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Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda
Ok, so let's assume we've got a space elevator, a number of recreational and medicinal space stations in LEO, and some serious asteroid mining outposts who have declared themselves to be an independent entity from all Earth nations.
What kinds of special ops assignments might emerge within this milieu? I'm looking for something that requires a small, elite force and that's going to force my protagonist to confront the enemy pretty much face-to-face.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda
I'm still working out the details of which military branch controls what, but let's work with the idea of a combined model; the Air Force transports ground forces and maintains small combat vessels, the Navy maintains larger battle stations, and so forth.
(Speaking of which, if anyone has ideas on where the turf wars between the various branches might occur, that would be very handy.)
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Possible assignments:
- attacking / defending the space elevator, maybe sabotage v. outright attack - it would only take one missile or bomb, or maybe attack is more sophisticated (computer virus, whatever)
- VIPs (politician / CEO / ...) @ entertainment in orbit: protect / kill / rescue / defend
- medical research in orbit: bioweapons research / release, other key bio/pharma tech; defend, disrupt evil plans, etc.
- on some asteroid, of course, or the Moon, or in transit; but why?
The first objects for mining are the NEAs - near earth asteroids
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nhats.html . There are thousands, and some of them would be selected and mined before the asteroid belt proper due to the shorter travel time and/or lower "delta-v" and therefore energy requirements. You're going to have to say what they are doing with the output; it's likely building more structures in space, except for precious metals that might be returned to Earth.
A few of these - those that have earth-crossing orbits with near intersection at a convenient time - could, as mentioned above, also be used as a threat to Earth itself (or any region thereof); the idea is to use gravity to drop something very massive. Instead of "smart rocks" or "brilliant pebbles", use "stupid mountains". You can do this with hunks of the Moon, too. It's less feasible if the mass is not close to Earth - it takes a long time to move huge masses, and earth-based instruments can already track them, giving the "other side" plenty of time to react. Well-trod ground, I think, but one of these might fit in the plot - sneak a NEA mining crew onto one of these instead and start nudging it or breaking off a piece to nudge. The website above could be used to identify specific candidates in the timeframe, if wanted, for authenticity.
There probably won't be large-scale militarization of space in the next 200 years ("large battle stations") - it's very expensive, even with space elevators, and politically charged internationally - maybe a reason for a conflict in your story. But it would be developing in that timeframe, so that could be one potential part of the scenario: the events around the early attempts to gain de-facto control of space by one or more Earth gov'ts. Countries and corporations will be playing very high-stakes games of chess.
The key turf wars today are inside the Pentagon, and from there in budget appropriations in Congress (in the US). In 200 years, though, the simple trend from today is to have China as the dominant / wealthiest world power, with plenty of time and money to develop a sophisticated technology-based military.
Wikipedia seems to agree with me on much of this, and adds more. I should have looked there first
