Poll: Space Combat

[feather240]

I've been wondering what space combat would be like. In space you're capable at moving at extreme speeds with almost no slow down from friction, so I can't help but wonder how we would fight in it. Here's some examples I've been going over.

Boarding: Get in and kill the crew. I can't imagine this working without some kind of combat spacesuit and even then it would be hard to stay on without magnets or some other kind of climbing rig. This isn't even mentioning the fact that a force-field could fry you, and that in 3D space you have another dimension to worry about when trying to get near an enemy ship.

Lasers: I don't think we have the technology for it, but lets pretend we do. Even if we could get it to work I don't know how it would react against a force-field, and collateral damage would be a major problem.

Missiles: Homing missiles and heat-seekers sound like a good idea, but they can't change speed to match the ships. If they go to fast they'll zoom right by, if they're too slow they can be outmaneuvered.

Kinetic Weapons: It sounds the cheapest to me, just get a ball of iron and put it in a magnetic cannon. You can tear through most ships with ease, but like the laser it has collateral damage problems, and it would require a computer to take care of ballistics, assuming you can guess where the ship's going next in the depth of space.

Ramming: I'd imagine this would be the easiest. Turn on shields to full and ram through a ships hull. You don't even need to ram them, just brush by them and they're gone.

Other: This one is a- ... -_-

 

[Marter]

I'd use lasers, just because they are so fun.

They also go pew, pew.

 

[Zer_]

Early on, Railguns may be used in space battles, but I believe eventually we will grow towards energy based weapons, or even hybrids.

 

[Elonas]

I'll go with missiles, since... I like explosions. Both seem doable in the future, I guess.

 

[BonsaiK]

I've been wondering what space combat would be like.

Well, nothing like Star Wars, that's for sure.

The problem with lasers is that they just don't make very efficient weapons. The energy that would be needed to fire a laser of sufficient force to make a dent in an object is so great that you would really be better off just ramming the other ship or something. Plus, mirrored armour and your laser is 100% useless. Even worse, hit a mirror at a 90 degree angle and you've just shot yourself, oops.

Dumb straight-ahead torpedo-style missiles would work, however if your target was moving you might want something guided and then we have issues. It's easy enough to get an object like a missile moving in space at a set speed and direction but not so easy to change direction once it's moving, you more or less have to stop it moving in the old direction before making it move somewhere else. Homing missiles would be just about impossible unless they were extremely light.

Boarding would work, the trick would be getting in without killing yourself or completely depressurising the other ship. After all it's not like the other ship is going to open their airlock for you, so you'd have to bust your way in, which would mean making a hole, which means that the oxygen escapes, which means you can't get in anyway so you might as well have just shot it with a gun from a distance or something.

Kinetic weapons seems like it could work, although I do wonder how guns etc work in a vaccuum with no burnable oxygen to ignite the gunpowder or whatever... I'm sure there's a way around that though, like maybe having the firing part of the mechanism oxygenified and then just stick the barrel out... some of you Americans who actually know stuff about guns might be able to help here...

Ramming could be interesting, because given how much of a prick spaceships are to navigate, you wouldn't even need to do considerable damage, all you'd really need to do is disable the engines and then bump the thing into a shitty orbit and then it might fall into a planet's atmosphere or something. Of course, to achieve that you have to put your own ship on a trajectory that could be equally dangerous. I think what would be more likely is ramming with an unmanned probe, sort of like the missile idea, but heavier, slower, and sneakier... mind you it's the missile problem all over again, if your target does something unpredictable bye bye probe if you don't have enough fuel to turn the big lug around...

 

[Cherry Cola]

The force.

Because everyone knows that we on Earth cannot use the force due to not having any aliens to suck blood out of.

If I was to be in space, there would be plenty of aliens with blood for me!

Alien blood=The Force

 

[titanium turtle]

all of the above- but it will basically be a battle of computer minds and maneuverability
I figure hacking and super viruses will also play a part

 

[Aerodynamic]

Lasers, Pew pew.

What fun they would be.

 

[NeutralDrow]

Kinetic weapons. Lasers are grossly impractical in space (not to mention that if you did get them to work, it'd only be at extremely short distances), missiles are more dangerous to the attacker than anything, and ramming...yeah, no. As for boarding, doing so in space is absurdly difficult even when you know what you're doing and (more specifically) you yourself designed the boarding and boarded ships in question. Same problem as ramming, in other words.

Kinetic weapons seems like it could work, although I do wonder how guns etc work in a vaccuum with no burnable oxygen to ignite the gunpowder or whatever... I'm sure there's a way around that though, like maybe having the firing part of the mechanism oxygenified and then just stick the barrel out... some of you Americans who actually know stuff about guns might be able to help here...

No gunpowder. Too dangerous.

Railguns are the practical weapon (launching projectiles via magnetism). They take advantage of the same thing that makes micrometeors so dangerous, that there's essentially no friction in space. Launch something with an initial velocity of "holyshitthat'sfast kph," and it won't slow down.

 

[Nwabudike Morgan]

I imagine it would be like two submarines going at it.

 

[Shock and Awe]

Giant ship length rail guns. They could travel long distances very fast, carry huge amounts of kinetic energy, and are already well into development by the US Navy.

 

[Aur0ra145]

Kinetic Weapons, it would be very difficult to recover from the newly induced spacial problem. It would make the enemy's situational awareness go to hell. Though I believe missles will also play a large role in space combat if it ever comes to that.

 

[TheTim]

It will be kinetic energy weapons and lasers, because they are the fastest weapons avaliable

 

[Ithera]

Ohhhh, to Ram or to board? Well.... I'll board. Nothing like some up and personal stabby/shooty action. All those stupid Kirks out there, sitting in their fancy ships dealing out fancy orders. "BAM" break in there! gun the crew down, brutalize the captain before shoving him/her out of the airlock. Oh yeah!

A little to violent? hah! who said space was a nice place?

 

[Chamale]

Keep in mind that in space, ships couldn't make fighter-jet-like turns. At light speed, it would take months to turn around without killing the crew from G-forces.

Boarding would be ineffective, since you need the other ship to be willing for any chance at a docking. Otherwise, it could easily spin away from your efforts to reach it. In fact, at close enough to light-speed, you could never catch it.

Lasers travel instantly and don't cause recoil issues, but could be counter easily. Put some reflective shielding on the ship, and there's a high probability that a major laser will just bounce off. Of course, if the shielding fails, a high-power laser could melt right through the ship. However, I can't put my vote behind a weapon that would be foiled (HA!) by aluminum foil.

A missile, carrying a high-explosive payload and travelling at near-light speeds, would be effective. Its robust computers could survive much greater forces than anything living, and so could head towards a manned ship easily. Such a missile could possibly be taken out by shrapnel (see below), but sufficiently robust and numerous missiles could easily deliver a payload to within lethal range. Keep in mind that in the void of space, a chunk of shrapnel could travel for thousands of miles - and still be just as deadly as the moment it left the bomb.

Firing high-speed kinetic weapons would be a *****. The recoil from a 1-kilogram cannonball at a measly 10% of lightspeed would send a 100-ton ship backwards at 300 metres per second, instantly, relative to its previous speed. Consider trying to fire many projectiles, and consider that a single projectile would have no chance of hitting a ship in space if the target is zigzagging slightly.

Finally, under "Other", we have shrapnel. Currently a major obstacle to space exploration, micrometeorites slam into a spaceship's front with the force of their own weight in TNT. Sometimes, rather than exploding, they pierce right through the ship. Deployed by the thousands into a spaceship's path, these present a problem that NASA has yet to solve. They could possibly be dodged, but unlike missiles, they would have nothing to detect except for infrared radiation. Shrapnel dumped from a ship would be around 290 Kelvin, and would take a while to cool down. Infrared sensors would be the best way to detect such a threat as a spaceship speeds toward it.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Lasers: I don't think we have the technology for it, but lets pretend we do. Even if we could get it to work I don't know how it would react against a force-field, and collateral damage would be a major problem.

Lasers, we have the technology.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.157022-Boeing-Laser-System-Kills-a-Plane#3877838
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.147652-Boeings-Plane-Mounted-Laser-Cuts-Into-Truck#3403613

Probably in combination with missiles.

 

[Andantil]

Thinking on the physics of space combat I'd have to say lasers. lasers are light, so they'd be the fastest and most accurate weapon and could potentially be devastating, though light can be reflected which would make for difficult combat.

Kinetic weapons are possible, I'm thinking gauss weapons. Projectiles wouldn't be as fast or accurate as lasers and would require intense calculation for accuracy, and assumptions on the future course of the target. keep in mind, space craft move incredibly fast, the average orbit speed of space shuttles now is 27724 km/h. The firing of projectile weapon in space would also result in the same force returned on the craft firing it, with very large or powerful weapons being impossible for all but the largest or most massive vessels. The one major benefit to projectile weapons is their impact force, which would almost always be devastating.

Missiles would have to be completely overhauled for use in space. I'll remind you all that there is no air in space, so current methods of directional control would be useless. missiles would require separate internal stores of fuel, as they would have to have multiple thrusters to control their heading. Missiles would likely travel faster than projectiles but only at a fraction of the speed of lasers.

Boarding would work very well if you could remain undetected, but it would likely not be a primary means of attack unless you seek to take a ship.

Ramming would require absurd reinforcement of the hull. It's pretty-much out of the question.

 

[feather240]

Just wondering, would a strong enough rail-gun reduce the metal rod it fires into plasma, or would it be impractical?

 

[Andantil]

Just wondering, would a strong enough rail-gun reduce the metal rod it fires into plasma, or would it be impractical?

The force from firing the projectile would be returned to the ship, firing something with enough force to vaporize it would probably destroy the ship it's fired from, or at least send it backwards at upwards of a kilometer per second.

To fire plasma you would have to contain it in a projectile. plasma is gaseous, so it would expand extremely rapidly once fired, making firing "pure plasma" completely useless.