saint of m wrote:Besides enemy bombardments, what sort of dangers would a terrain ship face in space? Solar storms, meteors, space junk/debris, and other dangers that could arise?
Radiation from the Solar wind or planetary magnetic fields would be a concern, but I think any spacecraft would have to be designed to protect against such radiation; we can do that today, so I don't anticipate it being a problem. Military vessels are probably well-hardened against anything the Sun can put out, and civilian vessels may have "shelters" with extra shielding in which passengers can ride out a solar storm.
Fire is a concern, but I expect most things that make up a spacecraft will be engineered to be flame resistant.
Collision with any object is a serious concern, especially when system transit velocities can be up around 3,000 km/s. Radar detection of debris and proper traffic control will be very important in avoiding collisions.
Jakelope13 wrote:Did the individual nations on the colony worlds develop because of which Earthside nation launched the colonial expedition, or is it more like that the colonies are divided among individual city-states? And is it only Mars that has nations, like Earth, or have all of the colony worlds been divvied up in the same fashion?
Colonies will be sponsored by a wide variety of entities: Earth nation-states, corporations, private organizations, or private individuals. Some will have strong ties to Earth nations and/or cultures, and some will have no ties at all. Some will be commercial ventures, some will be national attempts at expansion, and some will be attempts at cultural or religious independence by minority groups. In this wild and woolly early phase of colonization, if you have the proper backing, you can go almost anywhere and set up a colony, but it's easiest to do so on one of the four established extra-solar colony planets. All four of these planets each have multiple colonies. Alpha, Proxima and Esperanza are administrated by a TCA Colonial governor, with each colonial settlement being essentially a sovereign nation; almost any unclaimed land can be colonized. The Aldean colonies federated together to form a planetwide government (which is a full TCA member), and so to settle on Aldea you must obtain specific permission from the Aldean government.
Jakelope13 wrote:On a separate note, what happens if a Terran ship fires its mass driver weapons at a target and misses? Is there some kind of warhead built into the round that, after a set period of time, detonates, or does the round just... keep on going? I mean, sooner or later, that round is going to smack into something.
Later more likely than sooner; a projectile could easily zing around a solar system for years, decades, or even millennia before it was swept up by large mass such as a planet. Or if the round had escape velocity, it might leave the solar system altogether.
Hopefully if there are projectiles launched in an inhabited system, someone will keep track of where they went and whether they present a hazard to navigation. But the vastness of space is such that I don't think it's that much of a worry.