this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Since this subthread had already stepped into the realm of sidetracked internet debate, I'd like to challenge that claim.
I understand that the reasoning behind this statement is that interstellar travel requires some properties that disqualify the ship from being considered "unarmed":
I see two problems with this argument:
That's a fair critique.
About cars, road injuries are responsible for about 1.2 million deaths per year, they are extremely dangerous death machines, so I think it is reasonable to say that a car can't be unarmed, though I agree that it would stretch it. By that definition, a large wrench can be a weapon, so I am hesitant to just call anything that can be used as a tool for violence as a weapon, because almost anything can be... I have a pretty heavy keyboard which could be used as a weapon if I really wanted to.
If you consider a weapon as an instrument that increases the attack potency or range of the wielder, a car is certainly can be used as a weapon... We even require people to have a license because of how dangerous they are, just like weapons.
If you consider only something that was designed for the purpose of increasing the attack potency or range of the wielder, then a car isn't one. It all boils down to how you define a weapon.
And about the FTL thing, assuming it is possible, I can still think of a couple of ways any relativistic/FTL ship can be used as a weapon even without using it's kinetic energy for impacts.
Blue shift of electromagnetic radiation. If you are getting closer to the target at either relativistic or FTL speeds and you release electromagnetic radiation (not necessarily visible light, even a powerful radio, which I'd imagine all interstellar ships would need in order to communicate over enormous distances), or even just a regular thruster... the blue shift would turn it into extremely lethal, short wavelength, somewhere in the deep X ray.
If the FTL system works by stretching and compressing spacetime around it to travel distances with some kind of field... It would be theoretically possible to asymmetrically stretch space in a way that would wreck a target's structural integrity, and depending how aggressive you can take it, go full blown spaghettification like black holes do.
My point about the FTL thing is that this question is in the realm of science fiction. Sci-fi authors can come up with whatever physics they want, and in real life we are so far from being able to do it that we can't tell how it'd look like. So I wouldn't rule out that it'd be based on some physical principles that allow a non-weaponizable spaceships.
Regarding the comparison to cars - I agree that it all depends on definition, but while there is some merit to the philosophy that "there are no wrong definitions" - bad definitions are certainly a thing. And a definition of "weapon" that includes regular cars is a bad one, because it misses out the important distinction between regular cars and armored vehicles with mounted guns.
Fair enough about the FTL thing.
And as for cars, like I said earlier, I am pretty much on the fence about it. I think we can look back into prehistoric times when people would throw rocks, and I think that it's fair to say that these rocks were also weapons, but not that every rock is a weapon, but any rock can be a weapon if someone grabs it.
The same can be said for a spaceship; even if it isn't it's primary purpose, much like the rock, it has a high potential for destruction that can't be ignored. A single interstellar spaceship probably has enough energy to boil all the water on earth without even pushing it.
I agree about that part, but only from a modern human's perspective. We don't have interstellar spaceships (even intrastellar travel is still a huge feat for humanity as a collective) so if such a spaceship from an alien civilization arrives here tomorrow, even if it's a civilian one that was never intended to be a weapon - its operators could still cause us tremendous damage if they decide to use its power against us.
But let's go back to cars. If you take a regular car to a small village of some lost tribe completely detached from civilization (for the sake of the argument, let's assume that the ground is flat enough and solid enough to drive), you could probably use it to destroy the village. Take the same car to a modern city - and while you can still cause damage with it, it wouldn't be as devastating since they know how to deal with cars and have the infrastructures and rules to safely deal with them. Bring a tank, however, and it'd be a different story.
I imagine a type 3 civilization would know how to deal with interstellar vehicles. Bring such a spaceship to one of its outposts - and it won't be considered a weapon. Unless, of course, it happens to be one that's actually designed to be a weapon.
Just because a tank is a more powerful weapon than a car doesn't invalidates a car as a weapon. You can take a brick and go on a smashing spree in a populated city, and they will stop you fairly quickly, take a machine gun and you will be able to hurt a lot more people with it. That doesn't mean the brick isn't a weapon when someone uses it to kill people, it's just a different level of weapon.
And yes, a K3 civilization will not consider a 10^15 watt ship trying to attack it as an existential threat like a sub K1 civilisation will, but a modern military won't find a guy with bow and arrow as a threat (unless he is Rambo), still, a bow is a weapon regardless. It won't win a war, but it can still kill.
A bow is usually considered a weapon while a car isn't, but the car has much more destructive power than the bow. It's not the destructive power that makes something a weapon.
But even if you replace the bow with a brick, it is still a weapon when someone smashes people's faces with it.
And a soft piece of sponge is also a weapon when you force it in someone's throat. If you define "weapon" like this, almost anything is a weapon. You lose the distinction between a bow that was designed for killing and a brick which was designed for building.
But more importantly - if everything can be a weapon when used as such, then saying that an interstellar capable spaceship is a weapon says nothing about spaceships themselves or interstellar travel itself.