Is Battlestar Galactica the most realistic sci-fi future of them all?

[clearspira]

Here's a fun one that I was thinking of.

FTL drive is going to be fantasy for a long, long time. And yet colonising our own Solar System is well within our ability using solar sails, ion drives or good old generational ships. But if it takes years to reach another planet from Earth, and say, American Jupiter goes to war with Chinese Saturn, The war will be over by the time that we get there.

It seems to me that in the future, the planets of our Solar System will probably be independent entities not beholden to our governments whether the Earth likes it or not due to the distances involved. Which means the Twelve Colonies. And there will almost certainly be Battlestars as they are basically just aircraft carriers in space. Earth will basically be Kobol. But that is not to say that Mars will not grow powerful with access to the mineral rights of the asteroid belt.

It also leads to some interesting cultural possibilities. The first settlers will just bring Earth culture with them. But the next generation after that won't be Terrans, they'll be Martians. What about the generation after that, and after that? Will the Stars and Stripes for example mean anything to the people of Mars when they are five generations removed the US itself? Got to wonder.

[Madner Kami]

"Is Battlestar Galactica the most realistic sci-fi future of them all?

No. There's a god within that "universe" and he's real and he's manipulating events into a terribly sorry state that keeps repeating itself, so it may seem realistic at first glance, but it really isn't, because god does not exist and the universe is just the way it is, with us shaping events into their sometimes sorry state, thanks to humans not being infallible and winging it most of the time, because we've got only our limited perspective and noone can or has told us how to do better.

Also, aircraft carriers in space are a terrible concept, if one or both sides have directed energy weaponry, which we already do. The future of space-warfare is saturation attacks with, mostly, small kinetic projectiles from long range, at least until we invent an armoring material strong enough to withstand such attacks, at which point the attack pattern will switch to saturation attacks with larger, self-propelled kinetic projectiles or, if we can manage to get the focusing and energy production done, directed energy weaponry from long range, with kinetic projectiles for ambush scenarios.

If you want to think about humanity colonizing the Sol-system, "The Expanse" is what you should be looking for, both in terms of tech, warfare and sociology

[TGLS]

I don't like raining on people's parades, but:

FTL drive is going to be fantasy for a long, long time. And yet colonising our own Solar System is well within our ability using solar sails, ion drives or good old generational ships. But if it takes years to reach another planet from Earth, and say, American Jupiter goes to war with Chinese Saturn, The war will be over by the time that we get there.

OK, I'm going to have to deconstruct this in a weird order.

Let's say we want to go to Europa or Titan. A Europa trip would have a Delta V requirement of ~22.5 km/s + Landing Fuel. You could save maybe 5 km/s if you aerobraked through Jupiter's atmosphere. The trip would take ~2 years. Titan on the other hand would have a Delta V requirement of ~20 km/s + Landing Fuel (which may not be needed if you aerobrake through Titan's atmosphere). You could save maybe 7.5 km/s if you aerobraked through Saturn's atmosphere. This trip would take 3 years.

Why are the times so short? The short answer is because the Earth is very far away from Jupiter/Saturn. You only have to wait one year (worst case) for conditions to travel to either of the Outer Solar System locations to be ideal. If you wanted to travel directly between Jupiter and Saturn? Worst case times are 14 years.

Now I did completely ignore the effects of thrust here for a very simple reason; it's not very important. Even a wimpy ion engine tacks on at most a year to the trip to Saturn.

A brief aside about Solar Sails; they're effectively useless past Mars. Unless your cargo is ridiculously small relative to the sail (keep in mind a regular sized cargo to haul around at Martian distances is about 40 Tonnes for a 4 km to the side sail), or you come up with a way to augment your sail with laser power, the best you can probably do is tug a rocket into position and have it fly the rest of the way. This would probably work best on an aerobrake through Saturn trip, as the rest of the trip has minimal Delta-V requirements.

It seems to me that in the future, the planets of our Solar System will probably be independent entities not beholden to our governments whether the Earth likes it or not due to the distances involved.

For this one I'll just accept the proposition the distances aren't that large (two years is still a really long time, and even longer for a return trip). The problem is that when you increase the time/costs to travel from A to B beyond a certain point (to create nearly automatic independent colonies), the economic case to build said colonies in the first place does not exist.

But that is not to say that Mars will not grow powerful with access to the mineral rights of the asteroid belt.

Mars? Eh... no. The delta-V to get to Mars is comparable to the delta-V to get to the asteroid belt. Building up an economic base on Mars to compete with Earth's is a challenge in of itself. With comparable delta-V costs getting to the Asteroid belt, comparative advantage effectively vanishes.

On the other hand, if sufficient water is found on Deimos, then "Gas Station Deimos" may very well become a hub of economic activity. This is because of the rocket equation, replenishing propellant part way through a trip is drastically more efficient than fueling completely a the origin. Besides that, it would be practical to use solar powered rockets or sails would be viable all the way up to Deimos and having other rockets deliver cargo from the asteroid belt.

Another aside: it's probably not worth shipping bulk minerals or possibly even refined bars back to Earth. The rocket equation means that even for nearby asteroids (i.e. 7.5 km/s delta V) and efficient rockets (20 km/s ISP), every additional ton of cargo means another half ton of fuel. It's better to ship finished products (which naturally weigh less) than it is to ship raw materials for this reason.

Will the Stars and Stripes for example mean anything to the people of Mars when they are five generations removed the US itself? Got to wonder.

I suppose it will depend more on whether the first colony is called Independence, Marsouri or Musklandia.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think you mean THE EXPANSE not Battlestar Galactica.

[CharlesPhipps]

No. There's a god within that "universe" and he's real and he's manipulating events into a terribly sorry state that keeps repeating itself, so it my seem realistic at first glance, but it really isn't, because god does not exist and the universe is just the way it is, with us shaping events into their sometimes sorry state, thanks to humans not being infallible and winging, because we've got only our limited perspective and noone can or has told us how to do better.

Clearly you are unaware this is all a simulation and God is actually a 19 year old programmer from Real Detroit, Real Michigan.

[Madner Kami]

No. There's a god within that "universe" and he's real and he's manipulating events into a terribly sorry state that keeps repeating itself, so it my seem realistic at first glance, but it really isn't, because god does not exist and the universe is just the way it is, with us shaping events into their sometimes sorry state, thanks to humans not being infallible and winging, because we've got only our limited perspective and noone can or has told us how to do better.

Clearly you are unaware this is all a simulation and God is actually a 19 year old programmer from Real Detroit, Real Michigan.

I don't subscribe to Nihilism, much less if it's Nihilism with extra steps

[Mabus]

No.
Also, I think you're mixing up NuBSG with The Expanse.

The Expanse has some good writing and worldbuilding, but it always bugged me how despite being mentioned that the reason most of the Earth's population lives on some Basic welfare, mainly due to automation, which replaced most jobs... and yet Mars doesn't have that problem, even though it should be much more automated than Earth, same thing goes for the Belt, which should be even more automated and industrialized, since it's much cheaper to send a small fleet of robotic ships to extract metals from an asteroid than a bunch of humans that need oxygen water, food and sanity. Sure, humans are more interesting than a machine, as one of the authors put it, but I feel that as the world becomes more and more automated and robots become more and more ubiquitous, this aspect of the show will not age well at all. And as for the whole future weapons, sure a slug might be better than laser in some regards and you might be able to block or have some limited shielding against lasers (also mentioned by authors a few times in the past), but that's not how military weapons evolved over time. No one said "hey, you know, the shaped charge projectile is a cool weapon that can penetrate like 300 mm of hard steel, but if all you need to do to protect yourself from it is to put a cheap fence a few cm away from the armor or cheap sand bags or some reactive armor, then it's a shitty weapon so we should stop using it", in fact the exact opposite happened, HEAT rounds became more and more sophisticated in order to stay relevant in the weapon-armor arms race: put a mesh or a reactive armor on the main armor? add an additional charge in front of the main one, so that when it detonates, it clears the first layer of protection so that then the main charge can penetrate the tank undisturbed; oh the enemy has switched to composite armor, which reduces the shaped charge penetration to half? Why, let's use a tandem charge, to compensate for the loss; or better yet, let's add a third charge so some projectile, just because the enemy acted like a dick; oh, they're using tungsten or depleted uranium in their armor? let's switch the copper from the shaped charge to tantalum or why not depleted uranium as well, that should teach them a lesson; oh, they now have active defense systems? let's have a smaller missile being fired seconds before the main one to counter the interceptor so that the main charge can reach the armor safely; oh, what's that, the enemy has developed countermeasures against that too? let's so the same; oh, what is this tech, explosively formed penetrator, it's like a shaped charge that can be fired from a very long distance, it's cheap and can penetrate armor if fired properly? lets use that too. So I find the limited weaponry existing in the series laughable, since if there's one thing army engineers like to do if invent all sort of new weapons. And it's not like just because you can sort of block lasers, they are useless, I mean they did turn the comm laser of the Behemoth into a weapon in the series (and then they just forgot about it), so the technology exists. And if classical lasers are easy to counteract, you can always switch to X-ray or gamma ray lasers, which are much harder to counteract (though a bit more complex).

NuBSG is worse in this regard, since if I didn't know the name of the show, I could mistake it for some House of Cards drama-like series, as nobody there looks like they've been to space in any regard. You just don't feel like their civilization even went to space at all. Their ships have artificial gravity and FTL drives, but that's all. Their weapons are just high explosive cannon shells, they don't even have railguns, and their high caliber guns all use solid propellant cartridges, just like modern armies do. But hey, they sometimes have missiles and nukes. The is no middle technology, no gravity gun to slow down enemy fighters of projectiles, to make them easier targets for the point defense cannons, no gravity slingshots to fire projectiles at the enemy, no FTL bombs, hell not even the Cylons don't have such weapons even though thanks to their AI they could outperform the Adama maneuver (and it's not like the army shies from using weapons that can hit the enemy before they know it, since that's how modern army strategy works, you know, modern army, like the one the series desperately tries to emulate...), in fact in some regards both the Galactica and Pegasus and the other battlestars are even less equipped than modern warships, they look like stadium halls rather than functional vessels.

IMO, for any series to be "realistic", its worldbuilding must be maximized as much as possible, with every plot element, be it technology or social issue, be properly characterized so that it doesn't create plot holes or have unintended consequences. Simply making it aesthetically look like it's from 2015 doesn't work, as I'm pretty sure that's what people from the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s though of their own series as well.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Not sure what is really realistic beyond Interstellar.

[McAvoy]

No. There's a god within that "universe" and he's real and he's manipulating events into a terribly sorry state that keeps repeating itself, so it my seem realistic at first glance, but it really isn't, because god does not exist and the universe is just the way it is, with us shaping events into their sometimes sorry state, thanks to humans not being infallible and winging, because we've got only our limited perspective and noone can or has told us how to do better.

Clearly you are unaware this is all a simulation and God is actually a 19 year old programmer from Real Detroit, Real Michigan.

Actually this is all a simulation that was created only 8 hours ago with everyone already programmed with everything they are or were supposed to know about the pre made world around us. Only one of us is the real deal. His name is Bob.

[McAvoy]

Oh and the Expanse is the most realistic. No FTL but some new faster drive that allows solar system travel to be reasonable.

The other part of the Expanse take as you will. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Also the Expanse is also the best Science Fiction show on TV right now, hands down. Jeff Bezos is a fan of the show and I heard he was the one who wanted the show on Amazon. A little bit of Babylon Give feel there...

If I was a rich as hell billionaire like him, you better believe I will personally pay for my favorite show to keep going. Thats just me.