Hard SciFi thread

the one I'm writing 102,000 years in the future

you either have to jumpstart an economy or be able to convince someone of a 30 year plan to gain resources from space travel instead of a 150 year plan

we have the tools and time necesarry to do so, but we'd simply need an absolute metric fuckton of money

m.youtube.com/watch?v=xvs_f5MwT04

Alien universe if you do not include the crossover and alien 3 bullshit.

>that still seems too advanced for 500 years
>scale back; 175 years in the future

I think I've found your mistake

Try Viktor Suvorov's Inside the Soviet Military. It's outdated of course and plus there isn't any Soviet military anymore, but he gives a good broad introduction to military organization, administration, and doctrine.

Then you can read about american/NATO doctrine and see how it's different. And how Russia's views have changed over the years. There's much more out there, but it's also more advanced and technical so harder to understand if you're not a soldier yourself. Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising is a fictionalized analysis of WW3 based on a wargame he played one time with Larry Bond. It's a good broad introduction to how such a war would play out as seen through NATO eyes and assumptions, which obviously was very different from how Soviets saw things.

Suvorov himself was a defector from soviet military intelligence (the GRU). He wrote a whole series of books like this (one for the GRU and the other for Spetznaz). Plus some WW2 history stuff that's way more controversial. Some experts criticized his books when they came out in the 80s, for being too basic for experts to bother with, and for getting stuff "wrong" that after the Cold War he was proven right about. They're great books. He's under death sentence still, and the Russians to spite him put all his books online for easy download so you wouldn't have to buy his books.

Also try reading strategypage.com, they do good articles you can skim once you have a basic background.

Anyway, that'll give you plenty of what you need.

You can also read a few good histories. Try an integrative work like Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy and Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave. Also remember that growth is exponential. With a good birthrate plus resources and space... well, let me show you. (cont...)

...

Let's say you have 10,000 adults of child-bearing age on a colony world. Every generation is 30 years. Every family consists (on average) of 2 parents and 4 children who survive to adulthood. 10% of the adult population for whatever reason don't participate in family building.

These are VERY conservative assumptions given a starting population that would be picked to encourage fertility. Someone not willing to start a family won't be selected to go on the mission. And family sizes can be much larger. Among Chasidic jews, for example, the birth rate is close to 7 children per family(!) We're also assuming no immigration/emigration.

So those 10,000 adults turn into 9,000 who want to form families. 4,500 families. 18,000 children. 30 years later, those 10,000 adults are no longer able to bear children (obviously assuming current tech only). But their 18,000 kids are now adults and happily popping out babies.

At year 100, your colony has a hundred thousand adults of child-bearing age. (All these numbers are approximations. You can do it yourself in Excel to get the official numbers.)

At year 200, your colony has about half a million.

At year 300, you're at three and a half million.

At year 400, twenty five million. Remember, this is just the segment that's at childbearing age. You'll have 45 million kids, plus about 10-15 million elderly, for a total of 85 million people.

At year 500, you're up to two hundred million adults, plus maybe half that in elderly and nearly double that in kids.

At year 600, you've just about matched the current population of Earth and are experiencing some serious population pressures. Your original government will probably have gone through its decline and fall by now, which might delay this point by a few years... but not as much as you'd think.

Now here's the thing. What if we match orthodox jews, mormons, traditional catholics, and other peoples with very large families? If you assume 6 kids per family and don't change any other assumptions, here's what you get:

Year 100: about 250,000
Year 200: about 7,000,000
Year 300: about 200,000,000
Year 400: about 6,000,000,000

ok so my point with

is that within 500 years of humanity starting to colonize the stars, several things will happen:

1) Populations will be high enough that the colonies will start having foreign policies and space fleets of their own.

2) Most governments will have collapsed and been replaced with something else at least once.

3) Whatever home earth government(s) were around to start the colonies will probably have been replaced with something else.

4) The Earth cultures that inspired and seeded the colonies will have changed significantly but will still be very recognizable.

So if you're looking for a tuffleyverse style setting where New Albions patrol the spaceways and fight a thirty years war with the space-french while the space-slavs spy on and subvert the space-turks, then this is the way to go. 500 years is about right. More and the cultures become too alien, and less than 300 years and the colonies haven't grown enough to be independent powers in their own right.

...

Good game.

Currently sort of working on one. Near-future space-based game, a good way into the colonisation of the solar system.
It's sort of retrofuturistic alternate history, in that the setting is based on what all the 1970s NASA concept art was depicting.

The players are going to be freelance traders/mercenaries/odd job men in their own ship, trying to make a semi-honest buck and keep their ship fuelled and full of propellant.
And yes, the two are different things, because this is NTR sci-fi.
Nuclear Thermal Rocketry.

Orion's Arm

Stripped down Mongoose Traveller, hard cap on technology at TL 11, no Jump drive or grav tech.

About as hard as UC Gundam, because I'm an English major and bad at math

How have I never read this? This is surprisingly really fucking cool.

So, you're playing jovian chronicles?

Anyone got a link for this?

Try the PDF in the OP of GURPS general.

That is fantastic.

Fantastic talk called The Science of Diskworld.

youtube.com/watch?v=3CMdTlbGhXQ

FBI agents working to stop terrorists from bombing/hijacking the Space Shuttle.

Issac Arthur videos are so fantastic.

It was a good game. It's weird to think that it's become a "classic."

I never got this image. As a second year astrophysics student hard sci-fi bores the shit out of me.

Give me pulpy space opera any day.

>What is your hard scifi world?
Star Trek.

Star Trek is generally as boring as I will go.

>Give me pulpy space opera any day.
Me too. Especially when "hard sci-fi" is applied as some sort of elitist mantra, like "my sci-fi is better than yours because it's nerdier", or whatever.

>Giant magtic space baby
""""""""""Hard scifi"""""""""""

I was going to say reality but meme magic has already entered our dimensional plane

So basically Orbital?

I hope you someday find a girlfriend who puts up with your definition of "hard".

Red Mars is definitely hard sci-fi but it would also not be a fun setting to play. Unless you start way past the early colonization, and then it's just boring modern day social intrigue on Mars somewhat broken up alongside racial/cultural lines (Swedes/ Saudis vs Americans if I recall)