Realistic Space War

[tater]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

But a space colony doesn't have to shave off every unneeded gram of mass. Armor plating and defense systems guarentee it'll be fine. If the projectile is going fast enough, it'll just go straight through the colony. Leaving a few holes. But that's not a problem either. There's so much air that it would take years for all of it to leak out. The only issue, then, is the number of deaths and injuries. Along with costs of destruction.

Space colonies don't have to be fragile. If anything, they're stronger than your average city, what with tonnes of steel per square meter to block radiation.

Depends on distance. If they know something's coming, and they have an Orion drive, then they can dodge quite a bit.

You are not absorbing the amount of energy I'm suggesting. The KE level I suggest is catastrophic. Over penetration won't happen. One, any such colony has meters of regolith as cosmic ray shielding. Then the ship/projectile moves through the air in the middle at many km/s, then does the same on the other side. Spalled particles rain inside. That's assuming it hits solid. If it is detonated at some range, an entire side is blanketed with smaller particles of the same high velocity.

[FungusForge]

I still raise the question, why overkill the the space colony with a shotgun blast of relativistic shrapnel, totally destroying the structures in the process, when a military powerful enough to possess such a weapon can deal with the issue in a way that spares the colony structures for their own use?

 

No war has been waged without the thought that something would be gained from it. If you know you can take it for yourself, why would you destroy it?

[Atlas2342]

7 hours ago, FungusForge said:

If you know you can take it for yourself, why would you destroy it?

"If i cant have it no one can"? Lol

[sojourner]

7 hours ago, FungusForge said:

I still raise the question, why overkill the the space colony with a shotgun blast of relativistic shrapnel, totally destroying the structures in the process, when a military powerful enough to possess such a weapon can deal with the issue in a way that spares the colony structures for their own use?

 

No war has been waged without the thought that something would be gained from it. If you know you can take it for yourself, why would you destroy it?

Destroying something is a lot easier than trying to capture it.  Sometimes, in order to win a war you have to worry more about stopping the aggressor more than getting anything "from" him by winning.

[FungusForge]

No commander in his right mind would use an RKKW on a station, a station that lacks an RKKW of it own, when going in whacking out their critical systems is an option. Heck you don't even need to use a ship full of meatbags, just stealth up a 10 ton ball and put it in a retrograde orbit to collide with the station if you really don't care to keep the thing. Bam. They won't see it coming until its too late, because that's what stealth is for, and you take out the enemy without using a weapon that probably kicks harder than an angry Atlas on steroids, or risking the lives of your men.

[Atlas2342]

21 minutes ago, FungusForge said:

using a weapon that probably kicks harder than an angry Atlas on steroids, or risking the lives of your men.

Umm...rawr?

[FungusForge]

6 minutes ago, Atlas2342 said:

Umm...rawr?

I'm dying of laughter send help.

[sojourner]

RKKW???

[FungusForge]

Relativistic Kinetic Kill Weapon. I got tired of typing "relativistic"

[DDE]

On ‎23‎.‎04‎.‎2016 at 0:21 AM, FungusForge said:

No war has been waged without the thought that something would be gained from it. If you know you can take it for yourself, why would you destroy it?

Yes, but going in for close-in combat you expose yourself to a lot more risk even from an inferior force, assuming you can't snipe individual hostiles with killer crowbars from orbit. So if you value your forces, you would probably be willing to risk ordnance rather than close-in attack platforms.

[Hary R]

19 hours ago, DDE said:

Yes, but going in for close-in combat you expose yourself to a lot more risk even from an inferior force, assuming you can't snipe individual hostiles with killer crowbars from orbit. So if you value your forces, you would probably be willing to risk ordnance rather than close-in attack platforms.

Politics will be the reason to do so. Assuming your are not in a dictatorship and your population is at least against murder of civilians (especially children) your government will be forced to land an invading force instead of just blowing everything.

Edited June 11, 2016 by Hary R

[vger]

If a human space war ever happens, mining corporations will probably be involved somehow. Most wars throughout history have been about resources. Ideologies just get used as a front to garner support from populations. But in that case, would we actually fight in space? Or would fights over asteroids all occur on the Earth?

Being that far away from Earth, conventional law is likely to be followed about as well as in a newly-established frontier town.

The first such battle would likely not be planned at all, and the folks on the receiving end of the attack wouldn't suspect a thing. Weapons would be improvised at best, and might be as simple as going on EVA to sabotage a rival craft.

How might it escalate beyond that? Unsure, but it stands to reason that after the first fight, mining craft would start being equipped with some kind of deterrent.

[DDE]

On ‎11‎.‎06‎.‎2016 at 5:32 PM, vger said:

* snip, need ping *

But then we run across the whole "Is going into space after resources even economically feasible?" problem. Corporations are bound by economic reasoning; governments engaging in diсk-jousting are not.

[NSEP]

I dont think fleets of spaceships could exist, they will float away from eachother. And i think dogfights would be smaller attack vehicles attacking motherships, not the classic WW2 dogfights, i dont even think you could call them dogfights anymore.

[PB666]

Mining wars might occur, but they would probably be in the mine itself, not on the surface.

Imagine fighting over a mine asteroid, you already have a bunch of loose material because of the mining operation, maybe even some debris in low velocity orbit. Now start blowing up the surface.

The critical flaw in the argument here is that there are million of asteroids, but not millions of mining companies. At present there are 0 space mining companies, and each company could have an asteroid that provides more than enough raw materials for its space ventures. And if you a mining operation on one roid, the miner simply can move operations elsewhere, and he could, being a miner just sabotage your operation by redirecting a much smaller asteroid. (for all intents and purposes invisible to you).

The second major flaw is that any really successful space miner is going to need a source of volatiles, these are all located in the outer solar system and need to be strategically stabilize. There is an endless supply of these each one with more volatiles than would ever be needed, some companies are likely to cooperate with governments to draft these into a useful orbit, and it might be a good idea to merge these with the orbits of asteroids so that resources can be paired. Again warring on a frozen loosely packed dusty snow ball is not a way to conserve a resource that would have to be drafted from deep space. So once again, warring about resources does not make sense.

The final aspect of space is territory. Territory in space cannot be defined, for example the comoving reference frame are orbits of a certain radii from the star, roughly non positional. Territory in space would not be defined by objects such as asteroids, those would be claims, but by man-made constructs (i.e. mining stations, space stations, habitats, etc) that presumably would be crafted. The definition of a territory would be somewhat limited to a space a human could claim in their birthday suit and live persistently there (such as Babylon 5 - sped way up in terms of rotation) and procreate. Man-made places that are only transiently habitable (even the ISS) would be considered equipment (such as property). This seems like a strange definition, but what is the difference between a car and the ISS. Both travel, both are only occupied for short parts of ones life, children are not born (typically) and procreation is neither expected or desired. A permanent habitat would be

high enough in orbit not to degrade within a reasonable lifetime.
Short of food, and oxygen provide for all the expected needs (gravity, privacy)[Although with engineering this provisions would eventually be obsolete]
Procreation would be expected.
Educational system would be expected.

While we could see an eventual conflict for space housing such territories, in circumsolar orbit there is no limitation on space. So that territorial conflicts are more about the periphery, things like claims.

So what about pirates. This can be a problem. You spend a couple of decades getting resources to a place where you can build a permanents space colony. What is to stop pirates from jumping your claim and steering it into pirate space. Since piracy can be defined by the acts of less stately individuals, their actions cannot be as well controlled. Piracy though is not wise either. In this scenario why should the pirates mine, they can simply steal processed materials. For this we assume that colonies are floating around the moon, earth, the sun and mars. Each specializes in building certain resources and trade with each other for stuff they do not make. So pirates would go after the trade. The would not blow up ships, but disable them and transport them to a something, maybe a hollowed out asteroid, where they could steal goods. The problem is that in space, you can't hide, so eventually there might be a long-distance attempts to destroy the pirates. Each pirate MS has limited ability to defend its self against long distance attacks.

 

[W. Kerman]

If you have a space war, the wining side will be the one with the best sats, if you can't tell where your going, you can't take out the enemy.

[SargeRho]

Just now, W. Kerman said:

If you have a space war, the wining side will be the one with the best sats, if you can't tell where your going, you can't take out the enemy.

?

You don't use sats for guidance in space, you use stars, radio beacons and pulsars.

[W. Kerman]

1 minute ago, SargeRho said:

?

You don't use sats for guidance in space, you use stars, radio beacons and pulsars.

If you don't have visual on a target, or you are trying to avoid a spacecraft that would rip you apart, then you would want rader stations and other forms of figuring out where you are relative to your target.

[Kerbinchaser]

I would do it with EXPLOSIONS!!! The Kerbal way!! (Oh, you said "realistic?" Uhhhh.. Okay...)

 

I would deploy corvettes and runners at the front, to aid in spotting the enemy, and then I would blockade the planet with large armored beasts. 

[SargeRho]

27 minutes ago, W. Kerman said:

If you don't have visual on a target, or you are trying to avoid a spacecraft that would rip you apart, then you would want rader stations and other forms of figuring out where you are relative to your target.

You can see a ship from millions of kilometers away in space, using passive IR.

[W. Kerman]

6 minutes ago, SargeRho said:

You can see a ship from millions of kilometers away in space, using passive IR.

By the time we are having space wars, we will probably have better stealth tech

[FungusForge]

1 minute ago, W. Kerman said:

By the time we are having space wars, we will probably have better stealth tech

Nope, not unless you can find a way to hide the waste heat from your fission reactors. Fact is that long range ships are going to be going around with reactors, and reactors get really hot. Space being what it is, you'll need radiators to dissipate the immense heat, otherwise the reactor has a meltdown, and stops working.

[W. Kerman]

Wouldn't gas/liquid core reactors be able to handle brief periods of intense heat? Or you could use beamed power to charge a large battery, and run on battery for fighting.

[FungusForge]

Beamed power would be range limited, and blocking the receiver, or simply destroying it, would quickly kill the ship. Batteries can't honestly be expected to run a ship for long periods of time, especially one expected to see combat where that battery would be drained aiming and firing its armaments alongside running other critical ship systems. And even then, we could be talking hours or even days, of trying not to be spotted by their sensors to get any appreciable stealth advantage, and even then, radar or even optical sensors would still pick you up before you got in firing range.

That isn't even considering the possibility of whatever enemy celestial you're approaching having its space just littered with an array of satellites to pick out anything suspicious, like an approaching warship.

[kiwi1960]

I did not read the entire thread so not sure exactly what was said... but...

The Sci-Fi notion of a space war is impossible... fleets of ships meeting at a point in space is near on impossible, they can one pass of attack and then have to continue to their destination... assuming that they could even find each other in space, the Star Trek notion of an inertia dampener is a silly concept that allows a star ship to stop instantly and alter course.

So, if a battle were to happen, it would need to happen in the orbit of the planet being attacked. Lets say aliens decided to attack earth for conquest.

At the moment, we would be doomed as we have nothing in space to defend ourselves, We *might* see them coming, but we wouldn't want to plot a course that would take us to Mars to get one shot at them before continuing onto Mars, turning, and rushing back, because unless we had a second fleet to prevent the actual invasion... we would be doomed.

So... in orbit... again, our ships wouldn't be able to easily change course... unless they had plenty of fuel, and that makes them flying bombs easily destroyed....

End result... we may see them coming, but we wouldn't be able to stop them until, maybe, they were in the atmosphere....

So its going to be a war of alien Tech VS our modern air breathing jet fighters....

Their craft would be suited for space travel.... ours would be thinly protected air craft of either aluminium or titanium..... we are so doomed....

Sci Fi is nice.... I love it, but reality must exist here for any debate.

 

Edited August 3, 2016 by kiwi1960