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Ask Slashdot: What Would Real Space Combat Look Like?
c0mpliant writes "Two friends and I were up until the wee hours of the morning over the weekend debating what real space combat would look like. I've spent some time looking it up online, and there doesn't seem to be any general consensus. So, I thought I'd ask a community of peers what they think. Given our current technology and potential near-future technology, what would a future space battlefield look like? Would capital ships rule the day? Would there be equivalents of cruisers, fighters and bombers, or would it be a mix of them all?"
My prediction: slow and boring.
Laser Beams.
That's all.
my mirror shields will take the day
I think this exchange about sums it up. Your great-great-...-great-grandparents could have sat around 150 years ago wondering what air combat would be like. With hindsight we know that the relative strengths of propulsion, maneuvering, aiming, homing, countermeasures, and automation have been constantly changing, with the result that air combat has looked different in each successive war.
There's no reason to think that the qualitative nature of space combat wouldn't change just as drastically as the eternal arms race continued. Of course, that doesn't mean it's not fun to think about or that there's nothing meaningful that can be said. The exercise is to make a few essentially arbitrary assumptions about available tech, and then try to extrapolate consistently to their implications. AKA writing sci-fi, minus the character development. AKA writing sci-fi.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
I'm surprised no one has brought up submarine warfare for comparison here. When in a sub war, one does not try to destroy their opponent. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And THE enemy is water. Let the enemy in is the name of the game. Same with space. Vacuum is the enemy. Let the enemy into your opponent's ship and then sit back and watch the show. (for as long as it lasts anyway)
Space introduces dynamics as unique as underwater. Craft can be insanely delicate and lack any armor and still be a potent force. Range is dictated by your ability to detect/track your enemy (without becoming a beacon yourself) and to focus laser and other particle weapons at long distance. Stealth is very important.
So I think it's fair to say that any hit with a kinetic or explosive weapon would be fatal. Point-defense against missiles would be mandatory because it would be trivial for even the smallest ship to launch a few dozen little missiles that fan out in a very wide trajectory and track you. Mines would be big - think autonomous boxes that sit quietly playing asteroid until something big that lacks the FOF beacon comes into range.
Due to the extreme decompression risk, crew would probably wear very minimalistic suits that carried very little air and power but could be tethered at their stations, and drop the face shield down in case of breech, to prevent a small breech from voiding the ship. Trying to armor critical areas of the ship would be mostly counter-productive because more mass means less maneuverability. The suits the crew wear may even be similar to flight suits that can help with high-Gs, allowing even greater maneuverability.
I think current sci-fi fighter designs are closer to realistic. Babylon-5's star-furies showed excellent insight, I recommend looking at those for reference. Those also showed how ships need to be able to maneuver in zero-g, featured crew in suits, etc. The only thing not really serious there were the energy "pulse guns". But limited ammunition and fire recoil makes sci-fi space battles a lot less interesting. I think we need to break away from the "pulse gun" concept in sci fi fighters, it's a tired crutch that's unlikely to ever become reality.
A lot of this is considering larger ships. Probably the only "big" things will be moon/asteroid bases and the occasional "space dock" carrier-type large ships, I don't think a "capital class" space battleship will be anything short of a nuke-magnet. (again reference several examples in B5, bigger ships generally lost to smaller ones, for good reason)
The other crutch is unlimited energy, particularly in the fighters. Capital ships could have reactors, but at a great weight and size penalty. I think fighters are going to have to rely on smaller consumable fuel. Fuel logistics will be big, considering the difficulty of getting fuel into orbit or acquiring it in space. Other different ways of storing energy will probably be found, such as being able to produce hydrazine from raw elements found in space, with the synthesis (energy input) from solar power.
I could probably muse about this for several more pages but I'll take a break now I think.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Guns, smart and dumb. Missiles. Bombs, smart and dumb. Maneuvering for position in gravity wells. People will discover that common, everyday tools make great weapons, with the application of imagination.
What will war look like? Just like it has always looked. Messy, confusing, chaotic, adorned with lots of blood and gore.
My question is, why does everyone ignore the guns? Guns will work wonderfully in space. Projectiles won't be deflected by dust, mirrors, or other fancy tricks. Guns have been pretty reliable since they were invented. Guns probably won't last long as a primary weapon, but they will always have a place in combat. Energy weapons won't rule until we've figured out cold fusion. Until then, guns will remain as end-game deciders, if nothing else.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
My question is, why does everyone ignore the guns? Guns will work wonderfully in space.
The main issue with using large guns in space is the recoil. A missile, for example, could be just tossed away from the ship with minimal impulse, and it fires up its own propulsion and goes on its way. Also, you really don't need the massive kinetic impact of a gun in space. Making a little pinhole in the side of a ship with a laser would be pretty effective in space and lasers would offer several other advantages over guns, including less recoil.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Barring a completely different future propulsion system, everything in space is either in orbit, on its way into orbit, or on its way back to Earth. Current space ships have extremely little ability to adjust their trajectory on more than a very occasional basis.
So, for any near-earth combat, one would simply launch a missile from earth or a high altitude aircraft to destroy the target in orbit.
For combat near another celestial body, you would probably just toss some marbles in the other party's orbital path.
If you can get there. If something is in orbit around the moon, the only thing capable of touching it will have to get to the moon first. And that's not an action that happens on a whim.
For any extra-orbital combat, relative speeds and distances between objects are likely so great that there isn't any combat at all.
paintball