Johnny Bravo-
Yeah, I figured that a sphere would probably be a pretty good shape to have a spaceship. If you imagine a ball resting on a desk, where it's resting could have the main thrusters, and then along the "equator" of the ball, you could have two (or more) turret mounted attitude thrusters. By mounting them on rotating turrets, those would be the only attitude thrusters you'd need, (unless you wanted more as backups). Alternatively, the main thrusters could be placed on the turrets allowing for extremely quick rotations. And because its a sphere, and the end surface area of the sphere has the thrusters, it won't have to sorry about any non-symmetrical torque effects. Basically, a spehere would allow for the most maneuverable shape type possible (it would be impossible to design another shape that could rotate without having to worry in some form about torque effects, plus, it's moment of inertia over all points will be the smallest possible compared to any other shape which has to rotate along all the x,y, and z-axes).

A sphere is also structurally very strong and it also has very nice deflection/reflection capabilities. One disadvantage is that you are always presenting the same size target to the enemy, whereas if you have a rectangular or cigar shaped ship, then you can present boradsides (for a lot of firepower) or you can present your bow or aft to minimize your target. Going with this, a spheroid shaped ship can't amass alot of its weapons on one side, but I'm not sure this is so much of a disadvantage. With computers on-board, you could effective continuously roll your ship and time the firing of the weapons. I can think of another slightly serious disadvantage....heat radiation.

The biggest problem that space ships will face is getting rid of heat. On the space shuttle, the cargo bay doors act as big passive radiators (which radiate heat obviously, since convection doesn't work out in space). A sphere has IIRC, the best internal volume to surface area ratio of a geometric shape possible. That means that you've got all this internal mass without a lot of surface area to radiate the heat. This can be partially diminished in non-combat scenarios by extending out radiator flaps, but obviously that's bad in combat. So a spherical ship will most likely overheat before other shaped ships will.

Again, here's one of those things that seems realistic, but it's just not "sexy" to have a big ole 8-ball cruising through space. Ditto with missles or other kinetic energy weapons. If missles or kinetic energy weapons will be used, it will most likely only be used against mobile targets (orbital platforms, naval docks, space stations and ground targets). If I were a naval designer, I'd have specialized ships perform these sorts of tasks, and have your regular ships of the line only have a modest amount of these mostly to attack ground targets of opportunity.

Now one interesting use of small craft like fighters would be as wild weasels. They could carry the same EM signature and output the same amount of heat. At extreme ranges (without visual inspection), it would look like multiple capital ship class bogies.

Quote:

Original post by johnnyBravo There would be the military flag/mother ships that would be more of a huge armored block that had immense power to move very fast to get around, and it would be a platform for launching small fighters and carrying lots of weapons. This ship wouldn't be able to land on planets due to its size and armor so no slimness needed. This ship would sorta be like a space station that moves :)

That's impractical. The amount of force and energy needed to move an object is proportional to the mass of the object.

What about the doppler shifts?
If you were travelling that fast, then you would end up seeing gamma rays from your target, and communications would be very hard.

Also, neuclear weapons would be used, as here shockwaves could be used to illuminate targets, destroy small targets near it, could be used for bunker busting (and with directed explosions, these worsts of things could be quite useful), As well as for irradiating sensors, anialating clouds of missles, ect.

Things like collomated neutron beams (made by using uranium as a lazing material), would be focused (using strips of metal, like in the two slits experement, just by changing the intensity of the beams, rather then a "black and white" area), and would be used to ciut holes in ships (remember, that it is hard to stop neutrons, and that a strong enough neutron stream would cut strait through the hull of an enemy vessel).

Just imagine having a 0.1mm^2 hole through your ship, from stem to stern, from a single shot from a neutron cannon!

You would also be able to move a minefield, drones and all to a specified location (ambush anyone?).

The ability to generate false em signatures at different location s would be imployed in most millitary vessles (like mines, which project the image of one, large, star destroyer).

The dispersal of metallic substances (like mercury) would be used to hide vessles (because the mercury would absorb some of the em, also because it is ionised (because it would be diepersed by nuke), would mean that radar would not be able to get through it (because of the varing propogation speeds, and angles).

From,
Nice coder

Geez, lotsa space gearhead stuff here.

I've chased the 'realism' bugaboo a lot over the past several years. It hasn't gotten me anywhere. Eventually I decided on a game fiction close to the present day, because among other things, it's easier to make realistic extrapolations 100..200 years from now. Later, it's anybody's guess.

I think you need to settle on the historical timeframe for the combat (100 years from now? 200? 1000? 10,000?), the distances covered (interplanetary? inter star system? inter quadrant? inter galaxy? interdimensional?), and the conditions of cultural contact.

For instance, let's say your game is about 'early flying junk'. Nobody's figured out how to get out of a star system yet, so all warfare is interplanetary. Probably this isn't going to occur between 2 species. You're probably talking about civil war... and how did you get that + get to the other planets, exactly?

If you did have 2 species, starting on different planets, they're exceedingly unlikely to evolve space travel at the same time. Far more likely is one's in the space age and the other is in the stone age. Maybe the stone age species eventually learns from the conqueror, and then you get your wars.

Looking farther out, to as-of-yet-unknown physics... why would you worry about tactics when fighting a hostile species in another star system? You'd build some doomsday device and blow up their entire star system. Like cause their sun to go nova or something. Or otherwise obliterate large chunks of known space. Hey, if you can cross interstellar distances in reasonable periods of time, you've got some serious mastery over physics, right? For such advanced civilizations, obliterating entire star systems at once is their version of the H-bomb.

There was also 'The Doomsday Machine' from Star Trek TOS. Just make something with an indestructible shell that eats planets, ships....

On the civilian side of things, remember that space doesn't offer much in the way of architectural constraints. Once you get past the 'bit head' stage of space traveller history, people are gonna wanna be stylin' ! To the extent that large futuristic ships are inhabited by sentient life forms, those ships will probably take their cues from architectural traditions rather than engineering traditions. You really wanna look at steel plates and warheads when you're off-planet for years at a time? No, you want to look at botanical gardens, soaring arches, restful scenes....

The various 'world ships' solve this problem, like Arthur C. Clarke's "Rendezvous With Rama." They do so by being very, very big. But I'm saying, even a small civilian ship would be nicely landscaped. Like you'd see in a rich neighborhood on Earth today, or an important civic building.

I think 'the realistic future of spaceships' is a far deeper subject than Star Wars and what's the best weapon for blowing up some 'hostile' civilization. I think intergalactic ping-pong is far more likely.

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Original post by Dauntless ...But my question is shouldn't the current velocity affect the torque forces generated at every point along the object?

Nope. Try your rock-spinning experiment on a fast-moving train. You will see that it is no different to doing it on solid ground.

What you must realize is that all velocities are measured relative to something else; there are no absolutes. So a spaceship might be travelling very fast in relation to its destination, but practically motionless in relation to another ship on a parallel course. If velocity were a factor in things like rotation, then which velocity would you use for the calculations?

Plasmadog-
Now I get it. You're absolutely right. I was still thinking in terms of absolute velocities as well as forgetting that as long as forward acceleration is zero (there is no force acting on the object) there are no other forces trying to sum up.

Oh man, this is bringing back nightmares of trying to calculate where a stick will go if you push it with a Force A-> at varying points along the stick.

You should really check out some books about submarine warfare - the similarities are uncanny. For that matter, a number of officers have even suggested that in the future, space combat would be less like dogfighting and more like Ohio-class subs stalking through space (Gen. Chuck Horner, Ret. He headed the Air Component in Desert Storm, and later was USSPACECOM).

I remembered a couple of old threads.

Realistic distances in space combat and, of course, Wavinator's extremely long and detailed :) Space weapons, which focuses on realistic uses of said weapons, as well.

I see one difference though between the two silent services. In submarine warfare detecting the enemy is pretty difficult. If you want to ping your sonar you will be able to find things, but you can bet your grannies family jewels that they're going to know where you are too. Sort of makes me wonder if the USN has been developing "stealth" technology for subs similar to how the stealth fighters and bombers work. I mean, why not? If you could develop some sort of absorbing material to absorb the ping I imagine it would be possible. And the idea of the Red October's non-cavitating propulsion isn't that far off. NASA's been doing some work on magneto hydrodynamic turbines for awhile now. I could see subs in the future being virtually invisible and silent....pretty scary if you think about it. In my own game setting, one faction has a pretty well-established space superiority but virtually zero sea-power. The other faction is outgunned on both the ground and space, but has virtually total dominion of the seas. Naval-launched counter-orbital batteries tend to even the score between the two factions. In the past, you could almost bet your money on the side with the more powerful navy to eventually win the war (I personally can't think off the top of my head a case in which this wasn't true...from ancient times till now...often the more powerful land forces country would make great gains, but ultimately the country with the strongest navies won the war). In the future, this will probably go to the space navy, but the power of a terrestial sea shouldn't be underestimated either.

But in outer space, there's nothing you can do about the passive emission of heat. At best, you can let your forward momentum carry you into a system fully powered down with only minimal power for a timer to reactivate the ship (again, this will only work with a non-human powered crew). However, I have a feeling that most stationary outposts will have active detection measures like radar rather than rely totally on passive detection (infrared or visual detection). Still, trying to find something as relatively small as a spaceship would be difficult given the area of space to cover (look how hard it is trying to find meteros and asteroids). So such a tactica might viable against stationary fxed targets to gain surprise, but in hunter-killer missions this isn't an option.

I personally think that possible extrapolations of "realistic" future space combat will be more interesting than a rehashing of WWII style naval battles in outer space.

One last thing, I've heard some people claim that (at least for the US) the USAF would take over space duties. I personally don't see this happening. Space vessels would be rather large vessels and the Air Force simply doesn't have the experience and training to deal with large groups on large craft. Space may be an extension of the "air", but large crewed vessels is an area in which the Navy excels. Of course ultimately, human crews will be done away with, but in terms of engineering and creating the algorithms for "crew" interaction would be more in the domain of the Navy than the Air Force. Historically, the navy has been involved in astral observation (e.g. navigation) and the USN, USMC and USCG have provided the majority of astronauts for NASA (the USMC is under the auspices of the USN and so is the USCG in times of war).

Everyone keeps talking about realistic space travel as if that automatically excludes faster-than-light travel. To my mind, realistic means that the basic laws of physics, like the laws about acceleration, torque, inertia, etc., are normally followed. That doesn't mean that there can't be faster than light travel; it just means that faster than light travel is not accomplished by simply using a really, really powerful rocket, but instead with some other as-yet-undiscovered/unproven method, such as wormholes. In good science fiction, the known and defined laws of the universe are not broken, but that doesn't mean that the creator of the work can't invent a little new science to make things more interesting -- just as long as what's known now isnt thrown out. Including faster-than-light travel or antigravity doesn't make a game unrealistic; imposing a maximum speed of 100 km/min relative to some fixed point even with engines still running makes it unrealistic (yes, i've seen this done). As far as balance and fun issues go regarding faster-than-light travel, why not include it to allow interstellar travel, but make the technology that allows it expensive, slow to power up, and resource-intensive. This provides a reason to have large "motherships" rather than just automated nukes: the mothership houses the warp drive, or worm-whole generator, or whatever, and the automated nukes close the distance and provide the firepower. If the warp drive can only be used every week, requires a day to warm up, and can only be fit into extremely large, vulnerable, expensive ships, this won't make conventional drives obsolete.

As to the issue of control exclusively by computers versus including at least a one or two humans somewhere in the fleet, I agree that control would probably be largely computer-based, however I think that there is an important reason to include a few people that has been overlooked: sanity checks. As everyone on this forum knows, you can't put much trust in a program until it has been tested thoroughly. The most essential test of a program is to use it as it is intended to be used, but with a suite of programs for directing interstellar war, a truly realistic test could be difficult to devise (unless you happen to have another civilization that you can try it out on first). With a person on board, as long as the manual overrides work, you don't have to worry about a glitch causing the fussion missiles to turn around and irradiate Earth instead of Mars. Although it is true humans require a great deal more resources than computers to keep alive, with reasonably improved waste recycling technology, a few humans could be kept alive and given some control without using up an overly large portion of the space available on a medium to large vessel.