Interplanetary WAR!

[Northstar1989]

Oh come on. I challenge you to come up with a spacecraft that could work without electricity in the most basic sense. How do you use the engines for one, not even orient the craft just use the engines. And I'm going to ignore the statement that hydrolics don't need power.

I did not say that hydraulics don't need power. Nor did I ever suggest a spaceship running without electricity (both concepts are equally absurd). I said without *electronics*, as in SEMICONDUCTORS- the part most vulnerable to EMP in a ship.

There *are* ways to run spaceships without silicon chips. They're not exactly the most efficient, but they certainly work...

And, as pointed out, we already have ways to shield electronics. I wasn't speaking of a complete absence of semiconductors either- just a very limited number of very heavily shielded silicon chips, so that a ship could safely run an EMP.

Nukes are a great way to generate an EMP, I don't dispute that- I only said they're not strictly necessary- and in some cases are disadvantageous- to take out enemy drones in close proximity to your hull, for instance...

Regards,

Northstar

[Northstar1989]

The problem with lasers is that, assuming even a token antilaser coating, you actually do more thermal "damage" to yorself than to the target. a 50% efficent laser vs a 50% efficient mirror coat (say, a titanium hull) that puts 100 Mj into a shot, generates 50Mj of heat and fires a 50 Mj laser. The mirroring reflects 50% of the laser, meaning the target only takes 25 Mj of transfer energy while the firing craft takes 50 Mj of waste heat. They're only useful against targets with a smaller thermal mass than the firing ship. (so, a capital ship or base firing at microwave-sized fighters would DEFINATELY use lasers, because a base can absorb 50 Mj into it's structure, whereas the fighter is vaporized by the 25 Mj pulse)

Because the best weapons against parasite warships ("fighters") damage the firing craft, it's still worth it to throw fighters and cheap missiles at the enemy, because it forces the enemy to raise it's thermal signature, bleeding off their capaciters and heat sinks before the real fight begins.

Who's to say lasers won't be improved in the future? I took a small class taught by a physics professor my freshman year of college who had made his entire research career that- improving the efficiency and cost of lasers. I strongly believe we'll be talking more like 90% efficient lasers some day in the future...

Regards,

Northstar

[Rakaydos]

90% efficent lasers vs 90% efficent laser defense- 10% of the energy is wasted, 9% is absorbed by the target, and 81% is absorbed by sandcasters or redirected by metamaterial cloaks.

Advantage is still with the defense.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Rakaydos

[Northstar1989]

our current antimatter production is such that producing the antimatter necessary to fuel an alcubierre drive would take millenia. compared to our progress toward strong AI, i'd say we're only a little futher ahead in the propulsion department.

Antimatter production is likely to increase exponentially in future decades. I don't see why we wouldn't have it in three or four centuries. Strong AI faces strong political opposition in some circles which is only likely to grow (and for good reason- we are basically talking about playing god and creating sentient slaves), so I doubt it will ever become a reality except through the work of rogue scientists...

if you're taking the battlefield straight to orbital space then true, there will be horizons to hide behind.

however, on the asteroid thing, i seriously doubt that any amount of asteroids is going to shield a ship from being spotted especially if it's burning to change orbit, but also if it's idle running at 280 kelvin and running the reactor to keep the crew alive. unless you're actually hiding behind the asteroid, and then who's to say that your alcubierre warp spaceships can't put someone on the other side of the asteroids to spot for the rest of the FTL warships? spaceships are hot as hell compared to almost all of space, and your manned belter warship is going to get spotted one way or another once it starts engaging the drives for combat, especially if the battles are as close range as you suggest (<1 light-second). and are there really going to be multiple asteroids within a few 100s of kilometers of each other? asteroids in the real asteroid belt have an average separation of 1,000,000km. even in the densest fields, barring planetary rings, i don't think you'll ever have enough asteroids to foul up a ship's sensors.

True, a spaceship glows like a torch in an asteroid field- but you could easily "fix" that problem by heating up nearby asteroids with some very low-powered lasers. How is the sensor going to tell which is the ship, and which is the asteroid, even if the two (or three, or five...) are a million kilometers apart?

oh and on the "troll" remarks, ad hominem is just what we need to keep this fire burning baby. that said, i did gloss over your post, my durp. i see your point about alcubierre, and yes, it would reduce battle ranges.

Let's just forget this conversation ever happened... KSP is supposed to be a warm, welcoming community...

i've already seen battlestar galactica. yes sapient drones might be harder to convince that serving us in war is necessary.

Glad you agree.

i know about the concept of faraday cages, yes, but no matter what kind of antenna you are using, parabolic dish or hull wire, it's still basically a relatively lightweight length or hunk of metal with some cords to plug in. it certainly isn't going to mass as much as a missile or a loaded gun/mass driver. doesn't seem like that much of an expenditure of resources to pack a crap ton of them.

You can't pack *too many* into a ship. Eventually they start interfering with each other's signals... On top of that, every additional antenna is going to reduce the ship's efficiency and performance...

also

i'm well aware of this, but can you show me the numbers on how a nuclear bomb and capacitors compare? especially in mass... i would certainly think that even without an ionosphere a contact nuke would create enough system-generated EMP to outdo any capacitors.

i'm not convinced, but true, crewed warships could make sense

Nukes outdo capacitors, I don't doubt/dispute that. But capacitors are reusable, and can neutralize targets too close to your ship to make use of a nuclear weapon. Additionally, they can also be used for useful energy storage (try harvesting the energy from a thermonuclear warhead, outside of a nuclear pulse rocket like Project Orion...)

Regards,

Northstar

[Northstar1989]

Jamming/hacking

do you see predator drones being hacked? i don't! i rest my case. (hacking is not easy, it can take months to hack something) (Jamming this kind of transmission is nearly impossible in this time)

Just because it's not *CURRENTLY* happening doesn't mean it can't ever happen. You should know better than to make that argument...

Yes, computers systems take a LOT of time to initially hack into. But you can prepare "back doors" and sleeper viruses/worms etc. ahead of time, that only activate at the worst possible moment for an enemy (such as on ALL their drone forces in the heat of a battle). Manned ships can easily avoid this possibility by not networking their computers, but unmanned ships don't really have this luxury available to them...

EMP:

manual controls? last time i checked, you could not just shift to manual in a spacecraft and a rudder pops out the back for steering. if one was to use and EMP an a manned ship, the person would have no life support, no way to control their hydraulic engine, no way to increase/decrease thrust, no way to do anything, almost everything in a spacecraft is electronic.

Once again, a ship with only a very limited number of heavily-shielded semiconductor chips- not a ship without electricity.

Many of the systems you named can easily be run on little besides a steady supply of electricity and analog controls. Life-support, for instance. The main component of that is water electrolysis to produce oxygen. You don't need *ANY* semiconductors to control that- all you need is a steady supply of current (you can perform electrolysis of water in a high school chemistry lab with nothing but a couple electrodes and a current- not computer chips are needed), a series of pressure gauges, and a few switches to adjust the current levels going into the electrolysis system- all of that can be done without computer chips...

Rocket Engines can be controlled by just a handful of analog controls- you don't need a computer chip to set the rate of fuel flow into a giant combustion chamber- which is ultimately what determines thrust.

Even weapons can easily be run without computer guidance as well. For instance, simple gun-style kinetics. Simply load in a shell, aim the barrel (you don't need to aim very WELL- if you triggered an EMP your unmanned opponents are just floating hunks of metal waiting to be shot to bits...), and trigger the firing mechanism. All of that can be done with valves on hydraulics, switches, etc..

Regards,

Northstar

Edited May 9, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

90% efficent lasers vs 90% efficent laser defense- 10% of the energy is wasted, 9% is absorbed by the target, and 81% is absorbed by sandcasters or redirected by metamaterial cloaks.

Advantage is still with the defense.

Ahhh, but the defense systems you just outlines are likely to be complex and expensive. Whereas, efficient lasers are likely to be cheap someday...

There are strong countermeasures to almost any conceivable weapons system. The point is to make your opponent spend more time/money/energy defending against just one possible weapons system than it's worth for the majority of his vessels- then he'll only equip a small portion of his ships with anti-laser defenses: which will still leave many vulnerable targets of opportunity...

Alternatively, your opponent spends enormous time, money, and effort equipping his entire military with defenses against lasers, whereas you only spend a tiny amount of time/money/effort equipping a handful of your ships with a few lasers in addition to other types of weaponry...

Similarly impervious defenses exist against missiles and kinetics. It's not like lasers are the only weapon type with possible effective counters in existence...

Regards,

Northstar

Edited May 9, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Accelerando]

link to post

you could use an asteroid decoy, aye, but there's usually just one of them, and it's probably a different mass from the ship. as well an asteroid would have likely been tracked already by enemy sensors long before you ever reached it. any cameras watching you depart from home base would see a new heat signature in the asteroid belt within the hour and call BS.

but even if that weren't the case. unless you blow it up into a bunch of ship-size chunks, you won't be adding a lot of decoys to your fleet. if you do blow the asteroid apart, maybe it'd work - but seems like it'd be a heck of a power expenditure, and you'd only be fooling the enemy so long as you didn't turn on your drives. once the engines start firing, it's going to be extremely obvious that the space rocks, however hot they are, aren't moving at the same rate as the spaceships, or accelerating at all really, nor do they have drives installed. and if they do, why not just build another ship entirely?

and, indeed, you could emp incoming missiles and drones.

though, what if the missiles and drones don't need to come within EMP range at all? using casaba-howitzer nukes you could fire a lance of nuclear flame to whatever dispersion you pleased, or the missiles could carry more traditional self forging penetrators, disposable lasers, or they could just be shotgun projectiles with an engine and some guidance strapped to the back. they could even be EMP bombs themselves - chemical explosives being used to pump the capacitors, and since they're disposable you don't have to worry about making the EMP powerful enough to damage its own systems. a mechanical system can be set to detonate the incoming bomb once it's likely enough to scramble its target, so that even if the warhead itself gets electrically disabled, it will still carry out its mission. can a ship using EMP defenses protect its electrics unfailingly from its own ECM if the ECM is given enough power? more importantly, won't a powerful enough EMP take out critical electrics like the maneuvering system for long enough for the enemy to land a shot?

about the antenna thing, i'm not proposing to have all of them on the hull at all times, but why can't you stow some extras in the gaussian-shielded interior of the ship and push out the replacements as needed?

indeed, strong AI might not manifest. though, i suspect that particularly "smart" highly autonomous tactical AI capable of outdoing humans in everything except high-level diplomatic decisions is going to be very useful to militaries and thus, very likely to be developed. autonomy doesn't have to mean sapience, it just has to be capable of making some decisions for itself, to maximize benefits and minimize losses. nonsapient animals do this all the time. so i don't see why we won't have "AIs" capable of running a ship with at worst a skeleton repair crew, at best without humans at all, since a repair drone could take care of the problem itself, but indeed that would have EMP to contend with.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Accelerando

[Accelerando]

Ahhh, but the defense systems you just outlines are likely to be complex and expensive. Whereas, efficient lasers are likely to be cheap someday...

-snip-

why aren't antilaser defenses going to be cheap as well? sandcasters are basically just CIWS that shoot dust, and the price of metamaterials will go down if they are manufactured in bulk, which would be necessary for them to be useful as armor. CIWS and passive armor won't use much power either, so they won't need a larger reactor as you'd need to power the lasers

[Scotius]

Guys, i need to remind you that methods of hardening electronics against EMP exist even today I guarantee you can't knock down modern military airplane or ship so easily with electromagnetic pulse - such protection in the future will be undoubtely even better.

[Seret]

What about the guys on the ground? After all, infantry have been a part of our warfare since the dawn of civilization, and even though every other aspect of warfare has changed (well, maybe not every aspect, that was hyperbolic), I just get the feeling we'll still have ground forces involved in battle for the next couple centuries, at least as long as the scope of this discussion.

And navies and air forces planet side won't just dissappear, I don't think.

This is an important point. Combat in space won't exist for the sake of itself, it'll occur because it confers a tactical or strategic advantage on the ground. Even current combat doctrines urge senior commanders to consider themselves operating in a 3-dimensional battlespace that includes space.

The main role of space assets in the near to medium future will remain the same as it is now: they're C4I assets. Their primary role is reconnaissance, navigation and comms. The main role for space combat vehicles would be to protect the satellites, and to destroy enemy satellites. The main threats against satellites will be ASAT weapons and interceptors in orbit. Ground fire can be mitigated by surface or atmospheric assets, or by a strike platform in orbit (as ASATs are likely to be deployed very deep) and orbital interceptors would have to be tackled by friendly ASATs or interceptors.

When it comes to deployment ASATs would operate as point defences, but would probably only be effective against fairly low orbits. To protect or deny a low orbit or to go an get a satellite in a GEO orbit you'd need a combat vehicle capable of manoeuvring. You could deny a big chunk of useful low orbits by deploying interceptors into retrograde orbits so that they'd encounter anything in a prograde one quite quickly. They could just sit there orbiting indefinitely until they were required to engage. If approaching from interplanetary it wouldn't even be expensive to get them into those orbits, unlike the poor sods on the ground. Engaging targets in GEO orbits would have the advantage that if they manoeuvered to avoid you then that's a mission kill in your favour, so they'd be a sitting duck really.

[krona14]

Once again, a ship with only a very limited number of heavily-shielded semiconductor chips- not a ship without electricity.

Many of the systems you named can easily be run on little besides a steady supply of electricity and analog controls. Life-support, for instance. The main component of that is water electrolysis to produce oxygen. You don't need *ANY* semiconductors to control that- all you need is a steady supply of current (you can perform electrolysis of water in a high school chemistry lab with nothing but a couple electrodes and a current- not computer chips are needed), a series of pressure gauges, and a few switches to adjust the current levels going into the electrolysis system- all of that can be done without computer chips...

Rocket Engines can be controlled by just a handful of analog controls- you don't need a computer chip to set the rate of fuel flow into a giant combustion chamber- which is ultimately what determines thrust.

Even weapons can easily be run without computer guidance as well. For instance, simple gun-style kinetics. Simply load in a shell, aim the barrel (you don't need to aim very WELL- if you triggered an EMP your unmanned opponents are just floating hunks of metal waiting to be shot to bits...), and trigger the firing mechanism. All of that can be done with valves on hydraulics, switches, etc..

Regards,

Northstar

I do a lot of RC stuff, so i know a lot about this. when you say

(you don't need to aim very WELL- if you triggered an EMP your unmanned opponents are just floating hunks of metal waiting to be shot to bits...)

you are saying that there is a lot of electronics in a drone, false. all you need to have, is the basic controls for maneuvering/firing weapons ,,a camera for the pilot and a receiver/transmitter, not any fancy AI, any AI assistance can be located elsewhere to remove the cost of the individual drone. in manned craft, you have much more delicate electronics (ie: displays AI assist, computers, life support, radio, and may other things, also manned craft have to be airtight and much larger then a drone. and with manned craft, you need a lot more armor to protect the pilot from radiation, bullets, and the vacuum of space. and this cost a lot more money because many of you pilots will be killed, but if they are remotely piloting, you wont lose the most expensive thing: the human. also this allows you to train people more effectively without the worries of them dieing.

What about the guys on the ground? After all, infantry have been a part of our warfare since the dawn of civilization, and even though every other aspect of warfare has changed (well, maybe not every aspect, that was hyperbolic), I just get the feeling we'll still have ground forces involved in battle for the next couple centuries, at least as long as the scope of this discussion.

And navies and air forces planet side won't just dissappear, I don't think.

if we have any infantry, i will all be drones/robots there will be no actually manned vehicles for fighting because drones are superior in every way (this does not mean hyper-intelligent AI, this is just remotely controlled things). also, in this time drones will be hugely cheaper then using people.

Antimatter production is likely to increase exponentially in future decades. I don't see why we wouldn't have it in three or four centuries. Strong AI faces strong political opposition in some circles which is only likely to grow (and for good reason- we are basically talking about playing god and creating sentient slaves), so I doubt it will ever become a reality except through the work of rogue scientists...

You need to read the prompt for this discussion, this is supposed to be pre-fusion, that means no antimatter! anyways, antimatter is hugely volatile, fusion would be much more controllable and efficient because of the abundance of the reactants, once you have fusion reactor, just stop a your nearest atmosphere to refuel for free, and it is very safe and efficient.

LASERS!

lASERS ARE NOT EFFICIENT! THEY WILL ALMOST NEVER BE! railguns are cheaper and more powerful. you do not need lasers! lasers are not practical! if you want laser like weapons, the only thing practical is microwaves which could be used well in specific circumstances

STOP TALKING ABOUT LASERS! THIS IS NOT STAR WARS! LASERS ARE OVERRATED!

Edited May 9, 2014 by krona14

[SuperBigD60]

if we have any infantry, i will all be drones/robots there will be no actually manned vehicles for fighting because drones are superior in every way (this does not mean hyper-intelligent AI, this is just remotely controlled things). also, in this time drones will be hugely cheaper then using people.

All I'm thinking about is that, sure, maybe you can construct drones and train the pilots/drivers cheaper than training a marine, and it'd definitely be more expendable, but it won't be as functional.

The physical human presence on the battlefield will inevitably scale back, but I can't imagine a sequence of events over the next 200-odd years that renders a human soldier completely obsolete in every possible manner.

There's just too much people can do in a battlefield, and for us to come up with a machine for each thing, or even one machine that does everything is going to take a lot longer than the scope of this discussion.

[ThirdHorseman]

lASERS ARE NOT EFFICIENT! THEY WILL ALMOST NEVER BE! railguns are cheaper and more powerful. you do not need lasers! lasers are not practical! if you want laser like weapons, the only thing practical is microwaves which could be used well in specific circumstances

STOP TALKING ABOUT LASERS! THIS IS NOT STAR WARS! LASERS ARE OVERRATED!

lockheed-martin-laser-can-disable-boats

Navy LAWS system destroying drone

These are small kW-size lasers working through a mile or so of air. You put a several hundred kW or even MW laser in space, and I'm sure it could do a good deal of damage to a commsat or GPS, or the windows on your manned interceptor. It could even just burn off all your solar panels, and let's not even think about what happened if you had external O2 tanks...

While I agree kinetic weapons are best for attacking ground targets from orbit, in space I think the high power laser might be best...

[SuperBigD60]

lockheed-martin-laser-can-disable-boats

Navy LAWS system destroying drone

These are small kW-size lasers working through a mile or so of air. You put a several hundred kW or even MW laser in space, and I'm sure it could do a good deal of damage to a commsat or GPS, or the windows on your manned interceptor. It could even just burn off all your solar panels, and let's not even think about what happened if you had external O2 tanks...

While I agree kinetic weapons are best for attacking ground targets from orbit, in space I think the high power laser might be best...

It's kind of a game of economics to make sure the bullet you shoot at your target is actually cheaper than the target. That's why the navy is funding this stuff, so that the cost to destroy a target isn't more than the target is worth in the first place.

[Rakaydos]

lockheed-martin-laser-can-disable-boats

Navy LAWS system destroying drone

These are small kW-size lasers working through a mile or so of air. You put a several hundred kW or even MW laser in space, and I'm sure it could do a good deal of damage to a commsat or GPS, or the windows on your manned interceptor. It could even just burn off all your solar panels, and let's not even think about what happened if you had external O2 tanks...

While I agree kinetic weapons are best for attacking ground targets from orbit, in space I think the high power laser might be best...

"Although still in a prototype phase, ADAM managed to burn through multiple layers of the rubber hull of military-grade speed boats in less than 30 seconds from a mile away. The boat is stationary while the laser melts its hull."

30 seconds, against a stationary target, against the thermal mass of RUBBER. While powered by a warship that has an entire ocean to dump waste heat into.

My point about lasers being effective against smaller targets stands (and is supported), but lasers are MORE than useless against a comparable (thermal) mass craft.

[Northstar1989]

"Although still in a prototype phase, ADAM managed to burn through multiple layers of the rubber hull of military-grade speed boats in less than 30 seconds from a mile away. The boat is stationary while the laser melts its hull."

30 seconds, against a stationary target, against the thermal mass of RUBBER. While powered by a warship that has an entire ocean to dump waste heat into.

My point about lasers being effective against smaller targets stands (and is supported), but lasers are MORE than useless against a comparable (thermal) mass craft.

May I point out that you're looking at a laser that has to pass through a mile of seal-level atmosphere? That much air is going to dissipate a LOT of the laser's energy long before it reaches the target. Lasers work much better in space...

Also, this was using the electrical systems of a standard, chemical-powered warship. In order for weaponized lasers to ever be truly useful, you would need the kind of power density you get from antimatter reactors...

Your assumptions about the size of the craft vs. the size of the target are entirely based on conventional (not even nuclear) power densities. This is a huge mistake, and explains why you think lasers would never work...

Regards,

Northstar

[Northstar1989]

you could use an asteroid decoy, aye, but there's usually just one of them, and it's probably a different mass from the ship. as well an asteroid would have likely been tracked already by enemy sensors long before you ever reached it. any cameras watching you depart from home base would see a new heat signature in the asteroid belt within the hour and call BS.

but even if that weren't the case. unless you blow it up into a bunch of ship-size chunks, you won't be adding a lot of decoys to your fleet. if you do blow the asteroid apart, maybe it'd work - but seems like it'd be a heck of a power expenditure, and you'd only be fooling the enemy so long as you didn't turn on your drives. once the engines start firing, it's going to be extremely obvious that the space rocks, however hot they are, aren't moving at the same rate as the spaceships, or accelerating at all really, nor do they have drives installed. and if they do, why not just build another ship entirely?

and, indeed, you could emp incoming missiles and drones.

though, what if the missiles and drones don't need to come within EMP range at all? using casaba-howitzer nukes you could fire a lance of nuclear flame to whatever dispersion you pleased, or the missiles could carry more traditional self forging penetrators, disposable lasers, or they could just be shotgun projectiles with an engine and some guidance strapped to the back. they could even be EMP bombs themselves - chemical explosives being used to pump the capacitors, and since they're disposable you don't have to worry about making the EMP powerful enough to damage its own systems. a mechanical system can be set to detonate the incoming bomb once it's likely enough to scramble its target, so that even if the warhead itself gets electrically disabled, it will still carry out its mission. can a ship using EMP defenses protect its electrics unfailingly from its own ECM if the ECM is given enough power? more importantly, won't a powerful enough EMP take out critical electrics like the maneuvering system for long enough for the enemy to land a shot?

about the antenna thing, i'm not proposing to have all of them on the hull at all times, but why can't you stow some extras in the gaussian-shielded interior of the ship and push out the replacements as needed?

indeed, strong AI might not manifest. though, i suspect that particularly "smart" highly autonomous tactical AI capable of outdoing humans in everything except high-level diplomatic decisions is going to be very useful to militaries and thus, very likely to be developed. autonomy doesn't have to mean sapience, it just has to be capable of making some decisions for itself, to maximize benefits and minimize losses. nonsapient animals do this all the time. so i don't see why we won't have "AIs" capable of running a ship with at worst a skeleton repair crew, at best without humans at all, since a repair drone could take care of the problem itself, but indeed that would have EMP to contend with.

A lot of well thought-out points there, and indeed you're referring to technologies I've never heard of before (such as casaba-howitzer nuclear weapons)...

I do persist in saying that space combat would occur mostly at relatively close range, however.

One factor you may not have considered is the presence of minefields around important targets such as planets...

The economics of mine warfare are extremely good on land, and I can only assume that by the time any major interstellar war might occur, the cost of bringing mass to orbit would have been brought seriously down...

You wouldn't have to achieve very dense coverage of the orbits near a planet with mines- their main purpose would be to deter enemies from zipping in and out from around the planet on high-speed strafing runs, like was suggested earlier... If the mine were properly protected from sensors (passive stealth technology), and perhaps given a small but powerful engine to perform last-second boosts at nearby targets ("active" mines) to increase its effective range, you could make it far too dangerous to perform such high-speed tomfoolery...

A slower target is easier to hit, and defensive forces would thus be able to seriously deter high-speed strafing runs on the planet's near orbits, while relying on heavily-armed and armored "stationary" defensive platforms (ones with very little engine mass or fuel storage besides a tiny amount for station-keeping) to defend against attacks on the planet... These platforms could be supplemented with drones or a few small unmanned escort-class starships for a low-maintenance defensive solution... (while I believe that in active fleets and invasion forces, manned forces would prove superior; for garrison-type defensive duties, not having to pay salaries is always a much more worthwhile investment).

Regards,

Northstar

Edited May 10, 2014 by Northstar1989

[krona14]

All I'm thinking about is that, sure, maybe you can construct drones and train the pilots/drivers cheaper than training a marine, and it'd definitely be more expendable, but it won't be as functional.

The physical human presence on the battlefield will inevitably scale back, but I can't imagine a sequence of events over the next 200-odd years that renders a human soldier completely obsolete in every possible manner.

There's just too much people can do in a battlefield, and for us to come up with a machine for each thing, or even one machine that does everything is going to take a lot longer than the scope of this discussion.

Ok, humans are already becoming obsolete. you can engineer a drone to do everything that a human can do and more. humans are very weak, we can die from one well placed gun shot or of many kinds of infection. a drone however can have much more armor and weapons then a human could cary and they could be tremendously faster also what can humans do the robots cant?

[krona14]

May I point out that you're looking at a laser that has to pass through a mile of seal-level atmosphere? That much air is going to dissipate a LOT of the laser's energy long before it reaches the target. Lasers work much better in space...

Also, this was using the electrical systems of a standard, chemical-powered warship. In order for weaponized lasers to ever be truly useful, you would need the kind of power density you get from antimatter reactors...

Your assumptions about the size of the craft vs. the size of the target are entirely based on conventional (not even nuclear) power densities. This is a huge mistake, and explains why you think lasers would never work...

Regards,

Northstar

STOP TALKING ABOUT ANTI-MATTER LIKE YOU KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT IT! We know NOTHING about anti-matter now, stop talking about things like anti-matter reactors like they actually exist, if you know something we dont, tell someone and you will get a prize or something. also, rail-guns are cheeper, more power efficient and do a crap ton more damage then lasers do.

Also i want a real source on this laser thing, you i dont believe any of the things that you have said about lasers.

GIVE US SOURCES!

[Jouni]

Railguns and lasers are both experimental weapons, so nobody really knows how practical they will eventually be. My intuition about their pros and cons is the following.

Railguns:

• Effective range is probably tens to hundreds of kilometers in space. It's easy to detect when somebody fires a railgun, and the projectile is easy to dodge with a random burn, if the distance is long enough.
  
• A railgun is really a propulsion system, with Isp similar to chemical rockets. Recoil may interfere with their accuracy.
  
• Physical projectiles do heavy damage and penetrate armor easily.
  
• Railguns use a lot of power and generate a lot of waste heat. Current designs are typically tens of megajoules per shot.
  

Lasers:

• Effective range is ultimately limited by beam divergence. For visible light and reasonable beam widths, it's probably thousands or at most tens of thousands of kilometers.
  
• Accuracy should be quite high.
  
• Damage potential and armor penetration are lower than with railguns. Lasers are probably more useful in disabling or destroying delicate systems, instead of penetrating target hull.
  
• Power usage and waste heat are not as big problems as with railguns. Current prototypes range from tens to hundreds of kilowatts.
  

[Evilchicken]

Lasers in space combat can be very effective. On earth the atmosphere absorbs many frequencies of light, in space this isn't a problem and in fact we can have almost any wavelength letting us pick the most powerful and efficient laser for combat. For example a Hydrogen fluoride laser which burns ethylene and nitrogen trifluoride inside a light cavity can output megawatts of light easily, it can't be used on earth as the atmosphere adsorbs that frequency of light very well, it also has the advantage in that you can dump waste heat away into space along wit the now useless reaction produced.

Railguns and coilguns are nice but there huge power hogs and produce lots of waste heat.

[krona14]

Railguns and lasers are both experimental weapons, so nobody really knows how practical they will eventually be. My intuition about their pros and cons is the following.

Railguns:

• Effective range is probably tens to hundreds of kilometers in space. It's easy to detect when somebody fires a railgun, and the projectile is easy to dodge with a random burn, if the distance is long enough.
  
• A railgun is really a propulsion system, with Isp similar to chemical rockets. Recoil may interfere with their accuracy.
  
• Physical projectiles do heavy damage and penetrate armor easily.
  
• Railguns use a lot of power and generate a lot of waste heat. Current designs are typically tens of megajoules per shot.
  

Lasers:

• Effective range is ultimately limited by beam divergence. For visible light and reasonable beam widths, it's probably thousands or at most tens of thousands of kilometers.
  
• Accuracy should be quite high.
  
• Damage potential and armor penetration are lower than with railguns. Lasers are probably more useful in disabling or destroying delicate systems, instead of penetrating target hull.
  
• Power usage and waste heat are not as big problems as with railguns. Current prototypes range from tens to hundreds of kilowatts.
  

How would railguns be easy to detect? it uses a small half a foot by 3 inch cylinder of tungsten going mach 10. this could be redesigned to be a more stealth shape too. also railguns can be significantly scaled down to be used on a smaller ship. also the US navy has just stated arming aircraft carriers with railguns and there have been huge amounts of testing done on them, a full sized railgun can penetrate a 40ft reinforced steal-concrete bunker at a range of 2 km. this is a very clear about the effectiveness of a railgun. i have not done a large amount of research on lasers, but I have seen that they have a very short effective range and use a massive amount of electricity.

[krona14]

also, if railguns use to much electricity, just use a SCRAM canon instead, its basically the same, just without electricity and magnets

[Jouni]

How would railguns be easy to detect? it uses a small half a foot by 3 inch cylinder of tungsten going mach 10. this could be redesigned to be a more stealth shape too. also railguns can be significantly scaled down to be used on a smaller ship. also the US navy has just stated arming aircraft carriers with railguns and there have been huge amounts of testing done on them, a full sized railgun can penetrate a 40ft reinforced steal-concrete bunker at a range of 2 km. this is a very clear about the effectiveness of a railgun. i have not done a large amount of research on lasers, but I have seen that they have a very short effective range and use a massive amount of electricity.

Firing a railgun produces extremely powerful electric and magnetic fields, as well as a lot of heat. All of those are easy to detect.

Ultimately railguns suffer from the same problem as lasers and similar weapons. Their effectiveness is primarily determined by the amount of energy they can deliver to the target, but the ship firing them suffers from a similar amount of waste heat. There are several ways to improve the trade-off: put the weapons in disposable drones, or use guided missiles or explosive rounds.

Lasers may be a bit less efficient than railguns, but the difference in the energy delivered / waste heat ratio is not that significant. In atmospheric conditions, railguns have a longer effective range, because they can fire beyond the horizon and lose less energy to the atmosphere. In space, neither of these really applies, and the effective range of lasers depends mainly on three factors: targeting systems, wavelength (shorter is better), and beam width (bigger is better).

[krona14]

Firing a railgun produces extremely powerful electric and magnetic fields, as well as a lot of heat. All of those are easy to detect.

Ultimately railguns suffer from the same problem as lasers and similar weapons. Their effectiveness is primarily determined by the amount of energy they can deliver to the target, but the ship firing them suffers from a similar amount of waste heat. There are several ways to improve the trade-off: put the weapons in disposable drones, or use guided missiles or explosive rounds.

Lasers may be a bit less efficient than railguns, but the difference in the energy delivered / waste heat ratio is not that significant. In atmospheric conditions, railguns have a longer effective range, because they can fire beyond the horizon and lose less energy to the atmosphere. In space, neither of these really applies, and the effective range of lasers depends mainly on three factors: targeting systems, wavelength (shorter is better), and beam width (bigger is better).

with railguns unlike lasers, you could fire it on the other side of the planet and hit your target without you having to be anywhere near them, also if you were a closer ranges you could hit your target before they could make any kind of maneuver, or you could equip the railgun with ammunition that cold guide itself to its target.