Could we actually fight a war against an alien race?

[Final-Fan]

Reasonable said:

Dodece said:
a great post

We can't do that now.  We can't really create a very long term self contained environment on Earth at this point never mind space faring.  We can't get the material into orbit to build anything remotely like that with current rockets/cost.  We may just be able to create a ship capable of taking us to Mars without the crew beind ripped apart by radiation but  doubt we could go much further.  I also really doubt our engineering would be up to creating something that would last long enough even to cover the 4 light years or so to the nearest star.

What you're talking about is still theoretical and would most likly simply be a doomed approach for the foreseeable future.

Now, to be fair, if some aliens did show up District 9 style in some sort of generational craft or much slower than lightspeed ship then sure, we might have a chance.  But the odds of that I'd argue is small not the most likely.  That would require aliens being in our vicinity of space and being just advanced enough tech wise to pull it off but only just.  It's unlikely there are any aliens close enough to make this viable.

I'm talking aliens showing up Contact style via wormholes with the ability to manipulate space/time fabric or at least with tech advanced enough to get up to relatavistic speeeds and cross multiple light years in a (subjectively) relatively (sorry for the pun) short time: either of these are the more likly way aliens would show up in a meaningful way.  And in that case they need to be friendly or we're cosmic dust.

Well, suppose the aliens are much much more advanced than us but still arrive in a generation ship?  Their only chance would be to try to use relativistic weapons (rocks fall everyone dies) to terrorize us into submission, and that only will work if we don't manage to blow up their ship that they'd have to keep in orbit to maintain the threat.