The Logistics Of Space Combat

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, Boyster said:

Sometimes i think ship to ship space combat will never be a thing until we discover a way to have those sci-fi shields that can take some damage.

Imagine spending so many resources just to get destroyed by a small rock, i loved Expanse, but seeing all these trillions of resources vanishing in seconds...so unrealistic.

It doesn't make any sense, realistically i think space will be used only for intelligence espionage and sabotage for many many years.

Also if not already, it will be used to store weapons, the dangerous ones, makes perfect sense, you can move them around in an instant with small DV, protect better than anything in earth and keep the population ''safe''.

 

Well...if space war is expensive it would be rare. And met with a lot of MAD scenarios.

Scifi shields that work as advertised in fiction simply  only work that way if you use mass.

And mass hitting mass hard? And staying intact without conducting  all that heat back?

To get a legit scifi shield you need a fictional invisible material that can absorb both kinetic and thermal energy without breaking,while radiating excess heat 100% back light.

If we had a such thing, it would be invisible except for when blocking. Then shine blinding flashes of light.

 

Coincidentally scifi shields also make great radiators.

Edited January 3, 2021 by Spacescifi

[Serenity]

13 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

And mass hitting mass hard? And staying intact without conducting  all that heat back?

To get a legit scifi shield you need a fictional invisible material that can absorb both kinetic and thermal energy without breaking,while radiating excess heat 100% back light.

If we had a such thing, it would be invisible except for when blocking. Then shine blinding flashes of light.

Coincidentally scifi shields also make great radiators.

I was thinking of a more active solution, not deflect but actively taking down the incoming, like those early efforts to shoot down incoming missiles but in a more advanced and persistent way.

[Spacescifi]

2 hours ago, Boyster said:

I was thinking of a more active solution, not deflect but actively taking down the incoming, like those early efforts to shoot down incoming missiles but in a more advanced and persistent way.

 

That requires resources...which planet Earth or it's equivale bt will win if they want to bad enough.

Nothing like the Expanse...if Martian humans win at all it is because we allow it.

[radonek]

Planetary chauvinisim strikes again. Belters outmatch Earth in resources by far, they will sooner or later outproduce it and without need to crawl up the freakin well. they can outcompete it so easily it's not even worth a try. And just you wait until they start producing suitable megastructures and outpopulate it.

Face it, unless you came up with Star Crap magic propulsion, planets with deep gravity wells are irrelevant. Cradle worlds may trade in intangible assets as long as they are superior in culture or research, but that's about it. If we are talking logistics, what does need for hi-twr booster with 12km/s deltav mean for logistic chain? 

[Spacescifi]

20 minutes ago, radonek said:

Planetary chauvinisiym strikes again. Belters outmatch Earth in resources by far, they will sooner or later outproduce it and without need to crawl up the freakin well. they can outcompete it so easily it's not even worth a try. And just you wait until they start producing suitable megastructures and outpopulate it.

Face it, unless you came up with Star Crap magic propulsion, planets with deep gravity wells are irrelevant. Cradle worlds may trade in intangible assets as long as they are superior in culture or research, but that's about it. If we are talking logistics, what does need for hi-twr booster with 12km/s deltav mean for logistic chain? 

 

The belters will require Earth just to become the Belters.

Even once established they won't have all their resources in one nice package like Earth does, which will severly limit what they can create when Earth comes for them.

 

Simply put, size and variety of resources matters.

Earth has lots of both.

The belt? Less of both.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Spacescifi

[Serenity]

1 hour ago, radonek said:

Face it, unless you came up with Star Crap magic propulsion, planets with deep gravity wells are irrelevant. Cradle worlds may trade in intangible assets as long as they are superior in culture or research, but that's about it. If we are talking logistics, what does need for hi-twr booster with 12km/s deltav mean for logistic chain? 

If the belters can build megastructures then it only makes sense that Earthlings would be doing the same hundreds years ago before them around Earth and Moon.

And as our history has shown us, who builds first powerful well...weapons...usually takes a while to overthrow them, or wait until they overthrow themselves.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Boyster

[kerbiloid]

Before the belters can appear, the Earth will have a fleet of orbital belter detectors to provide the belt industrialization.

So, any belter rebel will be located, localized, and finished very quickly.

Also just automatically turn their board computers into stand-by mode when they don't get an authorization reply from the Earth for a day or so.
I.e.  when a beltaship doesn't send an auth request to the Earth and get auth response, autoinsert it in the closest stable orbit, switch off everything but lifesupport and radio and start sending SOS.

Edited January 4, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Serenity]

14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Before the belters can appear, the Earth will have a fleet of orbital belter detectors to provide the belt industrialization.

So, any belter rebel will be located, localized, and finished very quickly.

Also just automatically turn their board computers into stand-by mode when they don't get an authorization reply from the Earth for a day or so.
I.e.  when a beltaship doesn't send an auth request to the Earth and get auth response, autoinsert it in the closest stable orbit, switch off everything but lifesupport and radio and start sending SOS.

Are you a developer/writer on a game called Breathedge, i swear if you don't know it, it seems right up on your alley, you gonna love it.

Its getting a full release soon as well, its already great just missing some final parts.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/738520/Breathedge/

 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

  

8 hours ago, Boyster said:

Are you a developer/writer on a game called Breathedge

No, but I'm a developer of corporative software, 2/3 of whose professional efforts are spent on preventing the product from stealing by close neighbors and client(s), lol.

Upd.
Just watched the trailer, it's great! Thank you!

 

Edited January 5, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Terwin]

On 1/3/2021 at 8:22 PM, radonek said:

Planetary chauvinisim strikes again. Belters outmatch Earth in resources by far, they will sooner or later outproduce it and without need to crawl up the freakin well. they can outcompete it so easily it's not even worth a try. And just you wait until they start producing suitable megastructures and outpopulate it.

Face it, unless you came up with Star Crap magic propulsion, planets with deep gravity wells are irrelevant. Cradle worlds may trade in intangible assets as long as they are superior in culture or research, but that's about it. If we are talking logistics, what does need for hi-twr booster with 12km/s deltav mean for logistic chain? 

Assuming that:

* Fertilization, gestation, birth, early development, and long-term health are not adversely affected in a way that cannot be effectively managed

* Heat and cooling issues can be addressed in a cost-effective manner(without convection, and possibly even atmosphere)

* Radiation, micrometeors, and other 'space hazards' can be sufficiently mitigated without a huge atmospheric blanket

* Waste materials handling so that your waste slag does not end up killing you or someone else

* Long-term life-support(including any 're-supply' resources) can be handled cost-effectively without reliance on 'deep gravity well' resources

* long range transport is nether too resource nor too time-intensive(the earth and the moon are very very close together as far as space objects go)

* your products are not destined for the bottom of that 12mk/s gravity well anyway(where all of the above problems are already addressed, so your solutions had better be damn cheap if you want to sell your products competitively on earth, and that is where all of the wealth and capitol currently reside, so paying to get what you need for a boot-strap process will leave you in a very deep financial hole if you can't deliver value to earth)

 

All of our current processes assume quite a lot about things such as gravity, convection, evaporative cooling, separation by density, etc.

Not even counting any biological processes required for our survival being influenced in ways that we may not have noticed yet.

Assuming that living off-planet long-term is even possible, most industrial processes would need serious re-designs to account for things that are never noticed due to always being present on earth.

I hope it will one day be possible, but assuming that it will be is turning a blind-eye to many many barriers that still need to be overcome(assuming all of them can be).

Edited January 5, 2021 by Terwin

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

If by resources you only mean access to currently unmined metals and slag, sure. 

But abundant air, liquid water, space to walk around, sufficient gravity and diversity of resources on the wet rock far outstrip  anything in the Belt. 

 

Furthermore - there really isn't 'more' in the Belt, despite its being bigger https://www.google.com/search?q=mass+of+asteroid+belt+compared+to+earth&oq=mass+of+asteroid+belt+comoar&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i13i457.19944j0j4&client=ms-android-samsung-ss&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

 

[kerbiloid]

One more option.

If move the minds into computer, they can save a lot of room and resources, because virtual people need much less of both.

So, then the planetary population is limited only by the data-centre cooling system which requires a lot of power.

How many Kerbals do live on your table?

***

Also this makes logistics much easier. And you can create crew backups.

Edited January 6, 2021 by kerbiloid

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

westworld_s_02_e_10_the_passenger.jpg (350×225) (tvtropes.org)

11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

One more option.

If move the minds into computer, they can save a lot of room and resources, because virtual people need much less of both.

So, then the planetary population is limited only by the data-centre cooling system which requires a lot of power.

How many Kerbals do live on your table?

***

Also this makes logistics much easier. And you can create crew backups.

 

Edited January 6, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[radonek]

On 1/4/2021 at 4:19 AM, Boyster said:

If the belters can build megastructures then it only makes sense that Earthlings would be doing the same hundreds years ago before them around Earth and Moon.

No it does not make sense at all. Show me a serious project where majority of resources is provided by Earth. Even earth-to-orbit space elevators count mainly on extraterrestrial resouces,  and I don't think you can get more earth-skewed then that. This is because they realize what logistics is about - if I can get to LEO cheaper from Vesta then earth surface, this means that Vesta is for their purpose (time insensitive cargo)  closer then planetary surface. (And  if you think that time is of the essence, just look how much cargo nowadays is transported by sea and how much is airlifted.) This gives earthlings a head at providing personel and light or time critical stuff, and even that does not extend much beyond  Moon.

It is of course quite possible (in fact, probable IMO) that any early economic effort will bear name of some earth based corporation and/or be governed by earthly government. But industrial might behind it will be extraterrestrial, with all the centrifugal political force brought on by that. It will become independent sooner or later.

[Serenity]

2 hours ago, radonek said:

But industrial might behind it will be extraterrestrial, with all the centrifugal political force brought on by that. It will become independent sooner or later.

I agree that industrial might will probably be extraterrestrial but i doubt it will be humans that operate it.

It will most likely be heavy automated with very few human operators and not like Expanse that there is a whole nation living around it.

Edited January 6, 2021 by Boyster

[radonek]

On 1/5/2021 at 5:39 PM, Terwin said:

Fertilization, gestation, birth, early development, and long-term health are not adversely affected in a way that cannot be effectively managed

…

Not even counting any biological processes required for our survival being influenced in ways that we may not have noticed yet.

Yes, this is serious objection as far as baseline homo sapiens are concerned. For how long that remains relevant is a different question entirely. Let's just say that Spider Rose would disagree and leave it at that :-)

On 1/5/2021 at 5:39 PM, Terwin said:

* Heat and cooling issues can be addressed in a cost-effective manner(without convection, and possibly even atmosphere)

* Radiation, micrometeors, and other 'space hazards' can be sufficiently mitigated without a huge atmospheric blanket

* Waste materials handling so that your waste slag does not end up killing you or someone else

* Long-term life-support(including any 're-supply' resources) can be handled cost-effectively without reliance on 'deep gravity well' resources

These are "only" engineering problems. Not easy ones, but I'd say way, way more approachable then "how to conjure orbital energy out of nothing" which is what you need for planetary industry to be competitive in interplanetary trade.

 

On 1/5/2021 at 5:39 PM, Terwin said:

* long range transport is nether too resource nor too time-intensive(the earth and the moon are very very close together as far as space objects go)

I'd kindly like to bring to your attention our own history. Not only was transport in age of sail on similar time scales, but communication was too. I dare to say that managing commercial activity over inner solar system is easy compared to what East India Company had to deal with.

On 1/5/2021 at 5:39 PM, Terwin said:

your products are not destined for the bottom of that 12mk/s gravity well anyway(where all of the above problems are already addressed, so your solutions had better be damn cheap if you want to sell your products competitively on earth, and that is where all of the wealth and capitol currently reside, so paying to get what you need for a boot-strap process will leave you in a very deep financial hole if you can't deliver value to earth)

Bunch of different stuff here. First, bootstrapping is definitely huge problem. But it does not affect my point - if you can't set up extratrrestrial industrial base at all, it does not make hauling stuff up the well any cheaper.  You just remain planetlocked.

Second, if I take off-earth industry as given (which OP essentialy does) I don't care about space-to-earth trade. If Earth is net beneficiary, colonies are only that much stronger pulled towards independence. Once they became independent, it's interplanetary market what matters. And sitting at the bottom of deep gravity well is not exactly win there. So again, you are either planetbound or nonplanetary, with intermediate period of home planet dominace being relatively short and not economically stable. (If it were, Indies would still be part of British Empire).

On 1/5/2021 at 5:39 PM, Terwin said:

All of our current processes assume quite a lot about things such as gravity, convection, evaporative cooling, separation by density, etc.

…

Assuming that living off-planet long-term is even possible, most industrial processes would need serious re-designs to account for things that are never noticed due to always being present on earth.

That is not even a serious objection. It may be something of a bar to get over, but that is bootstrap problem again. And way easier to solve then economy. Our industrail processes are going through serious redesigns all the time, for instance look how iron smelting went from cities full of dirty sweaty wage slaves to bunch of suit-and-ties in a tidy control room. I don't mean that packing everything up for zero-g is easy, not by far. But I don't see any reason why it could not be done at all. And there is a rub, there are usefull processes that can't be done in gravity at all.

[Terwin]

14 hours ago, radonek said:

These are "only" engineering problems. Not easy ones, but I'd say way, way more approachable then "how to conjure orbital energy out of nothing" which is what you need for planetary industry to be competitive in interplanetary trade.

Much like the cable and cable climbers for the space elevator are 'only' engineering problems, but may still be a problem that we can never solve, or worse, cannot solve in a cost-effective way

14 hours ago, radonek said:

I'd kindly like to bring to your attention our own history. Not only was transport in age of sail on similar time scales, but communication was too. I dare to say that managing commercial activity over inner solar system is easy compared to what East India Company had to deal with.

 

Indeed, but can pay-offs in those time-frames compete with shorter-term local investments?

A 900% profit on a 2 year venture is a bad deal compared to a 10% profit on a 1 month venture(~985% cumulative profit over 2 years), and that is without considering the value of having your capital more liquid.

Also, Boards/CEOs want numbers this quarter, making longer-term investments even less attractive.

 

At this point in time, the highest probability scenario for boot-strapping off-world industry is for an extra-planetary organization to have planet-busting weapons, and for the Terran militaries wanting to build second-strike capability off-planet for MAD deterrence.

At that point, the details of space logistics are highly dependent on what those planet-busting weapons look/act like. 

[kerbiloid]

Buying some significant amount of gold on the Earth they usually don't move it physically from dungeon to dungeon.
It keeps lying at the same place, but humans re-believe that it has particular owner and he's changed.

So, they should just officially declare the minable asteroids as "remote precious metal deposits" and sell them  to the banks.
So, everybody who wants his part of 16 Psyche just goes to the bank and buys an "extraterrestrial metal deposit" certificate.

This is much easier than move those resources from there to here, can be performed right now, and the space battles will run in courts.
The horribly bloodless, terribly unviolent battles with no prisoners _{except the sent to prison by judge}.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I officially declare ownership of all resources on Ceres - watch this site for information on how to buy shares!