03-06-2003 22:34									#1
	realistic spaceship combat Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

Assuming plausible near future tech (no warp drive, no star trek type shields), what would spaceship combat really be like?

Tech wise, say we have nuclear or ion engines, basic lasers weapons (like the prototype ABM laser), powerful radars of course, and ICBM-like missiles.

It seems to me that spaceship combat would be more like modern day submarine combat:

1) cat and mouse detection game
Space is so vast, that even radar signals would take time to return off of a target. For example, If I am orbiting Earth, and the enemy ship was around Mars, it would take ~10 mn for my radar signal just to reach the enemy. You would also haver to send out a very powerful and narrow radar beam in order to get any signal back. Since radar gives away your position, like submarines, spaceships would probably rely on passive sensors that just "listen" for signals from the enemy. So, like submarines, spaceships would probably rely on a long preliminary detection phase, where both sides jockey for position and try to hide and detect the enemy first.

2) close combat
Combat would probably occur over short distances. YOu would attack when both ships are orbiting the same planet. You could not attack over long ranges (distances ~earth-mars or earth-jupiter), when even light takes minutes or hours to travel across, and your missiles would require days to reach their target. Could you fire an ICBM at a target when the missile would take several weeks to reach the target? Probably not!

Any long range combat would probably involve unmanned drones. A ship would launch a bunch of drones that would be capable of conducting limited search and destroy missions on their own.

3) 1 hit = 1 kill

Since we don't have magic shield tech that absorbs any hit, ships would probably be very vulnerable to attack. Like with current aircrafts or subs, a single missile hit would be devastating. Like with current naval warfare, defense would probably involve trying to shoot down the incoming missile, evading the incoming missile, and confusing the missile's sensors with jamming or decoys.

I think for all these reasons, near future spaceship combat would probable be very similar to modern naval and sub combat.

	03-06-2003 22:40									#2
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

I don't know about radar beign the main method of detection: Maybe it works better outside of an atmosphere, but given the distance and perhaps background radiation..why wouldnt passive means, liek searching for the other shiops emmisions, be just as usefull? After all, if you can see them in radr, they would see you, but if one shot equal one kill, would it not be better to relly mostly on passive searches, track his emmissions while keeping your low?

Edit: woops, just read the beginning of the radar part... :O

As for one shot one kill: well, you can make ships in sections, so that if one section is taken out, it can be dropped and the ship and its crew could stil try to survive. You don;t have to deal with the problems of such a heavy medium as water, or the issues of being so close to a gravity well, like being on a planet, so that getting hit means going down, and going down means dying.

	03-06-2003 22:40									#3
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Tech wise, say we have nuclear or ion engines, basic lasers weapons (like the prototype ABM laser), powerful radars of course, and ICBM-like missiles.

What about rail guns? Using high-speed projectiles in a vacuum should be pretty simple.

	03-06-2003 23:18									#4
	Put an end to popups!

quote: Originally posted by GePap As for one shot one kill: well, you can make ships in sections, so that if one section is taken out, it can be dropped and the ship and its crew could stil try to survive.

Totally agree. In fact, I think the first manned ships to Mars will probably have a modular design, similar to the ISS, where you can assemble the ship by just assembling the appropriate modules.

quote: Originally posted by GePap You don't have to deal with the problems of such a heavy medium as water, or the issues of being so close to a gravity well, like being on a planet, so that getting hit means going down, and going down means dying.

It seems to me that space could potentially be more dangerous. If a sub crew get enough warning of a catastrophe, the sub can blow the ballasts and quickly rise to the surface where the crew can be rescued within hours. In space, there is the threat of vaccuum and radiation, and a rescue mission could take months.

As you mentionned, spacecrafts would probably have separate sections like subs, where a section can be instantly sealed off to protect the rest of the ship in case of hull breach.

	03-06-2003 23:19									#5
	Get a bigger avatar today!

The Diplomat: there is no point at Radar detecting some one orbiting Mars from Earth. What would you do to them, anyway?

Besides, I don't think we'll see small ships like the ones in Star Wars, more of enormous motherships ( maybe with fighter wings escorting them).

And yes, they'll all use Railguns.

	03-06-2003 23:27									#6
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: It seems to me that space could potentially be more dangerous. If a sub crew get enough warning of a catastrophe, the sub can blow the ballasts and quickly rise to the surface where the crew can be rescued within hours. In space, there is the threat of vaccuum and radiation, and a rescue mission could take months.

I would agree that space is a far more hostile medium to life than anything on earth: my point is how easy it is to fight o live(or die) another day. What happens, for example, if the sub is hit in a way were it can't release ballast? Even if the ship can be cordoned off into compartments, once the ship is sinking, gravity and water pressure will combine to mean probable doom, unless the sea floor is nearby: unless a good sumersible is on hand, eventually the outside rpessure makes rescue less and less possible.

In general what i mean is that the likelyhood of the crew living through a catastrophich hit somewhere on the ship might be higher on a spaceship that a sub, though the issue of eventual rescue is worthwhile. I would say though that I think battles far away from planetary bodies seems unlikely to me, just like most naval battles. Few naval battles happen ut in the middle of nowhere in the ocean, if only becuase the low probability of crossing paths in the high seas. Space would most likely be similar, with shipping routes, and parts of space that would be almost empty. While Saceships might seem like subs, imagine how much fuel it would take to be able to "cruise" space? I think it more realistic for ships to have two sorts of engines, ones for travel near planetery bodies, and engines to try to cut travel time between planets.

	03-06-2003 23:31									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

I say that detection equipment will evolve much more quickly than stealth equipment, unlike underwater, there's little to mask the presence of a spacecraft. We can already track bits of space junk of a decent size from Earth. But what about a stealth spacecraft? Apart from the ludicrous cost (both procurement and maintainence) of stealth, a spacecraft which attempted to absord incoming tracking signals would quickly overheat.

So I think that a cat and mouse game is unlikely.

Laser are too power-hungry to be much use for anything other than targeting and communication, a decent ship would have cooling systems, reflective armour and smokers to deal with all but the most intense laser beams.

Missiles would be highly useful, in my view, particularly as they would not have to be particularly steamlined, and could have a more efficient shape, such as a sphere or an teardrop.

Armour would probably be pretty good, probably very thick, but low mass stuff with multiple layers, able to slow down and absorb kinetic weapons, rather than reflect them. Alternatively, if you could mine asteroids, you could build a powerful space 'tank', a slow, but heavily armoured warship than can laugh off low power munitions.

Defensive devices would include cooling systems and smokers against lasers, electro magnet cages to protect vital systems aginst solar flares and EMP weapons, chaff to distract missiles and enemy detection systems and most importantly for lightly armoured ships, agility to avoid incoming weapons fire. I'm not convinced that devices to shot down incoming missiles, bullets etc, would be that effective, since even if a missile was destroyed, it would still have a shotgun effect on the hull, not to mention the possibility of missiles that deliberately split into smaller pellets to confuse defensive fire.

	03-06-2003 23:43									#8
	Put an end to popups!

quote: Missiles would be highly useful, in my view, particularly as they would not have to be particularly steamlined, and could have a more efficient shape, such as a sphere or an teardrop

Oh, no, the most efficient form storage-wise will be used. a cube.

	03-06-2003 23:45									#9
	Tired of ads?

How would explosions work in space? Given that it's a vacuum I doubt there'd be much flames and stuff like you often see in movies, but I ain't exactly a scientist.

	03-06-2003 23:45									#10
	Support Apolyton

Missiles would probably be pretty useless as missile defense systems will probably improve more quickly, unless you could overpower the defenses with missile swarms. At long range they could be destroyed easily enough to avoid damaging shrapnel. Short range is another story.

Still, it would probably be much more cost effective to have rail-guns and such. Though if spaceships were to approach enemy planets or bases they could probably easily be destroyed by missile swarms.

In general the whole idea sounds way too costly, maybe people will just be sensible and leave it all to a game of chess.

	03-06-2003 23:54									#11
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Railguns will be awesomely deadly. How about a 3 Barrel Gattling Railgun? Imagine this bad boy on an space, launching these 2 feet long slugs with immese speeds, like a hail of deadly hornets.

Asteroidal installations, will probably have lasers. Lasers seem to work, and with thinner atmospheres, they could reach space.

	03-06-2003 23:57									#12
	Support Apolyton

quote: Oh, no, the most efficient form storage-wise will be used. a cube.

But a cube is inefficient in terms of the material used to make it. A sphere is better if you want to mimimize the volume of the device, and thus it's mass. The sphere will also stand up better to space dust and anti-missile fire.

	04-06-2003 00:09									#13
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Active detection measures would be suicidal. Trying to radar (or any other active measure) to find someone in space would be like standing out in the desert on a totally dark night with a flashlight.

You won't see anything, but the whole world will see exactly where you are.

As for combat, railguns and hypervelocity dumb projectiles are silly - you'd have to have extremely close ranges in relation to space, to accurately hit something - keep in mind that enemy spacecraft would be moving pretty fast.

Movement is totally different from the nonsense in the movies - every time you apply thrust, you accelerate, so if you have constant thrust, you have constant acceleration. Nothing brakes you in a practical time frame, so to slow down, you thrust in the other direction.

Combat would greatly favor defenders, and one time of weapon that would work well is analogous to a particularly nasty type of anti-shipping mine. You have an automated missile launch/detector/mine system, that sits in a given area (yeah, you have to have a lot of these, but same with manned ships) and uses passive visual and infrared detection to find ships.* Once one detects something, it initiates a narrowband, low energy signal with a narrow field antenna to a communications center, where other sensors are ordered to change direction to improve the tracking of the enemy ship.

Once the enemy ship track is established, you can select a missile dispenser or two, and have them initiate a low energy launch (you're zero G, so not a lot of thrust is needed) to get them away from the dispensers, and on their way to the path of the enemy ship. The missiles stay in low-thrust, low emission, passive detection only mode until they close within a specific range, then they switch to high thrust and active target acquisition mode.

Ideally, the enemy ship is suprised at one or two inbound missiles at close range without warning.

* This is easy to do with current technology. Just take CCD imagers with a given field of view, and constantly take a series of short exposure images. It's simple data processing to sum the values of all pixels in the CCD field, and compare that number to the number for previous exposures of the same area. If there's a difference, you have either a reflective object, or something passing in front of another object. Once you have a suspect field of view that has some activity in it, you can then focus other detectors on that area and try to get a visual/IR read on it.

	04-06-2003 00:15									#14
	Remove this text

quote: But a cube is inefficient in terms of the material used to make it. A sphere is better if you want to mimimize the volume of the device, and thus it's mass. The sphere will also stand up better to space dust and anti-missile fire.

I don't understand anything you said, except the last sentence.
Why is a cube inefficient in terms of the materials used to make it?

	04-06-2003 00:21									#15
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Unless you were running through an area with alot of junk, which you probably wouldn't be, these objects could probably be detected by the ship pretty easily, and taken out at a sufficient distance. Active detection systems would hardly be ridiculous if you knew you were in an area where you were going to be seen and you had a reasonable assurance that you could disable incoming missiles.

	04-06-2003 00:26									#16
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by Azazel Why is a cube inefficient in terms of the materials used to make it?

A sphere has the smallest surface area ratio to volume of any 3D shape.

	04-06-2003 00:27									#17
	Tired of ads?

quote: Originally posted by Azazel quote: But a cube is inefficient in terms of the material used to make it. A sphere is better if you want to mimimize the volume of the device, and thus it's mass. The sphere will also stand up better to space dust and anti-missile fire. I don't understand anything you said, except the last sentence. Why is a cube inefficient in terms of the materials used to make it?

The surfaces of a cube require more internal structural support than does the surface of a sphere.

	04-06-2003 00:29									#18
	Support Apolyton

A sphere with the same volume as a cube has a smaller surface area.

Smaller surface area = reduced volume/mass of fuselage = lighter, cheaper missile

Edit: What they said ^

	04-06-2003 00:29									#19
	Remove this text

What about missiles launched from a rail gun (or rather slugs that could make adjustments to their course after launch). The rail gun would give them a big initial boost, and they could make minor deviations after that to increase accuracy. They'd probably be a lot cheaper than a single missile that has to do all the work of accelerating towards its target by itself, so you could probably aford more of them.

	04-06-2003 00:32									#20
	Tired of ads?

quote: A sphere with the same volume as a cube has a smaller surface area. Smaller surface area = reduced volume/mass of fuselage = lighter, cheaper missile

	04-06-2003 00:33									#21
	Put an end to popups!

quote: Originally posted by gsmoove23 Unless you were running through an area with alot of junk, which you probably wouldn't be, these objects could probably be detected by the ship pretty easily, and taken out at a sufficient distance. Active detection systems would hardly be ridiculous if you knew you were in an area where you were going to be seen and you had a reasonable assurance that you could disable incoming missiles.

Active detection systems would broadcast your position, bearing, course and velocity for a range that is (in space) hundreds or thousands of times the range where you would get a sufficient return signal to positively detect an enemy.

You wouldn't be able to detect an inbound missile if the enemy had plenty of time to maneuver it right into your path before it goes active.

The difference in active/passive range is far higher in space than in the atmosphere, since passive detection systems are subject to ghost signals, harmonics, bounce, etc., so they're always picking up junk.

	04-06-2003 00:34									#22
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: A sphere has the smallest surface area ratio to volume of any 3D shape.

So what?

quote: The surfaces of a cube require more internal structural support than does the surface of a sphere.

a-ha! Thanks, MtG.

	04-06-2003 00:40									#23
	Remove this text

quote: Originally posted by FrustratedPoet How would explosions work in space? Given that it's a vacuum I doubt there'd be much flames and stuff like you often see in movies, but I ain't exactly a scientist.

You are right. there wouldn't be any large explosions since there is no atmosphere or medium to carry the shockwave. Of course, if the missile hits the enemy ship, then it would produce damage.

Missiles would probably be most effective if they manage to pierce through the enemy hull and explode inside. If the missile exploded inside the hull, it would tear the ship apart from the inside out.

Missiles could also be used as great EMP devices. A nuke that exploded in space would not produce any shockwave but it would produce a huge amount of EM radiation which could damage electronic devices, and the radioactivity would severely affect the crew (ie, kill them slowly).

	04-06-2003 00:42									#24
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

good thread

even with rail guns, wouldn't you still have recoil? you are still accelerating a projectile...

Due to the speeds involved, even in our primitive means of space travel, I doubt projectiles would be used to shoot incoming vehicles. I imagine they would be restricted to missiles defense roles like the Phalanx system on carriers.

I don't think space combat would be very practical. To be realistic, you have to ask the following questions.

1. What are we doing in space in the first place?
2. Where would such battles take place? Space is pretty big, I doubt many confrontations would take place in the middle of nowhere. More likely, battles would take place in areas of importance, like planets, moons and such.

Anyways, I'm having too many problems with trying to think about this practically without reaching into some sort of sci-fi realm.

	04-06-2003 00:43									#25
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

For large and even medium sized ships an effective response would probably be sending reconnaissance probes ahead and to the sides of their trajectory, giving them a greater passive range, stereo-scopic views, results could be checked against each other. These probes could even be used for active detection in cases where the enemy already knows of your presence, giving him a general, but not exact, knowledge of where you are.

	04-06-2003 00:45									#26
	Put an end to popups!

Combat in interplanetary space or even a decent distance from the Earth sounds pretty unlikely - unless the two country's ships were travelling together for some reason or someone discovered an incredible leap in propulsion technology, it would take at least weeks for someone on Earth to get a ship to intercept another ship halfway between Earth and Mars, by which time either the war would be over or the defender would have had ample time to move out of the way. I think if any space combat occurs in the near future it would be either in Earth orbit or in Mars/Moon/any other colonized body orbit.
Considering that spaceships are not known for being manueverable or stealthy and are extremely expensive, the best bet would probably be the drones - maybe something as simple as a nuclear missile with guidance and engines. I would think that it would be easiest to keep these on Earth and launch them when an enemy ship is identified, especially considering the cost of putting extra weight on a spaceship. Give them the heat-seeking stuff like we've got on SAM missiles today and keep them in contact with Mission Control so they know what direction to go, and it shouldn't be much of a problem, especially if they've got decent stealth technology.
If people learn how to shoot down missiles very accurately, I wonder if a big unmanned ram might not be a bad idea. Considering the speed spaceships can go, it would cause a huge amount of damage, and if the enemy tried to destroy it, it would just shatter into a lot of fragments that might work just as well.
Any sort of close combat would probably be suicidal for both, since they'll both have missiles (which stay around after the ship is destroyed) and they'll both only need one shot. Depending on how close "close" means, maybe a smart commander could put a nuke on board and detonate it when the ship goes down, taking the enemy with it.

Do we have the technology to make X-Wingesque fighters that can function in space?

	04-06-2003 00:56									#27
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: Originally posted by Sava even with rail guns, wouldn't you still have recoil? you are still accelerating a projectile...

Yes you would have a recoil effect because of the law of conservation of momentum. This would make rail guns on spaceships highly unlikely because the recoil would be too much. You could however, have rail guns on planets, since there the recoil would be regligeable.

	04-06-2003 00:59									#28
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Would manned ships be the most efficient?

I know that a human intelligence obviosuly would be better able to adapt and create new strategies in the heat of battle, but at the same time, the use of humans puts a whole set of constraints. If we assume no such thing as inertialess drives or antigravity, a ship with people in it is far less manueverable. In a ship with a crew, you need to have protective armor (against cosmic rays) everywhere a crewmember may go, making the ship more massive. You need lots of space for Oxygen, water, and food and life support systems, and in theory, also escape modules.

Wouldn't autonomous ships be far cheaper and almost as effective? (give how much battle would be automated anyway, due to the realities of space?) The ship would not have some sort of AI, but instead would be given its ission parameters from the start, and the onboard systems then make only tactical decisions and navigation.

	04-06-2003 01:02									#29
	Increase the size of your Attachments

quote: Originally posted by The diplomat Yes you would have a recoil effect because of the law of conservation of momentum. This would make rail guns on spaceships highly unlikely because the recoil would be too much. You could however, have rail guns on planets, since there the recoil would be regligeable.

Recoil can be taken nito account. Modern ships have to deal with it, no reason to believe it would be a major detriment to space ships. On top of that, missiles will cause recoil also.

	04-06-2003 01:05									#30
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

I think putting all that weaponry into the hands of an AI is just a little too frightening. You would need someone on hand, though the crew can be very small in proportion to the size of the ship, making the areas that need radiation shielding and oxygen storage very small.