Not sure if this should go in GD or IMHO. It’s really a call for speculation.
Assume it’s 50 years in the future. The colonization and economic exploitation of space is finally in progress, in earnest, to the point where the Great Powers (the U.S., the European Union, Russia, China, India, Japan, possibly even the South American Community or the Arab League) are actively competing for space “territory,” and sometimes coming into conflict. Armed conflict, in near-Earth space itself, and/or on the surface of the Moon, or Mars.
How would that work? Would there be spaceship-to-spaceship combat on the order of WWI airplane dogfights and/or old-style ship-to-ship naval battles? Is there any role for “infantry” soldiers flying around in self-propelled spacesuits? What would be the relative importance of beam weapons vs. projectile weapons? Is there any way to armor a free-floating space habitat to protect it from bombs and shells?
For these purposes, assume no black-box technologies (transporter beams, artificial-gravity fields, spaceships that move without expelling any reaction mass, etc.), only things that probably are possible under the laws of physics and chemistry as we now understand them.
It depends an enormous amount on the circumstances – who’s involved, what the stakes are, what the goals are. It would be really easy to use ballistic systems to destroy stuff. Presumably that’s not your goal. Larry Niven ans Stephen Barnes wrote an interesting account of a very limited “space War” involving what are essentially space shuttles and Niven’s favorite “Sinclair Molecule Chains”. in The Descent of Anansi about 20 years ago.
Computer controlled drones launched from spaceships that are hundreds of thousands of kilometers apart. Probably lots of missile warfare. Each side would launch their weapons, then wait for thirty minutes to find out if they’re dead or not. Beam weapons, WWII-style fighters, and boarding parties would not be a part of the equation.
In some circumstances that would be precisely the goal: Destroy the enemy’s habitats. In other circumstances you might want to blockade or occupy the enemy’s habitats.
Tactically I think the closest model will be submarine warfare, one-shot kill situations where detection of an enemy will be a primary focus of technological advancement, and defense will be centered on concealment from the same. Armoring might be possible but probably not worth it, deception will be easier and more effective. Though static positions like space stations are often seen in fiction I dismiss their viability, so equivalent positions of strength will have to either be hidden, mobile or burrowed into a natural object that can withstand a massive impact, nuclear or otherwise.
Strategically speaking, pre-industrial desert warfare would seem the most instructive model, where the oasis serves as both the objective and the place of engagement, and the sand itself is worthless. So, first entity to take and fortify certain key positions in the solar system is likely to hold a vast strategic advantage for a very long time to come.
On the grand scale, effective perimeter defense of a planet will be difficult in the extreme, and perimeter defense of a solar system will be impossible, which leads me to the conclusion that any hypothetical conflicts will be resolved only by either: A) diplomacy or B) sudden, overwhelming offensive force. The utter silence of the galaxy suggests to me that if we are not alone, choice B is or has been very popular in the past.
Actually, beam weapons might be, just not the bright pretty ones we see in science fiction. The Air Force is playing around with various types of laser weapons systems, and they might be of some use in space (ie: trying to knock down incoming warheads or burn out any infra-red based targeting systems).
I think it’d depend on what kind of weapons platforms were being used and what the objective of the war would be. If we’re talking about disputes over mineral exploitation, it’d probably be massive explosives delivered space-to-ground, at least to destroy the enemy’s exploitation potential. Unless one wanted to destroy the enemy but retain the infrastructure, in which case biochemicals or the “neutron bombs” that were being developed in the 1970s and 80s might be the weapon of choice.
At first I thought, like Grossbottom, it would be impossible to defend “approaches” to a planet or planetary system because one can approach from 360 X 360 degrees. But consider the resources required for space travel and the physics involved, attack approaches might actually be pretty limited. Even then, can you imagine what it would take to build anything approaching a “battlestar” (a la “Galactica”) or one of those space battleships from the early “Star Wars” movies? If you could, however, it might take less to destroy one of those than a surface-based installation; relatively minor damage might prove fatal because of the lack of breathable air and the vacuum of space.
For you science guys and gals, wouldn’t the physics of atmosphere vs. space prohibit launching a “fighter squadron” from space to fight inside a planet’s atmosphere, and vice versa?
Maybe inter-planetary warfare won’t be possible until we can devise weapon systems that don’t require delivery of massive amounts of explosives.
The only way to defend the almost incomprehensibly vast perimeter of a solar system, without seriously heavy blackboxing, would require more sheer mass to build the picket than the sum of everything you were defending, including the star itself. I’m sure that’s been said before by someone smarter, but in case it hasn’t, I hereby call it the Available Mass to Probable Defense Rule.
I agree with the “submarine warfare” analogy, but an even better analogy would be modern day terrorism.
Thing is, I expect that any space platform is going to be ridiculously easy to destroy. Every ship capable of matching velocities to dock at that platform is also going to be capable crashing into that platform at an insanely high relative velocity.
It won’t be easy to just fire a bullet at a space station and see it explode…you’ll have to fire a bullet at where the space station is going to be. But that can be calculated pretty easily. So any platform in a stable orbit is a sitting duck. The only defense is random large changes in velocity such that it won’t be possible to predict where the space platform is going to be. But this uses up your delta-v in pretty short order. Which means that constant scans to detect incoming projectiles is a must…and quick random burns the millisecond anything incoming is detected.
So, terrorism. The best way to destroy that platform is with a scheduled projectile…one that the platform believes is “friendly”. But instead of docking the ship crashes. Or you dock with the platform, go to your hotel. Then put on your pressure suit, whip out your cutting torch and grenades and start hacking holes in the platform. How much damage can you do and how many people can you kill before station security puts a hole in your pressure suit? Or instead of grenades you sneak down to hyroponics and do some clever rearrangment and everyone ends up poisoned.
Space “battles” therefore between matched forces become equivalent to two guys with Uzis pointed at each other, waiting for the other guy to twitch. If fighting starts at least one guy is going to have a dozen holes in him, and the other guy is likely to be in critical shape as well. So the guys starting fights are going to be people who don’t own any vulnerable platforms themselves…that is, terrorists.
Lack of breathable air wouldn’t necessarily be a paritcularly unique problem for a space cruiser. Wet-water navy ships can find themselves facing exactly the same problem if they are damaged in the right (or wrong) way. Both a wet-water navy ship and a space cruiser would probably have re-inforced bulkheads, pressure doors, and a rather compartmentalized internal structure, so that a hull breach will be limited in the internal volume of the ship that it would expose to space. Add to this shipboard discipline re: keeping doors sealed unless you are using them and keeping space suits (hopefully futuristic ones that are easier to get into and move around in than the current batch, something like the Skinsuits from the Honor Harrington books) handy for the crew during high-risk situations (or at least in at-risk compartments nearer the hull) and you can help minimise the risk of damage due to a hull breach.
Actually, at least one of the Honor Harrington books mentioned that during combat conditions, the outer compartments are either drained of their atmospheres or are pumped full of an inert gas, to minimise the possible damage from a hit (if it was inert gas, it was to prevent fires from starting and spreading, if it was a vacuum, it was to help prevent the atmosphere inside the compartments from carrying the force from any shock waves through the inside of the ship).
As far as space fighters go, I dunno how much use they might actually see in space combat, and even if you made the equivilant of the Thunderbolt Starfury or the Hammerhead Endo/Exo-atmospheric attack plane, you would probably be at a disadvantage against any contemporary atmosphere-only fighters sent up to intercept you (assuming you didn’t just destroy their airfields from orbit before launching your own fast movers).
that said, such craft might still be useful if you were attacking a world which, for whatever reason, has markedly inferior (or nonexistent) atmospheric fighters. Still, flattening the airfields from orbit would be a handy thing to do if you knew where they were, and you could probably spot the enemy fighters from space easily enough once they were in the air, allowing you to deploy (or withdraw) your own fighters as needed. (This all runs with the assumption that you’d still be using space fighters, as opposed to remote or autonomous drones).
Materials would be no problem; there’s plenty of them floating around the Solar System. Construction would be done in free fall, by humans and remote-controlled robots. I don’t think size would be a limiting factor.
Not a science guy, but I don’t see why. The “space plane” is an old concept and there are several viable examples. A spaceship designed to operate in the atmosphere should also be able to operate in space, where the aerodynamics of its design don’t matter.
Well, how is detection possible in space? You can track an object visually by the light it reflects from the sun or any lights it shows, by radar reflection, by passively detecting radio emissions.
Eliminate those and you eliminate the methods for detecting the object, and therefore conceal the object. Of course, the best method of concealment is to prevent the enemy from ever attempting to track the object in the first place. So you confuse the enemy over whether a particular object is a spy satelite, a communications satelite, an x-ray laser platform, or a chunk of orbiting space junk.
Lemur866 has the right idea I think. Begin by eliminating as much as possible from the visible spectrum, and then you’re on to reducing non-visible energy signatures of every possible type. Heat, radio, whatever, with near or total invisibility being the goal. Then there’s camouflage. You could probably cover alot of ground in a solar system disguised as a harmless asteroid or comet, or mask energy bleed with natural phenomena. In the words of Billybob Thornton, it’s a big ass sky.
I think it’ll be the same with planets and possibly stars, ultimately. Deception would be key not just for attack but defense. Between humans it obviously wouldn’t matter, but I’m convinced that the only true defense a star system can ever have is to disappear. Quite a blackbox trick, and at the very least you’d have to find a way to monkey with gravity to make it work.
As I said in the other thread… Kinetic energy is your weapon. Why bother shooting a bullet? What’s a measly couple of thousand miles per hour when orbital speeds are measured in 10’s of thousands of miles per hour.
I think a typical encounter would go like this - enemy ship approaches from opposite direction, closing at 50,000 miles per hour. It releases a bag of minute pellets, almost like a bag of buckshot. A timer goes off, and blows the bag open and causes the sand cloud to disperse. By the time the other ship gets to it, it’s hundreds of yards wide, but still dense enough that it’s certain to score multiple hits on the enemy ship. A ‘bb’ hitting your ship at 50,000 mph will ruin your day. The size of the shot can be adjusted to account for hte strength of the other ship’s hull, trading off maximum dispersion for greater impact.
Combat in open space would be slow and deadly. Forget guided missiles, lasers, or particle beams; all you need is a battery of electromagnetic gauss-type cannon and freely available iron, cast in balls. You accelerate the balls at several thousand meters per second and spray them in a densely spaced, wide array pattern sufficient to cover any escape of the target vessel. The applied velocity, combined with whatever velocity your attacking vessel has with respect to the target, pretty much ensures pentration through any reasonable material, and the near-invisibility of the oncoming cloud makes the balls virtually undetectable until it’s too late to maneuver out of their path. The resultant destruction is virtually a forgone conclusion, unless the target can somehow shield itself behind another body. Two opposing ships could broadside one another in a freefall analogue of 18th Century maritime battles, but both are likely to be completely obliterated. It’s possible that you could bury a space habitat deeply enough in a moon to protect it, but you have to have some kind of surface interface and facilities somewhere.
If you want to siege a facility–say, a manufacturing facility or habitat–you reduce the velocity of the projectiles enough that you damage communications and interface facilities without risking damage to the whole thing. You might need a marine-type force for landing/boarding parties and personnel security, but a large infantry (or perhaps they should be cavalry) is going to be a big nuisance to maintain and transport. Imagine, all these smelly, rambunctious, bored, aggressive troopers making a mess in your cargo bay (you weren’t planning to let them roam around the ship’s main habitat and vandalize sensitive equipment, were you?) and consuming valuable water and food stores, who finally deploy only to almost immediately be killed off due to their inability to cope with a little bit of vacuum or radiation when it turns out that their standard-issue pressure suits can’t withstand even modest weapons. I’d expect most detail operations to be performed via automaton and/or remote control.
Not too exciting or space opera-ish, but that’s reality. Protecting a vessel in free space is basically a futile exercise. All you can do is stay the hell out of the way, or preferably, remain hidden.
