The Key To Winning Any Deep Space War Using Rocket Propulsion

[Spacescifi]

It dawned on me that given the low ISP of most rockets, space war using modern tech would not at all be about big spaceships duking it out.

Why? Propellant. Big ships are horribly slow with ion drives, and horribly inefficient with chemical rockets before running dry.

Instead of putting space fleets of big battleships in deep space, all you really need is a swarm of ion drive probes... the more the better. You do not even need to armor them or put weapons on them.

Because a space battleship can only do so evasion maneuvers before it runs out of propellant.

 

So if a swarm of ion drive probes are headed it's way, evasion alone could be enough to mission kill it, forcing it to have to return to home base to refuel.

 

The main point is that delta v matters more than firepower in deep space, since firepower is limited anyway but space itself is virtually infinite.

 

 

Lasers are overrated, since the more uber the laser the more whale-like your ship will maneuver, which means that eventually ion probes could close the distance and hit it.

 

We are talking months of travel time, which is pkenty of time for the ion drives to catch up.

In low orbit, low efficiency but high powered rockets are better, but in deep space ion drives win out if they are small.

 

 

Edited January 22, 2022 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

 

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Two Enter... Only One zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

@Spacescifi - I think you're starting to see why other writers use Impossiblium Drives and Zapper Torpedoes.

[Spacescifi]

26 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Two Enter... Only One zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

@Spacescifi - I think you're starting to see why other writers use Impossiblium Drives and Zapper Torpedoes.

 

I have known that for some time. What strikes me most is that war must not be too expensive.

So a swarm of ion probes will win out against virtually any rocket warship we could make in deep space.

Since we are back to the fighter plane versus battleship analogy.

It actualky becomes just that win ion drives are involved versus real rocketry in deep space.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

7 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

war must not be too expensive

Don't forget your Ambrose Bierce:  "War is the untying of a political knot with the teeth... that would not yield to the tongue". 

 

It's what Governments do.  What all the taxes are for.

[Piscator]

A more fundamental problem might be that the whole concept of a warship in space is probably obsolete. As long as your most effective weapons are limited in range it makes a lot of sense to put a bunch of them on a vessel and drive them where they're needed. In space, range is not really an issue. There is little need to send a ship to Mars to launch a lot of warheads if you can just launch the warheads from Earth.

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, Piscator said:

A more fundamental problem might be that the whole concept of a warship in space is probably obsolete. As long as your most effective weapons are limited in range it makes a lot of sense to put a bunch of them on a vessel and drive them where they're needed. In space, range is not really an issue. There is little need to send a ship to Mars to launch a lot of warheads if you can just launch the warheads from Earth.

 

With modern tech waiting is part of the game for space travel no matter the intent.

A probe or missile is far easier to launch by the dozens than launching crewed battleships.

Missiles and probes do not care about several month or year long journeys nor are they a .drain on resources that would not add to the war effort  (human breathing, sleeping and pooping hardly helps the war effort in space).

 

So yeah... with modern tech space warships are as obsolete as the star trek cellphone Kirk used (nowadays the people who look like they are talking to themselves use arguably more advanced tech than star trek of the TOS/TNG/DS9 era.

 

 

It's like they lack wireless data transfer or they have low gigabyte storage!

 

 

Edited January 22, 2022 by Spacescifi

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Well...

So here's the thing:  Is your intent to tell the story of space travel and explicate current and near-future implementations, or is it to tell a story and have space travel be the backdrop?  Either way the limits are part of what confound the characters.

Your 'giant space battleyacht' isn't necessary when you can scale the tech down... so what if you can't?  What if the only way to sail between the stars within the lifetime of a human is what Pournelle did in his universe?  A great big ship that goes to a specific locus and translates from there.  Or you could do the classic 'great big ship gets far enough from the star to safely translate, then using massive engines and or capacitors bends space to its will and appears at the outskirts of the enemy's system'.

Frankly - one of the things I hated about the subsequent StarWars movies was that anything could warp.  Obi Wan introduces us to the idea of the galaxy far far away and the ability to travel by having them be forced into a den of scum and villainy to find someone with a ship capable of crossing the galaxy; a souped up sleeper freighter.  They travel a long enough time to learn sword fighting and play chess.  Later?  Some guy jumps in a yugo and is instantly where he wants to be.  Stupid.

Edited January 22, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli