Slugthrowers as Space Artillery in the American Mandate

"Slug" is a general term for any unguided (or semi-guided) projectile.  Slugthrowers are as old as our family:  apes evolved with rocks in their hands.  Mechanically-launched slugs appear in the Late Pleistocene to Holocene in the form of spearthrowers, slings and bows; complex mechanically-launched slugs were first developed by the Ancient Greeks and Chinese (ballistae and crossbows), and chemically-propelled slugs by the Medieval Chinese and Europeans (fire arrows and cannons).

Slugs dominated warfare from the 14^th through 20^th centuries.  Cannon ruled sieges and large battlefields; muskets and rifles short-ranged combat.  The subtype of slug called a shell – essentially a slug with an explosive and detonation mechanism – delivered by artillery tube or dropped from an airplane, ruled the battlefields of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  Even the first use of nuclear weapons, in World War II, was in the form of air-dropped bombs:  nuclear missiles did not become a reality until the 1950’s and were not deployed in numbers until the 1960’s.

With the development of missiles, slugs and shells became increasingly less important in strategic warfare.  Aside from personal combat, the main role of slugs and shells in 21^st-century warfare was as defensive weapons designed to shoot down attacking missiles.  These autocannon had an important combat role well into the 22^nd century, though principally to backstop anti-missile and anti-torpedo defenses based primarily around lasers, blasters and missiles.

In the late 22^nd century the development of the gausson (“gauss cannon,” basically an electromagnetic slugthrower) to full practicality gave the slugthrower a new lease on life.  Gauss-cannon could throw their slugs much faster than chemical propulsion, and the impact of the projectiles at several, eventually dozens of miles per second delivered concentrated energy which was superior to anything producible by small energy weapons.  The main limitation on the gauss-gun was range:  even if it fired a self-guiding projectile (essentially a very small missile) it was still essentially a close defense system.

In the 24^th century the leaper (“laser-propelled round”) further extended the range and speed of slugthrowers.  A leaper was propelled primarily by a laser mounted on the launching platform, though it might be given a starting boost by a gausson or other mechanism.  This allowed the leaper to accelerate all during its run, reaching terminal velocities of hundreds of miles per second, and it could use the received energy for delta vee, making it a sort of missile with a very limited engagement cone.  Leapers were important because they pushed the offensive-defensive projectile equation strongly to the defense, which meant that torpedoes were greatly weakened and such weapons as meson cannon and neutron blasters greatly strengthened in space combat.

Finally, the late 26^th century saw the development of the arkvee (“R-K-V” or “relativistic kill vehicle”) to practicality.  This was essentially a very fast leaper, using antimatter-pumped lasers on the gun mount to allow acceleration to many thousands of miles per seconds.  An arkvee, as the name implied, could if powerful enough reach a good fraction of “C” (the speed of light) and its kinetic energy would be immense:  at such velocities fairly small slugs impacted with the force of contact nuclear explosives.

Arkvees very strongly threw the balance of force to the offensive, and put a premium on powerplant, agility and active shields as the principal defense against such weapons..  When coupled with the gravitic-harness inertial damper, which enabled crewed ships to maneuver at hundreds of gravities, arkvees very much weakened all fixed defenses, such as the space fortresses which the Late Mandate had so very much relied upon to defend itself against the Outies.  The use of large numbers of small antimatter-powered, photon-driven grav-harnessed warships, armed with arkvees and disruptor cannon, by the Hordes which swept in from the Outer System during the 27^th and 28^th centuries, were the immediate cause of the fall of the American Mandate in Space, and its reduction to a remnant in Eurasia for the next millennium.

Birth of the Mardween (2012) by Jordan S. Bassior

"Birth of the Mardween"

(c) 2012

by Jordan S. Bassior

IntroductionShort for "Martian Bedouin," the Mardween are an Arab-derived culture of Sunni Muslim religious fanatics who emigrated to Mars in the late 21st and early 22nd centuries to practice their Wahabbist cult with strictures increasingly-illegal on Earth, including extreme patriarchy, honor-killings and the enslavement of non-Mardween.  The Mardween were implacable enemies of Western Civilization in general and of the American Mandate in particular:  in truth they deeply hated all life and civilization other than their own.  In the end they became merely a force for chaos and destruction, a taint on Mars and Mankind.

The First Martian Hegira
The culture was founded by Ahmed Jabril ("The Founder") Farouk who on January 15th, 2089 led the first Hegira to landfall on Mars, with the intent of eventually dominating Mars by demographic expansion.  Farouk's followers first setled around northern oases, and were tolerated by the other Martian settlements as long as they refrained from raiding them.  There, they built conventional domed outposts and shallow subterranean settlements, architecturally-similar to (if a bit better-fortified than) those constructed by the other Martian cultures.  In these early days, these Muslim colonists were still sufficiently weak -- and sane -- to avoid provoking a war of ethnocide from the other settlements:  indeed they participated in the 2097 declaration of the Martian Confederation, and fought for the Confederation against both the abortive 2150-51 attack by Lee III and the successful invasion in 2154-55 under Lee IV.

The Second Martian Hegira

When the American Mandate finally conquered Mars, in 2155, Farouk's eldest son and successor, Abdullah ("The Grim") led the most fanatical of his followers south of the equator into the deep deserts, in what was called the Second Hegira.  There, they at first attempted to build normal colonies, though well-concealed from the American authorities, in the hopes that risings would sweep the American presence from Mars, allowing them to return to the Founder's plan.  Part of Abdullah's strategy was to refrain from raiding as much as possibe, and to conduct such raids only by indirect and deniable means, so that the blame might be put upon "bandits."

In 2169, however, an astute investigator for the American Forces Military Police successfully proved to the satisfaction of General Sutton that Farouk's Wahabbists were actually behind the raids.  US forces descended upon Abdullah Farouk's capital of Sira by near-total surprise and captured the colony, finding ample evidence of Wahabbist misdeeds, including slaves taken from other Martian settlements, and stores missing from military convoys and depots.  Abdullah the Grim was slain in the fighting, but intelligence captured from his computers and some of his other followers allowed Sutton to roll up and occupy the Wahabbist settlements.

Here, the Mandate missed a major opportunity, because Sutton did not have the authority to disperse the Wahabbist civilians and hence end their culture.  Some of the most fanatical Wahabbists were able to escape into the unsettled deserts, where they set up heavily-stealthed subterranean encampments and made only the most minimal contacts with civilization, even Muslim civilization.  The populace in the Muslim settlements, both northern and southern, strongly sympathized with these fanatics -- for the first time called "Martian Bedouin" -- and young hotheads frequently ran off to join them. 

When Sutton tried a partial dispersal in 2171, through mass arrests in the most egregiously-rebellious settlements, to cut off supplies to the Bedouin, he aroused political opposition amongst liberals back home, who argued that he was unfairly persecuting a rich and unique culture that merely wanted to be left alone to their traditional way of life.  The new Commander Nicole Lee, fifth of her dynasty and one who imagined herself to be highly enlightened in the European mode, repudiated Sutton's actions, released his prisoners, and sent Sutton back to Earth, to take control of the continental defense of Antarctica.

In 2176, the shocking pornographic broadcasts made by Nicole Lee, as part of America's Quadricententennial Celebration, outraged many people throughout the Solar System, and in particular its Muslim population.  The terrorist atom-bombing of Washington DC was seen by many religious fanatics of all stripes as a sign that Armageddon was upon the Universe.  On Earth, there was widespread Muslim rioting. On Mars, these events both offended the Muslims, and heartened them when they saw Nicole Lee's incompetent and cowardly reaction to the attack on Washington DC, which included a pointless persecution of the Changists (a group hated by orthodox Muslims and blamed by Lee V for the attack) -- in an effort to avoid having to confront mainstream Islam.

In 2177, Lee V made matters worse by dispatching her favorite LaRousse, whom she had made a Marshal in the American Forces, to Mars to serve as Governor.  Marshal LaRousse was despised by much of the American military because of his inept response to the Muslim attacks of 2176, and the appointment was a deliberate attempt to remove him temporarily from the Terrestrial scene so that he might be returned at a future date, his sins overlaid by more recent blunders by other high officials.

LaRousse was a very poor choice for a Governor.  To begin with, he viewed his appointment primarily as a golden opportunity to line his own pocket through bribery, graft and outright extortion.  The wise policies of the late Commander Lee IV had led to a Martian economic boom, with the combination of superior Martian technical skill and access to the huge Terrestrial and Lunarian markets proving immensely profitable for Martian commerce.  To LaRousse, these thriving enterprises were so many geese to be plucked -- or even slaughtered -- for his own benefit.

So highly-skilled Martians, in control of a sizable and modern industrial infrastructure, who had been reconciled by Lee IV to American administration on the proviso that their economic growth was encouraged, were now being plundered by the disgraced favorite of Lee V, and plundered so ruthlessly that they were thrown into recession.  The Martians had been free a scant 22 years earlier -- just one generation past -- and they were far from tamed to the point that they would submit meekly to such treatment.

Formal delegations were rebuffed with scorn.  Public demonstrations were dispersed with lethal force.  Angered, and mourning the death of some of their own youth, the Martian political leadership readily accepted arms smuggled in from the League of Europa -- and supplemented them with many more munitions forged in Martian factories.  Survivors of the original wars of 2150 and 2154-55 provided leadership; the new generation was already old enough to provide ample recruits.

The rebellion against LaRousse erupted in 2178, just two yearsafter the appointment of that venal Governor.  Among the Martians joining in the rising included the Muslims, which was ironic because LaRousse's malfeasances included an almost complete suspension of patrol and law enforcement activity against the Muslim settlements (he preferred to use his forces to intimidate the wealthier non-Muslim towns, the better to fleece them).  LaRousse was so plainly a despicable, licentious coward that all this attempt at appeasement produced was utter scorn on the part of even the more moderate Muslims, let alone the fierce Bedouin of the South.

In the encounter, LaRousse's forces -- led by political favorites and supplies stripped by embezzlement -- proved woefully below the normal Mandatial standard, and far less able than were the Martian rebels.  In a mere month the rebels seized control of the whole planet and its orbital facilities; only the forts on Deimos remained in American hands, and these were so besieged that the commanding officer at Deimos, Brigadier Leonard Oswald Ferrell (a more competent nephew of that Terrence Ferrell famously ambushed at Blackrock in 2121) was barely able to keep enough lasers and casters working to prevent a precision bombardment of his works.

With this victory the Bedouin -- led by Hakim ("The Cruel") Farouk, younger brother of the slain Abdullah, ran wild.  They were just sufficiently sane to avoid attacking their fellow rebels, but they did make prisoner various American and other foreign personnel, both military and civilian, and upon them visited the most horrible abuses.  Many were mutilated and enslaved; others simply slain, with or without slow torture.  Some of the worst atrocities were actually comcast to Earth, by way of defiance.

These actions horrified not merely the Mandate but also all sane men throughout the Solar System -- including most of the Martian rebels.  When Morton Blythe Stanek formed the Second Martian Confederation, it was with great reluctance that the Muslims were represented, and it was generally understood by the other Martians that the Muslims were to be kept away from any real decision-making powers -- which politically-weakened the revolutionary regime.

Marshal LaRousse survived the defeat of the Mandatial forces by fleeing Mars -- not for Deimos, which he judged doomed -- but for Luna.  Faced with political embarassment and strategic disaster, Lee V brought General Sutton back from his Antarctic obscurity, made him a Marshal, and put him in command of the American Martian Expeditionary Force, tasked with recovering Mars for the Mandate, and suppressing the rebellion.

Sutton swept swiftly to Mars, taking the calculated risk of leading with a strong force of assault carriers, strike cruisers, destroyers and fast tenders, while the main body of battlefleet lagged behind.  Consequently, he was able to arrive in early 2179, before the Martians had sufficiently fortified Phobos, and though his light forces took losses from the enemy defenses, his torpedoes battered and then his marines captured the inner Martian moon,  allowing Ferrell to reopen the port on Deimos and opening the port on Phobos to the American transports.

Now with strong superiority in Martian orbital space, Sutton brought up his battleships and bombarded the Martian surface defenses into uselessness, gaining complete orbital supremacy.  Massing his forces rapidly but with precision, he bombarded local defenses around Bradbury and effected a landing at that port, seizing and strongly garrisoning a wide worldhead.  He was able to hold it against desperate Martian counterattacks, within which could be landed further reinforcements.  The Martian ability to concentrate against his landing was limited by orbital interdiction fire, and Sutton's own ability to make raids and even secondary landings as required elsewhere on the planet.

As for the Second Martian Confederation, following the fall of Bradbury its political disintegration was rapid.  Sutton was almost as canny a diplomat as he was a general officer, and he knew Mars well enough to grasp where lay the political faultlines.  He covertly treated with all the major Martian factions, even the Muslims, and offered all pardons and good treatment should they submit to the American Mandate.  As one after another settlement and faction surrendered even before his troops rolled up to their gates, he was as good as his word toward most of the factions -- but not the Southern Wahabbists.  The Martian Bedouin, of course, kept on fighting -- though after Hakim the Cruel died in an American raid on October 26th 2179, they fought as independent bands, clans and families rather than as a united force.

Sutton had seen firsthand the barbarity of their culture in his 2169-71 campaign, and was well aware of the Bedouin atrocities of 2178.  After he had firmly garrisoned all Martian settlements -- especially those of the Muslims -- he conducted a thorough investigation into all actions committed by the Martian Muslims from 2171 on which would be considered criminal even in most Outie polities, such as rape, slavery, torture and the murder of prisoners.  All the while he recomcast the original atrocities, with tantalizing leaks from his investigations to outrage not only the population of the Mandate but also the reconquered Martians.  The final straw -- for the Martians -- was when he produced evidence showing that such abuses had also been committed against other Martians who had somehow fallen afoul of Muslim ire.

With this revelation, he sprung the trap.  The Martian Muslims were assigned almost all blame for both the revolt and its atrocities.  The other Martians gladly agreed with this notion.  Virtually every Muslim who had been an officer, official or even combatant in 2178-79 was convicted of war crimes.  Sentences ranged from death to mental enslavement to long prison terms.  Every child belonging to their families was judged to be in an unfit environment and put in fosterage.  The Muslim colonies themselves were confiscated in reparations for the atrocities and their lands and other assets put up for sale; their populations forcibly evicted and dispersed among other settlements, both on Mars and elsewhere.

The Third Martian Hegira

As one would expect, the most fanatical of the surviving Muslim Martians refused to accept this grim edict.  With the death of Farouk the Cruel, they had no overall leader, but the surviving Sheiks were able to organize escapes of families with considerable amounts of war-surplus equipment into the deep Southern deserts, far from even the old Wahabbist settlements.  There, the Mars-Bedouin were determined to make a stand for their religion, for their culture, and for their way of life -- including raids against and the enslavement of the unbelievers.

At first, of course, they were hiding far more than raiding.  American Forces pursued them, but desultorily -- as long as they stayed away from convoys and settlements, and did not make their presence obvious, the Americans were too busy rebuilding Mars to be able to devote the tremendous effort needed to find and neutralie every single Mars-Bedouin holdout.

Marshal Sutton would have liked to get them all, of course, but in 2180, less than one year after he had completed his conquest of Mars, the Second Great Muslim revolt erupted on Earth.  With significant portions of Earth itself under rebel Muslim control, Sutton could not keep most of his forces:  they were shipped back to the Terrrestrial System to support Marshal Hispano's Arabian campaigns.  While Sutton did not wholly abandon the field to the Mars-Bedouin, even in the deepest deserts of the south, all he could do was to guard scattered outposts, escort convoys, and carry out the occasional search-and-destroy operation -- usually in reaction to a Bedouin raid.

It was during this period that Sutton's troops -- often overstretched, tired, and increasingly-cynical about the prospects for long-term victory against such an elusive foe, began to call the Martian Bedouin simply the "Mardween" -- and the culture received the name under which it would be finally known to history.

Natural Boundaries for Spacefaring Civilizations

Introduction

An important concept in earthbound geopolitics is the "natural boundary" -- which is to say a defensible frontier beyond which further advance becomes difficult given any sort of serious opposition.  Natural boundaries are important because they are basic units of empire -- an empire expands past a natural boundary with difficulty, but once it has conquered a whole region within boundaries of this sort, can easily hold them.  Natural boundaries thus tend to also become political boundaries, whether imperial or provincial, and where natural and political boundaries are identical, very stable boundaries.

If we postulate civilizations expanding past single worlds to become interlunar, interplanetary or interstellar in scope, then we should attempt to discover what sort of natural boundaries might affect the growth and defense of an spacefaring civilization.  This article examines the possibilities, assuming "real-world" physics (no FTL or time travel).

First, let us examine the concept of "natural boundaries" as they exist on Earth.

I.  Terrestrial Natural Boundaries

There are three basic sorts of natural boundaries:  obstructive, logistical and cultural.

A.  Obstructive Natural Boundaries

An obstructive natural boundary is the simplest sort.  It is essentially a terrain feature that is difficult to pass; hence it renders defense along its line relatively easy.

Suppose that two countries, Alphia and Betasan, are separated by a mountain range which is crossable only by means of narrow passes.  It is fairly easy for either country to build fortresses on its side of the passes, making it very difficult for an enemy army to force a passage.  If both Powers be roughly equivalent in strength and competence, then wars between the two Powers will tend to be long, drawn-out and indecisive; for this reason they will be rare and unlikely to result in the capture of much territory.  Hence, the border is likely to run along that mountain range for a very long time, until one or both of these countries collapse. 

A real-world example of this is the Pyrenees between France and Spain:  even though France and Spain fought each other several times between the 16th and 19th centuries, only during periods when one country or the other was exceptionally strong or weak were such wars fought to decisions on the enemy's home territories, and the diplomatic tendency was for the border to return to this natural boundary.  One reason for this diplomatic tendency was that both sides were aware that the condition of strength or weakness on one or the other side was transient, and a border not drawn along this natural frontier would be unstable:  it would simply lead to a war of reconquest in which the former owner of the territory would have all the advantages, for reasons which will be discussed under "logistical" and "cultural" natural boundaries.

Mountain ranges are obvious obstructive boundaries, but any sort of terrain which is difficult to cross can serve the same function.  For instance a large river may only be crossable without boats at a few fords or bridges; a dense forest or wide swamp may have only limited roads along which supplies can be hauled, and of course operations across oceans are limited by the availability of sea transport, so coastlines are also natural boundaries.

Even today, where natural boundaries have to some extent been surmounted by the ability to build railroads, superhighways, modern seaports and airports, a surprising number of countries have coterminous natural and political boundaries.  This is in part due to the fact that these boundaries may have been set before the Steam and Electrical Ages; in part due to the effects of logistical or cultural boundaries.

B. Logistical Natural Boundaries

A logistical natural boundary exists where a transport system, allowing easy movement of men and supplies, reaches its limits.  Everything within the range of this transport system is relatively easy to defend, because armies may readily maneuver using this transportation.  Beyond the range of the transport system, amies find it difficult to operate due to the need to drag large supply trains along with them:  movement is slow and operations endangered by the risk of supply exhaustion.

The (literally) classical example of this is afforded by the Roman Empire.  The Roman Empire had a basic transportation system afforded by oceanic shipping and riverboats, which it extended overland through the construction of the Roman roads.  Because the Romans lacked steam locomotives and motor lorries, land movement of any great quantity of supplies had to be accomplished through beasts of burden. 

But beasts of burden need fodder themselves in order to work, meaning that long-distance supply trains had to haul a lot of fodder just to fuel the beasts which were pulling their wagons.  If the journey was too long -- beyond around 50-200 miles depending upon roads and terrain -- the supply trains would have to carry so much fodder that they could not also transport any significant amount of supplies, and hence this rendered military operations beyond this range both dangerous and impractical.  (Steam trains and motor trucks have similar problems, but need much less coal or petrol per ton-mile than beasts of burden need food, hence motorized supply trains allow much longer supply lines).

In consequence, the Roman Empire basically followed the contour of the territories within a 50-200 mile range of the oceans and navigable rivers, save where deliberate strategic decisions were made to use a river itself as a natural boundary (as was the case at times on the Rhine and Danube).  Indeed, sometimes within ostensibly Roman provinces, those areas far from the coasts and rivers would often be half-wild, with brigands and surviving semi-independent barbarians, because it was too much trouble for the Romans to police such regions save during prolonged periods of peace.

Obstructive and logistical natural boundaries can and often do coincide.  For instance, the aforementioned Pyrenees are also a logistical natural boundary to any pre-Steam Age army, because it is difficult for supply trains to move through the passes.  (In winter it's almost impossible).  A French army trying to operate in Spain, unless it was able to get supplied by sea, might starve -- as the French discovered to their sorrow in the Peninsular War campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars.

Deserts are more logistical than obstructive boundaries.  Most deserts are flat and many are relatively hard-surfaced:  good walking terrain.  But they are also hot by day, cold by night, and lack much in the way of available food and water.  An army wishing to operate in the desert must bring its own water, which means it needs a larger than usual supply train, and the beasts pulling the wagons of the supply train also need to carry their own water.

Before the domestication of the camel, large-scale trans-desert military operations were almost impossible, and even afterward they were difficult.  This is why the writ of the Pharoahs did not run too far from the Nile and its nearby oases such as Lake Fayum, even in eras when Egypt controlled major parts of the Levant.   The Roman Empire was never able to expand very far south into Africa, save along the Nile, and the many wars between Rome and Parthia were usually rendered indecisive by the difficulty of crossing the Syrian deserts.  Even after the development of motorized transportation, desert warfare was difficult:  the North African campaigns fought between 1940 and 1943 rarely saw signficant forces move more than 100 or so miles inland from the coast, and operations were very much dependent upon the availability of seaborne supply and the control of good ports at which to land them.

When a good natural boundary is found and reached, a society may long defend these boundaries, and the people living within this boundary may develop a shared culture.  This leads to the last major type of natural boundary.

C. Cultural Natural Boundaries

All things being equal, people would rather be governed by leaders and administrators of their "own kind" -- people who speak the same language, worship the same gods, and have similar philosophies of justice and standards of decorum.  People will accept oppression from native tyrants far more readily than they would accept the same oppression from foreign ones, and the rule of even enlightened foreigners is often resented.

As I mentioned, since obstructive and logistical natural boundaries tend to be stable, the people within them will often be under the same rule for long periods of time.  Over the generations, these people will assimilate with their masters and with each other, until they share a common culture:  a culture that they perceive as very distinct from those people within or on the other side of natural boundaries.

This greatly increases the defensive power of the natural boundaries.  Should an invader from outside the culture-group manage to surmount the natural boundaries and seize some or all of the territory within them, the resistance of the natives may be bitter and protracted.  It may take centuries for the natives to accept and assimilate to the new rulers, and until then the governors will face a constant threat of revolt.  If the imperial power faces other dangers -- internal or external -- at the same time, the threat may become an actuality, and the revolt may even prove successful.

This threat is far greater if the invader has conquered only some of the territories within the natural boundary system.  As long as independent territories and armies of the native culture are still extant, such will serve as a rallying-point for the rebellious subjects of the empire, and such independent territories will be especially quick to strike at the empire when the empire suffers a time of weakness.

An excellent example of this is afforded by the fates of the European empires in the East Indies during and immediately after World War II.  France and the Netherlands both lost the early phase of World War II to the Germans, which also weakened their now-unsupported colonial forces in Indochina and Indonesia.  Britain remained undefeated, but could not afford their Malaysian colonies much support when the British were fighting for their lives at home.

The Japanese took advantage of their weakness in 1940 and 1941, invading first Vietnam and then Malaysia and Indonesia.  Though the Japanese were thrown out of these territories by the victorious Allies in 1945, the postwar West was badly-drained by the economic, human and moral costs of the war, and the natives rebelled against their foreign masters.  The Dutch were thrown out of Indonesia by 1950; the French from Indochina by 1954. 

Even the British left Malaysia in 1957, though in part because Britain was less damaged than the other two colonial Powers by World War II, and in part because British rule had been more humane, the British were not forced out by the Malaysian Insurgency but instead remained friendly with the regimes of Malaysia and Singapore.  Note that things might have been less friendly had the British insisted on holding on to power.

Cultural natural boundaries are subtler than the other two kinds of natural boundaries, but they can be very strong.  Cultural areas can remain effectively unified even when they are formally governed by different regimes:  note the strength of the Anglo-American Alliance from 1917 to the present date, or the friendship between all the nations of the Anglosphere (America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand).  It is very difficult to engage in the long-term subjugation of an alien cultural group, unless one's military superiority and political determination both be great and long-lasting.

Now let us extend these basic concepts into the recent past, present, and future.

II. Spatial Natural Boundaries

A.  Obstructive

Space is mostly empty and relatively invariant, so one might think that there are no obstructive boundaries in space.  There are in fact two very large ones:  gravity, and distance. 

The "terrain" of space is formed by massive objects creating gravity wells, in orbit around other massive objects creating gravity wells.  A force deep in a gravity well must expend energy to escape the gravity well; likewise, a force orbiting a gravity well must expend energy to counter the velocity of its orbit and drop into the gravity well -- save for missiles, it may also have to expend energy to avoid crashing into the massive object at high speed.

Distance is obstructive primarily because it provides time for defenders to destroy incoming missiles.  Since missiles are potentially the most destructive of weapons, and since stealth is difficult in open space, the longer a missile has to travel before impact the greater the likelihood that it will be destroyed by defenders' weapons, particularly energy weapons.  Given computers at least as advanced as those existing today, the effective accuracy of energy weapons asymptotically approaches 100% assuming a non-evading target, and evasion is essentially impossible at ranges below around 0.1 LS (about 30 thousand kilometers).

Secondarily, distance provides defenders more time to destroy incoming warships:  the more so because energy weapons cannot quickly destroy a well-protected target but can slowly destroy such a target through overheating.  The main defense against overheating is a heat sink, but heat sinks are ablative defenses (the heat must eventually be gotten rid of, mainly through dumping into hot volatiles which are then ejected), and given enough time the target will exhaust its supplies of coolant and be reduced to the much less effective means of heat loss by radiation.

Finally, at interplanetary or greater ranges, distance causes a communications lag which fatally lengthens the command and control loop.  Thus, assuming no FTL couriers or radios, actual sapient minds must be present to do more than launch a long-range raid against any world not in the same lunar system.

B.  Logistical

Space is mostly analogous to a desert.  Nothing save a lack of energy and reaction mass, or the existence of relatively strong gravity wells, prevents maneuver onto any desired vector.  However, like a desert, everything (save for small amounts of energy obtainable by the reception of radiation) that one requires for supply must be brought along on the spaceship itself.

This means that distance is also a logistical barrier.  If I wish to conduct military operations on Mars, and it takes my spaceship six months to get to Mars, then I must carry six months' worth of supplies for my ship, crew and equipment.  Supply requirements may be reduced by means of recycling (utterly essential for rapidly-exhausted supplies such as air and water) and fabrication shops aboard the spaceship itself, but recycling and fabrication imply the provision of specialized equipment which also takes up mass and requires energy to operate.

One very important type of supply is reaction mass.  This is distinct from "fuel" in all but chemical rockets:  power comes from a fission or fusion reactor, or from chemical, nuclear or antimatter fuel cells, but this power cannot directly drive the ship.  Instead, the power is used to fling out mass or energy, which then drives the ship through Newtonian reaction.  This is a "reaction drive," and so far it is the only sort of space drive which we know how to build or are even certain is theoretically possible.

In space, there is neglible friction on a human timescale, so the important question of maneuver is not "speed" but "acceleration" and the resultant "velocity."  Velocity is a vector rather than scalar force, which means that it is a magnitude PLUS a direction.  One is not merely flying at, say, 20 km/sec, one is flying at 20 km/sec on a particular spherical bearing.

Changing one's vector is called "delta vee" (change in velocity), and any object with a certain reaction mass and exhaust velocity has a certain delta vee, and can be rated by that delta vee.  When an object has exhausted its reaction mass, it cannot change its velocity save by very slow means relying on the weak force of the solar and other particle winds ("space sailing") and by the clever use of gravity and the tiny amount of friction which does exist in the (semi-) void.  Hence, reaction mass (and delta vee) are a "supply" which is depleted by operations.

Worlds, from the greatest gas giant down to the tiniest asteroid, are potential supply sources.  Whether this potential is realized is based on the resources and facilities present on the world and on the spacecraft.  Gravity wells have a complex relationship here:  the deeper the gravity well, the easier it is in terms of time and delta vee to achieve orbit; but the harder it is in terms of time and delta vee to leave orbit.

Acceleration capability is important in this regard.  An ion-driven spaceship with a maximum acceleration of 0.005 G would take a lot of time to achieve orbit around a small world or leave orbit around a large one; a fusion-driven spaceship with a maximum acceleration of 5 G would have little problem landing or taking off  (let alone acheiving or leaving orbit) from even the largest planet.

Local conditions may create logistical boundaries, because spacecraft may require special equipment to operate under particular local conditions.  The ones we are most familiar with is atmosphere and gravity:  a spaceship designed for operation in vacuum and under very low-g acceleration will not be able to take off or land from a world with a signficant atmosphere or gravity, and will have to conduct operations on its surface by means of shuttles or landers which have better engines or streamlining.

Another local condition is radiation, or the lack of radiation.  A spaceship designed to operate closer to Jupiter than Callisto would need strong electromagnetic shielding, stronger than most spaceships might have.  Consequently, the magnetosphere of Jupiter would be an obstructive barrier to ships without this shielding, and a logistical barrier in that ships would have to be equipped with this shielding to so operate.  Conversely, a ship making extensive use of solar power would be useless in the Outer System, where solar radiation and hence the energies so obtainable would be feeble.

Distance, which we've already discussed as an obstructive boundary, is also a logistical one.  If a force from the Solar System wishes to conduct military operations in the Alpha Centauri System, its communications with the Solar System will suffer an 8.72 year round-trip time lag, which means that even the fastest possible supply shipment (lasered energy) could not possibly be changed any more rapidly.  This means that very long-range operations would have to be well-planned in advance, and could not be easily reinforced if they encountered unexpected difficulties.

Here we should mention receptive drive and energy systems, or to speak more familiarly, catapults and powerbeams.  A spaceship does not need to carry all the fuel and reaction mass that it would normally  if it can get some of its power through beamed transmission from bases, or some of its delta vee through launcher/catcher catapult systems.  Several frequencies and kinds of electromagnetism (particularly masers) work well for beamed power transmission; options for catapults include electromagnetic rails, ion projectors, and lasers.  Counterintuitively, a catapult "launcher" can also serve as a "catcher" -- in other words, a ship or cargo can be not only accelerated but also decelerated (most efficiently by a catapult at the destination, but it is actually also possible to do it from the point of origin using large reflector and receptor arrays deployed by the ship itself.

This mention belongs here because any such use of receptive systems requires coordination with the transmission facilities.  This limits the flexibility of their use at ranges which impose signficant two-way communications lags.  For instance, if a fleet from Earth is atempting to operate against Mars, and it is getting most of its energy by maser beam from Earth, it cannot engage in unplanned maneuvers (such as evasion or other combat events might require) or it will maneuver right out of its power beams.  Likewise, any delta vee obtained from external sources cannot be used for unplanned maneuvers; in the case of catcher systems, the catchers themselves might be at hazard from enemy action.  Hence, receptive systems are much more useful for civilian than military purposes.

C.  Cultural

Generally speaking, the maximum range of exploration will always be greater than the maximum range of colonization, and the maximum range of routine transportation less than the maximum range of colonization.  This means that we will generally be able to explore farther than we can colonize, and colonize farther than we can engage in large-scale operations.

This is a situation quite familiar to terrestrial history, and its implication for the creation of cultural natural boundaries is that there will be a time period between the initial colonization of a world and the development of large-scale transportation infrastructure between the homeworld and colony.  During this period, there will be signficant obstructive and logistical boundaries between the homeworld and colony.

Thus, the colony will be able to develop a culture distinct from the homeworld, and if the colony secedes from the homeworld, will enjoy significant defensive advantages should the homeworld dispute its independence.  These defensive advantages will be the greater, of course, in a war fought long after independence, because a long-independent nation will have a more developed economy and military establishment.

Obviously, it takes time to establish a culture firmly enough, and to let its population grow through immigration or natural increase to the point that its cultural solidarity becomes a natural boundary.  This is unlikely to happen, during the first expansion outward from the Earth, regarding Earth-Orbital or Lunar colonies, because the technological advances permitting large-scale military operations will likely come rapidly enough on the heels of those permitting colonization, and the vast existing population on the Earth will be very concerned about dominating Earth-Orbit, or Earth's only natural satellite.  But it is very likely to happen regarding other worlds of the Solar System and beyond, because as we go farther and farther out, the number of potential targets for colonization increase to (literally) astronomical quantities.

These cultural natural boundaries will be important as a source of resistance to divisio et imperio ("divide and rule") invasion strategies:  which is to say, obtaining a surface-head on and hence circumventing the other natural boundaries of obstructive distance and logistical supply support which act to defend a world against invasion from without.  United worlds will be conquered from time to time, owing to the fact that an attacking multi-world empire may be able to concentrate vastly greater force to bear on a single planet than that planet has with which to defend itself, but the defender will enjoy a tremendous force-multiplier advantage, as long as he can remain culturally and politically united.

D. Technological Progress

The main instability inherent in any such system of natural boundaries is the advance of technology.  Gravity wells that were obstructively-deep and distances logistically-wide to spaceships with one kind of drive may be conveniently-shallow and narrow to spacecraft equipped with later and more powerful engines.  Logistical problems which crippled operations in one century might be solved by improved resource processing and product fabrication devices.  Hostile local conditions that required massive and expensive protective systems at one level of technology might become mere nuisances to the improved protective systems that are later devised.

We have seen this repeatedly happen in terrestrial history.  For instance, the very same ocean which prevented Great Britain from holding on to her North American colonies in the late 18th century could not prevent the United States of America from liberating Western Europe in the mid-20th.  The ocean was no narrower, but what had been a major logistical barrier to sailing ships displacing hundreds of tons was only a minor one to steamships displacing thousands of tons.  We now have routine tourist transportation to coastal Antarctica:  to many of the same places which a mere century ago were reachable only at great danger and suffering.

In general, the key technologies which will overcome natural spatial boundaries are powerplants and engines, followed by life support and fabrication.

1. Powerplants and Engines

These two technologies are related, because greater energy-density of power system roughly correlates with greater exhaust velocity of engine, and hence the specific impulse generated by each kilogram of reaction mass (the relevant equation being f=m(v squared) where f = force, m=reaction mass, and v=exhaust velocity).  As this demonstrates, increasing the exhaust velocity has much more effect on the production of thrust than does merely dumping more reaction mass:  reaction mass affects thrust force linearly while exhaust velocity affects it geometrically.

Generally speaking, the simplest kind of rocket is a chemical rocket, in which fuel and reaction mass are one and the same.  Chemical rockets allow routine access to orbital space but allow access to inter-lunar space only with difficulty and inner inter-planetary space (Mercury to the Asteroid Belt) with extreme difficulty.  Next comes nuclear fission and thermal or ion drives, which allow routine access to inter-lunar space, inner inter-planetary space with difficulty and outer inter-planetary space (Jupiter through Neptune) with extreme difficulty.  Then nuclear fusion and plasma or fusion drives (a fusion drive is a plasma drive with a fusion afterburner), which allow routine access to inner inter-planetary space, access to outer interplanetary-space with difficulty, and far outer interplanetary-space (the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud) with extreme difficulty.  Finally come antimatter-powered photon rockets, which allow routine access to outer interplanetary space, far outer interplanetary space with difficulty, and the stars within about a dozen light-years with extreme difficulty.

There may be power systems and drives beyond that, without totally leaving the confines of known or almost-known physics.  For instance, energy might be drawn from the structure of spacetime ("Zero Point" energy) or stored in stretched gluons (by teasing and holding apart the quarks in subatomic particles), or fuel or reaction mass might be scooped from the interstellar medium through the use of lasers to ionize and electromagnetic fields to draw in interstellar dust and gasses (the "Bussard Ramjet" principle).  Considerable advances in physics and engineering would be needed to employ either method on a practical scale, but none of this would violate known physical law.  Such improved systems might allow merely difficult or even routine access to the close stars.

Beyond this of course lies the possibility of FTL communication and travel, but since so much of the physics involved is incredibly speculative and I'm trying to stick as close as possible to "hard science," I will leave off at this point.

2.  Life Support and Maintenance

Both are essentially concerned with mastery of chemical and mechanical processes, and neither involve any fundamental physical advances:  they are purely issues of design and control of the systems.  Hence they may be assumed to be developed further and further with time; yet the precise degree of their development at any particular time imposes the most basic logistical limits on military and other operations.

We already know what chemicals and biochemicals human beings need to survive.  Basically, we need clean air and water, and wholesome foods.  Providing such, on the scale of a settlement or even a large hab, would be a necessary but not theoretically very difficult task.  The problem, of course, is that for transport operations, one must either shrink the recycling and production systems down to a portable mass, or simply accept that one will only be able to produce an incomplete set of the required biochemicals and supplement that set with irreplacable supplies, carried aboard the spaceships.

Likewise, we would know precisely what sorts of replacement parts might be required to keep functional the mechanisms of the spaceship and its equipment (including the life support system).  As technology advances, the mass and other costs associated with the required highly-flexible machine shops reduce, and the more sophisticated the equipment which can be repaired onboard, rather than at a better-equipped base.

However, there is a subtler problem associated with both life support and maintenance, which may prevent logistics from ever being more science than art.  That is that both ecologies (even the limited ecologies of spacecraft life support systems) and systems of mechanisms (such as those comprising the spacecraft) are complex systems which can succeed or fail in complex, synergistic, "emergent property" fashions.  Consequently, both sapients of skill and emergency backup systems and supplies will always be needed, albiet to a diminishing extent as the technologies progress.  And there will always be the occasional disaster, avoidable or unavoidable, to remind sapients that traveling across long distances is inherently hazardous, though also to a diminishing extent as progress marches on.

III.  Levels of Boundary

A. Sub-Orbital

The Great Powers of the Earth have been an effectively sub-orbital civilization since the 1950's, when we developed long-range rockets capable of flying accurately for thousands of miles.  By putting nuclear warheads on these rockets, and by putting these rockets on submarines, surface ships and heavy bombers, we effectively rendered all existing terrestrial obstructive natural boundaries irrelevant at least where unlimited strategic bombardment was concerned.

In consequence, the whole world of Earth has now become effectively part of the same natural boundary system.  Any Earthly Great Power may carry out strategic bombardment against any other Earthly Great Power, and the only military bar to such bombardment is an active defense:  the deployment and use of anti-missile missiles or defensive energy weapons:  and such weapons are not significantly enhanced by the presence of any natural boundaries save (to a limited extent) large oceans.

Logistical natural boundaries have been severely weakened by the wide deployment of railroads, superhighways and large steamships.  Where such boundaries are still somewhat effective, it is through defensive action:  for instance, interdiction strikes on enemy rail and road nets, or submarine and air strikes against enemy transport shipping.  They are becoming increasingly ineffective however as transportation becomes cheaper and more versatile.  It is much harder to interdict motor lorries than it is steam trains, and harder still to interdict transport helicopters.

Cultural natural boundaries are still strong, because they take generations to drop.  Widespread global communications are slowly breaking down such boundaries:  it would already be politically very difficult for two Western Powers to go to war against one another, and in such a case both parties would face extreme political pressure to conduct a war in the most humane possible fashion (for example, the Falklands War, in which both sides accepted surrenders and treated captured military and civilian personnel very correctly).  Most vicious wars are now either fought by non-Western Powers or across strong cultural boundaries (and the latter, of course, tend to be indecisive for precisely that reason).

The obvious long-term trend for military operations on any one world in a state of sub-orbital civilization is for them to either lead to general devastation (as strategic bombardment becomes too easy) or general unification (whether through peaceful federation or protracted conquest).  Eventually, any world which survives its disunited stage will become culturally and politically unified, and then its own ionosphere becomes a "natural boundary."

In the not too distant future, sub-orbital capabilities may also be used to reduce logistical barriers to the very rapid deployment of military forces.  There is no theoretical reason why hypersonic sub-orbital rockets might not be used as troop transports, though the economics of such rocketry will mean that they will at first only be used for the insertion of very small specialist forces, such as commandoes and various kinds of scouts and engineers.  Eventually, most intercontinental air transport might be superseded by suborbital passenger rockets or (magnetic or other) catapult-launched capsules.

Before this happens, though, the nature of the technologies involved tends to lead to such a world ascending to the next stage of transporation capacity.

B.  Orbital

In our history, it took less than two decades to pass from the first sub-orbital rocketry to the first orbital rocketry.  However a case can be made that we did not really become an "orbital" civilization until the deployment of the first manned orbital space stations in the 1970's.

Because there are no natural objects in close orbit around the Earth, becoming an orbital civilization did not mean any major changes to military operations in terms of new terrains to colonize and hold.  This might not be the case for all orbital civilizations:  for instance, if an orbital civilization had evolved on Mars, it might have progressed rapidly from sub-orbital rocketry to planting actual settlements on Deimos and Phobos, both of which are in fairly close orbit of their planet.  We may also in the future choose to build large permanent close-orbital stations (though there are some disadvantages to such siting, due to the need to periodically trim their orbits to counteract the effects of high-atmospheric drag).

Instead, the main effects on military operations of becoming an orbital civilization were to vastly improve the power of reconaissance for any Power with space superiority, or even parity, with its foes.  The development of reconnaissance satellites greatly reduces the ability of distance or obscuring terrain to hide forces, which in turn weakens natural boundaries.

An artificial space settlement in close orbit around a world would be highly-vulnerable to military action from the world's surface.  It might be able to defend itself from enemy missiles, because the missiles would have to cross a large open space to reach the settlement, and during that time the settlement would be able to engage the missiles with their own anti-missile missiles or energy weapons, but enemy energy weapons based on or near the world's surface could bombard the space structure with extreme accuracy, burning precisely into its sensors, weapons and power systems.  Even an armored space settlement would eventually succumb to the power of enemy beams which would have a whole world's power grid on which to draw, and which would be commanded from bunkers miles-deep in the world's crust.

The defense of a moon in such an orbit, however, might prove more practical.  Though enemies on a world's surface could still snipe with energy cannons at exterior targets with extreme accuracy, the sheer volume and mass of a moon -- even a small moon like Phobos or Deimos -- would enable the defenders to make a literal "defense in depth," meaning that they could locate their command centers, arsenals, barracks, depots, powerplants and even populations miles deep beneath the surface, rendering bombardment with energy weapons long and difficult propositions.

The defenders' own energy weapons would be able to draw on the gigantic stationary powerplants which one might site on an actual astronomical body.  They could be located in tunnel systems, spending most of their time safely hidden in the moon's depths, scooting up to fire, and then once again retreating to avoid counterbattery bombardment.  Sensors might be similarly concealed, and as long as any sensors remained operational, the moon could put forth such a volume of defensive fire as to render either missile bombardment or orbital assault impractical.

An energy weapon, if it fails to immediately-damage a target through thermal explosion, inflicts harm through the cumulative conversion of its energy to heat.  This means that a major defense against energy weapons is to pump the heat away from the point of bombardment to a heat sink:  a large relatively cold mass which can absorb the heat and, eventually, vent the heat into space either through a radiator array or by the emission of hot gas.  An astronomical body has a clear advantage over a ship or all but the largest conceivable habs in this regard, in that it is possible to create immense storage tanks for volatiles that can be used for such heat dissipation systems.

C. Lunar Systems

The next step up is the "lunar system," which comprises a planet and all its associated moons.  The vast majority of planets have moons (in our own system, Mercury and Venus are the only moonless terrestrial worlds):  all known Solar gas giants have multiple moons and even some dwarf planets, such as Pluto, Eris and Haumea, have lunar systems).

The reasons why a lunar system is a natural unit is that a lunar system -- even the biggest ones such as that of Jupiter -- is small enough that  (a) even chemical rockets can (with difficulty) travel about such a system and (b) energy weapons fire can be delivered more or less accurately against even maneuverable targets elsewhere in the same lunar system.  Consequently, once one colonizes any object in such a system, one can readily colonize the other such objects, and a State in one part of such a system can readily project power against other parts of the same system.  The imaginary border of a lunar system is therefore an "obstructive" (defense-moat) and "logistical" (transport-net) natural boundary, and in time lunar systems are also likely to become cultural natural boundaries.

As discussed under "Orbital" operations, any moon (even a moonlet such as Deimos or Phobos) is large enough that its possession gives the possessor a significant defensive force multiplier.  This might enable a State controlling one moon to retain its independence from another State -- even a stronger one -- based on the planet or on another moon in the same system. 

What one then gets would be a system of "moon-states" which would be in many ways analogous to that of the "city-states" common in the history of Earthly regions divided by land obstacles but united by greater surrounding natural boundaries, such as Greece or Italy.  This system is unstable in the sense that advancing technology will inexorably increase the capability of interlunar transport and the firepower and defense of warships, eventually leading to a situation in which the interlunar boundaries must collapse either to confederation or conquest; but depending how long this process takes to complete, cultural natural boundaries might appear and delay the resultant unification.

This is not very likely to happen, at least initially, in the Terrestrial lunar system (Terra and Luna) because the Earth starts with an immense population and industrial base (billions) while the Moon will at least at first only have colonies measurable in the dozens, hundreds, or thousands, with very little industry in absolute terms by comparison with that of the Earth (though probably much more industrial output per capita).  Long before the Lunar population has increased to the point of being able to credibly defend a whole world, Terra will have enough atomic-powered rockets to transport enough ordnance and manpower to overwhelm any likely Lunar defense.  (This is a shame, as one of my favorite science-fiction novels growing up was Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress).

In the case of Mars, the primary world is an obviously-attractive target for colonization and economic exploitation, while the two moons are small and uninteresting.  Hence, the Martian population will quickly eclipse that of its moons, which will probably function primarily as spaceports and fortresses serving the needs of the mainworld's society.  High population turnovers are likely, with consequently weak cultural formation on the moons.  Now and then an enemy or adventurer may succeed in seizing one or both moons from the Martian., but this is likely to be merely short episodes in Martian history, assuming a unified Martian planetary government.

Lunar systems, however, will be especially important to the histories of our four gas giants.  Jupiter has four large moons (Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io) each of which is likely to be of interest for slightly different reasons as a target for colonization  (Callisto, outside the magnetosphere, is an obvious spaceport for the Jovian system; Ganymede has seas each of which may have different ecosystems and which are sources of volatiles; Europa has a gigantic planetary ocean likely to boast life; and Io is dense and volcanically active, hence a good target for mining).  Jupiter herself is a hostile environment for colonization, hence it is likely that the Jovian moons and especially the four big "Galilean" moons (so-called because Galileo first discovered them) will boast significant populations before Jupiter.

The Jovian System is also highly-defensible against attack from the rest of the Solar System for several reasons.  First, the Jovian magnetosphere both provides energy to any Jovian civilization, which could also be used to power energy beams and defensive shields.  Secondly, that same magnetosphere requires strong shielding to operate anywhere within Callisto's orbit (Callisto herself is outside its worst effects) and hence most interplanetary cruisers, especially in the early ages of interplanetary civilization, will probably not be able to participate in attacks into the Jovian system without extensive refitting.  Finally, it is a large and diverse lunar system which would offer its occupants access to all kinds of metals and volatiles, hence well able to withstand blockade.

Though at first one would expect to see moon-states, eventually some sort of Jovian Lunar League or Federation seems a likely governmental type:  the sooner if the Jovian System feels threatened by some external force.  The natural boundaries around the Jovian System being very strong, such a League would be breakable only through application of overwhelmingly-greater force or through the disunity of its members.

The moons of this federation would probably take charge of efforts to colonize Jupiter, which would occur because Jupiter is a potentially-limitless source of energy and minerals.  The colonization of Jupiter would be very difficult:  even establishing floating settlements in the upper atmosphere would require operating in a 2.54 G field, which would practically require extensive use of cyborging, genetic engineering or robotics on the part of the colonists.  As one goes deeper, pressures and temperatures climb, and the Jovian core is one of the most hostile places in the Solar System (far worse than the core of the Earth or the surface of the Sun).  But it is also a treasure-trove:  a vast silicon-nickel-iron-actinide body larger than the Earth, probably very active and hence containing immense concentrations of virtually any desired heavy element, so the rewards for building or breeding sapients capable of operating under these insanely-difficult conditions would also be great.

One problem that a Jovian Lunar Federation might face is that the natures, and hence perhaps the cultures, of the beings capable of operating under the extreme conditions of the Jovian depths would be very different from that of unmodified human beings or even humans modified to operate in the Jovian moons or in the Jovian upper atmosphere.  Since the colonists of Jupiter (the "true Jovians") would eventually gain access to resources far greater than those obtainable on the Jovian moons, a long-term tendency might be for the Jovian moons and their inhabitants to fall under the sway of their own Jupiter colony or colonies.

The other gas giant lunar systems are smaller and less rich than Jupiter, but they too contain their prizes:  also, they too would tend to see their moons colonized before the main bodies, and in the long run to see the power of the planetary colonists eclipse that of the lunar colonists.  Saturn's lunar system, of course, is dominated by Titan which is large, fairly dense for an object in the Saturnian system, and immensely rich in volatiles including hydrocarbons.  There are also several other moderate-sized moons, but it is likely that the lunar system would be dominated by the colonists of Titan. 

In general, Saturn and its moons are fairly low-density objects and hence could be expected to be metal-poor; Saturn's rocky core is also small compared to Jupiter's, but even so is still larger and richer in absolute terms than a terrestrial planet.  Thus, in the long run the whole Saturnian system might fall under the domination of its mainworld.

Uranus has several moderate-sized moons, of which the most important are Oberon, Titania, Ariel, Umbriel and Miranda.  Oberon, the outermost, might be the system port, while the other moons are sufficiently large and diverse that a lunar-state system might emerge.  The Neptunian lunar system, in contrast, is dominated by its biggest moon, Triton, which would almost certainly control the other moons as well.  Both the Uranian and Neptunian systems would eventually wind up dominated by their mainworlds:  either giant would be much easier to colonize than Jupiter, though such colonization would offer comparatively less rich rewards.

Pluto and Charon are very nearly a double dwarf planet:  one might long see a situation where each world remained independent of the other.  The other Solar dwarf planets have only tiny moons compared to their mainworlds:  Eris has Dysnomia, Haumea has Namaka and Hi'iaka, and so far Ceres and Makemake appear to have none.

It must be emphasized here that all these lunar systems have immense defensive advantages against interplanetary attack.  Approaches even with plasma or fusion drives would take weeks or days, during which the defenders could scourge the invading armadas with gigantic energy weapons powered by huge stationary fusion reactors.  Until the invaders seized at least one moon in the system, they would have no safe base at which to rest and repair damage, and even then they would have to hold off counterattacks at merely interlunar distances, while invader reinforcements would have to travel across interplanetary distances, and worse would have to pass through the same sort of gauntlet of long-range defensive fire.  Unless numerous and well-planned, such invasions could easily end in disasters for the invading forces.

This leads us to

D. Interplanetary

The scale now expands from mere tens or hundreds of thousands, or at most millions of kilometers; to tens to hundreds of millions of kilometers:  a two to four-fold increase in order of magnitude.  This increase is conditioned not by arbitrary human definition but by fundamental astrography:  there is a big gap in scale between lunar systems orbiting planets and planetary system orbiting suns.

It is perhaps best to explain this in terms of what military operations even an interplanetary civilization could not easily perform.  It could not perform interplanetary bombardment with any great chance of success assuming even roughly equal force strengths (the defending lunar system could shoot down salvoes of missiles with great ease), until perhaps very fast kinetic or even relativistic kill vehicles were available (and perhaps not even then, as outlying space fortresses and large-scale electromagnetic shields powered by whole planetary magnetospheres might offer significant defense in depth against such attacks).  It could not invade another lunar system save as part of a very large and well-coordinated military effort, and even then would be at serious risk of disaster.  And travel between planets would always be more difficult, expensive and time-consuming than travel between parts of the same lunar system, with all this implies regarding the difficulty of timely reinforcement of an interplanetary invasion.

A natural unit is formed by the worlds of the Inner Solar System, which are mere tens of millions (as opposed to hundreds of millions or billions) of kilometers apart.  Against light opposition (such as early colonies would put up against imperial forces from Earth), even nuclear fission powered ion-drive warcraft might suffice to maintain control; and nuclear fusion powered plasma-drive ships, especially if supported by catapult launcher-catcher systems, could make the entire Inner System a single economic and defensive zone from the point of view of any of the outer planets. 

The obvious natural boundary is formed by the edge of the Main Belt, which offers plenty of mass and natural astronomical bodies on which to base the control centers for an early warning system able to detect and to some extent intercept attacks coming from beyond along the plane of the Solar ecliptic (the Belt would also be a good place in which to build a thinner early warning sphere to deal with possible attacks coming in above or below the plane of the ecliptic).  One convenient aspect of the Main Belt is that many of its asteroids orbit as much as 20-30 degrees off the ecliptic, providing astronomical bodies on which to site control stations for detectors even off the ecliptic, reducing the thinly-covered zone to around 120 degrees to the "north" and "south," and this far off the orbits of all but the dwarf planets and thus requiring high-delta-vee courses to navigate (and high delta vee means more engine burns and hence easier long-range detection).

Because the Main Belt is large (over 6 AU in diameter and hence some 19 AU in circumference), this early warning sphere would of necessity be thinly crewed, with single stations acting as control and collection systems for small cheap arrays spread out over millions to tens of millions of km of the surface of the sphere.  The largest such stations would be fortresses and bases for spacefleets, but most of the fleets themselves would be closer in to the Sun, in the middle or inner parts of the Belt or even near Luna or Mars.  When an incoming threat was detected, depending upon the geometry of the situation, fleets would be vectored in to intercept the invader, a classic thin-shell mobile force system, similar to that employed by the Late Roman Empire.

The Trojans and Greeks, groups of asteroids roughly in and in orbital resonance with Jupiter, would have a different significane.  Each group is sufficiently spread out to constitute its own interplanetary zone rather than a part of Jupiter's.  They are of course easiest to reach from Jupiter's own orbit, and control of them would have strategic implications both for the defense of Jupiter and of the Belt.  If Jupiter was controlled by the same polity which controlled the Belt, there would be defensive outposts in the Trojans and Greeks; if they were controlled by different polities, there might be conflict over the settlement of these bodies.

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have sufficiently large lunar systems to be seen as interplanetary groups of their own.  Also, each giant has accompanying asteroids (the Trojans and Greeks in the case of Jupiter, and some of the Centaurs in the case of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) easily reachable from their lunar groups.  In the case of Neptune, this includes some of the inner fringes of the Kuiper Belt, including the Pluto-Charon lunar group.  Each giant lunar group would have strategic interests in its associated asteroids, which could otherwise be used as bases against their systems.

There are presumably groupings of dwarf planets and planetoids in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, but not very much is known about the former and almost nothing about the latter.  Eris, Haumea and Makemake, the largest known such objects, presumably have many attendant smaller bodies.  The distances out here are immense, and "attendants" might easily be farther from their primary worlds than the width of the whole Inner System.

E. Inter-Sectional

The natural boundaries betwen parts of a Solar System (such as the Inner and Outer Systems, or the Outer System and Kuiper Belt) would be largely logistical rather obstructive.  The main problem here is distance, and differing design philosophies for warships intended to operate in different parts of a star system.  For instance, a warship operated by an Inner-System polity, and never expected to travel beyond Jupiter, would carry extra powerplant, weapons and armor at the expense of engines and cargo capacity:  it might be very effective in direct combat but able to traverse billions of kilometers only with the aid of an entire fleet supply train; a warship operated by a polity centered around Pluto or Sedna might have relatively light weapons and armor, but would have top-notch detectors, powerful drives and capacious cargo holds to enable it to cross immense distances without external logistical support.

This difference would be exaggerated by differing resource availabilities.  The terrestrial worlds of the Inner System have lots of metals and direct access to vast quantities of Solar energy, and hence could easily produce the super-alloys and exotic matter required for armor and weapons.  The moons of the gas giants are much less dense, but might have access to the rich metal deposits of the gas giant cores.  But the iceworlds of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud are mostly frozen volatiles over silicate rocks:  while they would have no problem obtaining energy from the abundant hydrogen in those volatiles, they would skimp on metals and exotic matter as much as possible, reserving them for detectors and engines:  much of their structure and armor would consist of nanocarbon and nanosilicate plastics.  Hence, available resources would further affect design choices.

A major limitation on military operations at such vast distances would be communications time lags.  An Admiralty conducting operations at ranges of light-hours to light-days from their main headquarters would find it very impractical to micromanage their forces:  realistically, they would have to assign general goals and trust to the officers at the front to intelligently work towards these objectives.  Any Admiralty which insisted on such micromanagement would simply doom their own forces, as their enemies --operating closer to the enemy headquarters or with greater local control -- got inside their command and control loops and defeated them in detail.

This would greatly affect the military cultures of the polities involved.  The officers of an inner-system polity would tend to refer problems up to higher command, deferring their own decisions to their superiors whenever possible.  In contrast, the officers of an outer-system polity would be used to having to make important decisions on the spot, with their superiors only knowing about these decisions in retrospect.  This difference might be further exaggerated by the likelihood that it would be those with higher levels of initiative and independent spirit who would tend to colonize the outer system in the first place.

Maneuvering over these distances would be highly impractical without at least plasma and preferably fusion drives; it is quite possible that by this point warships would be equipped with antimatter power storage and true photon rocket engines.  Such drives would themselves be powerful weapons, but of course by then their true weapons would be far more effective.

It is at around this point that relativistic kill vehicles would start to be practical, because the power densities involved would allow the launching of reasonably large RKV's both from bases and from warships.  The main defensive challenge imposed by an RKV is the great speed at which it travels (a signifant percentage of the speed of light) and the fact that, even after interception, the result is a mass-to-energy conversion explosion which leaves an expanding sphere of plasma still on roughly the same course at close to the speed of light.  Consequently, any target defended against RKV's would require detection and defense in depth, and powerful energy shields in point defense, to ward off the potential damage inflicted by the near-C ionic and subatomic cloud of debris.  The use of and defense against RKV's is a complex topic, worthy of an article in and of itself, and I will not go into it too far here.

The extreme outer parts of a star system would be the most susceptible to the development of independent cultures and hence cultural natural boundaries.  This is because their communications with the inner parts of their own systems -- or other parts of their own Oort Cloud -- would be subject to great time lags, and would be closer to long-distance mail in the 18th or 19th century than to modern telecommunications.  On the other hands, delayed posting protocols on message boards might allow meaningful dialogues even with such restrictions, and the quality of the messages might still be high with redundant signal techniques, so some sort of cultural unity or at least strong sympathy could be maintained within a given star system.

F.  Interstellar

If a civilization is able to travel to the edge of the Oort Cloud, 1-2 LY from the Sun, it is almost half of the way toward having the capability for interstellar travel.  This would require nuclear fusion or antimatter powered photon rockets, possibly augmented by electromagnetic ramscoops.  Even at decent sublight speeds -- say around 0.5 C -- it would take 9-25 years to reach one of the closer stars, so starships would need to be large and have extensive life support and self-maintenance capabilities.

It is debatable whether or not the first starships would be launched as major prestige projects from the Inner System (Mercury is a particularly good place to build starships, because one can benefit from immense amounts of solar energy and a powerful slingshot effect at launch), or as a more incremental extension of inhabited areas from the outer Oort Cloud onto rogue worlds (terrestrial or dwarf planets drifting between the stars) or into the Oort Clouds of other star systems.  In any of these cases, we would be talking about large, powerful long-duration transport vessels.

Once colonies had been founded on the worlds of other star systems, there would be a great tendency for their cultures to diverge from those of home system.  For instance, a colony civlization in the Tau Ceti system would suffer a 12-year one-way and 24-year two-way comunications lag with the Solar System; it would react to the culturally-influential events of over a decade ago and might not react in the same ways as did the home or other colony systems.

This would make it extraordinarily-difficult for an interstellar government to exercise any meaningful control over the administration of such a colony, unless the control was very light and rare indeed.  The best structure for an interstellar polity would be some sort of league or very loose federation:  any attempt at a tighter regime would be very likely to provke revolts.

The drives required to make starflight practical would make unifying any particular star system very easy, as any vessel designed to be able to make decade-long voyages of 4-5 LY distance would encounter few difficulties in merely crossing a star system.  To travel from edge to edge of our own Oort Cloud, for instance, would be a voyage of merely 4 LY, which is not much shorter than the 4.36 LY to the Alpha Centauri System.

At the same time, by making interstellar colonization practical, this technology would introduce an extreme likelihood of its civilization fissioning into many smaller civilizations, and protect those civlizations behind a truly tremendous natural boundary -- the vast gulfs, with all that this implies in terms of communications lags and logistical obstacles, between the stars.

Any sublight interstellar military operations would have to be very self-sufficient, able to at least secure system-heads and hold them for years or even decades before being reinforced, because communications lags would require such time to respond to changing situations and dispatch relief forces.  Of course an operation could be planned in detail including follow-up fleets, but if each fleet -- even the reinforcing ones -- were not capable of securing a lodgement on its own, then this would open the distinct possibility of total disaster, with each fleet in turn flying into its own destruction.  Interstellar wars might then acquire a World War One flavor, with immense sacrifices being made over long periods of time for small and incremental gains.

Relativistic Kill Vehicles might break the stalemate, particularly if they could fly at very close to the speed of light.  There are however problems with very fast RKV's (in particular, their sensors and effectors might become damaged by collisions with interstellar matter) and my estimate is that the attacker does not enjoy anything like the total advantage envisioned by Pellegrino and Zebrowski (The Killing Star), at least against a systemwide civilization with equivalent technology and any time to prepare before the outbreak of war.  RKV's also offer the distinct disadvantage that they can't conquer anything:  they are purely weapons of bombardment, and if launched across interstellar distances rather than by starships arriving on the scene, their bombardment plans are severely inflexible.  In extreme cases of distant launch and defense in depth, a defender might have time to move a planet out of such a salvo!

Logistical problems related to fuel are very severe, unless electromagnetic ramscoops become practical.  This could lead to a situation in which a fleet arriving in an enemy or uninhabited system might be forced to construct a base simply to refuel, which might impose long timelags on interstellar operations in addition to the transit times.  If this is the case, then RKV's become even less attractive as an aid to conquering a system, as the RKV's would destroy the very facilities which one would hope to use for resupply.

My guess is that RKV's will be used, but rarely as the sole weapon of interstellar war, and more often with salvoes timed to support and be controlled by the sapients aboard an invading fleet.  Such salvoes, controlled by people in system rather than watching the battle from many light-years away, might even be tactically-employed against enemy forts and fleets, instead of merely serving as a means of bombarding inhabited worlds.  Combined-arms operations of this sort might prove the most effective means of interstellar combat.  Large and powerful star cruisers might also be able to launch their own RKV's as anti-shipping missiles, much as modern naval warships employ SSM's.

Defenses against such will be very important.  United systems will deploy early warning surfaces at the outer edges of their own Oort Clouds, with thickening detection and weapon stations and fortresses as one moves further in.  Approaching the Outer Systems themselves, there will be major fleet bases with large fleets of warships ready to move to intercept incoming RKV salvoes, and batteries of very long-range anti-RKV missiles.  Since an RKV could be killed by putting so much as a dust mote onto a direct intercept course, where detection is early the defense will enjoy the advantage.  In the Inner System, vast electromagnetic arrays will power "sunbeams" (thank you E. E. "Doc" Smith for this term) which will redirect large fractions of total stellar outputs into super-powerful defensive beams able to scour wide cones of space clear of all incoming enemy weapons.

Conclusion

Nevertheless, the distance between the stars is something of an ultimate natural boundary, from the point-of-view of known physics.  One might envision interstellar wars between rival federations or empires, in which interior lines and the greater defensibility of continguous frontiers became important:  there is no inherent reason why the early-warning lines could not be extended between adjacent star systems, making flanking such defenses difficult for an attacker.  Beyond a certain size, though, such wars would be unmanagable absent FTL radioes, and would tend to degenerate into mere interstellar anarchy.

So we leave our overview of future spacefaring civilizations and their extents with system-states and small interstellar empires.  Is anything vaster possible?

Remember this:  much of physics is still unknown.  And the future may be far stranger than I -- or anyone -- can possibly imagine.

How Superpowered People Would Change the World

"How Superpowered People Would Change the World"
(c) 1993, 2007, 2011 by Jordan S. Bassior)



Introduction:  I originally wrote this essay in 1993, in response to my growing awareness that most story universes with super-powers did not attempt to explore the strategic and other effects which metahumans would have on them (1).  I then revised and published it at various times, on Usenet and most recently on Livejournal.  Here is its latest incarnation.

Powerhouses: These are the ultimate combat monsters who can fly, shoot raybeams, bounce artillery shells off their bodies, and have supersenses and incredible speed. Examples are Superman, the Silver Surfer, Miracle Man, etc.

Not all super-universes will have even one such character, and the effect of such a character should be obvious: namely, there is not a single thing that all the armies of the world could do to stop him if he was at all smart (2). This is because real-world weapon systems fall into one of two categories: powerful weapons which are useless against flying targets (like a Tomahawk missile) and agile weapons with small warheads (like a Sparrow missile). The very few weapons with powerful warheads capable of hitting flying targets (basically, nuclear SAM's) (3) are so rare that anyone with supersenses, superspeed and energy beams could easily avoid them and/or shoot them down.

Furthermore, real world political, economic, and military systems are centered upon leaders who are directly guarded by men bearing nothing heavier than automatic rifles. A Powerhouse could fly right into an enemy capital, grab all their leaders, and fly out again, kiling or imprisoning said leaders at his whim, and there is nothing which the nation under attack could do to stop him (4). How long would the morale of the victim nation last under such circumstances?

The only force at all capable of standing against such a being would be another Powerhouse, a Mentalist, or a really good Gadgeteer who could produce special weapons to take advantage of the entity's weaknesses (if any).

The effect of such beings upon the world would be that they would become the primary constituent of military power. No nation could win a war against any nation possessing even one such entity, unless it possessess such entities itself. Modern ICBM's, being unmaneuverable and highly vulnerable in flight, would be especially useless against a Powerhouse-possessing country (5).

Unfortunately Powerhouses, unlike ICBM fields, are sentient individuals who may have their own agendas. What do you do if your Powerhouse decides that he can run the country better than you can? What if he only agrees to aid you if you pursue certain policies? What if he only agrees to aid in certain policies? Where do you draw the line between the Powerhouse following his conscience and the Powerhouse dictating national policy? (6)

All this assumes that the Powerhouse is an ethical being. If he is ruthless and amoral, of course, he simply takes over. There is nothing that you can do to stop him, unless you have other Powerhouses or really good gadgeteers.

Bricks: These are big strong invulnerable guys, such as the Hulk, the Thing, etc. Surprisingly enough, these would have the least effect on the world. Sure, they are strong, but so are tanks or construction machine. Packing it into a human frame is useful, but not earthshakingly so. Their military utility is also limited. Yes, the Hulk can use a tank cannon as a personal armament, but so can a tank. Yes, artillery shells bounce off the Thing, but they do the same off a bunker. A real army (unlike the usual comic-book excuse for one) could simply use heavy weapons to annihilate such an entity, because, unlike the Powerhouse, he cannot fly or use supersenses (7). Thus, once localized, nuclear weapons or really heavy conventional arms (like some of the larger Russian ASM's) could be used to stun or kill him. Basically, Bricks would find employment as bodyguards, enforcers, supersoldiers, or in heavy labor, but they would do little to alter the balance of power. They would of course be greatly respected (or feared) by normals and probably kept track of by governments (who really wants superpowered mafioso wandering around?).

Energy Projectors: These are people who can project blasts of energy. Often they can fly or defend themselves with this energy. These people have some effect on the balance of power, in sufficient numbers. Being only man-sized and able to fly and project artillery-scale blasts while easily dodging AAM's and SAM's puts one in a position similar to the Powerhouse, with the important difference that, should a shot connect, the super is probably done for. Thus, Energy Projectors would find a valued role in any nation's armed forces, and would be more effective than the Bricks. If the form of energy projected was really unusual, they might be useful in medical and/or scientific fields as well.

Assassins: These are people whose powers and/or skills make them highly effective at infiltrating through security systems. Commonly they have superhuman agility, enhanced reflexes, extensive combat training, and possibly powers such as invisibility, teleportation, desolidification, regeneration, etc.

Surprisingly (as they are a dime a dozen in comic books) Assassins are one of the most destabilizing types of supers. The reason is that (as I mentioned before) command and control systems are highly centralized. If you are good enough to get through a leader's security and kill or kidnap him, you can change history (who shot JFK, anyway?) (8). If you can do this to your enemy in the middle of a crisis, you can disrupt his decsion-making capacity and thus derive a tremendous advantage.

The worst part of Assassins is that, by their very nature, they would be hard to monitor or control. How do you know that your Asssassins are really loyal to you? What if they come to dislike you? Is your insurance paid up?

Furthermore (unlike Powerhouses), Assassins are most effective if used unethically. A nation possessing super Assassins would be tempted to dispose of its opposition in a highly direct manner. Do you distrust the CIA now? How would you feel if Bullseye worked for them? In the real world one of the most important limitations on covert agencies is that traceless murder is actually rather difficult to commit. But if people like Deathstroke or Elektra existed, it would become quite easy.

Assassins would thus have a destablizing effect on almost every form of government, from dictatorship to democracy.  Dictatorships would be vulnerable because the decision-makers would be few and easily-identified, hence vulnerable to threats of assassination (hence, they would have a strong need for metahuman bodyguards); democracies vulnerable because the decision-makers, though numerous, would have to remain relatively accessible to the people in order to remain politically-effective, complicating the guard task.

Historically, the real-life State closest to the government in a paranoid conspiracy thriller was the late-medieval to early-modern Most Serene Republic of Venice, which had a secret Council of Ten above the regular government.  The very membership of the Council of Ten was secret, and the Council could issue warrants to imprison or kill those whom it deemed enemies of the Republic.  It was above all other tribunals, so there was no appeal from its edicts.  Even the Doges feared the wrath of the Council.

In a world with metahuman assassins, all Powers might need to develop such secret, "Majestic 12" like tribunals in order to prevent such assassins from destablizing their regimes.  This leads to obvious problems, namely:  How can you trust the secret tribunals not to seize total power for themselves?  What happens if the assassins discover the membership of the tribunals and thus influence them against the interests of the Powers the tribunals are attempting to protect?  What happens if the assassins take over the tribunals?

The opportunities for Story here are numerous.  Actually living in a world where such insane paranoia became sober reality might not be half as much so fun (9).

Gadgeteers: These are the brilliant scientists who invent the comic-book technology. Examples are Reed Richards, Tom Thumb, and Doc Savage. These people are very destabilizing (as the non Western world found out to its cost after the Renaissance). This is because the discovery and application of knowledge is the essence of change and progress.

Gadgeteers would do much to alter both the balance of power and (perhaps more importantly) the nature of everyday life in the comic-book universe. After all, if Reed Richards invents aircars, how long before the car dealers have the latest models? If he can build faster-than-light starships, you won't see NASA using Space Shuttles much longer. And if the heroes start playing with fusion power packs, who really cares about all that black gunk on which the Arabs live over? (10)

The point is that (unlike in a comic book universe) in real life an invention is rarely taken to the point of practicality and then ignored, if it is truly useful at the time. For example, solar power was developed in the 1910's, but at that time was almost useless in comparison to fossil fuel technology. The airships of the 1930's were impractical without modern weather monitoring systems.  But solar power, with more advanced methods of manufacture and better photo-electric conversion systems, has become practical, and airships may become practical once more (and in any case saw some of their role taken over by bigger and longer-range airplanes).

The effect of having gadgeteers in a realistic comic book universe would be that the society would gradually change from what we consider "modern" to what we consider "futuristic". In many ways this is the most fundamental change possible, and the hardest to sell commercially in comic-book form (11).

Mentalists: These are the people with awesome mental powers, usually at least telepathy and often including mind blasts or mental control. Examples are Professor X or Mastermind.

Mentalists are insidiously destabilizing. Like the assassin, a mentalist can get through any real world security system and reach a leader. Unlike the assassin, however, killing or kidnapping a leader is far from the worst he can do. A mentalist can read or control minds.

Ultimately, any conflict is determined by strategy. If one can read the mind of the opposing commander, his plans are laid bare to your side. Worse still, if one can control his mind, he can be induced to pursue a losing strategy (12).

These are but the most straightforward and least harmful applications of mentalism. For example, a mentalist can also function as an even more indetectible assassin, by ordering a victim to kill himself. A mentalist could also uncover dissent, murder the dissenters, or (even worse) order them to sabotage their own cause.

In a totalitarian society, the application of such techniques would render dictatorships unshakeable (ah, but can the dictator trust his mentalists?). A Mentalist dictator would be a frightening concept (WILD CARDS' Puppetman tried to become such a ruler). Even in a free society, the temptation represented by Mentalists might prove irresistable to the government. (What do you really think Johnson or Nixon might of done about the antiwar protests if they could have given orders to the protest leaders?). Of all the types of supers, Mentalists might prove the likeliest to take over (13).

Conclusion:

Political power is ultimately based upon force or the threat of force. Even in a democracy, the power of the people is (however implicitly) based upon the enlightened realization that the people, if ignored, may rebel.  The point of democracy is to channel rebellion into legitimate and non-violent political action, achieving the effect of a civil war (the bigger faction wins) while avoiding the destruction caused by a real civil war.

This works well, as long as people are more or less equal in intrinsic capabilities. You may not live as long or as well as a rich man, but the basic sorts of things you can do are the same. He can afford a bodyguard, but bullets don't bounce off his chest. He can afford a gun, but he can't spray laser beams from his fingers. He can buy better equipment than you, but it's at the same tech level as your own. He can investigate you, but he can't read your mind. He has more political power than you, but not more than a whole bunch of common people.

This basic human equality disappears in a super-powered world. In such a world, military (and thus political) strength is primarily based upon the loyalty of super-beings, rather upon the loyalty of the populace as a whole (14). Thus, it is no longer necessary to maintain the loyalty of the populace through democratic institutions to remain in power. (It may be more pleasant, but it is not necessary).

Superbeings would of necessity in any system of government evolve into a sort of aristocracy. (Even in the existing comic book universes, this condition exists de facto: note that superheroes rarely get in trouble with the law over what are generally vigilante tactics). In a democracy, they would be the respected guardians of law and order; in a dictatorship, the feared elite guardians of the Revolution. (This status would follow naturally from their extreme importance to society: consider how the real world regarded men like Churchill or Edison; imagine how we would regard Captain America or Reed Richards) (15).

Eventually, the tendency would be for supers to become the ruling class (16). How could a normal leader inspire the respect of super powerful individuals, in a society that more and more regarded super powers as a mark of aristocracy? This tendency would be reinforced by the dircect utility of certain types of supers (Powerhouses, Gadgeteers, and Mentalists) in the acquisition and maintence of authority.

In hindsight this would be seen as just another stage in the development of dominant classes. Just as the emergence of Bronze Age technology led to the heroic warrior elite, so would the emergence of super powers lead to the modern heroic warrior elite -- the superhero.

And the new world would be born ...

END.


====
Notes

(1) - Indeed, most metahuman universes reserve all attempts at strategic and social change to the villains, and make it the major concern of the heroes to stop them.  This is a profoundly "conservative" assumption, in the most fundamental meaning of the term -- indeed, it is literally "reactionary," since all the heroes do is fight to stop attempted change.

Admittedly, most comic-book villains who "attempt change" are doing so by force and with a total unconcern for human rights, and hence should be fought and stopped.  The problem is that the heroes almost never attempt to make meaningful positive changes themselves, even when their powers or skills allow them to do so in sane and legitimate ways.  Successful changes are almost always confined to "What If?" stories, and almost always Go Horribly Wrong.

The moral suggested by this is that we should all be happy with what we have and never try to improve the world:  doing so would be at worst villainous and at best counterproductive.  Needless to say, if we'd taken that attitude in 1750, we'd mostly still be working in subsistence farming and bowing to the aristocracy, and I think this would have been a very bad thing.

I don't think that the comic book writers are really that reactionary -- I think it comes from the nature of trying to do a long-running serial story, especially multiple such stories in a shared universe.  If, say, Reed Richards introduced private civilian aircars, not only would society change, making it no longer "Superheroes in the modern world," but also every other series would have to take this into account.  Far safer to restrict aircars to a small techophilic elite (note that not even rich men in the Marvel Universe have aircars unless they are gadgeteers or directly fund gadgeteers).  That way, nothing much changes.

This works from the point of view of managing the story universe, but it makes it very poor science fiction.

(2) - "Smart" meaning that he realizes that he is being attacked by people who mean to kill him and will not necessarily limit these attempts to a one-on-one duel at close range, so he doesn't waste his time standing around pontificating in range of weapons capable of doing him serious harm.  In other words, he doesn't act like a typical four-color comic book hero.

(3) - Since 1993, we've added ABM's and various kinds of laser weapons to that list, but both are rare, and even as of 2011 our present-day strategic lasers aren't powerful enough to do much damage to a Powerhouse:  at best, they could dazzle one.

(4) - Unless, of course, the target was guarded by a super-powered bodyguard team, as suggested by one commenter on my earlier post on this topic.

(5) - Yes, any version of Superman from the late 1940's on (not counting the fake Supermen from the Death of Superman arc)  could have single-handedly taken down a full strategic nuclear strike by the Soviet Union.  The most powerful version could have gone back in time and pre-emptively destroyed the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal from the moment that he became aware that the Soviets were launching; at a more normal power level he could have simply flown around really fast and destroyed the missiles with his heat vision or by ramming them.  About the only damage the Soviets could have done would have been by using Powerhouses of their own, or through covertly-emplaced nuclear devices.

I would presume that the DC Universe got around this by having the Soviets stockpile Kryptonite, or havin (several weaker) powerhouses or magic-based metahumans in their super-military, or whatever.  They also had Superman be remarkably callous as regarded avoidable deaths in Third World conflicts, under the theory that he "couldn't interfere."  My point is that in real life, Powerhouses would be major strategic assets -- and nations would thus be willing to expend major efforts to obtain and keep their loyalties.

(6) - To return to the Superman example once more, Superman was willing to intervene in some wars (notably World War II) but not others (notably, the ones from Vietnam on, though I suppose he's willing to stop Terrorist attacks on American soil, which kind of shows what I mean about the powerful impact of the politics of the Powerhouse on strategic issues).  It is not reasonable to assume that all non-villainous Powerhouses -- even all non-villainous Powerhouses (unless we define "dissent" as "villainy") -- would share the prejudices of the American main-stream media.  Nor is real life (or the verisimiltudinous "real life" of a science fiction story) always scripted by writers who share these prejudices.

Forgetting for the moment about the terrifying implications of Powerhouses who shared the prejudices of, say, the radical left or radical right, there are a heck of a lot of Powerhouses who would simply be (in the West) strong Statists or Libertarians, or even just conservatives.  Each Powerhouse would be an individual, each would have his own scruples regarding for what he would or would not fight, and governments would be willing to offer them concessions to sign them onto wars or other interventions.  So they would have an effect on national and international politics, whether they wanted to or not.

(7) - Comic books, like most other popular speculative fiction other than techno-thrillers or military science fiction, tend to have only a limited understanding of how actual warfare works.  Because the part of warfare which is comprehensible to anyone is one guy hitting, stabbing or shooting another guy at close quarters, and because that's the easiest thing to draw, that's upon what they tend to focus.

Real warfare moved beyond that a century ago.  Most combat, even with small arms, occurs at ranges where the combatants have difficulty seeing one another (in part, because the combatants are quite sensibly spending most of their time ducking behind hard cover), and the most serious casualty-producing agent of war is artillery, in its various forms (understanding airstrikes to constitute "flying artillery").  Thus, typically, a soldier who is killed or injured by the enemy in battle, is killed or injured by a bullet or shell or sub-munition launched by an attacker who he never clearly sees.

The Powerhouse is too agile to be effectively targeted by these sorts of attacks, provided that he doesn't do something stupid.  Most Bricks, on the other hand, do not move fast enough that they would not have to worry about being hit by stray artillery rounds and the like.

This gets into another aspect of real warfare ignored by most comic book universes, which is that a lot of weapons target areas rather than individuals, and that much of the danger of being on the battlefield is that one may be hit by this sort of area fire. 

All but the toughest Bricks would be in danger from, for instance, artillery bombardments launched at their areas -- even if the Brick could move fast enough to dodge shells aimed at himself (which is actually possible against sub-sonic artillery even for non-powered humans -- what one does is to duck into cover when one hears the gun fire, and one can sometimes even see the shell in flight), he may not be able to move fast enough to clear the target zone of a whole battery or regiment of artillery.

So even Bricks, if they wanted to stay alive on a battlefield, would spend a lot of time crouching or lying in foxholes, trenches, or bunkers.  And even Bricks would sometimes fall victim to stray shells.  If they had no buddies around, even being knocked unconscious might be fatal, because if the enemy won or held the ground, the unconscious Brick could be killed or captured.  There's one good reason for Sidekicks!

(8) - Lee Harvey Oswald, in the real world.  But in a world with metahumans, there would be many ways for someone else to be the real culprit. Disguises, clones, mind control, robots, solid holograms ... you name it, some supervillain's done it.

(9) - An obvious, and highly unpleasant, possibility is that large States collapse, and we see a return to city-states and mercenary armies, because it becomes too difficult to trust in one's own chains of command and political authority.  If you suspect that the President is being secretly controlled by a Majestic 12 tribunal, or worse by an organized criminal conspiracy which has taken over such a tribunal, what motive is there for obedience other than fear of his power?  And what happens when whole groups of states or provinces thus stop following his orders.  It could be worse than the American Civil War, because the leaders of all the smaller Powers which emerged would be likewise vulnerable to the assassins, resulting in further fragmentation of authority.

(10) - By the same token, if a new technology  requires a rare resource, other countries may benefit by the chance of that resource being present under their soil.  For instance, if tellurium becomes vital to the new Solardyne 90% photo-electric cells which have revolutionized international power production and rendered coal plants obsolete, then not only America and Canada (which one thinks of as both wealthy and resource-rich countries)  but Peru (resource-rich but poor) and Japan (rich but resource-poor) will benefit and become more important on the world stage owing to the bonanzas of tellurium beneath their soil.

(11) - In part because of the secondary effects, both economic and social. 

For instance, if aircars become cheap and controllable enough that they can be as common as groundcars are today, this creates vast changes in society.  If the aircars can cruise at (say) 300 mph, as opposed to a groundcar's 60 mph, workers can now commute over distances about 5 times as great as they do today:  300 miles, as opposed to 60.  Greater metropolitan areas can now extend over several medium-sized states -- New York City's would now cover all New York State and divide New Jersey with Philadelphia's and Connecticut and Massachusetts with Boston.

Over such vast areas, it is no longer necessary for residential housing to cover any but a tiny amount of the land.  This means that large areas can be allowed to slip back into a natural state:  the workers can now live either in large apartments in very large residential developments (my "milespires"), or in very large private homes (essentially, small mansions), which become cheaper because of the immense expansion of acreage which is now functionally "suburban" or "exurban."  Private home ownership increases and extends down the income ladder, leading to further social and political change.

Widespread aircar ownership also changes the nature of border and offshore patrols.  The border patrol now needs, essentially, squadrons of fighters and gunships in order to prevent smugglers from simply flying over the borders in aircraft that are now incredibly cheap and flying near the borders in large numbers.  Police have an "eye in the sky" presence dwarfing that of modern police helicopter forces; by the same token, so do the criminal gangs they oppose.  As E. E. "Doc" Smith pointed out in his Lensman series, increased police and criminal mobility requires expansions of jurisdiction and the deployment of special inter-jurisdictional police forces, else the criminals can simply commit crimes in one state or country and flee to the next.  Interpol acquires arrest authorities, or is replaced by some more trustworthy Western-centered force with similar powers.

And so on, and so on.  Thinking about these sort of secondary consequences is what science-fiction writers do all the time:  it's what comic-book writers try not to do, because one soon winds up with a very different kind of society than that of contemporary Earth.  Which is why Status Quo is God is most comic books.

(12) - Take everything I said in note # 9 about metahuman assassins, and increase it by at least a full order of magnitude.  Mentalists are among the worst enemies one can possibly have, as a skilled-enough mentalist can destroy your perception of reality or, on a national or international scale, take over organizations from the top down.

(13) - And worse -- even more than in the case of the assassins, one might not ever realize that a Mentalist had taken over.  If he avoided the most obvious and distracting temptations, he might rule for decades without even his victims being aware of what was going on.  Unlike the case of the super-Assassin takeover, there wouldn't even have to be a trail of corpses.

(14) - This is the more true given the fewer the number and the greater the power per capita of the metahumans.

If metahumans are many but not too powerful individually, then they are unlikely to act in concert to cause political change, unless forced to by some sort of persecution campaign directed toward them by the normals.  What's more, as long as they are not cast out of society, metahumans if numerous will tend to politically sympathize with their groups of origin (white, black, Catholic, Protestant, male, female, etc.) or adoption (computer programmers, science fiction fans, businessmen, etc.) more than with metahumans as a community. 

But if metahumans are few but powerful, they will be socially-isolated even if admired, hence tend to seek other metahumans for companionship.  What's more, the decision of each metahuman will become more individually-important.  In an extreme case (just one metahuman, but at Superman power levels) it would be very difficult to prevent him from becoming de facto Ruler of the World, even if he cherished no such ambition!

(15) - I briefly discussed in my previous essay on metahumans why attempting to oppress metahumans as a class (the "Genosha Solution") would be a very bad idea, especially for a Power which was but one in an international system of many Powers.  In fact I don't think it would work even for a dominant Power -- if (say) the United States tried this in reality, they would merely be handing over world dominance to some more tolerant Power to which the American metahumans would then for obvious reasons emigrate.

(16) - For different values of "ruling class" in different societies.  The more free and open the society to begin with, and the more it originally accepted and attempted to work with rather than oppress the metahumans when they appeared, the greater the chance that "metahuman" would merely become seen as a socially-positive attribute, tending to make one rise in society; as opposed to a source of ascribed and legally-enforcable status.

A country such as America or Canada, for instance, might manage to maintain a reasonable degree of liberty and status for normals after the social transition.  Countries such as Argentina or Romania would do less well, with either specially high social status for metahumans, immunities from prosecution for some crimes and the like; or specially low social status for metahumans, and consequently a tendency to be pushed around by countries better able to attract metahumans.

Naked dictatorships such as those in most of the Mideast and Africa would probably wind up either persecuting local metahumans (and getting the crap kicked out of them on a regular basis by countries which didn't persecute metahumans) or directly ruled by the metahumans as an aristocracy.  Possibly with fluctuations between the two conditions, taking the form of horrendously-violent rebellions, revolutions and civil wars.