Just use missiles instead.
The Myth of the Starfighter
- Thread starter Cryogenator
- Start date
Just use missiles instead.
Realism has nothing to do with it. Movies and shows use fighters BECAUSE IT FUCKING LOOKS COOL. 
If we wanna go truly realistic, there would be no fighting in space at all, IMO. It's kind of stupid to fight over vast regions of nothingness or for worlds so far apart from one another that the resources required for such an effort could be better spent improving what's at home, and likely even easier than invading and securing another planet.
Point Defense Systems on all StarShips & even Star Fighters will relegate Missiles viability to a very low hit rate.
This is not even counting ECM & ECCM.
C.E. Evans said:
There's no point in fighting over almost everything humans fight over. A negotiated compromise will result in a better outcome for both parties in virtually every case. But we still fight. I've absolutely zero doubt that at some point in the future, we will fight in space.
Honestly, the best weapon is almost certainly going to be a solid projectile moving very, very, very fast. The lack of atmosphere seriously reduces the effectiveness of an explosive because there's no shock wave. So pure kinetic energy is the most effective choice.
In which case, you wouldn't even want a missile, just a slug, because every gram of propellent burnt by the missile is that much less mass impacting on a target. And with a solid slug, ECM is pointless. (Well, it affects your firing solution, but that's true of every weapon system you can imagine.) Point-defence will be of much less effect, too, since it can't crush or detonate a solid slug - it'll have to try and deflect the slug rather than destroy it. Plus, it will be that much harder to see since the slug itself won't be radiating, making evading much more difficult.
I'm quite confident that real-world space combat will end up being heavily armoured balls or cylinders throwing rocks at each other until someone runs out of delta-v and takes one in the face.
There's no point in fighting over almost everything humans fight over. A negotiated compromise will result in a better outcome for both parties in virtually every case. But we still fight. I've absolutely zero doubt that at some point in the future, we will fight in space.
Honestly, the best weapon is almost certainly going to be a solid projectile moving very, very, very fast. The lack of atmosphere seriously reduces the effectiveness of an explosive because there's no shock wave. So pure kinetic energy is the most effective choice.
In which case, you wouldn't even want a missile, just a slug, because every gram of propellent burnt by the missile is that much less mass impacting on a target. And with a solid slug, ECM is pointless. (Well, it affects your firing solution, but that's true of every weapon system you can imagine.) Point-defence will be of much less effect, too, since it can't crush or detonate a solid slug - it'll have to try and deflect the slug rather than destroy it. Plus, it will be that much harder to see since the slug itself won't be radiating, making evading much more difficult.
I'm quite confident that real-world space combat will end up being heavily armoured balls or cylinders throwing rocks at each other until someone runs out of delta-v and takes one in the face.
Point Defense DEWs (Directed Energy Weapons) would melt the slug which would screw up their velocity vector.
Also vessels can use RCS to strafe.
As ExPlained in The video, A missile can be vastly More agile (inCludIng Strafing) than Any StarFighter, so if pOint deFense sysTems can Stop a missile, they Can much More easily stop a starfighteR.
I liked the drone-based space warfare game-within-a-game depicted in the adventure game Mission Critical from about 30 years ago. The drones - of various types - could survive very high acceleration that would turn wetware humans into jam. Any remember that game? The SF story behind the game itself was also very good. This warfare minigame also included missiles and PDS, but not energy shields or energy beam weapons. I can't recall if it depicted EM-driven mass projectiles. It was how I envisaged such engagements realistically being fought within the next few hundred years. Where it fell down, I thought, was relying on humans in a drug-enhanced accelerated state of cognition to control the weapons. I suspected appropriately trained AIs would be up to the job by then.
en.wikipedia.org
Mission Critical (video game) - Wikipedia
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Which is a specific implementation of deflecting the slug. And if you have a DEW with enough energy-on-target to melt a solid slug, why not just shoot that at the enemy vessel? I thought were were talking about plausible space combat. Also, completely melting the slug is pointless unless you also change its vector, because impacting mass is impacting mass and it doesn't matter it it's a solid or liquid mass when it smashes into you. So why waste energy doing that?
Any realistic DEW available for PD roles would vapourise small pockets of the incoming slug, deflecting its vector and hopefully causing it to miss. This is one possible technology that might be used to achieve the goal of "make that incoming slug miss." It's not the only one, though it's likely to be mass-efficient.
(And really, "velocity vector?" All velocities are vectors, that's like saying "dime coin.")
Sure, by why bother? The delta-v you'll get from your attitude thrusters is negligible. Unless you meant "boost with the main engine to evade and use attitude thrusters to maintain a firing solution." In which case, yes, that's very likely how real-world space combat will work. But if you meant "use the attitude thrusters to dodge sideways after the main thruster is out of delta-v" - that's either going to be such a tiny delta-v that it will only be effective at long range, or an awful lot of your mass budget is tied up in attitude thrusters.
In that latter case, well, that's just a subset of "until someone runs out of delta-v." It will make the fight take longer. The fight will still end when one ship runs out of reaction mass, can no longer change their vector, and eats a couple of very high speed slugs.
Enemy might be out of range.
Enemy might be hidden or using some form of Stealth/Cloaking.
You might need to defend something against incoming projectiles, regardless of what the enemy is doing because keeping whatever object alive is priority over destroying the target at that moment in time.
Unless you can predict how it melts every time from every direction, that's unlikely.
Especially since you don't know what the composition of the slug is and what parts will melt at what rate.
When you start the melting process, it'll start splitting the object into ever smaller chunks over time.
That's kind of the point of DEW PD, it's to be energy & mass-efficient while defending against incoming fire.
That's seperate from any DEW used for Offense.
I was typing & thinking fast, so some thing get through like Colloquialism's that don't make sense.
I know that Velocity has Vector in it, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time.
Typing & shooting out "Stream of Concious Thought" onto Forum Post faster than Editing could catch it.
Oh my RCS units wouldn't be so wimpy like the ones you see.
It'd be closer to a StarFury from B5, but modified for all Six-Axis of Freedom will have Hyper-Impulse level RCS units that allow ridiculous manueverability in all Axis.
I'm crazy enough to mate Impulse & Hyper-Impulse Drive tech to the RCS units to allow crazy manueverability.
Like what you would see in Gundam or Macross, but on a StarFighter instead of a Giant Bi-PaB Mech or a Transforming Mech that has 3x forms of transformation.
In the Trek Universe's Lore, I would want to mate the Impulse Engines to the RCS Systems and not be dependent on RCS fuel that is primative & expensive compared to Impulse Drive that is far more fuel efficient, but more complicated to operate & a bit more maintenance heavy then even the standard Warp Drive Systems.
Without adding substantial mass to a spacecraft, there's not a lot of protection to be had against standoff directed energy weapons, such as directional nukes of the sort proposed by Freeman Dyson for Orion nuclear pulse propulsion with the addition of suitable materials to produce the required radiation enhancement.
Shielding composed of elements with high atomic mass is most effective against X-rays and gamma rays, and hydrogen-rich materials are most effective for thermalising neutrons, although secondary irradiation by the products of neutron activation is a possibility. Charged particles can be deflected by strong electric and magnetic fields and tend not to be as penetrating as high energy photons and neutrons.
I envisage the survival rate not being very high when such weapons are used in addition to shotgun-style railgun slugs.
More exotic weapons and defences might be possible. I'm sticking with what (little) I know.
Shielding composed of elements with high atomic mass is most effective against X-rays and gamma rays, and hydrogen-rich materials are most effective for thermalising neutrons, although secondary irradiation by the products of neutron activation is a possibility. Charged particles can be deflected by strong electric and magnetic fields and tend not to be as penetrating as high energy photons and neutrons.
I envisage the survival rate not being very high when such weapons are used in addition to shotgun-style railgun slugs.
More exotic weapons and defences might be possible. I'm sticking with what (little) I know.
One of the great advantages of text-based forums is that they aren't real time conversations. So you don't need to post the stream-of-consciousness first draft. You can re-read it, and fix it, before you put it up.
Ah, I understand now. You are not, in fact, having the same conversation as me.
I'm talking about something that could actually be built in the real world in the next century or so. Something that conforms to actual physics and the hard limits on mass and energy that real world spacecraft will have to deal with.
You're talking about interesting fiction.
These are very different conversations.
This explains why you're ignoring all common sense when it comes to spacecraft design. Which is fine. Starfuries are cool, I enjoy a good fictional space battle too; good fiction and actual battles are frequently at cross-purposes in any setting.
But it's not the conversation I'm having, so responding to my points with your points is... well, pointless.
Anyway, enjoy your weekend.
That sounds like the Honor Harrington "Bomb-pumped X-Ray Laser" ? Just with slightly different wording?
I would think the main targets of such an attack in the real world - and I also am teetering upon Mount Stupid as I say this - would be electronics (which are comparatively easy to protect) and the crew (who would die horribly, but not instantly). Actual damage to structural elements I would think would be minimal.
Here I am leaning on conversations I've had with the creators of Attack Vector, who concluded that nukes of any kind just weren't worth the mass, but I don't think you're actually discussing nukes as such?
I am referring to bomb-pumped X-ray lasers, neutron bombs and the like. Here is a diagram of an individual pulse unit for Project Orion:
NASA - Nuclear Pulse Space Vehicle Study, Volume III -- Conceptual Vehicle Designs And Operational Systems
pages 9-12
The materials used for the radiation case, tamper and channel largely determine the specific device characteristics. The pulse design also used dial-a-yield electronics to control the explosion size - presumably by adjusting the timing and neutron flux during initiation (guessing here).
For the 10m diameter pusher plate design, the mass of each pulse unit was 141kg.
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That would also be good against nickel-iron slug asteroids.
Pulse unit about the size of the impactor here?
en.m.wikipedia.org
Pulse unit about the size of the impactor here?
Deep Impact (spacecraft) - Wikipedia
Depends on their integrity, but potentially, yes.
Roughly the same - the impactor's mass was 372kg and the kinetic energy of its collision with Templel 1 was calculated to be equivalent to 5 tons of TNT (2x10^10 joules). Each pulse unit proposed for the 800 metric ton payload interplanetary version of Orion would have a slightly greater mass of about 500kg and a yield of 140 tons of TNT (5.6x10^11 joules)*. 800 pulse units would be required to reach low Earth orbit - detonating one per second. Each launch from Earth was estimated to result in ten additional deaths from cancer caused by fallout. Burning coal releases radioactivity as well as combustion products. Using coal as a fuel is estimated to cause over 50,000 premature deaths per year.
* The combined effective power of the five Saturn V first stage F-1 engines was about 90 gigawatts or 9x10^10 joules per second. The total actual power was about 2x10^11 joules per second. That's the equivalent of exploding 50 tons of TNT per second. The first stage was discarded at just under 150 seconds, of course. The total energy expended was perhaps half that released by the A-bomb used at Hiroshima, albeit the time scale of release differed by quite a few orders of magnitude.
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