Over the years since I began posting my novels online, a few people have asked why many of the vessels in my novels are completely unarmed. Why did I not follow the Star Trek model of arming every vessel right down to small shuttles?

There are a variety of reasons for this. The most obvious, but somewhat minor, reason is that I don't want my work likened to Star Trek. I've never been a fan of that universe (although there are some good stories set in it) and have serious issues which lots of the technology. Star Trek technology is also considerably ahead of anything yet seen in Astronomicon.

The Astronomicon universe starts roughly where we are now. The International Space Station (ISS) is not armed (although there are a couple of handguns onboard courtesy of the Russians). None of the Apollo missions was armed and I can't imagine that the first manned mission to Mars is going to feature weapons either.

We've never found any trace of intelligent life anywhere in the known universe and it is incredibly unlikely that we will find any on other planets within our solar system or around nearby stars. Therefore carrying weapons is a waste of weight and fuel.

The colonisation vessels in the first Astronomicon book travelled a mere 4.2 lightyears. That's nothing in comparison to the 120,000+ lightyears diameter of our galaxy. When you look instead at vessels in the novel Icarus, they travelled an even smaller 0.00006 lightyears. The only intelligent life you will meet at that range will be other humans.

In the early Astronomicon books, space travel is primarily for exploration and resource gathering. Spacecraft are vulnerable and relatively easy to destroy. This obviously begins to change as space travel gets cheaper and more accessible and the number of factions flying around in the solar system increases. 

In later novels, when the Eridani share their technology with Terrans and alien threats become apparent, the whole shape of Earth's vessel technology begins to shift rapidly towards military use.

Handheld weapons have been treated slightly differently. I assumed from the start that a colonisation vessel would have to take a small cache of firearms as a last-resort means of maintaining civil order. As such the L.E.O.s (Law Enforcement Officers) are trained to operate such weapons. Like here, civilians do not carry guns, only Police and military personnel.

I hope this goes some way to explain some of the decisions that were made when designing the Astronomicon universe.