Future of Space Carriers....if any.

[Valley]

After spending many hours getting MechJeb 2 to fly into a Space Carrier - and failing half the time, I started to realize two things. One, I now know why so many people prefer attaching probes, shuttles, and droids on the hull of larger ships. Trying to dock in an enclosed space is hard - even when I took over from MechJeb 2 and tried to dock right next to the docking ports.

Second, I also realized that while the armor plating and small entry point made it hard to pilot craft into the carrier, it really would do nothing to stop a missile.

I started to think on designs for future space carriers. Two came to mind. Both would have armored bows. I know that capital designs among the military ships have advanced in the past year, as players fight battles, learn from them, redesign their battleships, and go back into battle. One of the first ideas of all those players seems to be to reinforce the bow of their ships. I know, last year I used a few as target practice for my own warships.

One idea is that the armored bow would have entry points behind it, on the flanks of the ship. While not subject to direct enemy fire, I can still see this being a problem when it comes to easy access and smart weapons. On the other hand, a dumb weapon may enter one side and go out the other.

A more interesting idea was to have a rear entry, between the main engines. The more I thought about this, the more I thought it could be a interesting idea. Many supply ships, cargo ships, and shuttles, be they controlled by MechJeb 2 or a live player, much of the time end up approaching their 'target' ship from behind because of the way ships change orbits when 'catching up' with another.

I was wondering what you folks felt? Was there any future for space carriers (military ones) or have they already been phased out (outside of future KSP science fiction/adventure Youtube series)?

[astropapi1]

I feel like having a central "tube" with the propulsion and habitation units with side-attachable fighters/missiles/whatever... might be the best option. I mean, it's not like having armor plating or not is going to matter when you're getting hit by a SRB at 1000m/s, so you might as well make your carrier agile and lighter.

Plus, you can swap the missile ports and fighters for landers and satellites and make it a colony transporter, or add orbiters and probe landers and call it an imperial science vessel!

Of course, nothing beats a badass

or

.

[G'th]

Realistically speaking a carrier, even in space, wouldn't be that heavily armored. It would be fairly beefy just by virtue of how large it would have to be to be useful, but it wouldn't be in the thick of things and for the most part it wouldn't even be armored. If your carrier ship is being attacked directly, you either got surprised (Somehow) or you already lost the battle. Defensively speaking, a carrier ship would have to rely almost entirely on the craft it deploys.

So, instead of having your deployable craft dock to the interior of the ship, they would dock to the exterior and be carried along that way.

[DerpenWolf]

I've messed around with docking a Militarized kerbal ship (small) between the engines of a vessel in the past and it seemed to work, only thing is you want to make sure you have space to work with because ramming your engines could break parts of your craft or worse, the mothership.

[Guest]

I was wondering what you folks felt? Was there any future for space carriers (military ones) or have they already been phased out (outside of future KSP science fiction/adventure Youtube series)?

Carriers really only make sense when spacecraft act like they're in a WWII air battle. Better to have craft carry multiple robotic, expendable, kinetic kill weapons that can engage from long ranges instead of trying to make recoverable "fighters" work.

[Xaiier]

Carriers really only make sense when spacecraft act like they're in a WWII air battle. Better to have craft carry multiple robotic, expendable, kinetic kill weapons that can engage from long ranges instead of trying to make recoverable "fighters" work.

Ender's Game (the movie) had a fairly decent display of semi-realistic space warfare, with little fighter thingies.

The main problem with any kind of space warfare fiction is that the defenses always massively outclass weapons (standard weapons) where in reality, weapons tech is so massively further along than defenses that space combat would be more on the line of sniping ships from across the system with smart kinetic kill missiles and throwing asteroids at planets. link to fun also 1960's space warship

Edited May 20, 2014 by Xaiier

[UmbralRaptor]

Carriers really only make sense when spacecraft act like they're in a WWII air battle. Better to have craft carry multiple robotic, expendable, kinetic kill weapons that can engage from long ranges instead of trying to make recoverable "fighters" work.

Pretty much this. If you're playing Gratuitous Space Battles, carriers are a reasonable choice. If you're in a situation that has more realistic physics, it tends to come down to missile buses vs giant lasers unless you find a way to keep the action in low orbit or on planetary surfaces. (And if you make things too realistic, all the action takes place on the ground.)

[Hary R]

My thought on it:

The only real option for space carrier, realistically speaking, is not for space fighters at all. I see them mostly as cargo ship that is deployed after the space fight is won and your fleet is ready to assault the planet if itself. They will carry the reentry craft (a mean to do a planetary-fall) and other atmospheric airplane, armored land vehicle and so, required to conquer a planet. As spacecraft carrier, like in say... Battlestar Galactica... I think it is pretty useless.

[SpaceGremlin]

Carriers really only make sense when spacecraft act like they're in a WWII air battle. Better to have craft carry multiple robotic, expendable, kinetic kill weapons that can engage from long ranges instead of trying to make recoverable "fighters" work.

Even in very hard scifi settings it makes sense to use a large ship capable of interplanetary/interstellar travel to bring many smaller ships capable of conducting operations locally. Having every combat ship haul its own fuel or have its own long range drive into combat only hampers its performance.

If kinetic kill drones are the way of combat, would it be better to have them consolidated on larger long range ships or use a carrier to spread out multiple smaller ships capable of delivering them? In equal numbers the carrier based ships stand a better chance of winning because they could devote more of their mass to better defenses, more weapons, or use the mass savings to achieve higher maneuverability.

[AmpsterMan]

Seeing as this topic is only tangentially related to KSP, I moved it to a different forum.

I think the whole idea of space carriers are a bit strange to be honest. It presupposes that interstellar travel, and/or conflict are similar to oceans. Space as an interstellar ocean as it were. That being the case, I think having transport craft for getting to/from other craft/planets is just practical and would fill the role that helicopters do now-a-days.

Edited May 20, 2014 by AmpsterMan

[Hary R]

Ender's Game (the movie) had a fairly decent display of semi-realistic space warfare, with little fighter thingies.

Come to think of it. In this movie, they were using drones mostly, and I don't think dron have the required DV to go anywhere without a carrier, which is I think pretty realistic.

Even in very hard scifi settings it makes sense to use a large ship capable of interplanetary/interstellar travel to bring many smaller ships capable of conducting operations locally. Having every combat ship haul its own fuel or have its own long range drive into combat only hampers its performance.

Indeed!

But isn't that the purpus of a carrier after all, carry smaller ship from A to B.

No need to be to armored, carry them, drop them and get out until the fight is over.

[NASAFanboy]

DARPA is working in a electromagnetic shield. It can keep a Humvee intact from the full force of a RPG blast without damaging the shield, and bullets are nothing to it, they either hit the shield and fall to the ground or bounce off.

Perhaps we shall install it onto the carrier?

[Xaiier]

DARPA is working in a electromagnetic shield. It can keep a Humvee intact from the full force of a RPG blast without damaging the shield, and bullets are nothing to it, they either hit the shield and fall to the ground or bounce off.

Perhaps we shall install it onto the carrier?

Casaba howitzer disagrees.

The thing is, power wise that shield probably takes more than the RPG fired at it, so you reach the upper limit faster with defense stuff than offense.

[Guest]

If kinetic kill drones are the way of combat, would it be better to have them consolidated on larger long range ships or use a carrier to spread out multiple smaller ships capable of delivering them?

Instead of spending a bunch of mass supporting smaller ships carrying weapons, why not make the weapons better and carry a few more? You could also have additional radiators, more fuel, redundant systems, or even an extra meter of radius on your laser turrets. Space fighters certainly are romantic, but they require romantic physics and Magical things. In any case, if you're going to bring a sub-ship that isn't designed solely for transporting people, it only makes sense to take the people out of the equation because they're dead weight. Here's a good read on the subject: http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/2007/08/space-fighters-not.html?m=1

Edited May 20, 2014 by regex

[magnemoe]

Carriers really only make sense when spacecraft act like they're in a WWII air battle. Better to have craft carry multiple robotic, expendable, kinetic kill weapons that can engage from long ranges instead of trying to make recoverable "fighters" work.

Depend on your operation, for a shootout between capital ships you are right, blockade of an planet with an industrialized moon, pacifying an asteroid belt is an operation where a carrier would be useful.

Yes this would be something more like an marine corps carrier who also have landing crafts.

The problem with the carrier you fly into is that it would require an carrier who is vastly larger than the fighter, think huge ferries and cars.

If you don't want the fighters to hang on the outside use doors who can closed and protect the fighters. think a H like structure, fighters dock on top and bottom and the doors closes making it an 8

[SpaceGremlin]

Instead of spending a bunch of mass supporting smaller ships carrying weapons, why not make the weapons better and carry a few more? You could also have additional radiators, more fuel, redundant systems, or even an extra meter of radius on your laser turrets. Space fighters certainly are romantic, but they require romantic physics and Magical things. In any case, if you're going to bring a sub-ship that isn't designed solely for transporting people, it only makes sense to take the people out of the equation because they're dead weight. Here's a good read on the subject: http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/2007/08/space-fighters-not.html?m=1

Space "fighters" (a la Star Wars, etc...), probably won't be very effective. At that size drones make more sense. But I made no mention of "fighters", merely the use of a large carrier vessel to haul smaller vessels into combat. The missile buses carrying the kinetic kill drones may very well be drones themselves, or even the carrier itself could be a [large] drone, it doesn't matter. Using the carrier as a platform to leave unneeded mass/equipment behind while going into combat still makes sense.