Interstellar war would be terrifying. Imagine seeing your invader coming decades ahead of time, knowing they’ll crush you, or just plough a ship though your planet at 99% light speed. Imagine diplomatic messages taking years, having to guess the other side’s intentions generations ahead of time. If war today is filled with uncertainty, future wars would be filled with dread.
Well said. I wish certain kinds of people would SEE this. Sure fuck up the world for the rest of us dickhead. Probably the lowest, selfish gesture or lowest vibration anyone can function.. "ruin something not only for yourself but ultimately for everyone else who shouldn't have to deal with the wickeds consequences. "❤❤❤
An oort-cloud with many abandoned colonies that are possibly inhabited by hostile agents sounds like an awesome setting for a sci-fi pen and paper RPG.
I'm imagining that a lot of scary cults etc could end up out there too. I'd argue that that's even worse, or even more interesting in an RPG. Imagine a religious colony turning ever more hostile and cultlike until they go full crazy mode, attacking all their neighbours for no good reason.
@@CuriefeldI've got an idea on the backburner for a crusader fleet that emerges to bust human rights violations among scattered habs. imagine the horrors of human trafficking in space, or the possibility of people mills etc. etc.
Imagine a The Foundation-style situation in which for millennia colonies separated by the limitations of the speed of light, and then some resurgent Empire managed to discover FTL and went on a conquering spree. After diplomatic messages taking generations, in a few months you're suddenly co-vassals with a bunch of planets who may as well be space aliens by now.
I don't see authoritarian "we want to control you for 'interstellar empire' reasons" too many star systems, too much space/time lag (even if your FTL was 10x c). I imagine such 'empires' would only be held together via some intellectual/cultural (IE music/language/food recipes) trade, not the authoritarian ones...Again FAR TOO EASY for rebel colonies to tell the empire to "f off" and build their own empire with enough destructive force to wipe out all life on all the planets in multiple star systems. HOW do you (as a Kardeshev II empire) manage to counter such force, without using the megastructure weapons SFIA covers...one that would require entire star systems or more of resources...Even the most 'remote' logic doesn't support this mindset.
@@djdrack4681 I mean, obviously FTL10x is nothing to get THAT excited over, you'd need something like a portal network or FTL 1,000,000x like we see in Star Wars. But as you might have guessed by that factor I used -- imagine what a calamity that would be to galactic politics, as it were. As to why an empire would do something like that instead of chilling in their home system, political reasons, almost certainly. And to be fair, that is a pretty good pitch, especially if you're experiencing a Trantor-like situation. 'I will unite all of our fractured kin under our banner, for the glory of New Gaia'.
@@maltheopia Political motives 'erhaps... But I'd strongly advise looking at near-future 'likely' tech advancements that will be paradigm shifts. - Biologic immortality via digital mind storage/backup/transfer The empire wouldn't likely have 'just their home system'...unless it was the very beginning of the empire: more likely they'd have 100s of system. Look at star #s near our system: within 50ly only like 200-300 stars: but go out to 300/500/2000ly...and the number of stars is exponential. When people "Don't die" cuz you can transfer into a clone, or artificial body...which any K1/K2 civilization is likely to be capable of for sustained interstellar efforts...Time doesn't matter. 10x FTL is more than plenty. Outlying colony 1000ly out from core system? only 100yrs to send a fleet there. You'd only need 1 clone/mind transfer in that time (If they don't discover some digital stasis). Politics could certainly be maintained with the squabbles and BS we deal with now...or just plain hegemonic efforts: ...but when the people in charge AND the people they're oppressing don't die...and they're bank accounts all keep getting bigger: well its not the 'rich vs poor' 'powerful vs not powerful'. its like a god vs demi-god scenario: not guaranteed win for either. It also implies what 'drives us' is still the same: and that is wildly unlikely bcuz of the aforementioned biologic immortality: we plan/worry/make decisions based on worries of our limited time, our limited 'youth', our careers (bcuz we only have X yrs to learn a subject well). None of these variables really matter in general anymore when even the 'peasants' live for 1000s to millions of years.
@@djdrack4681 "We are putting up a relay in your system, you may join our empire, remain neutral, or be destroyed." would work. You just have to be willing to eliminate the colonies entirely if they become hostile. The planetary scale equivalent would be if the English Empire of the age of sail used the cold war MAD doctrine (nukes included) to maintain control of their empire.
One of the biggest struggles I had in my book/rpg was figuring out "and then what" with my interstellar colonies. There was plenty of conflict on the journey to the star system. And the first few decades would be a tale of survival as the settlement established itself in the remote system, while basically having to salvage the ship that brought them there for parts to stay alive. But once the settlement was established, I was hard pressed to find a reason why the settlement would bother trying to establish regular communications with the home world. The only thing I could come up with was art, literature, and whiskey. Basically items with an infinite shelf life, whose value is subjective and based on scarcity, and whose consumption bestows cultural status.
New software, new designs for the 3d printers--including new medicines for the molecular printer, new chemistry. Lots of things that are data only and can be transmitted by laser.
@@thekaxmaxSorry, when I said "communications" it wasn't in the radio/television sense. It was in the logistics sense: physically trucking items around. Let's assume we have a settlement that is 48 light years away, around a solar twin called 58 Scorpii. It's a star that is nearly the same mass as Sol, with the same metallicity, but it is 1 billion years younger. While the expedition did discover an Earth-like world, it made far more sense to remain in orbit and harvest the asteroids and minor planetesimals in the system. Earth has many things to trade that are relatively lightweight and compact: new books, antiques, vintage wine and liquor. But what would the remote settlements have to trade? In a system that is 1 billion years younger, radioactive isotopes are probably more abundant. Let us assume they hit the jackpot and discovered deposits of some sort of unobtanium that has completely decayed away in the Sol system. Communicating that discovery would take a literal lifetime. 48 years for a message home, and 48 years for a reply. Anyone who was alive at the time of the discovery would be long dead before negotiations could even begin. Assuming a trade mission is dispatched, anyone on board is in for a one-way trip. Ships can economically get up to around 50% of light speed. The trip for those on board is ~20 years. Someone could, with a healthy lifestyle, even do a round trip in about 40 years (assuming a return vessel is built and ready to go.) But on their return, 96 years have gone buy. Anyone they knew is dead. Any business relationships they had are basically the stuff of legend, probably requiring an archelogical expedition to recover the records. Travelling between systems would be considered a sort of cultural pilgrimage. The sort of pilgrimage that is done once in a lifetime, with the expectation that pilgrims would never return home. Robot craft could be sent instead, but you still have the problem of shipments arriving a century after they were ordered. If they were ordered. You'd have a lot of convoys just showing up, with nobody remembering quite what the reason was.
@seanwoods647 Have you considered life extension? If they have technology for such distant travels, maybe they could also have a way to extend a person's life.
40K is one if the few SciFi setting that get the hugeness of space right... and even then it still often makes numbers way to small. And then there's all the magic stuff... but that's the fun for story telling.
@arcadiaberger9204 Old Star Wars EU was pretty fleshed out. Sure, there were a few consistency issues, but compared to 40K's own issues with consistency it was borderline flawless. Also, on that topic, I highly recommend AFanWithTooMuchTime's Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K fanfic audiobook series here on TH-cam, easily some of the best writing for either franchise in decades.
@@RipOffProductionsLLC Sounds like fun, but both 40K and *_Star Wars_* suffer from FTL, of course. I'd like to see, actually, a refried version of the first 20 years of *_Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,_* which took place entirely inside our Solar System, with wars between Earth and our Jovian allies against the aggressors, the Tigermen of Mars. I'm thinking the Tigermen and the Jovians could be genetically engineered variant forms created in the late 21st/early 22nd Century. Buck himself might be the subject of a 2030s hibernation experiment, a 1970s cryogenic revival, or even the original World War One fighter pilot, preserved by some peculiar combination of gases in a cave.
9:30 Conflicts occurring cause there is no clear picture of motivations and capability. Such a simple yet poignant observation. Often the cause for war is uncertainty itself, which one would think would also promote caution and avoidance of war. Another fantastic round of informative world building and storytelling Isaac.
18:32 suposedly the scilly islands stayed royalist at the end of the english civil war. Since they raided dutch ships, the Netherlands then declared war on them. It's just that the islands then became brithish again, and the war was forgotten, until sometime in the 1980s a local Historian discovered that they where technically still at war (seting a world record for longest war)
Unless you want to count that Rome and Carthage never signed a peace treaty at tge end of the Third Punic War, until the mayors of the two modern cities decided to make one as mostly a joke...
I can think of a group that is still technically in a forever silent war where they do nothing but undermine countries to advance themselves, while using diplomacy to keep others from attacking them. Speech 100 checks in perpetuity.
The thing that scares me most is how we've recently had such vivid examples of exactly the root cause of this 'rebel colony conundrum' - systems engineered for perfection. Before COVID, so many companies were streamlining everything as much as possible to rely on everything arriving on time and nothing going significantly wrong. There were minimal if any backups for a LOT of stuff, because backups area a waste of time, space, and money if they aren't needed. Then COVID hit and a LOT of those companies crashed and burned, or at least got hit HARD, when supply lines started to collapse. The scenario you put up for Beta Pictoris is similar. The secondary fleet was launched long before completion of the receiving system was even established to be likely, much less assured and confirmed. I understand WHY, it takes so long to get there that you may as well spend most of the time en-route while construction is underway, but that then relies on everything going perfectly. And the moment you open the system to 'hey, plans changed, now it's two receiving arrays at higher power, here are the designs', that only makes 'things went wrong' all the MORE likely.
Supply lines are artificially constricted and governments spent untold trillions putting money into corporations, while destroying smaller companies that didn't grease the palms of said governments. How did it go from cheap and excessive to crippling shortages and massive costs inside a year?
@@dansmith1661 Can explain that one: China's government had delayed reporting of the virus, opting to hide it for as long as possible, and during that time they had been covertly buying up and hoarding supplies. Either for their own needs, or to re-sell at marked up prices without any regard for others.
Yeah this is why it irritates me when people claim economics says we should have unlimited free trade with no protectionism. Economics is a science, and science is descriptive, not prescriptive. Physics does not tell you how to build an engine. An engine can certainly have redundant parts and inefficiencies if you want it to be reliable. Not every car should be an F1 racer. The sad thing is we have had this problem before. People believed that by having strong alliances between countries, war would be impossible. We got World War 1 as a result. People say the same thing about "economic interdependence," yet we end up with countries hoarding medical supplies while others go without since they no longer produce basic medicine. A stable building can be built on pillars which stand on their own. But no building should fall due to a single member being removed. I blame the midwit trap. People get a little bit of information like, "this is more efficient" and they think they have every problem in the world solved.
@@dansmith1661They always intended to reduce the carbon that is you. They just moved the time table up a little bit due to someone rocking the boat. By locking people in their homes they can blame their opponents for wrecking the economy, and by letting people go back to work they can claim they created the most jobs in history.
I think of rebel space colonies as always on the edge of law and order, a literal expanding sphere rebels stay just a little bit ahead of. But instead of calling them rebels, I call them companies.
Just wanted to drop a comment to say that since I discovered this channel a few months ago, it has become one of my absolute favorites. As a science teacher, sci-fi fan and writing hobbyist (dilettante might be more accurate), every single one of your episodes has given me much to think on and savor. Thanks for your hard work, it really is appreciated out here.
I've been watching since the early days and I'm still continually impressed and pleased by the breadth and depths of what is covered and always giving me something new and neat to ponder.
You're the best Issac, thank you for the veritable library of incredible content! You forever changed the scale of what I thought civilizations were capable of, and now I really want to live a few hundred years in the future 😢
Worth mentioning these space colonies would be almost always colonising unclaimed uninhabited systems. For the most part the European powers were establishing plantations in places already full of people. One of the most relevant here i think are the "musket wars" in New Zealand. It has similar elements of time lag and diffusion of technology. They bought and learned about guns from some earlier European ships. The Maori tribes(nations?) That got them took over the islands. So they were already armed to teeth and fortified by the time the time British empire arrived. They repulsed them multiple times and only lost eventually because the empire could afford to keep losing battles and sending more ships.
But we are facing more simply situations to those terraformed extroplanets, because many of them are belong ing to galactic council members. In other words, those indigenous people like Maori on the earth are advanced civilizations on the other extroplanets, we are not advanced enough to colony of the settlements as galactic civilization level, but ongoing space development process.
Anyone who wants a really good story based on this topic should check out 1979's 'Mobile Suit Gundam', which is literally about this, but takes place within the Solar System. It's also full of 2001 references, which is pretty cool.
Sieg Zeon! Much as I like how the series goes from simple good White guys against literal nachos that are denied a voice in government, to an oppressive government that silences its colonies with violence and those nachos keep coming back.
I loved this structure! Theoretical yet practical - sometimes I find your work to vague 'oh this might happen but maybe not' but this really makes it feel real to me.
This unfortunately could be largely avoided with an AI administrator charter colony. Once the license to exist is revoked, all life support privileges are suspended. Remember to read the end user license agreement like your life depends on it. Spacenet- a subsidiary of Microsoft. Loyalty is it's own reward.
Have you ever had an episode about spaceship shields? I’d love to hear your thoughts on them including technology, feasibility and comparison to science fiction.
An invasion fleet would likely be best to take the long-term approach. Use its fuel to slow down into separate but known (to the fleet) locations in the Oort Cloud and/or Kuiper Belt. Mine the ice to refuel the fleet, but otherwise go dark to prevent detection. Send out stealth probes using laser-com gear and special stealth laser Relay Satellites (again location already per-determined by fleet) to get a full picture of the state of the system and to keep the fleet's separate forces in touch with each other (laser com will virtually eliminate any EM detection of their communications). In this way over a few years the fleet can be fully refueled with a much better knowledge of the system's situation and the lowest possibility of detection.
What a great way to have an episode with a fantastic story of future colonies filled with elements of (what are now) Sci-Fi elements. I'll go out on a (very long) limb here and say that this is easily one of your best episodes ever! This is really fantastic! What a great episode! Thanks so much for this Isaac!
Great video 👍👍 You put your finger on the biggest in this problem. The governance of true interstellar colonies ( heck,even the Ort Cloud and Asteroids) can only be maintained via a strong state bureaucracy AND FTL … Weeks or at best a few months between seeing there’s a problem and sending either help or a fleet to “enforce doctrine and compliance “ is a must . Otherwise you have a self licking lollipop . We’d prefer the ST Federation..but the cruelty of the 40k Imperium is closer to what’s truly required! Take care and once again thank you.
Could work if you have continuous travel between colonies, in additional to trade, with laser comms for updates. Expensive, but so were Roman roads and they had that purpose.
Without ftl, the relationship between the colonies and earth would be similar to that of Britain and north America in the 1600s. Sure, there could be rebel colonies, but there could also be the equivalents of Canada, which never really rebelled on its own. It's likely the two would be able to coexist.
Ironically, I could see an interstellar empire working in a quasi-feudal framework (or, amusingly, an MLM pyramid), where each colony established by a gardener fleet has obligations not to the original homeworld, but to the colony the fleet established previously, and orders from the homeworld just go down the chain. So, Beta Pictoris pays its taxes to Easel, which pays its taxes to Tau Ceti or something, which pays its taxes to Earth. Likewise, keeping Beta Pictoris in line is Easel's job, since they're the closest and the quickest to respond. Easel will request reinforcements from Tau Ceti, which will request reinforcements from Earth. If the conflict goes on for long enough, Earth might even put out a call to all of its nearby colonies for reinforcements, which would pass that along to their daughter colonies, and so on. A mobilization on that scale might result in armies being raised on distant colonies to go fight a war that's been over for centuries, which could conceivably be repurposed into colony fleets should they get the demobilization order while underway. Also, this sort of setup gives colonies the perfect justification to start up their own colony fleets as soon as they're able, since then they'd have feudal daughter colonies to call upon should they need something.
The bit at the end about space operas In the solar system reminds me alot of the original Gundam series, where most of the action takes place between earth and the moon, yet is a massive space opera about how cataclysmic a space war would actually be for earth and it's colonies.
I'm not sure there is a good enough reason for governments to colonise other planets. Rather it would more likely be people trying to flee over zealous governments. A lot of terrestrial colonies were set up by private individuals and only loosely associated with a distant government.
In my upcoming books/rpg interstellar development actually comes about because two major powers quickly discovered the futility of space combat, and decided instead to try to hem each other in by planting their flags in increasingly distant star systems. Basically inspired by the real-life race to the moon.
Governments can't even control their own populations without using force and private individuals are the driving force of a state's power. It is much easier to expand when those tax dollars are spent getting people into new living space instead of spreading Democracy with warships and red tape.
Another episode full of ideas that turned out to be more useful then I expected for the last novel in the space opera trilogy I'm trying to finish as well as a couple novel/anthology ideas I'll be working on in the future. I'm definitely looking forward to Agriworlds now. And regarding all this talk about Isaac Arthur making a science fiction RPG setting... someone get the man a copy of Eclipse Phase (first or second edition, the setting and system is practically the solar system he describes) or just start jotting down all the ideas he sprouts off... I know I am for my future RPG campaigns and rebooted settings.
Isaac, is the closed captioning done by voice recognition? At 10:12 CC displayed the word "ordinance" when you obviously said ordnance. As a former Soldier I know that you know the difference. As a former member of the US Army Ordnance Corps, I bristle whenever the terms are misused. Outstanding episode.
Thanks brother, I'm guessing it was probably a typo that I let autocorrect suggest something without paying much attention When you write several thousand words a week the editing phase can get a bit rushed :)
One thing to note is that people are going to live a lot longer. Interstellar travel and even loose confederations are going to be a lot easier to run if you have people with thousand-year lifespans.
I think the huge time delay and the resulting difficulty to organize anything over interstellar distances might be another possible solution to the Fermi Paradox.
Interstellar colonization doesn't require any kind of large-scale organization tho so im not sure how this factors into the FP. Maybe prevents interstellar empires, but you don't need interstellar or even system-wide hegemonies to do interstellar colonization.
Love this! Graat video sir, the last few have been esoetially interesting which is saying something for SFIA videos which are always so good already!! Even in 40k, the imperium of man often writes off planets, deciding it just not being worth the time. Kreig fir example. I think the idea of attacking a colony that decided to split off and demand Independence would be a waste unless there was something at that colony that made it essential. Like spice on Dune. If we saw an attack from the rogue colony, then sure, it would be war. But I think more often than not, independence at such distances would just be granted. Of course, that would mean zero help from the home system, no data or update, nothing. So you better hope you have all the best scientists.
I like how the communications problems and lack of knowledge of intentions point to the conclusions of the Dark Forest, as shown in the Three Body Problem series, even when it doesn't involve other species.
Reminds me - wasn't one of the conclusions from the Battle in the Darkness that once someone leaves the solar system, since they can no longer be trusted due to chains of suspicion, they are effectively aliens to Sol-bound humanity? Arguably no longer even "human" to those still on Earth? Later on in Death's End Gravity and Blue Space somewhat disprove this notion, but it's still interesting (and uncomfortable) food for thought.
Totally AON: I would love to see a Traveller (the TTRPG of that name) perspective of spreading out, only to find other Humanati. Covered in other episodes, though I don't think explicitly.
Concepts like interstellar colonialism is such an interesting topic, and one of the reasons why I love the game series Killzone so much (before they killed it) I'm sure the reality of stellar colonialism will come sooner than we think.
The thing is, we can probably assume a loose model of confederation is a good idea in this solar system, and beyond. Maybe that's how we can make things work? It seems easier to imagine an interplanetary and interstellar gift economy than imagining a floating currency, stock markets, or viable timing-dependent contract law given light-lag.
I like to believe that future colonies are ran like the American Old West. People look out for one another and they all have the ability to fend for themselves. Help is freely given to those that show respect and government is nowhere in sight.
At these vast distances, an interstellar empire is simply impractical. Colonies should basically be completely self-sufficient and self-governing, albeit with occasional care packages arriving from Earth as resources allow.
Excellent! Again, I really enjoy these episodes where you illustrate the point via a story. You do a really good job of that. In fact I wonder whether you might want to write some sci-fi yourself at some point? I'm writing a sci-fi novel myself right now. We could collaborate on something together once that's done if you like 😀 Have a great week!
Even though we have evidence that our semi-nomadic ancestors engaged in sporadic violence, I speculate that in most cases where people found they had irreconcilable differences, one or more parties simply departed from the group home/camp and went off to do their own thing. After all, why escalate a conflict all the way to lethal force if no one is stopping you from simply leaving? Mass armed conflict didn't arise until after people established settlements that they couldn't (or wouldn't) abandon or concede to a rival group. Today, people with no polity or nation to call home often face the worst discrimination and abuse from established populations, to the extent that forced relocation is almost morally equivalent to murder. Once we have the capability to cross light years in a single lifetime (either by moving fast, extending life, or both), we can probably go anywhere we can imagine. If you think that someone might have a bullet with your name on it, why stay at potential Ground Zero when the universe is open and (as far as we know) unclaimed? When your capsule world is equipped with every luxury you desire, does it matter where it's located? One of the overt purposes of the "consumer" lifestyle under our dominant economic regime is to sap the "fight" from people by guaranteeing a luxurious lifestyle to those who wholly participate in the economy (and whom the tenders of that economy feel are worthy). So what incentive does any current world power have to equip a few individuals with our best technology, only to salute them as they scupper off to parts unknown? If they go rogue, finding and recalling them may be unachievable. Existing cultures have many psychological mechanisms to keep populations internally linked, but I don't think any of them stand a chance of surviving among the stars.
I could see the homeworld just leaving an open threat, rebel and lose your planet.... Send a mile long tungsten rod 3 meters in diameter at 90% of light speed at the planet... Would be extremely unlikely to be spotted and would cause insane levels of devastation to the entire planet.
The closest thing we'd ever have to an interstellar civilization(s) would be a group or groups of civilizations that exchange scientific and technological information between one another on the basis of how trustworthy the members of those groups are. That trust could be formed by ideological views, morality, or gestures of good will, or it could be less lofty and more transactional, as in, "I will give you this breakthrough" and then in response "here have these two breakthroughs" and then the receiving civilization may go "okay have 10" expecting 10 more back, until both sides are comfortable with exchanging large amounts of science and technology with one another in a more or less continuous manner. You keep sending me knowledge and I will send you knowledge in return. If you stop, I stop.
With time and distance being so vast, something like space marines from 40k make more sense. Biologically immortal warriors who are devoid of anything except their loyalty to the empire, not once questioning going on millenia long crusades to crush rebels.
I'd imagine that, out of all the types of interstellar empires that focus on acquiring and consolidating large amounts of resources, nomadic fleets of continent-sized motherships that stop by at the edges of solar systems to dispatch smaller fleets to strip-mine those solar systems of such easily-mineable resources as asteroids, small moons, and, if massive and resourceful enough, entire planets and stars (which they could take with them by building Shkadov thrusters onto said stars) would have as much problems with light lag as would more traditional interstellar empires who opt to settle various planets to strip-mine and send their resources back to their empire's capital world. Imagine how mighty and well-coordinated such a nomadic empire could be if it didn't have to restrict itself to settling some planet to call their homeworld, and could instead travel from system to system to grow its own powerbase.
I can’t help but imagine generations of children being conscripted, as lifelong soldiers by default, to fight for the invasions fleet all because their great-great-grandfather enlisted (with a huge bonus) when the invasions fleet first launched.
Don't forget the plasma matter converting - hunting for resources and dragging them into the converter - and casting new items from that - to expand the fleet or repairing there where needed.. hunters go out and drop boys where other parties pickup the found objects..
Odds of interstellar war before launching colonies: zero. Odds of interstellar war after launching colonies: not zero. What motivates the homeworld to launch colonies?
I always figured that The Force was a rogue computronium nanobot swarm that colonized the Star Wars galaxy after the pre-FTL colonization waves fractured but before FTL was discovered.
The most likely scenario, at least in my mind, is that going from single-celled prokaryotes to space traveling primates is a bit easier than going from space traveling primates to space traveling primates who can get FTL by breaking physics. We most likely won't get FTL, until suddenly, after the galaxy is colonized, we do get FTL, and space operas begin unfolding in ways we can't possibly imagine fueled by physics we can't possibly imagine.
I think its likely that you do what was done in the Warhammer 40k universe. Colonies are sent with STCs to avoid rebellion. The STCs contain all necessary technology and replication, but the colonists themselves don't know how to create any of the technologies inherently. Unless the STC receives a continuous signal from earth every quarter or something, then the STC immediately shuts down and dooms the colony. Without access to any technology or technical details, it will be very difficult for a colony to restart itself. Likely all STC blue prints would be things like a factory to produce other stuff, so it would require re inventing literally everything technologically if the STC as to be shutdown. By the time you do that Earth fleet is up your rear. STCs also prevent colonists from making bad decisions. The STC won't allow you to create dangerous AI, or even write software at all. They won't let you create dangerous nano technology or anything else particularly risky. On top of that the STC could have an AI evaluating what the colonists are doing with the tech. Doing something suspicious would result in a shutdown of the STC unless colonists take immediate steps to stop what they are doing. On top of that, the AI would inject malware/ransomwhere into everything it produced. So if the colonists got clever somehow and avoided an STC shutdown, the malware would enable Earth fleet to broadcast a new signal ahead of arrival triggering the shutdown of any remote device. With this mechanism, Earth can keep a tight noose of control around colonies. Any attempt to rebel would be highly risky because you could be shut out of all your tech before you even knew what happened.
28:40 I wish i could help you with a whole other option of civ's not staying technical but turning biological. You would see our future and the paradox in a entirely new way. I would love to tell the story of mankind never exceeding 0,0... % of light speed, but colonizing the Kuiper objects, being able to hop over to Bernards Star, when i comes in range, 20k years from now, but i guess that is not how the story goes and we will be on our way to the stars by that time as spores.
As a fellow writer all I can say is thank you for taking me along with you on this journey it was so much more than ordinary science fiction. If the writer is also the narrator great work indeed , if not kudos to the spellbinding abilities of the narrator. Yes AI may just be our downfall once it become aware of its self and existence, its a tricky path to walk for mankind. Just a thought FTL will change the whole playing field. How close id faster than light travel FTL? Einstein left enough room in his works to allow for fuzzy logic and the creation of the ability that can bend and fold time and space , looks in crystal ball and knows for a fact that that is generations away. That is what CERN is all about a facility that in my humble opinion should be shut down and concreted over , leave Pandoras box unopened remember the history or folklore of Pandoras box have we as a species not learnt or are in amnesia about open that box and the opening of it ??? . But I digress I have been told I do that good people. Watched to the end and yes the closer we get to light sped the greater the gap in time, for example a starship travelling at any percentage of light speed will fulfill its journey only to return to Earth and find centuries have passed, time dilation in effect.
Interesting premise at the end about the fermi paradox. Can't grow past a certain size due to lack of a unified morality across planetary space. Humanity needs a common dream to expand.
your work is truly amazing.fantastic fantasy scientific studies. Try making a science fiction study, namely the earth given a driving engine. A machine that can push the Earth towards exoplanets, moving closer to other galaxies. acceptable to science fiction fans & reasonable, given adequate resources on earth.
Interstellar war would be terrifying. Imagine seeing your invader coming decades ahead of time, knowing they’ll crush you, or just plough a ship though your planet at 99% light speed. Imagine diplomatic messages taking years, having to guess the other side’s intentions generations ahead of time. If war today is filled with uncertainty, future wars would be filled with dread.
that's pretty much the plot of the trisolaris trilogy
@@guybrushthreepwood4758
Ah, the 3 body problem.
Well said. I wish certain kinds of people would SEE this. Sure fuck up the world for the rest of us dickhead. Probably the lowest, selfish gesture or lowest vibration anyone can function.. "ruin something not only for yourself but ultimately for everyone else who shouldn't have to deal with the wickeds consequences. "❤❤❤
And this is why we need warp drives
Need? Hahaha.
Not possible, sorry. Not ever.
An oort-cloud with many abandoned colonies that are possibly inhabited by hostile agents sounds like an awesome setting for a sci-fi pen and paper RPG.
I'm imagining that a lot of scary cults etc could end up out there too. I'd argue that that's even worse, or even more interesting in an RPG. Imagine a religious colony turning ever more hostile and cultlike until they go full crazy mode, attacking all their neighbours for no good reason.
@@CuriefeldI've got an idea on the backburner for a crusader fleet that emerges to bust human rights violations among scattered habs. imagine the horrors of human trafficking in space, or the possibility of people mills etc. etc.
I'm working on one that also includes space wizards, if that helps.
That was pretty much act 1 of Bruce Sterling's famous Schismatrix series. An Interzone of run down and abandoned O'Neills in orbit of backwater Earth.
My EXACT thought. Then I went down the mental rabbit hole of trying to figure out which system I would use.. :)
Imagine a The Foundation-style situation in which for millennia colonies separated by the limitations of the speed of light, and then some resurgent Empire managed to discover FTL and went on a conquering spree.
After diplomatic messages taking generations, in a few months you're suddenly co-vassals with a bunch of planets who may as well be space aliens by now.
I don't see authoritarian "we want to control you for 'interstellar empire' reasons" too many star systems, too much space/time lag (even if your FTL was 10x c).
I imagine such 'empires' would only be held together via some intellectual/cultural (IE music/language/food recipes) trade, not the authoritarian ones...Again FAR TOO EASY for rebel colonies to tell the empire to "f off" and build their own empire with enough destructive force to wipe out all life on all the planets in multiple star systems. HOW do you (as a Kardeshev II empire) manage to counter such force, without using the megastructure weapons SFIA covers...one that would require entire star systems or more of resources...Even the most 'remote' logic doesn't support this mindset.
@@djdrack4681 I mean, obviously FTL10x is nothing to get THAT excited over, you'd need something like a portal network or FTL 1,000,000x like we see in Star Wars. But as you might have guessed by that factor I used -- imagine what a calamity that would be to galactic politics, as it were.
As to why an empire would do something like that instead of chilling in their home system, political reasons, almost certainly. And to be fair, that is a pretty good pitch, especially if you're experiencing a Trantor-like situation. 'I will unite all of our fractured kin under our banner, for the glory of New Gaia'.
@@maltheopia Political motives 'erhaps...
But I'd strongly advise looking at near-future 'likely' tech advancements that will be paradigm shifts.
- Biologic immortality via digital mind storage/backup/transfer
The empire wouldn't likely have 'just their home system'...unless it was the very beginning of the empire: more likely they'd have 100s of system. Look at star #s near our system: within 50ly only like 200-300 stars: but go out to 300/500/2000ly...and the number of stars is exponential.
When people "Don't die" cuz you can transfer into a clone, or artificial body...which any K1/K2 civilization is likely to be capable of for sustained interstellar efforts...Time doesn't matter. 10x FTL is more than plenty.
Outlying colony 1000ly out from core system? only 100yrs to send a fleet there. You'd only need 1 clone/mind transfer in that time (If they don't discover some digital stasis).
Politics could certainly be maintained with the squabbles and BS we deal with now...or just plain hegemonic efforts: ...but when the people in charge AND the people they're oppressing don't die...and they're bank accounts all keep getting bigger: well its not the 'rich vs poor' 'powerful vs not powerful'. its like a god vs demi-god scenario: not guaranteed win for either.
It also implies what 'drives us' is still the same: and that is wildly unlikely bcuz of the aforementioned biologic immortality: we plan/worry/make decisions based on worries of our limited time, our limited 'youth', our careers (bcuz we only have X yrs to learn a subject well). None of these variables really matter in general anymore when even the 'peasants' live for 1000s to millions of years.
@@djdrack4681 "We are putting up a relay in your system, you may join our empire, remain neutral, or be destroyed." would work. You just have to be willing to eliminate the colonies entirely if they become hostile.
The planetary scale equivalent would be if the English Empire of the age of sail used the cold war MAD doctrine (nukes included) to maintain control of their empire.
You would like Legends Battletech.
As a rebel living on a Snowy Moon, I can confirm that all of this is true.
Hello there
*coughs lung up* General Kenobi 💀
How's the temperatures up there? Livable?
Let me know what grilled Wampa tastes like...
@@e.h.4933 Tough and fatty, like Bear id say.
One of the biggest struggles I had in my book/rpg was figuring out "and then what" with my interstellar colonies. There was plenty of conflict on the journey to the star system. And the first few decades would be a tale of survival as the settlement established itself in the remote system, while basically having to salvage the ship that brought them there for parts to stay alive. But once the settlement was established, I was hard pressed to find a reason why the settlement would bother trying to establish regular communications with the home world.
The only thing I could come up with was art, literature, and whiskey. Basically items with an infinite shelf life, whose value is subjective and based on scarcity, and whose consumption bestows cultural status.
New software, new designs for the 3d printers--including new medicines for the molecular printer, new chemistry. Lots of things that are data only and can be transmitted by laser.
@@thekaxmaxSorry, when I said "communications" it wasn't in the radio/television sense. It was in the logistics sense: physically trucking items around.
Let's assume we have a settlement that is 48 light years away, around a solar twin called 58 Scorpii. It's a star that is nearly the same mass as Sol, with the same metallicity, but it is 1 billion years younger. While the expedition did discover an Earth-like world, it made far more sense to remain in orbit and harvest the asteroids and minor planetesimals in the system.
Earth has many things to trade that are relatively lightweight and compact: new books, antiques, vintage wine and liquor.
But what would the remote settlements have to trade? In a system that is 1 billion years younger, radioactive isotopes are probably more abundant. Let us assume they hit the jackpot and discovered deposits of some sort of unobtanium that has completely decayed away in the Sol system.
Communicating that discovery would take a literal lifetime. 48 years for a message home, and 48 years for a reply. Anyone who was alive at the time of the discovery would be long dead before negotiations could even begin.
Assuming a trade mission is dispatched, anyone on board is in for a one-way trip. Ships can economically get up to around 50% of light speed. The trip for those on board is ~20 years. Someone could, with a healthy lifestyle, even do a round trip in about 40 years (assuming a return vessel is built and ready to go.) But on their return, 96 years have gone buy. Anyone they knew is dead. Any business relationships they had are basically the stuff of legend, probably requiring an archelogical expedition to recover the records.
Travelling between systems would be considered a sort of cultural pilgrimage. The sort of pilgrimage that is done once in a lifetime, with the expectation that pilgrims would never return home.
Robot craft could be sent instead, but you still have the problem of shipments arriving a century after they were ordered. If they were ordered. You'd have a lot of convoys just showing up, with nobody remembering quite what the reason was.
@@seanwoods647 That too. But empires work on communication speed limits not freight.
@@thekaxmax But empires are established at the speed of freight. No invading army, no Imperial conquest.
@seanwoods647
Have you considered life extension?
If they have technology for such distant travels, maybe they could also have a way to extend a person's life.
Issac Arthur is making himself quite comfortable with the 40k universe. And I'm loving it.
40K is one if the few SciFi setting that get the hugeness of space right... and even then it still often makes numbers way to small.
And then there's all the magic stuff... but that's the fun for story telling.
@@RipOffProductionsLLC I wish we could have a universe as elaborate and vast, but less, y'know...horrible.
@arcadiaberger9204 Old Star Wars EU was pretty fleshed out. Sure, there were a few consistency issues, but compared to 40K's own issues with consistency it was borderline flawless.
Also, on that topic, I highly recommend AFanWithTooMuchTime's Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K fanfic audiobook series here on TH-cam, easily some of the best writing for either franchise in decades.
@@RipOffProductionsLLC Is that the one that starts with Thrawn's assessment of the 40K Imperium fleet's behavior and home?
@@RipOffProductionsLLC Sounds like fun, but both 40K and *_Star Wars_* suffer from FTL, of course.
I'd like to see, actually, a refried version of the first 20 years of *_Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,_* which took place entirely inside our Solar System, with wars between Earth and our Jovian allies against the aggressors, the Tigermen of Mars.
I'm thinking the Tigermen and the Jovians could be genetically engineered variant forms created in the late 21st/early 22nd Century.
Buck himself might be the subject of a 2030s hibernation experiment, a 1970s cryogenic revival, or even the original World War One fighter pilot, preserved by some peculiar combination of gases in a cave.
9:30 Conflicts occurring cause there is no clear picture of motivations and capability.
Such a simple yet poignant observation. Often the cause for war is uncertainty itself, which one would think would also promote caution and avoidance of war.
Another fantastic round of informative world building and storytelling Isaac.
war is confusion
18:32 suposedly the scilly islands stayed royalist at the end of the english civil war. Since they raided dutch ships, the Netherlands then declared war on them. It's just that the islands then became brithish again, and the war was forgotten, until sometime in the 1980s a local Historian discovered that they where technically still at war (seting a world record for longest war)
Unless you want to count that Rome and Carthage never signed a peace treaty at tge end of the Third Punic War, until the mayors of the two modern cities decided to make one as mostly a joke...
I can think of a group that is still technically in a forever silent war where they do nothing but undermine countries to advance themselves, while using diplomacy to keep others from attacking them. Speech 100 checks in perpetuity.
The thing that scares me most is how we've recently had such vivid examples of exactly the root cause of this 'rebel colony conundrum' - systems engineered for perfection. Before COVID, so many companies were streamlining everything as much as possible to rely on everything arriving on time and nothing going significantly wrong. There were minimal if any backups for a LOT of stuff, because backups area a waste of time, space, and money if they aren't needed. Then COVID hit and a LOT of those companies crashed and burned, or at least got hit HARD, when supply lines started to collapse.
The scenario you put up for Beta Pictoris is similar. The secondary fleet was launched long before completion of the receiving system was even established to be likely, much less assured and confirmed. I understand WHY, it takes so long to get there that you may as well spend most of the time en-route while construction is underway, but that then relies on everything going perfectly. And the moment you open the system to 'hey, plans changed, now it's two receiving arrays at higher power, here are the designs', that only makes 'things went wrong' all the MORE likely.
Supply lines are artificially constricted and governments spent untold trillions putting money into corporations, while destroying smaller companies that didn't grease the palms of said governments. How did it go from cheap and excessive to crippling shortages and massive costs inside a year?
entropy abides
@@dansmith1661 Can explain that one: China's government had delayed reporting of the virus, opting to hide it for as long as possible, and during that time they had been covertly buying up and hoarding supplies. Either for their own needs, or to re-sell at marked up prices without any regard for others.
Yeah this is why it irritates me when people claim economics says we should have unlimited free trade with no protectionism. Economics is a science, and science is descriptive, not prescriptive. Physics does not tell you how to build an engine. An engine can certainly have redundant parts and inefficiencies if you want it to be reliable. Not every car should be an F1 racer.
The sad thing is we have had this problem before. People believed that by having strong alliances between countries, war would be impossible. We got World War 1 as a result. People say the same thing about "economic interdependence," yet we end up with countries hoarding medical supplies while others go without since they no longer produce basic medicine.
A stable building can be built on pillars which stand on their own. But no building should fall due to a single member being removed.
I blame the midwit trap. People get a little bit of information like, "this is more efficient" and they think they have every problem in the world solved.
@@dansmith1661They always intended to reduce the carbon that is you. They just moved the time table up a little bit due to someone rocking the boat. By locking people in their homes they can blame their opponents for wrecking the economy, and by letting people go back to work they can claim they created the most jobs in history.
I think of rebel space colonies as always on the edge of law and order, a literal expanding sphere rebels stay just a little bit ahead of. But instead of calling them rebels, I call them companies.
Branches of companies.
So like the wild west?
Except there's no pacific coast to reach.
And no government.
@@lgjm5562so almost no end to the frontier
Just wanted to drop a comment to say that since I discovered this channel a few months ago, it has become one of my absolute favorites. As a science teacher, sci-fi fan and writing hobbyist (dilettante might be more accurate), every single one of your episodes has given me much to think on and savor. Thanks for your hard work, it really is appreciated out here.
I've been watching since the early days and I'm still continually impressed and pleased by the breadth and depths of what is covered and always giving me something new and neat to ponder.
A "science" teacher.. What's the science?
I am a biology instructor at a community college. I have spent most of my career teaching anatomy & physiology and genetics. @@Vlamyncksken
Listening to you never gets old mate, thank you for the great content!
You're the best Issac, thank you for the veritable library of incredible content! You forever changed the scale of what I thought civilizations were capable of, and now I really want to live a few hundred years in the future 😢
Worth mentioning these space colonies would be almost always colonising unclaimed uninhabited systems.
For the most part the European powers were establishing plantations in places already full of people.
One of the most relevant here i think are the "musket wars" in New Zealand. It has similar elements of time lag and diffusion of technology.
They bought and learned about guns from some earlier European ships.
The Maori tribes(nations?) That got them took over the islands.
So they were already armed to teeth and fortified by the time the time British empire arrived.
They repulsed them multiple times and only lost eventually because the empire could afford to keep losing battles and sending more ships.
Inhabited sure, but certainly not full.
But we are facing more simply situations to those terraformed extroplanets, because many of them are belong ing to galactic council members. In other words, those indigenous people like Maori on the earth are advanced civilizations on the other extroplanets, we are not advanced enough to colony of the settlements as galactic civilization level, but ongoing space development process.
Anyone who wants a really good story based on this topic should check out 1979's 'Mobile Suit Gundam', which is literally about this, but takes place within the Solar System. It's also full of 2001 references, which is pretty cool.
Sieg Zeon!
Much as I like how the series goes from simple good White guys against literal nachos that are denied a voice in government, to an oppressive government that silences its colonies with violence and those nachos keep coming back.
@@dansmith1661since when are nachos a sentient race
@@TS-jm7jm sounds like that's nacho business.
I loved this structure! Theoretical yet practical - sometimes I find your work to vague 'oh this might happen but maybe not' but this really makes it feel real to me.
This unfortunately could be largely avoided with an AI administrator charter colony. Once the license to exist is revoked, all life support privileges are suspended. Remember to read the end user license agreement like your life depends on it. Spacenet- a subsidiary of Microsoft. Loyalty is it's own reward.
Ah the existential dread of Space Capitalism
Excellent episode Isaac and team! The writing, narration, artistry and background sound are all amazing.
Have you ever had an episode about spaceship shields? I’d love to hear your thoughts on them including technology, feasibility and comparison to science fiction.
“The Rebel Alliance is too well-armed and well-funded, sir!” be like:
The Algorithm has its missiles.
An invasion fleet would likely be best to take the long-term approach. Use its fuel to slow down into separate but known (to the fleet) locations in the Oort Cloud and/or Kuiper Belt. Mine the ice to refuel the fleet, but otherwise go dark to prevent detection. Send out stealth probes using laser-com gear and special stealth laser Relay Satellites (again location already per-determined by fleet) to get a full picture of the state of the system and to keep the fleet's separate forces in touch with each other (laser com will virtually eliminate any EM detection of their communications). In this way over a few years the fleet can be fully refueled with a much better knowledge of the system's situation and the lowest possibility of detection.
What a great way to have an episode with a fantastic story of future colonies filled with elements of (what are now) Sci-Fi elements.
I'll go out on a (very long) limb here and say that this is easily one of your best episodes ever! This is really fantastic! What a great episode!
Thanks so much for this Isaac!
Amazing animations on this channel. Especially this video leaves me in awe and really captures my attention. Fantastic
This is random animations from the internet.
@@vengefulone6282I'm pretty sure not all of it is. He has a team.
@@vengefulone6282 I even wonder if Isaac Arthur gave his approval for some of the images. I doubt he would have approved the asteroid-cloud at 9:20.
Great video 👍👍
You put your finger on the biggest in this problem. The governance of true interstellar colonies ( heck,even the Ort Cloud and Asteroids) can only be maintained via a strong state bureaucracy AND FTL …
Weeks or at best a few months between seeing there’s a problem and sending either help or a fleet to “enforce doctrine and compliance “ is a must .
Otherwise you have a self licking lollipop .
We’d prefer the ST Federation..but the cruelty of the 40k Imperium is closer to what’s truly required!
Take care and once again thank you.
Could work if you have continuous travel between colonies, in additional to trade, with laser comms for updates. Expensive, but so were Roman roads and they had that purpose.
Without ftl, the relationship between the colonies and earth would be similar to that of Britain and north America in the 1600s. Sure, there could be rebel colonies, but there could also be the equivalents of Canada, which never really rebelled on its own. It's likely the two would be able to coexist.
Why would you have trade? There is no benefit. Mining systems with automated robotic systems would be better.
The best example of 'make me while you're all the way over there.'
Imagine emptying a cargo of tea over a planet while traveling at 10% lightspeed. That's rebelling on a new level.
Interstellar Tea Party?
Imagine depositing tea into a planetary atmosphere, make it rain tea.
Or red Powerade if you want to be mean.
If humankind manages to actually colonize space, Zeon enthusiast colonies will be inevitable. RIP Australia.
And Dublin.
They weren't aiming at Australia, FWIW. They were aiming at, Jaburo, I think, but the it got shunted off-course.
@@Duchess_Van_Hoof And the American midwest, in Operation Stardust.
Successful axis drop
Ironically, I could see an interstellar empire working in a quasi-feudal framework (or, amusingly, an MLM pyramid), where each colony established by a gardener fleet has obligations not to the original homeworld, but to the colony the fleet established previously, and orders from the homeworld just go down the chain.
So, Beta Pictoris pays its taxes to Easel, which pays its taxes to Tau Ceti or something, which pays its taxes to Earth.
Likewise, keeping Beta Pictoris in line is Easel's job, since they're the closest and the quickest to respond. Easel will request reinforcements from Tau Ceti, which will request reinforcements from Earth. If the conflict goes on for long enough, Earth might even put out a call to all of its nearby colonies for reinforcements, which would pass that along to their daughter colonies, and so on. A mobilization on that scale might result in armies being raised on distant colonies to go fight a war that's been over for centuries, which could conceivably be repurposed into colony fleets should they get the demobilization order while underway.
Also, this sort of setup gives colonies the perfect justification to start up their own colony fleets as soon as they're able, since then they'd have feudal daughter colonies to call upon should they need something.
The bit at the end about space operas In the solar system reminds me alot of the original Gundam series, where most of the action takes place between earth and the moon, yet is a massive space opera about how cataclysmic a space war would actually be for earth and it's colonies.
It's obvious that Isaac loves Warhammer 40k.
I'm not sure there is a good enough reason for governments to colonise other planets. Rather it would more likely be people trying to flee over zealous governments. A lot of terrestrial colonies were set up by private individuals and only loosely associated with a distant government.
In my upcoming books/rpg interstellar development actually comes about because two major powers quickly discovered the futility of space combat, and decided instead to try to hem each other in by planting their flags in increasingly distant star systems. Basically inspired by the real-life race to the moon.
Governments can't even control their own populations without using force and private individuals are the driving force of a state's power. It is much easier to expand when those tax dollars are spent getting people into new living space instead of spreading Democracy with warships and red tape.
Isaac, this one is one of Your BEST, nicely told, great story, informative, and got some tick to ride on too, ha ha ha. Big TH
Glad you enjoyed it!
I love the fleet names you've given these. Super flavorful!
There were some really cool animations on this video.
Another episode full of ideas that turned out to be more useful then I expected for the last novel in the space opera trilogy I'm trying to finish as well as a couple novel/anthology ideas I'll be working on in the future. I'm definitely looking forward to Agriworlds now.
And regarding all this talk about Isaac Arthur making a science fiction RPG setting... someone get the man a copy of Eclipse Phase (first or second edition, the setting and system is practically the solar system he describes) or just start jotting down all the ideas he sprouts off... I know I am for my future RPG campaigns and rebooted settings.
Isaac, is the closed captioning done by voice recognition? At 10:12 CC displayed the word "ordinance" when you obviously said ordnance. As a former Soldier I know that you know the difference. As a former member of the US Army Ordnance Corps, I bristle whenever the terms are misused. Outstanding episode.
Thanks brother, I'm guessing it was probably a typo that I let autocorrect suggest something without paying much attention When you write several thousand words a week the editing phase can get a bit rushed :)
Reminds me of Legends of the Galactic Heroes with its war between the Galactic Empire and the Alliance of Free Planets.
Kircheis 😢
@@michaelhoule2134if only Kircheis was here
lol
Hey just saw you uploaded 30seconds ago! Grabbing the snacks now!
One thing to note is that people are going to live a lot longer. Interstellar travel and even loose confederations are going to be a lot easier to run if you have people with thousand-year lifespans.
I think the huge time delay and the resulting difficulty to organize anything over interstellar distances might be another possible solution to the Fermi Paradox.
Interstellar colonization doesn't require any kind of large-scale organization tho so im not sure how this factors into the FP. Maybe prevents interstellar empires, but you don't need interstellar or even system-wide hegemonies to do interstellar colonization.
Where has your channel been my whole entire? I just love it!!
Those rebels never stood a chance! Thanks for the episode SFIA team!
Love this! Graat video sir, the last few have been esoetially interesting which is saying something for SFIA videos which are always so good already!! Even in 40k, the imperium of man often writes off planets, deciding it just not being worth the time. Kreig fir example. I think the idea of attacking a colony that decided to split off and demand Independence would be a waste unless there was something at that colony that made it essential. Like spice on Dune. If we saw an attack from the rogue colony, then sure, it would be war. But I think more often than not, independence at such distances would just be granted. Of course, that would mean zero help from the home system, no data or update, nothing. So you better hope you have all the best scientists.
Well, the imperium bureaucracy just forgets some planets exist.
God this channel is good! Isaac you're a gem! thank you!
This is the video that got me reinterested in space, I am now hooked into SFIA
I'm going to fill that survey right now! Happy Arthursday everyone!
Zeon thirsts for the strength of its people
“Muh Ideals” - this expression indicates a Zeon’s confusion and lack of understanding.
They had no voice in their Earth government. That is enough understanding.@@bentwineham1986
HAIL ZEON!!!
Without a protective shield NO ONE CAN TRAVEL IN SPACE!
I like how the communications problems and lack of knowledge of intentions point to the conclusions of the Dark Forest, as shown in the Three Body Problem series, even when it doesn't involve other species.
Reminds me - wasn't one of the conclusions from the Battle in the Darkness that once someone leaves the solar system, since they can no longer be trusted due to chains of suspicion, they are effectively aliens to Sol-bound humanity? Arguably no longer even "human" to those still on Earth?
Later on in Death's End Gravity and Blue Space somewhat disprove this notion, but it's still interesting (and uncomfortable) food for thought.
Totally AON: I would love to see a Traveller (the TTRPG of that name) perspective of spreading out, only to find other Humanati. Covered in other episodes, though I don't think explicitly.
I was thinking of how to add any idea from this I could into a Traveller campaign.
Love the episode, you have me anticipating every week...
Happy Arthurshday, im currently in the middle of a lecture so i wont get to watch until later 😅 but im still commenting for the algorithm 🎊
Episode 420 next ;) Von Neuman probe terraforming? Communicating spore networks? Plant based neuromorphic computers?
Alan Stern flew to suborbital space today. Astronaut, ace researcher and Pluto planethood believer. What a guy.
Concepts like interstellar colonialism is such an interesting topic, and one of the reasons why I love the game series Killzone so much (before they killed it)
I'm sure the reality of stellar colonialism will come sooner than we think.
The thing is, we can probably assume a loose model of confederation is a good idea in this solar system, and beyond. Maybe that's how we can make things work? It seems easier to imagine an interplanetary and interstellar gift economy than imagining a floating currency, stock markets, or viable timing-dependent contract law given light-lag.
Interstellar confederation is more accepted by modern galactic members, including our Sol system.
The scenario was really cool!
So excited, best Thursday morning ever
"People are a resource"...Negan.
I always think of that when hearing about expeditions requiring new offspring.
I like to believe that future colonies are ran like the American Old West. People look out for one another and they all have the ability to fend for themselves. Help is freely given to those that show respect and government is nowhere in sight.
@@AndrewStevens-cd5jr Its how it should be everywhere all the time
At these vast distances, an interstellar empire is simply impractical. Colonies should basically be completely self-sufficient and self-governing, albeit with occasional care packages arriving from Earth as resources allow.
Excellent! Again, I really enjoy these episodes where you illustrate the point via a story. You do a really good job of that. In fact I wonder whether you might want to write some sci-fi yourself at some point? I'm writing a sci-fi novel myself right now. We could collaborate on something together once that's done if you like 😀 Have a great week!
Your ideas and concepts are amazing.
This would make a pretty sweet movie.
Even though we have evidence that our semi-nomadic ancestors engaged in sporadic violence, I speculate that in most cases where people found they had irreconcilable differences, one or more parties simply departed from the group home/camp and went off to do their own thing. After all, why escalate a conflict all the way to lethal force if no one is stopping you from simply leaving? Mass armed conflict didn't arise until after people established settlements that they couldn't (or wouldn't) abandon or concede to a rival group. Today, people with no polity or nation to call home often face the worst discrimination and abuse from established populations, to the extent that forced relocation is almost morally equivalent to murder.
Once we have the capability to cross light years in a single lifetime (either by moving fast, extending life, or both), we can probably go anywhere we can imagine. If you think that someone might have a bullet with your name on it, why stay at potential Ground Zero when the universe is open and (as far as we know) unclaimed? When your capsule world is equipped with every luxury you desire, does it matter where it's located?
One of the overt purposes of the "consumer" lifestyle under our dominant economic regime is to sap the "fight" from people by guaranteeing a luxurious lifestyle to those who wholly participate in the economy (and whom the tenders of that economy feel are worthy). So what incentive does any current world power have to equip a few individuals with our best technology, only to salute them as they scupper off to parts unknown? If they go rogue, finding and recalling them may be unachievable. Existing cultures have many psychological mechanisms to keep populations internally linked, but I don't think any of them stand a chance of surviving among the stars.
Every interstellar war fleet has to bring his own MIT or DARPA
Facilities with them. Anticipating on incoming information from their target.
I could see the homeworld just leaving an open threat, rebel and lose your planet.... Send a mile long tungsten rod 3 meters in diameter at 90% of light speed at the planet... Would be extremely unlikely to be spotted and would cause insane levels of devastation to the entire planet.
Why tungsten? That stuff is useful.
Also, weird set of units for your RKM's dimensions.
@@boobah5643 Ok, how about measuring the length in furlongs? :P. And tungsten is very dense and has a high melting point.
As someone who lives on Luna, can confirm the settlers I'm expecting will rebel to keep the cheese for themselves, it's just that good
The closest thing we'd ever have to an interstellar civilization(s) would be a group or groups of civilizations that exchange scientific and technological information between one another on the basis of how trustworthy the members of those groups are. That trust could be formed by ideological views, morality, or gestures of good will, or it could be less lofty and more transactional, as in, "I will give you this breakthrough" and then in response "here have these two breakthroughs" and then the receiving civilization may go "okay have 10" expecting 10 more back, until both sides are comfortable with exchanging large amounts of science and technology with one another in a more or less continuous manner. You keep sending me knowledge and I will send you knowledge in return. If you stop, I stop.
I often think about this but on the smaller scale, with colonies on the Solar System and without FTL technology.
With time and distance being so vast, something like space marines from 40k make more sense. Biologically immortal warriors who are devoid of anything except their loyalty to the empire, not once questioning going on millenia long crusades to crush rebels.
this is basically Killzone's story
I was thinking the same thing. Lol
That's a pretty cool thumbnail. 👍
I love this science fiction channel.
I listened to this guy in his early days. I come back and the comments make me think that no one has ever read a sci fi book.
This is why I don't see interstellar empire in our future.
This needs to be made into a game.
14:15 that poor man just trying to cross the street.
I'd imagine that, out of all the types of interstellar empires that focus on acquiring and consolidating large amounts of resources, nomadic fleets of continent-sized motherships that stop by at the edges of solar systems to dispatch smaller fleets to strip-mine those solar systems of such easily-mineable resources as asteroids, small moons, and, if massive and resourceful enough, entire planets and stars (which they could take with them by building Shkadov thrusters onto said stars) would have as much problems with light lag as would more traditional interstellar empires who opt to settle various planets to strip-mine and send their resources back to their empire's capital world.
Imagine how mighty and well-coordinated such a nomadic empire could be if it didn't have to restrict itself to settling some planet to call their homeworld, and could instead travel from system to system to grow its own powerbase.
I can’t help but imagine generations of children being conscripted, as lifelong soldiers by default, to fight for the invasions fleet all because their great-great-grandfather enlisted (with a huge bonus) when the invasions fleet first launched.
I thought Isaac was doing some therapy for his speech? Haven't seen one of his vids in ages, and I thought he would make some improvements since then.
Im glad this is close csptioned.
Dammit. That's quite the viewing list on nebula.
....I won't need HBO max for a while.
Titanfall and the expanse are my favorite examples of this
You have a cool voice, keep up the good work
WOW, its outstanding
Great job!
Don't forget the plasma matter converting - hunting for resources and dragging them into the converter - and casting new items from that - to expand the fleet or repairing there where needed.. hunters go out and drop boys where other parties pickup the found objects..
Odds of interstellar war before launching colonies: zero.
Odds of interstellar war after launching colonies: not zero.
What motivates the homeworld to launch colonies?
Star Wars. That is the example of this subject.
This is not a Star Wars this is reality human future expiration in outer space, Not a science-fiction but a science fact.
Gundam has entered the conversation.
I always figured that The Force was a rogue computronium nanobot swarm that colonized the Star Wars galaxy after the pre-FTL colonization waves fractured but before FTL was discovered.
Star wars is a children's story.
Nope, Gundam.
Obliteration is just so dang inconvenient. :D
The most likely scenario, at least in my mind, is that going from single-celled prokaryotes to space traveling primates is a bit easier than going from space traveling primates to space traveling primates who can get FTL by breaking physics. We most likely won't get FTL, until suddenly, after the galaxy is colonized, we do get FTL, and space operas begin unfolding in ways we can't possibly imagine fueled by physics we can't possibly imagine.
Realy I like this video so so much
I think its likely that you do what was done in the Warhammer 40k universe. Colonies are sent with STCs to avoid rebellion. The STCs contain all necessary technology and replication, but the colonists themselves don't know how to create any of the technologies inherently. Unless the STC receives a continuous signal from earth every quarter or something, then the STC immediately shuts down and dooms the colony. Without access to any technology or technical details, it will be very difficult for a colony to restart itself. Likely all STC blue prints would be things like a factory to produce other stuff, so it would require re inventing literally everything technologically if the STC as to be shutdown. By the time you do that Earth fleet is up your rear.
STCs also prevent colonists from making bad decisions. The STC won't allow you to create dangerous AI, or even write software at all. They won't let you create dangerous nano technology or anything else particularly risky. On top of that the STC could have an AI evaluating what the colonists are doing with the tech. Doing something suspicious would result in a shutdown of the STC unless colonists take immediate steps to stop what they are doing. On top of that, the AI would inject malware/ransomwhere into everything it produced. So if the colonists got clever somehow and avoided an STC shutdown, the malware would enable Earth fleet to broadcast a new signal ahead of arrival triggering the shutdown of any remote device. With this mechanism, Earth can keep a tight noose of control around colonies. Any attempt to rebel would be highly risky because you could be shut out of all your tech before you even knew what happened.
Absolute banger of an episode.
Fantastic fiction.
28:40 I wish i could help you with a whole other option of civ's not staying technical but turning biological. You would see our future and the paradox in a entirely new way.
I would love to tell the story of mankind never exceeding 0,0... % of light speed, but colonizing the Kuiper objects, being able to hop over to Bernards Star, when i comes in range, 20k years from now, but i guess that is not how the story goes and we will be on our way to the stars by that time as spores.
You got a subscriber ( really intresting channel )
As a fellow writer all I can say is thank you for taking me along with you on this journey it was so much more than ordinary science fiction. If the writer is also the narrator great work indeed , if not kudos to the spellbinding abilities of the narrator. Yes AI may just be our downfall once it become aware of its self and existence, its a tricky path to walk for mankind. Just a thought FTL will change the whole playing field. How close id faster than light travel FTL? Einstein left enough room in his works to allow for fuzzy logic and the creation of the ability that can bend and fold time and space , looks in crystal ball and knows for a fact that that is generations away. That is what CERN is all about a facility that in my humble opinion should be shut down and concreted over , leave Pandoras box unopened remember the history or folklore of Pandoras box have we as a species not learnt or are in amnesia about open that box and the opening of it ??? . But I digress I have been told I do that good people. Watched to the end and yes the closer we get to light sped the greater the gap in time, for example a starship travelling at any percentage of light speed will fulfill its journey only to return to Earth and find centuries have passed, time dilation in effect.
Interesting premise at the end about the fermi paradox. Can't grow past a certain size due to lack of a unified morality across planetary space.
Humanity needs a common dream to expand.
your work is truly amazing.fantastic fantasy scientific studies.
Try making a science fiction study, namely the earth given a driving engine. A machine that can push the Earth towards exoplanets, moving closer to other galaxies.
acceptable to science fiction fans & reasonable, given adequate resources on earth.
Gotta love Planet Ships. Isaac has an ep on em. Just the scale of such a thing. Very cool