Wouldnt smaller craft such as starfighters be useless in space combat?

Aright, time to bring a few things back to the past so we can understand the arguments against the future.

1)people did not believe the 'horseless' carriage' (car) would ever make it to common use.

2)people did not believe the airplane would ever make it to common use.

3)people did not believe that the aircraft carrier would be considered a replacement for the battleship (which it currently pretty much is)

4)IT WAS BELIEVED THAT STEALTH TECHNOLOGY ON AIRPLANES COULD NOT WORK... and then it did.

Does anyone see a trend here. In each of these situations, there were PLENTY of reasons why these technologies could not be feasible. Innovations changed the answer.

If an airplane can fly out of the sun to make it harder to shoot at, why not have fighters that (with proper technological assistance) look to instruments like solar winds, asteroids, and such... Heat signature issues were overcome for airplanes, so why not space fighters? We are ASSUMING that every explosive reaction is massively exothermic. This is simply not true. As a very simple example, add salt to diet coke. The ENTIRE assumption that you could not have a stealth fighter is built on the flawed assumption that future propultion must not only operate on the basis of 'pushing' with an explosive reaction, but that said explosive reaction must also be proportionately exothermic with today's rockets. This ignores the possibility of ionic/magnetic and other drives that do not operate on the principle of 'burn something real hot on the back in a closed space'. It also assumes the fighters will not be, say, left in an asteroid belt looking like space junk until they fire up engines (or just fire weapons). It also assumes the fighter does not redirect, refract, or leave echoes to fool the tracking. At that range, being the slightest bit off target would cause a miss. For a weapon to be accurate at such distances would require it to be able to be quickly and effectively calibrated for motions smaller than anything our current tech allows. Point is, we ASSUME you fire a laser half way across a solar system, it hits on target and the beam has not dispersed too much to do damage. We also ASSUME that the fighter has no countermeasures to fool this targeting system, misdirect it, or otherwise blind it.

Also, heat is not light. Heat does not transfer well through the cold of space and is unlikely to be directly detectable, and even if it were, would be too far out of date to use as targeting. It is not unreasonable to assume that light can be prevented from shining directly towards a known target if the thrusters are pointing away from it, even if it meant a big dopey looking 'skirt' around the whole ship or some other such measure. Light travels in a straight line by default, is reflected when it strikes matter, and bent (slightly) by gravity. There is not enough particle density in the void of space to refract that light sufficiently to give away a fighter's position.

Now, plasma weapons:Glorified high tech version of a HEAP round of ammunition. Will it be worth it for us to fire something physical in a plasma state at a target? Will rounds be used to impact a target AND administer massive temperature at the same time? Youbetcha, already doing it.

Mass Drivers/Rail guns:Well I can ask, but I don't think 'eel be very keen... you see... eez already got one. Yes, that's right, we have rail guns. They're big, they're bulky, they're experimental. The big problem is power and size, same as military lasers.

Military lasers:We use them as part of what missile defense we have. They're also power hogs, but instant targeting is very useful for shooting down missiles.

Back to 'plasma weapons':anything worth flinging at the opponent is worth flinging at them superheated. The idea is heat something REAL hot then fling it at them rail gun style. Will it be in the 'plasma' state? Probably not. Will there be some kind of 'molten something launcher' at least experimented heavily with? Probably if we find vastly more efficient means of energy production and storage. Probably not if we do not.

In summary, Stealth:not a write off by FAR, at least not within a solar system. You do need to hide in front of, behind, or near SOMETHING so in the depths of space between solar systems, you're much more likely to get busted. Oh, and due to range, ACTIVE scanning is almost impossible unless you already have a location to search. This is due to dispersion rate and sheer distance and thus the sheer energy needed to get a 'reflection' back.

Lasers, mass drivers:High energy weapons, each has advantages and disadvantages.

Missiles:self guiding, definitely useful, though since they basically fly straight at you, they are easy to scan for, detect, and therefore likely shoot down with lasers easily. Changing this turns them into give or take the very drones we're discussing.

plasma weapons:Unknown whether they will pan out in the traditional definition. Due to extreme low temperatures in space and lack of combustibles, I would presume incendiary and high temperature projectiles would be FAR better suited for use within an atmosphere.

Now ALL of this can change, drastically, when/if some new innovation comes that changes the whole equation. As for the light speed barrier, teleportation, and all of that kind of fantastical technobabble...

As I understand, through the wonders of quantum entaglement, a beam of light was 'teleported' a short distance. While Albert Einstein is perhaps my greatest childhood hero, it would appear that God DOES in fact play dice. The rules regarding maximum speed travelled are not followed by quantum particles, and light, being both particulate and pure energy at once is it's own slippery beast. It is inaccurate to say it is impossible to break the speed of light. It is more accurate to say that as far as we know, it is somewhere between inordinately difficult and inordinately improbable. Breaking light speed is then, perhaps, not so much a matter of IF we can do it, but on what SCALE we can do it, under what circumnstances, and how reliably. Finding those answers leads one to the labyrinth of string theory and perhaps beyond. This does NOT mean it's impossible, just ... very hard or very improbable in scale and with precision.

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Automatic Doors. You forgot Automatic Doors from Star Trek.

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Automatic doors in a fighter craft? Sounds pretty high tech to me. If you got those, you'd need some of them flashing lights and touch panels, and big red lights for red alert, and ... (it's waay too late. Sleep time)

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Second, ships in space would be heavily armored

IN space a second type of shield is already developed, plasmashield. By using a weak eletromagnetic field and releasing gas(only a few kilograms btw) into it you can create a shield of matter which extends thousands of kilomters around a craft.

This is enough to damage any fast moving targets that enter it(not stop them just damaing anything like lenses and computer chips inside)

And to dispease lasers.

It also acts as a solar sail and could be used to drive ships around the solarsystem.

Fighters are useful because of the fact that a smaller target is harder to hit. This will allow them to thread the needle and attack the enemy starship, unless it has guns for taking it out.

Heat signature issues were overcome for airplanes, so why not space fighters?

The ENTIRE assumption that you could not have a stealth fighter is built on the flawed assumption that future propultion must not only operate on the basis of 'pushing' with an explosive reaction, but that said explosive reaction must also be proportionately exothermic with today's rockets.

Heat does not transfer well through the cold of space and is unlikely to be directly detectable, and even if it were, would be too far out of date to use as targeting.

As I understand, through the wonders of quantum entaglement, a beam of light was 'teleported' a short distance.

The rules regarding maximum speed travelled are not followed by quantum particles, and light, being both particulate and pure energy at once is it's own slippery beast.

-Dr. B

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When you are asking what weapons will be used in a war you are asking which weapon is more cost effective. Even if we assume that manned fighters have its uses and are viable there is no way that the fighter could beat unmanned missles or drone in terms of being cost effective:

Unmanned drones/missles can have just as much firepower, are probaly just as hard to hit without the need of an human operating inside it.

Maybe there are countermessures to purely AI or remote controled vessels or a situation like in Battlestar Galactica but these are special cases.

Of course you will always have a need for manned ships if only to transport humans and to remote control any umanned vessels. How much they can be used in warfare depends on the countermessure they can field against the enemy weaponry. But you cannot know that without knowing all the technologies present at that time. So a discussion about that is useless.

So its more likely that the ships are designed to fullfill its function while being as big as necessary but as small as possible.

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Now that youve started talking about AI I've started thinking about the robot guys from GalCiv - maybe thats who the Vasari are running from

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Quoting Bodyless,

reply 5

So its more likely that the ships are designed to fullfill its function while being as big as necessary but as small as possible.

Unless it turns out that bigger warships are better; then you'd have people building ships as small as necessary but as big as possible. It all depends on the nature of the technologies present at the time. I personally think that's a more likely scenario, but as you said, we won't know until we get there.

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Interesting thread . . .

Allot of stated and unstated Assumptions though . . and it seems that people are getting bogged down on these and they need to be addressed or at least assumed and noted or some “useless” arguing can only continue. (not that there is some very good stuff here either )
As you will hopefully see quickly the differences between reachable fact and scifi fiction also ends up being the difference between real arguable possibilities and “Battlestar” vs “enterprise” fantasy fan boy fight which seems easy to get into.

1. First is tech level . . are we talking about a foreseeable future (near or far) that does not break the laws of physics as we see them now? or a unforeseeable future / unknown or alternate laws of physics.

This fist point goes a long way here . . if you pick “unforeseeable future / unknown or alternate laws of physics” then really anything goes and is the basis of most Scifi and simply in “your” universe anything can happen so no “arguments” can happen.
If you pick the foreseeable future (near or far) that does not break the laws of physics then limitations are very hard and unforgiving (possibly not “fun” in a game??) This can have some leeway with speculative tech and physics but even then hard limitations can also be speculated. (good room the argument here – AS LONG as Assumptions are agreed on)

2. Scale of power. Everything is about power, with unlimited power you can do just about anything, so with limited power what will you do with it?

Take Nuclear, fusion and antimatter . . Nuclear has a mass to energy ratio much less than 1%, ~1% for fusion and 100% for antimatter.
What do you do with that energy? And how does each power plant scale? Size, mass, volume, price, fragility etc?
for example IF antimatter can only “fit” in large ships then the advantage may go to large ships since the power difference so great (think star trek the bigger and better the power generation the faster, deadlier and stronger the ship. More power for shields, weapons, movement etc) If Power is scaled the other way and say the bigger plants are not giving the bang for the buck and smaller ships (or even medium) ships have a better power ratio then they will be preferred. So what IS the tech/ Scale of power assumed??

3. Reaction mass. Sorry to hit with the laws of physics but ALL ships need expendable reaction mass to move. (reactionless drives are effectively magic at this point and can have ANY qualities you want so firmly in scifi land)

So, Yes even Nuclear, fusion and antimatter engines require mass ejected out the “tail pipe” to move. Power <> movement, mass thrown away is. Even an ion drive uses the small mass of the charged particles that have very high velocity to move the craft, chemical uses high mass low velocity . . . (ion is low thrust, low fuel use, chemical is the opposite) the sweet spot is to use the least mass you can to get the acceleration you need. . . which boils down to move you ejected mass the fastest you can – efficiently . .this is fraught with diminishing returns, tech and scale problems. . . this alone could tip the scales on what size ship is most efficient.

4. Scale again! Everything in space is of a scale we are not used to. Space is big^1000000+ Manmade objects comparably are crazy small. Differences in “speeds” delta V can be many many magnitudes higher then anyone has ever experienced. There is no atmosphere, no traditional drag, no up or down.

Give a thought to what this means . . Projectiles will travel forever unless an outside force acts on them. Changing direction costs mass. Energy weapons become more useful (no atmosphere, great targeting/tracking, and light speed responce). Ships could detect each other not 100s of miles away but 100s of light seconds (1 LS = ~ 186,282 miles). “Speeds” are drastically changeable (a naval ship goes from 0-40 knots, a jet airplane 0- 1,984 knots, a spacecraft 0(relative)- 46,619,993 knots) Imaging 2 ships closing at those speeds? Acceleration? (.9m/s2 to 19m/s2 on earth, In space? Anything the humans can handle 88m/s2? . . much much more for hardware or projectiles). There is almost no “terrain”, you can view unhindered for billions of miles (vs ~3.3 miles for a 6’ human on earth till the curvature gets into the way) Sensor return time is now a issue and projectile speed (steering)? is now critical, lasers will hit as sensors are first detect them. At these scales human senses are useless and engagement ranges very distant. “dots firing at dots”

I can go on (did not even got to weapons). . . but as you see REAL space is total alien to most people (allot of people here only have some of it right) and most people have additional wrong ideas about it from scifi and no concept of the real scale (scifi gets it very very wrong most of the time – this is fine for a fiction BTW). Physics puts REAL and boring (compared to movies) constraints to what you can do, how long it will take and the resources it requires. Also it seems like physics is here to stay (yes it will be refined and expanded, and new relationships found and exploited . . . but the basis is not going to change)

BUT, then again this does not have to be boring! with some thought some really interesting (with non mainstream concept) ships and battles can take place. But first we must forget the WWII starwars concept of space combat and even modern sea and air combat . . . . space is just too different to use those models even though it is convenient to do so. (engines can be used as weapons, well placed “dust” cloud could kill a ship, orbital stations can be shot at from many planetary orbits away with killer projectiles, sensor blinding weapons, water spray shield, etc )

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Six pages on Space Fighters?????

I take time off to do political work and this Space Fighter nonsense still pops up with all the same debunked arguments for Space Fighters being used.

Again I like to point out that nuke spam would kill the fighter pilots well before they can get even close. Which is why the Fighters will be reserved for planetary invasions, where they will support the ground troops.

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You're wasting nukes on fighters? Hot. Damn. Let loose the squadrons! I just might win this war after you run your stockpiles dry turning your own home system into a nebula, and it'll only cost me a few squadrons of convicts.

It is important to keep in mind that wars are political in nature. Wars simply do not happen without a reason to fight, or the resources to fight, and that means you need a developed sci fi world to go with it. While the potential of weapons is constrained by real, impossible physical limits, the weapons that actually see combat are constrained by policies, logistics, and rules of war. These policies have been established between civilized nations at one time or another, either set from tragic example, or horrifying potential, or even glamorous success. The versatility of these weapons combined with the skill of the generals determines just how far they can go to winning a war. Protip: Everyone is going to have their own idea how to win the war.

In terms of technology, fighters by theme have the simplest requirements. They take the smallest facilities to build, the least resources, and fill your forces the fastest for cost. A big beefy kill ship requires big beefy shipyards to go with it. Those shipyards are going to need access to massive resources, and that means all the big things are going to be rare.

Take modern airplane production, for example. Hundreds of modern places can build aircraft of some type. It only takes a good sized garage to start pumping out personal aircraft. However, only a fraction of real factories can build large jets. Of those facilities, most are used for commercial or industrial use, but some of them can build military fighter craft. Only a select few factories around the WORLD can house and build the biggest modern aircraft, and they comprise a tiny portion of our world's total aircraft manufacturing power. It doubtful that things will change in space. The majority of construction power won't be in epic sized capital ships. It won't be in medium sized combat vessels, either. It's going to be in the medium commercial or industrial scale vessels. Smaller versions may go out to private investors, but by and large the military isn't going to be all alone in space.

Given a space full of non military businesses and valued investors, are fighters going to be useful? Hell yeah! They're going to whoop serious butt on any poor sap without a weapons license(vote for 2nd amendment rights in space!).

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You're wasting nukes on fighters? Hot. Damn. Let loose the squadrons! I just might win this war after you run your stockpiles dry turning your own home system into a nebula, and it'll only cost me a few squadrons of convicts.

Lol sorry but you rather run out of pilots before anyhting of these would happen. Who would do that kind of kamikaze missions anyway?

If nukes are too big, just use a smaller warhead or mirv ones. Easy.

In terms of technology, fighters by theme have the simplest requirements. They take the smallest facilities to build, the least resources, and fill your forces the fastest for cost. A big beefy kill ship requires big beefy shipyards to go with it. Those shipyards are going to need access to massive resources, and that means all the big things are going to be rare.

No simply because you need years to train pilots. Also you are ignoring missle which can be even build more easily.

It doubtful that things will change in space.

It is doubtful that thing wont change in space:

You have no friction, no bottom, mostly non or low gravity and the distances between bases will be enormous. Noone would do insterstellar travels in a small fighter.

Only in your imagination you can compare warfare on earth and space.

However, only a fraction of real factories can build large jets.

In space, building larger things is a WAY easier.

Given a space full of non military businesses and valued investors, are fighters going to be useful? Hell yeah! They're going to whoop serious butt on any poor sap without a weapons license(vote for 2nd amendment rights in space!).

Useful but compared to missles and drones simply not cost effective.

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sigh* another pointless arguement

1 says this the other that, words are twisted people think they gotta say stuff even tough they dont know shit about the subject

1 space = a void, theres nothing, as far as we know.... an example of how it works (ofcourse you die in outer space... but, and theres no air to sneeze with but nvm that)

if you float in space and you sneeze you pick up speed on the opposite direction, there is nothing to stop you, so you'll keep floating the same direction without slowing down or speeding up infinitly

(ofcourse this changes with gravity of planets etc.etc. but you get the point)

even funnier, if you take a stretch of space totally nothing in it and you keep sneezing in the same direction eventually you'll reach the speed of light (theres nothing to slow you down, tough it'll take some serious time to do this... ofcourse....)

so that cleared up, mass DOES matter in space, even tough everything is considerd weightless it still has a mass, you cant pick up a spaceshuttle and swing it around, it's mass is to great for that

so having a 10 ton fighter with 5 ton/s propulsion gives you a small / evasive spacecraft with little room for weaopons and a HIGH ACCELERATION

and having a 10.000 ton spaceship with 5.000 ton/s propulsion gives you a large / easy to hit spaceship with little room for weaopons and a SLOW ACCELERATION....

pretty useless, so yeah, in space becuase of low mass fighters have a high acceleration, thus a high maximum speed in a short time whislt a big spaceship has more mass to be moved, thus it accelerates slower. tough eventually it'll have the speed of a fighter, but that takes longer and the fighter will already be going faster to

fun to know... NASA is working on an ion engine (dont think of star trek now) its an engine that uses charged ions as thrust

the name may sound cool, but the thrust it gives is around the same of someone breathing out the engine is expected to last incredibly long. If you just keep thrusting a ship even with the slighest force it'll eventualy go super fast (space = void = no drag = nothing to slow down = gradual increase of speed)

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In space, building larger things is a WAY easier.

Is that really true? Ships aren't built in a galactic vaccuum (pun intended). Our own planet still has remarkable manufacturing power that could have great use producing ships. Colonies are going to have their own manufacturing power as a necessary tool for survival. In fact, you aren't going to get anywhere in space without first establishing some sort of space factory on your homeworld. These factories are not simply going to shut down the instant the first shipyard is built. They'll more likely grow in scale and power as advancements make vessels become more space worthy.

Sure, mechanical units have an easier time in space, but habitable and easy environments are at a premium. There is nothing quite as cheap, secure, and relatively easy to maintain as a land based factory. Presuming that there is an easy/cheap way for lifting parts out of a gravity well, small assemblies are going to be extremely easy to work with. You may even be able to ship completed fighters into space directly from the planet's surface. This means you can make direct use of a planet's material and manufacturing resources. Take a cheap lifting tool like a space elevator, and you can build the cheapest constructed fighter fleet ever, all from the comfort of your home.

You can't do that with capital ships. By their nature, big ships are too big to work in a gravity well. You can't be building big directly on a heavy planet's surface before shipping it out, it has to be done in parts. This means you need big, expensive space borne shipyards in order to assemble everything together. Doing complete smelting and assembly in space is going to be even more difficult, as you'll need a complete space borne manufacturing complex to get the job done. Yes, there is a rich abundance of raw material in space, but the most heavily industrial areas are still going to be on a planet's surface, where a large population(good planets make population cheaper too!) can fuel a large industry.

Useful but compared to missles and drones simply not cost effective.

How do you know what the costs will be thousands of years in the future? The only true market constant across history is supply/demand. In this case, my argument for cap ships vs. fighters comes down to manufacturing supply. Resources are abundant in space. REALLY abundant. If we could instantly utilize all our resources in the Sol system, we could be on the way to galactic conquest. But we can't do that, because our industry isn't powerful enough. If you can determine what factors influence the development of factories, you can know what factories will be around.

Small ships are cheap, can be developed directly on a planet and shipped to space. You can bet your ass the manufacturing ability for "small" ships is going to be HUGE. If it can be developed on planet, boxed, and sent directly to space, you don't need a single second of shipyard time to build a fleet. You may not bother with small shipyards at all, except as maintenance harbors for larger structures. Medium shipyards are going to be potent for developing heavy space industrial machinery. This stuff may be used for mining, producing, or plain old cargo transit. The use isn't really important, only that a medium shipyard has the most versatility for what it can produce. You'll see plenty of them in various flavors as a result. At some point in scale, you're going to have a ship SO large that only a few advanced shipyards can build it. You might assemble giant pieces at the medium shipyards, before pushing them over to the custom skeleton. You might redecorate a massive array of medium shipyards for the single new project. It doesn't matter how it's done. The point is your big shipyard's time is going to be the smallest supply compared to your total space capacity. Its production is coming at a premium. You can bet it's going to be the most expensive thing to produce. Don't forget that your mighty capital ship is going to need something just as complex and massive to support and repair it. You can fix your space fighter at a space borne mall(no, not really). If anything, the large decked out ship is the one that won't be cost effective.

The problem with many arguments that I see is that you are not given a bunch of raw materials, some SCVs, and told to build a war machine. You do not get to pick and choose where and what the greatest war assets are. Most importantly, you do not have a mighty empire hoisted upon the backs of 40 peons! Your empire is going to be built upon the backs of millions, if not billions of citizens. You are going to have a LOT of land to cover, and a shortage of military resources to do it(you can ALWAYS have a few more cruisers...). Not only that, but you have to deal with the vital issue of keeping your ships maintained and supplied. You can't afford to dock a battlecruiser at a rock when the biggest threat to deal with is an out of control crane. Especially since that rock can't supply a ship of that size. You can't be sending the fleet every time a pirate/t'rist/drone uprising makes their ugly heads known, and they will pop up from time to time. That'll empty your coffers in no time. You're going to NEED fighters to respond to the minor issues necessary to hold the peace. A squadron of fighters allows you to divide your fleet up into precise responces for any sized threat, and they'll do it at the most efficient price point possible. Big ships can't do that. Big ships are going to have vital strategic jobs, and can't be wasting time on a fender bender, or a puny village. There's no two ways about it.

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Quoting Bobucles,
reply 13

In space, building larger things is a WAY easier.Is that really true? Ships aren't built in a galactic vaccuum (pun intended). Our own planet still has remarkable manufacturing power that could have great use producing ships. Colonies are going to have their own manufacturing power as a necessary tool for survival. In fact, you aren't going to get anywhere in space without first establishing some sort of space factory on your homeworld. These factories are not simply going to shut down the instant the first shipyard is built. They'll more likely grow in scale and power as advancements make vessels become more space worthy.
Sure, mechanical units have an easier time in space, but habitable and easy environments are at a premium. There is nothing quite as cheap, secure, and relatively easy to maintain as a land based factory. Presuming that there is an easy/cheap way for lifting parts out of a gravity well, small assemblies are going to be extremely easy to work with. You may even be able to ship completed fighters into space directly from the planet's surface. This means you can make direct use of a planet's material and manufacturing resources. Take a cheap lifting tool like a space elevator, and you can build the cheapest constructed fighter fleet ever, all from the comfort of your home.

Uh no. First off, fighters are useless for any task in space and can not keep accelerating like a large ship can. Plus the big ship can carry all the equipment needed for long journeys and extended combat missions. The fighters can not. Also once we have Heavy Lift Capability again, which we had in Saturn V rockets, we will build shipyards in planetary and lunar orbits. We then simply lift resources to said shipyards and build the massive ships we need.

Since we don't need to worry about pollution in space, we can do projects too dangerous to build on Earth.

How do you know what the costs will be thousands of years in the future? The only true market constant across history is supply/demand.

Likewise, what reason do you have that such things will change? Respect science!

In this case, my argument for cap ships vs. fighters comes down to manufacturing supply. Resources are abundant in space. REALLY abundant.

Yeah so? Doesn't make Space Fighters viable now does it? Prove that space fighters are viable in the enviroment of space.

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Just a thought, if your curious about small craft combat in space. Check out this gem. It is based on the Babylon 5 TV series.

http://ifh.firstones.com/

It has about as true real physics flying as I've ever seen in a space flight sim. And of course it is free! Just a big download.

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In WW2, the biggest battleship, of all time, the IJN Yamato, was sank by U.S bomber airplanes. Its countless flak guns didnt save it.

The Bismark, a famous Nazi warship sank the pride of the British Navy, HMS Hood. It badly damaged Prince of Wales despite the fact that Prince of Wales had quadruple gun turrets that were bigger and better then Bismark's guns. The entire Royal Navy hunted it. Did warships with big guns destroy it? No. Instead, a very old-fashioned biplane with a torpedo sank it. Its flak guns didnt save it.

Further more is space is a battlefield then everything furfills a different role. Being big and tough DOES NOT make everything else obselete. Battships did not make unamoured destroyers and small gunboats useless. Small craft would have a role. Why should this be the case is space?

My point: size, range, armour and raw firepower do count for something but not everything. A small target is a very hard target to hit. A military vehicle does not need to be big to have alot of firepower.

It doesnt matter how big your gun is if the other guy hits first. Fighters have superior acceleration and are harder to hit so if the fighter hits the enemy first they are a goner. Who hits first is all important. Large warships were made obselete by airplanes. Fighters might have shorter range but carriers solve this problem.Further more, by then we might not need propellent so range would be irrelevent.

People often think of outer space combat like naval combat. I would be amazed if there were any similarities. Space is a totally different battlespace to the sea, so space combat vehicles would probobly be more like aircraft, but large like naval vessels.

Also, space training is very stressful on the human body. Being attacked in space with a deadly vacuum outside and knowing you might die so far from home would be very demoralising. Worse then being on a submarine. At sea, if your ship is destroyed, a few men might survive, but in space, NONE would survive.

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Quoting JuleTron,

reply 16

In WW2, the biggest battleship, of all time, the IJN Yamato, was sank by U.S bomber airplanes. Its countless flak guns didnt save it.

The Bismark, a famous Nazi warship sank the pride of the British Navy, HMS Hood. It badly damaged Prince of Wales despite the fact that Prince of Wales had quadruple gun turrets that were bigger and better then Bismark's guns. The entire Royal Navy hunted it. Did warships with big guns destroy it? No. Instead, a very old-fashioned biplane with a torpedo sank it. Its flak guns didnt save it.

Yamato had very poor flak protection, as a matter of fact a U.S. Destroyers of WW2 had better flak protection and the advantage of computer assisted targeting radars to direct their flak fire compared to Yamato.

Bismark was scuttled by the Germans after intensive shelling and torpedoing of it by several British Battleships failed to sink it. It was scuttled in order to keep the British from capturing it.

Also space there is no horizon to hide behind, no drag which means big and small ships accelerate at the same speed, except the big ship can keep on accelerating.

Because of this big ships can see fighters well in advance and shoot them down before they get close. Unless you can violate the Laws of Thermodynamics, fighters are useless.

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I believe there will be no fighters if mankind ever witnesses space warfare at all (we seem to be doing everything to become toast way before that). Hell, I think there will never be any "frigates" or such crap. Only mobile, (almost) crewless weapons platforms and 'colony ships'.

The thing is, we're well on our way to finding the best methods of making things ridiculously tiny yield energies beyond understanding. Nuclear energy, Fusion energy, maybe Antimatter. Maybe even energy zero, or so they call it. Who knows.

Anyway, space is a very... open space. In Earth atmosphere you cannot see something 200 kilometers away, even with clear sky. Simply because there is *something there* - the gases obscure vision. 200 kilometers of clean air has a transparency of 50 metres of dense fog. You just can't see through it. More than that, you may not see something 1 meter away because it is behind a tree or whatever.
In space, there's no such bullshit. If you place a telescope big enough on the orbit, you could count rocks on one of Mars' moons. Sure, there are asteroids, some gas clouds and planets, but even when we count them in, 99,999999999% of space is completely empty.

So basically one could just build a few powerful lasers on an asteroid or moon or a space platform and just rip apart anything millions of kilometers away. No ship makes any sense.

I don't have time to elaborate, but I believe MISSILES will be the key in space warfare. Not between ships like in any space RTS though. I believe missiles will be launched from one planet or platform, accelerated to speeds close to the speed of light (using strong gravity wells like those of stars) and then projected towards enemy planets, which can not run away. Such objects would be hitting their targets the very moment they would be able to notice them, so there would be no defense. Also, the energy of something moving faster and faster grows as the speed squared, meaning awful amounts of energy released on impact.

So, missiles (or anything massive that could be propelled) and ships transferring people, that's all there will be. All the rest will be simply to easy to destroy, that's what I think.

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so having a 10 ton fighter with 5 ton/s propulsion gives you a small / evasive spacecraft with little room for weaopons and a HIGH ACCELERATION

and having a 10.000 ton spaceship with 5.000 ton/s propulsion gives you a large / easy to hit spaceship with little room for weaopons and a SLOW ACCELERATION....

Haha, so funny. both ships would actually have the exact same acceleration! maybe you should not have slept in physics. (accelaration=Force/mass)

Also, why should the smaller ship be more evasive? As long as both ships have the same engine power/mass ratio both would have the same maneuverability.

Ok, larger ships are easier to hit but a cloud of 1000 fighter would be easy to hit too.

You can't do that with capital ships. By their nature, big ships are too big to work in a gravity well. You can't be building big directly on a heavy planet's surface before shipping it out, it has to be done in parts. This means you need big, expensive space borne shipyards in order to assemble everything together. Doing complete smelting and assembly in space is going to be even more difficult, as you'll need a complete space borne manufacturing complex to get the job done. Yes, there is a rich abundance of raw material in space, but the most heavily industrial areas are still going to be on a planet's surface, where a large population(good planets make population cheaper too!) can fuel a large industry.

Yes you can. How do you think was the ISS built? They made the modules on earth and then assembled them in the orbit. The same way you could easily build larger ships.

How do you know what the costs will be thousands of years in the future?[...]

Did you even read my argument? Seriously. Go read it again:

Useful but compared to missles and drones simply not cost effective.

How could a drone (ai or remote controlled fighter) or a missle (rocket with a warhead) could bemore expensive than a fighter with a human pilot? Still both can be as devasting as a fighter.

The rest of your post is based on pure assumptions while you forget that smaller ships mean that you will need more of them to do the same job. And you cannot do everything with fighter cause noone wants to fly days within a small craft.

It doesnt matter how big your gun is if the other guy hits first. Fighters have superior acceleration and are harder to hit so if the fighter hits the enemy first they are a goner. Who hits first is all important. Large warships were made obselete by airplanes. Fighters might have shorter range but carriers solve this problem.Further more, by then we might not need propellent so range would be irrelevent.

People often think of outer space combat like naval combat. I would be amazed if there were any similarities. Space is a totally different battlespace to the sea, so space combat vehicles would probobly be more like aircraft, but large like naval vessels.

Well, since you assume that bigger ships have a smaller acceleration you are already comparing space combat to naval combat. That or you need to prove it.

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First, if fighters would ever make it to space combat, then NOT with a pilot. People are too erratic in their judgments, too slow in their thinking, and would have their spines broken with the first turn attempt. Seriously, they would be way too clumsy.
Either way, space is just too open for fighters - one fast computer controlling a strong laser (like the ones Americans are experimenting with, regarding anti-nuke protection, but it may be a thousand times stronger with enough energy, and that will not be an issue in the future) could blast a dozen fighters from a million kilometers away in a second, providing there is not a planet between them... and since, unlike Earth, space is 99,999999% empty, that is quite not an issue.

As for the acceleration issue, the fighter would have a high acceleration, but the cap ship would require all personnel to be seated in pilot's seats, trained for enduring high G-forces and the ship itself would likely fall apart.
Huge constructions are less durable than small ones. If you make a tiny paper ship and make it sail slowly into an ice cube in your bath, it will not sink, it will just bounce away from it.
Now, magnify that by a few thousand times and you have a Titanic, which definately did not bounce off the iceberg unharmed.
The reasons are simple - the molecular forces that keep matter together in the nano-scale are extremely powerful compared to those that keep large blocks of it in one piece. An ant can hold 10 times itself and walk up a tree with it, while an elephant would break and succumb to the ground if you threw another elephant on its back. A flea can jump a 100 times its own stretched length... we can't. A small, one inch metal ball that is empty inside can fall from 10000 feet into water and nothing will happen to it. Now, when an airplane tries that, it falls apart.

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psychoak

Join Date 07/2007

+225

I can just imagine a Star destroyer with conventional thrust equal to half it's earth weight...

"Damn dude! The engine ripped itself off again!

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As for the acceleration issue, the fighter would have a high acceleration, but the cap ship would require all personnel to be seated in pilot's seats, trained for enduring high G-forces and the ship itself would likely fall apart.

Fighters would require that as well....But thats not an issues for them since they only have pilots while bigger ships could actually have crewmen doing other tasks, making them much more versitile.

Ok you made a point that the big ship could fall apart if the force applied is too big. So there is an upper limit on how big the ship and how powerful the engine can be but how do you know that you will be able to fit the best engines only on the smallest craft? Bigger ships may still be able to get the same acceleration simply because there is no engine to make fighters faster than that.

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Quoting Wanderer17,

reply 9

Again I like to point out that nuke spam would kill the fighter pilots well before they can get even close.

Actually, nukes would be more effective against bigger ships (assuming you could get a hit, which is highly unlikely in either case). This is because explosions don't propogate very well in space, so even if fighters were flying as close as could reasonably be safe at combat speeds they would not be affected if a nuke hit the next fighter over. A big ship does not have a vacuum between parts, so a hit would hurt more for it.

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psychoak

Join Date 07/2007

+225

Radiation. The nuke goes off, spreads it all over the place. All the pilots start puking their guts up and die. They'd need seriously heavy shielding to survive anything resembling a close blast in space, vacuums don't do real well for absorbing particles.

Not that flying in open space outside the magnetic field of the earth without adequate shielding wouldn't kill them anyway.

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Quoting Wanderer17,

reply 17

Quoting JuleTron, reply 16In WW2, the biggest battleship, of all time, the IJN Yamato, was sank by U.S bomber airplanes. Its countless flak guns didnt save it.

The Bismark, a famous Nazi warship sank the pride of the British Navy, HMS Hood. It badly damaged Prince of Wales despite the fact that Prince of Wales had quadruple gun turrets that were bigger and better then Bismark's guns. The entire Royal Navy hunted it. Did warships with big guns destroy it? No. Instead, a very old-fashioned biplane with a torpedo sank it. Its flak guns didnt save it.
Yamato had very poor flak protection, as a matter of fact a U.S. Destroyers of WW2 had better flak protection and the advantage of computer assisted targeting radars to direct their flak fire compared to Yamato.

Bismark was scuttled by the Germans after intensive shelling and torpedoing of it by several British Battleships failed to sink it. It was scuttled in order to keep the British from capturing it.

Also space there is no horizon to hide behind, no drag which means big and small ships accelerate at the same speed, except the big ship can keep on accelerating.

Because of this big ships can see fighters well in advance and shoot them down before they get close. Unless you can violate the Laws of Thermodynamics, fighters are useless.

You are missing my point. You are getting the Bismark mixed up with the Turpitz. Why would fighters need to get in close to kill a battleship? no reason.

One very important thing people seem to forget is PURPOSE. If a space army had nothing but battleships they would get dominated. If strength alone mattered why do we bother with smaller, weaker ships? Btw, the laws of thermodynamics are not unbreakable.

If an army of space battleships were to fire at an enemy position, how would they know whether they won? if they sent in the battleships closer to capture the territory, then the enemy might have had a super-self-defense system and survived the attack. your unprepared space battleships would be dead.

An intelligent commander would send in a small expendable ship to scout enemy positions. With just battleships how could you gather intelligence?

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