Spacescifi

Yuck. Count me in on space travel the day we have the means to shorten the time scale enough that imported food will be enough. When or if we get warp/FTL/jump drives, even intetstellar restaurant malls/stations could have imported food. Which is easier than keeping critters and beasts alive in an environment that they utterly fail to live healthy in.

Even if we can make a lot of food, probably a deciding factor on colonization is whether or not it tastes good. I just do not see people lining up to go to space habitats en mass knowing full well they will be eating the same meal for weeks/months on end. Not for fun anyway. Only for professionals.

Ad Astra had a short horror scene with the baboons aboard the derelict spacecraft. It got me thinking though, if we put animals in space on spacecraft that coasted a lot, which animals would be an optimal fit? Nominate an animal and explain how they would be dealt with. I nominate cats. I would deal with them by putting lots of stuff for them to grab onto, and also putting the crew in plushy suits so they do not get clawed too bad. Also get them diapers... you know why. At least they do not eat too much. Unlike these guys...

When effectiveness is more important a factor than what looks nice, interesting spaceship shapes result. These are the conclusions I have reached. Limited thrust starships: When you have to watch your propellant or risk running out. Virtually any shape you want can work, since you will spend more time coasting than under thrust anyway. Even near illogical Star Trek designs can kind of work. Constant thrust acceleration: Forget the saucer shape, it's not optimal. Use a cross beam shaped rocket. The mid-beam rocket has an engine at the rear and has the deck oriented for horizontal landings. Thus that is what the mid-beam rocket is for. The cross beam is actually two beams attached to the sides of the mid-beam rocket. These beams rotate so that the floor is oriented with the forward acceleration so any crew in them can have 1g gravity. So when about to do long periods of constant acceleration, crew go to the side beams and rotate them to have gravity under thrust. When the ship is about to land, crew leave side beam areas to go to the mid-beam rocket, and the side beams also rotate to match the ground too. Thus all is oriented with 'down' when the vessel lands. EDIT: Realistically constant acceleration of 1g for several days or even months is a dream right now, but if we had it, a shape similar to the one I described would be optimal. What other designs can you think of? Did I overlook anything? What I learned is that spaceships are better off having moveable parts rather than being the static bricks so often seen in scifi that are based more on ocean navies.

I take it you mean near invisible in space? Since this methane rocket plume is visible in the air. https://m.youtube.com/watch ?v=e7kqFt3nID4

In the average human's life, if he/she lives long enough they will face all six versus scenarios sooner or later. Among other things we can hope for individually is this, to quote the show Andromeda: "When we die, let it be as better men than we were, or no worse than we feared."

In scifi man vs man is what humans vs aliens is usually. Except when their tech is VERY high end, then it becomes man vs a godlike being or beings.

In fiction, it has been said that the basic story has a few variations that are repeated again and again. The main interest the viewer/reader has is to see how matters change and who wins/loses and how. 1. Man vs man. 2. Man vs self. 3. Man vs environment. 4. Man vs society. 5. Man vs beast. 6. Man vs God/a godlike being or beings. Which one has featured in your own life story the most? Can be more more than one. You can only guess mine. If you guess correctly, I will let you know.

So we will never truly know how effective any of the designs were until they are built and tested. Hopefully the time will come when there will be a need for such weaponry. Not for killing each other, but for asteroid mining. And because there will always be humans like me who love to watch stuff go boom.

I know. It did do a good job of making us care about who won or lost though. The shadows actions made me hate them so that I was glad when they finally got their comeuppance by getting driven off for once by the younger races they bullied ('guided' according to them) for so long. All star trek battles I never cared as much. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UAsk3ay3e98

Try telling that to anyone on Babylon 5! It is just for entertainment though. At least they had newtonian movement. As for nukes, they are still viable. Project Orion detonates nukes much closer than 3 Km near the pusher plate. In other words, armored ships could survive. Even better if they do not pressurize much of the ship. A big pressurized station like Babylon 5 would die fast. Only a matter of penetrating it's hull and sending a nuke through. Pops like a balloon.

I was being generous with autoshifting at 1000 or even 100 kilometers. Babylon 5 has ships autoshifting out of hyperspace at 3 kilometers or closer. At that range, missiles can cross it in mere seconds. Which means big bulky ships would get slammed with lots of nukes/missiles. Spacestations would likely get wrecked. The only way maneuvering will save a ship here is via counter fire and also missiles targeting other craft while it flies away with a big fuel tank.

A thorough analysis. I tend to agree, but we are discussing the popular scifi trope of hyperdriving into a system from lightyears away, with speed and trajectory autoshifted to match the object of interest. For all intents and purposes, relatively speaking, the fleets are standing still either a 100 kilometers or a thousand kilometers apart. Take your pick, I have discussed the pros and cons of both ranges I believe. In this setting, combat can actually be 3-D, although the only real use would be to target a partbof an enemy vessel that you're nit already facing. At high speed maneuvers would be near useless, and big ships would get murdered unless they were mistly fuel tank anyway. I guess the only real warship in such a setting would be big scifi gun boat, firing off rapid fire flack and shells on each pass. Missiles would kill everything else. And I do tend to think that larger distances are the only thing that make lasers competitive with missiles Of course in this classic short rsnge dead stop newonian scifi scenario, lasers do not have the benefit of standoff range to not get attacked by missiles.

Okay, so apparently casaba howitzers are really lethal stuff (looked it up on tough scifi). Change of strategy. Unarmored missile cruisers. Fire everything. Just a box with a rocket engine, minimal sensors, and full of small missiles. It really comes down to cost vs effectiveness. While I will lose a LOT of missiiles and missile cruisers, in quantity those missiles could overwhelm the ships launching the casaba howitzers. So it all comes down to affordability vs effectiveness. Yes yours are more effective, but if you do not have more than me to balance out my numbers (could easily outnumber your force 2 to one) then winning is not definitely assured. The most effective formation would be to scatter my fleet like a vast swarm, since your casaba howiters could cut a hole through the fleet, but are'nt destroying every single one. It's either MAD or a pyrric victory for either side. It's a smashing victory if you outnumber my forces so much that I would not try. Quantity vs quality. Quantity is a quality all it's own. The south arguably had better military leaders in the US civil war. What wore them down? Quantity of resources of the north was greater then theirs. EDIT: Ever played a modded chess game with a normal chess army two rows deep vs 4 row deep army of pawns and a king? Winning is hard agaibst an opponent who knows what they are doing.

The spacebattle ships goung up against the swarm of lasbombs would not only have armor, but arms too. Sandcaster shotgun spray is but one of several ways to mitgate the effectiveness of your attacks. The other is chemical missile swarms, fired from behind the battlecruisers from the missile carriers. Chemical missiles will outnumber your bome lasers since they are cheape/easier to make, so you will either exhaust them all destroying blasting hulks of dead batteships covering for others behind them, or use them up defeating my missiles, or risk allowing my larger, cheaper swarm of chemical missiles hit whatever cruisers that are launching your bomb lasers. That is the advantage of inertia. A killed ship can still drift and provide some cover for a fleet behind it. This is not like star wars where the energy DEW's are so powerful syuff is bliwn into dust. Far from it. At best the bomb lasers try to mic damage you could do with kinetics, just not as penetrative. This battle is essentially the ancient Roman Legion VS a whole army of British longbowmen. Yes the longboman can take out several Romans at a distance, but once the Romans get witin range to throw their javelins and charge with swords, it will be over. Heavy armor/weapons vs long range light but massed offense.

1. They are efficient, but lower DPS than kinetic missile swarms. Railgun rounds too. Kinetics are more or less solid chunks of potential energy. 2. Armored vessels are the only way to counter your bomb lasers from destroying my scenario space fleet assets. Fighters would get wrecked I know. But armored vessels would not. Once the bomb lasers run out the real offensive would begin. My strategy against bomb pumped lasers would be to put a fleet of armored ships ahead to absorb the splash damage from the lasers, and seemingly counter intuitively, have the missile carriers begind them, and behind them would be the drone fighters with shotgun cannon. I would not even bother sending troop transports until my space fleet was unopposed.

Alright. Even so, a thick armored vessel could take a lot of 'splash' damage from such lasers. Unlike scifi, the smart thing to do is NOT pressurize all of a spaceship, as that makes it harder to go BOOM! If there must be a human crew in a space battle it would be a small one in an armored, pressurizef small area of the ship in a place you would not suspect.

Interesting in a way we humans can relate to. While we run from death, they would seek it as their purpiose in life. There are animals that live this way... spending time and effort to reproduce only to die shortly after.

Has it ever been tested? Or proven to be accurate at shots? I only express doubt not to win a debate (such are worthless) but only to understand.

Who said humans would be manning fighters? In space it would be an extra mass/inertial liabilty for little gain, as a human just issues commands that an AI could do. X-Ray lasers may or may not be accurate shots due to the explosion *bomb powered lasee), although I will grant you that close range is a huge advantage Also lasers tend to do pinprick damage. They do not do the same level of damage that kinetics do. Unless the power is scaled up a lot. So spaceships could survive a laser strike intact if armored. A missile swarm strike? Not likely. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=prlIhY3e04k

100 kilometers is a short distance to cover. We can make orbit fighting gravity in about 8 min. Fighting gravity is not at issue here, so presumably missiles and fighters could cover the distance even faster. Also lasers are known for being BIG and fragile. Since missiles are fired in swarms anyway, that could defeat a laser battleship. Laser battleships could win if there were enough, but I think it less cost effective considering the size, energy, and waste heat issues. An opponent who relied more on missiles I would think would produce them more numerously and cheaper than the big laser battleships. EDIT: Now if we change the starting distance to farther out like a 1000 kilometers... then lasers, being the long range weapon they are, truly show an advantage... until you have to cool them off anyway by halting from firing.

Perhaps. Never saw it as I do not get that channel. Newtonian combat I also do think is more interesting for a gamer or TV watcher. As opposed to watching people talk for 45 min while all the action happens in mere seconds. Come to think of it... that was how TNG was. They could have stuck to real orbital mechanics and it would not have changed the series much LOL.

Scifi often features war, and to make it entertaining to watch, it is often shown only in a newtonian context. Babylon 5 does this, as for the sake of the plot, ships leaving hyperspace come out matching the speed and trajectory of whatever they want to pursue. Otherwise, if real orbital physics were in play, they would fly past targets and spend several minutes retroburning to make a strafing run. I find it interesting that with speed and trajectory equalized at the beginning of a newtonian space battle, the biggest factor is distance. How close can the battle start? For the sake of discussion, let's go with 100 kilometers (about a third of the way into outer space from earth). With that range, missiles and fighter craft could win the day, since inertia does wonders for newtonian combat. Akin to modern naval combat, space battleships would not exist. It is quite within human technical ability to make a missile accelerate to orbital velocity within 100 kilometers of vacuum. At best there would be the space equvalent of air carriers and missile/flack gunships. What do you think? Did my analysis miss anything of this known scifi trope? EDIT: Lasers would not be the weapon of choice at this range, as a really effective one would make a giant, slow target... at relatively close range. EDIT: If you maximized the starting battle distance to a 1000 kilometers, then bigger space warships would have more of a chance. To offload missiles/fighters and make a run for it before their opponents 'cargo' catches up with them.

Now U see why all the media scifi spaceships have blue plumes. Guess they got that right at least. However what about these? Then again... violet lightning often happens in the rain, so there is that.

Hydrogen is tricky though since people say it cannot be stored for long periods without it all boiling/vaping off. Unless future us figures out a way to prevent that. So spacehip/starship propellant will likely be a variety. One for deep space, and another for launch. Also, I read somewhere that violet colored light gives off more energy than blue, so would'nt a purplish plume be ar a higher energy than blue? Although I do know that a white plume beats all (the sun is blazing white in space).