You can argue this over in your head a lot, but it's really quite simple in my mind.
If we assume space travel becomes relatively easy (that is to say it is used for more than initial colonization) there will be interstellar commerce. If there is unprotected commerce, there will be pirates. Any time there are pirates, protection will develop. Let us call these peace-keepers the Navy.
If you engage in commerce and you have a powerful Navy, you can influence or even control commerce.
Do you see where I'm going? Most wars are about resources. Commerce is about resources. Anywhere you have commerce, you are liable to develop conflict.
I think you're looking at this with a 20th century viewpoint. There doesn't seem like there'd be a lot of physical matter that an advanced civilisation might want to pirate. Perhaps some form of exotic matter, like a black hole, might fit the bill, but that would be particularly hard to steal because everyone could see where you were taking it.
Sure, but even today, raw material resources tend not to be the sort of things criminals target directly. You rarely get thieves trying to steal lumber, or iron ore, for example, because they have a low price-to-weight ratio.
Read TFA, it argues pretty convincingly that there will not be pirates because A) you can't hide in space and B) Any ship is a WMD, so governments will do anything to keep them out of the hands of criminals, and protection rackets would be a far more profitable use for them than raiding commerce.
Pirates are generally noted as coming after privateers. Privateers had plenty of places to hide. Notably privateers with letters of marque against Spanish shipping had British, French and Dutch ports to hide in.
Piracy developed when the pirates could appear easily as privateers. If you didn't piss of your host nation, then you were free to loot the ships you wanted. Then pirates gained enough money and power that they could start their own micronations. Note that privateer ships were often enlisted by the military during wars, so it's safe to assume an assault on a pirate haven was out of the question for the military. Especially when pirate controlled settlements were often cleared by privateers issued letters of marque on condition of clearing the settlement.
I don't see how governments will keep ships out of the hands of criminals when governments show little desire to exploit space, where as corporations do. Corporations will grow very quickly in space, governments won't. Governments are likely to spread via colonies rather than commerce or expansion.
The guy doesn't argue convincingly that there won't be pirates, because his argument should have meant pirates wouldn't have existed in the 1700's. The Spanish knew where the pirates and privateers were running to, but they were well enough armed that you wanted superior numbers. So it was a matter of attacking a solitary ship with more fire power before it could reach a safe port.
Even though Port Royal and Tortuga were known as lawless ports, there was plenty of law there. The Spanish weren't about to invade a port with cannons on its battlements and dozens of privateer and pirate ships docked. Many of these pirate ships were better crewed and equipped than their respective nations military ships. Stede Bonnet had a sloop with 120 men and 16 guns. He was captured when he only had 50 men and was beached in a harbour. Notably the military brought 2 of the same tonnage ship, notably 8 gun vessels which Bonnet's ship had originally been at the start of his life of crime. [Edit: IIRC Rhett had 130 men on his two ships and simply outlasted Stede whose crew surrendered - Stede wanted to blow his ship up rather than surrender]
I'm not sure you've understood the poster's arguments.
The worst a pirate captain could do with a single ship in the 1700s was to sink a few merchant ships.
The worst a pirate captain could do with a spaceship is to destroy an entire continent.
In the 1700s, a pirate captain could hide his ship from government navies, and take merchant ships by surprise.
The location of a spaceship is public knowledge; it cannot take anyone by surprise, and the authorities know exactly where it is.
You can see how there might be a little bit of a difference? There's a considerable incentive for any planet-side government to make sure pirate spaceships don't exist, and there's nowhere the pirate can hide.
This idea that you can't hide in space betrays a lack of imagination. As a rule, ships will operate near objects such as planets, asteroids or nebulae. These objects provide plenty of opportunity for cover and ambushes. There is also the possibility of minefields and other unmanned devices that can easily be shielded from detection. And those are just the things we can realistically grasp with our current technological understanding.
The other point that a rogue ship can wage war against an entire planet is correct, but it's also misleading because the assumption only works if the planet has no defense systems appropriate to the threat. The other argument that ships will be highly regulated because they're dangerous, powerful, and profitable is probably correct but at the same time it's important to remember that being outlawed per se doesn't stop anything. We should know better, because we tried this with drugs, terrorism and copyright violations - all of which are still going on despite the massive amount of resources employed to eradicate them.
> As a rule, ships will operate near objects such as planets, asteroids or nebulae. These objects provide plenty of opportunity for cover and ambushes.
Maybe in science fiction.
The main problems you have are:
1. Space is big and mostly empty. A few hundred probes could cover every blindspot in a solar system.
2. Going anywhere requires venting hot gas that's highly visible. Even small ion drives are detectable light minutes away with current technology.
> There is also the possibility of minefields and other unmanned devices that can easily be shielded from detection
Shielded how, exactly?
Also, how are these unmanned devices going to get close to their targets? Space is big, so a ship isn't going to blunder near one by chance. Perhaps if you knew the ship's route ahead of time, but then even a small randomizing factor introduced into the route would prevent that.
> we tried this with drugs, terrorism and copyright violations - all of which are still going on despite the massive amount of resources employed to eradicate them.
Drugs, C4 and digital files are small, easy to hide, and relatively inexpensive.
Don't forget that motor vehicles are well regulated, dangerous, powerful and profitable. It still doesn't mean dad won't hand the keys to his 17 year old kid and said kid won't try doing 160 and take out a hotel lobby.
We wilfully put aeroplanes in the hands of thousands of pilots. It doesn't stop them coming to work drunk, or falling asleep at the wheel, or heck snapping.
The reason governments won't strictly regulate space ships will be the same reason governments don't strictly regulate driving. It costs too much.
You've completely missed my point, like took the highway to the next state missed the point.
> The worst a pirate captain could do with a single ship in the 1700s was to sink a few merchant ships.
It wasn't that they sank the ships. Stede Bonnet is noted for capturing around 30 ships in under 2 years, noted in that there's a record of the ships he plundered. The money he took from this went to the ports he traded in.
> The worst a pirate captain could do with a spaceship is to destroy an entire continent.
Depending on the size of the vessel, it's a possibility, but not likely. It's going to be easy to tell if someone's approaching you at ridiculous speed. Also, this means anything you hit them with hits harder. When you're driving at a bullet at the speed of sound, it's definitely going to hurt a lot more. You're not only making yourself more obvious, but more vulnerable.
> In the 1700s, a pirate captain could hide his ship from government navies, and take merchant ships by surprise.
How? Is there some magic cloaking device that prevails the Caribbean ocean? Sorry, but the Navy can't stop drug smugglers by boat today with satellites, radar and whatever else.
They knew where they were going. Do you not think the Spanish knew that Henry Morgan was headed for Tortuga? He didn't have to hide from the British or the French, in fact he ended up an Admiral of the Royal Navy.
They took the merchants by surprise, because the merchants didn't know they were pirates, they thought they were just crossing paths with another merchant ship. Stede Bonnet captured three ships by pretending to trade with merchant ships (notable for their short crews) and rushed them with his 130 men.
> The location of a spaceship is public knowledge; it cannot take anyone by surprise, and the authorities know exactly where it is.
Again, yes and no. Just because you can see everything, doesn't mean you can watch everything. You're assuming one universal government and data sharing between governments or agencies.
Sorry, but it's eventually going to be in one nations best interest to economically harm the other and harbour privateers.
> There's a considerable incentive for any planet-side government to make sure pirate spaceships don't exist, and there's nowhere the pirate can hide.
Earth based governments, maybe. Do you think the colonies are going to turn down building materials for 1/2 the cost? Or protection for harbouring pirates? Anything that increases government revenues will be protected.
Governments will harbour pirates because they have before. The French made piracy rampant by issuing letters of marque simply to damage everyone elses economic ability.
Governments war over limited resources, but they sabotage when there's plentiful resources.
> Depending on the size of the vessel, it's a possibility, but not likely. It's going to be easy to tell if someone's approaching you at ridiculous speed.
So if you a voting citizen of Earth, you'd have complete confidence in your planetary defences, and see no reason at all to send the military after the rogue spaceship that could potentially destroy your country?
Can you imagine a national government saying today, "Yes, we know the terrorist has nuclear bombs, and yes, they're currently in a remote location within strike range of our aircraft, but no, we're not going to take them out because we're 99.9% sure they'd be unable to get those bombs into our country."
> How? Is there some magic cloaking device that prevails the Caribbean ocean?
The atmosphere, the curvature of the earth, primitive communications, and obstructing land masses are all problems 18th century ships had to deal with.
> Sorry, but the Navy can't stop drug smugglers by boat today with satellites, radar and whatever else.
And how many large, hard-to-hide pirate vessels do you see nowadays? How many pirate battleships, or pirate aircraft carriers are there?
Pirate vessels today are small, short-range craft that can be easily hidden, because communication and observation technologies are so much better today than in the 1700s.
> They took the merchants by surprise, because the merchants didn't know they were pirates, they thought they were just crossing paths with another merchant ship.
That trick would only work once. Once the pirate attacked, everyone in the solar system would see them, and their little green icon would permanently change into a little red icon.
> Sorry, but it's eventually going to be in one nations best interest to economically harm the other and harbour privateers.
Why? That doesn't happen today. The US doesn't sponsor pirate battleships to attack the French, for instance.
Privateers made sense in the 1700s, where raw materials still had a lot of worth, and war could be waged between world powers without mutual destruction.
But today, piracy doesn't make economic sense for anyone with any wealth. It's much more profitable to invest than steal.
> Do you think the colonies are going to turn down building materials for 1/2 the cost?
Yes, because everyone will see them doing it, and in a high-technology civilization, raw materials are ultimately not that valuable.
The minute someone says "that's impossible, there is absolutely no way that will happen", someone else begins to devise a way to make the "impossible" scenario/product/achievement possible. Incedentally, the typical HN reader falls into the latter category - so carry on space pirates!
You could apply the same arguments to why wooden naval combat shouldn't have happened.
You'd think there is nowhere to hide on the ocean- but there is the horizon to hide behind (planets anyone?) and weather (electrical or magnetic storms?) to hinder visibility.
I think your argument is aiming at the right target, but is using the wrong ammo.
The essay outlines why piracy is not possible (or at least practical) for space commerce. However, it is very plausible that nations will fight over shipping routes and try to destroy each other's freighters and merchant ships. Like you said "Anywhere you have commerce, you are liable to develop conflict." This will be true, but probably only between political states.
Incidentally it was the nations of England, France, Spain and Denmark that caused piracy. Not only did they give charters to captains to give them the right to attack another nations ships, but they harboured them.
The British ports were notorious for this. Spain had control of the gold, so Britain allowed their pirates to attack the gold galleons and haul it back to British ports. The pirates would eventually spend said gold in the port buying items imported from Europe and transferring wealth back to the old world (incidentally this actually faired better for England than it did Spain, as the Spanish gold went into the governments coffers. The stolen gold entered the economy).
I agree, piracy isn't likely to happen just randomly. Without ports harbouring pirates the oceans became clear pretty quickly. The European superpowers didn't want to go to war with each other, but it was still in their own best advantage to sabotage the other.
Remember the majority of 'pirates' were privateers. Many privateer ships were commissioned when their host nation went to war and decommissioned when the war ended. Whenever you see in the movies a pirate ship landing at Port Royal or Tortuga, then they likely had letters of marque from Britain or France against the Spanish, if not they would be real pirates and even then they'd have safe harbour if they didn't piss off the authorities.
Steed Bonnet for instance was a pirate attacking British/any vessels. However he received an official pardon (along with Blackbeard) from his life of crime. However (unlike Blackbeard) he set sail for a Dutch settlement to buy a letter of marque and become a Dutch privateer against the Spanish. However, this didn't happen. He turned to all out piracy very shortly after his departure and when news got back that it was him, then the governor that pardoned him sent the military after him. Then he did the neck hanging dance.
Privateers were even known to reclaim colonies from pirates for being issued letters of marque.
IMO piracy and privateers have a very strong likelihood of occurring. We're already seeing signs that it's going to be companies to exploit space before governments, similar to in the Caribbean. It will only take one nation permitting privateers to operate before all nations and companies of size will be operating privateers. It's the logical step if governments aren't capable of exerting their force more than corporations.
True, but probably only until space flight becomes less prohibitively expensive, or the commerce that happens in space becomes more "interesting", to pirates.
There was commerce between the Romans and ancient china that took around 10 years one way. I don't remember what was being traded, except for the silk from china, but it shows that distance and time are not absolute limiters for trading.
Here's a good article about traveling to Alpha Centauri[1]. It posits that it would take 85 years best-case-scenario technology and 81k years using current technology.
Absent the discovery of new physics that allows us to travel through wormholes or something of that ilk, traveling to the other side of the galaxy for a vacation will, sadly, not be happening. Instead long-distance space travel will likely involve putting humans into cryosleep and then waking them up when they reach their destination; hundreds of thousands or millions of years in the future.
Why send humans at all? By that time I'd assume we'd have reasonable AI; just send it along with a bunch of frozen embryos anywhere you please. The AI can incubate and raise the children. It could even terraform the planet until it was habitable. You wouldn't even need to explore; just send out probes willy-nilly. If they never reach a suitable location, then it's no big loss.
A fire-and-forget method of human space colonization is not only far more feasible, but also far more economical.
If we assume space travel becomes relatively easy (that is to say it is used for more than initial colonization) there will be interstellar commerce. If there is unprotected commerce, there will be pirates. Any time there are pirates, protection will develop. Let us call these peace-keepers the Navy.
If you engage in commerce and you have a powerful Navy, you can influence or even control commerce.
Do you see where I'm going? Most wars are about resources. Commerce is about resources. Anywhere you have commerce, you are liable to develop conflict.