Submarines in Space
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- Опубліковано 20 сер 2024
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I’m sure you’re going to get a lot of notes about this, but I cannot believe you left out the most classic submarine battle in Star Trek ever. The episode BALANCE OF TERROR. The plot of this episode is based on The Enemy Below (1957), with the Enterprise taking the part of the American destroyer and a Romulan Bird-of-Prey with its cloaking device taking the part of the submarine. This episode was also partly inspired by another World War II Submarine Drama, Run Silent Run Deep (1958), which was directed by Robert Wise, who would later direct Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).
Balance of Terror was my first episode of Star Trek. It was the first episode to feature Romulans. It had Mark Leonard as the Romulan commander who would go on to be Spock’s father on several occasions.
If you have an afternoon with nothing to do one day, rent The Enemy Below and maybe Run Silent Run Deep, and then watch Balance of terror. It’s quite fun to see how much they lifted from the old movies.
Also just recently the tv show The Orville featured a “dive for the gas cloud” episode I’m which the first officer literally says out loud, “Submarine Warfare?”
@@theloniousMac indeed I already had. I just was not nearly as complete as you were. Good job.
@@theloniousMac He seems too busy shilling on Strange New Woke episodes. Which isn't even Star trek to begin with.
Stealth systems are deliberately highly radioreflective - just deliberately not retroreflective, so no 90 degree angles. The idea is to minimise reflections back to the transmitter so you want absolutely minimal scattering.
Flat plates are easiest. The SR-71 used this on its leading edges with acute triangular radar traps covered by a radar transparent high temperature panel.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623 Show me where the woke hurt you.
Space battleship yamato has a cool example of this, the dimensional submarine. It works by moving along a fourth spatial dimension into a parallel plane, and even has a periscope for seeing into 3d space.
Yes! This ship was cool. And they never actually 'beat' it.
Was about to mention that ship
@@Tetsujinhanmaa The only damage the sub took was the periscope being shot off and shrapnel from a nearby missile when the vessel was unable to enter back into the subdimension.
Sounds like Starsector...
Yeah sad they didn’t mention it. In 2205 it also received some upgrades and in 2205 showed its tactical advantages again
“Balance of Terror” Star Trek first series- not only is the tactics sub inspired - the entire story is (The Enemy Below 1957). It is one of the best in the TOS and one of the ones that holds up. Also first time we see Romulans and cloaking devices.
I honestly couldn't believe it wasn't brought up!
@@tylerromero I know also it is I think the first time we see that the Enterprise has a chapel and it is the last time we see Yemen Rand till the first Star Trek movie.
True! I was also thinking that cloaking was very analogous to diving for a sub
This
I was so offended by that being missed I wrote a long post before reading your comment, which is totally correct.
I literally joined the navy to be on a sub because it was the closest I'd ever be to being on a spaceship. I don't know if I feel seen or attacked lol.
Something weird people don't think about is how loud the inside of a sub is, there are fans, alerts, smelly dudes talking, and high pressure piping everywhere. When machines are perpetually keeping you alive/also trying to kill you the loudest noise you hear is quiet, which I think any submariner will relate to because nothing will wake you up as fast as the silence of fans and ventilation getting secured for a fire.
When I experienced this I always wanted to chuckle a little remembering a line Tali said in Mass Effect about how she was having trouble sleeping aboard the Normandy because the ship was too quiet and if things were that quiet in the migrant fleet something was wrong. Pretty sure the expanse says something similar about beltalowda. I think the depths of the similarities of the machines and people between the two environments can be explored in media a lot more than it has.
Same, fans turning off was an instant fully awake thing. Can't tell you how many dives or surfacings or other 1MCs I slept through though. We could always tell if the casualty was real nor a drill depending on if the fans turned off before or after the 1MC for the casualty.
Pun intended but without the cheesiness…
Guessing that’s a literal example then of “the silence if deafening”
@@juggernaut7625 After 10 years on subs, I separated and got married. The second morning with my soon-to-be wife her telephone rang (old, land-line, corded phone with an actual bell inside it)... I sprang out of bed and shouted out "Where's the casualty?"
Dude, you're the man. 👍
@@karlbrundage7472 I was sleeping, having a boatmare, my phone rang and still mostly asleep I answered "manuevering, electrical operator".
One more quick story.
I was with my first wife (civilian by this point), I was asleep but she was watching TV, some gonging screeching noise came from the TV. She told me I rolled out of bed and was reaching for the wall but couldn't find what I was reaching for. I told her later that I guess I was reaching for my poopy suit because it sounded like an alarm.
As a former US Navy submariner (SSBN) & huge sci-fi nerd this was quite enjoyable to watch.
I think another parallel between space ships & submarines is the environment around the ship is the biggest enemy. Hull breaches in both sci-fi and at sea (especially when submerged) are huge dangers and battling such casualties is a source of extreme tension & drama. I always enjoyed in Star Trek, the Expanse, and other shows when damage control was highlighted.
Another one is that submarines & space ships both create their own atmospheres; not just creating oxygen but cleaning out the toxic remnants of our respiration.
On nuclear submarines the backup diesel engines, and their associated limitations, remind me of starships that have their FTL capabilities reduced as well. Such as when a Star Trek vessel is down to impulse power.
In fiction, the complexity and danger of the environment and the systems that keep the ship & crew safe can be utilized to increase tension and danger, even more-so in the heat of battle. Books and shows that see ships as these preciously balanced feats of engineering that could see a cascade of catastrophes if something is damaged have always been at the peak of hard sci-fi.
What sub did you serve on? I’d love to know what life is like on them
@@khidorahian I was on the SSBN-732 (USS Alaska). There are a lot of videos on UA-cam about life on a US submarines, so if you search you will find a plethora. The only big difference in the US Navy is whether one is on an SSN (fast attack) or an SSBN/SSGN (-BNs carry nuclear missiles & -GNs carry cruise missiles, but based off the same Ohio-class hull design). The SSNs being smaller and the latter being larger with more crew amenities.
@@khidorahian Rum, bum & concertina!
Was coming down here to make this point, but you already made it far more emphatically than I ever could.
Submariners probably should be actively recruited into any nascent space force. Seems they've not certain valuable skill sets, but also the necessary mental fortitude to grapple with perils of space.
I have always loved this similarity. Most battles in sci-fi would probably be fought purely over sensor displays. Visual contact is rarely necessary, unless it's for the benefit of the audience.
Check out the Honorverse books.
And then you get David VanDyke, he straight has a submarine commander as a starship captain.
That's true of real-life naval warfare as well, which is almost always fought beyond visual range. Even in WW2, British and American battleships used radar-directed fire control to shoot at ships that they couldn't see. HMS Duke of York smashed the battleship Scharnhorst in the middle of an Arctic storm, for instance, where nobody could see a thing.
have a look at Jack Campbell stuff, in 'the lost fleet' battles take hours to set up but are over in microseconds as everyone is moving so fast they are hundreds of thousands of miles apart before the average human could react to anything, as a result its all about positioning, counter position and faints with light lagg taking into account.
@@Cailus3542 incidently, in the comparison between the iowa class and the bizmark class (both being the heaviest battleships deployed by there respective nations during WW2), most sources say that the iowa would win, primarily due to it's radar directed fire control systems, which allow it to engage at greater ranges than the bismark was designed for (the bizmark was designed as a more classical brawler, for relatively close range slug fests).
In 'Space Battleship Yamato 2199' there is a space submarine, the UX-01. This ship can submerge into subspace where sensors don't function and the crew must use a periscope to see what's outside of subspace.
by "yamato 2022" they built more of them too, and they play a big role near the climax of the story.
@@glitterboy2098 And then in 2205 we get to see them more and even earth have one prototype!
@@cardiv5zuikaku944 hold on, Earth had developed a prototype of it?!
@@brunothebat4122 Yep, after Earh Garmillas agreement to technology cooperation, Nanbu was sent but Garmillas with the core to do the job, the result was the first earth interdimensional submarine prototype, which still have problems, but playing a big role in the 2205 OVA
Reminds me of that ridiculous scene in the Wing Commander movie where everybody gets quiet to try and not get spotted as if forgetting that there's no sound in space.
I got to admit as cool as the special effects and ideas they had on that movie, that scene was pretty silly.
They are clamped to an asteroid during that scene, so it's plausible the Kilrathi would have been able to detect soundwaves travelling through the rock. But if that was the case, they should have established it in the movie!
Or that they have to circle the carrier waiting to land when one crashes on the deck. And then have to push a wreck "off the deck" because the rest of the wing was running out of fuel
Quiet! There is a destroyer hunting us!
@@Bakuryu0083
Yeah. Real fighters in space wouldn't land that way. In fact, short of a BSG combat landing, it would be like parking cars in a grocery store parking lot.
Always had the thought that if warships in space needed to be crewed they’d enlist active submarine sailors as they have the most similar training to what a space crew would need.
Another channel I watch actually brought up this exact point in a recent video.
@@justinthompson6364 Sacred Cow Shipyards? Cus I just finished that video before watching this.
@@T3rm1NaT0r_ That's the one
I was reading a series, I think it was the cost of empire, and they literally converted boomers into spaceships because their drives allowed them to get the hulls into orbit intact.
Especially as they already know and are trained to hold their breath for months, very handy in space
The ToS Episode 'Balance of Terror' was also inspired by submarine warfare. The cloaking device is practically analogous to the Bird of Prey surfacing and diving.
I was waiting for that reference in this video but...
Also The Expanse.
Yeah, I can't believe they didn't include that in this video.
The greatest Trek episode ever “Balance of Terror” is basically a submarine battle in space.
One thing that I wish more scifi ships incorporated from submarines is the idea of putting the bridge (or as it's more accurately called in Submarines the *Command Center* ) deep inside the ship's hull.
How often do we see starships with big exposed bridges that would realistically be the first target, but for some reason are almost never attacked?
Hell most of them have panorama windows, shoot them down you idiots! Lol
Subs do actually have a bridge, its up in the conning tower, but your point about the CIC still stands!
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
Thinking about how most iterations of Gundam have exposed bridges for their space carriers lol and it's always the first thing targeted. I don't remember if they ever explain why they have exposed bridges
I agree. It's one reason why I love the ships in Battlestar Galactica and the recent Expanse. Legend of the Galactic Heroes also does a good job of having both tropes; their bridges can move from the outside to the inside. In battle they're on the inside but when either outside of combat or when exterior sensors have failed, they can move it to the outside.
Hopefully more sci-fi integrates stuff like this.
You mean citadels. For surface ships it's called citadel. The final line of defense from which the ship can fight for its survival and be commanded.
@@MugenZeroX because they're carriers and those weren't bridges, they were air traffic towers? Like on modern british carriers? With secondary control center inside the hull and both towers being able to take over one another.
Cat and Mouse was a fantastic episode of The Clone Wars, and it really used that idea of a stealth ship to great effect. The space battle over Christophsis is a great example of a Separatist fleet actually being effective in that show, not just falling apart due to some stupid commander.
Admiral Trench having experience fighting cloaked vessels, and eventually realizing what he's up against even before it's revealed, is a great twist. Using his own arrogance against him is the perfect ending. I even love that look on his face right before the explosion, not angry or panicked at all, just accepting defeat because he recognizes the mistake he made.
You could probably make the case that the other ships in the blockade should've made it harder on Anakin to take on the flagship alone, but I guess Trench's orders to not break formation were followed to the letter, and if they're simply droids commanding the smaller frigates, that makes enough sense to me.
"I don't have a transition, so anyway..." is my favorite transition.
It goes back even further. The ToS episode Balance Of Terror is a straight up retelling of The Enemy Below. The Enterprise acting as the destroyer hunting the invisible and dangerous U-Boat.
A movie on submarines I can absolutely recommend is "Das Boot", a German blockbuster about a German Submarine during WWII. Even thought it's a quite old movie, it's a great movie.
The two movies to get a feel for what being on a sub is like:
•Das Boot
•Down Periscope.
The first is the serious part, when they actually have a job to do. The second is the downtime and screwing around that inevitably comes from being locked in a metal tube for weeks or months.
@@lonelystrategos There is also a newer series (last few years) that ups the espionage side of things but is none the less quite well done... saw it on CBC in Canada but I beleive was originally a German / UK production.
Actual WW2 sub crew said "Das Boot" was like reliving their time in the war, everything was so accurate and realistic.
I have that on DVD.
There's also the "space submarines" (literally called that) in the Space Battleship Yamato universe. They "dive" into a dimension adjacent to normal space which has some fluid characteristics and basically do all the fun things submarines did in WW2...
Or perhaps use cloaking devices
@@captainbroady other series do that, but in Yamato it’s a far closer analogue. They literally move into a different dimension and can get stuck there, and have to send out a probe (styled as a periscope for fun reasons) back into normal space to even know what’s going on out there. (Which of course is how cloaks should work IRL but in fiction they can always see out of them…)
@@kaitlyn__L I see. So it works as a medium similar to the oceans of today :D
I'm not surprised that sub warfare is similar to starship warfare. A lot of spaceships in science fiction are similar in size to navy ships. Like the Yamato and White Base are both similar in size and I think those 2 are similar in size to the Star Trek TOS Enterprise.
And the classes are identical..
Patrol
Frigate
Cruiser
The Yamato from Battle Ship Yamato is the Imperial Japanese Navy Ship Yamato they pulled it up from the sea floor and used it's hull to make the Space Ship
no even TOS enterprise was a bit bigger than the larger carriers of the 60's, the trek ships only got larger from there
also white base had to carry a gundam which stood about 10+ stories high, that ship was large enough to carry the gundam standing up so the bottom to top of just the hangar was at least 4 stories tall and more likely 5 stories just to clear the gundam with no movement worries.....
also in other ships of the same era as 0079 the white base was intended to carry a squadron of gundams, not just Amaro's MS.....
the shape of ships like the minerva are way different but still have about the same capacity of intended to carry a squadron of gundams and support MS's
@@kakashiloshotmail In the original show yes, which is something that was changed in 2199, a change which I think was for the best.
I adore 2199 and 2205. It's rare for me to enjoy a remake of something I grew up watching, I.E. most cartoon network reboots of classic shows (such as Ben 10), so when I absolutely loved 2199 and 2205 it was a welcome surprise.
@@corinthianimperialstudios704 I haven't seen the new one
The stuff about active and passive sensors reminds me of the Bobiverse series. The spacecraft in that have active and passive sudar systems that mimic sonar pretty closely. Their main sci-fi element is that unlike radar, which is limited by the speed of light, and sonar, which is limited by the speed of sound, sudar is instantaneous, giving an exact location for any mass large enough in its detection range, with no delay whatsoever. But the active/passive systems do work just like sonar. The instant you throw out a ping, you get an exact location on all mass in the area. But your opponent also knows precisely where you are.
After reading the Vorpal Blade by John Ringo, in which the US Navy actually converts a Nuclear sub into a starship, I told my father (who had been an Electrician's Mate in the Navy) that if I was to do a stint in the military, I'd love to do my time in a sub as it would be the closest I'd likely get to serving on a starship.
My father looked at me, and said to be careful who I said that to.
A sub would be incredible boring since you see not much during the weeks of travel.
I wonder if we're the wrong people. ;)
I haven't read that book, but Ringo likes putting warships in space. In his Aldentta series, the warships the humans built incorporate parts of the ships' namesakes.
Would not work. The problem is while there is the similarity that both subs and spaceships are self contained because the environment in which they operate is lethal, the fact is those environments are also VERY different.
Submarines for example are built to keep pressure out, Spaceships are built to keep pressure in. Because of the high pressures at the kinds of depths modern submarines operate at they are actually pretty solidly built. The pressure hulls have to be thick enough to withstand the pressures and have to be structural. While space ships may be armoured (and probably will be), that armour is not part of their structure just as the armour of Dreadnaught Battleships was also not part of the structure but attached TO it for ease of repair and replacement. As a result a purpose designed spaceship would have more internal volume relative to a submarine (if not by a huge amount) because its 'armour' does not have to be structural.
Another thing people often do not realise is that submarines are double hulled. They have two hulls, the outer hull is essentially there to give the submarine a hydrodynamically efficient shape and is NOT watertight. The inner hull is the pressure hull and forms the structure of the submarine. The space between the hulls is used for some things like many of the ballast tanks and that sort of thing, but even so the double hulled nature again eats into internal volume for systems.
@@alganhar1
In the sci-fi world I made up, the naval ships are double-hulled. There's a larger armored section, a smaller pressurized section and in between them are things that don't need air or consistant servicing.
Star Trek (et al) even calls its guided munitions "torpedoes", a nod so obvious that it's easy to miss. A torpedo isn't limited to submarines, but it's a weapon that only works underwater, named after a fish. It's in the same territory.
I have a science fiction story concept where an alien race refers to torpedoes as 'hounds' because their planet doesn't have as much an oceanic maritime tradition and were less apt to name things after fish. Their starships are even built along the lines of airships where Deck One is the bottommost deck and they work their way up to the top of the hull.
Modern naval surface ships still carry deck-mounted torpedo launchers. Point the turret in the general direction of the submarine- you’d use the guns or guided missiles for a surface ship - and they get popped over the gunwale with the on-board homing system taking care of fine adjustments as it zipped off to do its job.
Great video. I'd maybe give a nod to DS9's 'For the Uniform' - nothing particularly sub-like going on in the actual starship manoeuvres, but having the computer fried requiring everyone to do everything manually, and say it out loud as they're doing it, I felt really gave an old school sub feel to the bridge scenes.
especially with Nog relaying everything to the engine room in order to handle things like impulse and warp propulsion settings.
Balance Of Terror is hands down one of the best episodes of Star Trek.
Space Battlship Yamato had a ship that hid in a paralel dimension. Even had a periscope that could reenter real space.
I remember watching another video a few years ago talking about how submarine films were used as an inspiration for the sound design of Star Trek TOS
I liked it in the clone wars you pointed out that Anakin is using the same tactic in Red October as a way to get rid of your enemy baiting the missiles, I hope it that does not become an overused cliche in the future. If it is used it as a overused cliche it's going to get old very soon. 😀
If the tactic works, why change it? In a way, it forces all parties to plan around the most hare-brained gambits one can imagine.
Here is a direct example from WW2. USS Laffey would never normally stand a chance against the IJN Hiei, but the skipper of the Destroyer skidded practically yards from the broadside. The Hiei could not gets its large rifles down low enough to hit Laffey. Laffey summarily raked the bridge tower and quite handily wounded the admiral commanding that battlegroup. The Laffey didn't survive the encounter, of course, due to the escorts Hiei had, but that attack probably shook up quite a few Japanese higher ups for a moment.
Another example was in Midway. Nautilus tied up Arashi long enough for Arashi to make a full flank dash back to Kido Butai, only to drag along a lot of prowling SBD waiting to drop their bombs on flattops. Nautilus came away from the cat and mouse game without harm. Kido Butai did not.
There are *a lot* of things considered funny business in the naval tactics department.
It is really silly, since torpedos are way more mobile then even a fighter.
@@seancarroll9849 the Laffey’s move was repeated in the opening of the Destroyermen book series during the Second Battle of the Java Sea. The destroyers Walker and Mahan are facing the Japanese battlecruiser Amagi. A Mahan crewmember suggests coming up right alongside the Amagi, too close for its long-range heavy guns. The goal isn’t to hurt the battlecruiser but to get past it to make it into a small squall that might allow the destroyers to escape. And escape they do… just not in the way they could’ve ever imagined
This wouldn't work in real submarine warfare since most submarine launched torpedoes have a 180° auto shutdown. Sure you can wire guide it past the shutdown window but as soon as the wire is cut it'll shutdown, to the best of my knowledge that's not something that can be bypassed either and the wire is relatively short for the range of the torpedo.
I feel like one that was missed is the nx-01 enterprise, that entire series and wspecially the 3rd season feels very submariney
I remember an online article years ago that discussed the three types of naval warfare: aerial, surface and submarine. Of the three, submarine warfare was believed to be the closest equivalent to ships fighting in space
I do love when writters remember these connections and use them.
The SNW episode was great in how to write this into a story much like Wrath of Kahn
Space battleship Yamato actually had a submarine like vessel. You should break it down, along with the other space battleship Yamato ships
Funny thing is a part of this similarity also exist in real life as astronauts train underwater for actual spacewalks
I'm surprised you didn't bring up Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (AKA Starblazers) as there is literally a submarine warfare episode of a ship that travels through a pocket dimension like sub, hell the Yamato has even gone underwater in another episode.
I have a massive blindspot around anime.
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
Let not forget that the original anime also had the Dimensional Submarine. At least the ones in 2199/2202/2205 are arguably the hardest space submarines to destroy as they going into another dimension space so the only weapons that can go through different dimensions can hit it or you can go for the Periscope like the the Yamato crew did.
Absolutely. That's the first thing I thought of when I saw this vid's title.
@@hoojiwana Maybe it's time to star looking into some of the references we put here.
@@joao_goncalves I agree
A very informative video.
Another instance of submarine inspired warfare is in the DS9-episode "The Search, Part I".
In that one, the Defiant not only cloaks but also shuts down most of its systems (in essence silent running) to avoid two Jem'Hadar warships using antiproton beams (in essence sonar) to scan for her.
I love the Space Engineers music. My favorite space building game.
The best example of this are the battles in 'Wraith of Khan' 🥰
Taking crews from submarines would be best option for getting experienced manpower into ships.
If you had to fill the rosters of 10 ships it would be the most practical along with NASA/military airmen.
Three of my favorite submarine movies are Crimson Tide, U-571 and Down Periscope.
Down Periscope and Operation Petticoat are the most accurate submarine movies. There was a French submarine movie made a few years ago "Call of the Wolf" I think that was damned accurate. Almost every other submarine movie in existence has more fantasy than fact.
I built a Sci-Fi setting for a story and game I wrote years ago, where all space travel was done in a way that was like submarines. The only way to reliably move fast, especially at FTL speeds, is to warp gravity around the ship. The only way to keep that from ripping a ship apart is to encase the entire ship in a bubble and move the bubble. But because that bubble bends all light and radiation around it, nobody outside can see it and nobody inside the bubble can see out. So you have to move, 'surface', look around, then move again. The only way to fight in space is to get your ships close enough for their bubbles to touch and merged, or to hit their bubble with any of a variety of gravity weapons that can pierce into the bubble, or disrupt their engines and pop it.
How can you not even mention Balance of Terror? Totally based on The Enemy Below, a submarine/surface ship war film. The Enterprise plays the cruiser and the Bird of Prey is the U-Boat.
I really like the way Starsector incorporated submarine elements into it's gameplay. It's normally a fairly conventional is highly nuanced 2D real-time fleet combat game, but there are 'phase ships', which can make themselves incorporeal by dipping into a subdimension. Doing this they can move through enemy fire, underneath enemies and just in general move with near complete freedom. While submerged or 'in phase' they also experience time dilation, making the world around the ship move slower (or when viewed from outside, move way faster once submerged). While perhaps counter-intuitive at first, it lends them a really fun and dangerous ambusher feel, where phase ships slip between combat lines and deliver precision strikes at exposed targets or peel off supporting ships. The downside to this powerful phase diving ability is a lack of shields, which are otherwise vital for longevity and survivability in direct combat, as well as the ship building flux (essentially heat) while in phase, meaning they can't hide forever and if they stay under for too long they will be too stressed to fight once they surface. The time-dilation effect is very powerful, but also a double-edged sword because they run out of performance time much faster than other, more conventional ships.
In-lore phase ships are exotic technology, not alien but might as well be to the layman. A stay aboard a phase ship is a miserable experience, exposure to the coils that facilitate the effect has adverse effects on the mental state of the crew. As such Phase ships are primarily used by either the Tri Tachyon Corporation, which invented the tech and thus knows it best, or pirates, when they can get their hands on one, since the ships hit-and-run burst-damage playstyle and mental-stressing lore fit them well.
Such a great video! I've long noticed the similarities between submarine tactics and Starship tactics. The classic fight scene in the Mutara Nebula in ST:WOK is just the most obvious but as you so ably showed in this excellent video, SciFi is replete with so many examples.
Well done - Such an excellent video!!
Maritime history combined with stellar travel and tactics! He-yeah!!!
I'm at least convinced that engines are way more explosive than operational bridges. A comment was made that it was kind of stupid not to fire at will at ship bridges. I disagree.
I really liked the way The Expanse handled combat in space. They really thought about how it likely would play out realistically.
1. Stuff flies indefinitely until it hits something (c) Newton 2. You can't use windows - stuff is happening at least hundreds kilometers away
Regarding the "lure the torpedo into the attacker" scene from Hunt for Red October:
In the original novel they don't do that, and I kind of wish they'd kept the original version for the movie because it's frankly a lot more badass.
They _ram_ the attacking Alfa.
Another great episode. Just binge listened the sojourn. Brilliant work!
I've always said that the hunt for red October is my second most favorite star trek movie
I wish writers would draw inspiration from eras of naval warfare besides the 20th or the age of sail. One I think is greatly under appreciated is the age of ironclads, which ran from the 1850s to the 1890s. In that, armor technology had outpaced gun technology so much that practically every large fighting ship had to be fitted with a ram bow since that would be the only way it could harm a similarly large enemy ship.
Another would be naval warfare in the age of antiquity. That revolved around boarding the enemy ships and engaging them in melee combat, while ranged weapons such as bows and flamethrowers were used to soften the enemy before boarding.
I'd actually love to see more shows normalize boarding strategies. You could even combine the two and make it where since armor tech so overpowered that it could take hours to actually fully break through the armor so the goal is to create openings in the enemy ship for boarding parties to use. And the goal of a battle is mainly to have your boarders disable enemy ships or capture the bridge.
@@Nostripe361 maybe this could be a viable application of shields. The shields could be so strong that ranged weapons can't penetrate, and depleting the power supply that runs the shields could take weeks. Therefore the only effective strategy would be to board the enemy ship. Perhaps some form of shield ram could be used to put a hole in the enemy shield to allow boarding. Then once the ship is boarder, the boarding parties will either capture or sabotage the ship.
When I talk about how a submarine operates; makes it's own oxygen, cleans out the CO2, scrubs CO and hydrogen from the air, uses electrostatic precipitators to remove dust and solids from the atmosphere, makes potable water, feedwater for the propulsion system and distilled water for oxygen production, along with the myriad of other unique procedures and processes that constitute an operational nuclear-powered submarine they're amazed. And that's without the classified bits that I'm prohibited from talking about.
A modern nuclear submarine really is the sci-fi fantasy ship of most people's imagination.
I love the cheekiness of Yamato's "Sub-Space Submarines"
The anime Starship Operators has an episode dedicated to fighting a 'space submarine'. Its essentially an extremely stealthy ship that can get close and deliver a devastating strike. Most of the episode deals with coming up with a way to negate it stealth.
I just remembered this show. Its been decade and a half since I last watched it. I just barely remember it since its been so long but I do remember that their was a whole episode on a space submarine and the Earth ships using a frightening laser barrage to basically cook their enemies in their own ship.
You forgot the balance of terror with Kirk and the enterprise playing a game of deadly hide and seek with a romulan bird of prey with the romulan captain using debrey to fool Kirk and the enterprise using it phasers like depth charges to try damage it quarry although the bird of prey did become visible to attack
Soooo right, I wandered if someone had remembered that one
Space Engineers Music in the background is a nice touch.
Space: Above and Beyond had an episode call Mutiny where a cargo ship his being hunted by alien ship in a very submarine like engagement.
The book "Yesterday's Children" (1972) by author David Gerrold (TOS: Trouble with Tribbles) is one of my favourite military scifi books. It deals with the psychological distress of submarine seek & destroy warfare as reimagined in outerspace. Reads very much like a Star Trek script, I always thought of it as an off-canon take on the early Federation - Romulan wars.
OHHH We're gonna talk about the Gorn episode for sure!
On the size issue, I think that has more to do with how its probably easier to increase the size of a starship to be comfortable when you don't have worry about space crushing you due to positive pressure. For a starship the bigger issues would be having enough resources and ability to produce power for a larger ship specially if you have some sort of Star trek integrity fields or inertial dampener. I could also see space being saved by using gravity to store things on the roof so you don't need as much space for storage of supplies.
Honestly I've only seen them aim for it being claustrophobically small when they are trying to be stealthy or something.
Ringo's Into the Looking Glass quartet, with the ASS Vorpal Blade as perfect example.
7:08 “above” is such a relative term in space though…as unlike a sub…you can just rotate along your x-axis and roll over to bring guns to bear rather than manoeuvring to get into a different position
I absolutely adore The Hunt for Red October! I cannot recommend it strongly enough to those that haven't seen it.
Now you have me wanting to kitbash a Typhoon with thrusters and turrets.
Seeing all these comments giving more examples makes me hope for a Part 2. 😊
He’ll yes!
I always thought “The Hunt for Red October” would be great Star Trek, with the Enterprise-A taking on the Dallas roll.
Yes, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that "Cat and Mouse" takes straight from "Hunt for the Red October"
Didn't know you guys liked Hunt for Red October. I love that movie.
Having sleek stealth ships just chilling out in enemy territory for first strike capability is just neat.
Back when I thought I was going to create a space opera, I did do some limited reading about what subs are like because I could see the similarities. If it makes sense, some of what I was considering was that at least one sort of sensors used exactly the same sort of display as a sonar does.
If you're interested, I called it tachion radar. The idea is that tachions are spontanious created, travel for a while and then decay. They can only be detected when they interact with a high-energy plasma, and even then only subtly. A percentage of them can be absorbed by something large or dense enough. So, what you see is shadows in the tachion field. Any shadow you see you know the direction of, but because if something is close, but not dense it can look like something far away but very dense, you have to figure out if you're looking at a planet many light-days away or a ship a few light minutes. And the best computer only got you to this point, so you need a thinking person to make a guess of what it is (which will then give you a guess as to its distance), ask the computer to track it and then change its identification if it does something unusual. I thought it was clever.
I actually want to point out the reason behind submarine warfare and space combat being similar is how efficient the sensors are.
Modern passive sonar can detect things underwater very far away and with computer analysis, result in very precise resolution. This is very similar to radar and IR sensor in space when there is no atmosphere to scatter the electromagnetic wave. In short the ships both underwater and in space will require a lot of passive sensor masking, or in simple term stealth technology just to stay alive.
Submarine space battles are the best. Pity you rarely see them these days.
Great video I can see the similarities between space battles and fiction and real world naval battles underwater. 👍
It's so funny. I was reading into submarines because of my passion for sci fi shows. I always wanted to create my own spaceship and I always see myself looking back at submarines. Whats so funny about that? I mean, this video came out pretty much at the exact moment, I was sure, my next build in space engineers would be a submarine build.
Love this kind of ship battle it adds just a whole new level to ship combat.
Although it has been a few years since I have seen it, I seem to remember that the Wing Commander movie also has some sub influences.
And of course, if you want to go to books, John Ringo's Looking Glass series, where they actually converted an Ohio-class sub into a space ship.
@@ICU1337 Right down to having Jurgen Prochnow as Captain, hiding from a 'depth charge' run in asteroid canyons; and then having someone yell "Fire in the battery room!"
The original series Star Trek episode Balance of Terror is probably the best example of a submarine inspired battle in space. The cloaking device didn't make the Romulan ship completely impossible to detect but close enough as to make it very hard to find and track. Just like a real sub, it gave away its position when it fired or tried to move too quickly. There was literally a point where the battle turned into a waiting game just like in real life submarine battles during WWI and WWII in which a sub had to remain still and quiet in order to go undetected and the first captain to make a move set off the fighting again.
One thing that seems to be sorely lacking is taking advantage of three dimensions. There's no reason for spaceships to be fighting in more or less the same plane. On Earth, submarines are subject to gravity, which is why they don't move directly vertically, at least not intentionally, and gravity also leads to thermal gradients that affect sensors. Even in The Wrath of Khan, Kirk was still thinking two dimensionally because the Enterprise moved back up into the plane where Reliant was moving instead of shooting at the bottom from below. We did see a tiny bit of this in All Good Things when Riker comes out of warp in Dreadnaught Enterprise above the Klingon ship and shoots through the upper hull. I suspect part of the problem is these days a lack of experience on the part of animators makes the scenes difficult to animate but sticking to the same plane is more familiar.
There is a ship in the Alpha phase game "Star Citizen" that is meant to be a stealth recon/scout ship that is very sub inspired. The Terrapin is even described as "coming up for air" when it has to retract some of it's armor plating to vent heat that get's trapped when it's in stealth mode. Whenever I think of subs and space ships, my mind goes to two of my favorite things to watch when I was young, The Flight of the Navigator movie, and the SeaQuest DSV tv show. But, the Terrapin from Star Citizen is my new favorite sci-fi ship because I feel like it could actually be both a space ship and a sub with no problem in a single mission.
Glen Cook's novel Passage at Arms is literally a submarine analog in space. The parallels between it and other war fiction like Das Boot are uncanny.
Not sure if somebody else mentioned this, but there was an episode from the original Star Trek series that borrowed heavily from a 1958 movie called, "Run Silent, Run Deep". The movie is about a WW2 US Navy submarine, and there is a climactic battle with a Japanese sub near the end of the movie. Many of the plot elements of this sub vs sub battle show up in the plot of a battle between the Enterprise and a Romulan star ship in the Star Trek episode.
hey did you know? any spaceship with a cloaking device and/or subdimensional phase shifting tech is basically a space submarine! very stealthy and hard to hit!
The most obvious example is the TOS episode Balance of Terror. It is a WW2 submarine movie in space with all of the usual tropes and plot points present and correct. Multiple scenes are lifted straight from those old submarine movies.
In the stellaris mod "gigastrucular engineering", the katzen, a unique mid game crisis specifically balanced around gigasturctures absurdity, have a literal soace submarine, which can "dive" into sub space to bypass FTL inhibitors and bastions, and super long range torpedoes to take out enemy's without the risk of being counterattacked.
Theres also the blokats, which have there super ships shielding warped through several sub space dimensions, thus causing only a tiny fraction of the ships shields to be exposed at any one time, unable to be penetrated by any weapon you can bring to bear, even a supermassive black hole gun. You beat it by utilising a sub space super nuke to blast the shield though all sub space dimensions simultaneously, then Amove several system craft against the blokats super ship for a rapid flawless victory.
You forgot the one TOS Episode that is about sub hunting. The Balance of Terror. The USS Enterprise (destroyer) hunts a new class of Romulan ship equipped with a cloaking (submarine) device.
Lots of studies done by NASA in the 60's on US Navy submarine crews to study what extended spaceflight might be like.
you forgot "Balance of Terror" from star Trek TOS.
That entire battle between the enterprise and the romulan bird of prey was pretty much a cat mouse game between a destroyer and a submarine... with both depending on stealth, on passive sensors, on hiding.
Though my fav was a hyper "realistic" space combat style in a comic called "Albedo". It followed pure Newtonian physics for space combat, which would be SOOO boring to watch on tv, as an engagement between 2 ships could last... hours or even days. Engagement ranges might be as far as several light minutes apart. Ships at that range would open up with... essentially huge missiles. these would burn towards the target either expending 90% of their fuel or 40% of their fuel depending on profile.
If ammo was limited, they could be set to expend 40% of their fuel on the aceleration, use up to 20% on the attack run, then spend the remaining 40% to decelerate and come to a stop, so they could be recovered. These had no warheads on them usually, as well, nukes are pretty useless in space as there is no air to create a shockwave... so they just used pure kinetic impact.
Combat would pay out like this. both ships would fire their missiles. then... the crews would kill time, go have dinner, go to sleep, what ever, cuz it would often take up to 6 hours... for the missiles to make it half way there. At the half way point, some missile would slam into each other, those that missed would continue on to the enemy ship. At this point both ships would assess the "initial impacts" here they would decide if they wanted to launch more missile to intercept the incoming... OR more missiles at the enemy ship. either way, the next intercepts might happen 2 hours later... If either ship launched more missiles, if not... 4-5 hours later the ships begin their evasive maneuvers, point defense guns try and shoot down incoming missiles, which is a lot harder then it would seem, again, no warheads so many had fairly heavy "noses" to inflect is much damage on inpact. even if they are shot down, fragments could still rip through a ship. now its damage control and evaluation phase... repair your ship tend to the injured that can actually be helped... and... try and figure out if the enemy ship has been crippled, killed, or is still a threat. and decide if you need to launch more missiles again.
the reality of combat like this is... there was always a chance both ships would be wiped out.
The reason that the inside of spaceships is more, well, spacious is because firstly, you don't have crushing pressure to deal with. You have atmospheric pressure versus the pseudo vacuum of space. That's a big difference. 3 ft of water is more pressure than atmospheric. The other reason is because a lot of the things on board a starship get more efficient the bigger they get. UA-camr Isaac Arthur, SFIA is his channel, goes into detail in regards to scale. So while the bigger your vessel the more absolute material you require, the more efficiently you can put it to work because you have so much goddamn internal volume to work with. It's basically the construction equivalent of buying in bulk.
Actually - 34 feet of water (fresh) is closer to atmospheric standard (14.7psi). Salt water changes this a bit.
As for psi vs spacecraft skin - 14.7 psi pressing out makes for some panels that need to be very well designed if they are too large. The differential pressure for an aircraft at altitude runs about 5 psi - which when you factor that out means that a seat window in an airliner (60 sq in?) is running with about 300 pounds pressing out on it... heavy...
Clone Wars' Cat & Mouse is definitely one of my favorite "Space Submarine" sequence.
The rather obscure 1999 film "Wing Commander" is so unapologetically "Submarines in Space". As a kid I thought it was kind of cool, but I can't actually remember if it's a good film or not.
I love David Weber's Honorverse series of books. The intrigue and unique take on propulsion and defensive tech is very refreshing. They're definitely worth a look if anyone is looking for a new series to dive into.
I mean, there wasn't much "looking out the window" in The Expanse either!
This "submarine style" of space combat was always my preferred approach, and was opne of the specific reason why i gravitated towards the "Star Trek" school of writing space battles, rather than the "Star Wars" approach of high-adrenaline fighter combat. Watching and re-watching the Battle of the Mutara Nebula in ST:TWOK is a treasured, childhood geek memory.
That, alas, is precisely why I was so angry to hear JJ Abrams pooh-pooh this approach to writing space battles in the DVD features for the reboots, despite being one of the new films' defenders: he was literally throwing out what I liked the most.
Mass Effect's own Flagship, the Normandy is by far the best example of this. It's explicitly designed to mimic submarines in a universe where mass drivers enable long-range combat, by allowing it to shunt it's own emissions for hours at a time, all the while operating a high-endurance drive core that requires little "discharging" of static energies.
You can shut down an Admiral who attempts to dismiss your ship as a lemon by explicitly referencing submarines, and he actually admits the similarity.
In the second game, you are able to dock with a hostile station uncontested, simply because the synthetic race operating it has no need for visual sensors.
You might be interested in watching the anime "Starship Operators". It has some great physics based space combat that would be up your alley.
Perhaps you could take a look at military aviation influence as well? The expanse's combat takes a lot from BVR combat methods, for example.
Bulk of the sci-fi is already inspired by military aviation (WW2-era)
I recall Wing Commander having a literal silent running to avoid space depth charges scene.
3:07 While the Ragnar Station run in BSG 2004 was modeled after the Thor's Twins run in "The Hunt for Red October," the same scene in the original BSG 1978 was based on the the parting of the Red Seas scene in "The Ten Commandments," as the BSG 1978 pilot/movie plot was a retelling of that Universal Studios classic. Also, let's not forget the BSG 2004 episode where Adama retakes his ship from the mutineers, which borrows heavily from another great submarine movie, "Crimson Tide."
Pike: Mr. Spock, give me 1 ping only.
Spock: Sir, this is highly illogical...
Pike: Spock, 1 ping only.
If you haven't seen Hunt for Red October, see it. Now.
Star Trek Fleet Command really short changed everyone's upper arms.
IN WHICH SPACEDOCK DESCENDS DEEP INTO NAVAL GAZING.
Had a really good laugh over the creative segue. :) Sometimes a bit of self-aware honesty in production is the best solution. Oh, and the rest of the video was enjoyable too!
Also the bridge of a star destroyer with the sailors sitting left and right while the captain moves in the center.
Someone in the comments already mentioned it but I'll back them up and say the ST:TOS episode "Balance of Terror" is probably the closest direct draw from submarine warfare, when the Enterprise engages a cloaked Romulan warbird.
Another sci-fi franchise that draws a surprising amount from submarine warfare would be the Mass Effect series, in-game they describe how much actual combat is fought exclusively with sensors and not visuals, which is why the Normandy's stealth systems are so important.