
Aircraft Carriers in Space - stargazer-3
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/28/aircraft_carriers_in_space?page=full
======
jff
I'm continually amused by the space battles in Star Trek. Two ships pull up
within a few ship-lengths of each other, then lob torpedoes and phaser beams
at each other. I seem to remember seeing in the old series something about how
the phasers really get fired: Kirk gives the order, the weapons guy on the
bridge presses a button, a buzzer or something sounds down in the "phaser
room", and a guy down there presses yet another button which does the actual
shooting. Similarly for torpedoes, except I seem to remember seeing them
manually loading torpedoes into the tubes like it's a 1940s U-boat or
something.

Vernor Vinge's "Marooned in Realtime" has some very interesting space battles,
based around the single conceit of "bobbles": impenetrable force shields which
essentially separate their contents from the universe (and from time) for a
pre-selected length of time. Space battles then become a tricky game of trying
to catch your opponent when he's un-bobbled, while at the same time avoiding
the bobbled nukes and other weapons he has strewn around when you were last
bobbled.

~~~
Angostura
Not to mention how the oposing force's crafts are always orientated in the
same plane. Very rarely do you get someone attacking from 'above' I've never
seen the Enterprise upside down, as ~I recall.

~~~
yummyfajitas
If I recall right, Kirk maneuvered vertically in the Wrath of Khan. A quick
google search points out Spock saying, "His pattern indicates two-dimensional
thinking."

------
csense
From the article:

> For a ship in the water, drag increases as the cube of speed...As your speed
> increases, your drag increases exponentially...

He's being inconsistent.

I've actually heard this a lot lately -- people will say something is
"increasing exponentially" (i.e. has a curve of the form f(x) = k*b^x) when
they really mean a much looser condition like "accelerating" (positive second
derivative, which might be an exponential curve, but also might be one of many
other curves, e.g. any polynomial of degree >= 2 with nonnegative
coefficients).

It's almost as bad as people who talk about the "least common denominator,"
but that's a rant for another post.

~~~
natrius
I'm tempted to say that it's good enough for something where the reader won't
need to do actual math with the information. He's just trying to get across
the point that the drag increases faster than linearly. "Increases
polynomially" would be more correct, but would get the message across to fewer
readers. "Exponentially" is inaccurate, but conveys the message more
accurately than any other phrasing that readily comes to mind.

~~~
hollerith
>I'm tempted to say that it's good enough

And I'm tempted to say that what distinguishes math from most other forms of
expression is precision, and if you're not going to be precise, you should
avoid blatantly mathematical language.

~~~
saraid216
Okay, you don't get to say "cube" or "exponentially". Rewrite those sentences,
then.

------
nradov
The definitive source for information about realistic spaceship combat is the
Atomic Rockets web site. The webmaster set it up specifically to help authors
get it right, since those are the type of SciFi books he likes to read.

<http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php>

------
mfenniak
I recommend the Honor Harrington novels for "plausible" Sci-Fi combat
scenarios. Over the series of novels, the style of space combat changes
dramatically multiple times as factions develop new technology, strategies,
and tactics. They're quite a fun read.

~~~
Flemlord
Highly recommended. They're also available for free in electronic form at the
publisher's site.

<http://www.baen.com/series_list.asp?letter=H>

~~~
protomyth
You can buy the later hardcovers and get a CD with the entire series on it. I
do recommend Baen for books because they sell at pocket book prices and have
no DRM.

------
cousin_it
Gwern Branwen has a well-researched essay about more realistic space warfare:
<http://www.gwern.net/Colder%20Wars> . His main conclusions are that planets
have overpowered detection and defense capabilities against ships, but are
underpowered against asteroids flung at relativistic speeds.

------
InclinedPlane
The interesting thing about warfare portrayed in fiction is that it's not only
a very idealized model of warfare but it tends to be based on a zeitgeist
which is easily decades if not centuries out of date.

For example, modern naval warfare, setting aside aircraft even, is of the sort
where the combatants generally fire missiles at each other across the horizon
(or would be, if there was any significant amount of naval warfare between
first world powers). However, in scifi space battles you have warfare which
tends to look more like naval battles in the 17th century than anything else.
Inaccurate weapons. Point blank ranges. Etc. That sort of warfare was obsolete
over a century ago. And even the close cousin in the form of long but still
within visual range battleship battles were very rare even during WWII and
terribly obsolete after that (the Falklands war being a decent example).

The idea that a laser at a range where the enemy is visible with the naked eye
is going to miss is ridiculous. Similarly, the idea that any missile fired
would not be guided, or that a guided missile would miss at such close ranges,
is equally ridiculous.

But, SciFi isn't about predicting the future so much as it is about setting up
a premise with which to tell a story, so I can forgive these shortcomings.

~~~
fafner
Not only zeitgeist. But portrayal in fiction requires heroism, action, and
suspense. You don't get that with real warfare. Being shot at by an enemy you
can't even see and then calling in an air strike at the location where you
expect the enemy to be is not the "romantic vision" people have about war.
They want close combat with sweaty men fighting each other in heroic ways.

What would be a more realistic portrayal? A bunch of automated drones fighting
each other. Space even removes a lot of tactical elements. So the one who has
the right number of good enough drones wins. That's boring. No heroism, no
action, no drama, no suspense.

The sweat and suspense is left in non heroic and to outsiders a bit boring
fashion at the engineer's drawing board.

~~~
vacri
_What would be a more realistic portrayal?_

Add in no sound in space, no seeing lasers from the side, battles where you
can't visibly see your enemy, ships going 'dead' without much visible going on
- there's nowhere to 'sink' if you're catastrophically holed, and vehicular
explosions really aren't that common despite what movies would have you
believe. If you want 'action', there's not a lot of breadth in a realistic
depiction of a space battle.

~~~
Gravityloss
But that doesn't preclude interesting and visual things! It's just that those
elements you are familiar with from old technology are not there.

In realistic space warfare, there might be something entirely different and
still visual and aural.

Unfortunately, that might require thinking in new ways, creativity and an open
mind. Hence it can not be done in movies that only recycle ideas.

------
CodeMage
I'm surprised that in all this discussion nobody even mentioned David Weber's
Honor Harrington series. He tries to make his space battles as realistic as
possible.

------
sown
Reading the first couple of questions makes me think about how people of the
late, late 18th century thought similarly about air ships and how air power
would turn out to be.

H.G. Wells wrote a book called "Clipper In The Clouds" and it also used navy
themes influencing how people thought it would go.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Anyone interested in this kind of thing should really check out the Hardcore
History episode on the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan:

[http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-42---(BLITZ...](http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-42---\(BLITZ\)-Logical-
Insanity/Second%20World%20War-World%20War%20Two-World%20War%20One)

It explores the history of air power as well, including the massively inflated
early expectations that sound basically like modern nuclear war.

------
MaggieL
See David Weber's "Honorverse" stories. (Yes, they eventually gain carriers,
but it's plausible)

------
jamieb
Its a movie! Its all about the story! Galactica and Star Wars have "fighter
planes" purely so that the narrative can have "Heros" and "Loose Cannons".
Could Kara Thrace have had her mysterious journey if she was in a 100-crew
missile cruiser? Could farm-boy-done-good take out the death star in even the
millenium falcon - and would we care? And then there is Galactica itself: the
lost ship, the fortress in the wilderness. I'm sure my literary friends could
tell me the specific term for the narrative role it plays the way I can tell
you which Design Pattern accept(foo) belongs too. I saw Ron Moore's GDC talk
and nothing in Galactica was by accident except Boomer being a Cylon.

------
javert
From the title, I thought he was going to say:

In the future, aircraft carriers will be space ships, not naval ships. The
aircraft will fly down from the carrier to conventional enemy airspace, then
return to the carrier in space.

From what I know, that would actually solve some of the problems that current
aircraft carriers are coming up against as enemy defense systems are currently
evolving. I assume it would introduce some major new problems too, but I
haven't checked the math. Anyway, it's a cool idea for a sci-fi story.

~~~
dsr_
An aircraft which is running out of fuel can generally glide a fair ways
before landing. It's rather difficult to gain substantial amounts of altitude
that way. Even before that, an aircraft which intends to return to a low-orbit
base needs more fuel in reserve, which means that ranges are shorter and
aircraft are comparatively heavier than their ground-based brethren.

Nor is getting to "ground" from orbit free. You need to cancel your orbital
velocity, or most of it, in order to manage a sustainable atmospheric re-
entry. Sure, you can use parachutes later in the process, but they don't work
in vacuum.

------
vacri
The article reminds me that in the early 90s there were a pair of games -
Elite and Frontier - which had realistic movement in space. The first half of
every battle was spent in time dilation (you wouldn't want real time) while
you and your opponent accelerated to generally match vectors.

As for the 'carriers in space' thing that he thinks is incorrect, it's at odds
with the rest of what he says. While he does defend his point with a function
of sea carriers providing the interface between sea and air, that's not all
they do. The aircraft carrier doesn't function as a battleship, the fighter
aircraft do. The carrier functions as a support ship, an auxilliary, to the
craft doing the fighting. Same in space. The large support carrier gets to
hold the supplies, living quarters, extra fuel and so on, and the small craft
contain the bare necessities for waging battle without having to lug around
needless support slowing them down (remember also he talks of issues regarding
mass and agility). I'm not saying that it's viable, just that there's more to
a carrier than 'sea/air interface'.

~~~
z303
Elite was released in 1984 and did not have realistic movement (Oolite, an
open source game in the same vein is well worth checking out ). I think you
are talking about Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters

~~~
vacri
Yeah, I thought my timing was off with Elite. Thanks for the correction.

~~~
z303
You could have been thinking about Elite Plus from 1991, which I only found
out about yesterday

<http://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Elite/eliteplus.html>

Also an OpenGL version of Frontier exists, base on the disassembled Atari ST
release

<http://tom.noflag.org.uk/glfrontier.html>

------
lnanek2
SF is entertainment. It isn't really surprising it neglects things like
officers spending time managing and doing paperwork in favor of always being
on watch, or avoiding issues of supplying the ships, and other topics. They
aren't fun entertainment.

------
robomartin
If we do have battles in space it will be clear evidence that humanity has
failed.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Humans will build colonies off-Earth. And there will be wars there. There will
be poverty. There will be starvation. There will be crime. Humans are
imperfect beings. This won't mean we've failed, it just means we're imperfect.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> it just means we're imperfect.

And it also means we failed to fix that.

~~~
jacques_chester
Maybe it can't be done.

I'm serious.

The strategy of parasitism is the one strategy that has been around almost
since the beginning of life on Earth. Any evolved system which is as efficient
as possible is necessarily vulnerable to parasites and so constantly changing
and adapting to repel parasites is considered to be one of the most important
-- possibly the most important -- of evolutionary drivers.

But parasitical behaviour is fractal. It doesn't just happen to organisms, it
happens in social structures too. Sociopathology is a high successful minority
strategy and so will always handsomely reward whoever rediscovers it once it
has been defeated.

And just as you can see the whole history of sexual reproduction as a response
to parasitic organisms, you can see the rise and elaboration of civilisation
as a response to parasitic social behaviour.

It will never go away.

(There's also the fact that we evolved as predators, and predators basically
live in a strictly zero-sum world vs other members of their own species --
which has irreversibly shaped us to see things in those terms).

