This talk about the Death Star in another thread got me thinking of how absurd pretty much any sci-fi depiction of space combat I can think of really is. I mean, you watch re-runs of Battlestar Galactica, or go rent Star Wars for the umpteen bazillionth time, and I bet you don’t often think of how crazy the whole concept of these sleek little space fighters swooping around aerial-dog-fight-style really is. I mean, imagine an X-Wing and a TIE Fighter dog-fighting over Dagobah or wherever. Chances are, they’d be filmed swerving and diving and darting about, shooting ray guns at each other, with the curve of the planet below adding a breathtaking backdrop.
Now let’s really think about this. Say Dagobah is the same size as the earth. The orbital velocity of the Space Shuttle is about 18,000 mph. That’s how fast you have to go to keep from spiralling earthward. So, unless Luke and R2D2 want to drop like a rock and burn up in Dagobah’s atomosphere, they’ve got to be moving at around Mach 25 (ok, the speed of sound in space is kinda not a usefull concept, but you know what I mean). Something moving that fast has a lot of inertia. In the movies, Luke can turn that thing on a dime. In reality, for him to reverse direction in a few seconds, moving at that rate, would leave him plastered like jelly all over the inside of the cockpit, he’d be pulling so many gees. Actually, it’s hard for me to see how he maneuvers at all, considering he only seems to have thrusters that point behind the craft. I mean, what’s changing his direction? It’s not like those “wings” on the X-Wing generate any lift in space. I suppose there could be thrust vectoring nozzles or something, but they must be hidden well.
And how about people veering to avoid a laser blast? Uh, it’s light. You’ll see the TIE fighter shooting at you when it hits you because its salvos are moving at the speed of light. You can’t swerve to get out of the way! There’s no way to see it until it hits you! And a bolt of laser energy in space would be invisible if it didn’t hit you. A laser beam is coherent, has virtually no scatter (unless there’s a dusty atomosphere), and thus cannot be detected unless it’s shining right in your face, in which case you’re screwed, because you’ve been hit.
OK, so these are just a tiny fraction of the ridiculous errors sci-fi makes regarding space combat. I’m sure you all can think of many more (which I’d love for you to share). But also in this discussion, I’d like to know:
What would real space combat be like? If in the following centuries we take war to space, what will the space fighter pilot of the future really be dealing with?