Jump Dog Fighting

[Mazon Del]

Quite frankly the only real way that I can see dog fighting happening in the near future is if there is something to be gained out of launching a manned craft on a suborbital attack hop. Think that unmanned mini-shuttle the Air Force has, except with a crew member (for some reason, lets say signal lag, whatever), and the whole "dog fighting" aspect is that both the attacker and defender are trying to angle themselves and their orbits to allow their weapons to reach their target (each other, a station, etc). But all that said, it really would just be better for it to be unmanned craft for this specific case.

[Seret]

You completely skimmed over the, "keeping yourself ready to burn evasion" part.

I read it, but didn't think it was an important enough point to bother debating. Major changes in orbit aren't required for evasive maneuvers, you can translate whatever attitude you're in

Most fights would probably be while ships are shifting orbits across each other and they pass within enough range of eachother to fire though, then after 1-2 minutes of engagement, and several more of evading the missiles that are still floating around, then their "retreat" would just be drifting along their orbit away, out of range.

I agree, although it's quite likely that orbital weapons will be kinetic kill vehicles themselves, so they either destroy the enemy during interception or they've failed.

Also just because any of the real world concepts that you have found, doesn't mean thats how it would turn out.

No, but what are we supposed to base the discussion on: reality or sci-fi? Nobody knows how the future will turn out, but if you're not even taking the current situation into consideration then it's just pointless speculation.

Quick glance though google nets me several goofy hand drawn sketches that showed up in magazines in the 60s, most of them not being more than a dozen meters long, and on the scale of a possible spacewar would be like the merrimack and monitor compared to a ticonderoga (I make that specific comparison due to the Ticonderoga's basis as a missile cruiser, not a gunboat.) Also many of them don't seem to include any ideas of proper armor design. At least for a craft that should be taking fire, the front would be brought into a point or a chisel, so your armor would be pre-angled to oncoming fire, Weapon barrels could be built inside of the angled part perhaps with a little armored cover that moves out of the way when you go to shoot.

Lets leave the random stuff dreamed up by artists and sci-fi nuts where it belongs, for a dose of (admittedly less exciting-looking) reality you're looking at things like the Almaz and IS.

[linkxsc]

I read it, but didn't think it was an important enough point to bother debating. Major changes in orbit aren't required for evasive maneuvers, you can translate whatever attitude you're in

Don't need major changes in orbit, But its pretty safe to assume that your main engine has a higher TWR and efficiency then your RCS or translation thrusters. Also, say you do translate yourself at say, 50m/s perpendicular to the missile, whats to stop it from making that same translation and still hitting you? Odds are that a missile would close to you at 300-500m/s (thats ~700-1100mph or all the non-metric people) and keep another 500-1000m/s of fuel left to chase you with. Only reason why we dodge missiles by turning tightly IRL is that the missile is using a solid rocket motor, even long range missiles trying to make a sharp turn after flying a long way run out of fuel trying to turn around and come back, and even then missiles are generally too accurate for that now, the best defense is to shoot first and drive them away or not get shot at.

No, but what are we supposed to base the discussion on: reality or sci-fi? Nobody knows how the future will turn out, but if you're not even taking the current situation into consideration then it's just pointless speculation.

Lets leave the random stuff dreamed up by artists and sci-fi nuts where it belongs, for a dose of (admittedly less exciting-looking) reality you're looking at things like the Almaz and IS.

So... where do we draw the line then? Imagination? Or projects that never happened? This entire thread is nothing but speculation and wild ideas, some ground in science, others not so much.

Its certainly possible to assume a realistic spacecraft capable of war, even built from current technology, and then pit it against the arguments of others here on the forums. Heck if my laptop was capable of firing up blender and not blending itself, I'd model mine up for everyone for a better perspective of my arguments, but well my laptop sucks. I'd build the thing in KSP and screenshot it, but I can't even play that. So all I can do is argue. Because we haven't really done anything to give anyone accurate points of how it would turn out.