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[Shinziril]

One possible profitable space industry would be asteroid mining for rare-earth elements, particularly the ones we're beginning to run out of.  More than a few of them have useful and unique properties.  Admittedly, we'll probably have to run quite a bit more out than we are now before that becomes feasible, but it's still a thought. 

A useful side benefit of this would be an easy source of construction materials that are already in orbit, and thus do not need to be slowly and painfully dragged out of Earth's gravity well with inefficient and underpowered chemical rockets. (Yes, despite the staggering horsepower involved, chemical rockets are still effectively underpowered for space travel.  Earth's gravity well is a bitch.)

Oh yeah, if you have near-lightspeed spaceships, or even say, 10% lightspeed spaceships, you pretty much automatically have weapons of planetary annihiliation (Consider the impact of say, a 1000-ton rock at 10% C*).  This is one of the more annoying facts of space travel; anything fast enough to get places in a reasonable amount of time is also freaking scary.

*A naive calculation of kinetic energy puts that at 107 kilotons of TNT or so.  Big, but we have nukes rather larger than that already.  Guess we're going to need a bigger rock . . .

[Azzuro]

To contribute to the discussion on space piracy, piracy only occurs when you are sure that you can obtain what you want (i.e. cargo) without it being destroyed, when you are sure that there is little chance of the relevant authorities catching you, and when you are sure the loot can be safely sold without it being traced back to you.

Modern pirates ransom the crew (after beating and raping them, of course), and the ship. A bunch of borderline retarded thugs with AK-47s can't do shit with a freighter, and sure as hell couldn't move the cargo without being caught in the act.

Exactly, which is why I think space piracy will focus more on hijacking and ransom rather than seizing cargo.

To use the example of piracy in the Caribbean, it mainly occurred because of Spanish trade with the New World colonies, and the vast amount of resources that they were bringing back. Another factor was the sheer size of the oceans, Spanish navy ships could not protect every single merchant ship at once. Here, we have a similar scenario, the opening of a new frontier, and the vast amounts of resources brought back as a result. However, unlike buccaneers in the Caribbean, it is unlikely that just any aspiring space pirate possesses the billions of dollars required to build and launch an armed spaceship. It is therefore likely that most 'pirates', in the traditional sense of seizing and selling merchant cargo, will instead be funded by rival corporations wishing to put their enemies out of business, much like how privateering was prevalent in the Caribbean. If new laws are not put down before humanity ventures into space, we could soon see a chaotic mess of rival ships engaging in fights against merchant convoys over the skies of Earth, which would seriously hamper any effort to make progress further into the solar system.

To uses another example of piracy in Somalia, the reason why it remains so successful is because of its simplicity. Just take a small motorboat and some men, arm them to the teeth with assault rifles and rocket launchers, board a ship and demand ransom. The small number of men and the small vessels used makes it easier for pirates to dodge ships of CTF-150. But, as stated earlier, spaceships are expensive to build, which makes it more likely that pirates will be covertly placed into merchant spaceships, disguised as cleaners or other low-key personnel, where they will strike once the ship is too far from help. Again, the number of men needed to hijack a spaceship are very little, perhaps as few as ten to fifteen, which further serves to deepen their cover. What is more worrying, however, is the fact that such hijackings may go the same way as state-sponsored terrorism, with ships deliberately crashing into major political or military installations.

Note: All of the above assumes that spaceships will be few and far between, and the lack of any space force.

Edit: Ninja'd twice!

[Aqizzar]

Actually, the traditional origin of pirates, in the olden Caribbean and some modern pirates, is traders who previously had a successful business, but then their source of business goes under, and they're left with a ship, a rowdy crew, and nowhere to go.  So they took to raiding other traders, and became pirates.  Other pirates were military ships that deserted en masse, or were wealthy captains who bought a letter of marque and went bonkers.

Sounds like something that could happen anytime private investment puts the capital (a ship) in the hands of people who could turn pirate.  Where this falls apart In Space, is that you can't just sail over the horizon to another port and assume a new identity.  Fast, mass communication spelled the end of train-robbery and common bank-heists, because it was no longer easy to just run and hide.

but more importantly because communication is such that you'd be instantly identified and responded to

This alone could be a huge contributor to space piracy. Communication is going to be absurdly difficult in space. Doppler effect makes communication while travelling tough. You'll be light-hours to light-months away from other people, reception will be extremely poor. Worst of all, it's going to be tough for pirates to latch on to freighters, but even tougher for enforcement ships to latch on to pirates.

I don't think you really appreciate just how incredibly hard it would be for one space ship to shag down another space ship.  Everything said about trying to hijack an airplane in flight goes to exponential levels.  You have burn enough fuel to intercept the other vessel, somehow catch it and board it, then get to a port other than the one it's headed to.  And if you mess up any one stage of the process, either you or the quarry or both of you will go hurtling off into the void, never to be seen again.  In the real world of Newtonian physics and finite fuel capacity, trying to do anything in space besides send a body from one point to another along a precisely planned trajectory is Russian roulette of the highest order.

Modern pirates ransom the crew (after beating and raping them, of course), and the ship. A bunch of borderline retarded thugs with AK-47s can't do shit with a freighter, and sure as hell couldn't move the cargo without being caught in the act.

Just a clarification: That's what the now-infamous Somalian pirates like to do, because yeah they have no use for a cargo ship and nowhere to sell anything they could steal, so they just ransom the crew.  The pirates in the Straits of Malacca work the opposite; many of them have experience and contacts in the shipping and trading business, in a major sea-trade part of the world.  They normally kill the crew, and then sell the ship and everything in it, sometimes without even leaving the port.

[alway]

but more importantly because communication is such that you'd be instantly identified and responded to

This alone could be a huge contributor to space piracy. Communication is going to be absurdly difficult in space. Doppler effect makes communication while travelling tough. You'll be light-hours to light-months away from other people, reception will be extremely poor. Worst of all, it's going to be tough for pirates to latch on to freighters, but even tougher for enforcement ships to latch on to pirates.

I don't think you really appreciate just how incredibly hard it would be for one space ship to shag down another space ship.  Everything said about trying to hijack an airplane in flight goes to exponential levels.  You have burn enough fuel to intercept the other vessel, somehow catch it and board it, then get to a port other than the one it's headed to.  And if you mess up any one stage of the process, either you or the quarry or both of you will go hurtling off into the void, never to be seen again.  In the real world of Newtonian physics and finite fuel capacity, trying to do anything in space besides send a body from one point to another along a precisely planned trajectory is Russian roulette of the highest order.

Or for an example of how hard it is, go install Orbiter and try to rendevous with the ISS from takeoff. Then imagine the ISS is another ship which itself is powered and trying to avoid you. There would be no way in hell of docking with that. Even something as simple as spinning the craft in a way which causes the docking surface to rotate around the ship would make docking without engines 10 times better than those of the craft impossible. Furthermore, interceptor enforcer ships would be dispatched even before you got close, and would likely be armed with laser weapons; no latching on and boarding required.

[SmileyMan]

Too much space opera!  One of the most effective ways to weaponize space is simply to establish a base in a very large orbit, and then drop stuff!

Providing you can break the escape velocity of where you build your weapon platform (and if you build it at a Trojan point that will be very easy), and providing your orbital calculations are up to the job of accurate targetting, you can just let the gravitational potential energy do its stuff.

For instance, a 5kg cannonball dropped from the orbit of Neptune to the orbit of Earth would gain about 3.5 gigajoules of energy on the way, enough to melt a couple of tons of steel, easily enough to destroy any feasible spaceship, and totally undetectable, since it would be travelling at just under 60,000mph.  A 100-tonne asteroid undertaking the same journey would have the same speed (since there's no friction in space) and the same energy as the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

[kuro_suna]

I think you mean Lagrangian point

And indeed space will probably be militarized since anything large in orbit is a weapon
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ColonyDrop

[alway]

Or as ME2 eloquently puts it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLpgxry542M

[SmileyMan]

I think you mean Lagrangian point

There are 5 Lagrangians.  L4 and L5 are also known as the Trojans.

And they'd make better weapon bases since aiming would be easier without so much gravitational interference from the coorbital planet and its satellites.

The ME:2 clip is maximum awesome though!

[Lightning4]

Where this falls apart In Space, is that you can't just sail over the horizon to another port and assume a new identity.  Fast, mass communication spelled the end of train-robbery and common bank-heists, because it was no longer easy to just run and hide.

Only problem is that an early FTL (hell, STL if we're in it long enough) era would be more or less be a MASSIVE step back in communication. It'd basically be like the early ocean days all over again, with communications between separate colonies more or less taking weeks or months depending on distance. It could even be worse, with communications taking years to get to their destination. So, you probably could disappear if you really wanted to.

Barring any super-tech being handwaved into existence like near-instant FTL or subspace communications or what have you.

[Aqizzar]

I assumed we were still talking about space piracy taking place inside this solar system, with theoretically achievable technology.  If we're assuming humanly-fast regular travel between space colonies on far flung stars, you've already got so much superscience going on that any other predictions are moot.

Even if communications are slower than travel, data storage, forensics, and post-1900 policing knowledge mean that as long as there's any real government at a colony that respects the governments of other colonies, space pirates would never have a friendly port.

[Azzuro]

Where this falls apart In Space, is that you can't just sail over the horizon to another port and assume a new identity.  Fast, mass communication spelled the end of train-robbery and common bank-heists, because it was no longer easy to just run and hide.

Only problem is that an early FTL (hell, STL if we're in it long enough) era would be more or less be a MASSIVE step back in communication. It'd basically be like the early ocean days all over again, with communications between separate colonies more or less taking weeks or months depending on distance. It could even be worse, with communications taking years to get to their destination. So, you probably could disappear if you really wanted to.

Barring any super-tech being handwaved into existence like near-instant FTL or subspace communications or what have you.

But assuming that communications take years to get to their destination, won't you also take years to reach your hiding spot?

Even if communications are slower than travel, data storage, forensics, and post-1900 policing knowledge mean that as long as there's any real government at a colony that respects the governments of other colonies, space pirates would never have a friendly port.

Actually, most of my arguments rely on the fact that space pirates would not have the capital necessary to build an armed ship, and therefore most of them would have the backing of corporations or countries. After all, if you have the resources needed to build and arm a ship for the sole purpose of looting another, it would be foolish to not provide a friendly port for them to dock at.

Anyway, I think we're getting slightly off topic here. It was already stated in the fourth post that space piracy would be near impossible to pull off successfully.

[Soadreqm]

Actually, most of my arguments rely on the fact that space pirates would not have the capital necessary to build an armed ship, and therefore most of them would have the backing of corporations or countries. After all, if you have the resources needed to build and arm a ship for the sole purpose of looting another, it would be foolish to not provide a friendly port for them to dock at.

Anyway, I think we're getting slightly off topic here. It was already stated in the fourth post that space piracy would be near impossible to pull off successfully.

Well, if the topic has been exhausted, getting off it is what we should be doing, no?

I don't think ship-to-ship combat is feasible in general. There is no stealth in space, and you can't really stop radio transmissions once they've been sent, even if you are in interstellar space with all other people light-years away. If you're inside a solar system, there are probably people watching you with telescopes. It would be impossible to attack a ship without the injured side finding out who did it. Planets, on the other hand, can't make evasive maneuvers, and are really easy to destroy if you have access to decent spaceships. If the space pirates have a safe haven of any kind, that safe haven will get nuked from the orbit. Or struck with a relativistic-speed boulder sent seven hundred years ago from another solar system, if it's immobile enough.

The threat of mutually assured destruction would keep any major players from assaulting each other.* If you wanted to avoid getting your home base shot up, you would have to actually live on the ships. And since there are no resources in space, you'd have to get ALL your supplies with piracy.

Maybe if we had some kind of government-funded but independent terrorist organization? Would that work? Would it be possible to supply a roaming terrorist fleet without the target side finding out?
*Well, the threat of mutually assured destruction would hopefully keep the major players from assaulting each other. If mutually assured destruction is something that governments are willing to risk, we aren't even going to get to the spaceship building phase.

[Aqizzar]

Actually, most of my arguments rely on the fact that space pirates would not have the capital necessary to build an armed ship, and therefore most of them would have the backing of corporations or countries. After all, if you have the resources needed to build and arm a ship for the sole purpose of looting another, it would be foolish to not provide a friendly port for them to dock at.

To restate the clarification that I stated earlier, most historical pirates started out as legitimate trading or military vessels that went rogue/desperate and started stealing from other ships.  As for a friendly port to dock at, privateering and merchant-marine type contracts could certainly come back into vogue; and all it takes is one politically-thorny, lawless port no outside authority wants to deal with for legal and illegal vessels to meet up and barter.  Think a space-Liberia or space-Rio-de-Janeiro.

The same dynamic could occur in any medium, all physical impracticalities of space combat besides.  Which is really the big problem.

[sneakey pete]

Too much space opera!  One of the most effective ways to weaponize space is simply to establish a base in a very large orbit, and then drop stuff!

Providing you can break the escape velocity of where you build your weapon platform (and if you build it at a Trojan point that will be very easy), and providing your orbital calculations are up to the job of accurate targetting, you can just let the gravitational potential energy do its stuff.

For instance, a 5kg cannonball dropped from the orbit of Neptune to the orbit of Earth would gain about 3.5 gigajoules of energy on the way, enough to melt a couple of tons of steel, easily enough to destroy any feasible spaceship, and totally undetectable, since it would be travelling at just under 60,000mph.  A 100-tonne asteroid undertaking the same journey would have the same speed (since there's no friction in space) and the same energy as the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

The mind boggles where you get the idea you can just "drop" something from. If your orbiting at, say, neptune distance (not around neptune), and you want to get something to, say, earth orbit distance, you need to give it enough change in velocity to do that. which is a lot actually. Remember, your actually orbiting around the sun, for the purpose of interplanetary transfers, not around the planets themselves. being in the lagrange point of the earth won't do much.

[SmileyMan]

The mind boggles where you get the idea you can just "drop" something from. If your orbiting at, say, neptune distance (not around neptune), and you want to get something to, say, earth orbit distance, you need to give it enough change in velocity to do that. which is a lot actually. Remember, your actually orbiting around the sun, for the purpose of interplanetary transfers, not around the planets themselves. being in the lagrange point of the earth won't do much.

Moving to a position of lower gravitiational potential energy is a "drop."

All we're trying to do is launch something on an Earth intercepting trajectory - we don't care about transit time (if we do, we'll likely need more energy as you pointed out).  If our delta-v impulse is retrograde to our solar orbit, then we're effectively doing a de-orbit burn at apoapsis.  I'm not going to do the maths, but I imagine it'll be around the order of near-future mass accellerators.