swords and spaceships
Feb. 22nd, 2014 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xt1meI got to lie in today (which was nice) and I started thinking; there's an argument to be made for low tech weapons in sci-fi settings.
When everyone is living in spaceships having weapons around that'll rupture the hull doesn't do you any good because everyone one would know you would never dare use it.
You could, of course, develop lasers and blasters with variable settings. But while people are great at coming up with new and inventive ways of bashing other people in the face, they are also lazy. Mankind has spent centuries developing weapons, they're not going to forget all that just because they're in space.
The old style revolvers in Firefly make sense when you realise the softer lead bullets won't get though armoured hulls like a more destructive weapon would.
Even more primitive sub-sonic weapons like crossbows would make sense. They'd still mess up a person but wouldn't make though even the thinner inner walls in a spaceship so there's little chance of the taking out, say, the life-support systems accidentally.
Going further, space is a premium in space. Any empty room would have to be filled with air to make it inhabitable. Air that has to be stored or generated. As a result, even now, every available surface in a space ship would have something on it. Even in the future and on the more expensive crafts I imagine that there would twisting corridors. As a result, ranged weapons become less useful. Also since manoeuvrability would be more useful then armour, knifes, daggers and even short swords would become more useful.
Not even the fancy kind. Because, lets face it, lightsabers are cool and all but one wrong move in a fight and say hello to explosive decompression.
Just something to think about
When everyone is living in spaceships having weapons around that'll rupture the hull doesn't do you any good because everyone one would know you would never dare use it.
You could, of course, develop lasers and blasters with variable settings. But while people are great at coming up with new and inventive ways of bashing other people in the face, they are also lazy. Mankind has spent centuries developing weapons, they're not going to forget all that just because they're in space.
The old style revolvers in Firefly make sense when you realise the softer lead bullets won't get though armoured hulls like a more destructive weapon would.
Even more primitive sub-sonic weapons like crossbows would make sense. They'd still mess up a person but wouldn't make though even the thinner inner walls in a spaceship so there's little chance of the taking out, say, the life-support systems accidentally.
Going further, space is a premium in space. Any empty room would have to be filled with air to make it inhabitable. Air that has to be stored or generated. As a result, even now, every available surface in a space ship would have something on it. Even in the future and on the more expensive crafts I imagine that there would twisting corridors. As a result, ranged weapons become less useful. Also since manoeuvrability would be more useful then armour, knifes, daggers and even short swords would become more useful.
Not even the fancy kind. Because, lets face it, lightsabers are cool and all but one wrong move in a fight and say hello to explosive decompression.
Just something to think about
