What do you think Space Warfare will actually be like? Thread

I also think heat detection might be less applicable
since ships won't require constant propulsion to move
Unless you take into account the temperature required by life support
but that won't be nearly as detectable as a huge rocket engine
or whatever we'd be using, ion propulsion or something

nebulae?

even though that's not a planet
but it is a gas... thingy... in space... I think... right?

Are you sure railguns would work in space? I mean, I use them in a project I'm working on but I'm unsure wheter or not their plausible.

Also, I think porting naval battles into space seems inconclusive - naval warfare itself has changed in the past few decades (not to mention the past few centuries). An admiral living in 1700-1800 would have a different concept of "cruiser", and we have recently seen what happened to battleships.

Plausable? definitely. Accurate? maybe ... depends on what you're firing ...

The US navy is looking into rail guns for battleships and there have been also alot of regular people with electrical backgrounds that have made minature railguns as well ...
really the only issue they've been having is with finding enough space
for the capacitors needed (big rail guns require monster banks of capacitors) ... and maybe the magnetic field generated by it when it fires

if you're just firing a magnetic slug then your accuracy will probably
be at extremely bad at long distances ... newton's third law kinda
screws with your ships targeting system accuracy

However if you fire some sort of smart projectile that is capable of making slight trajectory corrections via thrusters then yes ... infact it would be a much more efficient way of utilizing electrical energy into destructive means ...

Rail guns are great potential because Inertia is a bitch ... and in a practically no atmospheric situation it would be like firing a battleship cannon at a target at point blank range simply because there would be no atmosphere to slow the fired projectile down ...

There are a couple downsides though ..

a) you run out of ammo or energy, you are done rather than just energy alone

b)The kick from the rail gun could be hard to manage if you are firing a shell with significant mass at a blinding speed ... when you shoot a projectile out, there will be an equal and opposite reaction because linear momentum=(some constant) and equvalent force would be preserved
In layman's terms, your crew would either feel a slight jerk or recieve a face full of wall every time the gun was fired depending on size and power

c)The fact that the projectile would be slower than a energy weapon says that the other ship may have a chance of dodging it at long range ... all they really need to do is "sidestep" it ... depending on the corrective capabilities of the projectile, they may be able to easily dodge it at long range (talking about solar system type scales here)

Edited by: Assaultman67

But you're in space ... once you fire the gun you will start flying backwards no matter if you had a recoil system or not ...

the biggest problem you would have really is not so much the ship moving (translation wise) as much as having problems with the ship spinning ...

once you fire the gun, the ship will undergo an angular acceleration due to the projectile being fired (well, assuming the barrel isn't perfectly inline with the center of mass of the ship) ...

This has an effect on the aim of the ship so it would be much harder designing a system to counteract this effect than making a rail projectile with thrusters that is able to course correct to a certain degree ... this allows for inaccuracy in the gun targeting systems ... It also allows some discrepancy in gravity field readings ...

Otherwise if the projectile gun was fired and the barrel is of by a 10th of a degree the projectile could miss the ship by a 10 miles ... (considering the range in space that is)

yeah I agree, I just think the amount of work to make a cannon feasible on a space ship isn't worth the time or money. that's why I was thinking stuff like microwave emitters and computer hacking would be prime weapons, I think everyone is still thinking that spaceships will be like battleships, I've always thought that the evolution of space warfare will transcend the use of cannons and the like. think about it, would the medieval knights who used swords and bows even of thought that we'd be using jets, machineguns, rocket launchers and helicopters? (or even battleships?) I just think warfare will evolve the same way, it won't retain the likeness that we have from modern warfare...

btw I didn't edit this so if it doesn't read well I just woke up haha

oh shit I'm just on the second one, I guess stealth is out haha

I still think "nodal" warfare would be a solution to alot of problems ...

Such as the active Radar/lidar problem discussed on the second page ...

program a probe with active detection capabilities to go out and search for the enemy ship using active detection systems and then when it finds it, it broadcast its coordinates ...

This prevents the enemy ship from detecting your ship, but still gives you the upper hand ...

Depends on how far into the future. A thousand years from now Space warfare would be fought from such a distance that you cant see your enemy with the naked eye. Projectile weapons would require too much calculation and be far too easy to destroy, even today we are capable of shooting down artillery shells. Lasers with 20terrawatts of juice  will burn through any hull at any distance (Space is a vacuum, hence lasers will travel until they hit something) and would be 100% accurate from as far away as at least four hundred light years against large slow moving targets, half that for anything of significant speed (Fighter or missile). Space warfare will become increasingly dangerous and boring. Boring because the age of broadside shoot-outs and will not be carried over int space especially if you consider that the decompression of a ship in space and result debris at such a range could and would destroy the attacker.  I think Star Trek has made the best portrayal of space warfare (When battling the ships are actually several thousand kilometers away from each other but obviously in cinema you have to bend the rules for entertainment), which will be quick and boring with no fighters, missiles reserved for soft targets and planetary bombardments, and no, or few, projectile weapons.

And whats this talk of no one ever hearing of a gas planet? We have four gas planets in our solar system! Although two are also considered 'Ice giants'. Gas planets are mostly composed of helium and hydrogen on the outside, as you go deeper they compress into a liquid or slush finally you have a rock core.

I don't think people fully understand the accuracy nessessary of using a dumb guided weapon such as a purely kinetic weapon or a laser or microwave gun or whatever ...

Let's do some math to see what type of accuracy we are looking at to shoot a laser 1000miles and be able to hit a target plus or minus ... oh ... say 200 feet ... which is a pretty big area about twice as much as a football field ...

I honestly doubt you would be able to hit anything 1000 miles away with that kinda accuracy needed let alone hold it steady long enough to burn through the target ...

And that's instant hit ... you also have to keep in mind that you have to take into account for things such as light speed, velocity of the object, and the local gravitational field effects ...

The laser would be effective in close quarters combat ... but if you were to do anything at a far distance you would definitely need guided weapondry ...

i ran some other calculations considering my "guided" rail gun projectile theory and got a function similar to this:

distance = (velocity of rail projectile)*((acceleration constant of thrusters)*(radius)^(1/2)/.5)^(1/2)
distance being how far away the target is, and the radius would be the course correctional possibilities ...

anywho, if you graph this you get a semi-conical kinda structure that shows what is "hittable" with your projectile if it had a guided system with thrusters and a constant forward velocity ...

The actual result would be much more elongated, but it shows that your initial gun-based targeting system wouldn't have to be nearly as accurate because the projectile could make "minor" course corrections

So yea ... now imagine that you have a rail gun ... that shot a guided rail projectile ... that breaks into several pieces at X range to pepper the enemy ship with fragments and to avoid counter measure systems such as defense lasers?

(honestly the tracking though ... would be ... so freaking ridiculous for shooting it down im not even sure the last step of it breaking up is even needed :o )

Edited by: Assaultman67

L0K wrote:You dont think a computer a thousand years from now could calculate that in a fraction of a second? The use of the human mind in calculations is being phased out of everything, a star ship a thousand years from now would probably have no more than ten crewmen, all software engineers

but a starship in 20yrs when nasa masters theyre fusion reactor would have 1000+, the russians can get enough power for a lightbulb, a whole house is another world

hail discovery etc channels for background noise, and code crude universe with physics and end up with a computer science phd

Edited by: p0rt

L0K wrote:You dont think a computer a thousand years from now could calculate that in a fraction of a second?  The use of the human mind in calculations is being phased out of everything, a star ship a thousand years from now would probably have no more than ten crewmen, all software engineers

Really the calculations are childsplay ... but physically adjusting a turret to hit an object a 1000 miles away is not ...

I have a hard time believing that a turret that probably would weigh a couple tons could be adjusted to 1000ths of an degree in a timely fashion ... and i have a hard time believing the gun would stay aligned with the target as it was being fired ...

Dumb fire weapons simply wouldn't work at that kinda range :/ ...

holy crap i thought i was pretty clear in my last post ... calculating trajectories for long range systems isn't the problem ... its getting that kinda accuracy in the mechanical systems via servos, or linear actuators or whatever the hell you plan on using to move your turret ... you know ... the thing you are going to tell to move via computer ...

1/1000th of a degree is  ... really fucking small >_> ...

that's why im saying a weapon that shoots a projectile/beam couldn't hit a target at such a long range ...

However if the projectile had its own guidance system it would be able to correct for the inaccuracy in the ship-based targeting system ...

last time i check, robots automaticaly made microchips