Subject:
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Re: Jormungand Carrier Strike Craft
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Sun, 17 Oct 2004 16:28:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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1192 times
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In lugnet.space, Jordan D. Greer wrote:
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Yes, though I think our central disagreement stems from the fact that you’re
not thinking of the sheer scale involved in space. The energies, velocities,
and distances involved in anything relating to deep space are such that not
even nuclear weapons provide the kind of energy density that one would truly
desire for space combat.
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Ok, lets go straight to the roots then: In my view the basic disagreement is,
put to the extremes, if one should “shape reality to fit sci-fi” or “shape
sci-fi to fit reality”, where I have a bias toward the first one, and doesn’t
really consider the last one sci-fi as the fiction-part of sci-fi implies being
able to do something that’s impossible by today’s standards or technologies.
It’s incorrect that I don’t take the physics of space combat into consideration,
and it’s very much a part of my vision on how space battles could be (made)
possible, so in the following I’ll spend some time trashing yours ;-)
1: Yes, space is very large, but that does only mean that you have to have some
kind of warp- or hyperspeed drive in order to get to the battlefield in the
first place (which probably wouldn’t be in deep space unless it was a pitched
battle which is already a thing of the past). 2: Closing the remaining distance
relatively fast shouldn’t therefore pose much of a problem. 3: And then we can
have a good old style naval battle in sub lightspeed, where fighters has been
proved very useful.
If I understand you right, you envision a kind of battle where the fleets can
see each other from a huge distance and start firing nuclear weapons (and
anti-nuclear weapons?) until one of them is destroyed. Here’s what I don’t like
about that:
A: If the fleets and nukes are moving above lightspeed, finding each other would
probably be the biggest problem as it’s impossible (AFAIK) to detect anything
above that speed before impact (or after it has passed you or otherwise too
late) given the lightspeed limit of waves, so in a battle fought at that speed
you wouldn’t be able to communicate with friendlies nor pinpoint the enemy (as
radio and radar works at lightspeed), so it would be condemned to a big
ridiculous mess of ships racing around blindly firing big large area nuclear
weapons hitting friends and foes alike. So I believe that battles have to take
place in subspeed. B: Then there’s two possibilities: Either my points 1-3
where the fleets slow down beneath lightspeed in order to fight or they can’t
get above that speed at all, in which case: C: Given the large distances in
space, no contact or hostilities is realistic, and an approaching fleet or
barrage of nuclear missiles would be spotted with current wave detection
technology. LONG before they arrive = no element of surprise, and you have
plenty of time to prepare a warm welcome (assuming that you’re able to defend
yourself in the first place!). D: A battle fought at that speed would probably
be a test of how many nuclear and anti nuclear rockets you’d brought, and who
runs out first, so your money would be spend wiser on building rockets than
ships and send them alone, and then we’re back to a situation very much like the
cold war and the philosophy behind the Starwars project(s): Not sci-fi at all if
you ask me.
I’ll look forward to be corrected it’s always very enlightening.
BTW: How does those advanced nuclear weapons you talk about all the time
actually work?
-NB
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Jormungand Carrier Strike Craft
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| (...) Meh, I'm the same way. I have a lot of projects I'd like to get to, but I never start on most of them. (...) You misunderstood me, I was sort of calling my own comments a nitpick since this argument is rather pointless given the conjectural (...) (20 years ago, 13-Oct-04, to lugnet.space, FTX)
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