Imagine there was another Earthlike planet in our system

Derren · Apr 4, 2013

Janx said:
Militarily, it's be easy to justify building a planetary defense network, than an assault on their planet. It's also lower risk. Mars likely doesn't care that we have a ring of orbital defense platforms around Earth. They can't get to us. But the military can pitch that we need it "just in case they can" without it appearing to be a hostile move against Mars.

Of course this can be seen as aggressive move. Just look at the problems the Russians had with the missile defense screen in Europe.
Setting up a defensive screen could mean that you managed to develop a defense against their attacks, thus breaking the MAD situation. Then you are free to attack them.

Dannyalcatraz · Apr 4, 2013

Re: Interplanetary War

Bombs are the worst way to do it. At present & reasonably forseeable tech levels, not only would it be incredibly difficult to project force via that method- as has been pointed out- it would be costly in terms of its effects on whatever resources we (or they) hoped to gain.

No, the way to do it is bio-weapons. Once one species or the other learns enough of the biology & ecosystems of their intended victims, you borrow a page from HG Wells & the history of the American West and engineer a "bird flu" to kill them off in the millions if not billions.

1) In all likelihood, such a bioweapon would be unable to affect the side that chose to use it.

2) Such a weapon sysem would be relatively low mass compared to conventional arms, generally speaking, depending on the delivery system (Aerosolized? Powders? Pellets? Infected consumer goods?), virulence and vectors.

Wash, rinse, repeat until the enemy cannot mount a meaningful resistance, then mop up with more conventional arms.

Joker · Apr 4, 2013

Umbran said:
No, the issue is first, "What can they actually do?" Then you ask if you can trust them not to do it.

On Earth, we had a Cold War over territory - who was gong to control the world, the USA or the Soviets? That is not a question here. Neither species is going to have the ability to take over the others' planet. Not gonna happen. They cannot control us, cannot take our planetary resources.

You're making the assumption that we know that they're not concerned with territory.

You're also very level-headed and logical about this situation. Can you say for certain others will be the same?

Can you say for certain our leaders, most of whom are businessmen and graduates of law and not scientists, will be level-headed and rational about this? Even if they were, we were *this* close to total annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis with rational people in Kennedy and Khrushchev at the head of the situation. Consider our state of mind when the stakes are considerably higher and against a threat actually alien.

All it takes is a few people to kindle our fear of the unknown. People who are afraid themselves and instill that fear in others, not out of malice but because of a genuine desire to survive as a species, no matter how irrational it may seem. I can easily imagine the media taking things out of context or out of proportion and causing wide-spread panic which in turn will create a desire to end our fear of the Others. And there really is only one way to do that.

jonesy · Apr 4, 2013

I remember one short story that was about a first contact situation between two different space travelling species of roughly the same technological level. Two ships met somewhere in space. After they figured out how to communicate (I think that was glossed over to get the plot moving faster) they both recognized that they could destroy each other easily, but also that they both were interested in each others technology and that they wanted to establish some sort of trade agreement.

They pondered over how to do this, as neither wanted to reveal the location of their home star. Revealing colony locations was deemed unacceptable as well, as those could be searched for astronomical data. Then they realized that they couldn't simply leave the location in peace, since either could track the other to where they would head out to (here I think there was some plot reason for why the encounter was a surprise to both, and they didn't know where the other had come from).

In the end the solution to the problem was to trade the ships. Since each knew their own ship inside and out they could disable everything that the other could use to track or attack the other. They then taught each other how to fly their ships and made a deal to meet at the location later for future exchanges. I forget what the solution was for how to do the future meetings without revealing where they each came from. It was a rather contrived story, but an interesting thought experiment.

Morrus · Apr 4, 2013

Joker said:
You're making the assumption that we know that they're not concerned with territory.

You're also very level-headed and logical about this situation. Can you say for certain others will be the same?

Can you say for certain our leaders, most of whom are businessmen and graduates of law and not scientists, will be level-headed and rational about this? Even if they were, we were *this* close to total annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis with rational people in Kennedy and Khrushchev at the head of the situation. Consider our state of mind when the stakes are considerably higher and against a threat actually alien.

All it takes is a few people to kindle our fear of the unknown. People who are afraid themselves and instill that fear in others, not out of malice but because of a genuine desire to survive as a species, no matter how irrational it may seem. I can easily imagine the media taking things out of context or out of proportion and causing wide-spread panic which in turn will create a desire to end our fear of the Others. And there really is only one way to do that.

Attacking another planet requires a hell of a lot more than one or two insane people. It's not even vaguely reminiscent of our Cold War capabilities. We - literally - can't do anything. Developing the ability to do so would take decades and tens of billions; no single impulse decision can do that. It needs to be a concerted unwavering economy-destroying effort by major countries over a dozen successive governments/administrations.

You think Iraq is expensive? That's bankrupted the world. How on earth are we going to do the same on another planet at a thousand times the cost?

Derren · Apr 4, 2013

Morrus said:
Attacking another planet requires a hell of a lot more than one or two insane people. It's not even vaguely reminiscent of our Cold War capabilities. We - literally - can't do anything. Developing the ability to do so would take decades and tens of billions; no single impulse decision can do that.

We can already send probes up to mars. Load them up with nuclear or biological bombs and you have your weapon. Of course you do not send one but thousands.
The capability to wage war is certainly there.

Morrus · Apr 4, 2013

Janx said:
I would suspect that 2 planets of "same" tech level don't necessarily have the exact same technologies. Meaning, we both probably have radio and rockets, because on discovery of the other, we're inherently motivated to make contact and exchange something, be it bullets or information.

What we exchange is really the key. Culture has a near zero weight over radio. Hollywood exports its TV to an entire planet already. Shipping BayWatch to Mars could happen.

We also could exchange science. Odds are good they'll be farther along in one science and us in another. Trading notes would likely happen.

Militarily, it's be easy to justify building a planetary defense network, than an assault on their planet. It's also lower risk. Mars likely doesn't care that we have a ring of orbital defense platforms around Earth. They can't get to us. But the military can pitch that we need it "just in case they can" without it appearing to be a hostile move against Mars.

We may exchange some one-way payloads with each other. Objects, stuff like that. Ship it to orbit for pick-up by the other party, or some other agreed upon delivery location. Biological samples may be forbidden as that might give away a biological weakness. it's easy to trust a guy on the internet who can't drop a biological attack on your front door.

Eventually, we may setup a Midway station between Mars and Earth for the first direct contact meeting. Something where it's only half the distance for both parties.

Once we find out what the other planet has of value and vice versa, trade will happen. Science will be pushed to develop the technologies to do it, because business will see a way to make money off it.

Our biggest worry would be if we had plenty of something Mars wanted, but they had nothing we wanted. Like our Water. They would be more motivated to take our water, lacking anything of worth to trade us for it.

Water? Why fight us for it when it's so plentiful in space? Just go to Europa and take as much as you want.

jonesy · Apr 4, 2013

Derren said:
We can already send probes up to mars. Load them up with nuclear or biological bombs and you have your weapon. Of course you do not send one but thousands.
The capability to wage war is certainly there.

Thousands isn't enough. A billion wouldn't be enough. At no point do you reach assured levels of destruction with current level of technology. We wouldn't even know our biological weapons would work on them.

Morrus · Apr 4, 2013

Derren said:
We can already send probes up to mars. Load them up with nuclear or biological bombs and you have your weapon. Of course you do not send one but thousands.
The capability to wage war is certainly there.

Send thousands?!?!? C'mon! It's a major deal to send one.

We can't. We can send one every few years at immense cost, and they'd probably see it coming months out.

The capability to wage war is most definitely not certainly there.

Derren · Apr 4, 2013

Morrus said:
Send thousands?!?!? C'mon! It's a major deal to send one.

We can't. We can send one every few years at immense cost, and they'd probably see it coming months out.

The capability to wage war is most definitely not certainly there.

We can. We just don't do it because there is no use in sending thousand probes at once to mars.

jonesy said:
Thousands isn't enough. A billion wouldn't be enough. At no point do you reach assured levels of destruction with current level of technology. We wouldn't even know our biological weapons would work on them.

You do not need to destroy the entire race with one attack. Only to destroy their weapon stockpiles/launch facilities so that they can't retaliate or blunt their retaliation so it is not fatal. Then you have all the time in the world to finish them off.