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With all the super cereal threads on here at the moment, it would be pretty cool to talk about the wars that might be conducted in Spaaaaaaace.

Right now, in fiction and so on, we are putting modern day fleets and putting them in Space to pitch against each other. Carriers, Corvettes, Frigates, Carrier Borne wings, Destroyers and even dreadnoughts. While this idea of the Space Navy returning the navy to glory is awesome to think about, I do not think this is how space battles will work. We tend to think of the future as an upgraded today, the things we have improved to awesome levels. When we look back to the turn of the 20th century we can see some whacky visions of the future... that feature their technology but improved to be beyond amazing. We see portable old style phones with faces on mirrors, odd flying contraptions, Motorcycle Cavalry and other oddities that are funny (but still fascinating) to see today. However as we know, things turned out very different to what many people thought (although some are pretty close).

Anyway, Space.

In Space we have something humans don't fathom very well, complete 3 dimensional warfare. Enemies could be at any angle, heading in any direction at any speed or in a spin or other angles. Like being underwater with less resistance, but even in water there is an up and down. Commanders will have to study long and hard to get used to the idea that the battlefields are not flat or have no horizon. How does this change the designs of ships? Well it is likely we would need weapons that can quickly change direction to meet targets at all angles. Unlike space ships of the media with plenty of blind spots we would need no blind spots to make full use of the many angles possible in space. This presents a problem though, the more moving parts in a weapon (or vehicle for that matter) the more that can go wrong. Having fixed weapons is certainly cheaper due to it's simplicity however it requires the positioning of ships to bring their weapons to bare. This assumes though, that weapons will even be direct fire weapons. But I think it is likely some solid munitions will be used but we have to consider these later.

To sum up, these ships and the crew training will have to able to work under the assumption that enemies could be in any direction. This includes weaponry.

Space is also huuuuuge. While space ships broadsiding each other looks cool, just like with real navies chances are the fighting will be done at range. We are talking huuuuuge range though. The main part of the battle will be fleets attempting to locate each other at these huge distances. Being the first to spot the enemy fleet would have a huge advantage in the next action. If we look the naval battles in the Pacific we see this is true, the fleets search each for each other and as soon as one spots the other aircraft are launched. In space though, replace aircraft with guided munitions. Sending aircraft huge space miles to hit an enemy target has pros and cons. On the bright side, if the ships survive they can be reused and the mix of human and the guidance system means more flexibility. But the time it takes for these pilots to get to their target and return is likely to take a long time, they also would not be capable of reaching the same speeds (and be effective) as the guided weaponry, you can also carry less crew and no hangar space and instead use it for other vital systems.

To sum up, I think carriers will be obsolete as guided munitions replace piloted craft and given the distances involved locating the enemy fleet will be both tough and vital for victory.

So how will space battles play out?

Say a fleet is traveling for months to intercept an enemy fleet that was mobilized, their first job would be to locate the enemy. How will they do this? Scanning sounds simple at first, but scanning space is a 360 degree vastness. They could be weeks or months or more travel away from your location. It is likely they will have counter measures to try prevent you from locating them too. You could send out automated drones to find them, but this requires a bit of thought, with the enemy being able to be anywhere at great distances you cannot send drones everywhere (that's a lot of drones) and you also have to ensure the drones are unpredictable in their pattern (so they cannot trace the drones trajectory back to where you launched them) and at the same time you need to stop them finding you. As usual, locating the enemy is always the hard part.

Once the enemy is located you now have to act quickly. Computers (or whatever sort of calculation machine they are using by then) will quickly have to pin point and predict it's movement. The solid shot weapons will be fired in clusters with a calculated speed and target location to attempt to hit the enemy fleet. Unlike naval warfare, you cannot adjust the weapons after a reported miss due to the distances involved so it has to be precise. I wager a lot of effort will be put into a system that can predict enemy movements. To complement the clusters of solid weapons being fired in the enemies path the guided munitions will be sent in as well. Guided munitions are not likely to miss, however they are easier to stop than the solid munitions. Point defense (been waiting ages to use that word) will be the bane of guided munitions while merely the direction of your ship will be the bane of solid weapons. Perhaps solid weapon clusters can be used to try influence the enemy fleet to change directions to a more favorable location for a concentrated barrage or for the optimum location for guided munitions strike. These battles, being over vast distances, likely will take months to happen as ships hunt and then fire long ranged weapons towards each other. The locating of the enemy is vital because if you can fire first you dictate where the enemy has to move (making their firing harder) and you are likely to hit them first.

To sum up, I believe solid weaponry and guided munitions will be the mainstay of space warfare. Locating the enemy is the first goal (obviously) and the most important.

I do not believe lasers will be a common space weapon and nor do I believe Energy shields will exist. I have covered the weapons I think will be used but defense can be of interest. Point defense will be staple to defend against guided munitions which will likely be rapid firing solid weapons designed to knock out enemy guided weapons, maybe lasers can be used for this like they might be able to today? Ruining their guidance or disabling them. In Tanks of old, they sometimes had armour panels away from the body of the tank to soak up damage and reduce penetration rates from rocket weaponry. This could be handy too however it will need to be positioned so as not to hamper the weapon arcs. Mines as a defensive weapon would be near useless as they would need to be unfathomably tall and wide and thick to actually prevent fleets from just going around it. Unlike mines today which can completely seal off areas or slow down an advance we do not have the luxury of smaller scale conflict in space to do anything similar. Unless of course you can make and place untold quantities of them. The main defense of all ships though, will simply be to move. Moving complicates equations for enemy weapons and gives you opportunity to evade and so on.

One final point I have is space wars will be expensive. The ships themselves, the training, the supplies and the fuel will cost a lot (just like navies have always been a huge cost to nations) and so little damage will need to be done to your enemy to win the day. Just like in the first world war I wager many navies will be hesitant to engage each other. The costs of battle are huge and the loss of only a few ships can forever put you at a disadvantage. How will this effective space battles? Well it is likely that when invading a planet, the 2 fleets will be at a standoff. The invader will try to prevent access to the planet (maybe bombarding it now and then) while the defender will try to entice the invader to commence a battle and try knockout blow against a couple of ships and drive the invaders away. Ammunition will need to be conserved as supplies over great distances will be a hard job for the poor logistics men. I doubt very much Space Navies will have huge slug fests as when they do both sides will lose a lot of money and supplies that are not easily replaced. Because of the way Space is I think in order to compete you will NEED a large navy. Unlike in the past there is no weather, land formations and so on to save you from an invading fleet. You need to have a fleet large enough to scare all fleets from engagement.

I don't know how the ships will look, or how big they will be (every time I think fo something heaps of bad side effects come up, I lack the knowledge to balance the bad and the good in a space ship design) but I think battles will be conducted in a manner above.

Thoughts? Something I missed? Your ideas?

Note: I did not include things like gravity pulls/swings from objects and how they will effect how ships might move etc simply because I don't know much effect that will have besides initial boost maybe.

Due to physics, weaponry would have to be laser based or missile (rocket) based, nothing else is a realistic option.

"Starfighters" will likely never become a reality given that engagement ranges are theoretically infinite (the only limiting factor is detection range, which would be realistically measured in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, kr even millions of miles). Even if they did, theyre never going to "dogfight" like you see in the movies.

Also, realistically, at least early on, I think space wars will be fought by "Space Forces", as in an Air Force in Space rather than by a Space Navy. In the US at least, Space is actually the Air Forces domain, and as such the majority of the US current military operations are either done by the Air Force or under the Air Forces supervision.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Due to physics, weaponry would have to be laser based or missile (rocket) based, nothing else is a realistic option.

"Starfighters" will likely never become a reality given that engagement ranges are theoretically infinite (the only limiting factor is detection range, which would be realistically measured in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, kr even millions of miles). Even if they did, theyre never going to "dogfight" like you see in the movies.

Also, realistically, at least early on, I think space wars will be fought by "Space Forces", as in an Air Force in Space rather than by a Space Navy. In the US at least, Space is actually the Air Forces domain, and as such the majority of the US current military operations are either done by the Air Force or under the Air Forces supervision.

Wouldn't a mass driver work as a "solid weapon" though? Thats the sort of thing im thinking anyway, catapults that use various means to launch solid munitions (which would work theoretically well in space).

I agree, like any weapon they have advantages and disadvantages but obviously those disadvantages are huge in space.

I didn't actually know that. Interesting stuff.

Relativistic Velocity. Or: why realistic space warfare makes my head hurt.

Problem with any sort of weapon that "shoots" a solid projectile is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, i.e. firing a mass driver forward of the ship will cause it to move backwards with an equally proportional amount of energy.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Problem with any sort of weapon that "shoots" a solid projectile is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, i.e. firing a mass driver forward of the ship will cause it to move backwards with an equally proportional amount of energy.

True, but surely this would be cheaper than having a laser. Just like on the sea or on the ground most weapons, even with counter measures, need readjustment after firing.

The issues with a laser is what will it actually do? Especially in space. At the moment we have one example of a laser weapon but there is little known about it besides a brief description of what it might be able to do. It is undoubtedly designed for exposed areas where the sudden heat will cause damage (people, ammo, thin targets) but these are not likely to be seen in space.

As said above though lasers may be decent for anti guided munitions etc.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Relativistic Velocity. Or: why realistic space warfare makes my head hurt.

Googled that... might read it later... (might).

Yes, its cheaper, but it physically does not work as a viable system. If the weapon is fixed to the hull along its center of mass, then taking a shot will at best cause the vessel to rapidly accelerate away from whatever it just fired at (most likely turning the crew into a fine paste in the process) and at worst will cause the vessel to break apart from the stress it would experienced. If its mounted in a turret or a gimbal, then either the turret will be torned from the ship which will in turn suffer extreme structural damage and/or impart a moment force on it causing it to tumble out of control until it collides with something or they burn enough fuel to correct its attitude and velocity.

Oh, did I also mention that on earth, projectiles lose a majority of their energy to air resistance pretty much the moment theyre fired? A .22 cal bullet has the same energy in space as an 8" shell on earth (that might or might not be a bit of an exaggeration az I no longer remember the actual numbers involved in the calculations), even a relatively small kinetic weapon will cause serious problems to the firing vessel.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Yes, its cheaper, but it physically does not work as a viable system. If the weapon is fixed to the hull along its center of mass, then taking a shot will at best cause the vessel to rapidly accelerate away from whatever it just fired at (most likely turning the crew into a fine paste in the process) and at worst will cause the vessel to break apart from the stress it would experienced. If its mounted in a turret or a gimbal, then either the turret will be torned from the ship which will in turn suffer extreme structural damage and/or impart a moment force on it causing it to tumble out of control until it collides with something or they burn enough fuel to correct its attitude and velocity.

Oh, did I also mention that on earth, projectiles lose a majority of their energy to air resistance pretty much the moment theyre fired? A .22 cal bullet has the same energy in space as an 8" shell on earth (that might or might not be a bit of an exaggeration az I no longer remember the actual numbers involved in the calculations), even a relatively small kinetic weapon will cause serious problems to the firing vessel.

So then, instead just releasing a missile of sorts into space then having the missile activate and fly towards the enemy is a better idea? So just have clusters of guided munitions dropped into space and then they activate and and head towards the enemy target?

I did not realizes that space kickback was that harsh, but it does make sense.

If we don't have any form of shielding just launching a bucket load of small projectiles at high speed will be enough, i guess rail-guns will be effective in space.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
If we don't have any form of shielding just launching a bucket load of small projectiles at high speed will be enough, i guess rail-guns will be effective in space.

Yea I fail to see how shielding can work, how does one create a barrier that stops objects using pure energy? No idea how plausible shields are but I doubt they are given serious thought. Hence why I left it out.

Thats exactly my reasoning, but the kickback of weapons, if true, makes it a bit more complex than that. If they can be made to work I think they would be the most efficient, if the kick back can be controlled.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
If we don't have any form of shielding just launching a bucket load of small projectiles at high speed will be enough, i guess rail-guns will be effective in space.

Depends. Whipple shields are fairly effective at stopping small, high velocity objects. You're better off throwing something larger, or at the very least extremely energetic.

Lasers are a good choice, as you're dumping large quantities of heat into something with no actual way of cooling itself, barring (extremely slow) radiation or physically dumping chunks of itself (often explosively, depending on how strong your laser is). If you can keep the beam on target for a second or two, you can effectively kill a target simply by overheating components and crew. This mostly has the problem of keeping the beam on target, as well as beam diffusion over the vast distances of space. Admittedly, it's a lot easier to target a laser than a kinetic weapon (travel time is insignificant), but from far enough away a random walking target can still evade by pure luck fairly easily.

The next option is guided projectiles. Kinetic kill vehicles are a pretty good choice, as poking holes in fragile bags of atmosphere is entertaining, and at the very least you'll cause some entertaining spalling. Personally, I'm a fan of bomb-pumped lasers: Take a nuke, wrap it in focusing rods, and detonate it near (within a few hundred kilometers) the target. Gets you all the fun of lasers without worrying about missing, and you actually get to use those warheads that are otherwise pretty useless in space (barring as propellant).

Yes, its cheaper, but it physically does not work as a viable system. If the weapon is fixed to the hull along its center of mass, then taking a shot will at best cause the vessel to rapidly accelerate away from whatever it just fired at (most likely turning the crew into a fine paste in the process) and at worst will cause the vessel to break apart from the stress it would experienced. If its mounted in a turret or a gimbal, then either the turret will be torned from the ship which will in turn suffer extreme structural damage and/or impart a moment force on it causing it to tumble out of control until it collides with something or they burn enough fuel to correct its attitude and velocity.

This is actually incorrect. While recoil is of course a consideration, the mass of your projectile compared to the mass of your platform is going to be negligible, and unless you're launching something at c-fractional velocities you're not going to experience much change in velocity yourself.

Oh, did I also mention that on earth, projectiles lose a majority of their energy to air resistance pretty much the moment theyre fired? A .22 cal bullet has the same energy in space as an 8" shell on earth (that might or might not be a bit of an exaggeration az I no longer remember the actual numbers involved in the calculations), even a relatively small kinetic weapon will cause serious problems to the firing vessel.

Incredibly exaggerated, in fact. a .22 bullet masses 1.9 grams, and travels at 550 m/s right out of the muzzle, for a total energy of 287 joules. An 8" shell from an M110 masses 92.53 KILOGRAMs, and travels at 587 m/s, for a total of ~16 megajoules. In order for the .22 bullet to equal the KE of the artillery shell, it would have to be travelling at a whopping 140,000 meters per second. Not quite c-fractional, but still excessive.

Fun math: Assuming you're firing that shell (or bullet, doesn't really matter once their KE is the same) from the Space Shuttle (which masses 1,841,585 kilograms), its change in velocity would be ~4.54 m/s, and with decent recoil management (read: springs) this could be distributed over a second or longer. For comparison's sake, the Earth's gravity is 9.8 m/s. You're not going to turn to paste.

Whipple Shields is a better word than I used in the OP,

Whipple shields consist of a relatively thin outer bumper placed a certain distance off the wall of the spacecraft.

Which works like the anti rocket panels use on tanks. However these would have to be smartly placed so your ship can still use it's weapons. The whipple shield is obviously a very small version of what the larger one could look like, but the shielding will have to be well placed so your ship can still function.

Nice to hear the mass driver can still be useful. Im currently looking into it a bit...

They're not TERRIBLY useful, honestly. It's just that they're not going to kill you. The main problem with them is that it's exceedingly inefficient to accelerate a rock to a velocity where it'll be accurate at range. Of course, you can launch guided projectiles fairly easily that way, which gives them a head start on their acceleration towards the target.

 Laughing Man wrote:
They're not TERRIBLY useful, honestly. It's just that they're not going to kill you. The main problem with them is that it's exceedingly inefficient to accelerate a rock to a velocity where it'll be accurate at range. Of course, you can launch guided projectiles fairly easily that way, which gives them a head start on their acceleration towards the target.

Yes but in space surely it can be accurate yes? Assuming no space dust clumps or other debris effects it couldn't most of these rounds make it to the target?

I agree on the guided munitions, it sounds like it's the way to do it. I still can't help but think they can't be the only way though.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Laughing Man wrote:
They're not TERRIBLY useful, honestly. It's just that they're not going to kill you. The main problem with them is that it's exceedingly inefficient to accelerate a rock to a velocity where it'll be accurate at range. Of course, you can launch guided projectiles fairly easily that way, which gives them a head start on their acceleration towards the target.

Yes but in space surely it can be accurate yes? Assuming no space dust clumps or other debris effects it couldn't most of these rounds make it to the target?

I agree on the guided munitions, it sounds like it's the way to do it. I still can't help but think they can't be the only way though.

It's not a matter of being deflected. It's a matter of distance. You'll be able to see your target at lightseconds away or more, and kinetics travel extremely slowly when compared to DEWs. With a DEW, the target only has that second or two to randomwalk out of the way. Meanwhile, at that range a target could have minutes before a kinetic weapon hits, and they can even see the shots coming. Without a guidance package, kinetics are unlikely to connect at all outside of point blank range.

I think it's likely minutes for laser and even more minutes for solid rounds isn't it?

But in my opinion the point of kinetics would be to force the enemy to move where you want, if you get to fire first you get to dictate how the enemy moves because they have to chose to take the kinetic hits or to evade them. This allows you to maximise your guided weapons.

Dunno, that was just my theory on how they would use them. I don't see lasers being effective (thus far they have been nothing but a glorified giant magnifying glass, but we wil soon see).

Space is so big, there is probably very little reason to have a war. A lot of science fiction writers like to talk about aliens wanting our planet for its resources, but it's doubtful anyone would care about water or minerals that are trapped down a huge gravity well. Not when that stuff is abundant and floating around feely in space.

It would also be extremely difficult to even find each other to have a war in outer space. Right now, there is a very good chance (statistically) that there is an Earth sized object orbiting our Sun way out beyond the orbit of Neptune, and probably quite a few large rogue planets between our star and the next closest. But even with all our instruments and dedicated teams spending years looking for stuff, we have to be extremely lucky to detect those kinds of distant objects, the stars literally have to align. And those things would be unimaginably massive compared to a ship or a space station. The idea that we'd have instruments that can instantly detect other ships in the same system, after a brief sensor sweep, is actually quite far fetched. It would be like someone in California trying to detect a sea monkey swimming off the coast of Australia.

 Smacks wrote:
Space is so big, there is probably very little reason to have a war. A lot of science fiction writers like to talk about aliens wanting our planet for its resources, but it's doubtful anyone would care about water or minerals that are trapped down a huge gravity well. Not when that stuff is abundant and floating around feely in space.

It would also be extremely difficult to even find each other to have a war. Right now, there is very good chance (statistically) that there is an Earth sized object orbiting our Sun way out beyond the orbit of Neptune, and probably quite a few large rogue planets between our star and the next closest. But even with all our instruments and dedicated teams spending years looking for stuff, we have to be extremely lucky to detect those kind of distant objects, the stars literally have to align. And those things would be unimaginably massive compared to a ship or a space station. The idea that we'd have instruments that can instantly detect other ships in the same system, after a brief sensor sweep, is actually quite far fetched. It would be like someone in California trying to detect a sea monkey swimming off the coast of Australia.

There has and always will be war.

I mentioned that finding the enemy alone would be the hardest part and with good reason, the space (even when you know where the enemy is roughly traveling) is huge. The main objective to winning a space battle would be locating then damaging enough ships for the enemy to pull out.

I also mentioned that most wars I think will be a stand off, Fleets having such expense that losing them would be highly wasteful. Like the naval race at the turn of the century most ships will end up being for show.

So yea I ish agree, but there will certainly always be war over who knows what. I doubt space mining will ever be as efficient as mining a planet. When mining for gold you don't look for areas with sporadic amounts of gold, you go straight for the huge deposits of it whenever you can, even if it means flattening mountains.

 Swastakowey wrote:
There has and always will be war.

It's hard to imagine life not being that way when we're all trapped here together. But people that were able to survive in space, would have (need to have) an almost unlimited energy supply (by definition). They would have unlimited resources, and they would have virtually unlimited space to not get in each other's way. It's hard to imagine what would be left to fight over.

So yea I ish agree, but there will certainly always be war over who knows what. I doubt space mining will ever be as efficient as mining a planet. When mining for gold you don't look for areas with sporadic amounts of gold, you go straight for the huge deposits of it whenever you can, even if it means flattening mountains.

Actually, it's planets that have sporadic amounts of gold, at least on or near the surface. Most heavy elements sink towards the core where they are likely to be inaccessible, even for advanced technologies, and then even if you could get them up, you would have to wrestle them off gravity to get them back into space, which uses a lot of energy. Asteroids on the other hand are about 2% gold IIRC (maybe gold and other precious metals). That doesn't sound like a lot, but when you consider a large asteroid might be millions of tones, you can quickly deduce that the gold from just one asteroid would far exceed what you'd be able to mine on Earth. And you wouldn't have to worry about how you're going to accelerate it to 11.2 kilometers per second, to get it out of the gravity well. It would already be in space, ready for you to build your solid gold space ship

 Laughing Man wrote:

Yes, its cheaper, but it physically does not work as a viable system. If the weapon is fixed to the hull along its center of mass, then taking a shot will at best cause the vessel to rapidly accelerate away from whatever it just fired at (most likely turning the crew into a fine paste in the process) and at worst will cause the vessel to break apart from the stress it would experienced. If its mounted in a turret or a gimbal, then either the turret will be torned from the ship which will in turn suffer extreme structural damage and/or impart a moment force on it causing it to tumble out of control until it collides with something or they burn enough fuel to correct its attitude and velocity.

This is actually incorrect. While recoil is of course a consideration, the mass of your projectile compared to the mass of your platform is going to be negligible, and unless you're launching something at c-fractional velocities you're not going to experience much change in velocity yourself.

Unless you *are* actually firing a small projectile ala a .22, the amount of energy and momentum being imparted on the firing platform would be more than you would be able to quickly compensate for via mass or attitude correction. Unless of course you're assuming that a space combat craft would be larger than say the space shuttle (I'm assuming that most combat spacecraft wouldn't be), particularly if the firing point is off-center. Regardless, no matter what, each shot you took would impart momentum on the firing platform, period.

Oh, did I also mention that on earth, projectiles lose a majority of their energy to air resistance pretty much the moment theyre fired? A .22 cal bullet has the same energy in space as an 8" shell on earth (that might or might not be a bit of an exaggeration az I no longer remember the actual numbers involved in the calculations), even a relatively small kinetic weapon will cause serious problems to the firing vessel.

Incredibly exaggerated, in fact. a .22 bullet masses 1.9 grams, and travels at 550 m/s right out of the muzzle, for a total energy of 287 joules. An 8" shell from an M110 masses 92.53 KILOGRAMs, and travels at 587 m/s, for a total of ~16 megajoules. In order for the .22 bullet to equal the KE of the artillery shell, it would have to be travelling at a whopping 140,000 meters per second. Not quite c-fractional, but still excessive.

Fun math: Assuming you're firing that shell (or bullet, doesn't really matter once their KE is the same) from the Space Shuttle (which masses 1,841,585 kilograms), its change in velocity would be ~4.54 m/s, and with decent recoil management (read: springs) this could be distributed over a second or longer. For comparison's sake, the Earth's gravity is 9.8 m/s. You're not going to turn to paste.

Your math is wrong for one simple reason, you’re discounting the effects of vacuum on the internal ballistics of the gun (which is evidently a pretty common mistake), the velocity of that same bullet being fired in space is a lot higher than 550 m/s. First thing to consider is that the gas behind the bullet will expand at a much faster rate in vacuum than it does in atmosphere which will cause the bullet, in turn, to accelerate down the length of a barrel at a faster rate than it would at STP/sea-level. The second thing to consider is that there is no air drag on the bullet in vacuum (which is a factor that still plays a role in internal ballistics but which is frequently discounted by amateur ballisticians). More complex is that, on Earth, a partial vacuum forms immediately behind an accelerating bullet as it travels down the length of the barrel that serves to slow the bullet down, again, this would be a non-factor in a vacuum environment. The effects become even more pronounced when dealing with more powerful rounds which achieve transonic speeds on earth and have to contend with wave drag effects. There is also the factor of energy loss to heat transfer (which will be lower in vacuum than it is in atmosphere), etc. etc. etc.

I had the opportunity in college to attend a lecture by a former army ballistician, towards the end of it, just for fun, he decided to ‘get a little sci-fi’ as he put it and quickly went over some calculations on the physics of a bullet in space, I don’t remember the base assumption (i.e. the caliber of the round and the length of the barrel), but I do remember it was a fairly ‘ordinary’ type of small arm and nothing that you couldn’t find in the average gun owners possession), but the muzzle energy in vacuum was several orders of magnitude greater than it was in atmosphere, due to the effects of squaring the increased velocity.

Mind you, an argument could be made that a small arm is really all what you would need in space, as outside of the consideration of gravitational effects and relative velocities of the projectile and target, external ballistics largely cease to be a factor.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Your math is wrong for one simple reason, you’re discounting the effects of vacuum on the internal ballistics of the gun.

I don't think being in a vacuum makes any difference to the 140,000 meters per second calculation. Assuming that part of his calculation was correct, it does seem like an unreasonable speed, even for a bullet fired in space. The New Horizons probe, which was accelerated by rockets and got a gravity assist, only managed about a 10th of that speed.

I don't think it would be all that hard to locate the enemy. Wars and battles are centered around objectives, which in space warfare would of course be planets. A planet has to be defended, so that is where your enemy is going to be. If not, you can just go ahead and wreck the planet anyway. I don't think battles will ever be fought in open space, they will be in orbit or at least centered around a planet.

Just to throw something else in to the mix... I would say in reality war in space would be avoided if at all possible.

The reason being that the vast majority of space travel would be point to point. Assuming we move beyond earth travel would be from one planet or moon to another. Changing direction in space is very expensive on fuel, so you would want to be going from one point to another with as little deviation as you can. "shipping routes" like you have at sea or for airplanes would very quickly form. They would have massive strategic value, with anything outside being worthless. Much more so that on earth. And unlike earth the debris does not just sink out of sight. It hangs around, with shards of deadly shrapnel traveling very fast. Any war would very quickly make routes completely unusable. If this was the aim, fine, but I could see few people wanting to do this. If domination is the aim, then why make your target worthless.

 Smacks wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
There has and always will be war.

It's hard to imagine life not being that way when we're all trapped here together. But people that were able to survive in space, would have (need to have) an almost unlimited energy supply (by definition). They would have unlimited resources, and they would have virtually unlimited space to not get in each other's way. It's hard to imagine what would be left to fight over.

What about all the things humans have always fought over? Religion, ideology, politics, different opinions, historical feuds or just over more power? Not all wars are about resources.

 Smacks wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Your math is wrong for one simple reason, you’re discounting the effects of vacuum on the internal ballistics of the gun.

I don't think being in a vacuum makes any difference to the 140,000 meters per second calculation. Assuming that part of his calculation was correct, it does seem like an unreasonable speed, even for a bullet fired in space. The New Horizons probe, which was accelerated by rockets and got a gravity assist, only managed about a 10th of that speed.

Oh yeah, no it wouldnt be anywhere near that fast, but it would be a hell of a lot faster than 550 m/s, but I even caveated my comparison by stating that that might not be mathematically accurate, and the point of the 8" comparison was more to illustrate a point rather than make a factual comparison.


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As for war in space, I would think that most space combat would actually occur in close orbit during re-entry rather than in "open void". Its the only point in time that combatants would be reasonably close to one another and that any debris would be more likely to re-enter atmo/burn up rather than linger in perpetuity. On top of that, even a small piece of shrapnel would conceivably be enough to destroy a large vessel and incinerate its crew (which would certainly make for some very short and extremely bloody exchanges of fire between combatants) if it damaged the heat shielding.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Wars and battles are centered around objectives, which in space warfare would of course be planets.

To us planets seem invaluable because it's almost impossible for us to live anywhere else, but you'd have to assume a space faring race would be a lot more adept at living in space. With that in mind, they might not be too interested in planets, and might even want to avoid them. Planets are just large dangerous gravity wells, with nothing much of use at the bottom, and getting up and down is very energy intensive.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
What about all the things humans have always fought over? Religion, ideology, politics, different opinions, historical feuds or just over more power? Not all wars are about resources.

People fight about that stuff when they are forced to live together. But you're comparing people forced together (such as prisoners, who are certain to fight) with people literally living on different planets, who would need to go out of their way just to find each other, let alone bother each other. I'm not saying it's impossible that people would fight, but it seems a lot less likely when it's so easy to put billions of miles between you and anyone you don't care to deal with.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Smacks wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
There has and always will be war.

It's hard to imagine life not being that way when we're all trapped here together. But people that were able to survive in space, would have (need to have) an almost unlimited energy supply (by definition). They would have unlimited resources, and they would have virtually unlimited space to not get in each other's way. It's hard to imagine what would be left to fight over.

What about all the things humans have always fought over? Religion, ideology, politics, different opinions, historical feuds or just over more power? Not all wars are about resources.

Wars normally do come down to resources. Be that land, raw materials or strategic points for trade. Everything else is just an excuse.

I can't imagine there being any war in space, at least not between humans and/or aliens that are similarly advanced. Short of there being some kind of Zerg/Tyranid/Bugs-style space monster horde out there It just won't be issue. Even putting aside all the issues of the downward trend of war in developed states, trade being a more effective means of increasing one wealth and all the logistical horrors of waging a war at that scale the level of MAD at that tech level makes wars impractical.
If you've got an interstellar civilization with any meaningful level of disconnectedness you've somehow managed to give Einstein the middle finger and develop FTL. If you've got FTL for ships you've got FTL for rocks. If you've got FTL for rocks, you've got planet-crackers lying around in every modestly sized asteroid.

Steve steveson wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Smacks wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
There has and always will be war.

It's hard to imagine life not being that way when we're all trapped here together. But people that were able to survive in space, would have (need to have) an almost unlimited energy supply (by definition). They would have unlimited resources, and they would have virtually unlimited space to not get in each other's way. It's hard to imagine what would be left to fight over.

What about all the things humans have always fought over? Religion, ideology, politics, different opinions, historical feuds or just over more power? Not all wars are about resources.

Wars normally do come down to resources. Be that land, raw materials or strategic points for trade. Everything else is just an excuse.

That is not true. Many wars have been fought for nothing but conflicting ideologies. The Syrian and Ukrainian Civil Wars are a current examples.

Smacks wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Wars and battles are centered around objectives, which in space warfare would of course be planets.

To us planets seem invaluable because it's almost impossible for us to live anywhere else, but you'd have to assume a space faring race would be a lot more adept at living in space. With that in mind, they might not be too interested in planets, and might even want to avoid them. Planets are just large dangerous gravity wells, with nothing much of use at the bottom, and getting up and down is very energy intensive.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
What about all the things humans have always fought over? Religion, ideology, politics, different opinions, historical feuds or just over more power? Not all wars are about resources.

People fight about that stuff when they are forced to live together. But you're comparing people forced together (such as prisoners, who are certain to fight) with people literally living on different planets, who would need to go out of their way just to find each other, let alone bother each other. I'm not saying it's impossible that people would fight, but it seems a lot less likely when it's so easy to put billions of miles between you and anyone you don't care to deal with.

Unfortenately people are really stubborn and absolutely hate to get out of another's way. Why should I get out of the way and not the other? Many people would fight for their current place rather than have to emigrate to a completely different planet to avoid conflict. Also, humans will never be able to get away from all other humans. If there isn't going to be war between planets, there is going to be war between different groups on the same planet, or in a space fleet, or even in a single spaceship.

Humanity will never be able to escape war. When conflict does not find us, we will start looking for it. Conflict and war are human nature.

Okay let me put it this way. Imagine you were a frontiersman living in Europe, and you and your family have the whole continent to yourself. You have everything you need right there to build a life for yourself, all the trees are yours to cut down, all the animals are yours to hunt etc... Now imagine your nearest neighbour is another frontiersman living in Canada. Are you really going to have a feud with that guy? You'd have to travel thousands of miles just to meet him (which is nothing in space terms). Would you really go all that way just to steal his wooden house, or his trees? When you have your own?

That's what life in space would be a bit like. Space is huge, and there are billions of tones of resources just laying around. Why bother fighting people for stuff that you can find in abundance everywhere?