TitaniumTurtle

I'm just gonna say that I think the real solution to the entirety of this is that Christianity simply doesn't become as powerful and prevalent as it did in real life. No Christianity, no Spanish Inquisition. The Normans that conquered Britain in 1066 were already Norse descendants, but they had also converted to Christianity after settling in France. If they hadn't converted and retained the viking culture they arrived with then basically same result and you just have the Norman vikings instead of the Swedes who failed to beat the English, or have the Swedes attack after the Normans instead.

I guess after reading a little more, am I right to understand that a purely antimatter based drive would directing the output of the reaction as a laser that would propel the craft? I am just lightly reading at the moment as I am currently at work, so i'm not getting to the deeper numbers, just conceptual stuff.

It basically was just indicating that there are some design propositions that indicate antimatter can be used to produce greater gains. Most of it was a bit over my head though. I am a bit more of a visual learning when it comes to physics, so the lack of diagrams is unfortunate.

Okay, that's a lot of good information. I haven't read as much about fission designs because at some point I kind of assumed it was generally considered either a failed prospect or just not necessarily comparable to the possibilities with fusion. I generally had the same understanding of how antimatter would work with fusion, until some reading I did to refresh for actually writing that answer.

I spent an hour typing up a good answer, but kept revising myself so much I realised I just want to see what other people come up with at this point.

Might be good to read the "Safehold Series" by David Weber. No magic, but simple explanation is humanity has to start over on another planet and a thousand years later an android wakes up to find civilization in an early renaissance. Android's mission is to return humanity to an advanced space faring level of technology. Pretty crazy descriptions of armies with very different capabilities fighting eachother. Good guys basically wipe the floor despite far fewer numbers thanks to advanced training and technology. Way more complicated than that though. Good read. like 10 books so far.

@AlexandraEagle Even though you have added that information in other questions it is important to include it each time because we may not have seen any of your other questions.. You don't need to retype everytime, you could simply copy and paste or even hyperlink to the other question to indicate there is more detail there.

Yeah, I think you may want to heavily rewrite this question, or at least add a lot more backstory so we understand the circumstances that negate the obvious answers.

@AlexandraEagle yeah, that would be a pretty key detail. That said, considering they can see eachother across the Straight of Dover. You don't even need a boat though. Like I said, some people have swam it, but if you don't feel that athletic you could probably due with anything big that floats or build a makeshift raft.

Just gonna throw out there that people have literally SWAM THE ENGLISH CHANNEL between England and France, so yeah... Also, "no more than 17th century technology" is not almost no technology. Especially considering people had been traveling between England and France for THOUSANDS of years before that. Those are probably a few of the reasons there are downvotes.

@Graham Honestly, I think both sides will always argue that opposing leaders are crooked, and that opposing followers are stupid sheep. The argument then leads into debating the intelligence of the opposing leaders, if they are stupid then that is the cause of their faulty ideals. But if they aren't stupid then they must be intelligent, and therefore intentionally misleading people, thus evil. Accusations of election rigging are honestly just par for the course though.

@Graham I don't think it would directly be Republicans rejecting democracy, but as mentioned above, only that it appears either side did. I grew up in a conservative household, and the prevalent idea that "crooked Democrats were rigging the polls" was almost a regular discussing around election season. It is not a far stretch at all for someone to think that if "they aren't playing by the rules, why should we?". it wouldn't be everyone en mass either, it would start with small groups and domino.

@Miech Being honest, that was part of my attempt to seem neutral, because I didn't want any of the comments to turn into: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN APPEAR?! THEY ARE ALL COMMUNIST CRIMINALSDAFGIIFSGFUGFIHNFOQWEUGV*)QELKAEFFEF!!!!!"

@fraxinus I mean specifically the two-party system, I should have clarified. The (literal) bipolar system we have specifically divides people beyond the point of coming to a common agreement. Every single political argument is either for or against, and always the extreme in one direction or the other. Most people don't really think on those terms, but modern American politics has a way of making it seem like there is no choice.

@PaulTIKI I wasn't referring to firearm usage at all. I was referring to tactical training, teamwork, following orders, discipline. Any group of gun owners can fire accurately, but a well trained team is far superior to a force in any comparable numbers, even outnumbered. That is the difference between a standing military and a militia.

@AlexP The events wouldn't be caused by actuality of policies, it would entirely be perception. It doesn't matter if the Democratic party is actually socialist or communist. The conservatives just have to think they are, and in turn hate them for it. Politics really is just as, if not more, divisive than religion here. People are more than willing to killing eachother over their beliefs, and simply don't because of the rule of law. The fact that so many people on both ends of the spectrum distrust the law doesn't help either.

@PaulTIKI Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I really would only classify them as a militia rather than an actually army purely on the basis that they would not yet have a standing structure or the unified training to deem them regulars (at least at that point). Still a hell of a fighting force though.

@Hoyle'sghost From my experience the resistance to metric is derived from a couple of factors. Technically, the US officially adopted metric decades ago, but never really followed through. Part of this is because of industry being heavily invested in Imperial. Imagine how expensive it is to replace all your tools and equipment with metric standards and needing to replace entire lines of infrastructure with Metric if something breaks, when a single piece can easily be replaced in Imperial. Also, people really don't do a lot of personal business internationally, so there isn't a lot of need.

Are you basing this on a specific quality of your universe, or just your personal opinion? If it is your opinion then why do you think humans are bad at recognizing facial expressions? What would you categorize as good? I personally can't think of anything better than humans at recognizing facial expressions. Robots can only learn what we tell them, and even then often miss the subtle intricacies. I'm going to have to say I think you have a flawed premise...

This is immensely helpful. Only other question I really have is how does medical fit in? In my novel I think I actually have a lot of the departments pretty close: Tactical (Weapons and Combat Systems), Navigation and Communications (including Operations and Deck), Engineering (including reactor), Supply, and then Medical. I'm not sure if it should just be the Chief Medical Officer (Chief Surgeon?) and a handful of other doctors, or is it basically a mobile ER with dozens of nurses and technicians and all that? I'm assuming they would all be officers because of the level of expertise needed.

@Mark Not suing eachother, but there are instances of assault, rape, theft, etc... When you have so many people, you can't just revert to tossing everyone in the brig for suspicion.