Galactic Empire in the Future?

The moon, Mars, and Europa are the next places for humankind to colonize and establish a presence there in the 21st century. So to come to this question, are we becoming a galactic empire? Is our main goal to take over as much space as possible in the universe?

Here are my predictions for the complete galactic empire of the human race.
21st Century - New World Order; Bases on Mars, moon, possibly Europa
22nd Century - Running Cities on most solid planets in the solar system (Solar System Empire)
23rd Century - Bases on planets outside the solar system.
24th Century - Cities on planets outside the solar system.
25th Century - Bases on most planets in the Milky Way.
26th Century - Milky Way Galactic Empire

With a galactic empire, it would be treated like a country on Earth. Race would differentiate by humans, aliens, or robots. Planets, respective to Earth, would be "cities" of the Empire. A similarity with Star Wars is most likely the characteristic of a galactic empire of the future. BTW, I am a sci-fi tech fan.

I dont really want to be part of a human galactic empire. Maybe I can emigrate to some other race's empire?

Come on, you know humans colonizing space right now would be a disaster. We would build weapons and probably end up with another cold war, only this time its Earth vs Mars thats at stake, with weapons capable of destroying planets.

We have the rabid dogs running the planet, and until that changes, we should be kept on this planet, doing limited damage in the grand scheme of things.

We havent learned to solve our differences peacefully. Will we ever? I think so, but it requires a radical change of education systems, media systems and so on to make people LIKE eachother, not hate eachother.

My post may be a bit off topic, sorry, but every time I think of humans moving into space, I think every other race out there should prevent us. Its like giving a car to a 3 year old. You just dont do it if you care for the safety of others.


[edit on 1-11-2007 by Copernicus]

I think the technological advances required to colonize an entire galaxy would eliminate the possibility of a galactic empire ever arising.

Whatever political or social systems we happen to engineer while exploring space on a large scale are going to be completely new, and fundamentally unlike any such system in place on Earth.

Besides, from a strategic standpoint, a centralized authority covering such a vast distance doesn't make any sense at all.

I think its pretty likely that we will expand beyond our planet in the coming centuries, and it will be a necessary once our resources here run out. I think that there is a strong possibility we will become the Aliens we write movies about now, searching the universe for new resources and destroying less advanced civilizations in order to get them.

Never happen. A human galactic empire would require ships and communication that move at speeds we won't be able to achieve. Any kind of workable government, empire or otherwise, requires you to be able to tax and enforce and communicate. If it takes you 1,000 years to get to a planet to collect taxes, then there's no point to it. Even simple trade becomes problematic, because there's nothing so rare or valuable right now that would pay for the costs of transportation.

Now, maybe someday we'll be able to figure out some fancy warp drive or something, but once you have that, you can pretty much get whatever you want without having to tax people. Rather than whipping slaves to mine gold for you, you can just fly around until you find entire huge asteroids made entirely of gold. No slavery required. And at that point, the entire notion of value breaks down, because there are no shortages of anything. You can own an entire planet if you wanted to.

No need for trade, no need for protection or organization, no need for government.

reply to post by Nohup


Well, you'd still have to pay for your spacecraft - and the people whom go out prospecting asteroid fields will need to be paid.

Still, it's nice to think as such.

EDIT: Essentially, most of our tax money (if we do find some way of travelling tremendous speeds) would probably goto law enforcement or travel expenses - that gold isn't going to shift itself, you know?

[edit on 1-11-2007 by Throbber]

That's quite an imagination Dan5647. Anythings possible I guess. Just wonder if our minds are ready for such big leaps. Our Sun will die sometime in the future and we'll have to "go where no man has gone before" sorry, just had to say that. But really, can we make any of the planets in our solar system home? How do you know that any of the planets in our galaxy is suitable for home? Maybe we're meant for something totally different than Galactic Empires. Maybe we'll be living in spaceships and searching for a place we'll never find. Who know's maybe your predictions will come true and we won't stop until the whole universe is destroyed. Let's hope there's something better than trying to conquer everything we see. I hope there's peace for whoever and whatever may be out there among the stars and war is a thing of the past.

I think your predictions are way off. Humans can't start colonizing space with any effect until we start getting along, and that might take hundreds, thousands of years. There's just no way around it. An effort like colonization would take so much resources that cooperation between sovereign nations would be a requirement. So, then we'll need the New World Order to take effect. Even this will take at least a hundred years in my opinion.

When we talk about things happening inside our own civilization, the time is much less than when we talk about things on a cosmic scale. If there were some kind of stand off between a futuristic Earth and Mars, the weapons would be awesome. We're not talking about things like the death star, it would require too much energy. More practical would be something that would do more damage in the after effect, equivelant to a comet strike or something that would, over the course of years, deteriorate the planet until the enemy is choked out.

Personally, i don't think a galactic empire would be capable of supporting itself.

heh galatic empire.. We are way off from that. Lets just hope when we get out into space we dont run into any other species...Prolly get our butts handed to us!

eventually though progress will force us into colonization of new worlds. the age of exploration will repeat itself as all of history does.

Well just say that humanity has reached the point where we do inhabit numerous different planets and moons, all of which have very different environmental properties.

How long (in terms of generations) would it be before all these different colonies start having marked physical differences? I really think from the first true off world generation you would notice - just think what effect gravity alone would have on a developing foetus and the resulting child.

In a similar way humans have adapted physical characteristics here on Earth such as races that live nearer the equator tend to be much darker skinned, taller and thinner and as you travel towards the poles they become shorter, whiter and more stocky (I know that's a major generalisation, and it really changed as travel has become easier over time)

I could see humans coming in as many variety's as there are breeds of dogs in as little as 20-30 off world generations! that would rock.

But has been mentioned by others before, the point is somewhat moot as we have a lot of growing up to do first.

I agree with most of the posts on here about "getting along", but if we had a NWO government, which we might see in our lifetime, wouldn't they establish a totally new system of education that would teach people to get along? Also a thing to look at, the immigration of illegal aliens to the U.S. right now is literally going to transform the skin color of the average American. Eventually, everyone on Earth is going to have tan skin because of genetics. My point is is that we have a better chance of getting along now than we did in the past human history.

Originally posted by Dan5647
I agree with most of the posts on here about "getting along", but if we had a NWO government, which we might see in our lifetime, wouldn't they establish a totally new system of education that would teach people to get along? Also a thing to look at, the immigration of illegal aliens to the U.S. right now is literally going to transform the skin color of the average American. Eventually, everyone on Earth is going to have tan skin because of genetics. My point is is that we have a better chance of getting along now than we did in the past human history.

I don't think it's safe to assume than a one-world government would establish an effective system of education that would teach people to get along. I mean, you teach people to get along, you teach them to work together. If people are able to work together, then it's possible they'll start working together to change things. Massive governments are not generally known for their caring nature, and the muslim world has clearly shown us that control is much easier to maintain over a population when there is little education to speak of.

i mean really i see it happening too but it may have to wait till after Armageddon and then there would be loads of technology just there for you

reply to post by The Cyfre

If you get people to work together with a common goal, then you get harmony. You wouldn't get separatists or rebels if you had a government that knows how to set things right in the right direction. However, a downfall to one government is the possibility of an evil ruler taking in charge.

I don't think we will ever see conflict in space on the same scale that we do on Earth. The natural environment off of Earth is so dangerous by itself that future colonists will likely be too preoccupied just staying alive to be able to devote extra resources toward killing one another. I don't mean to say that there will never be war, but I think it will be something that never occurs between different planets.

Another factor is just how big space is; I don't think there will be quite as much competition for resources out in space because there is just too much of it to need to fight over. Again, on individual planets people may fight, but probably not out in the asteroid belt. Not to say that there won't be competition, just not all out war.

If, and only if we or one of our descendants ever invents a method of travel that can get around the Light-speed barrier will there ever be an interstellar Empire of some kind. Otherwise I imagine such governments would be limited to individual star systems. Surely our own Solar System will at some point have a government like this. Even in the far off future when we have millions or even billions of people living on Mars or elsewhere in the solar system Earth will always have a near-monopoly on many rapid food shipments to whomever needs them. To balance this out, those not on Earth will have a near-monopoly on precious metals and other resources. So they'll need one another too much to justify serious fighting.

Originally posted by Dan5647

Here are my predictions for the complete galactic empire of the human race.
21st Century - New World Order; Bases on Mars, moon, possibly Europa
22nd Century - Running Cities on most solid planets in the solar system (Solar System Empire)
23rd Century - Bases on planets outside the solar system.
24th Century - Cities on planets outside the solar system.
25th Century - Bases on most planets in the Milky Way.
26th Century - Milky Way Galactic Empire

hmmmm, IMHO i'd say we will have warp tech in the next 60 years.

If ZPE technology goes the way its going.

and btw, when ZPE comes available to everyone.... anything will be possible...even the speed of light.

remember how einstien said that you would need an infinite power source to travel at the speed of light.... well ZPE is supposed to be an infinite power source.

with that i think we could power warp engines.

-Mayan

With genetic engineering, colonist will be pre-adapted to their new world right from the start. Consider Mars. Being adapted to a different light situation would require only some minor, by then, manipulation. The children, first generation Martians, would appear somewhat different than Earth humans.

As the expansion grew, the changes would be more and more radical when compared to basic Earth stock. Eventually, there would likely be complete alienation, in the truest sense of the word.

There could even now be some grain of this as truth in our own encounters with what we consider aliens. It may not be that they diverged from us, we may have diverged from them.

I know, the whole evolutionary theory would take a hit with this idea. But it is just a theory. E=MC2 is also a pretty strong theory, but now it too is under challenge.

Hopefully we have time if it's possible to terraform mars before humans live and breath martian air. But I feel to survive in the future when the sun decides to swell and explode and eat our planet along with Mars is vital. Maybe we have time to terraform mars to give us a better chance to head for the stars and find another planet to call home. Hopefully technology will give us the power to do this. I aways thought that our science fiction imagination like star trek is actually an inner conscious possibilty that will come true if we believe it will and strive to make it a reality.
But I also hope while doing this that we find our difference in being human and accept it no matter what race we are. I honestly think that we can become a galactic Empire only if we can resolve our difference's and become an alliance to seek peace for all mankind and life we encounter.

reply to post by Solarskye


I think that for the first time in the history of humans a big percentage of people want to change for the better. It seems that in only the last few hundred years has this idea came about.

Maybe there's hope for us yet.