How would Space War work with today's technology?

Great Debates
21

Why would any war today be fought mano a mano (or satellite a satellite)? We don’t send single tanks to duel other tanks, or send single fighters to dogfight enemies. In this age of combined arms, the very idea of a single space dogfight seems… cartoonish? It’s different if you have entire space fleets, but if we’re limited to today’s technology, any space weapons we have would likely be aimed towards the enemy’s ground forces, which will have a much bigger impact than destroying their non-existent or at best miniscule space navy.

Think ICBMs – you don’t send them to dogfight other ICBMs, you send them to annihilate the enemy’s assets right at home.

I imagine satellite warfare would likewise target valuable ground targets – launch sites first and foremost, then infrastructure like power and communications, then production, etc. using missiles, hurled mass, EMP, etc.

In post #5 you say to ignore Earth’s surface, but I’m trying to argue that this is counterproductive because the very reason we don’t have space dogfights is that current tech would severely limit their usefulness. It’s like asking “Using nothing but hot air balloons, how would we design the best dogfighters?”. Even discounting surface warfare, current tech would likely limit space fights to electromagnetic and electronic warfare.

22

This is equally true on earth and yet soldiers can fire rifles without hurtling themselves backwards.

Guns work because the projectile is very small relative to the person or vehicle firing it, but can inflict serious damage by virtue of its velocity. Your spaceship doesn’t have to use big bullets. Small ones will do just fine. You don’t need to PUSH the target… you need to punch a hole in it.

23

My pet peeve with space movies is all the sound. Sound of the enemy’s engines, the sound when they shoot at you.

It would be much quieter.

24

If you’re only firing a bullet or two, fine. Massive rapid fire machine cannon would change your trajectory. Rockets/missiles definitely. You have to have the fuel to correct for evry shot; and your computers would get overwhelmed for massive chemical weapon firing such as was done in classic dogfighting. I think it’s out; just way too expensive to be effective. New tactics would emerge, or old ones come back into usefulness, like boarding the enemy ship if your few weapon options failed before you got there.

I see a closer analog to navy ships and fleets than aircraft sorties.

25

Space warfare using today’s technology, wouldn’t be much like the movies.

It would involve large amounts of anti-satellite missiles being launched against the other side’s satellites. Very powerful ground based lasers to damage the optics on spy satellites. Jamming, hacking. Changing the orbits of existing satellites to try to keep them alive for a few more orbits. Launching a few new ones.

Earth’s orbit would probably become so full of debris, it would be impossible for a satellite or anything else to survive in low earth orbit for very long.

26

My theory about sound in space battles is that it is computer generated within the cockpit of the ship. For example, when the computer senses a object approaching from the rear, it uses the speakers within the cabin to make a wooooOSSHHSHHH as it passes by. This allows the pilot to be informed and react to objects and events happening outside the cockpit even though they don’t actually transmit sound to his ship. The computer simulates the environment as if sound waves were hitting his ship.

27

Man I dinna think o’that.

My disbelief is suspended once again. But I’d have to make the application shipwide coz Scotty ain’t always on the bridge.

28

And I’d pay three times to see a movie intelligent enough where a character in the movie explains that to some nubile space neophyte.

29

Once again I’ll champion Brainglutton’s O.P.

We’re not in orbit. Ship to ship combat somewhere between here and Titan not within range of planet-based weapons or refueling/reloading/resupply.
*I’m not accepting less than within my control
Anything wussier than the least black hole
On board my cruiser for nonartificial gravity
And proffer BS for how quick from A to B *

30

Well, then the fuel becomes your critical issue. Ships on interplanetary trips (with current technology, anyway) don’t carry sufficient fuel for complex or sustained maneuvers. I’d guess the main factor would be detection, spotting the enemy when he’s so far away that one can make the most minor of course changes to either avoid him or intercept him, fire a bunch of missiles (which I presume carry their own quick-burning fuels) and if you miss on the first pass, you’re not getting another.

The Honor Harrington books address this, albeit with a physics- and inertia-defying “gravity wedge” system that allows sustained accelerations of 500g or more, which allows ships to close and maintain range for extended battles (though again without any major dogfight-like agility - the ships basically run parallel and broadside each other until one is destroyed or peels off).

I picture a more realistic encounter such as you describe might be:

Ship A coasting from Mars to Titan. Ship B coasting from Ganymede to Earth. By an astonishing coincidence, interception is possible. Ship A detects Ship B four days in advance, must decide to make a small nudge in vector to close to missile range, while keeping in mind that any course change will have to be corrected later. Ship B, with less advanced radar, spots Ship A three days before possible intercept, and notes that Ship A is changing course to close (in which case B must decide to commit or avoid), changing course to avoid (in which case B must decide to pursue or not) or doing nothing (thus not committing to either action, in which case B has to decide whether or not to commit first).

It could be that neither ship does anything; they pass without achieving missile range, and go on their way. Or that one ship moves to intercept, the other moves to evade, and the first ship decides it’s not worth wasting more fuel in pursuit, having earned what they can call a minor victory in making the other guy flinch.

Until and unless we get tech that allows spaceships to maneuver at will in a manner analogous to naval ships, I’d guess space “battles” will be over before they begin simply because the vectors won’t line up 99+% of the time. The only way to guarantee being in position to attack would be knowing the other guy’s course in advance, planning your own vector accordingly, and approaching with a stealth ship so by the time he detects you, he can’t do anything about it.

31

I think you’d send up lots of small unmanned spacecraft designed to directly impact enemy craft. There isn’t much advantage to putting a lot of projectiles into a single craft except for launching into orbit or beyond, and that craft would just be a container shell. You wouldn’t use anything like a bullet or cannon because then you’d need extra fuel to deal with the reaction. So you’d just have to shoot rockets anyway. They would probably have a warhead designed to detontate in proximity.

32

Won’t anybody merge Pirates of the Caribbean with Star Wars and get me some space pirates that glow in the dark boarding the enemy to recover the…

33

yeah. For planetary orbit defense.

34

A rocket or missile wouldn’t change your trajectory, no. The missile is simply released and then propels itself under its own power. I suppose it’d change your trajectory in that the spacecraft would become LIGHTER, but that would be a good thing, inasmuch as it now makes your existing fuel supply more powerful. But there’s minimal effect from Newton’s laws.

And why do we need a big Gatling gun?

This is simple Newtonian physics. A pretty common computer could do the trick.

35

Everybody needs a big Gatling gun.

36

You would not have dogfights. Ever. Humans are crap at high g, solid state electronics not so much. What you would see is huge launches of semi smart missiles. The control technology is cheap, and you can build them small enough to be very hard to spot. With no atmosphere to worry about, they can build up ridiculous levels of velocity very easily.

So, probably the equivalent of a mothership, that can deploy thousands of the above, but also has some high energy weapons such as:

Railguns:

Already being heavily researched by the US navy, and even happier in a zero atmosphere environment

Lasers:

Which again become a lot more efficient without pesky atmospheric conditions (water vapour mainly) to deal with.

37

With today’s technology? Well then there aren’t going to be any space battles outside Earth’s orbit, because there isn’t anything outside the Earth’s orbit that is worth fighting over. Oh, China lays claim to Ganymede? We must stop them! Except their claim over Ganymede doesn’t mean anything because they don’t have a spacecraft that can reach the Moon, much less Ganymede.

And even if they did have a spacecraft that could reach the Moon, so what? They’re going to set up a lunar colony, then declare the Moon the 34th province of China? No they’re not, because a lunar colony would cost trillions of dollars and not even the United States has trillions of dollars to pour into a lunar colony.

And even if tomorrow China turns into the implacable enemy of the United States, the best thing that could happen for us would be if China decides to pour trillions of dollars into a lunar colony, because they’re choosing that instead of trillions of dollars worth of nuclear bombs and submarines and tanks and bombers. Our warfighting strategy should be to stand aside and allow them to waste trillions of dollars on a lunar colony rather than trying to stop them.

Aside from that, the most important thing to know about space travel is that the ability of a spacecraft to change its velocity is very very small compared to the velocity of the spacecraft. Forget every notion of pointing the nose of your spaceship toward Ganymede and firing the engines until you get there. Even if you’ve got a Heinlein-style torchship that uses total conversion to generate thrust, you can’t just turn on the engines and blast because you’re not limited by the energy of your reactor, you’re limited by the amount of reaction mass you can carry. The only way to change your velocity is chucking stuff off the back of your canoe as hard as you can.

So any notion of “dogfighting” is nonsensical. Spacecraft won’t dogfight, any more than submarines dogfight. I agree with Bryan’s notion that a space battle will consist of craft detecting each other, and either maneuvering to intercept or avoid, with the recognition that most of the time there’s no question of interception because neither craft has enough delta-v to intercept, even if both cooperated.

And given that if you detect incoming weapons a small change in your trajectory means the weapons miss you, that means during an intercept both craft are going to be making lots of small corrections to make their future trajectories hard to figure. I imagine lots of victories would come, not from hitting the other craft with one of your weapons, but forcing them to expend so much delta-v evading your weapons that they don’t have enough to ever match velocities with a friendly base or spacecraft. And so the enemy astronauts die of starvation, or run out of oxygen, or old age, or whatever, rather than being killed. There’s a lot more empty space out there than stuff.

38

Again, exploding warheads in proximity. You can’t escape shrapnel heading in all directions.

39

I know, I know, but for purposes of this thread we’re handwaving all that.

40

Well, with today’s technology, I’d guess the most likely form of a space battle will be two people getting into a zero-gee slapfight aboard the ISS over who ate the last tube of freeze-dried ice cream.