Reasons For War Among Asteroid Habitats

So I've been kicking around the idea of a realistic mid-future space opera, and the fact of the matter is that you can't really do it without eliminating Earth. You need a large space-born population divided into various interesting factions, but the economics of space travel mean that you can't really get a colonized solar system until much further than 'mid-future'. So Earth's gotta go.

In 1969, a rogue planetoid is detected on a collision course with Earth. ETA is ~80 years, around 2050. This leads to immediate action: institution of a one child policy, and the beginning of an evacuation plan. The world will use the remaining 80 years to construct a fleet of Orion driven ark ships, the size of small cities(I ran some back-of-envelope math. Checks out.). These will be built on site near major industrial and population centers, and launched in one big wave at the end when fallout and the destruction of all surrounding infrastructure isn't an issue. In the meantime smaller missions will be sent out to build expertise with living in space.

Major research outposts are established on Mars, Ceres, Vesta, and Calysto, with many more scattered around various other corners of the solar system. Ultimately, the way I see it it comes down to choosing between the asteroid belt and Mars. Mars has all the compounds necessary for life (CHONPS - Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Sulfur), but it's gravity is only 1/3 earth standard. This might not be an issue, but decisions will have to be made early on, and I think it's a risk they won't want to take. Mars does have a tenuous atmosphere, water, regolith for radiation shielding, and an open sky for psychological purposes - might not be a huge issue. On the other hand, the asteroid belt also has CHONPS - through those are a bit more distributed. Ceres has more water than all of Earth's oceans, you've got metals and silicates out the wazoo, and you can easily create earth-standard gravity by spinning your habitat. The Belt is thus chosen as the main target of Human colonization.

Smaller seed ships are sent out decades ahead of the main wave to establish infrastructure and develop expertise. These are followed by a wave of engineers and technicians who start to built the first major space habitats - semi-temporary structures designed to hold as many people as possible in the smallest amount of space for the years and decades that will be necessary to construct the second generation habitats where they can live comfortably. Back on Earth, cities and homes are constructed to minimize space and resources, both for efficiency and as test grounds for the post cataclysm habitats. Children spend their summers at space camps, living in close quarters, learning how to behave in the unforgiving environment of space. Their generation will be one ones to flee the Earth.

Nations compete and cooperate, trading technological capability for raw materials. They split up the Belt and the Solar System between themselves. A common external threat unites the world while simultaneously escalating tensions. With certain death of them and their children should they fail the multitude of challenges ahead of them, people act selfishly when they can. Great efforts are made to mediate conflict and prevent it from escalating, lest it divert resources from the critical task of evacuating the Earth.

At the very end, great Orion driven ark ships ascend from Earth’s surface on pillars of nuclear flame and sett course for their new homes in the belt, named after the cities they left behind. More habitats are built, overcrowding lessens. People adapt, trade, politics, and rivalries begin to reassert themselves. Pre-exodus slights and machinations cause resentment. War is devastating in space, where infrastructure is absolutely essential to life, but rational thinking does not always prevail over ideological conflict.

Except I want to write me some Risen Empire style space opera, and I want space battles. So I've been thinking about the economic reasons for war - socio-cultural reasons are all very fine and good, but you need an economic underpinning to go to engage in serious conflict most times. The problem is that there are a lot of asteroids out there, and they're more or less all good sources of the basics you need for life: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, are all abundant. Phosphorous and sulfur are rarer but still well represented in iron type asteroids. And there are plenty of metals.

My best idea so far has been that war might develop from land disputes, similar to the rising tensions over the south china sea right now. While resources might be plentiful in absolute terms, the effort required to extract say, sulfur, from an asteroid might mean that its more effective to find one of the rare asteroids with a high concentration. Hab A might send out a prospecting scout, but Hab B might make a counterclaim on the asteroid and send a patrol boat to ensure their asteroid isn't interfered with, prompting Hab A to send a small squadron to 'protect their prospector', etc. The situation might devolve into a shooting war, but at least it will be far from the hoe habs so no real damage will be done, and neither hab will attack the other directly because that will open them up for attack in a MAD scenario, so they keep squabbling and hold their grudges a long time which makes conflict even more likely in the future.

It's.... a workable solution, I suppose, but I feel like it's still only a limited justification. Can anyone suggest some ways to expand on this?

edited 29th Aug '16 7:32:27 PM by thealgebraist

"Us versus Them" is as old as Tribalism. Do people really need a (valid) reason to dislike, distrust, or outright hate the "other" group? Johnathon Swift parodied it in Gulliver's Travels, with the Big-Endians vs. the Little-Endians (based on which end they crack their boiled eggs from.)

In this case, it would be Martians versus Belters. Almost any conflict can be justified using Insane Troll Logic.

Mister, can you give me simplification so I can get an answer?

Some form of Unobtainium might work - for instance, a very rare isotope or mineral that's instrumental to counteracting the radiation sickness bound to develop on any non-planetary colony. You don't have to be a hateful bigot to kill for the ability of your family to live.

The best one I've ever come up with is an alien contact scenario. Alien ruins works just as well. First humans there get dibs on any alien tech (incl weapons). So it's a race for supremacy with no rules. The aliens themselves, if they are alive, probably won't know any better, so they could easily increase tensions without intending to.

Culture. My fave source on this one is Megazone23 which, while not actually focusing on a war of cultures with culture as the prize, operates under the assumption that people were most productive during the 1980s.

(Why yes, it was released in '85, why do you ask?)

Which got me thinking: what if the Megazone and Dezalg populations never went back to developing weapons (and the latter was as deliberately static culturally as the former)? What would they have to fight about, with their needs all being met?

Religion? Their populations didn't know they were in outer space, and would have no reason to think anything else was out there. If they weren't aware that the other was "the other", why would they fight?

No, they'd get down to saying "my music's better than your music". Nekki Basara and Tokimatsuri Eve would have a sing-off, SRWD-style. Each side, confident that their culture was superior, would horde it, only handing out the best of the best and keeping the mediocre B-Sides to themselves.

It'd be a war over artistic records.

Even if the resource are plentiful now, some nations will fight wars to secure more resources in the future. Take the French and Indian war for example. The British colonies had all the land and resources they could handle for the next 30 years. The war was more of a pre-emptive effort than one of desperation.

Politics, the aforementioned natural tendency of humanity towards tribalism, add in cultural differences that will inevitably arise between habitats, and throw in territoriality and real or perceived violation of territory boundaries and you could have any number of potential powder kegs.

Honestly though Jovian it sounds like you have what you need in general. A mixture of old world grudges, a favorite past time of human culture, and new world tensions thrown in for the balance.

"Insanity". Or "Backups". Asteroid habitats are fragile, and almost certainly depend on uninterrupted trade to... keep breathing. That means war is just a terrible, bad, no-good idea. Even a low-key conflict will involve entire habitats dying, and there are no victors because vengeance-strikes are very easy, and very deadly.

So in order to have a war you need the people involved to be deeply, barking, mad. Resource conflicts, or similar "reasonable" grounds for war just will not cut it. In order to initiate a large scale fight in this environment, where all weapons are weapons of mass destruction, you need serious hate. The people firing the first shot must be willing to loose most of their entire population - potentially, all of it - just to no longer share a universe with their enemies.

Or alternatively, they have ways to insure things like the merchant-rocket carrying the spare parts for the hydropondics getting blown up does not result in certain, slow, and horrible death. - The ability to enter hibernation and await rescue even if all systems fail, backups onto hardened electronic mediums for resurrection later, sort of thing. Ways to cheat death, as long as you have control of the battlefield after, would permit actual victory.

Or there is the third option: Highly ritualized war. Where people limit the weapons fire to designated battle fields and only official combatants. That's a thing that has happened before -it could happen in space, but it's not really.. very like modern war at all.

edited 5th Sep '16 11:59:09 AM by Izeinsummer

Speaking of which, just what kind of war are we dealing with here? Is it like a modern style military conflict with some laws and customs (and some officers decent enough to follow them), or is it a war of extermination with even colony drops being on the table? The desired scale and depth of the conflict would be most indicative of the respective goals and tactics... which is pretty much the reverse of how it works in real life, but that's world building for ya.