How is warfare in space gonna look like?
>hurl asteroid the size of the moon towards your planet
>watchu gonna do when they come for you, bad boy
>>7582991
If there were spaceships armed with weapons they'd be so far apart that they couldn't see each other, also because of the distance the last known location on radar or whatever they have would not be wholly reliable for a moving ship so you'd need scatter weapons or fleets of drones
mostly bombs
What's there to fight over in space?
>>7583004
Space cash
>>7583004
Ideas
>>7583007
Space religion
>>7583004
As of today, having satellit overview of enemy territory offers a huge advantage, so naturally, in case of a war of two nations with space program, each nation would try to destroy the satellites of the other nation
>>7582991
sci fi has explored this extensively. Of the more hard stuff, there are two main approaches.
1. cloaked bombs will pursue the enemy ship as stealthily as possible. Speed is less important as not being detected. Short of landing the ship somewhere and getting away from it, one's target is generally doomed.
2. Use incredible amounts of fast dumb projectiles to fill all possible vectors the enemy ship can take with death. This can burn through resources fairly quickly depending upon distance (more distance = more possible escape vectors to fill with death), so battles will largely be decided by whom can afford to shoot first.
Basically real space warfare will largely be uninteresting.
Defending a planet from space based warfare is a much more interesting topic.
>>7582991
Rockets on space rocks.
Relativistic bombs
>>7582991
I highly recommend reading through the "Atomic Rockets" website
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
It's basically a collection of articles written and curated by one guy, with lots of sections written by guest authors. The website aims to dispel common inaccurate sci-fi tropes and to realistically speculate about how advanced spaceflight, space warfare, etc. would actually work.
It's pretty much the "hardest" sci-fi treatment of these topics I've found online. Nearly everything is firmly rooted in known physics and engineering principles.
>>7583136
>1. cloaked bombs will pursue the enemy ship as stealthily as possible. Speed is less important as not being detected. Short of landing the ship somewhere and getting away from it, one's target is generally doomed.
How are you gonna cloak in space?
Shrapnel bombs would secure the peace in space until we get conquered by aliens.
>>7583274
ask the klingons
I. Unmanned
II. Lasers or missiles, or some futuristic gravity/time weapons
III. No need for dog-fighting bullshit
>>7582991
Shooting great amounts of whatever shit you have from huge distances to wherever you think the enemy is until you manage to hit it
Would probably be more interesting to go watch LoGH
Fighting will be done through diplomacy and careful navigation across rivers of knife edges. Consider how fragile humans are after leaving earth and compare it to our current state of warfare.
Island nation is throwing rocks and calling you a dick? Carpet bomb. They pick up the pieces, repair infrastructure, and escalate. Repeat until one nation has too many new assholes ripped in it and surrenders. In space and offworld colonies, this isn't how it goes down, because it's much harder to be self sufficient off earth. Phobos-ites are singing their hippy crap too loud it's keeping the Martians up. All the martians would have to do is cut off the water/food supply and keep an eye out for resupply ships coming from elsewhere in the system. Papers are signed, agreements are reached, and everyone goes on with their lives.
Earthlings are pissed at the Phobos-ites, pissed enough to plunge into total war. All it takes is a single bomb, the right size and in the right place, and everyone on that sad rock is gone. Same for a space station or an asteroid base or anything else except a planet-based colony decades into development, long enough for them to get shit underground. It's the cold war all over again, except all it takes is a single nuke. It will be boring, mostly political, and at the same time terrifying, because one off-comment can start the path towards very scary things.
>>7582991
Read this and get the fuck out of /sci/:
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/
/thread
>>7582991
High tech police forces shitting on bands of insurgents. You think MAD is a problem with war right now? In space, MAD is turned up to 11 thousand. Conventional warfare simply won't be worth it.
Military forces are generally scaled inversely to the complexity of the environment, that is, high complexity : small combatants :: low complexity : large combatants (Compare the environments where battleships and navy seals are employed). Improvements in firepower, range, and detection ramp up complexity in all environments over time, so the future of warfare looks much the same in all arenas: swarms of tiny stealth bomb robots. Space will be no exception.
>>7582991
It'll never happen. Too expensive.
>>7584281
It'll become less and less expensive as technology progresses.
>>7584286
I doubt an anti-matter propulsion system will ever be invented. Anything else would be too inefficient.
As it is, there are diminishing returns for making more efficient propulsion systems.
Even if an anti-matter propulsion system were possible, using such ships for war would make about as much sense as having a war in Antarctica.
Nasty, brutish, short and long-ranged.
>>7584309
It doesn't have to include anti-matter propulsion systems or these "ships" you're talking about. It'll most likely be satellites shooting at other satellites in order to knock out the enemy's communication or visuals, at least in the beginning.
>>7584362
It wouldn't be possible to defend against anything up there. It would be a waste of resources to even try. It would be too easy to send rockets to destroy satellites. Nothing can defend against nukes.
would war in space be safer because you don't have to worry about harming planets?
>>7582991
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz#Defense_measures
it's not.
>>7583274
>cloaking in space
We already have decent multispectrum cloaking, it just doesn't work well on the ground. Works just fine in space. It's also relatively hard to spot a missile that's only emitting any kind of signature when it's making a course correction.
>>7584350
>mfw how are we gonna do that
>mfw this retarded
>never taken 1st year level physics
>>7584728
>1st year level physics and suddenly energy is virtually infinite
K buddy, have fun maneuvering 10^22 kg around the fucking solar system.
>>7584730
>cnfirmed for retard
>cnfirmed for not even basic knowledge of space maneuvering techniques
>>7582991
With the use of light to see. Your eyes then use this light to distinguish colors.
>>7582991
Like this: https://youtu.be/pTU6Gat_ai4
[spoiler]Right on, Commander![/spoiler]
with gandams
Like in 40k except not Cathedrals.
Just extremely long range weapons from huge ships.
>>7583274
I'd assume a low radar profile would suffice. I doubt there will be much use for windows on a military craft.
warframe
>>7584149
>It's harder to be self sufficient off earth
Sure, but you know what's even harder? NOT being self-sufficient, and maintaining interplanetary supply lines.
>>7582991
Quantum bombs. Teleport bombs into the enemy ship and detonate. Or nations will have emdrive kinetic weapons co stantly accelerating in the outer solar system then impacting at ftl speeds.
>>7583005
That's so dumb. You mean "credits"
I wonder how long until we have the first actual battle in space, even if it is just between two satellites trying to poke each other's eyes out.
Long range missile/drone duels.
Missiles and drones are the best as they're flexible and rely on existing knowledge and tech and they're effective.
You won't see lasers much outside of point defense as they're too inefficient.
>>7585919
Would you have to manipulate quantum entanglement to do that?
>>7586321
How about a fistfight on a space station?
>>7584167
I think lasers, although they provide the best ballistic properties, are easily countered. Just make the outer shell of your ship a mirror. Yet, one would have to give up current stealth technology.
first air combat started as banter between the pilots ending in someone firing a revolver
>>7582991
1) Flak guns... flak guns everywhere. There's no need for nuclear missiles or high powered lasers when you can just fling clouds of high-speed shrapnel at enemy ships and tear them to pieces.
2) Tactics and navigation will become the predominant force in space battles - combat will be more like chess - both opponents see each other's moves and can respond long before those moves become relevant. Combat then becomes about predicting your opponent's next ten moves and setting traps for them to fall into. You don't fire where your opponent is, you fire where you're going to force him to be in 20 minutes.
>>7586352
Yes. You target the material, make it become entangled and reform into a bomb, preferably an antimatter once since that gives more bang for your buck.
>chinese space marines take over the ISS
>recoilless defensive guns are placed externally on the station
>shenzhou resupply vehicles also carry recoilless defensive guns
How do you retake the station?
>>7583004
>What's there to fight over in space?
Strategic positions in space such as Lagrange points. Strategic positions on the moon like Peaks of Eternal Lights or resources like He3 rich moon dust. Access to fuel lakes of Titan or metal asteroids like Psyche having an enormous value.
I am sure there are plenty more cases. So there are good reasons for why guys in uniform are considering space war.
As to how to fight, well probably by sabotaging space vehicles on ground before launch. Or by taking over the command channel to fail the mission. Or by massive jamming to prevent command uplink to adjust orbit preventing dive into atmosphere.
There are plenty of ways that do not involve futuristic weapons.
>>7583004
What's there to fight over on Earth?
>>7582991
High velocity rail guns and coordination nets of sensors will determine everything. Bombs are pretty useless in space, there's not much besides the energy of their explosive shrabnel to do damage; so the most effective ones will be like rpgs, using cavitation with their explosion to cause more damage. EMP bombs will also be useful but they can be guarded against.
in the end, precise targeting and lasers will take care of most targets, as they can fire over an infinite distance
>>7582994
> hurl asteroid the size of the moon
Not necessary.
Just park a spaceship in the Asteroid Belt. If your propulsion system is Newtonian, or you have a magnetic rail device of any significant size, you should be able to push thousands of smaller asteroids, say 0.5 to 1km wide each.
It's the difference between dropping a piano on someone or shooting them with a shotgun. They're dead either way.
>>7583013
Space government
Space religion
etc
basically ideas, all disagreements and war are over ideas.
>>7584350
As part of my evil genius phase I designed a way to do it without an insane amount of resources. Using existing technology that any large government or multinational corporation could get. It is not very fast often taking 5 to 10 years depending on the path, but the decaying orbital path means the energy needed to stop it grows to ridiculous levels very fast making it next to impossible to stop.
>>7586999
James Bond.
No, seriously get a spy to join the enemies ranks and do something.
I haven't thought this through but I guess sabotage life support while air-force blockades resupply ships. Then take station. If turrets are still up have the spy turn them off or throw disposable decoys to deplete turret ammo if spy died with everyone else.
>>7586605
Larger lasers can overwhelm all known material structures, including mirror armor. This would only make longer cool down cycles and larger radiators on laser cannons which are annoyances, but wouldn't stop them from shooting you to death.
Granted if you can stack enough annoyances war could be go a different way, but it going to need a lot more then just mirror armor.
>>7587058
correct, it is much easier then my old moon pushing scheme.
>>7587058
Another benefit is that smaller and faster has the same kinetic energy but is harder to detect and deflect once you go high enough speeds.
>>7583004
More space
>>7583007
Great answer
