Think about it.....what if one day our solar system was involved in &#39;Interplanetary War&#39; We&#39;d have to be advanced.
Considering the relatively enormous amounts of energy and the high level of technology required to travel between the stars with an acceptable speed, I would say that interstellar wars would be rare. However, it is possible, of course that it does happen. If you&#39;re sure to win, you could send a huge fleet if you have the resources. Perhaps some of them could have developed other ways to deal with their enemies on other planets or solar systems, by biological or nanotechnological warfare, perhaps. Either way, you&#39;re most likely right, it would be difficult to defend ourselves from an interstellar invader.
The extensive time investment involved with travel would also promote the concept of a "final solution".
Suppose a species took 10,000 years to get here (and it would take 10,000 years to get back to their industrial base). They could examine us, and determine that our progress in the last 10,000 years was too rapid. In addition, our nature might make us a threat.
Instead of returning in 20,000 years with a conquering fleet, a pre-emptive strike would be much more wise. "Nuke &#39;em from orbit"
*remember, other races would not have the same technological progress profile we do. Their biology might give them a glacially slow technology track. Maybe they&#39;ve taken 100,000 years to get from learning language to getting into space. A race that discovers space travel in 10,000 years (like us) would be frightening.
Thus, I support R&D into technology. The more money we put into advancements, the more able we&#39;ll be to counter future problems. As well, some believe that the more of a knowledge base we have, the faster we can add new knowledge.
Currently if aliens came to destroy us I don&#39;t think we would be able to do much. What do we have? Nuclear bombs, neutron bombs, atom bombs? If aliens who could travel across the stars didn&#39;t know about these sort of bombs then they shouldn&#39;t be travelling through space.
Maybe we might be able to win by accident, I don&#39;t think we would survive any other way currently.
I agree, we&#39;d be pooched.
I&#39;ve been researching the concept of a progressively-advancing technology level. I think the concept of the Singularity (http://www.betterhumans.com/Resources/Theories/theory.aspx?articleID=2002-05-22-4) is a noble one.
We need the technology to improve our lives in every way and even to survive as a species. We could gain full realtime data of the entire solar system, we could develop techniques to stop incoming asteroids, we could colonize the planets and maybe terraform them, at least Mars.
A magnetic bubble would only stop metal, you could bypass it with something made without metal. How about a pure energy ball aimed directly at Earth? How about a force field, what ever that is.
A race that discovers space travel in 10,000 years (like us) would be frightening.
10 000 years, or 4 500 million years?
Also, what basis do you have for comparison as far as rate of technological advancement is concerned?
What I mean is, once we started building and advancing - we haven&#39;t stopped. 10,000 years ago we started making buildings - now we&#39;ve gone to the moon. Pretty soon we&#39;ll be evolving our own DNA. That&#39;s pretty rapid advancement considering the times involved with interstellar travel (below c, anyway). If a planet is 1,000 years away, that&#39;s a significant chunk of time for a species like ours.
As for what basis I have for progress - well, our only comparison is other intelligent animals. Neither monkeys or dolphins can build houses :D . However, that&#39;s not a very fair comparison since (as it&#39;s been pointed out) it took a 50,000 years (or so) for our "intelligent" ancestors to start building bricks and bridges.
I am only extrapolating on other civilisations, but I suspect they&#39;ll have different technological process graphs. Think about us, humanity has intersperesed periods of learning with things like the Dark Ages. If we&#39;d had more time of dark ages, we&#39;d be much less advanced than we are today.
If we changed our values, or changed our instincts, we&#39;d be at a different place today as well. In my opinion, our culture is based on waste and comfort, not progress. Sometimes, some entrepreneur will find a way to do both (i.e, invent eyeglasses) - on those occassions we&#39;ll have a technological improvement as well as a comfort improvement. However, many entrepreneurs merely focus on increasing comfort, and so people spend their money on things like comic books and movies. There&#39;s no progress there, if you know what I mean.
So anyway, all I&#39;m saying is that tech-tracks might be different from civilisation to civilisation. I wouldn&#39;t be surprised if they had different values pushing their tech-tree.
We can always compare various &#39;races&#39; of humans, up until they met one another, as a comparision for the speed at which an &#39;intelligent&#39; race can advance and what sort of advancement speed differences there are.
is it possible that well after the colonisation of other planets etc that we could have an interplanetary war?
I doubt it. It&#39;s hard enough to travel between planets much less wage war. If the planets are not in the same system it&#39;s much more difficult. However, intraplanetary wars are likely for 1000 or so years.
LOL who knows his grandson may be in..
Hopefully, by the time man colonizes Mars, we would have evolved into a more benevolent society.
Garden variety definitions for "intra" (within) and "inter" (between) apply.