# Sci-Fi/Futuristic infantry battles **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 21, 2019, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935 "2019-02-21T00:47:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2019, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/81 "2019-02-25T01:49:41Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I don’t think space battles will look anything at all like most SF depictions, including the Expanse and other ‘realistic’ battles. Space is too big, velocities are too large, etc. For instance, rather than shoot a missile at a ship and risk having it miss, just lay down a cloud of gravel. At interplanetary velocities, a pea sized piece of gravel will ruin your whole day. Plus, unless we have magic drives, ships will always be extremely delta-V constrained, and won’t be able to manoever much. > > A more likely scenario would be an enemy ship on a Hohmann trajectory between planets, and someone firing a cloud of junk into the orbital path, which the enemy ship can do nothing about, since it has no fuel left other than what it needs to attain orbit around its destination. Energy weapons might also be a thing deployed against coasting soaceships if necessary. > > Space battles that have ships manoevering around each other, jinking out the way of missiles and the like ar pe hollywood creations that generally appeal to our understanding of how airplanes fly. > > And even moden airplanes are unlikely to engage in close quarters air to air combat any more. More likely, an airpcraft will fly until the enemy is within range of its fire-and-forget missiles, launch them, and go home. > > Even an older F-14 could carry up to six Phoenix missiles, which could be fired from 100 miles away. You could become an ace without ever even seeing your enemy. I expect that would be true for space ‘combat’. You’d never even see who you were fighting. Here of late, Sam, I’ve thought that the best interstellar spaceship would be an asteroid that was hollowed out. If the exterior were several feet of rock, would it be able to survive a cloud of gravel? BTW, everyone, Poul Anderson used the idea of a cloud of small objects being projected in a fleet’s path in a short story entitled “Cold Victory.” His fictional admiral used ball bearings rather than pea gravel. Same effect. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2019, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/82 "2019-02-25T02:07:58Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > As for the cold reservoir, why can’t that be an internal reservoir, pre-cooled while planetary or while near some other source of coolant? As long as it’s surrounded by excellent insulation, couldn’t you dump the heat internally? Again, the background temperature of space is in the range of 3 kelvin; that is three degrees above absolute zero. Even if you could create and insulate a cold temperature reservoir below this temperature, the maximum specific heat capacity of stable, solid state elements (lead or bismith) is only 122 to 127 J/(kg⋅K). One joule of energy is equal to 2.78×10[SUP]−7[/SUP] kW⋅h, which means that one kilogram of this theoretical cold temperature reservoir can absorb ~0.0001 kW⋅h for a temperature rise from 0 K to 3 K. It would literally require ten tons of mass to absorb 1 kW⋅h of waste heat over this temperature range. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > When I read about how impossible certain things will be in the future, I think about Archimedes. We don’t know what we don’t know; we don’t know what solutions tomorrow’s folk will find to tomorrow’s problems. > > We don’t know about tomorrow’s telephone. > [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I think of scientific proof in the nineteenth century that a steamship could not carry enough coal to cross the Atlantic ocean, but yours is better. There is a qualitative difference between declaring something “impossible” just because the power source or technical conveyance doesn’t yet exist, and something that violates the essential tenets of basic physics and fundamental materials science. The idea that perfectly adiabatic materials, the ability to somehow “move” heat around in a system (i.e. change the state properties) without doing work that contributes additional heat, or other ways of bootstrapping around the practical limitations of basic materials and the second law of thermodynamics “sounds like an engineering problem” belies a lack of understanding of the essential physical principles involved. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2019, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/83 "2019-02-25T02:43:16Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > There is a qualitative difference between declaring something “impossible” just because the power source or technical conveyance doesn’t yet exist, and something that violates the essential tenets of basic physics and fundamental materials science. The idea that perfectly adiabatic materials, the ability to somehow “move” heat around in a system (i.e. change the state properties) without doing work that contributes additional heat, or other ways of bootstrapping around the practical limitations of basic materials and the second law of thermodynamics “sounds like an engineering problem” belies a lack of understanding of the essential physical principles involved. Can a man shout in Carthage and be heard in Brittania? You may prove that we can’t get around the practical limitations of vocal cords and the basic properties of air. I maintain that it’s an engineering problem. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2019, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/84 "2019-02-25T03:18:47Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > You may prove that we can’t get around the practical limitations of vocal cords and the basic properties of air. I maintain that it’s an engineering problem. You may “maintain” whatever pleases you, but the laws of thermodynamics are an absolute physical limitation that cannot be handwaved away by describing them as “an engineering problem”. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2019, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/85 "2019-02-25T03:20:00Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > You may “maintain” whatever pleases you, but the laws of thermodynamics are an absolute physical limitation that cannot be handwaved away by describing them as “an engineering problem”. > > Stranger I’m not sure you understand the analogy. They are an absolute physical limitation in precisely the same way they are when a person wants their shout to be heard hundreds of miles away. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2019, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/86 "2019-02-25T04:46:21Z")
The best scientists of the age believed that postoperative infection was a good thing, that blacks were inherently inferior to whites, that trains were dangerous because people’s bodies just couldn’t handle traveling that fast, that powered flight was impossible, and that the sound barrier was unbreakable. We just can’t know what will be technologically possible centuries from now. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2019, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/87 "2019-02-25T05:17:05Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > The irony here is that I have offered [POST=21504096]repeated[/POST] [POST=21504868]explanations[/POST] of why any object in space that is generating power or doing work will have to radiate heat Sure you have repeated these things many times and I have responded to them. > [@](#): > > while you just keep repeating the term “factoid” [POST=21503487]over[/POST] and [POST=21504208]over[/POST] and [POST=21504882]over[/POST], which is not only a disingenuous argument but also by the context of your statements a misuse of the term when what you mean is “falsehood” or “fallacy”. No, I don’t mean those. The essential part of a factoid is not that it’s false, it’s that it’s oft-repeated, unthinkingly. The idea that hiding spaceships is impossible is something that comes up very frequently in discussion forums, blogs and vlogs, just google “stealth in space”. In most cases, it’s enough to point out that the purported problems are just of a technological / engineering type. If the logic of “I can’t think of a practical way to do it, therefore it’s impossible” worked, then all of science fiction is impossible, by definition. To call something \*impossible \*we should need much more than just that. To be clear though: if someone were to say “Stealth is space is much harder than implied in science fiction, and aliens, or humans in the future, may never even attempt it”, I would have no issue with that position. It’s just ruling it out as _impossible_ which rings alarms for me. (and adding “practically” or “virtually” in front of “impossible” doesn’t help in this context. We can say it looks very difficult to achieve, but we have no basis for implying it’s impossible or close to it) ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2019, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/88 "2019-02-25T06:00:18Z")
Have you guys never heard of hyperspace? All ships that have cloaking devices naturally also have warp drives. All that excess heat simply gets shunted off into hyperspace. Hyperspace is _cold_, man! 🌀 ---
**Author:** ![abcdefghij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/43a26b/32.png) [@abcdefghij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abcdefghij)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2019, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/89 "2019-02-25T11:22:03Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > What, you think being able to remotely detonate a Sea King-launched torpedo or delivering an intelligence analyst to the _USS Dallas_ via helicopter drop in mid-ocean deviated from reality and common sense? No more so than slaloming around seamounts along the mid-Atlantic ridge ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2019, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/90 "2019-02-25T12:53:55Z")
> [@abcdefghij](#): > > Submarine battles never get filmed realistically for the same reason space battles don’t. Your opponent is miles away, you spend most of your time trying to even locate them, and it all takes hours. Don’t get me wrong; the mock battles we did were intense, but they were pretty much unfilmable. Getting a little off topic, but I’m interested to hear from a submarine officer whether you thought _Das Boot_ was realistic? It certainly does capture something of the intensity, tedium, and slow pace of operations. ---
**Author:** ![abcdefghij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/43a26b/32.png) [@abcdefghij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abcdefghij)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2019, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/91 "2019-02-26T03:33:13Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Getting a little off topic, but I’m interested to hear from a submarine officer whether you thought _Das Boot_ was realistic? > > It certainly does capture something of the intensity, tedium, and slow pace of operations. I served in an era of infinite power, free oxygen, and bottomless tanks of fresh water, so I can’t say authoritatively, but Das Boot seems to nail it. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2019, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/92 "2019-02-26T23:19:09Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > It would be even less dramatic than that. Most science fiction battles use directed energy weapons or guided missiles but it really isn’t necessary to use anything that sophisticated. A railgun or Gauss gun firing a hail golf-ball sized ferrous projectiles in a pattern that is statistically unavoidable would destroy any opposing ship, so battles would be a matter of staying at the marginal edge of a pattern while sending out a fusillade of their own projectiles. There’s no hiding or cloaking in space, either; any ship of discernable size with a power system sufficient for interplanetary travel will be radiating heat and stand out against the background of space like a small star in infrared. Glen Cook had an interesting solution to the problem of energy and heat radiation in his book _Passage at Arms_. Basically, some specially built ships were able to “climb” out of both space-norm and hyperspace into a weird little space all their own, and their cross-section in space-norm and hyperspace was something referred to as a Hawking point. The Hawking point was so small as to be damned near undetectable unless the enemy was lucky or knew exactly where the ship had entered climb and had enough information about the commander, the ship’s capabilities, and its likely supplies, which information could then be used to calculate where the ship _could be_ from where it _had been_ and what was known of the ship. The energy and heat from engines and the like? Climbers couldn’t radiate that at all while in Climb, so there was nothing to detect in space-norm or hyperspace. The downside, of course, is that it put real limits on how long a ship could stay in Climb. And yeah, they actually had a rail gun along with torpedoes. The rail gun was new, and roundly cursed because it took away space that had been used for crew amenities. I forget what was lost for that trip, but they’d long since lost things such as lockers and showers. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2019, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/93 "2019-02-26T23:26:14Z")
So he got around a fundamental limit of physics by inventing new fake physics? What kind of solution is that? Why was it called a ‘Hawking Point’? Did it have anything to do with Steven Hawking’s actual theories? Or was it just a way to use Hawking’s name to make it sound more scientific? I have no problem with stories that violate fundamental physics. But they aren’t science fiction, they’re science fantasy or speculative fiction - as much as a world that has magic in it is fantasy. You can tell great stories in a magical universe, but they aren’t science fiction. Star Wars and Star Trek are both science fantasy. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2019, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/94 "2019-02-26T23:30:28Z")
As a reminder - since this thread is about futuristic infantry combat, you can’t have the discussion without referencing **Starship Troopers** by Robert Heinlein. The book, not the movie. The movie is dreck when it comes to actual combat. But the book is very meticulous in describing a future space-based infantry and what squad-level tactics might look like in the future. We’re talking about an infantry in powered armor dropping individually from orbit in ablative capsules. It’s fantastic. And yet I seem to be the only one who has mentioned the book. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2019, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935/95 "2019-02-26T23:33:51Z")
> [@Gray\_Ghost](#): > > Not that Iain Banks was a model of hard sci-fi, but the way he handled a scene of ship to ship combat in _Surface Detail_ made it very clear that computers were the only entities that could possibly comprehend the scale and speed of space battles. [SPOILER]I’m thinking of the scene where either Yime or Lededje tags along with the _Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints_ as it’s about to go to battle, spends a few pages getting prepared to handle the fantastic accelerations and radiation fields involved, only to have the battle occur and finish in practically a blink of an eye. The passenger ends up watching a playback of the battle in ultra slow motion, in which FOTNMC took apart the opposing enemy fleet. It was hilariously anti-climatic, and the pace was reminiscent of _Bambi Meets Godzilla_. > > Don’t fuck with the Culture.[/SPOILER] I was about to suggest Iain M Banks. Apparently there are film/tv show in the works. Hopefully that part transfers to the screen intact (not very optimistic mind you) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sci-fi-futuristic-infantry-battles/829935.md?page=4)