Manchester was referring to the use of "nukes and bullets" in Battlestar Galactica. Nobody would use the word "bullet" to refer to the kind of weaponry fired by a spacecraft; they'd say "shells" or the like. The word "bullets" was clearly meant to refer to the ammunition of hand weapons, and it's quite startling that you'd take it any other way.
The little Vipers in BSG certainly didn't used "shells", they used "bullets" on their light guns. That's what we're talking about.
An energy weapon's power pack would be limited too. That's something that SF stories often ignore.
Of course they do! It's just not so much ignored, as handwaved - interstellar travel requires SUCH amount of energy, it's a given in such a scenario the possibility to store energy is much further than today.
That only applies if your first warning an attack is coming is the attack (and that applies equally well to beams as well as projectiles). Otherwise, you can dodge a lightspeed beam as well as you can dodge anything else (it's not like people evading on Earth politely wait to be shot at and then try to move out of the way between the bullet firing and arriving). The hard sci-fi approach to space battles would generally be ambush attacks, where the first side to launch upon the other without being seen wins on the first shot (whatever form that shot may take). If you want to soften your hard sci-fi, you can say that's already happened, and now both sides can spot each other equally quickly and begin zig-zagging around long before any long-range attacks arrive, so it's back to close-up age-of-sail-style battles if you want to hit what you're aiming at.
That's the main difference though: If you fire a
projectile at somebody in space - no matter if it's "shells", "bullets" or "intelligent rockets" - you have
hours to get out of the way. You can super easily dodge that things hours and hours after it was originally fired.
Energy weapons move at the speed of light - if you want to dogde them, you have to
anticipate that, and dodge
before the shot actually got fired at you. Big difference.
As I already mentioned, you're behind the times in assuming that's a firm distinction. In the future -- indeed, in the very near future -- bullets will become intelligent projectiles.
That doesn't stop basic rules of
physics applying to them.
You're missing the point. When it comes to sensors, the speed of light is a limitation, not an advantage. If you're aiming at an enemy ship that's five light-seconds away, then you see it where it was five seconds ago. Your information about its position and trajectory is five seconds out of date. For all you know, it's already started to change course during those five seconds, so you can't predict its course in order to fire at it. That renders beam weapons effectively useless. Over that kind of distance, it would make more sense to use a smart missile that could track the ship as it drew near and adjust its course to chase it.
Dude. Yeah, of course speed of light is a limit. In a battle the movements must be anticipated. But holy cow, OF COURSE are weapons moving at the speed of light FAR, FAR better fpr space combats than projectiles that needs
hours to
days just to meet up with a target only a few light-seconds away!
Damn dude.
I know -- I did them in college when I was earning my physics degree.
Just different applications of the exact same equations, as Isaac Newton proved centuries ago.
While I of course believe you got a physics degree (which is amazingly good for a sci-fi writer!), I still have the feeling your knowledge of orbit mechanics starts and ends with Keplers orbits - again, which is
great for a sci-fi writer and super unique, so congrats! And if you didn't specifically studied astrophysics or aerospace engineering completely enough to get the basic physical
principles at hand - but actually getting beyond the fundamentals to actual application - this shit gets much, much, much more complicated, because you can't use the assumptions for stable orbits anymore.
And projectiles on Earth still don't move in straight lines, dude.
Nobody ever said anything like that.
You're assuming that "advanced" means "ray gun," but that's a conceit that was invented in the 1920s-40s when people were still fascinated by the novelty of electricity and radiation. These days, it's kind of an antiquated trope. Today, we see the future residing in nanotech and advanced materials engineering. The old sci-fi idea that solid matter was primitive and intangible energies were the future has been left behind by progress.
Which is a super narrow view on scientific progress regardless: Just because it's
newer, doesn't mean it fits better for certain specific
applications.
Nano-technology is all fine and everything. But if you use it to built a wheel, it's going to be less effective than an actual old-school
wheel built as a wheel.
As such, "ray-guns" and energy-weapons are probably overpowered for handguns - and as retro-futuristic as nuclear powered cars. But in
space battles with starships - they are really the only possible option. Not the one "most realistic". But the only one "not utterly physically impossible".
JPL propulsion engineer Paul Woodmansee, the science advisor for Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda (with whom I corresponded online back in the day), worked out detailed combat rules for the show based on the lack of FTL sensors, and he estimated that any battle range greater than about a light-second or so would give ships enough sensor latency time to dodge a beam weapon, so that any combat beyond a light-second was waged using remote drones. Although, granted, that was in a universe that assumed starships of any size could cancel their inertial mass and thus be highly maneuverable. In the absence of that ability, a larger ship wouldn't be able to dodge as easily as a smaller one
Also, of course, beam weapons lose efficacy over distance. A particle beam would be subject to electrostatic bloom and would probably be fairly short-range. A laser beam would spread to a lesser degree but still grow less focused with distance. Only a missile would retain the same effectiveness over any distance.
You know? This is great! And I love hearing that! But all these rules are more applied to very specific scenarios, with very specific assumptions for each show. The BSG-space battles are internally consistent. The one from "The Expanse" as well. Andromeda maybe also (never watched that show) - but all of these are also at the same time utterly physically impossible, and as "unrealistic" as Star Trek battles. Even less so - because lightspeed-weapons are really the only way over shells and bullets.
But they do
look and
feel more realistic. But that's based on the conceits of each show. You can't just use the "Andromeda"-science and apply it to BSG. Or the "Star Trek" science to "The Expanse". All these work differently. And the actual physical reality is something else entirely.
In the real world -
bullets and shells simply do not work for space battles. Period. That doesn't mean any science fiction show can't
use them. SF certainly has even more "impossible" things happening. But at the same time, it means an actual "realistic" space battle scenario would
have to involve energy-weapons.
