

What Will Future Space Battles Be Like? - mhb
http://gizmodo.com/5426453/the-physics-of-space-battles

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DannoHung
I stopped reading this article about two paragraphs in because it makes the
mistake of thinking that a space battle would necessarily happen in human
timescales.

A real space battle barring some silly fictional constraint (You can't
hyperspace jump too close! The shields are just holding out! Can't fire from
cloak! Etc etc) is going to be the perfect embodiment of warfare as we know it
now: months of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Except replace
months with years and moments with milliseconds.

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patio11
I think a real space battle is likely to be too expensive to make a good
narrative: in the status quo, major military powers in the United States avoid
_naval_ battles because the ships that matter cost billions, they can only
afford to field a dozen of them, and they have a huge likelihood of dying to
the first hit by a much cheaper missile. In space, the ships will cost tens or
hundreds of billions, no nation state will be able to afford a fleet of them,
and they will INVARIABLY be lost with all crew the first time they are acted
on with hostile intent. The environment itself is plenty capable of killing
the best the United States can produce without needing anybody chucking high
velocity directed fire their way.

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jacoblyles
The cost/benefit equation of war has changed drastically since the Romans kept
themselves in a perpetual state of conflict in order to fund the republic with
its spoils. Especially in this century, the cost of war implements has
increased rapidly relative to the possible benefits from engagement.

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Estragon
That's largely because the weapons industry has been corrupted by government
funding, though. I find it hard to believe that the research, development and
manufacturing of the F-22 Raptor would really need US $65B, and $125M per
plane, for instance.

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camccann
Another consideration this article doesn't seem to touch on: Heat.

Particle-beam weapons especially, but also anything carried by a ship that
generates significant energy that isn't thrust, is going to generate a lot of
waste heat, due to those blasted laws of thermodynamics. Where does all that
heat _go_?

Yes, space is very, very, cold. But vacuum is about as close as you can get to
an ideal _thermal insulator_ , so if you want your imaginary warship to be
spamming giant lasers like a Gradius boss, you're going to need some way to
rapidly dispose of heat before your entire ship cooks like a P4 with no heat
sink.

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selven
You could put some water or other substance and have it swimming around the
ship and when you use weapons or engines send it through them and fire it out
the back of the ship. It's a limited supply, but so is whatever is powering
the engines and lasers in the first place.

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radu_floricica
I'd say a bigger problem would be time to target, in one of two ways:

\- light speed; being 0.5 seconds away from the enemy moving at orbital speeds
means that even the slightest change in direction would put you quite far from
where he thinks you are. I'd guess in-combat ships would continuously change
direction by minute amounts.

\- old fashioned "see the bullet 1000 km away and dodge it".

This leaves one obvious option: autonomous scatter pack missiles. They would
get as close to the target as possible, then split into several parts so as to
be harder to pick up by laser or kinetic defenses. Payload could be anything,
but i'd guess delayed explosives might do a fair amount of damage.

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selven
Don't think of changing direction, think of changing velocity. Space is a
Newtonian movement system, so accelerating 20 meters per second in some
direction is just as easy at 0 km/sec as it is at 10000 km/sec.

As for missiles, I really don't like the idea. If I were tasked with building
a 22-nd century warship, I would put a few hundred automated anti-missile
lasers everywhere, which would fry the missiles before any of them get close
enough to darken the hull.

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hristov
lets hope non-existent.

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vaksel
we already have militarization of space, plenty of satellites up there, are
armed to the teeth. The second they find anything important up there, you'll
have space shuttles armed to the teeth.

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eru
I guess it's not finding something important, but lowering the costs of
launches, so that space becomes important.

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cschneid
<http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3t.html>

This is an ugly site, but it goes through a rational, technology based
approach to space, and space warfare. I've linked to the space war part
specifically, but it's all interesting.

It has lots of fluff from various sci-fi stories as well showing all the
schools of thought through sci-fi history. I recommend you waste all day
today, and read through it.

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mattiss
One would hope that once we reach that level of technology, we will have
gotten past wars....

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vaksel
depends on how far in the future you'll go.

frankly I think all the "space battles" will basically just boil down to two
space shuttle cargo haulers duking it out to hijack the other guy's shipment

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InclinedPlane
This analysis is grossly naive. It notes the importance of kinetic kill in
space battles but ignores utterly that the nature of the battlefield depends
greatly on the nature of technology. As increasingly advanced propulsion
technology makes feasible the next higher level of closing velocities (from
10-30km/s with chemical propulsion, to 50km/s with Nuclear Thermal Rockets and
such-like, to 100km/s, 1000km/s and beyond with Orion, NSWR, fusion, pumped
light/mag sails, etc.) the nature of battle changes. This is a far more
complex topic than this overly simplistic article could ever hope to cover.

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eru
I'd read your article.

