How will we colonize the solar system, and what would our early colonies look like? Also will there be wars between different colonies, planets or moons, if so how would warfare be waged in a low gravity environment?

1987961

How will we colonize the solar system,

Mars bases, possibly floating Venus ships

and what would our early colonies look like?

Bubbles, caverns, or both

Also will there be wars between different colonies, planets or moons,

There might

if so how would warfare be waged in a low gravity environment?

With weapons

1987961
Be honest, when it comes to low-gravity infantry battles, I think the most accurate guess at it was Ender's Game

Colonize space?!
Fuck that!
People of the same sex are in love!!!

1987961
There'll probably be some insulated bubbles on the moon and Mars, but I think real colonization wil start with us completely re-engineering ourselves and our ecosystems into unique forms that fit naturally into that environment, whether it's a frozen desert planet like Mars, a toxic world like Venus, an interior-ocean world like Europa, hard vacuum, the skies of a gas giant, the corona of a star, the event horizon of a black hole, or the beam of a quasar. Like ancient plants on Earth, life will eventually transform them into something new and comfortable and never before seen. Just because life didn't arise in these places doesn't mean we should try to turn them into Earth instead of creating new life suitable to them.

Except for a few unusual periods and statistical flukes, I'd wager there'd be even less war than there is today compared to the past, due to increased communication, the distances and timescales involved, incommensurate resource needs, and much larger rewards of cooperation and trade (much like today; this is why the US and China will never fight, at least in their current incarnations), but when it does happen, which it will, it'll be incredibly weird and involve lots of things we haven't thought of.

It would probably be very boring and unromantic to watch with human senses, given that most weapons would probably be very small or very far away from each other. I doubt there'd be much along the lines of traditional ground combat, since technological progress doesn't happen, if you'll forgive the expression, in a vacuum, and so combatants would have technology that lets them keep their vulnerable parts as far away from the battle as possible.

1987980 Speaking of Ender's Game, I can't wait for the movie to come out on the 31st.

1988131
I just finished the book. It was good, if a little creepy the way he acted.

I mean, I understand what it takes to win, and how he did it worked perfectly all the same. He was a great character. Still, he killed TWO kids; not just one, TWO! I guess I can understand it, but it's still pretty creepy.

Think Mass Effect!

1988131
From some of the previews... I am worried that the movie will simplify/modify material in the books to be more appealing to a wider audience. I really hope they don't do that, but I'm anticipating that they will. It will probably end up being an enjoyable science fiction film, but I don't think it will have any of what made the original great.

1988154
The thing about Ender is that he didn't know he killed them. I find him to be a really interesting character because of all that. Yes, he killed two different kids, but he didn't KNOW he killed them and so he still managed to retain his... innocence, I suppose. They purposely kept that from him because they knew if he knew, it would have destroyed him. He didn't want to hurt anyone else, he didn't want to fight, not really.

1987980
EDIT: Speaking of Ender's Game and zero-gravity infantry combat in general, has anyone here ever played Shattered Horizon?

Not many people play it any more, but I thought it was pretty fantastic. I took a lot of cues from Ender's Game when I played it. I remember getting sniped from one guy across this large "hallway" repeatedly, and I couldn't figure out how he was destroying me so easily. When I finally say how he had positioned himself, I laughed: He wasn't shooting my from across a "hallway", he was firing down at me at the bottom of a pit. The Enemy's Gate is Down, indeed.

1987961 All the answers to your questions about space and everything related can be found on this wonderful website.

1988105 I concur, it doesn't really make much sense to terraform Mars/Venus/Europa/What-have-you, when you could use those same technologies to make the Earth much more habitable. It would be much less resource intensive to simply modify our own bodies based on the environments we inhabit. Or if you want to go into an even more speculative route, we could transfer our minds into superhuman genetically engineered bodies, à la Avatar or Altered Carbon.

Dougal Dixon wrote a pretty grotesque book called Man after Man detailing the future of human evolution, both by natural selection and genetic engineering.

Some artwork from the book:

The artist Nemo Ramjet (awesome name btw) wrote of a similar idea of humans evolving (or being forced by hostile aliens) into all kinds of bizarre forms during the next billion years of space colonization, chronicled in his twisted-yet-beautiful All Tomorrows.

1988428 Oh man, Shattered Horizon, that was really something interesting. Nobody plays it anymore, and the only thing to shoot at are bots. Very underated, and definitely needs more love.

1988428
Yea, I remember they never told him for good reason, and he had to keep beating them so they wouldn't come back, which is a sound tactic. It's just the idea that a 6 year old can do that that's creepy.

1988048
Not sure if Chappelle Show reference, but will show anyways.

1989586
And a few of these-