Near-future Space Battleship Concept

[Joseph Kerman]

I want to start things up by saying I have never really made 3D models of these (possibly irrelevant).

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My Space Battleship is a 400m long, 400m wide, 250m tall ship. It's hull plating is a really unusual combination. Kevlar base, with 3" Cera-tinum (Ceramic + Titanium) with a reflective coating on top. Then, a 5" yellow diamond main armor with amorphous metal on top. The armor will be segmented, grouped in a 3'-perimeter hexagon. It's weapons will be 3 forward-facing railguns firing RP-AP (rocket-propelled armor-piercing) shells. 4 torpedo ports, also forward-facing, each houses 7 plasma torpedoes, but it is not really plasma. It has a thermonuclear warhead that would have a shaped charge for extra damage. It has a center Ion Engine Cluster (IEC) with 2 side VASIMR engines held by airbrakes (wings), and a nuclear turbojet on top of the IEC. It is FTL-capable, using an Alcubierre-White warp drive to reach extremely high velocities. It also has a counter-balance drive to center the warp bubble. The VASIMR will maneuver the ship in sub-light and in FTL. It also uses CO2 lasers for point defense, and 2 special 3-barreled ion laser turrets for both defense and offense. It is all powered by a fusion cell near the core. It will crew 12 people. It can dock onto large carriers or spacedocks with ease with its extendable docking arm.

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What do you think? Correct me if there are some far-future tech used.

Edited August 16, 2017 by Joseph Kerman

[Scotius]

So. Basically, this?

VASIMR, Alcubierre drive, airbrakes(!) and nuclear turbojet lumped into one package with railguns firing rocket propelled slugs and plasma torpedoes carrying thermonuclear shaped charge warheads. And what is fusion cell? May i suggest moving this thread to the Lounge? Because there is very little Science involved in it.

[hms_warrior]

if you want something historical and more realitic to orientate on :

 

Project Orion was one of the most ambitious -- and radical -- spacecraft concepts ever developed.  Central to the concept was substituting conventional chemical rockets with a string of low-yield nuclear bombs "spit" out the rear to create a series of powerful blast waves that would accelerate the spacecraft to high velocities.

The "piece de resistance" of the Orion development project was the Orion Battleship, a 10-story-tall spaceborne "doomsday" weapon that would carry more nuclear firepower than a nuclear submarine.  Its proposed armaments included 500 20-megaton thermonuclear missiles, 3 naval Mk 5-inch gun turrets, at least six Casaba Howitzer nuclear directed-energy weapons systems and numerous 20-mm close-in weapons.  Propulsion would consist of several thousand 5-kiloton nuclear pulse weapons (that would also serve as powerful EMP weapons if detonated in the upper atmosphere). Six "landing boats" were on board for use in crew transfer, resupply, emergency escape, etc.

When the Battleship concept (including a scale model) was shown to President Kennedy in 1963, JFK was reportedly so freaked out that he immediately cancelled the project altogether.

 

http://fantastic-plastic.com/ProjectOrionBattleshipPage.htm

 

and here is the link to the full book : https://www.amazon.com/Project-Orion-Story-Atomic-Spaceship/dp/0805059857

Edited August 16, 2017 by hms_warrior

[tater]

There is no such thing as a near-futre space battleship. The very idea of it makes no sense at all since nothing about it is near future.

[DDE]

3 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

ion laser turrets

Uhm... these don't exist.

3 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

It has a center Ion Engine Cluster (IEC) with 2 side VASIMR engines

VASIMR is an electromagnetic and not an electrostatic; it's not an ion thruster but a plasma thruster.

3 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

It is FTL-capable, using an Alcubierre-White warp drive to reach extremely high velocities.

3 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

Correct me if there are some far-future tech used.

*applies angle grinder to face*

[DerekL1963]

8 minutes ago, DDE said:

VASIMR is an electromagnetic and not an electrostatic; it's not an ion thruster but a plasma thruster.

And not particularly powerful despite all the hype.

[Green Baron]

Hilarious.

Even battleships at sea have come out style with the development of all sorts of self guiding stuff. A single cheap rocket could switch it out. A few are still around for display, latest designs from the last centuries 30s and 40s.

The idea is less far future but recent, sub-historic past ...

Edited August 16, 2017 by Green Baron

[DDE]

1 minute ago, Green Baron said:

Hilarious.

Even battleships at sea have come out style with the development of all sorts of self guiding stuff. A few are still around for display, latest designs from the last centuries 30s and 40s.

The idea is less far future but recent, sub-historic past ...

Meh, it was more about aircraft carriers than guided weaponry. In fact, guided weaponry might kill (or already actually have killed) carriers and bring back surface combatants... which in turn might get battleship armour back if point defences outmatch missiles to a point railguns come into play as the main offensive weapon.

[Vanamonde]

Please don't mock a fellow forum member's enthusiasm. Either discuss the topic or skip to the next thread. 

[KSK]

15 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

I want to start things up by saying I have never really made 3D models of these (possibly irrelevant).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Space Battleship is a 400m long, 400m wide, 250m tall ship. It's hull plating is a really unusual combination. Kevlar base, with 3" Cera-tinum (Ceramic + Titanium) with a reflective coating on top. Then, a 5" yellow diamond main armor with amorphous metal on top. The armor will be segmented, grouped in a 3'-perimeter hexagon. It's weapons will be 3 forward-facing railguns firing RP-AP (rocket-propelled armor-piercing) shells. 4 torpedo ports, also forward-facing, each houses 7 plasma torpedoes, but it is not really plasma. It has a thermonuclear warhead that would have a shaped charge for extra damage. It has a center Ion Engine Cluster (IEC) with 2 side VASIMR engines held by airbrakes (wings), and a nuclear turbojet on top of the IEC. It is FTL-capable, using an Alcubierre-White warp drive to reach extremely high velocities. It also has a counter-balance drive to center the warp bubble. The VASIMR will maneuver the ship in sub-light and in FTL. It also uses CO2 lasers for point defense, and 2 special 3-barreled ion laser turrets for both defense and offense. It is all powered by a fusion cell near the core. It will crew 12 people. It can dock onto large carriers or spacedocks with ease with its extendable docking arm.

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What do you think? Correct me if there are some far-future tech used.

Man, I would like to see the 'large' carrier that this thing is going to dock to.

Okay, there's a lot of far future tech in here. The Alcubierre-White drive is very far future as in, might not actually be physically possible to build, although the theory is nice. I'm not entirely sure what the counterbalance drive is but since it's stabilising a warp bubble, it's probably far future tech too. The fusion cell isn't quite as far future as the warp drive but its definitely not near future either. I'm not sure what an ion laser even is, so that sounds like far future too. Likewise the armour - not sure what yellow diamond is but synthesisng 5" thick diamond in 3' hexagonal pieces is quite an extrapolation from current technologies.

Then there's the sheer size of launch vehicle or alternatively, complexity of orbital resource gathering and manufacturing (if you plan to build this in space rather than launch it from the ground) required to get this beast to space. That's not exactly near future either.

Couple of sci-fi points. A fusion cell won't generate enough energy to power the warp drive. Ion engines and VASIMR engines won't be moving this thing anywhere fast anytime soon - you'd be better off with a torch drive. What are the airbrakes for? And why are you launching rocket propelled shells from a railgun?

 

[DDE]

17 minutes ago, KSK said:

What are the airbrakes for?

I fear it's for the same thing as the nuclear turbojet.

This thing is (supposed to be) capable of atmospheric launch and descent under its own power - no reason to have a turbojet otherwise.

Edited August 17, 2017 by DDE

[NSEP]

Cool idea, but like said earlier, its everything but near-future.

A space warship is pretty far fetched in general. Early 'space' wars are just going to be competing businesses men in my eyes

Edited August 17, 2017 by NSEP

[p1t1o]

20 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

What do you think? Correct me if there are some far-future tech used.

It sounds like you need to peruse project rho (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/), it has a great section on the theory of space war in terms of known science and current/reasonably extrapolated technology. Also pay close attention to the sections on propulsion to learn more about the difficulties of delta-V, reaction mass, acceleration and manouverability etc.

As you may have gleaned from other responses, your design is more fantasy than reality. The harsh lesson is, your design is full of holes. Its FTL drive is purely hypothetical. Its non-FTL acceleration will be measured in micro-Gees. And it sounds like the full internal volume of the ship will be weapons. The idea of putting in an engine intended for atmospheric use is ridiculously ill-advised. Your armour is made of exotic materials but is still only 8 inches thick, which whilst offering some protection, against a kinetic projectile of any significance (read: starting from a late-20th century tank cannon) its about as good as paper.

See this concept for more detail - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth - its a simple expression, but it holds as an approximation for anything from bullets to atmospheric reentry.

Your thermonuclear shaped charges are actually quite a good choice and are backed up by real science (though personally I've never liked them). But your choice of things like number of "torpedo tubes", ammunition load, point defence etc. feels totally arbitrary. It feels like you are describing a WW2 battleship but with its systems replaced by sci-fi alternatives. Thats like designing a car by starting with a submarine, sticking wheels on it and asking if it seems like a good design for a car. (Sorry, I really like annoying analogies )

If you read through the various sections of project rho, you will start to form a new picture of what a "space battleship" (or indeed of what space war itself) might look like, and it will be radically different from your initial assumptions.

Also check out "Children of a Dead Earth", a space battleship simulator that tries very hard to be as realistic as possible, with lots of real maths and science. Its not perfect but it is pretty danged detailed.

 

[Bill Phil]

17 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

And not particularly powerful despite all the hype.

Depends on how you define powerful. If you mean thrust power, you're right. Even relatively basic chemical engines can get into the Gigawatt range. You'd have to get a lot more thrust power, exhaust velocity and thrust, to do cooler things. That means you'll need beefy reactors and radiators. But before that gets developed, it could be used as a space tug for unmanned payloads to various points in cis-lunar space. It's perfectly fine to take weeks to get out there.

OP: There are quite a lot of far-future technologies in that proposal. But even so, space battleships don't make much sense. Essentially you could just use huge spaceships as slugs to obliterate the enemy. Put up a defense network in various orbits around your planet and such, and such a war might not be quite a MAD scenario. Confrontations between ships aren't likely, as adding weapons will hurt your mass ratio and spaceships are very easy to destroy.

[DerekL1963]

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Depends on how you define powerful. If you mean thrust power, you're right. Even relatively basic chemical engines can get into the Gigawatt range. You'd have to get a lot more thrust power, exhaust velocity and thrust, to do cooler things. That means you'll need beefy reactors and radiators. But before that gets developed, it could be used as a space tug for unmanned payloads to various points in cis-lunar space. It's perfectly fine to take weeks to get out there.

Even as a space tug, VASIMR requires a heavy power supply and radiators.  Even then, it can only deliver (at the outside optimistic best) a couple of hundred pounds (presuming we can develop a light enough power supply that doesn't require magic pixie dust).

Seriously, even it's capability as a tug is mostly hype.

[tater]

Any space war discussions need to have a set of sci-fi givens added for the author's universe.

What tech is available, what physics is broken (compared to current understanding), etc. Also, what the political/cosmographical context is.

 Near future is what? Within the lifetime of anyone now living? Or their grandchildrens' lives?

[KSK]

3 hours ago, tater said:

Any space war discussions need to have a set of sci-fi givens added for the author's universe.

What tech is available, what physics is broken (compared to current understanding), etc. Also, what the political/cosmographical context is.

 Near future is what? Within the lifetime of anyone now living? Or their grandchildrens' lives?

That last bit is where most space war scenarios break down for me, especially if we're in a setting with FTL technology. The ability to deploy any kind of advanced starship engine requires the ability to harness very large quantities of energy - and having sufficient trust in your neighbours that those said quantities of energy won't be turned against you:

"Yeah we appreciate that it sounds a bit far fetched, Mr President but honestly - we've run the numbers and it all checks out. We just figured we'd best be telling you before launching a spacecraft powered by our leftover nuclear arsenal."

"Well I sure do appreciate that, sir. We're all wishing your crew godspeed and the President of the our National Academy of Sciences has asked me to pass on his congratulations and wishes you many fruitful discoveries."

So once a civilization has developed the technology to build an FTL space battleship, not only have they managed to remain peaceful enough for long enough to avoid blowing their planet to bits with antimatter bombs but they also have the technology to essentially get rid of any meaningful reason to be fighting. Space is big - there's plenty of room and plenty of resources for everyone. The most diametrically opposed factions can - quite literally - never see each other again. 

If you're not squabbling over resources and you can leave all those irritating people that don't subscribe to your ideology light years behind - what's left to fight about?

Edited August 17, 2017 by KSK

[Bill Phil]

8 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Even as a space tug, VASIMR requires a heavy power supply and radiators.  Even then, it can only deliver (at the outside optimistic best) a couple of hundred pounds (presuming we can develop a light enough power supply that doesn't require magic pixie dust).

Seriously, even it's capability as a tug is mostly hype.

I don't know what Chang Diaz did to you, but VASIMR isn't just hype. Sure, it's been heavily hyped, and Mars in 39 days is most definitely only hype, however, it's capability as a tug engine isn't nearly as bad as you'd think. You do need lots of power, of course, but that's nothing that can't be handled, and it's by no means unrealistic. 

No one is saying that the VASIMR engines we have now are going to be working miracles soon. The design has to be developed. Problems need to be addressed. But it's no more or less practical than other near future engines. Certainly more practical than most fusion proposals. Realistically, it may lead to a dead end, but we don't know for sure. That's why it has to be developed. Researched. Judging a system so soon never really helped anything get done. And when it comes down to it, if VASIMR ends up helping the cause, then that's great. If it doesn't lead anywhere, then that's a shame, but then we would actually know whether or not it's useful. Right now it's mostly speculation.

What's your reasoning, anyways? Claims generally need evidence. I'm skeptical, but optimistic. My reasoning is that it could be helpful, but a number of people need to actually invest substantially to get good results. Not much is being thrown at it. But there's no reason to throw it out the window. They've managed to run some test firings, so it is being developed.

Also, I don't recall solar panels or nuclear reactors being pixie dust...

Edited August 17, 2017 by Bill Phil

[Joseph Kerman]

8 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Even as a space tug, VASIMR requires a heavy power supply and radiators.  Even then, it can only deliver (at the outside optimistic best) a couple of hundred pounds (presuming we can develop a light enough power supply that doesn't require magic pixie dust).

Seriously, even it's capability as a tug is mostly hype.

Actually, lighter batteries are becoming a thing. Li-S batteries are thought to be 30% lighter than standard Li-ion batteries, for the same charge.

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

I don't know what Chang Diaz did to you, but VASIMR isn't just hype. Sure, it's been heavily hyped, and Mars in 39 days is most definitely only hype, however, it's capability as a tug engine isn't nearly as bad as you'd think. You do need lots of power, of course, but that's nothing that can't be handled, and it's by no means unrealistic. 

Chang-Diaz didn't do anything to me.  What 'did' something to me was endless posts (such as yours) the pronounce the VASIMR to be a viable solution even though (as you now admit) it's still very early in development.

As it stands, VASMIR is a power hungry beast - and requires either solar panels of outlandish size, or a very heavy reactor and either way results in a tug with an impractically small payload capacity.  (The latter especially when compared with it's cost.)   For VASMIR to be practical requires serious breakthroughs in it's efficiency or in the efficiency of it's power supply - or magic pixie dust.  (As a point of reference, the current model requires 200KW - the ISS's arrays produce 120KW.)  
I'm not judging the drive, I'm judging the ungrounded assumption in your first post that it's already developed to the point where one can make reasonable assumptions of it's availability and capacity and thus presume (pronounce really) that it will be useful.  I'm not against the drive - I'm against counting eggs that not only haven't been hatched, their great-great grandparents haven't even met yet.
 

1 hour ago, Joseph Kerman said:

Actually, lighter batteries are becoming a thing. Li-S batteries are thought to be 30% lighter than standard Li-ion batteries, for the same charge.

 
A VASIMR engine requires large amounts continuous power for extended periods - something no battery now or in the near or medium term can produce.

[p1t1o]

9 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

Actually, lighter batteries are becoming a thing. Li-S batteries are thought to be 30% lighter than standard Li-ion batteries, for the same charge.

Batteries are not a power source, they are power storage/buffer.

To illustrate:

an Li-Ion battery stores maybe 460kJ per kilogram of battery.

Potato chips contains approx 20-30MJ per kilogram.

Gasoline, ~45 MJ/kg

Plutonium (from decay) ~ 2.2TJ/kg (2,200,000 MJ/kg)

Something like a solar panel - hypothetically infinite joules/kg

 

So as a power source, batteries are woefully inadequate.

 

[kerbiloid]

According to this, ISS solar panels have:
Area = 8 x 35 x 12 = 3360 m².
Power = 84..120 ~100 kW,
Power / area. ~ 100 / 3360 = 0.03 kW/m² = 30 W / m².
(I.e. they collect ~ 0.03/1.37*100 = 2% of solar energy.)

According to this and to Mir and ISS lifespan, we can estimate technical lifespan of a solar panel ~50 years.

Total energy / area = 30 * 50 * 3.2*10⁷ / 2 = 24*10⁹ J.

According to this, LEO solar panels can have up to 300 W/kg and 300 W/m2 productivity (i.e. 10 times greater and ~1kg / m²).

So, we can estimate total energy collected by LEO solar panels as ~2*10¹⁰ J/kg = 20 000 MJ/kg.
~2000 times more effective than chemical fuel (don't forget that potato chips and hydrogen require oxygen, which you have to deliver from the Earth).
~100 times less effective than the fission fuel, but doesn't require a heavy reactor with thick protection, so nearly the same.

But the greater is your ship, the more power it consumes, and the consumed power is proportional to the cube of size.
While the solar panels area is proportional to the square of size.
So, ISS already looks flat, and a ship heavier than ~1000 t would look like a sailing ship with solar panels.
So, a ship or station 1000+ t heavy, needs a nuke instead of solar panels.

Edited August 18, 2017 by kerbiloid