For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[ARS]

As a writer and game designer Jim Cambias put it:

Quote

"Why abandon a spaceship, however shot up or meteor-damaged it may be, just to hang around in a flimsy balloon or cramped pod? You're still on the same course, since no life pod can carry much delta-v, and the life-support problems are considerable. Why not include some kind of pressure balloon to provide temporary airtight containment in a hulled compartment and use the ship's own life-support? That way you get the ship's radiation shielding, power, etc."

"If it's a reactor emergency you're worried about, don't eject the crew in pods, EJECT THE REACTOR!"

"Actually, I realize perfectly well the purpose of life pods: it lets sf writers tell lifeboat stories in space."

Does the concept of escape pod for spaceship in sci-fi makes sense in context? I mean, I know that spaceflight borrows a lot of nautical terms (hatch, starboard-port, -nauts suffix, etc.), but (obviously by borrowing the concept of lifeboat, but in space) does ejecting people in space in a tiny capsule with limited supplies (especially far away from home, and especially ejected towards the nearby planet which may or may not make survival situation even worse) is a wise move? (Doubly so for warships since you're ejected on combat area filled with debris and the aliens you're trying to repel may not think twice about shooting the escape pods, so you're not only want to get out of ship, but also from combat area ASAP). Should there be a 'safe room' (as Jim suggested) in ship to act as a safe haven for the crew during emergency or better yet, an escape shuttle (not pod) with enough Dv to maneuver around or even warp out of area. I know that ISS is equipped with Soyuz spacecraft for emergency escape, but it doesn't count in this subject because the planet it's orbiting is earth, so it's just one reentry away from home for the crew

Also, since a lot of sci-fi space battle involves ship classification based from navies (destroyers, cruisers, battleships), does the concept of carrier makes sense in space battle? (as in, a pure carrier which carries a lot of fighters and little to no offensive weapon except some point defenses). Carriers isn't intended to brawl face-to face with other ships, letting their squadrons do the offensive and their advantage is power projection, which allows them to cover large area, that's how carriers operate in naval battle. But in space, especially in sci-fi setting where FTL let capital ships jump in and out of engagement with little to no warning, a single capital ship jumped in right in face of carrier would shred it in no time, not to mention that since there's no earth's curvature of earth, there's no such thing as 'maximum range' for ballistic weapon, allowing the guns on space warhips to always keep the carriers on their sight. Or does Star Wars' approach is the one that makes sense? Namely, it's not a pure carrier, but a battlestar-type ship, which could brawl face to face and also carries a sizable fighter wings so they can act like a combination of battleship and carrier that can fulfill both roles (and weakness) but also not overly specialized (aka jack of all trades)

Edited September 3, 2020 by ARS

[SOXBLOX]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

It gets annoying after a while.  People either ask or assume I was a basketball player, even though I'm built like an aging lineman.

I mean, I never ask people if they're jockeys

At 6'4", I'm with ya. If someone rubs me the wrong way, I think I might just ask that...

[SOXBLOX]

29 minutes ago, ARS said:

Does the concept of escape pod for spaceship in sci-fi makes sense in context? I mean, I know that spaceflight borrows a lot of nautical terms (hatch, starboard-port, -nauts suffix, etc.), but (obviously by borrowing the concept of lifeboat, but in space) does ejecting people in space in a tiny capsule with limited supplies (especially far away from home, and especially ejected towards the nearby planet which may or may not make survival situation even worse) is a wise move? (Doubly so for warships since you're ejected on combat area filled with debris and the aliens you're trying to repel may not think twice about shooting the escape pods, so you're not only want to get out of ship, but also from combat area ASAP). Should there be a 'safe room' (as Jim suggested) in ship to act as a safe haven for the crew during emergency or better yet, an escape shuttle (not pod) with enough Dv to maneuver around or even warp out of area. I know that ISS is equipped with Soyuz spacecraft for emergency escape, but it doesn't count in this subject because the planet it's orbiting is earth, so it's just one reentry away from home for the crew

Also, since a lot of sci-fi space battle involves ship classification based from navies (destroyers, cruisers, battleships), does the concept of carrier makes sense in space battle? (as in, a pure carrier which carries a lot of fighters and little to no offensive weapon except some point defenses). Carriers isn't intended to brawl face-to face with other ships, letting their squadrons do the offensive and their advantage is power projection, which allows them to cover large area, that's how carriers operate in naval battle. But in space, especially in sci-fi setting where FTL let capital ships jump in and out of engagement with little to no warning, a single capital ship jumped in right in face of carrier would shred it in no time, not to mention that since there's no earth's curvature of earth, there's no such thing as 'maximum range' for ballistic weapon, allowing the guns on space warhips to always keep the carriers on their sight. Or does Star Wars' approach is the one that makes sense? Namely, it's not a pure carrier, but a battlestar-type ship, which could brawl face to face and also carries a sizable fighter wings so they can act like a combination of battleship and carrier that can fulfill both roles (and weakness) but also not overly specialized (aka jack of all trades)

Great questions! I assume you've read Winchell Chung's excellent Atomic Rocket website. If not, run, don't walk, and go check it out.

As for your first question, escape pods can make sense for a ship in Low (Inhabited Planet) Orbit or in a magictech fiction show like Star Wars or Trek, but in deep space, it is pointless, unless there is a fleet travelling with your spacecraft which can pick you up.

If you're doing brachistochrone trajectories, like in The Expanse, then ejecting while aimed at a planet, before you've decelerated fully, will make your reentry fatal; you'll be moving too fast.

As for space warfare, assuming a space setting like The Expanse, with the constant acceleration drives that a certain other user is so fond of, there will be no manned "fighters". High-acceleration drones will have their uses, especially near a planet or other strategic location. So "carriers" will be mobile drone platforms, servicing and rearming defensive drone warships. Also, something that can carry drones internally is probably too large a ∆v investment; drones will dock externally to a drone tender, like WWII seaplane tenders. If you're wondering about ship types, go check out the "Templin Institute" on YouTube. They just released a video detailing ship types and their adaptation to sci-fi.

***

Edit: Oops, I thought my posts would merge. Sorry for doubleposting. My bad.

Edited September 3, 2020 by SOXBLOX

[Spacescifi]

51 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

Great questions! I assume you've read Winchell Chung's excellent Atomic Rocket website. If not, run, don't walk, and go check it out.

As for your first question, escape pods can make sense for a ship in Low (Inhabited Planet) Orbit or in a magictech fiction show like Star Wars or Trek, but in deep space, it is pointless, unless there is a fleet travelling with your spacecraft which can pick you up.

If you're doing brachistochrone trajectories, like in The Expanse, then ejecting while aimed at a planet, before you've decelerated fully, will make your reentry fatal; you'll be moving too fast.

As for space warfare, assuming a space setting like The Expanse, with the constant acceleration drives that a certain other user is so fond of, there will be no manned "fighters". High-acceleration drones will have their uses, especially near a planet or other strategic location. So "carriers" will be mobile drone platforms, servicing and rearming defensive drone warships. Also, something that can carry drones internally is probably too large a ∆v investment; drones will dock externally to a drone tender, like WWII seaplane tenders. If you're wondering about ship types, go check out the "Templin Institute" on YouTube. They just released a video detailing ship types and their adaptation to sci-fi.

***

Edit: Oops, I thought my posts would merge. Sorry for doubleposting. My bad.

 

Haha... my thinking has recently changed... a bit.

Constant acceleration is not necessarily needed anyway for long distance travel.

Scifi cheating of some sort is if you want to get anywhere fast.

Like just using a warp drive at lightspeed would allow you to wind up close to where you want to be.

From there you could just shut off the warp drive and let gravitational pull reel you into the planet's influence.

Warp and rinse repeat. Keep up until the trajectories and speeds match up how you want them and warp right above where you want to fall... no hot reentry required, since one can literally pack on or lose however much speed they want by using a warp drive creatively above a planet.

Warp changes your location, gravity changes your speed and can also change your trajectory.

The nice thing is it has an analogue to real spaceflight.

Prep time. You accelerate into the speed and trajectory you will need where you will warp to later.... and THEN you warp.

Any more course corrections done in deep space far from a gravity well will just require burning lots of propellant or busting bombs orion style.

Long story short, any drive that relied on gravity redirection thrust by relying on nearby celestial bodies depending on gravity field strength is good enough.

Not as good as constant 1g acceleration anywhere, but it at least gives you constant thrust where it is most needed (launch/landing/orbit velocity).

In deep space it will do no good, but what's of interest in deep space anyway?

Edited September 3, 2020 by Spacescifi

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

As a writer and game designer Jim Cambias put it:

Does the concept of escape pod for spaceship in sci-fi makes sense in context? I mean, I know that spaceflight borrows a lot of nautical terms (hatch, starboard-port, -nauts suffix, etc.), but (obviously by borrowing the concept of lifeboat, but in space) does ejecting people in space in a tiny capsule with limited supplies (especially far away from home, and especially ejected towards the nearby planet which may or may not make survival situation even worse) is a wise move? (Doubly so for warships since you're ejected on combat area filled with debris and the aliens you're trying to repel may not think twice about shooting the escape pods, so you're not only want to get out of ship, but also from combat area ASAP). Should there be a 'safe room' (as Jim suggested) in ship to act as a safe haven for the crew during emergency or better yet, an escape shuttle (not pod) with enough Dv to maneuver around or even warp out of area. I know that ISS is equipped with Soyuz spacecraft for emergency escape, but it doesn't count in this subject because the planet it's orbiting is earth, so it's just one reentry away from home for the crew

Also, since a lot of sci-fi space battle involves ship classification based from navies (destroyers, cruisers, battleships), does the concept of carrier makes sense in space battle? (as in, a pure carrier which carries a lot of fighters and little to no offensive weapon except some point defenses). Carriers isn't intended to brawl face-to face with other ships, letting their squadrons do the offensive and their advantage is power projection, which allows them to cover large area, that's how carriers operate in naval battle. But in space, especially in sci-fi setting where FTL let capital ships jump in and out of engagement with little to no warning, a single capital ship jumped in right in face of carrier would shred it in no time, not to mention that since there's no earth's curvature of earth, there's no such thing as 'maximum range' for ballistic weapon, allowing the guns on space warhips to always keep the carriers on their sight. Or does Star Wars' approach is the one that makes sense? Namely, it's not a pure carrier, but a battlestar-type ship, which could brawl face to face and also carries a sizable fighter wings so they can act like a combination of battleship and carrier that can fulfill both roles (and weakness) but also not overly specialized (aka jack of all trades)

I'll add to what @SOXBLOX wrote: in the space-warfare genre, the escape pods take the place of life rafts on past and present warships.  As someone who's been on a present-day warship in a contested zone, I actually appreciated the Navy having them on board, because if things went bad, I'd have at least a second chance at life... and where there's life, there's hope.

There are a lot of misconceptions about warfare - such as 'killing everyone'.  There is no need, as a combatant, for me to kill all of the enemy.  I simply have to defeat him; and there are ways short of death to do that.  (in fact, having a reputation for 'killing everyone' is actually counter-productive toward your desire to defeat the enemy:  Absent some thought that they can successfully surrender, your enemy will literally fight to the death, taking at least some of your forces with them).  Ambrose Bierce* described War as "Untying a political knot with the teeth, that would not yield to the tongue" - and this is true, especially in the West, and more-so since the industrial revolution.  European (including ancient Roman) traditions have very few cases where the victor put everyone to the sword, salted the earth and ethnically cleansed an area c.f Carthage.  It happened, but it wasn't common.  In the East (including Russia), historical mass killings were more common, comparatively, but still unusual.  More often the defeated were turned into slaves, serfs, vassals or hostages - without simply killing everyone, or even every soldier.

So, in the space-war concept, putting life-boats / escape pods on your warship does two things; it gives the sailors, soldiers and Marines 'a sense' that they get a second chance, and if necessary actually does; with the caveat that unless rescued they're at a minimum going to be prisoners, or at worst lost/abandoned, killed by the enemy or even eaten... but they can console themselves that they didn't die with the ship.  (Grim humor, sorry)

Which brings me to your Star Wars analogy; Lucas invented the ultimate terror weapon with the Death Star; a super-analog to the Nuke.  The problem is, that any self-respecting galactic empire needs all the planets it can get, and unlike a nuke, zapping an entire planet into rubble is a colossal waste.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still cities.  They're economically viable.  Alderaan isn't.  And the subsequent stories building a second Death Star and Planet Killer Base and all the other escalation, for me, wasn't good story-telling.  It was too simplistic, almost pedantic.  I far more enjoyed the various battleships, landers and etc.   An Empire that occupies and controls is believable.  An Empire that wantonly destroys is not.

 

 

*  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil's_Dictionary#:~:text=The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written,a series of installments for magazines and newspapers.

[magnemoe]

19 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I'll add to what @SOXBLOX wrote: in the space-warfare genre, the escape pods take the place of life rafts on past and present warships.  As someone who's been on a present-day warship in a contested zone, I actually appreciated the Navy having them on board, because if things went bad, I'd have at least a second chance at life... and where there's life, there's hope.

There are a lot of misconceptions about warfare - such as 'killing everyone'.  There is no need, as a combatant, for me to kill all of the enemy.  I simply have to defeat him; and there are ways short of death to do that.  (in fact, having a reputation for 'killing everyone' is actually counter-productive toward your desire to defeat the enemy:  Absent some thought that they can successfully surrender, your enemy will literally fight to the death, taking at least some of your forces with them).  Ambrose Bierce* described War as "Untying a political knot with the teeth, that would not yield to the tongue" - and this is true, especially in the West, and more-so since the industrial revolution.  European (including ancient Roman) traditions have very few cases where the victor put everyone to the sword, salted the earth and ethnically cleansed an area c.f Carthage.  It happened, but it wasn't common.  In the East (including Russia), historical mass killings were more common, comparatively, but still unusual.  More often the defeated were turned into slaves, serfs, vassals or hostages - without simply killing everyone, or even every soldier.

So, in the space-war concept, putting life-boats / escape pods on your warship does two things; it gives the sailors, soldiers and Marines 'a sense' that they get a second chance, and if necessary actually does; with the caveat that unless rescued they're at a minimum going to be prisoners, or at worst lost/abandoned, killed by the enemy or even eaten... but they can console themselves that they didn't die with the ship.  (Grim humor, sorry)

Which brings me to your Star Wars analogy; Lucas invented the ultimate terror weapon with the Death Star; a super-analog to the Nuke.  The problem is, that any self-respecting galactic empire needs all the planets it can get, and unlike a nuke, zapping an entire planet into rubble is a colossal waste.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still cities.  They're economically viable.  Alderaan isn't.  And the subsequent stories building a second Death Star and Planet Killer Base and all the other escalation, for me, wasn't good story-telling.  It was too simplistic, almost pedantic.  I far more enjoyed the various battleships, landers and etc.   An Empire that occupies and controls is believable.  An Empire that wantonly destroys is not.

 

 

*  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil's_Dictionary#:~:text=The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written,a series of installments for magazines and newspapers.

This, many star wars fan theories say the death star main purpose was to take out planets protected by an planetary shield. The shield was so strong you could not break it with lesser weapons and an habitable planet tend to be very self sustainable so you could not starve it out. 

As for life rafts, back at WW2 or earlier this was uncommon, first the modern inflatable life raft was not developed yet and lots of ships tended to take a lot of damage going down. Either because ships was very well armored or because weapons uses was not able of sinking an ship fast so life boats would be shot up. 
And yes about the point of purpose of war is not to kill everybody its getting the enemy to stop fighting. 
In naval combat the target is the enemy ships not the crew. 

As for escape pods, they make sense if ships tend to explode some time after getting taken out either because something like an magazine explosion or shields fails and then ship take an nuke.
Space ships will not sink so having an emergency life support system would be simpler 
Or if you operate around an habitable planet. 
ISS has escape pods as in the capsules. 

[DDE]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I'm insufficiently familiar with China to know this, but did the source for this provide any explanation for the differing heights?  E.g. availability of high quality and varied food, food scarcity, relative poverty or ancestral group?  A 10 cm spread that is as geographically distinct as shown between the shorter south and the taller, coastal north is intriguing.

3 hours ago, ARS said:

Does the concept of escape pod for spaceship in sci-fi makes sense in context? I mean, I know that spaceflight borrows a lot of nautical terms (hatch, starboard-port, -nauts suffix, etc.), but (obviously by borrowing the concept of lifeboat, but in space) does ejecting people in space in a tiny capsule with limited supplies (especially far away from home, and especially ejected towards the nearby planet which may or may not make survival situation even worse) is a wise move?

The use of lifeboats and escape pods is fundamentally driven by the imminent threat of whatever vehicle you're onboard ceasing to fly or float.

That is not an issue for spacecraft outside for very specific situations that they have to intentionally get themselves into, such as an imminent collision with a planet plotted before the occurrence of the emergency.

Edited September 3, 2020 by DDE

[DDE]

3 hours ago, ARS said:

But in space, especially in sci-fi setting where FTL let capital ships jump in and out of engagement with little to no warning, a single capital ship jumped in right in face of carrier would shred it in no time, not to mention that since there's no earth's curvature of earth, there's no such thing as 'maximum range' for ballistic weapon, allowing the guns on space warhips to always keep the carriers on their sight.

The "ambush-capable FTL" has even more dramatic consequences, such as enabling you to strike any planet at any time. No-one would bother engaging at range.

3 hours ago, ARS said:

Or does Star Wars' approach is the one that makes sense? Namely, it's not a pure carrier, but a battlestar-type ship, which could brawl face to face and also carries a sizable fighter wings so they can act like a combination of battleship and carrier that can fulfill both roles (and weakness) but also not overly specialized (aka jack of all trades)

Well, here's the thing: how do sci-fi space fighters dock?

That's a lot of space. And it still has to be armored. That's why the 'battle carrier' did not take off in the era of the battleship.

However, this is not a realistic way to host space fighters. Even Children of a Dead Earth forces you to carry internal drone launchers. But you don't strictly have to.

If you carry your fighters exclusively externally, or exploiting the voids already present in your armor design (example: fluff for capital ships in Mass Effect) the burden is lessened. Although you still need a hangar for repair, its volume shrinks greatly. The old Moskvas actually had a repair hangar (above, 5) and a storage hangar (below, 3).

Spoiler

 

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I'm insufficiently familiar with China to know this, but did the source for this provide any explanation for the differing heights?  E.g. availability of high quality and varied food, food scarcity, relative poverty or ancestral group?  A 10 cm spread that is as geographically distinct as shown between the shorter south and the taller, coastal north is intriguing.

The genes set the limit of the height at which additional food starts making to grow in diameter faster than in height.

East Asia is populated in several waves:
mostly-Australoids (of haplogroups C and D), right from Africa via MidEast and India, about 40 ky ago,
then two waves of proto-(Europeoids/Mongoloids) (of haplogroups K, L, M) from the Central Asia, to where they probably migrated from the Eastern Europe on the Ice Age, ~20 ky ago. (Thanks to them, the Papuans are tall).
two waves of Mongoloids/Europeoids (O and Q), after the Ice Age

Spoiler

So, their genetical difference is significant, and the height observably correlates with the Caucasian component.
(The haplogroups are not genes, but they trace the genes spreading).

The North-West of China obviously differs for ethnical reasons.

In the Central Asia the Europeoid/Mongoloid ratio visibly grows to the West, and the European component visibly prevails to the West from Urals, together with typically Europeoid haplogroups.

The cold climate (Himalayas) means less food, lesser height (typically), with the exception of the Baltic Vault, where some tribes of haplogroup I were isolated during the Ice Age, survived and resulted into bulky albinos with childish faces. (Probably, were already enough tall since their living in the Eastern Europe and migrating to the North, i.e. in the conditions where there was relatively much food, but the body mass was an advantage due to the cold climate).

That's how the blondes have appeared.

Spoiler

After the Ice Age were assimilated by migrants:
from Siberia (haplogroup N, originally Mongoloid but after killing the albino males and mating the albino females, gave the mixed Lapponoid race like the Finns),
and from Central Asia (haplogroups R1a and R1b, originally looking like modern Pashtuns, but mixing with the tribes of the I-albinos and the Lapponoids gave modern Slavs (R1a + N + I), Germans and Celts (R1b +N + I). producing what we know as Europeoid race (or thanks to the illiterate but enthusiastic German academicians of XIX/early-XX, "Caucasians").

The Northern Europeans are ancestors of tall Europeoids and those bulky albinos, that's why they are tall.

***

The "rice theory" avoids the fact that all Central Asia and Middle East eat plov/pilaf (like I did right now, in simplified Russian version) made of rice.
And they definitely have nothing common with South-East Asia except the goods "Made in China".

Spoiler

***

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Hard to have a cyclone if your tidally locked 'face' is an enormous, high desert plateau 

And the hot air must spread aroud, and the gases usually spread in whirls. So, this produces a stable whirl they call cyclone.

4 hours ago, ARS said:

Does the concept of escape pod for spaceship in sci-fi makes sense in context?

If it has a cryosleep, it can be saved much later.

Spoiler

Also the damaged combat ship is still a target with damaged hull, so they may want to get away from it while the opponent keeps bringing arguments against their ship.

And if it holds antimatter onboard, their intention to get as far as they can is more than understandable, because it will inevitably explode once the ship gets out of power.

***

Star Wars should stack the fighters to fill the hangar to ceiling, but then the parades would look less gorgeous.

Edited September 3, 2020 by kerbiloid

[SOXBLOX]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I'll add to what @SOXBLOX wrote: in the space-warfare genre, the escape pods take the place of life rafts on past and present warships.  As someone who's been on a present-day warship in a contested zone, I actually appreciated the Navy having them on board, because if things went bad, I'd have at least a second chance at life... and where there's life, there's hope.

There are a lot of misconceptions about warfare - such as 'killing everyone'.  There is no need, as a combatant, for me to kill all of the enemy.  I simply have to defeat him; and there are ways short of death to do that.  (in fact, having a reputation for 'killing everyone' is actually counter-productive toward your desire to defeat the enemy:  Absent some thought that they can successfully surrender, your enemy will literally fight to the death, taking at least some of your forces with them).  Ambrose Bierce* described War as "Untying a political knot with the teeth, that would not yield to the tongue" - and this is true, especially in the West, and more-so since the industrial revolution.

[Edited]

Which brings me to your Star Wars analogy; Lucas invented the ultimate terror weapon with the Death Star; a super-analog to the Nuke.  The problem is, that any self-respecting galactic empire needs all the planets it can get, and unlike a nuke, zapping an entire planet into rubble is a colossal waste.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still cities.  They're economically viable.  Alderaan isn't.  And the subsequent stories building a second Death Star and Planet Killer Base and all the other escalation, for me, wasn't good story-telling.  It was too simplistic, almost pedantic.  I far more enjoyed the various battleships, landers and etc.   An Empire that occupies and controls is believable.  An Empire that wantonly destroys is not.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil's_Dictionary#:~:text=The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written,a series of installments for magazines and newspapers.

@JoeSchmuckatelli Beautiful analysis! Modern war, and presumably future war, as you pointed out, is not about destroying the enemy, but about defeating him. Destroy the ability and will to fight of your opponent, and you won't have to lose men and munitions against his tanks and aircraft. Take down the base, fuel depot, or railway bridge, and move on. On a grander scale, crippling the enemy's economy and political integrity are the fast ways to bring him down. Break the logistics chain, and their tanks can't move. Mission kill an opponent, rather than hard kill, right?

The Death Star was, of course, there to show you how evil the Emperor was, and as a convenient big bad wolf. Much more interesting would be an actually philosophically evil villain with more conventional forces. Oh well... 

***

Oh, and as @DDE pointed out, sucker-punch FTL, provided you can see where you are jumping, makes for a completely different type of warfare, geared towards the defense of planets. Or maybe geared towards total offense, where you hope to cause as much damage as possible before your economic collapse. I think either is a possibility.

Edited September 3, 2020 by SOXBLOX

[kerbiloid]

Btw, sea battles, like the space ones, also usually happen near some land mass, not somewhere in open space.

So, the lifeboats are the way to reach the nearest planet and wait for rescue.

[ARS]

4 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

I assume you've read Winchell Chung's excellent Atomic Rocket website

Yeah, I've already read that. It's very addicting  (and I have difficulty in stopping)

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I'll add to what SOXBLOX wrote: in the space-warfare genre, the escape pods take the place of life rafts on past and present warships.  As someone who's been on a present-day warship in a contested zone......

......

Hmmm... I see. So at least it has it's use to preserve the morale of the crew when things goes bad, to give them a sense of safety. Though in terms of escape pod design, I can't still take those godawful design of pods from Starship Troopers movie

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Well, here's the thing: how do sci-fi space fighters dock?

I always cringe whenever I see space carrier have an actual runway as if it's a seaborne carrier. Artificial gravity might handwave the ship design to include such a feature, but since there's no gravity in space, the fighters can simply be ejected from hangar bays before firing off it's own engine (or use EM launcher to propel the fighters away from the carrier), unless the ship is designed to operate in atmosphere. If the gravity is a concern, then a simpler solution is to simply line up the launch bays' floor facing 'up' relative to the engine direction of the carrier. I find the hangar approach makes more sense than runway

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Which brings me to your Star Wars analogy; Lucas invented the ultimate terror weapon with the Death Star; a super-analog to the Nuke.  The problem is, that any self-respecting galactic empire needs all the planets it can get, and unlike a nuke, zapping an entire planet into rubble is a colossal waste.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still cities.  They're economically....

Yeah I just feel that the way planet destroying superweapons in SW plot is just used as an escalation device as the story progresses. Better take the planets and use it for your advantage rather than destroying it, unless it's something like Remina, then go bananas with your planet killers

5 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Btw, sea battles, like the space ones, also usually happen near some land mass, not somewhere in open space.

So, the lifeboats are the way to reach the nearest planet and wait for rescue.

Unless if said planet is a gas giant...

[kerbiloid]

12 minutes ago, ARS said:

Unless if said planet is a gas giant...

without moons

[DDE]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

I always cringe whenever I see space carrier have an actual runway as if it's a seaborne carrier. Artificial gravity might handwave the ship design to include such a feature

No it can't. Only air in space can.

The Vipers in BSG are literally lithobraking against the deck.

2 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

Beautiful analysis! Modern war, and presumably future war, as you pointed out, is not about destroying the enemy, but about defeating him. Destroy the ability and will to fight of your opponent, and you won't have to lose men and munitions against his tanks and aircraft. Take down the base, fuel depot, or railway bridge, and move on. On a grander scale, crippling the enemy's economy and political integrity are the fast ways to bring him down. Break the logistics chain, and their tanks can't move. Mission kill an opponent, rather than hard kill, right?

This line of thinking can end pretty badly. You can easily reduce the entire war doctrine to seeking a devastating victory on the battlefield - see the Japanese example below. WWII demonstrated the potential for wars of national annihilation, and potentially extermination, although it seems to have been a surprise to everyone involved. That's where four-engined Death Stars come in.

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by DDE

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

8 hours ago, DDE said:

...

I see that that is at least partly sourced from SCMP - would you mind sharing a link?  Also of interest is why they're associating food sources / farming methods with social behavior.  Always interesting to read how people see themselves and analyze the differences they perceive between themselves and their neighbors.

Along with what @kerbiloid writes / posted below, you guys have provided info into another area of fascination of mine, specifically human development and migrations.  Lines like "Thanks to them, the Papuans are tall" makes me itch to get out the e-shovel and start digging!

 

7 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The genes set the limit of the height at which additional food starts making to grow in diameter faster than in height.

East Asia is populated in several waves:
mostly-Australoids (of haplogroups C and D), right from Africa via MidEast and India, about 40 ky ago,
then two waves of proto-(Europeoids/Mongoloids) (of haplogroups K, L, M) from the Central Asia, to where they probably migrated from the Eastern Europe on the Ice Age, ~20 ky ago. (Thanks to them, the Papuans are tall).
two waves of Mongoloids/Europeoids (O and Q), after the Ice Age

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So, their genetical difference is significant, and the height observably correlates with the Caucasian component.
(The haplogroups are not genes, but they trace the genes spreading).

The North-West of China obviously differs for ethnical reasons.

In the Central Asia the Europeoid/Mongoloid ratio visibly grows to the West, and the European component visibly prevails to the West from Urals, together with typically Europeoid haplogroups.

The cold climate (Himalayas) means less food, lesser height (typically), with the exception of the Baltic Vault, where some tribes of haplogroup I were isolated during the Ice Age, survived and resulted into bulky albinos with childish faces. (Probably, were already enough tall since their living in the Eastern Europe and migrating to the North, i.e. in the conditions where there was relatively much food, but the body mass was an advantage due to the cold climate).

That's how the blondes have appeared.

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After the Ice Age were assimilated by migrants:
from Siberia (haplogroup N, originally Mongoloid but after killing the albino males and mating the albino females, gave the mixed Lapponoid race like the Finns),
and from Central Asia (haplogroups R1a and R1b, originally looking like modern Pashtuns, but mixing with the tribes of the I-albinos and the Lapponoids gave modern Slavs (R1a + N + I), Germans and Celts (R1b +N + I). producing what we know as Europeoid race (or thanks to the illiterate but enthusiastic German academicians of XIX/early-XX, "Caucasians").

The Northern Europeans are ancestors of tall Europeoids and those bulky albinos, that's why they are tall.

***

The "rice theory" avoids the fact that all Central Asia and Middle East eat plov/pilaf (like I did right now, in simplified Russian version) made of rice.
And they definitely have nothing common with South-East Asia except the goods "Made in China".

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***

And the hot air must spread aroud, and the gases usually spread in whirls. So, this produces a stable whirl they call cyclone.

...

The pilaf is also making me hungry!  I love that stuff!

BTW - I'm mentally sticking my tongue out at you with your, "produces a stable whirl they call cyclone" - because, of course it does.  I should have recognized that.  Nyeeah!

I'll also agree that there is some evidence that larger body mass confers advantage in cold climates - but I'm not certain that that the climate theory is wholly proven or required.  Yes, in northern Europe we get a bunch of very tall people, but that does not entirely extend to those living in the actual arctic.  Similar studies indicate that being large (Polynesia) or tall (Africa) conferred advantages related to food scarcity (travelling long distances across open water) and surface area to sweat/cool the body (hot open plains).  But as in the link I posted above - milk proteins in diet seem to be strongly correlative with stature as well (many Asian people are naturally lactose intolerant given that their ancestors didn't rely upon milk as a regular food source).  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X16300065  Whereas in Europe milk consumption (especially in the north) is fairly common.

An interesting thing I spotted in this article was the relative heights of the 'tall' folks (170's cm range).  Those are current heights.  We like to think of ourselves as taller now than our ancestors, but it does look as if pre-Ice Age folks were quite tall as well:

Quote

The earliest anatomically modern humans in Europe, present by 42,000 to 45,000 y before present [...] were relatively tall (mean adult male height in the Early Upper Paleolithic was ∼174 cm). Mean male stature then declined from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic (∼164 cm) before increasing to ∼167 cm by the Bronze Age 

https://www.pnas.org/content/116/43/21484

Food seems to have such a strong correlation with height, in fact, that hunter-gatherers who enjoyed a wide variety of foods, despite no regular food source were often taller and healthier than early farmers who relied upon a limited but stable supply: https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/early-farmers-were-sicker-and-shorter-than-their-forager-ancestors

Meaning that Conan really would have scared the heck out of the farming villagers he met!

.

[kerbiloid]

17 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

But as in the link I posted above - milk proteins in diet seem to be strongly correlative with stature as well (many Asian people are naturally lactose intolerant given that their ancestors didn't rely upon milk as a regular food source).  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X16300065  Whereas in Europe milk consumption (especially in the north) is fairly common.

The milk allowed to have enough food in the cold European climate, which was important for the agricultural peoples.

But the farming/herding and developed crafts (pottery, textile, copper casting) appeared after the Ice Age, about 12..10 ky ago, in MidEast Fertile Crescent among the tribes of Natufian culture, of Chatal-Huyuk / Çatalhöyük, and Zagros.
None of them had any relation to the Northern Europe since ~40 ky ago.

Spoiler

The herding/farming/crafts spreaded around after the Drought of 5600 BC (lasting for ~500 years) which made this region a dry desert and killed this first generation of civilisations.
The Arabian Peninsula and Sahara from steppes became deserts and stay so.
The hot lifeless swamps of Nile valley and Mesopotamia became habitable and got populated by the migrants from there and from Central Africa, and a massive wave of migration got into the Europe bringing the crafts and the agriculture to the Balkans.

A little later, about 4 ky ago, the Proto-Indoeuropeans migrated from the Central Asia (R1b as proto-Germans and R1a as proto-Balts/Slavs) in several waves and directions, and occupied the whole Europe.
To that date they were already familiar with herding, crafts, charrioting (probably from the peoples populating the Iran and neighboring regions of Central Asia).

And only after that they came to the Northern Europe and became the Europeans.

The Ice Age, giving the bulky blondes, assimilated by the Germans/Balts/Slavs and by Finno-Ugrians, appeared long before all that, before the herding, so, the milk definitely could not play any role in their life.
They were living before it was invented in MidEast.

The milk helped the Indoeuropean migrants quickly and easily occupy the whole Europe, but this happened much later.

What's extremely important, while the Europe is a place with a cold climate, unfriendly to the naked apes, at the same time it's a region of broad-leaved forests.
In the hot climate, to the equator from 20..30° latitude everything not covered with swamps or jungles gets dry and turns into desert. A cut forest won't grow.
In the really cold climate, to the poles from 60° latitude, just nothing fruitable can grow. A cut forest won't grow, too.
But between the 25..65° latitude and from the Atlantics to the Urals, there is a region where cut trees get automatically replaced with self-grown new ones, and fruitable plants give relatively rich harvest.

So, the ancient Europe was fully covered with forests and allowed to use extensive agriculture technics when you just burn a forest, plow the ash, grow crops for three years, then burn another forest while this one is self-recovering.

By using pigs as a fast-growing meat loving the broad-leaved forests, and cows to milk they got a constantly working food spawner.

Operating this way the post-Indoeuropeans (Germans, Celts, Balts/Slavs) quickly advanced and assimilated with the peoples (of E, I, and other haplogroups) living on the Mediterranean coast since the exit from Africa (prevailing component of Greek, Balkanian Slavs, Southern Italians and Spaniards), forming the European population.

As the Southern Europeans were rejecting going to the North, it was mostly occupied by the Germans and Balts/Slavs, who also massively assimilated the Finno-Ugrians who had migrated to there earlier, and the pre-Indoeuropean population of the Europe, consisting of the agricultural tribes of mostly I haplogroup, including the rest of the blondes.
Since then the Northern tribes of the Germans, Balts, and Slavs got blonded, while originally and mostly are brown/black-haired.

The cold climate makes the large body and small extending parts preferrable, while the German/Slavic diet gives enough food in the relatively cold climate of Northern Europe.
(While the much colder cimate of Northern Asia doesn't produce enough food, so the North Asian peoples are less tall, due to the lack of food. They get taller when have enough of it, but still are lower. Because in tundra there is not enough food to feed a large body).

Other significant advantages of the Europe are:
1) various climates gathered together, from subtropical to subarctical; this provides a wide variety of resources;
2) a lot of mountains, so minerals;
3) a lot of water for transport and irrigation (unlike the dry South and frozen North)
4) a lot of wood, rivers, and mountains, so it's a natural place for metallurgy till the steam engines made the place choice insignificant;

But the process of the European occupation took just 1..2 ky until historical times, unlikely enough to evolve.

So, while the ancestry of the Baltic survivors gave an additional Dutch height bonus to the Northern Germans, the Europeans in whole were tall even before coming to there.

Afaik, about 40 ky ago their ancestors came from the MiddleEast to the Eastern Europe and were living there for several millenia before the Ice Age made them to migrate (partially back to the MidEast, partially to Central Asia (Kazakhstan)). The marker is the volcanic eruption of 39 ky ago covering with ash all the Earth.

So, the ancestors of Europeoid and Mongoloids were living in cold but productive climate for millenia, and even while they were hunters-gatherers, they should have enough food to survive in the climate which pushes them to get bigger.
The most concentrated (almost 100%) known R1a haplogroup (i.e. no external invasion) living at same place since Ice Age are the Mountain Tajics and Pashtuns.
So, probably they closely portrait the European peoples (Germans, Slavs, Balts) on the moment of the migration beginning, about 4 ky ago.

This makes to think that after being forced to grow in cold but woody East Europe before the Ice Age, they repeated this challenge 4 ky ago with much more advanced food sources.
So, their agricultural technics, including the milking, let them occupy the Europe and survive in the European cold bootcamp, forcing to grow even more, and assimilate the bulky blondes as as design feature.

***

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Food seems to have such a strong correlation with height, in fact, that hunter-gatherers who enjoyed a wide variety of foods, despite no regular food source were often taller and healthier than early farmers who relied upon a limited but stable supply

The food is significant, but eating more doesn't make taller than possible, it just stops from getting shorter than possible.

And it allows to survive in conditions which constantly force to become bigger and stronger.
Not only to stay warm. The wood is harder than bamboo, and the European winter doesn't let to survive in a house made of rice paper.
In the Northern/North-Eastern Europe It's easier to survive for a human who is 180/80 rather than 160/50. Just because he needs a house made of logs, enough logs for fire for the whole winter, and enough stored food for himself and the herd, while the summer to do all this is much shorter.
At the same time, if he has done this, the climate provides enough food for him to survive again and again.

***

The hunters-gatherers didn't have a stable source of food, their diet and population are highly volatile, so an average peasant just must be shorter and weaker than an average hunter-gatherer of same ethbic group.
Because the agriculture allows to survive to the people who would be long ago dead as a hunter-gatherer.

So, this comparison just illustrates how hard was the life of the hunters than the life of the peasants.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Very true.  

While I wrote 'food' in general, I I should have specified that I meant a high variety and access both to quality and quantity of proteins - milk farming / herding provides both.  Early farmers generally had less variety (I. E. Mostly rice or mostly wheat), but the plenty and stability allows them to have more children. 

Trade, on the other hand, ameliorates quite a bit of the problems of early, isolated farming communities.  Hence Catalhoyuk & etc - once you have enough cities, the hunter gatherers get pushed into wastelands. 

@kerbiloid mentioned replenishing trees as a fantastic resource for developing peoples... And that's true.  The American Midwest to the East coast enjoys similar climate - lots of rain and broadleaf forests.  The major problem for the indigenous North Americans was the lack of large domestic animals for work. 

The other thing that was mentioned was need.  The massive drought drove innovation in Central Asia - while competition drove it in Europe.  I often wonder if plenty might also play a part in the fact that African and North American native technologies did not proceed apace with Eurasia, and whether plenty can explain the difference in post 1200s innovation between Europe and Asia. 

Both North America and Africa have /had plenty of game and in certain places relatively easy farming conditions.  Asia, after the Mongols became relatively stable. Absent an environmental need or massive competition for resources... Those peoples did not have to innovate as fast. 

Fast forward to today - and plenty in the West seems an issue. There is a lot of innovation and competition coming from the Asian (including India) part of the world. It will certainly be interesting to see how this all shakes out 

 

 

[magnemoe]

9 hours ago, DDE said:

No it can't. Only air in space can.

The Vipers in BSG are literally lithobraking against the deck.

This line of thinking can end pretty badly. You can easily reduce the entire war doctrine to seeking a devastating victory on the battlefield - see the Japanese example below. WWII demonstrated the potential for wars of national annihilation, and potentially extermination, although it seems to have been a surprise to everyone involved. That's where four-engined Death Stars come in.

 

In short you create an image of your enemy you want to have. 
Now, Japans plan might  have worked if they got the US to hit first and then gotten destroyed in an fair fight. Now you could use clever tactic to defeat the enemy once at war but non of the brutality the  Japanese was already known for, here the US might have settled for an favorable peace agreement. 
The problem is is that the US would never trust that deal so they would be printing warships like crazy. 
Around 1943 the US might say well either this is the peace in out time or we make it one after the war, US now outnumber Japan 3:1 and increasing fast. 
Now make some demands we like who make them scream.

Instead we got Perl Harbor, the south did a lot of the same mistake in the US civil war,  again let them get into an war and loose don't stat it, they only needed the war to be so expensive it was better to let the south go. 
Down the line the north would outperform them in industrial production, question is if they have enough grunges to take you. 

During the cold war pretty much all the colonies was dropped hard, fist it was obvious you had to make them citizens down the line, this would be an serious problem for broke European states and something you did not want. Also the USSR was fishing with dynamite down there. 
Let them carry the burden, the cost of lives was very high but no other options outside of WW3, an expand cold war with an blockade of USSR could easy end in WW3. 

Now in modern times you have way weirder stuff like ISIL, yes you have an division of light infantry who let you conquer land, but then you start pulling enemies who has more nukes than you have soldiers you kind of have an problem, add that you make Japan during WW2 looking nice. 
They lasted some months only because none other than them wanted to kill lots of civilians and it was an very realistic live fire drill. 
Even Sweden got into this to sell Gripen, 

[SOXBLOX]

13 hours ago, DDE said:

This line of thinking can end pretty badly. You can easily reduce the entire war doctrine to seeking a devastating victory on the battlefield - see the Japanese example below. WWII demonstrated the potential for wars of national annihilation, and potentially extermination, although it seems to have been a surprise to everyone involved. That's where four-engined Death Stars come in.

 

Ah, the decisive battle. One of A. T. Mahan's favorite theories. The problem is, of course, that it ended rather poorly for the Japanese. Such a doctrine led to them tricking themselves into thinking they could attack an enemy force and have it sit still or move in one direction long enough that they could wear it down and then destroy it decisively. This could only have happened if the US Navy had an objective it needed to reach. The Japanese assumed this would be their Home Islands; they thought that the American objective would be invasion. 

Of course, the objective was not invasion, it was ending the war with a minimal cost of American and Allied lives. Like Nimitz said, "winning was a simple matter of arithmetic; subtraction for them, addition for us". The American strategy was to destroy Japanese power projection capabilities and force an economic collapse, as well as liberate captured territory in the Pacific. Hence blockades and destruction of factories.

Also important is information warfare. Codebreaking, sensors, sensor data fusion, etc. It gives commanders a better picture.

See the page here for more information on this kind of warfare.

An example of the idea would be this: one nation is militarily supreme but in a semi-precarious position on the galactic stage. This nation, let's call it nation A, controls a large, backwater expanse used as a strategic buffer zone between it and the rest of the galaxy. Just bordering the expanse is another nation which is on its way up in the world, at least, according to it. They are tired of not being able to access this expanse, full of unused resources, or perhaps their leaders need to distract from the failings of their totalitarian regime at home. For whatever reason, this nation, nation B, declares war on nation A with the aim of humiliating A and taking over a chunk of the local economic market.

Nation B's military leader uses rapid, unpredictable strikes to eliminate A's infrastructure in the region in the opening hours of the conflict. This forces A to extend supply lines from its home bases, or mount attacks from more distant, unaffected locations. If B can win just a couple more victories, they can offer peace terms to nation A under which B keeps a significant part of the buffer zone. If A cannot retaliate forcefully enough to drive out B (because A's infrastructure was destroyed, they cannot maintain a fleet in the region), and they are under pressure from the rest of the galaxy to end the war, they may opt for conditional surrender. This timely peace offer would be a diplomatic fait accompli.

Edited September 3, 2020 by SOXBLOX

[K^2]

11 hours ago, DDE said:

No it can't. Only air in space can.

The Vipers in BSG are literally lithobraking against the deck.

The only mainstream(ish?) show I can think of that did this correctly was Babylon 5. Fighters were stationed on rotating section that provides artificial gravity to ship or station, so they were just released and effectively "fell" away from the carrier. By the time fighters need resupply, combat is effectively over, so they are collected through the main bay in an orderly fashion. And, of course, the way hyperspace works in the show allows fighters to follow capital ships during retreat without having to dock, so that removes the need for slamming the deck right before the emergency jump, like in BSG and the like.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

16 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

@JoeSchmuckatelli Beautiful analysis! Modern war, and presumably future war, as you pointed out, is not about destroying the enemy, but about defeating him. Destroy the ability and will to fight of your opponent, and you won't have to lose men and munitions against his tanks and aircraft. Take down the base, fuel depot, or railway bridge, and move on. On a grander scale, crippling the enemy's economy and political integrity are the fast ways to bring him down. Break the logistics chain, and their tanks can't move. Mission kill an opponent, rather than hard kill, right?

...

 

14 hours ago, DDE said:

...

This line of thinking can end pretty badly. You can easily reduce the entire war doctrine to seeking a devastating victory on the battlefield - see the Japanese example below. WWII demonstrated the potential for wars of national annihilation, and potentially extermination, although it seems to have been a surprise to everyone involved. That's where four-engined Death Stars come in.

 

So if I might opine: the purpose of combat is different than what most people assume.  As I wrote above, it is but one method of untying a political knot.  One of the tools in the nation-state (or other political actor's) kit-bag.  Ultimately, however, the solution sought is (and has to be) a political resolution.  The problem is that people are stubborn.  Sometimes they don't want to do what you want them to do... and thus, if you want them to do something bad enough - and they resist, your only recourse is to knock a few heads.  

So as you recognize, when you have an enemy and have decided to engage him in combat, you want to defeat his will to fight more than anything.  You want him to have a way to accept defeat as the lesser of two evils.  Again, people are stubborn, so this can be difficult.  Especially if you want to 'stay on the right side of history'.  i.e. not randomly killing women and children or destroying civilian infrastructure or religious buildings.  All of these limits that you set for yourself going into a conflict make that particular conflict more difficult - but actually makes your broader political goals more attainable, and future conflicts easier to manage.

For a concrete example: when we went into Iraq in 03, we had a very strict set of rules we had to follow.  These included not firing upon civilians or religious institutions or cultural locations.  This meant that we restricted our use of many weapons systems during heavy urban combat - accepting higher risk to ourselves - because the Iraqi soldiers and Fedayeen showed no qualms about hiding in these spaces or shooting at us from them.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that our combat experience in the cities was harder than it needed to be, because of our own restraint.  But I witnessed first hand the benefit of that restraint.  Not two days after some of the heaviest fighting in one of the cities, we were approached by a group of civilians.  They offered to return some of the personal items of Marines who had died in the city, showed us to their graves - respectfully dug, and watched calmly as we recovered them.  The civilians asked us if we were actually serious this time about eliminating the Sadaam government (and the man himself).  They accepted our answer... and offered us this: they would give the Fedayeen three days to leave town, or they would kill them themselves.

To @SOXBLOX's points: approaching combat, you have both strategic goals and tactical considerations.  Smart planners will keep the larger political goals in mind, even down to the Company level.  So yes, at one point you might want to take down a rail-yard to prevent the enemy from easy troop movements - but maybe you dont want to destroy the hydro power dam and send floodwaters crashing down on an industrial city.  Again, if you wantonly destroy everything the enemy holds dear, what exactly are you winning?

The problem comes when you look at a protracted war between nations relatively equal in power (with every type of power one might consider) - when you have parity between combatants, you can get into some ugly brawls, especially when your political goal is the unconditional surrender of your opponent.

And as @DDE wrote - expecting a knock-out blow to work is rarely successful.  I saw a woman, well-versed in Jiu Jitsu fight a man who was both taller and larger than she.  She fought him to submission and choked him out. Rather than realize he'd been beaten, every time he came to he jumped up wanting to fight some more.  Had others not broken up the fight, she might have been forced to kill him.  As the Japanese learned in Pearl, unless you overwhelmingly succeed with your 'knockout'... you just end up liquiding (*) off your opponent.  What made Hiroshima and Nagasaki successful was that they came at the end of the war - they showed that not only were we willing to fight to the end, but that we had the capacity to do so with little risk to ourselves.  At that point, our exhausted enemy accepted defeat as the lesser of two evils.  (*if you really want to twist your noggin, think about the devastation caused by the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, and then ask yourself what would have happened if instead of being used in 1945... we'd dropped bombs in 1942 - when our enemies were feeling rather spry.  I submit that we'd not have seen only two cities nuked)

Heck - even the Empire and its successor state saw this: using the Death Star(s) just liquided people off even more.  Instead of being scared, they got angry.

And an angry human is a dangerous thing.

 

 

 

 

(*) this is a 'creative' edit by the language filter... I may have to use it myself sometime!

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Nightside]

21 hours ago, ARS said:

Does the concept of escape pod for spaceship in sci-fi makes sense in context? I mean, I know that spaceflight borrows a lot of nautical terms (hatch, starboard-port, -nauts suffix, etc.), but (obviously by borrowing the concept of lifeboat, but in space)

Do submarines have lifeboats?

[DerekL1963]

12 minutes ago, Nightside said:

Do submarines have lifeboats?

Inflatable ones, yes.

[Nightside]

4 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Inflatable ones, yes.

I should clarify - do submarines have lifeboats they can launch when under?

A large spaceship could conceivable carry some small emergency landing pods, but these would not be suitable for extended deep space/interplanetary use.

[DerekL1963]

1 minute ago, Nightside said:

I should clarify - do submarines have lifeboats they can launch when under?

Yes, the (inflatable) lifeboats are stowed internally and can be (are) taken out the escape hatch if needed.