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[Request] I've had a random thought, what would be the necessary prerequisites for Space Pirates? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 23 hours ago by gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/askscience@lemmy.world

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/43972162

I'm guessing;

space flight so cheap that a normal person could buy and use a space vehicle for less than the cost of a house

space freight

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[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 6 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

            
              For piracy to work, there needs to be a system that makes it work. Most pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy were actually privateers. They had a letter of marque from some government that allowed them to legally attack, plunder, sink or capture ships from rivalling nations. That means they had safe harbours, a place to resupply and sell their spoils. This is probably the most important aspect.
Piracy also worked because stuff was hard to track and trace. On the high seas of the 17th century, if you were past the horizon you were gone. That means in practice you had to run for 4-6km, then you were mostly safe. The same would be necessary for space piracy. That means piracy would not work in a "The Expanse"-like universe with only sub-light-speed travel, because we can already today track space probes throughout large parts of the solar system. You'd need something like warp or hyperspace, where you could travel outside of trackable real space.
A pirate doesn't need to provide their own Space Ship. They didn't provide their own ships back then either. They used mutany to take over a ship, then used the ship to capture other ships. The space ships would need to be rather easy to operate though, so that even a crew of low-ranking mutaneers could operate a ship they stole.

[–] hoppolito@mander.xyz 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Love this insightful answer to what I originally thought was a pretty ‘duh’ question - very nice analysis!

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago

I love worldbuilding. There's always some mechanics, some incentives and/or some laws that cause rushes like that where for a certain time lots of people are doing something that hasn't really happened before or after.

People didn't become pirates over the roughly 80 years that are considered the Golden Age of Piracy because it was fashionable, but because the specific set of laws and circumstances that were present at that time made it a very worthwhile endeavor.