Would space combat be possible?
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I’ve been reading an extremely interesting discussion on another forum.
Basically, the topic starter asked if people thought space combat will ever be possible, and if so, how would it look like.
I believe space combat is the next logical “evolutionary” step of our continuous race to warfare… The means to it are already all available: railguns, lasers, chemical engines, missiles, etc.
What do you think of it?
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Well it’s certainly the next logical step. We’ve already bombed, shot at and nuked each other on the ground, so why not take it into space?
But we’d be starting from scratch again basically, seen as how all our current weapons are designed to function in an atmosphere, we’d have to modify them to function in a vacuum. Missiles would have to either carry liquid oxygen to fuel their engine or use something like hydrazine as satellites do nowadays. Railguns would work well in a vacuum, and if they don’t have recoil (I can never remember which magnetic guns have recoil and which don’t) then we don’t need to build massive engines to counter the recoil.
The other thing we would need to do is design our vessels from the ground up again, and space combat for quite a while would be very slow, tumbling affairs much like the first ironclad duel between the Monitor and Virginia.
Well, that’s got some thoughts started so we’ll see where they go.
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The ISS ( International Space Staton ) is used by American , Russians , Eurpeans, Japanese , they all work togehter .
Against who you want to fight in space combat ? Chinese , India , Iran ?? All pointless , if Chinese or whatever start killing US satellits there will be conesquences on Eath too , so none would start it .
Who knows about 200 years when the moon is settled and they fight for independence from Earth ^^ .
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there you go you colonize the planets raise theyre taxes so people cant afford to live in space and they fight to seperate from earth. i wanna seprate my state from trenton but i dont think thats possible. corzine is making it so bad people from new jersey cant leave new jersey its too expensive lol. ;D
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Look at current events within the space industry.
The X Projects: Creating an ExoAtmo craft capable of entering space and landing on its own power.
Next….take one of those craft and arm it, now you’ve got a space fighter. The most likely evolution would be as a bomber.
Students of history can find plans of this sort in regards to Germany during WW2, the design looked somewhat like a cross between the concord and the current space shuttle. (if I can remember where to look this up I will edit this post)I believe the most believable example of space combat was the series Space: Above and Beyond. I once had the rare privileged to get a close up view of the life sized ‘Hammerhead’ fighter used on the set, it was absolutely beautiful. From a design standpoint it looked capable of performing an actual role as an ExoAtmo Fighter.
http://spaceaboveandbeyond.tv/graphics/props/hh-fullsize.jpg -
- 1 to life
This thread is relevant to my interests.
POST MORE NUKES!
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“It was the 23. century, mankinds darkes hour” ;D
@ Whisper928: this Ship sont look like the Hammerhead ;D (btw. the VHF of the Bounty Hunters is named Hammerhead in the German Version)
but i think they will be a spacewar.
Not today, not this year, not this century but onetime there will be a war like Coalition vs. Alliance
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u really want my opinion… ur a sick guy…
its ok in game but real combat in space… most familys these days are affected by war… i for 1 would hate to see it happening in space now…
Let them all take war to space, no civilians there, and some idiots can get a free one way ticket to the vacuum of space.
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Is space combat possible?
yesbut it wouldnt look like in spaceshooters
reason: physics1. you need good engines
that means they need to be powerful enough to move high mass (space ships of course will have a high mass)
and they need to be able to reach a very good speed
upto now no such engine has been developed… there is not even conceptional work or ideas how to realize this
so far engines are either fast (on long distances) or powerful (on short distances)… both is not possible2. guns
preferable lasers or other beam weapons
basically its possible to build guns that are powerful enough to destroy “spaceships”
but those guns have 2 problems- they are heavy… -> high mass (which again requires even bigger ships to carry them and extrem good engines)
- they need MUCH energy… -> you will need to carry a giant powerplant on your spaceship + enough big condensators to get enough voltage loaded to the guns (which leads to a big mass problem again and that leads to the engine problem)
3. high speed + mass
speed + mass = inertia
inertia + changing the course of a ship in a short period time = organic mud on the wallvery likely the only space combat in the new future (next few hundred years) will be stationary objects (i.e.space stations) which fire low mass projectiles (i.e.missiles) on other stationary objects because these missiles require less technology then space ships and can get on a good speed very fast
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what about space combats with nano particles
very low mass and dont need much power - and the power they use can be retrieved by the particel streams^^
and before we are going to have high mass combats i would gladly know how you imagine to bring up this high mass into the space. gravitation would have much affect on high mass and hell there is a mass of energy necessary to move nowadays space ships into our orbit…
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there is a point when planetary resources get less important
low gravity objects (moons, asteroids) hold enough material… to build the basics is the problem (some kind of space factories)
thinking about space combat also will lead to thoughts about space economynot to mention that there has to be something out there worth fighting for
it would make much sense if the US government launches space ships to attack the iraq (just an example) -
I think space combat won’t happen for a very long while, if at all. Biggest worry is, as OP said, inertia. More than anything, inertia will be troublesome. Engines? Eventually, we’ll get a reliable, fast and long-running engine. Weapons? Same thing. But fixing inertia would be like bending the laws of physics… It’s another kind of deal.
Which is why I believe the first space wars will be led by remote controlled machines which would not suffer from high Gs. The first “weapons” might even simply be spaceships ramming into eachother, just like when naval combat began. Isn’t a missile an airplane/spaceship with lots of explosives packed somewhere, after all? Manned ship-to-ship combat will take as long as needed to create technology to circumvent inertia issues.
