating shields. The reason being is that Star Wars is at a tech level where they should be able to penetrate their own shields so easily that they aren't even there. The reason that they don't is because the whole concept of energy shields was not thought out well. To be fair, the concept of energy shields originated when lasers were primitive and neither femtosecond or attosecond lasers were even thought about. Hence, under certain conditions, namely that femtosecond or attosecond lasers don't exist, then shields can make sense. Under the condition that they do, shields don't make sense. It is one of those times were science fact is stranger than science fiction.

Which shield are we talking about? THere's several shield ratings in the ICS, and moreover its hilarious how you seem to assume that 'only dissipation matters' - if you somehow dump the energy in quickly enough the shields will somehow be completely ignored. Which actually completely ignores my point about heat sinks. What if the dissipation rate, for example, was not 'when the energy hits the shield', but rather 'what the radiators dissipate each second?' That would change things around quite a bit. What's more, one of the more commonly discussed interpretations (at least the way Mike used to put it) is a sink analogy. The 'dissipation rate' in the ICS is the drain, the heat sinks are the sink, etc. We know the size of the drain, but we dont know the sink itself, or how fast things get poured into it, etc.

I will further note that if such tactics were viable you wouldn't have to use shit like Torpedo spheres to take down shields, since they do pretty much what you describe to bypass shields as well.

We are talking about ISD ray shields. Please list your sources for your speculation for how heat sinks and radiators work. Torpedo spheres fire torpedo to open holes in shields that last mere microseconds. We are talking a pulse that lasts 1 billionth of a microsecond. Another point to mention about torpedoes is that if their torpedo detonations are as fast as nuclear explosions then they are essentially equivalent to a laser delivering a fraction of their energy to shield in a microsecond. The only thing is that the laser is going to me more concentrated so the intensity/area will be higher. Hence a laser would be more efficient at doing this than a torpedo would. The fact that they use torpedoes instead means that for whatever reason the Star Wars universe does not have powerful enough microsecond pulsed lasers much less femtosecond or attosecond pulsed lasers. Seeing as we are attacking the shield in a billionth of the time (femtosecond) as the torpedo is and that we are using concentrated lasers instead of unconcentrated explosions we need a much smaller amount of energy per pulse. In fact the operation of torpedo spheres reveals that my method of attack against ISD shields will work! I'm glad you brought them up. For the rest see my response above.

[Ariphaos]

How wide would this continuous beam be when it enters the target system ?
How much energy per square meter are we talking about ?

Depends on what you're trying to do. The upper limit for energy density depends on how big of a star you have, the quality of your statite array, and how large their individual effective lens size is. This ranges from "Boil oceans in a half AU-wide path" to "melt star destroyers that fail to get out of the way" for a star like ours. If complete, a statite swarm simply becomes another semi-dynamic 'layer' of its host star - it needs to let out nearly all of the energy it is absorbing in some fashion.

[Stark]

I think you'll find the upper limit for energy density is how big you can build the array before it's all trivially destroyed by superblasts from the transdimensional fortress Corregidor.

Can a superintelligent upload controlling trillions of drones frown? We're about to find out!

[Ariphaos]

Well, HSF versus SSF is all about competent people playing by the rules against morons who cheat. It's entirely a question of, does said stupidity exceed the edge they gain by said hax?

[Vendetta]

Well, no. It's actually about people who pick and choose certain rules, write the rest off as wizards, and then pretend that it makes them competent and clever vs. really big explosions.

[Connor MacLeod]

I haven't read The Essential Guide to Warfare but it is listed as a source for the article. One option is to start a thread and ask someone who has read it.

Right, because when someone makes a claim that requires proof, the obvious answer is to get someone else to do the research for you. THAT'S LOGIC.

If the shield can dissipate energy at 1*10^24 j/sec then that equals 1 gigajoule/femtosecond. I am shooting 5 gigajoule femtosecond pulses at 1000 pulses per second. Hence the shield can dissipate only 20% of the energy I'm shooting at it.

Ah, you made the figure up based on your assumptions of how the shield works, rather than actual facts. Gotcha. Now, if you can just find some actual facts to back up your claims, we might get somewhere.

Please stake what else is a factor. I am talking about using brute force to overpower your shield. Hence, my obsession with power.

Well for one thing you're completely ignoring the heat sinks. Your theory evidently is if you can shoot the energy at the shields quickly enough (in this case all this 'femtosecond' stuff.) they're magically going to bypass the shields because of WATTAGE. And if it wasn't for that pesky 'burden of proof' issue, this might be something that would require argument. As it is, it's mere speculation.

The response time from when the shield gets hit to the time that the radiators kick in. It will not be instantaneous. There will be a delay. For example, your computer control system will probably be involved. That means the processor has to take a fraction of a second to process the need. Plus the processor would have to get the information in the first place. Then the radiator would have to be sent the command and then the radiator would have to respond to the command. All of this takes time. So how long does it take?

Dude, we don't have that much information on how the shields work, unless you have some sources that I don't have access to. If you do, provide them. Otherwise you're going off into wild speculation territory and that can go MANY different ways.

Actually energy per pulse and number of pulses are exactly what I'm talking about. Since the laser is affecting the shield on the femtosecond scale, your control system that is controlling your heat sinks, radiators and shield has less than that long to respond to the pulse. If your control system is optical then the information can only travel less than 1*10^-7 m during the duration of the pulse against the shield and that involes everything from getting data that the pulse hit being transmitted to your processor, processed, and commands being sent to your heat sinks and radiators. So all of the above has to be less than 1*10^-7 m apart. Hence any reaction to the pulse by the shield must take place in less than a femtosecond. I already specified in the thread a 5 gigajoule femtosecond laser operating a 1000 hertz. I also mentioned the same laser operating at 100 hertz. The information that you are requesting was already mentioned. I also asked earlier in the thread why would any advanced race waste energy on creating shields. The reason being is that Star Wars is at a tech level where they should be able to penetrate their own shields so easily that they aren't even there.

No, the information required is 'Star Wars shields work this way, so my hypothetical laser will actually do what I think it does.' Just because the laser moves at lightspeed and you wave the word 'femtosecond' around doesn't automatically equate SHIELD PIERCING. At least, not without more proof.

The reason that they don't is because the whole concept of energy shields was not thought out well. To be fair, the concept of energy shields originated when lasers were primitive and neither femtosecond or attosecond lasers were even thought about. Hence, under certain conditions, namely that femtosecond or attosecond lasers don't exist, then shields can make sense. Under the condition that they do, shields don't make sense. It is one of those times were science fact is stranger than science fiction.

Dude, this is the second time you pull this shit. any time someone makes a demand of you you handwave it away by blaming SW. This is not a substitute for proof, and we have no reason that your hypothetical uberlaser will actually do what you say. That's the entire point of what I've been saying, can you comprehend that?

We are talking about ISD ray shields. Please list your sources for your speculation for how heat sinks and radiators work. Torpedo spheres fire torpedo to open holes in shields that last mere microseconds. We are talking a pulse that lasts 1 billionth of a microsecond. Another point to mention about torpedoes is that if their torpedo detonations are as fast as nuclear explosions then they are essentially equivalent to a laser delivering a fraction of their energy to shield in a microsecond. The only thing is that the laser is going to me more concentrated so the intensity/area will be higher. Hence a laser would be more efficient at doing this than a torpedo would. The fact that they use torpedoes instead means that for whatever reason the Star Wars universe does not have powerful enough microsecond pulsed lasers much less femtosecond or attosecond pulsed lasers. Seeing as we are attacking the shield in a billionth of the time (femtosecond) as the torpedo is and that we are using concentrated lasers instead of unconcentrated explosions we need a much smaller amount of energy per pulse. In fact the operation of torpedo spheres reveals that my method of attack against ISD shields will work! I'm glad you brought them up. For the rest see my response above.

And this is the crowning achievement of hilarity. After making all these grand pronouncements about your femto-uber-laser weap[on of doom - without proof - you go on to demand that I provide proof about how shields work because I'm 'speculating'. Can we say 'Double Standard?' Add ot that you again expecting other people to prove your speculation wrong for their arguments to have any validity, and it gets downright hilarious. Apparently if you use enough big, fancy buzzwords liek FEMTOSECOND and 'ATTOSECOND' you can ignore anything you like. So if you add 'carbon nanotube' to it somehow does that mean 'game winning?' too?

The 'sink' analogy for shield operation was described by Mike Wong here - it was based on (as I recall) discussions he had with the guy who wrote the ICSes that provide the information we're actually discussing. Since all you've brought to the table is speculation, that means Mike's explanation has the same weight as yours in the worst case - possibly more, given its based on the aforementioned conversations. And that's going to be all the evidence we have, since the ICSes don't exactly go into exhaustive detail about the functioning of shields in every little detail. I guess there are word limits or shit.


Oh, and I like how you conspicuously ignored the rest of my post to fixate on your magical shield-piericng uberlaser theory, despite the fact (as I pointed out and you ignored) there's no REASON for SW to actually send ships into effective range of your doomlasers. I guess its not HARD SCI FI enough to warrant reply, even though it makes your uberlaser completely irrelevant.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well, HSF versus SSF is all about competent people playing by the rules against morons who cheat. It's entirely a question of, does said stupidity exceed the edge they gain by said hax?

Isn't this dependent ENTIRELY on how you're defining the terms? I mean 'hard' sci fi tends to be pretty broad in and of itself, and constantly revising itself downwards (becoming more conservative) all the time. I mean the shit cropping up in this thread would probably get laughed at as 'magical' if you mentioned it on, for example, SFconsim, who have a vastly different of 'hard' sci fi (not for writing, to be fair, but still...)

I also don't like the assertion of 'morons' because it assumes that any 'hard' civilization is automatically going to be some sort of super-genius. What's to prevent such a civilization from being similarily moronic? did they stop being human at some point?

[Stark]

That's pretty much the point, yeah. I don't think the first page femtosociety is actually very 'hard', certainly not hard the way other hard scifi is. But it doesn't have FTL and for many that's the only requirement.

[Connor MacLeod]

I keep running this idea through my head that one could seriously argue Gundam is just as 'hard' science fiction as alot of the stuff that crops up in this thread. I mean its not hugetastic civilization wise, but most of the in universe 'techie' stuff I've seen actually makes alot of sense (at least in the 'possibility' department. Realism/practicality is another issue, but I think its safe to say we're not paying too much attention to that.)

I mean by certain 'hard' sci fi standards, a giant robot is no more implausible than space fighters and carriers and stuff.

[Stark]

Urge to post clip of 'the ruins of Laplace pass this point in its orbit at the same time every day ... Pay attention to your piloting, we'll only have one chance to make contact' rising. Limited delta-v and orbital mechanics in a kids show?!?!?

By like Vendetta and Formless say, this really boils down to HOW HARD ARE YOUR SPACE WIZARDS, so it's very much a subjective thing.

[Connor MacLeod]

I've been running with this idea for the past year or so that sci fi (or alot of fiction in general) has become so imitative (both commerically and creatively) that we invariably lead to these forced categorizations. I mean commercially its obvious - something becomes popular then everyone wants to cash in by copying it. Creatively.. its harder to understand what factors might lead to that coming about (I imagine commercialism and popularity have a factor - peer pressure of a sort.) Maybe each new 'generation' of sci fi fans tries to distinguish itself or try to 'explore' new territory by finding some sort of niche to occupy, or something. It seems like the whole 'hard sci fi' thing has been evolving that way for the past decade or so, given the trends I can remember seeing (for whatever that's worth.)

[Stark]

I don't doubt most scifi writers are like the writers here: eager to please fans and fit into their value preconceptions. When one of those preconceptions is 'hard space wizards are for smart people', you can see where it leads.

[Ariphaos]

Well, HSF versus SSF is all about competent people playing by the rules against morons who cheat. It's entirely a question of, does said stupidity exceed the edge they gain by said hax?

Isn't this dependent ENTIRELY on how you're defining the terms? I mean 'hard' sci fi tends to be pretty broad in and of itself, and constantly revising itself downwards (becoming more conservative) all the time. I mean the shit cropping up in this thread would probably get laughed at as 'magical' if you mentioned it on, for example, SFconsim, who have a vastly different of 'hard' sci fi (not for writing, to be fair, but still...)

My idea of hard is speculative fiction grade. You should be able to show that what you construct is feasible within our current understanding of science, or close to it. A statite swarm fits this description - you can work out how much you can balance on photon pressure at .08-.2 AU, and determine that yes, with known materials, you could wrap the Sun in them. Bowl shaped. Shiny side goes down. Black on the back. Small aperture in the center for collecting and transmitting energy, and making sure that reflected light doesn't go straight back to the Sun. Actually -covering- the Sun would be painful this way, but it's the most initially usable. You can just let them float into place and maneuver by adjusting their extremities.

On the other hand, to make an RKV launcher of any real use, you need to find a material that saturates at a couple hundred Tesla - and that may be some orders of magnitude too small. The math still works, but finding a material like that? That you're going to be willing to use as a projectile? And even then, there's still the fact that it's slower, and has a resource investment on top of being able to gather the energy to fire it in the first place. All this is still 'hard', but it's hard to take seriously once you work out the math. But we're supposed to take 'The Killing Star' seriously as an object lesson, for no reason other than 'Because the speed of light exists, it must be easy to launch something at 90% of it, and actually hit something fifty light-years away when we do'.

I also don't like the assertion of 'morons' because it assumes that any 'hard' civilization is automatically going to be some sort of super-genius. What's to prevent such a civilization from being similarily moronic? did they stop being human at some point?

As for intelligence, if a group ever gets to the point where they can start dropping such creations around the Sun unopposed, that means an era of our history is over and done. One vision of the future has taken control, and will set the course for humanity ever hence. Barring colossal stupidity, a change of heart, 'magic', or some similar event... the future of the Solar System will be defined by that group. At that point they can inflict arbitrary judgment as they will, and there is nothing that can stop them.

For my own setting, the AI in control of the statite array is effectively a treaty embedded into source code - between the entirety of the human race. The sentient beings in charge still call themselves human, but it's more as adherents to a code of ethics, rather than a species. The concept of species is a bit too mutable at that point. Regardless, if we still have a working civilization at this point, there are going to be some very clever people who are very influential. I'm not saying they'll come up with magic solutions, but the gaping mistakes we see routinely in e.g. Star Trek ("The defense codes please sir."), will be lacking.

[Stark]

'My space wizards are harder than yours'

Is this an adequate summary of your post y/n?

[Formless]

I'd say a more detailed summary of his post is "speculative advances in materials science that allow relativistic coil guns is bad. Speculative advances and extrapolations of trends in nanotech, computer science, artificial intelligence are good, as are advances in rocketry and propulsion science that would actually make interplanetary travel economically feasible."

Or in other words, "My Space Wizards are SMARTER than yours, OH MY GOD I FEEL SOOOOOO HARD RIGHT NOW GUYS!"

I've been running with this idea for the past year or so that sci fi (or alot of fiction in general) has become so imitative (both commerically and creatively) that we invariably lead to these forced categorizations. I mean commercially its obvious - something becomes popular then everyone wants to cash in by copying it. Creatively.. its harder to understand what factors might lead to that coming about (I imagine commercialism and popularity have a factor - peer pressure of a sort.) Maybe each new 'generation' of sci fi fans tries to distinguish itself or try to 'explore' new territory by finding some sort of niche to occupy, or something. It seems like the whole 'hard sci fi' thing has been evolving that way for the past decade or so, given the trends I can remember seeing (for whatever that's worth.)

One factor I would add is excitement over contemporary trends in futurism. That's why you see so many damn super-duper compoooters who can out-think ANYONE these days, like Orion's Arm and The Culture, even though the act of planning out or thinking something is rarely the most important time sinkhole in getting something done (and done right) *. Or Nano-tech wank, or biotech enabled zombie plagues (actually relatively plausible as far as the science itself goes). This isn't all bad, I mean its the same thing that inspired Asimov and Roddenberry and tons of other authors to write all sorts of good fiction. But then you get stuff where the author's excitement leads them to forget writer's rule #1: kill your darlings. So you end up with the meme that its plausible as long as the laws of physics are obeyed. Laws of economics? Observations of Sociology? Logical progression of society or advancement of technology? never heard of those things before...








* This not incidentally is why I tend to think god AI are probably not going to be any better at their jobs than a decent human bureaucracy, and possibly more expensive and god help you if you give it root level access to the very infrastructure humanity needs to survive. You deserve the resulting robit uprising if you do that. In fact, if you will allow a short tangent on my part, the God AI crowd is actually regressive-- remember all those super AI that Kirk blew up with logic bombs back in the day? Ever wonder why no one in Star Trek uses a normal computer terminal like the ones we use? Its because the dominant mode of thought in computer science for a very long time was "lets create an AI to do the thinking for us". Someone actually had to think of using computers as a tool to enhance human capabilities and networking ability before computers could actually begin changing the world the way they have. The field was intellectually/creatively stagnant despite having lots of really smart people working in it.

[Formless]

Actually, that's not a tangent at all, come to think of it. I wanted to make a point that tunnel vision on avoiding physics violations leads to violating lots of other factors on plausibility, and there I have a perfect one from real life. Heh.

[Connor MacLeod]

My idea of hard is speculative fiction grade. You should be able to show that what you construct is feasible within our current understanding of science, or close to it. A statite swarm fits this description - you can work out how much you can balance on photon pressure at .08-.2 AU, and determine that yes, with known materials, you could wrap the Sun in them. Bowl shaped. Shiny side goes down. Black on the back. Small aperture in the center for collecting and transmitting energy, and making sure that reflected light doesn't go straight back to the Sun. Actually -covering- the Sun would be painful this way, but it's the most initially usable. You can just let them float into place and maneuver by adjusting their extremities.

On the other hand, to make an RKV launcher of any real use, you need to find a material that saturates at a couple hundred Tesla - and that may be some orders of magnitude too small. The math still works, but finding a material like that? That you're going to be willing to use as a projectile? And even then, there's still the fact that it's slower, and has a resource investment on top of being able to gather the energy to fire it in the first place. All this is still 'hard', but it's hard to take seriously once you work out the math. But we're supposed to take 'The Killing Star' seriously as an object lesson, for no reason other than 'Because the speed of light exists, it must be easy to launch something at 90% of it, and actually hit something fifty light-years away when we do'.

Okay, granted with all that but... I think my point was that the definition is pretty much relative and open to interpretation, so we get a conflicting enough picture to make terms like 'hard' and 'soft' meaningless. What about universes that borrow equally from such purporeted categories? I like Alistair reynolds, but he has magitech (despite having no obvious FTL) crap as well as some plausible 'hard' tech stuff in fairly equal measure in his works. Certain other universes could fit into that framework as well depending on context: The Curtis Saxton view of Star Wars could be considered very 'hard' in the sense it goes for conforming to science and logic inasmuch as possible (which is one reason I suspect why some people dislike the ICS so much - making SW all techy and logical 'ruins' it for them.) And in 40K (at least the novels) you have some authors who like to introduce alot of 'hard' sci fi crap in with all the magic and 'wizardtech' crap - James Swallow and Dan ABnett are notable for this. So how does that fit into the hard/soft paradigm?

I'd say it doesn't, and its pretty much a matter of opinion, much in the same way 'what makes good sci fi' is a matter of opinion.

As for intelligence, if a group ever gets to the point where they can start dropping such creations around the Sun unopposed, that means an era of our history is over and done. One vision of the future has taken control, and will set the course for humanity ever hence. Barring colossal stupidity, a change of heart, 'magic', or some similar event... the future of the Solar System will be defined by that group. At that point they can inflict arbitrary judgment as they will, and there is nothing that can stop them.

For my own setting, the AI in control of the statite array is effectively a treaty embedded into source code - between the entirety of the human race. The sentient beings in charge still call themselves human, but it's more as adherents to a code of ethics, rather than a species. The concept of species is a bit too mutable at that point. Regardless, if we still have a working civilization at this point, there are going to be some very clever people who are very influential. I'm not saying they'll come up with magic solutions, but the gaping mistakes we see routinely in e.g. Star Trek ("The defense codes please sir."), will be lacking.

Okay again, granted, but this depends once more on perception and stuff, and things probably can't be assumed to be taken for granted. I think that's what really bugs me about the 'hard' sci fi thing. Its all the perceived attempts at categroization and pigeonholing it into neat little segregated groups, or wahtever. Not everyone does it, but enough of it happens for it to be noticable, and to be emulated and promulgated like thre is some hard SF ABSOLUTE TRUTH out there, rather than just being promoted as a point of view of how things might be done.

[easydoesit1]

And this is the crowning achievement of hilarity. After making all these grand pronouncements about your femto-uber-laser weap[on of doom - without proof - you go on to demand that I provide proof about how shields work because I'm 'speculating'. Can we say 'Double Standard?' Add ot that you again expecting other people to prove your speculation wrong for their arguments to have any validity, and it gets downright hilarious. Apparently if you use enough big, fancy buzzwords liek FEMTOSECOND and 'ATTOSECOND' you can ignore anything you like. So if you add 'carbon nanotube' to it somehow does that mean 'game winning?' too?

The 'sink' analogy for shield operation was described by Mike Wong here - it was based on (as I recall) discussions he had with the guy who wrote the ICSes that provide the information we're actually discussing. Since all you've brought to the table is speculation, that means Mike's explanation has the same weight as yours in the worst case - possibly more, given its based on the aforementioned conversations. And that's going to be all the evidence we have, since the ICSes don't exactly go into exhaustive detail about the functioning of shields in every little detail. I guess there are word limits or shit.


Oh, and I like how you conspicuously ignored the rest of my post to fixate on your magical shield-piericng uberlaser theory, despite the fact (as I pointed out and you ignored) there's no REASON for SW to actually send ships into effective range of your doomlasers. I guess its not HARD SCI FI enough to warrant reply, even though it makes your uberlaser completely irrelevant.

If the torpedo spheres work, then my uber laser as you put it will also work. I'm just doing what they do through a more effective means. The torpedoes from the spheres affect a 6 meter wide area. My laser will be affecting at most a 5 cm wide area. That is a difference by a factor of 10,000. The torpedoes detonate and release their energy over microseconds. My laser functions over a femtosecond which is a billion times smaller.

Let me design a STAR WARS microsecond shield penetrating laser. I fire a 2*10^18 J/microsecond pulse laser operating at 500 kilohertz at your star destroyer. It will function just like my femtosecond laser and your torpedo sphere but the numbers are big so you should be happy.

Nice strawman argument about carbon nanotubes which only you mentioned.

Oh, and I don't care about Star Wars fighting a non-specified HARD SCi FI civilization. My original comments that you responded to were about how using energy to create shields was a waste and the fact that shields do not give an advanced civilization an advantage. I also asked the question of why would an advanced civilization even bother building them.

Your comments about how Star Wars shields work are technobabble pseudoscience explaining other technobable. Heat sinks of the energy your are talking about fitting inside a star destroyer are scientifically impossible. The very concept of neutrino radiators is laughable. The engineering problems are beyond your grasp apparently. Heat does not propagate at superluminal speeds. Hence, in a femtosecond, heat can't even move 3*10-7m. You are not seeing the information problems with your heat sinks and radiators even having the time to kick in. You now need radiators, computers, and heat sinks operating at TACHYON speeds. But if this is so, then torpedo spheres should not work!

My other comments about a HARD SCI FI civilization that were directed at the op, repeatedly have the word ridiculousness in them. Since you are apparently unable to grasp inference, let me say this in a way even you can understand. There is NO LIMIT to how RIDICULOUS you can make a physics abiding STL civilization based on the laws of physics as we currently understand them. You can convert the entire mass of a galaxy into whatever you want. In fact why stop at a galaxy when you can take over the entire galactic supercluster for absolute RIDICULOUSNESS? The problem is AI. If you have it then absolute RIDICULOUS things become feasible. For instance, a type 3 civilization could build a fleet equivalent to 10 billion solar masses. So okay what do you do against an invasion of 1*10^30 starships? The very question is ridiculous.

In many ways Star Wars, Star Trek, and other scifi doesn't go far enough in the logical extension of the technology they portray. The Empire should be almost infinitely more powerful than it is portrayed in the movies. You don't need space magic (the force) to build a star forge. Why isn't there one in each of at least millions of systems. They have the technology required to build them but they don't do it. Heck Star Trek even has the technology to do it but doesn't. Nevertheless, as the series are displayed you could plausibly create a HARD SCI FI civilization that though limited to STL could still reach such RIDICULOUS proportions that it could win through just being too RIDICULOUS as long as Star Wars or Star Trek keeps operating within the confines of their current behavior.

As a closing point. You are arguing from an in universe perspective. I am arguing from a real world out of universe perspective in which fiction is really fiction. The real world explanation for why Star Wars or Star Trek doesn't have uber shield penetrating lasers is that the writers didn't think about it. That doesn't make Star Wars bad. It just makes it entertaining fiction. If it's any consolation, if you weaponized the NIF laser it would slaughter the Enterprise-D's shields so bad it isn't even funny. It would be about as bad as trying to use a bullet proof vest to protect you from a 16 inch battleship gun at point blank range. You want to win a debate about Stars Wars vs arbitrary HARD SCIFI civilization while I'm pointing out that shields are stupid and you can make the HARD SCIFI civilization so powerful as to be absolutely ridiculous.

[Connor MacLeod]

If the torpedo spheres work, then my uber laser as you put it will also work. I'm just doing what they do through a more effective means. The torpedoes from the spheres affect a 6 meter wide area. My laser will be affecting at most a 5 cm wide area. That is a difference by a factor of 10,000. The torpedoes detonate and release their energy over microseconds. My laser functions over a femtosecond which is a billion times smaller.

So your super uber doom laser behaves like an explosive warhead now? Did you even bother to look up how proton torpedoes work to see if there was a comparison? Did you even bother to do research on Torpedo spheres? Here's a hint - the stuff pertaining to torpedo spheres (like the WEG materials) specifies that the protorps used were specially designed for penetrating shields.

You're not really bothering to do any research to figure out whether your ideas will work or not, do you? You just assume its going to because.. well fuck if I know why. Because its HARD AND SCIENTIFIC I guess.

Let me design a STAR WARS microsecond shield penetrating laser. I fire a 2*10^18 J/microsecond pulse laser operating at 500 kilohertz at your star destroyer. It will function just like my femtosecond laser and your torpedo sphere but the numbers are big so you should be happy.

Which is a nice theory, but that's all it is. We don't know enough about shield functions to actually determine whether or not your theoretical uberweapon would behave like you claim it would.

Nice strawman argument about carbon nanotubes which only you mentioned.

Dude if you fixated on that as being somehow a crucial part to my argument or actually being a strawman, you need to go back and do (more) research. So sorry, try again.

Oh, and I don't care about Star Wars fighting a non-specified HARD SCi FI civilization. My original comments that you responded to were about how using energy to create shields was a waste and the fact that shields do not give an advanced civilization an advantage. I also asked the question of why would an advanced civilization even bother building them.

Your comments about how Star Wars shields work are technobabble pseudoscience explaining other technobable. Heat sinks of the energy your are talking about fitting inside a star destroyer are scientifically impossible. The very concept of neutrino radiators is laughable. The engineering problems are beyond your grasp apparently. Heat does not propagate at superluminal speeds. Hence, in a femtosecond, heat can't even move 3*10-7m. You are not seeing the information problems with your heat sinks and radiators even having the time to kick in. You now need radiators, computers, and heat sinks operating at TACHYON speeds. But if this is so, then torpedo spheres should not work!

It never ceases to amaze me how you substitute 'how I think things ought to work' for 'researched proof from the source material' in this debate. Did you attain CANONICAL AUTHORITY at some point from Lucasfilm, or is this just inherent to the sort of hard sci fi mentality you seem to embrace. Either way its hilariously absolutist.

My other comments about a HARD SCI FI civilization that were directed at the op, repeatedly have the word ridiculousness in them. Since you are apparently unable to grasp inference, let me say this in a way even you can understand. There is NO LIMIT to how RIDICULOUS you can make a physics abiding STL civilization based on the laws of physics as we currently understand them. You can convert the entire mass of a galaxy into whatever you want. In fact why stop at a galaxy when you can take over the entire galactic supercluster for absolute RIDICULOUSNESS? The problem is AI. If you have it then absolute RIDICULOUS things become feasible. For instance, a type 3 civilization could build a fleet equivalent to 10 billion solar masses. So okay what do you do against an invasion of 1*10^30 starships? The very question is ridiculous.

In other words, it basicalyl works along the lines of what Vendetta, Formless, etc. said. Gotcha.

In many ways Star Wars, Star Trek, and other scifi doesn't go far enough in the logical extension of the technology they portray. The Empire should be almost infinitely more powerful than it is portrayed in the movies. You don't need space magic (the force) to build a star forge. Why isn't there one in each of at least millions of systems. They have the technology required to build them but they don't do it. Heck Star Trek even has the technology to do it but doesn't. Nevertheless, as the series are displayed you could plausibly create a HARD SCI FI civilization that though limited to STL could still reach such RIDICULOUS proportions that it could win through just being too RIDICULOUS as long as Star Wars or Star Trek keeps operating within the confines of their current behavior.

Why the hell is it 'logic' invaraibly gets defined as what an individual thinks makes the most sense and NOTHIGN ELSE? The underlying point of the thread is how open ended and relative the terminology is, and yet people still insist on trying to inject PRECISION into it just because they think that's how it should work.

As a closing point. You are arguing from an in universe perspective. I am arguing from a real world out of universe perspective in which fiction is really fiction. The real world explanation for why Star Wars or Star Trek doesn't have uber shield penetrating lasers is that the writers didn't think about it. That doesn't make Star Wars bad. It just makes it entertaining fiction. If it's any consolation, if you weaponized the NIF laser it would slaughter the Enterprise-D's shields so bad it isn't even funny. It would be about as bad as trying to use a bullet proof vest to protect you from a 16 inch battleship gun at point blank range. You want to win a debate about Stars Wars vs arbitrary HARD SCIFI civilization while I'm pointing out that shields are stupid and you can make the HARD SCIFI civilization so powerful as to be absolutely ridiculous.

If that were the case.. why the fuck are you even responding? The two viewpoints are mutually exclusive and a resolution is impossible. Or is this just another backpedal?

[Guardsman Bass]

The problem is AI. If you have it then absolute RIDICULOUS things become feasible. For instance, a type 3 civilization could build a fleet equivalent to 10 billion solar masses. So okay what do you do against an invasion of 1*10^30 starships? The very question is ridiculous.

No, they don't. AI isn't magic, and all that other stuff relies on speculative capabilities in robotics, communications, and production. That's assuming, of course, that it turns out as "smart" as you think it will be.

You don't need space magic (the force) to build a star forge. Why isn't there one in each of at least millions of systems. They have the technology required to build them but they don't do it. Heck Star Trek even has the technology to do it but doesn't.

Why would they need a super-automated shipyard in every system? The existing supply lines and production systems already work quite well, to the point where starships are apparently cheap enough that smugglers like Han can own them (and people own individual space yachts in the EU). The incredible speed of hyperdrive means that they can spread production lines across the galaxy with only a few hours delay in between them.

I'd say a more detailed summary of his post is "speculative advances in materials science that allow relativistic coil guns is bad. Speculative advances and extrapolations of trends in nanotech, computer science, artificial intelligence are good, as are advances in rocketry and propulsion science that would actually make interplanetary travel economically feasible."

Not to mention the advances required in space manufacturing, since the costs of making and launching this stuff from Earth would be absolutely staggering (and the resource requirements might be huge as well, too big for Earth).

[Imperial528]

EasyDoesit, I'd still like to know what, exactly, you plan to build these lasers out of. Because all known materials would not survive the first hundred pulses of the femtosecond laser. And that's assuming your reactor survives turning on.

[easydoesit1]

I haven't read The Essential Guide to Warfare but it is listed as a source for the article. One option is to start a thread and ask someone who has read it.

Right, because when someone makes a claim that requires proof, the obvious answer is to get someone else to do the research for you. THAT'S LOGIC.

According to the bottom of page 7 through the top of page 8 of the Essential Guide to Warfare:
"The first defenses were energy shields, originally designed to dissipate solar energy absorbed by hulls in deep space. Energy shields were soon refined into deflector shields, which could also defend against energy weapons. Deflector shields create layered force fields enveloping an object in a single field or series of intersecting fields, depending on the size of the object to be protected and the energy available to power the shield. Energy is diffused away from the point of contact and either absorbed by the shield or radiated away as waste heat."

Further down on page 8:
"Directing energy against single points can overload the defensive field, allowing projectiles or energy blasts to pass through before the shield can regenerate, or burning out the generator powering that section of the shield."

And here I am talking about overloading a section of the shield by directing energy against a single point of the defensive field. LOL.. checkmate

[Connor MacLeod]

According to the bottom of page 7 through the top of page 8 of the Essential Guide to Warfare:
"The first defenses were energy shields, originally designed to dissipate solar energy absorbed by hulls in deep space. Energy shields were soon refined into deflector shields, which could also defend against energy weapons. Deflector shields create layered force fields enveloping an object in a single field or series of intersecting fields, depending on the size of the object to be protected and the energy available to power the shield. Energy is diffused away from the point of contact and either absorbed by the shield or radiated away as waste heat."

Further down on page 8:
"Directing energy against single points can overload the defensive field, allowing projectiles or energy blasts to pass through before the shield can regenerate, or burning out the generator powering that section of the shield."

And here I am talking about overloading a section of the shield by directing energy against a single point of the defensive field. LOL.. checkmate

Congratulations. you've proven that shields can.. be knocked down in combat if you abuse them enough. I'm pretty sure this is a new and startling revelation and all, but it really doesn't support your pet theory given that, you know, it lacks anything resembling actual numbers and shit. So sorry try again.