Babylon 5 and The Expanse did a pretty good job with more realistic space battles without making them boring. The Expanse even regarded gravity and momentum in a detailed manner and the weapons were more down-to-earth. Also Firefly had a realistic depiction of space (no sound, no fixed plane, no warp drive - but also no real space battles). Edit: but Star Wars looks cool though.
I'm addicted to the Expanse at the moment. It really stands out from other Sci-Fi Series because it's one of the few Sci-Fi Francises that gets Space Warfare & the Physics right and aren't afraid of the audience not understanding anything, while other sci-fi series' dumb things down just for the sack of simplicity, it's like they think the audience is unable to understand simple physics.
+Some Random Guy The Expanse is absolutely fantastic. That space battle in the Season 2 opening last week was one of the best and most realistic space battles I have seen in my life.
one of the ways will be spies placing bombs on the inside of the ship to cause as much damage as possible and finding ways to puncture the space ship causing everyone on board to be sucked out into space or to freeze
So long as there are limited resources, and we love our children more than we love other people's children, we will have war. There is no other way - human nature demands that we protect the advantages of those we care about.
@@GamingTeaParty if that were the only reason for war then effective interstellar travel would give us access to enough new resources to end conflict. Unfortunately it's not.
I just want to say I love all the discussion going on in the comments about the finer details of space battle physics, as well as the recommendations for sci-fi series that treat it right. Thanks everyone!
It's Okay To Be Smart In series of books "Crest of the Stars", "Banner of the Stars" and "Fragments of the Stars" written by Hiroyuki Morioka, one of most powerful space nations, Abh Empire, uses laser weapons for close (dozens or hundreds of miles) encounters, Antimatter and Solid Projectile Railguns for medium range (hundreds of thousands of miles) and Antimatter mines (simple computer, sensor array, couple of engines, time-space-field generator and an antimatter tank) for long range and tactical combat. Due the nature of insterstellar flight in this series (Interstellar travel is allowed by putting a ship inside a time-space-field and putting it inside of so called "Open Sord" - point of time-space that connects our universe with two-dimensional space, where normal physics is no longer applicable and only thing that allows spacecraft to even exist within that universe is said time-space-field, that consumes spaceship's fuel (antimatter) even, when ship isn't moving, staying for long in a flatspace is a bad idea), space combat in interstellar space happens only in really close distances (we are talking about mere kilometers, which is crazy! But they have to deal with it), so laser weaponry (which does act like real life lasers and not pew-pew thingies) is mostly used for point-defence against enemy mines and Mines are only reliable weapons, that can be used in a long-range combat. Studio Sunrise made a semi-decent anime adaptation of this series of books (not all of them, however), but they just had to put some Star-Wars-like stuff in it (Pew-pew-pew laser guns, and during orbital encounter with enemy ships, which are described in book as three distant star-like dots on a main ship's display, they've put three ships of a normal size in a somewhat superclose distance...). Still, this book series is one of my favorite space-opera books, mostly in how hard author tried to make it more realistic than Star Wars and Star Trek.
It's Okay To Be Smart One thing that I realized is that the orbital mechanics are never right, either. A, spacecraft move like airplanes: they are always applying an upward force which makes rolling a practical means of lateral translation and changing directions equivalent to braking; B, they always face wherever they're moving instead of accelerating as needed and then turning only to face enemy ships; and C, they just fly in the general direction of the enemy instead of actually performing orbital rendezvous procedures like planning an encounter and matching orbits by burning off the velocity difference.
Why aren't you wearing some kind of magical space garment to protect yourself from the gigantic g-force you experience every time you change direction while zipping through space at a relativistic velocity?
@@nahor88 Nott really, that was more so due to the art style (at the time) of the SNES era in which the characters were modeled after puppets. Later Star Fox games had all of the characters with non-amputated legs and instead in the player guide of SF64, it is explained that the Arwings are equipped with a mechanism called "G-diffusers" which gives the Arwings an edge for it's extreme handling controls.
Rail guns would be perfect for space combat. If you don't know, a rail gun uses high power electromagnets to accelerate a conductive projectile to tens of thousands of MPH.
Hologrampizza You realize of course that a The rail gun would operate as a rocket, driving the ship backwards with every shot. Then there is the travel time for the projectiles to reach the (moving?) target. Not sure that would be the perfect weapon for space combat. I think smart missiles might work better.
+Ansonidak The first problem could be solved with maneuvering rockets if the gun is side mounted, or using the main engines if the gun is mounted on the nose of the craft. The second problem could be solved by calculating the trajectory of the enemy craft. With so few variables in space, you could calculate and aim at your target's position several minutes in advance.
Hologrampizza I think you may be underestimating the effect of operating a large rail gun on a ship in space might be, or how effective any kinetic weapon system would be in space combat. It's comic book material IMO, like most space combat scenarios.
A general point on sound in space in science fiction: In space, particularly in a combat situation, situational awareness is kinda crucial - if an enemy is attacking you from an unexpected direction, the faster you can identify that direction, the better. There are a bunch of possible interfaces that could be used for conveying that information, most of which would require a lot of training to learn to interpret. One thing that could be used which would work with millions of years of evolution of an ability to track threats and other items of interest outside direct vision? You're ahead of me on this, aren't you? Yep - surround sound. You don't hear a TIE screaming past - you hear the cockpit computer's TIE sound effect coming from a virtual point source mimicking the TIE's motion.
I thought the same about his comments on balistic lasers being invisible.... Yeah, so there's a HUD overlay or some other quirky property of the canopy material, but most likely some HUD
But if you wanna keep that logic going, then at that point why keep human reactions in the loop at all? You don't need a surround sound system to alert the pilot; you don't need a pilot at all. No human could possibly react and make decisions better than AI. We already see some of it now, and it is a near certainty in future eras when space travel becomes common. (There were reports in 2022 of AI being unbeatable against human pilots in jet fighter simulators) So the argument can come all the way back around and still make sound effects unlikely in space, because there's no realistic situation where you need to simulate that for a human decision-maker. Human generals may be presented data and holographic simulations of the battlefield, but those don't seem to require fly-by sound effects.
@@lekhakaananta5864 There are also some arguments for not giving an autonomous AI weapons and sending it out to operate independently. If you're going to argue realism, you're probably not dealing with space fighter planes anyway, manned or otherwise - neither of the advantages of aircraft apply in space combat - on Earth, planes can see over the horizon (not an issue in space unless you're working very close to a planet), and they have the height advantage, being able to drop things on land and sea below, while their targets have to burn a lot of extra energy getting their defensive fire high enough to interact with the planes - in space, any ship type can find itself in a higher orbit.
I think space combat would actually look a lot like submarine warfare. There's no windows to look out of that can give you any useful information. Most of the targeting and shooting would be done by computers. If you want the drama of combat in space you should probably look to dramas of submarine warfare like The Hunt for Red October.
+Samuel Foreman This is probably about as true as it gets. Long distances and a lot of using your sensors (telescopes) to plot the bad guy's movement and plot your own weapons 'course' to intercept and destroy. You would only remove the stealthy aspect since in space everyone see's everyone.
I suspect stealth elements may be easier than you think. If they have the technology to field warships in space, they probably have technology that minimizes radar and other detection methods. It's easy to loose things in all that void. Science fiction has hand-waved bigger things than this for the sake of drama...
Samuel Foreman It's harder than you think. It's true radar returns can be reflected, etc, but you can't do anything about the heat you give off and everything is hotter than background space. IR detectors have come a long way and anything hotter than the background will have the potential to be detected if there is LOS between the detector and the object they're looking for. This method is also 100% passive and the target would have no idea it's been detected.
+Samuel Foreman The problem with space stealth is heat. Against the near absolute zero background temperature of space, even a ship with it's drive shut down is going to be lit up like a strobe light to infrared scanners just because the interior has to be heated to keep the crew alive, not to mention waste heat from the power source. And once you turn your engines on, everyone in the system is going to be able to see you with a good enough telescope.
Hunt For Red October is a good example of submarine warfare, but the german movie Das Boot offers a better example, and draws from actual historical sub fights.
"why is the inevitable outcome of human space exploration war?" Probably because most people would rather watch massive space battles then boring interstellar diplomatic negotiations.
Trepur349 What are you talking about? Humans will always need resources. Also, some resources will be easier and cheaper to extract than other resources, and people will still fight over that even when they are abundant. Also, there are many other reasons for war, for example feeding into a military industrial complex that makes money from it and pays politicians to start new wars and keep them going. Or just ideological differences. Or to gain power.
Sayuas Again, when you're technologically advanced enough for interstellar travel, there is no resource that you need. There is no resource extraction because they'll be getting energy from solar and heat power generated from stars.
Trepur349 Right, so they just extract metals, drinking water, food and all other resources that we need from "solar power". Also, you didn't address all the other reasons for wars that I talked about.
Babylon 5 got the physics of space battles pretty close. The fighter craft, Starfury is shown turning on its axis to fire at pursuing enemies while still heading on the same trajectory because of its initial thrust. The cockpit design is also good because it allows the pilot to see in 3 dimensions rather than being mounted on top like a jet fighter.
+Rowan J Coleman To be fair this isn't even the subject of the video, but cockpits are really unrealistic when it comes to any kind of spaceship. Radiation is a thing.
***** Well, transparilead would be better... Anyways, science fiction is really more about fiction than about science, what are we complaining about? xD
+Rowan J Coleman I also liked B5's cobra launch bays, flinging the starfury's clear of the station using its rotation, before firing thrusters. It also showed that when the Humans fought the Minbari, the tech difference was overwhelming. Bows and arrows against the lightning.
+Rowan J Coleman In really hard science most ships would be spheres. You need a dense material as the outer hull which would be heavy and expensive, so you're gonna go for the perfect relationship between surface and volume. Perry Rhodan consistently got at least that right, though they sometimes went and still go a bit crazy with their technobabble. www.rz-journal.de/Downl/465.jpg
I think Battlestar Galactica made some improvements in space battles. Well at least their fighters could rotate on their own axis to bring guns to bear on enemies behind them and not have to menuver like atmospheric fighters.
I recall on space battle scene on B5 where it was pointed out that the two sides in the conflict could be distinguished by the explosion of these ships as the two warring species required different atmospheres so the color of the exploding ships were different.
Okay, Physics REALITY time: #1) "Why am I blasting through the cosmos at full afterburner?" Well, you're not. Engine Efflux, or exhaust, will glow regardless of the power level because of the way the engine will likely need to work. If its an Ion based engine, the most likely design, you will probably want it at full power during combat, due to the speed shed during maneuvering and any drag forces affecting you; however if using a different system, the same still applies, because faster is, in fact, better in combat. Why do you think Yeager's breaking of the Sound Barrier was so important? If using a different system, since the rate of acceleration is based on the energy input into the thrust, it is possible to use full after-burners, so to speak, to make the journey faster; it all depends on how things balance out in the end. Its like driving a car; if your tank is approaching empty, some people speed up to reach the gas station faster. #2) "Explosive weapons are kinda useless..." Wrong on two counts. Number 1; an explosive doesn't necessarily need to consume Oxygen to explode; there are literally a million and one chemical reactions that can result in an explosion; Just off the top of my head, some potential fuels could be: Aluminum, Cesium, Magnesium....and those are just elements, not alloys, to which the number is far greater. And Number 2: Kinetic energy is not based on having a medium with which disperse its energy in three dimensions. A shaped explosive, detonated right against the hull, would still work in space, regardless of an atmosphere or not; and transfer the kinetic energy of the blast directly to the spacecraft. #3) "Nukes...." Correct, though unless the yield is around the gigaton mark, the vaporization radius would be about 1 meter per 50 kilotons, and the "melt" radius would be about 10 meters per 50 Kilotons; though keep in mind diminishing returns in a pure transference medium(space). If you waned to just melt a spacecraft, or cooks its crew with a nuke, you'd need a VERY large one, or dozens of smaller ones. #4) "Neutron Radiation could pass straight through spacecraft armor." Discarding the possibility of energy, particle and whatnot shield systems, there are actually substances that can absorb neutron radiation with ease. In fact, you have one in the pencil on your desk...... These materials have been used in nuclear reactors for decades, with great success. #5) "Lasers...." Correct; in fact, it is a 100% a dead end combat technology if you want to use it as a direct medium for causing damage. Waste of time and money. #6) "There is no atmosphere to dissipate all that heat...." /facepalm This one bugs me to no end. Heat = Infrared Radiation, which can not only travel in space, but can be detected from Hundreds of MILLIONS of light years away.... To absorb it, you need something made of matter, yes; but like a nuke's diminishing returns, it will disperse through space on its own. #7) "Close in, broadside, naval battles look cool, but....not gonna happen." Don't rule this one out. The greater the distance between two objects, the lower the accuracy of any weapon fired. You touch upon this in your Earth+Europa example, but reach a wildly wrong conclusion. What is much more likely, its combat will indeed be close in, within 10 Km, to ensure higher accuracy and lower diminishing returns on certain weapons(like lasers!). If two planetary objects, like the Earth and Europa, were firing at each other, well, then their leaders are idiots. Such objects are too easy to predict where they are, thus are BAD places to base combative weapons. Ship based weapon platforms are much more likely, and enable a greater range of strategies than just: "Calculate orbit, time differential, and FIRE!" Though you have put a good deal of effort into this video, you have made some mistakes. Fortunately, you didn't make the same mistakes a few others have made....even one multi million dollar documentary got about 99% of its conclusions wrong.
steven ratmansky My pleasure :) Actually, this isn't the first time I've done this; far too many people look at science fiction and space battles as "impossible" and totally forget the way things actually work. For that reason, I LOVE the show Battlestar Galactica remake; its by far the most realistic example of what space combat and spacecraft in general will be built like.
Lukemage The interesting thing about point #7 is that it suggests a reason why full-scale space war would be unlikely: Unless you have one hell of a planetary defense system or the ability to move your entire war machine (population, industry, etc.) onto mobile bases, your civilization is always going to be a sitting duck. So is your opponent's. Any two space-faring capable of engaging in warfare on that scale would thus end up in a state of Mutually Assured Destruction. You might have skirmishes or proxy wars, but no one would want to risk escalating to the point where you are flinging asteroids at each other's planets.
#1) Speed is actually irrelevant is space combat other than for determining where the fighting actually takes place. _Accelleration_ is important. Which is why you want something beefier than an Ion drive in a fight. mm/s2 doesn't make for much dodging. #2) Well, the only explosive that use an external oxidizer is FAE bombs. But other than that, yeah, explosives work just fine as long as you're not relying on a shockwave (fragmentation, or shaped charge). #3-4) You need quite a bit of C (or H) to stop the Neutron flux of a decent nuke. But if you build your ship smart your handy little fuel tanks will do the job. ;-) #5) Arguable. _Current_ lasers aren't up to doing that. It's theoretically possible to get throughputs way, way higher than that. In a few centuries it's likely that practical weapon lasers are commonplace. #6) Cooling a spacecraft is horrible work. Radiative cooling is the worst way possible to do it, and the only way possible in space. When you end up needing square miles of radiators you end up without a practical warship... #7) Dependent on engine and weapon capabilities. With practical lasers you'll be shooting at 1000's of km. Without practical lasers your best bet is probably missiles with shaped charge/Casaba howitzer nuke heads. Again very long range. 10's of km is if the enemy's defenses is tougher than your long-range firepower - and you're fast enough (accelleration + delta-V) to force an engagement.
Well, you may be able to go faster at full afterburner, but outside of an emergency it's a terribly inefficient waste of fuel when the inertia will get you there eventually on its own.
My favourite space combat book series is The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell. The detail and realism of the battles and ships is terrific. The limitations of the speed of light are addressed in almost every action so realistically. I would highly recommend it for any fan of space combat.
Because you have oxygen and a regulated pressure in there. If it was space, you would blow up inside your ship because your body produces enough pressure to even out with the atmosphere pressure on Earth. Now take that body pressure moving to the outside in space and you have a human blown to smithereens because there is no pressure in space.
+SansYT This is not true human skin is more than elastic enough to handle a 1 atm pressure difference lets face it in reality every one of us already knows this since diving down to 20m in water doesn't cause the water pressure to tear through your skin. But if logic alone isn't enough to convince you then bear in mind that at least one person has survived at least 30 seconds exposure to a vaccum equal to that of space during a NASA space suit test where the suit failed in a vaccum chamber. The survivor unsurprisingly was in no way exploded thus the surviving part sure they received a number of issues but nothing so dramatic or fatal. No actual exposure to vaccum would be a somewhat slower and crueller end than you make out the ultimate cause of death will be plain and simple suffocation though the injuries sustained while not fatal in themselves they would induce severe agony.
Seraphina S is correct. Skin is one of the most elastic substances in the world, even says so in the Bible that Moses tied his ass to a tree and walked 30 miles!
I am pretty sure Joe Haldemans book The Forever War had a very realistic aproach to space battles. They were fought over hundreds of years, one small projectile being fired and reaching it target 30 years later.
In the novel they don't see anything coming, because the projectiles are microscopic (at nearly the speed of light, their impact has still the energy of a nuke). If the crew notices, they are pursued by an enemy ship, all they can do is to get into high-pressure chambers supporting the body against acceleration and than the ships computer is doing evasive maneuvers at nearly 100 Gs. It is a really scary scenario and the soldiers are completely dependent on the technology. They could die in an instand and there is nothing they can personally do against it.
Absolutely. The main thing missing from every movie space battle is the fact that it would all be handled by computers. Even today, aircraft fighter systems are capable of automatically identifying approaching enemy by their engine signatures and launching active homing weapons all beyond visual range. The "death blossom" battle mode in "The Last Starfighter" comes close to what it might look like. Yes, the limitation will be the ability of the human crew to stand the computer-driven roller coaster.
I'm an engineer and I totally understand what you're stating BUT the battles are SO COOL! :P lol I think we will still fight in space it will just be very different from "Star Wars" and FAR more limited. I have this feeling human nature will not change in outer space, if we ever get there for real, someone is bound to want more. P.S. Think of all those shows that already had us living in space by now...
For anyone that doesnt understand physics in space, it would be so confusing and offputting. I would like to see a tungsten magnetic projectile be launched from 100s of kilometers away tho
I believe that space battles will be like this: Fighters will fire short bursts with engines and their weapons will be rail guns. (Rail guns are real. Search it up.) Present-day rail guns are already powerful, and by the time there's space battles, they will be even more powerful. In later years, plasma cannons containing unstable plasma will be used. The sheer energy needed for light travel will make it hard for it to be implemented into battles. Instead, warships will use bigger engines, and like fighters, use short bursts from their engines. The result will be battles fought with enemies far away. If this gets enough likes I'll talk about the designs and tactics for space battles and space warships.
I'm looking forward to the Expanse series (the first season just ended). I've read the books, and the space battles are quite ... different from what we're used to watch. Ships generate some sort of SF-y "thrust gravity" which means that a ship HAS to accelerate in order to generate artificial gravity, and in close combat this means that ships sometimes pull out as much as 12 or 14 G in order to avoid projectiles... which in turn would render a person unconscious if it weren't for the force-absorbing gels and hormone injections. Projectiles are ballistic, rely on the same propulsion as ships and are shot from tens of thousands of miles away, which means it can take DAYS for a torpedo to get from one ship to another. Communications are a mess, just like the 18th century naval battles you mentioned. It can take 40+ minutes to get feedback about a battle, which is quite frustrating in the thick of action :)
Most earthling screen writers don't have a clue how space battles are actually fought, but the Anime series "Starship Operators" gets them surprisingly right. Long-distance battles between ships (similar to earthlings' over-the-horizon marine warfare), no sound in space, more or less correct handling of inertia, as well as an emphasis on every space engineer's main problem : Heat dissipation.
The anime series, " Legend of the Galactic Heroes" does put a lot more stock in science as well such as slow communications due to the expanse of space, and including an interesting use of gravity concerning large objects in warfare. Though I am still willing to bet that not everything concerning physics in the show was entirely spot-on.
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Zogg I miss your videos! They are so awesome, also why didn't you finish the series on No Edge?
Jan Cillié Louw I will. But alas, I'm on another near-lightspeed trip right now, so it will take a while in your timeframe. [Off-character explanation: I've a lot of work right now, but I'll finish the third part as soon as I've more time.]
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Great can't wait, me and my fellow second year theoretical physics friend enjoy all your videos tremendously.
How you could do six minutes on the foibles of physics in modern sf media and not discuss how Babylon 5 is the only show that got it *right*, I have no idea.
***** Yeah, the magic shields suck a lot out of Star Trek's combat - I remember watching some major engagement in Deep Space Nine with shot after shot being harmlessly neutralised by the enemy shields, and my dominant emotional response being boredom, and comparing it to what B5 did with its battles, where any shot on target meant chunks of enemy ship taking heavy damage...
Tiwaking Tiwaking Yeah, the magic shields and fist-fights on the planet below worked well for the smaller, more isolated stories of the original series - not so well for the always-connected Federation of Next Generation and later, where it was routine to be able to call upon a fleet when in need rather than meeting other first-rate starships only rarely when not at base...
The "starfury" fighter craft from Babylon 5 address a lot of the flaws you mention. In fact, according to JMS, there was some NASA involvement in their design (can't remember if it was before hand, or afterwards, giving them kudos for well thought out work). They use their momentum to great advantage, using directional thrusters to spin around on their axis while still moving forward so they can fire at the enemy behind them.
*It is interesting that so many people are discussing the finer details of space battles and passing over the concept we learned from Hollywood(TV and films) that battles(particularly space battles) are a mainstay of plot devices. This is because war - and the good chance of dying - is dramatic. *So, stories of life in space follow the same old garden path as pre-spaceflight movies(and TV) that warfare is a standard plot device. The reason no stories about normal life in space were ever popularized is that the editors of sci-fi mags and book publishers told writers they didn't want stories about normal life in space. *Using words like"I'm not gonna pay for this idyllic swill, get me some drama, I want space battles, gimme some action!" the norms we accept came from middle-aged men who wanted to sell product. Paying attention to what people wanted came later, all he could know anything from was what sold. Also space story details were mixed with other genres that sold, so we get space romances, space detectives, and space zombies. *Also, it's great to see so many critiquing old space films and TV series. This means there are lots of people knowing details to criticize the writers/producers of those old shows(and Boy, do I ever wish you had a TARDIS to go hit Irwin Allen with pepper spray or a Tazer!) and so the higher standards means we get to see a bit more realism. *But the main selector of plausible science detail is still the producers, and their limitations are knowledge, and the money to produce the work - which often comes from others - who may want to influence the story(or the science). *If Humans ever encounter another race of space-faring intelligent life, we had better hope it's not one that is experienced in real space warfare. And that they won't think we're good to eat.
Why would Aliens eat us? Considering that it would take a long time to travel through space they would surely have the means of producing food to keep themselves alive. Also eating us can come with the risk of contracting diseases that could kill them. And surely they would have more of a preference for artificial food which would be more healthy and taster than us. Also eating other species would likely garner them a bad reputation with other species.
Alex Mckillmore I think a lot of these are on how beginning era of space flights would go because of our low tech, as he compared us to being like colonial style battling. However later on perhaps when the technology is greater, there's always the fact of manipulating physics to actually achieve space battles as you'd envision.
Alex Mckillmore He didnt say that we couldnt, just that it would be highly unlikely, due to the fact that it would be so freaken hard and so much trouble that people would probably just say the hell with it. I mean come one, what we going to shoot at each other. Bullets would be useless, so would rockets or any other type of rocket propelled weapons or any weapons that use any sort of combustion to do its destruction. Cause in space theres no air, no air, no fire, no fire, no explosion. We would have to baisiclly resort to lobbing rocks at each other, unless someone found a way to practically made lasers more effective and less huge then they would have to be as of right now to do any real damage to a large object such as battle ship at any distance. plus i dont know of anyone that would be wiling to go out into space where theres no air and that the smallest crack in your "windshield" would mean death and let someone shoot at them and you could also die by simply being disabled and drifting away for ever. So yeah, i dont know if people in the future are going to be anymore willing to do all that then we would be now. But who knows, maybe in the future people will be like in the movie idiocracy and will have just gotten dumber and dumber and be willing to go out into space and blow each other up by hurling rocks at one another...lmao.
You're clearly unaware that humans have long been sending rockets into space, powered by liquid oxygen. Even the Nazi V2 rockets were space-capable. Bullets would also work in space as they contain their own oxidizer in the powder. With that being said, there's also rail gun technology which would work in space. Your assessment of vulnerabilities in any future space conflict is also flawed as people have fought in comparably hostile environments in the past. The threat of insta-kill by no means dissuades people from spanking each other.
Nathan Luevano You never know what's possible. Hell, we just discovered a method of thrust that spits in the face of physics as we know it. Battle of Endor, please! (No, kidding, I wish you nothing but peace, future galaxy citizens.)
Alex Mckillmore Battles in the middle of space are unlikely unless we find a way to disrupt each other’s propulsion, space is simply way too big and without a way to interdict no fleet would ever need to engage the larger one (or even come close enough to each other to be detected). Battles over space stations and colonies however could come in the distant future, because unlike the vastness of space these things would both have strategic and economic value and be located in a particular spot.
This Is why there is so much stuff on the internet explaining Star wars physics, anybody who's not really into Star wars doesn't know it but there's an entire section of the internet dedicated to explaining everything it is one of the most fleshed out fiction universes ever and there's an explanation for almost everything
Star Trek phasers aren't lasers; they emit nadion particle beams. The word particle indicates that it's some form of matter that's actually being shot.
One set of books I read with what seemed like good space battle physics is the Star Carrier books by Ian Douglas. I recommend these books, it's a great series, very easy to get into.
I found Ian Douglas's depictions of space combat (most notably in the Star Carrier series) to be generally believable while still being fairly action packed. In general combat takes place on a solar system wide scale, relying on controlling the gravitational "high ground", and attacks at near lightspeed to keep the enemies from reading your hand. It does rely on a couple technologies that may not be entirely plausible, instead of reactive thrusters attack craft use drives that project gravitational singularities in the desired direction of travel, which seems to violate conservation of energy, and I don'te remember exactly how they dealt with the tidal forces. On the other hand, such technologies were rather crucial in maintaining narrative pace.
I am currently reading the Expanse series, and I think that the attention to how a space battle is conducted and the focus on keeping the technology and limitations realistic is really well written.
"The Lost Fleet" series by Jack Campbell has some pretty fun space battles with the time delay as a main component. They basically have to predict where the enemy will be and then wait to see if their shots even hit.
Agreed... Much more realistic than most of them, and there is a lot of downtime and planning before encounters.. And when there are hits, they are usually fairly catastrophic to a ship.
Was looking for someone to mention this series. It is probably the most accurate to how it would really be done. Long, slow, with short bursts of action followed by hours/days off more planning.
Babylon 5 used the best space battle physics I'm aware of in TV or movies, though it was vastly compressed in terms of distances involved. It kind of has to be, though, to have any entertainment value. If the jump gate were actually a realistic orbital distance away from the station, both would be basically invisible to each other, which isn't very fun to watch. So distances are short, and plasma weapons travel really, /really/ slowly. Like maybe... 4 m/s slowly. But they do use Newtonian physics, with short thruster bursts, maneuvering thrusters on the corners of X-shaped craft for maximum torque, and tactics that such physics enables, such as spinning around to glide backwards under momentum, while shooting at an enemy that was 'behind' before flipping around. I've never seen -any- popular media deal with real orbital mechanics, however, and that's not too terribly surprising, as they're -so- counterintuitive most people would yell at the screen about how stupid it looks to thrust completely the wrong way most of the time. XD The best space combat in a video game was probably Independence War 2. And of course, for real space flight mechanics, it's tough to beat Kerbal Space Program. ;)
I figure space combat could go one of two ways based on how our tech/science is progressing: A short range slugfest using EM accelerated guns, possibly warheads and missiles, possibly particle weapons as well. The range would would be short enough that light delat would be minimal -best example would be something like BSG. A really long range affair using semi or fully autonomous drones and missiles. Ships would move around while at the center of a spherical swarm of sentry drones that are far enough away that they are able to detect threats several minutes before the main ship. Combat drones would then be dispatched to the area where the probability of the threat's presence (calculated by projecting its course with whatever data they had gathered thus far) is highest. The drones would be ordered to find the target, determine the best way to destroy and then attack, probably with missiles or anything effective against ships really. Probably the best example of this type would be Andromeda. If I had to guess, I'd say that the latter scenario is more likely.
I dont think anyone would go see a sci fi film where there was no sound or "laser" blasts, Half of your movie going experience is audio effects like the "roar" of tie fighters. The whole point to go to the movies is to ESCAPE reality in the first place.
+The User formerly unknown as himself Some sci-fi series justify the sound in space thing by saying that pilots have a system that generates sounds for the events that happen outside of their spacecraft to increase their awareness of what is happening.
+David Foust Limitations can create amazing solutions. Creativity through adversity. Why not have a musical score playing that has beats in time with weapon blasts, or hits? Sounds could also be played whenever inside a shit firing or getting hit. Battle Star Galactica did this, Babylon 5 did it in some episodes. Did you see moon? That's a tense movie. Doing what's easy doesn't necessarily produce what is best. Star Wars was great but we've seen that already - and they're making more (which will hopefully be good). Just repeating what has already been done is lazy, and when you spread that attitude to all corners of movie making, you get lackluster results.
The closest I've ever seen anyone get to how real space battles might work would be the halo novels (More specifically the ones written by Eric Nylund) where two fleets sit a long way apart and fire missiles and lasers at each other with advanced targeting systems
Kim Stanley Robinson, Mars Trilogy? There's not a straight up space battle yet (halfway through the series) but I think his general outline of physics in varying atmospheres and distances is reasonably accurate. Anyone care to discuss?
While Babylon 5 treated space combat much like Great War naval engagements, they did the design of a space fighter right. The Starfury uses Newtonian maneuvering and only fires its engines and thrusters to maneuver. The positioning of the engines on 4 outward struts gives a good moment arm while making the major inertial axis point forward for stability. The weapons are placed along with the pilot in the center to prevent firing from influencing the balance too much. The use of pulsed energy weapons is a stretch of the imagination but if we harness plasma it might just do the trick. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfury
Metallic projectiles & strong magnets. Definitely like battles from the Age of Sail. And yes, neutrino bursts (why destroy a ship when you can kill its crew & take it for yourself?)--but seriously, if you got technology to go to stars then there's definitely a way to shield from neutrinos, OR EMP pulses that render onboard electronics dead. Space battles will definitely be fought by unmanned drones. And for inter-planetary, super massive projectiles are the way to go. Think towing an asteroid or sumthing..haha Cool video! Fascinating premise!
The "Lost Stars" series by Jack Campbell describes space travel and warfare perfectly. Hours of waiting around, then having combat last mere seconds because of the speeds at which 2 forces are going when they engage, having to swing the ship around to brake, the distance traveled, the targeting systems, etc.. All very fascinating. Not to mention they're great books.
For one, if war was common in space, we would likely all be using robotic craft that are programmed to attack enemies when they get within a certain distance. I am unsure that there wouldn't be close up battle, not dog fighting, but close battles as the example set forth that you'd be only fighting past images if you are too far away, rendering distance combat somewhat futile.
It's a great video and the mistakes in movies are many. It probably has been mentioned before, but a scifi story that, I think, gets space battles right is 'The Forever War'. It is a three part comic by Belgian comic artist Marvano. It not only deals with war, its brutalising effects and the bureaucracy, but also with the gravitational forces working on the human body at such great speeds. It is also fascinating when you see the accelerating age difference between the space warriors and their family left behind on earth while they travel amongst the stars. Absolutely a great read!
You are totally right about this BUT Star Wars is not a good example. It is NOT a sci-fi, but a fairy tale. Well Lucas tried to go for the sci-fi in episode-1, which is why it failed so hard.
The original series did not have any scientific explanation about any technology. All the explanation you were geting was spiritual. A fairy tale with futuristic elements, blades of light, the hold sorcerer, now using the force instead ,mana, but the story was never mentioning anything of the technological issues, how humanity got to that stage, and so on. If lucas did not do this, it would be too similar to the original Kurosawa film he was copying. Ol` Lucas did try to make it into a Sci-fi, started to put attempts to explain stuff, even tried to explain the force with the midicloreans, nobody liked the idea. We wanted our fairytales with magic knights who move object with their shear will, predict the future, and always picks up the fight against the darkness with his shining blade. People those days, who wanted to see sci-fi, were watching startrek That IS sci-fi. As the matter of fact, a perfect example of pairs to get for fairytale and sci-fi
SciFi: fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.... Where does it say that SciFi has provide explanations for it's technology?
its basic common sense. Scifi in general focuses on the scientific part of the story, that is the exact reason it`s called SCIECNE fiction. Fairy tales focus on the spiritual part. I cant really belive I had to pinpoint this out for you man... >.>
Towards the end of Larry Niven's novel "Protector" there is a battle between protagonists in starships powered by Bussard Ramjets. They use projectile weapons, aimed and fired by hand, and at the end the heroes ships tuns it's huge magnetic field scoops over the enemy ship. I think that that would at the very least destroy it's control systems. Written in 1973!
this UA-cam channel is awesome! why am I just finding out about this now?!? at least I don't have to wait for new videos to come out. it almost feels like I'm from the future!
I did a writeup one time for a story where one of main torpedoes used carried hundred or thousands of hardened projectiles in the warhead, when launched it would home in on it's target, calculate the intercept envelope to it, and then detonate it's shaped explosive, sending a lethal cloud of high-velocity projectiles that the target ship would have to fly through. Now this was a universe really without effective forms of shielding, so it would be up to hull plating to defeat kinetic impacts, but the abrading effect of the warhead's projectiles would do some nasty damage to that hull plating, if not swiss-cheesing it completely. It had a high impulse thruster for accelaration, and some ability to try to avoid being hit by point-defense weapons on it's target, but it only had to get close enough on it's intercept path, and then detonate. At which point no point defense would be able to stop it's cloud of projectiles.
what if the thrusters on an x-wing or any other craft in the star wars universe are non-directional, sure they may emit plasma exhaust from the rear of the spacecraft, but their main mechanism of action is pushing on spacetime to accelerate the ship in any direction without the need for the ship to change orientation? meaning that while Luke appears to be accelerating forward for the entire duration of his trip to Dagobah, he's actually slowing down and matching the planet's orbital velocity, even though his ship is orientated the opposite direction conventional engines would need to accomplish this, it would be advantageous to allow the pilot and weapon systems to face in a different direction to the forward acceleration of the ship. The spacetime and gravity manipulation capabilities that the ships clearly have could protect their occupants from the g-forces that a ship undergoing conventional acceleration would be subject to. The degree to which they can compensate seems to be dependent on the size of the ship and the magnitude of the force it needs to cancel out, hence why we see fighter pilots take long curved turns, to keep the g-forces on them to tolerable levels and have them pushing the pilot back into their seat if the ship's inertial manipulation systems are pushed to the limit.
I feel like a lot of these shows explain away the problems you bring up. RCS thrusters, for example, can be found on most star trek ships and are protected by their shields, so there's no need for reaction control wheels. Or maybe you do need to keep your engines on in space combat, despite Newton's first law, because your enemies have their engines on to match your speed -- it's the only way to avoid being out-maneuvered (Stargate: Atlantis). Broadside attacks as in BSG may be preferred for a number of reasons: If you're using lasers, like you said, their power diminish at long range. If you're using missiles like the Cylons, you don't want to give the enemy time enough to intercept them with countermeasures. And so on....
According to the Traveller Role Playing Game, most battles in space are actually fought near the vicinity of worlds and planets, mostly fighting for control of said worlds....
Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant paid a lot of attention to physics. And more recently, The Expanse did a good job including Coriolis Effect on liquid pouring in a frame of reference rotating for "gravity"
steven ratmansky we are on earth for ~6MY and became "Humans" (with agriculture) ~10TY ago. in the last ~150 (maybe more) years we started using coal and emitting tons of CO2 so to destroy a planet we need 2 BIG nations that have nuclear weapons and both have a Putin in charge, tell one something bad about the other, go out in space and watch.
You call 200 thousand years of existence fast? You call the current planet destroyed? I would say it was a failure, and it was done very slow. I would say the best way to destroy a planet is technologically advanced psychopaths.
You made a point about the problems distance plays on time. I'm very interested in this concept and have had some of my own ideas about it. For a very distant future where the technology is there for us to even attempt a Star Wars-esq battle, where multiple ships are traveling from different destinations at different speeds over vast distances in space, the logistics of any mass organization of force is mind blowing. We would be orchestrating battle plans for battles that we would never witness. The outcomes of which would not be felt for so long that we would need every ship to be aware of every contingency plan so that they could react in any organized manner. Our "wars" would at best be a game of probabilities. Now imagine if we are traveling at high enough speeds for time dilation to occur. You would have to take into account the pace of human advancement. If you're on a vessel traveling somewhat near the speed of light, by the time you arrive anywhere your ship is probably already out dated. If you're traveling at high enough speeds for extremely long periods of time (withing the span of a human life) you would have to make assumptions of where and when you would need a show of force and send it possibly years in advance for them to arrive at the same time, newer, faster models of ship would arrive. Its a task so ill suited that i doubt a problem would exist in all of humanity for us to ever even try.
I would argue the original Dune series got it best, where ships are used almost exclusively for transport and most of the fighting actually occurs on planets. The holtzman field/effect, makes an impact on land fighting, but there is almost no open space battles for what is arguably the greatest sci-fi series of all time.
I think any space battles in the future would be between unmanned drones shaped like cubes. They could react and maneuver better than human piloted craft. Drag isn't a factor so the craft wont need to be aerodynamic. It could have thrusters on each side of the cube. Weapons seem much more complicated though. Gun like weapons seem like the best bet because lasers spread out explosions have no medium to create a shockwave in, but the recoil from firing a gun in space would push the craft in the opposite direction. I'm honestly not sure what the best thing to use is. Maybe something like a torpedo, that is gently released from the craft, so no recoil, then takes off on it's own to track and make contact with the target before exploding and throwing shrapnel. Maybe EMP would be the most effective way of making a target not combat effective. It's not gonna do much if the circuits are fried. Life support systems would fail. But then again, would EMP weapons even induce a potential in a target when there's no path to ground? Man, space combat is nuts.
Your ideas are all based on an enemy craft using electronics... it's fine if you're fighting the Russians heh.. but fairly useless otherwise. One of the best ways is to send Matrix style sentinels to latch onto the enemy craft and cut into the hull. Another way would be to force the nearest star to go super nova
i think a space craft wound be a cone, so that when projectiles are shot at it there is a higher chance of them being deflected. there is no worry about not facing the enemy because space is so large you'll see them coming a long way away.
I'm going to toot my own horn here. While you can question some of the underlying assumptions about the energy density of the drive technology (too high) and the energy density of the lasers (too low, perhaps), a boardgame I wrote (Attack Vector: Tactical) gets more of this stuff correct than anything else on the market. I'd put a link to the product information page, but I'm in the middle of a web-site redesign and move at the moment. You'll have to settle for some reviews. :) www.wargamer.com/article/1760/attack-vector:-tactical boardgamegeek.com/thread/231608/attack-vector-tactical-review Attack Vector has fully Newtonian 3D movement, with the special case rules for fighting in near planetary orbit. It's also got fuel (including your ship's thrust increasing as the tanks run dry, and I do the calculus for you for determining total delta-V). It's got lasers that have energy density per unit area fall off at 1/r^2, and kinetic weapons where damage increases at mass times v^2. No squishy force fields, everything is armored, using high tech composites in layers like whipple shields. You have onboard reactors, radiators that retract in combat, heat sinks to store waste heat while in combat, and power is stored in giant capacitor arrays for later use.
I think I remember B5 Thunderbolts making use of short bursts from maneuvering thrusters (possibly also referring to limited reaction mass? it has been a while), so I'll give them a brownie point on this discussion. I also think non-thruster based maneuvering was cited as a rationale for why Mobile Suit Gundam declared giant robots more maneuverable than, say, a sphere with a couple rocket motors.
I suppose the weapons in space used for ship-to-ship combat would be fired INSIDE the craft, And the projectile would pass down a tube with an airlock at the end.
The video game "Independence War" had a warship that basically worked like the Starfury of B5. Was really fun to pilot. Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep" had space battles in which the ships had to get the warheads synchronized with the jump pattern of the enemies. Meaning getting the warhead to where the ship will likely be next. That I think will be what realistic space battles would be about. Predicting the other's speed, vector and inertia and getting a weapon there first.
The TV series "Babylon 5" had a fairly realistic physics model for its space battles. I loved one sequence where a bad guy gets on our hero's tail, oh no! What will our hero do? Well he just flips his fighter over 180 degrees (still traveling the same direction) and blasts the bad guy! Too bad Luke didn't figure that one out...
Guidance systems aside, missiles in space _are_ practical. Just as bullets are able to fire in vacuum because gunpowder carries its own oxidizers, high explosives also carry their own oxidizers. If any explosive relied on atmospheric oxygen, they would have a very small blast indeed (or need to be pre-mixed before ignition, as in the case of fuel-air explosives).
It's probably already been said, however, Babylon 5 had very realistic space battles that appeared to be conceived of with the laws of physics in mind.
As to the subject of the video here, the Ares Starfuy Terran Space Fighter (Mark 1) was where I started my line of thinking here. However, yes, despite the horror of such weapons, the Mass Drivers / Gauss Rifles the Centauri used on the Narn was great physics.
This video is pretty great. I've been watching a bunch of star trek voyager lately and wondering about why they don't just turn off their engines and coast to preserve energy. that question has lead me on a wonderful journey around the internet, and now i know all about various forms of ftl travel in science fiction and now about space battles.
What with the development of drones and such, I highly doubt there'll be such a thing as manned space combat.. It'll most likely be a couple of guys on a far away space station somewhere, sitting behind a bunch of high tech screens and controls, piloting unmanned spacecraft..
jarnomiedema That brings into play the lag time of communications though. If a decision needs to be made, do you want minutes or even hours between ship and pilot? And if you have artificially intelligent robotic piloting systems, can they react to unexpected mission questions in the same ways as creative human pilots? I was going to put all that in this video, but it would have like doubled it in length! Incredibly good questions and something to discuss though.
It's Okay To Be Smart or we could learn more about how ants do there task without a central intelligence and apply it to drones to achieve there mission. Or we can learn more about quantum entanglement so we can control the drones without latency.
We are likely to have conflict as soon as extraplanetary settlements no longer feel obligated to send back cash/goods. Remember how the, then future, USA didn't want to send cash back home? Same deal. Or earlier when Britain didn't want to be under the thumb of Rome. Or India under the thumb of Britain. Even an all out Imperial hegemony tends to wane after a while (see 400 AD Rome, Teotihuacan, or 1800s Britain) I'd say something like 100 years after initial settlement. "War" could possibly be mass-drops. Any spacefaring nation could afford it. It's really low tech: Just point it, speed it up, and release. Then drive them in dark from out system at relativistic speeds (like 5% C), leaving defense all but impossible. Level a continent with a few big rocks, and that's it. Just a big old buckshot to the system.
+fex144 I agree, once your space outpost has the ability to exist without the support of a parent planet or society they tend to chaff under remote rule. Some of your historical examples also shed light on the problem of keeping remote outposts under rule of the parent society, the vast distances and expenses. Military occupation tends to be expensive and with large travel times they become vulnerable to insurgency with long slow supply lines.
Lensflare Deviant Yes it seem to largely depend on the remoteness of the outpost/settlement. Travel time will likely be a big piece of this puzzle. If a roundtrip is a single day, then the military can get there almost immediately to quell an uprising. Remoteness is key.
Can I also point out that without air and the restrictions of a curved surface, ships could literally spot each other from thousands of miles away, so space battles probably wouldn't be reminiscent of 17th century naval engagements. Also, missiles could still be useful. Without air resistance, they could accelerate to extremely high velocities, punch through armor, and explode inside the target. Much like modern APHE rounds, except with a guidance system. However, in the advent of reactive armor and laser-based point defense systems, the effectiveness of missiles in futuristic space warfare would be questionable
One way, to do a space-Battle is still untapped by you: Computer-Warfare or Digital Warfare. As shown in the Anime "Bodacious Space Pirates", it is described as Hacking the Target-Ship's Computers, in order to prevent them from using their Battle-Capabilities. This method was also used by the Cylons in the more-known Battlestar Galactica-Remake-Series. While the Anime was simply using this to enable the "Piracy"-Acts(they were hired by the Companies, to simply put up a show, and everything they took from the Victims" was returned), in BattleStar Galactica it was used to initially disable the Targets, and then destroy them with conventional means. Now imagine such an attack being successful on a Starfleet-Ship, if the Attacker manages to take control over the entire Computer-System, it would be possible to use it, to either kill everyone onboard, by flushing all Atmosphere, or even more Drastic, to disable The Warpcores Protection-Systems, destroying the entire ship without wasting as much Ressource as Conventional Attacks would.
The Babylon 5 Battles were pretty decent. They had fighters that changed orientation to fire but kept their linear momentum. NASA even wanted to use the designs. And the Spacestation had more practical defence system, which shot short range projectiles to intercept long range projectiles and Plasmafire.
space battles would probably play out like submarine engagements. with both ships looking for the other by detecting radio waves or heat/energy emissions. also, yes the farther away you can engage your enemy the better, but it is extremely unreliable and inaccurate especially firing at a ship which can maneuver. each warship would also have some sort of dedicated role in combat; like battleships have the most firepower and destroyers being the most maneuverable. fighters are tricky because of the fact of constantly firing up their engines to turn and maneuver, I think that is why they always have their engines on so they can quickly move and maneuver. this is all my opinion.
joseph pender They had an episode of the original Star Trek where they were hunting a Romulan ship with a cloaking device. It was very much a sub vs. destroyer fight. I think the reality would be, "every ship a submarine," though. Notice how modern ships and fighters are going stealthy. I expect that trend to continue. Weapon are getting so accurate/powerful that you can't afford to let your enemy get off a single shot.
Kenneth Pryde that's a cool thought. I think space battles may have different stages. the first stage would be locating the enemy ship/fleet. the second stage would either be closing the distance between the ships in order to be effectively accurate or engage from a distance. there would probably be more, but I can't really figure out how. also strike craft would not that effective in attacking vessels over a large distance since they don't carry a lot of fuel. they would be used more as a defense perimeter or scouting the enemy. it's impossible to tell how it would actually play out.
joseph pender A thought: Artificial Intelligence will likely run everything by the time we are spread out enough in the solar system for armed conflict to arise. Warships would be run by machines and launch huge smart-missiles with detonation lasers as their payload. The "strike craft" would race to within a few kilometers and set off it's nuke, destroying itself and lasing the target... That's assuming the machines let us play war for real at all. Most likely they'll tell us to stop bullying each other and to go play nice.
+Kenneth Pryde never thought of that, but we would probably use virtual intelligence instead of artificial, the reason being is that artificial intelligence is to unpredictable and can learn extremely fast. virtual intelligence can't think for itself and has is programmed rather than created. like I said, it's impossible to tell how these things could play out.
joseph pender I don't think true artificial intelligence is possible. Like you said, it would be "virtual intelligence": a machine programmed to behave like it was a person. However, VI is still going to be so much smarter than us that it will likely begin to make most of our decisions for us. Set up by men, yes, but designed to control us. Imagine a machine programmed to learn how to manipulate people. Not a blanket approach, but machines that target each individual person on the planet with specific individual stimuli. Your choices in every facet of your life would be carefully guided so that you would "choose" where to work, what to eat, who your friends are... Unless you were in the know, you might never have an inkling that those "choices" were never really yours. So, "No, go play nice," could very well be the future of war. :D
Robert Heinlein recognized this in his Lazerus Long books when he noted that, "The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary." He understood that combat in space, from a practical standpoint, would be an impractical affair.
For a trek-style space opera, Andromeda was surprisingly good at this: space battles were led at the distance of light seconds thorugh the use of unmanned drone fighters, relativistic kinetic kill missiles, and point defense lasers. Every important system in the ships was redundant and the ships were huge, but with a lot of empty spaces to make hits less devastating. No shields, IIRC, but point defens lasers and I think kinetic weapons plus ablative armor. The maneuvers also looked less like dogfights, at least for the bigger ships, with turning in spot without changing movement direction, in one episode this was even being used to lauch some junk as kinetic impactors from mostly unarmed freighter's cargo bay, with the freighter turning the bay towards the target, opening it and reverse-thrusting hard to let the package flying. I haven't seen B5, but Andromeda had the most realistic space battles I've seen, all things considered.
I think David Weber's honorverse have it mostly right. It is acceleration there that is more important than speed. They do have ships that have heavy acceleration like 500g and missiles that have a much higher acceleration. They do have reaction-less engines fueled by fusion reactors for their ships. In the beginning this series looks a lot like a space version of 1800s ship combat with "wall of battle" compared to "line of battle"
Per Trygve Myhrer Yeah, the Honorverse does a lot right, but at least some of that is because the invented physics "just happens" to dictate 18th/19th century navies in space. Is it really doing it right when you change the laws of physics to make things work the way you want them to? On the other hand, at least Weber does make his revised physics explicit.
+Guy Smith Every reader has it taste, for example i love those battles. And I admire David Weber for believability of his worlds (politics, relationships, economics, diplomacy...) but back to space battles: Techically speaking I think the Honorverse principles seem to me as sound for battles in space. Its practically a carrier/fighter style warfare. Carrierships with crews launches automated fighters to deliver high yield nuke/energy weapons to range of the target ship. Munition/spent resources could be a drawback, but in terms of tactical advantage (range) its far superior to any other tactics I can think of..
***** Early Honorverse novels have long-range, largely ballistic, missile duels. Slightly later there are even longer-range missiles, and then they introduce actual carrier craft with manned fighters, which make somewhat less sense in space combat - the reasons aircraft carriers are so useful in contemporary combat have to do with height advantage (only a factor in space combat at really long ranges) and longer visual range due to the curvature of the Earth (not a factor in space combat). What LACs do offer is force distribution - rather than having the firepower of a superdreadnought permanently concentrated in one place and one place only, you can spread that same firepower over a dozen star systems - though, obviously, there's a risk there of being mopped up piecemeal by a more concentrated force. The automated, disposable missiles do make a lot of sense.
+rmsgrey Carrier / LAC (light attack craft) is a very viable concept in space too. The distribution of firepower is little bit questionable, because Carrier + LACs have smaller combined firepower than Superdreadnought, but definitely worth considering. No offense, but you are missing one MAJOR point - communications loop. LACs are quite literally distributing fire control system too. I know that sufficiently capable AI should be able to do that too (Apollo systems comes to mind - later in the series). Problem is when you are starting the engagement in distances over 3Gm light based communications have a delay 10s+ one way. Missile tracking system could still be fairly accurate, but even would be suspect. With low acceleration ships it doesnt have to be a problem, but especially in honoroverse that is a major limiting factor. In summary Long range missile system probably makes most sense. Missile delivered plasma cannon / high yield nuke / laser would be probably the best "solution" for space combat. But it has a MAJOR drawbacks too - Electronic warfare would became probably a huge factor.
***** The main problem with LACs is that they carry life support, shielding, point defences, and counter-missiles, as well as having to limit acceleration to something humans can survive, and needing enough power and reserve thrust to make it back to the carrier. Yes, the shorter c&c loop gives LACs an edge in fire control, but, even without Apollo's FTL-comms missile, using a telemetry drone as a relay would allow the use of a full capital ship's computational resources without needing to strap on life support etc. In fact, pretty much from their first deployment, Ghost Rider recon drones' real-time intelligence has been halving the Manties' response loops. Anything that has to worry about what happens after it attacks is going to be less optimised for offense than something disposable. As for relative firepower, an SD(P) has more missile firepower than anything else in space, but a CLAC can deploy more grasers than any other hyper-capable hull can muster. And in the novels, both Silesia and the Talbot sector have been seeing LAC wings deployed as detached rear-area security and anti-piracy forces.
In "I-War" you could do 'funny things' like e.g. grab a cargo container, dock with it ... find a nice enemy capital ship, accelerate towards it ... and then let go of the cargo container. Result: Cargo container slams full-speed into the capital ship while you stay out of range of their defenses ...
Cool video. Thanks for this smart look at space battles. My own point of view future science fiction will focus on more positive aspects of human space exploration. Like making contact with other intelligent lifeforms in peace and mutual curiosity, discovering more of the cosmos, colonising other planets in a sustainable manner, scientific discoveries, social, religious & political maturity etc. :)
Gundam and Classic Star Trek (as in, 1965 before the networks started screwing it) are the only TV science fictions that have a modicum of realistic space war... and even that is very fantastical.
Well Gundam tend to be pretty good about it as long as it doesn't involve anything Newtype related. 08th MS team (sure, this one is mostly on the ground), Gundam Thunderbolt and Stargazer I think are some of the best examples. Some others do a good job, just not to the same extent as those three. And I just remembered another series that did it somewhat well, Knights of Sidonia.
While I dislike how inaccurate space battles tend to be, would it really be that entertaining to watch, say, Star Wars, without the fireballs and their sound effects? Probably not. So while realism is nice and all, I think fiction can stray a bit from it. Think of The Wall from A Song of Ice and Fire, or magic from LotR, Harry Potter, etc. People don't nitpick fantasy about realism, so why do they do it to sci-fi? After all, it *is* science *fiction*.
gingergamergirl98 Because of the word "science". If they just called it "space opera", no one would care. It's like calling something "historical fiction" and having fireballs and steam powered trolls in it. Not wild about fireballs, but a steam powered troll sounds awesome. It just doesn't belong in the "historical fiction" genre.
Just went on a wild Odyssey from a half remembered TikTok to a risky Google to an iMessage search to a Spotify search to perusing the catalog of the man who scored the internet Kevin MacLeod to delving the depths of this channel's catalog and for all that I heard and saw, I cannot answer the original question, nor really any question I had along the way, but I do now know that the former theme of It's Okay to Be Smart, as heard in this video, is Ouroboros by Kevin MacLeod from 2014's “Hard Electronic”
For some good writing with what space battles would be like try CJ Cheryh and the Downbelow Station series and Merchanter series. She makes good use of the terror in not knowing where your adversary is at near light speeds, as well as the sheer frailness of space craft.
I know I am a bit late, but the actual fights in the scifi show the expanse are really good and really close from what you explained in this video. Cheers ^^
I'm currently bouncing around the idea for a Scifi webcomic, to get myself back into the habit of drawing. I was going to make it Science Fantasy, closer to something like Star Wars, with magic in space, but seeing this makes me want to throw in some hard scifi when it comes to things like space battles. I mean, I think I can have battlemages focusing their magics to harness a butterfly effect like chain reaction that makes a missile malfunction, hint at mechanics like gyroscope orientation in space craft and neutron radiation cannons. A doomsday device could easily be a telephone pole sized bar of titanium.
welcome to Macross.... and or Gundam projectile weapons still work Gundam is great since there is no FTL and humans are barely past the moon one the biggest weapons in Gundam is dropping LARGE masses on the earth why build nukes when you can drop a mega ton rock with a lot less work the energy weapons are basically charged plasma AND they get not needing thrust thing right the whole point of humanoid robots is to control movement a bit like an ice skater does there is even an in show device called an 'AMBAC' (Active Mass Balance Auto-Control)
I love the battle in Neptune's Brood. It's very rare that real hard science fiction has any space battle in it, because it's impractical, but that's the beauty of it.
in the nights dawn books, there is actually a really realistic description of space battles. not much dog fighting but continuously accelerating in a specific direction while firing multi functional AI controlled missiles with ecm, plasma cloud (for cover), nuclear (mostly fusion), kinetic shrapnel and antimatter warheadsoh and lasers, heat dissipation (and storage), turning maneuvers for better heat distribution and - instead of energy shields - molecular binding generators which amplify the structural stability of the armor its really worth to read
if you're looking for something to watch that does this well, The Expanse is where it's at. the parts that aren't space battles (ie, most of it) is really good too
"Heavy thing moving fast make spaceship go boom"
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Orks: Not as dumb as they look...
5:47
Congrats I'm the 69 person liking. Oh, and btw noice joke
Babylon 5 and The Expanse did a pretty good job with more realistic space battles without making them boring. The Expanse even regarded gravity and momentum in a detailed manner and the weapons were more down-to-earth. Also Firefly had a realistic depiction of space (no sound, no fixed plane, no warp drive - but also no real space battles).
Edit: but Star Wars looks cool though.
i loved firefly for the absence of sound in space scenes, well i loved it for more reasons ;)
I'm addicted to the Expanse at the moment. It really stands out from other Sci-Fi Series because it's one of the few Sci-Fi Francises that gets Space Warfare & the Physics right and aren't afraid of the audience not understanding anything, while other sci-fi series' dumb things down just for the sack of simplicity, it's like they think the audience is unable to understand simple physics.
+Some Random Guy
The Expanse is absolutely fantastic. That space battle in the Season 2 opening last week was one of the best and most realistic space battles I have seen in my life.
@@hellothere_1257 core module
When we finally see a space battle in Serenity, the Reavers fight mostly with grappling hooks.
Nah, humans will ALWAYS find a way to kill each other in space.
Cancer Carl of course, for the fucking space pirates
Electromagnetic Railguns would work in space, so yeah, there will be space warfare
one of the ways will be spies placing bombs on the inside of the ship to cause as much damage as possible and finding ways to puncture the space ship causing everyone on board to be sucked out into space or to freeze
oh don't worry....we're humans....we WILL manage to fight in space
+InfidelHeretic
With the former, I'm sure that's already happened at some point.
Convict can come to all beings not just humans.This natural
Probabably something like gratuitous space battles 2.
So long as there are limited resources, and we love our children more than we love other people's children, we will have war. There is no other way - human nature demands that we protect the advantages of those we care about.
@@GamingTeaParty if that were the only reason for war then effective interstellar travel would give us access to enough new resources to end conflict. Unfortunately it's not.
I just want to say I love all the discussion going on in the comments about the finer details of space battle physics, as well as the recommendations for sci-fi series that treat it right. Thanks everyone!
It's Okay To Be Smart in Star trek its phased energy particles, is that practical?
It's Okay To Be Smart You spent 1/6th of this video prattling your usual sub/like/comment nonsense and episodic referrals. That's not cool.
It's Okay To Be Smart
I didn't see the space battle from Eisen Hemmel, and Bullets can still fire in Space, which would help.
It's Okay To Be Smart In series of books "Crest of the Stars", "Banner of the Stars" and "Fragments of the Stars" written by Hiroyuki Morioka, one of most powerful space nations, Abh Empire, uses laser weapons for close (dozens or hundreds of miles) encounters, Antimatter and Solid Projectile Railguns for medium range (hundreds of thousands of miles) and Antimatter mines (simple computer, sensor array, couple of engines, time-space-field generator and an antimatter tank) for long range and tactical combat. Due the nature of insterstellar flight in this series (Interstellar travel is allowed by putting a ship inside a time-space-field and putting it inside of so called "Open Sord" - point of time-space that connects our universe with two-dimensional space, where normal physics is no longer applicable and only thing that allows spacecraft to even exist within that universe is said time-space-field, that consumes spaceship's fuel (antimatter) even, when ship isn't moving, staying for long in a flatspace is a bad idea), space combat in interstellar space happens only in really close distances (we are talking about mere kilometers, which is crazy! But they have to deal with it), so laser weaponry (which does act like real life lasers and not pew-pew thingies) is mostly used for point-defence against enemy mines and Mines are only reliable weapons, that can be used in a long-range combat.
Studio Sunrise made a semi-decent anime adaptation of this series of books (not all of them, however), but they just had to put some Star-Wars-like stuff in it (Pew-pew-pew laser guns, and during orbital encounter with enemy ships, which are described in book as three distant star-like dots on a main ship's display, they've put three ships of a normal size in a somewhat superclose distance...).
Still, this book series is one of my favorite space-opera books, mostly in how hard author tried to make it more realistic than Star Wars and Star Trek.
It's Okay To Be Smart One thing that I realized is that the orbital mechanics are never right, either. A, spacecraft move like airplanes: they are always applying an upward force which makes rolling a practical means of lateral translation and changing directions equivalent to braking; B, they always face wherever they're moving instead of accelerating as needed and then turning only to face enemy ships; and C, they just fly in the general direction of the enemy instead of actually performing orbital rendezvous procedures like planning an encounter and matching orbits by burning off the velocity difference.
Why aren't you wearing some kind of magical space garment to protect yourself from the gigantic g-force you experience every time you change direction while zipping through space at a relativistic velocity?
In the Star Fox games it's suggested that the Star Fox team actually amputated their legs to combat this.
"Inertial dampers"
@@nahor88 Nott really, that was more so due to the art style (at the time) of the SNES era in which the characters were modeled after puppets. Later Star Fox games had all of the characters with non-amputated legs and instead in the player guide of SF64, it is explained that the Arwings are equipped with a mechanism called "G-diffusers" which gives the Arwings an edge for it's extreme handling controls.
The Expanse series by James A Correy goes into some pretty cool and relatively accurate space battle engagements.
Rail guns would be perfect for space combat. If you don't know, a rail gun uses high power electromagnets to accelerate a conductive projectile to tens of thousands of MPH.
Hologrampizza You realize of course that a The rail gun would operate as a rocket, driving the ship backwards with every shot. Then there is the travel time for the projectiles to reach the (moving?) target. Not sure that would be the perfect weapon for space combat. I think smart missiles might work better.
+Ansonidak The first problem could be solved with maneuvering rockets if the gun is side mounted, or using the main engines if the gun is mounted on the nose of the craft. The second problem could be solved by calculating the trajectory of the enemy craft. With so few variables in space, you could calculate and aim at your target's position several minutes in advance.
+Hologrampizza only problem is, if you miss, that shot keeps going.... that will really ruin someone's day in a few decades time.
+Kharn The Betrayer Or just burn up in athmosphere, crash into an asteroid, crash into the sun, get sucked up by a black hole.
Hologrampizza
I think you may be underestimating the effect of operating a large rail gun on a ship in space might be, or how effective any kinetic weapon system would be in space combat. It's comic book material IMO, like most space combat scenarios.
A general point on sound in space in science fiction:
In space, particularly in a combat situation, situational awareness is kinda crucial - if an enemy is attacking you from an unexpected direction, the faster you can identify that direction, the better. There are a bunch of possible interfaces that could be used for conveying that information, most of which would require a lot of training to learn to interpret. One thing that could be used which would work with millions of years of evolution of an ability to track threats and other items of interest outside direct vision? You're ahead of me on this, aren't you? Yep - surround sound. You don't hear a TIE screaming past - you hear the cockpit computer's TIE sound effect coming from a virtual point source mimicking the TIE's motion.
I thought the same about his comments on balistic lasers being invisible....
Yeah, so there's a HUD overlay or some other quirky property of the canopy material, but most likely some HUD
Just like in elite dangerous. In the game if your cockpit is broken - the sound disappears
But if you wanna keep that logic going, then at that point why keep human reactions in the loop at all? You don't need a surround sound system to alert the pilot; you don't need a pilot at all. No human could possibly react and make decisions better than AI. We already see some of it now, and it is a near certainty in future eras when space travel becomes common. (There were reports in 2022 of AI being unbeatable against human pilots in jet fighter simulators)
So the argument can come all the way back around and still make sound effects unlikely in space, because there's no realistic situation where you need to simulate that for a human decision-maker. Human generals may be presented data and holographic simulations of the battlefield, but those don't seem to require fly-by sound effects.
@@lekhakaananta5864
There are also some arguments for not giving an autonomous AI weapons and sending it out to operate independently.
If you're going to argue realism, you're probably not dealing with space fighter planes anyway, manned or otherwise - neither of the advantages of aircraft apply in space combat - on Earth, planes can see over the horizon (not an issue in space unless you're working very close to a planet), and they have the height advantage, being able to drop things on land and sea below, while their targets have to burn a lot of extra energy getting their defensive fire high enough to interact with the planes - in space, any ship type can find itself in a higher orbit.
I think space combat would actually look a lot like submarine warfare. There's no windows to look out of that can give you any useful information. Most of the targeting and shooting would be done by computers. If you want the drama of combat in space you should probably look to dramas of submarine warfare like The Hunt for Red October.
+Samuel Foreman This is probably about as true as it gets. Long distances and a lot of using your sensors (telescopes) to plot the bad guy's movement and plot your own weapons 'course' to intercept and destroy. You would only remove the stealthy aspect since in space everyone see's everyone.
I suspect stealth elements may be easier than you think. If they have the technology to field warships in space, they probably have technology that minimizes radar and other detection methods. It's easy to loose things in all that void. Science fiction has hand-waved bigger things than this for the sake of drama...
Samuel Foreman It's harder than you think. It's true radar returns can be reflected, etc, but you can't do anything about the heat you give off and everything is hotter than background space. IR detectors have come a long way and anything hotter than the background will have the potential to be detected if there is LOS between the detector and the object they're looking for. This method is also 100% passive and the target would have no idea it's been detected.
+Samuel Foreman The problem with space stealth is heat. Against the near absolute zero background temperature of space, even a ship with it's drive shut down is going to be lit up like a strobe light to infrared scanners just because the interior has to be heated to keep the crew alive, not to mention waste heat from the power source. And once you turn your engines on, everyone in the system is going to be able to see you with a good enough telescope.
Hunt For Red October is a good example of submarine warfare, but the german movie Das Boot offers a better example, and draws from actual historical sub fights.
"why is the inevitable outcome of human space exploration war?"
Probably because most people would rather watch massive space battles then boring interstellar diplomatic negotiations.
+Trepur349 Also because humans will always wage war to gain resources that they need.
Sayuas By the time that humans have the technology for interstellar travel there will be no resources that humans need.
Trepur349
What are you talking about? Humans will always need resources. Also, some resources will be easier and cheaper to extract than other resources, and people will still fight over that even when they are abundant.
Also, there are many other reasons for war, for example feeding into a military industrial complex that makes money from it and pays politicians to start new wars and keep them going. Or just ideological differences. Or to gain power.
Sayuas Again, when you're technologically advanced enough for interstellar travel, there is no resource that you need.
There is no resource extraction because they'll be getting energy from solar and heat power generated from stars.
Trepur349
Right, so they just extract metals, drinking water, food and all other resources that we need from "solar power". Also, you didn't address all the other reasons for wars that I talked about.
Babylon 5 got the physics of space battles pretty close. The fighter craft, Starfury is shown turning on its axis to fire at pursuing enemies while still heading on the same trajectory because of its initial thrust. The cockpit design is also good because it allows the pilot to see in 3 dimensions rather than being mounted on top like a jet fighter.
+Rowan J Coleman To be fair this isn't even the subject of the video, but cockpits are really unrealistic when it comes to any kind of spaceship. Radiation is a thing.
***** Well, transparilead would be better... Anyways, science fiction is really more about fiction than about science, what are we complaining about? xD
+Colin Hunt FYI, the Star Trek concept of Transparent Aluminum is a real thing.
+Rowan J Coleman I also liked B5's cobra launch bays, flinging the starfury's clear of the station using its rotation, before firing thrusters. It also showed that when the Humans fought the Minbari, the tech difference was overwhelming. Bows and arrows against the lightning.
+Rowan J Coleman In really hard science most ships would be spheres. You need a dense material as the outer hull which would be heavy and expensive, so you're gonna go for the perfect relationship between surface and volume. Perry Rhodan consistently got at least that right, though they sometimes went and still go a bit crazy with their technobabble. www.rz-journal.de/Downl/465.jpg
I think Battlestar Galactica made some improvements in space battles. Well at least their fighters could rotate on their own axis to bring guns to bear on enemies behind them and not have to menuver like atmospheric fighters.
Peter Vario Yeah, Battlestar got the gyroscopic maneuvering spot on, as well as kinetic energy weapons. Great series
It's Okay To Be Smart and Babylon 5 fighters also got it right
Babylon 5 did that before hand and it even had an excuse of close in warfare since the enemy appeared close to the station from hyperspace.
League359
B5 got it VERY right :D
I recall on space battle scene on B5 where it was pointed out that the two sides in the conflict could be distinguished by the explosion of these ships as the two warring species required different atmospheres so the color of the exploding ships were different.
Okay, Physics REALITY time:
#1) "Why am I blasting through the cosmos at full afterburner?" Well, you're not. Engine Efflux, or exhaust, will glow regardless of the power level because of the way the engine will likely need to work. If its an Ion based engine, the most likely design, you will probably want it at full power during combat, due to the speed shed during maneuvering and any drag forces affecting you; however if using a different system, the same still applies, because faster is, in fact, better in combat. Why do you think Yeager's breaking of the Sound Barrier was so important? If using a different system, since the rate of acceleration is based on the energy input into the thrust, it is possible to use full after-burners, so to speak, to make the journey faster; it all depends on how things balance out in the end. Its like driving a car; if your tank is approaching empty, some people speed up to reach the gas station faster.
#2) "Explosive weapons are kinda useless..." Wrong on two counts. Number 1; an explosive doesn't necessarily need to consume Oxygen to explode; there are literally a million and one chemical reactions that can result in an explosion; Just off the top of my head, some potential fuels could be: Aluminum, Cesium, Magnesium....and those are just elements, not alloys, to which the number is far greater. And Number 2: Kinetic energy is not based on having a medium with which disperse its energy in three dimensions. A shaped explosive, detonated right against the hull, would still work in space, regardless of an atmosphere or not; and transfer the kinetic energy of the blast directly to the spacecraft.
#3) "Nukes...." Correct, though unless the yield is around the gigaton mark, the vaporization radius would be about 1 meter per 50 kilotons, and the "melt" radius would be about 10 meters per 50 Kilotons; though keep in mind diminishing returns in a pure transference medium(space). If you waned to just melt a spacecraft, or cooks its crew with a nuke, you'd need a VERY large one, or dozens of smaller ones.
#4) "Neutron Radiation could pass straight through spacecraft armor." Discarding the possibility of energy, particle and whatnot shield systems, there are actually substances that can absorb neutron radiation with ease. In fact, you have one in the pencil on your desk...... These materials have been used in nuclear reactors for decades, with great success.
#5) "Lasers...." Correct; in fact, it is a 100% a dead end combat technology if you want to use it as a direct medium for causing damage. Waste of time and money.
#6) "There is no atmosphere to dissipate all that heat...." /facepalm This one bugs me to no end. Heat = Infrared Radiation, which can not only travel in space, but can be detected from Hundreds of MILLIONS of light years away.... To absorb it, you need something made of matter, yes; but like a nuke's diminishing returns, it will disperse through space on its own.
#7) "Close in, broadside, naval battles look cool, but....not gonna happen." Don't rule this one out. The greater the distance between two objects, the lower the accuracy of any weapon fired. You touch upon this in your Earth+Europa example, but reach a wildly wrong conclusion. What is much more likely, its combat will indeed be close in, within 10 Km, to ensure higher accuracy and lower diminishing returns on certain weapons(like lasers!). If two planetary objects, like the Earth and Europa, were firing at each other, well, then their leaders are idiots. Such objects are too easy to predict where they are, thus are BAD places to base combative weapons. Ship based weapon platforms are much more likely, and enable a greater range of strategies than just: "Calculate orbit, time differential, and FIRE!"
Though you have put a good deal of effort into this video, you have made some mistakes. Fortunately, you didn't make the same mistakes a few others have made....even one multi million dollar documentary got about 99% of its conclusions wrong.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TYPING THIS FOR ME!!!!!!! I was thinking like 2/3rds of all these these and i was about to go post it and then i saw your post!
steven ratmansky My pleasure :)
Actually, this isn't the first time I've done this; far too many people look at science fiction and space battles as "impossible" and totally forget the way things actually work. For that reason, I LOVE the show Battlestar Galactica remake; its by far the most realistic example of what space combat and spacecraft in general will be built like.
Lukemage The interesting thing about point #7 is that it suggests a reason why full-scale space war would be unlikely: Unless you have one hell of a planetary defense system or the ability to move your entire war machine (population, industry, etc.) onto mobile bases, your civilization is always going to be a sitting duck. So is your opponent's. Any two space-faring capable of engaging in warfare on that scale would thus end up in a state of Mutually Assured Destruction. You might have skirmishes or proxy wars, but no one would want to risk escalating to the point where you are flinging asteroids at each other's planets.
#1) Speed is actually irrelevant is space combat other than for determining where the fighting actually takes place. _Accelleration_ is important. Which is why you want something beefier than an Ion drive in a fight. mm/s2 doesn't make for much dodging.
#2) Well, the only explosive that use an external oxidizer is FAE bombs. But other than that, yeah, explosives work just fine as long as you're not relying on a shockwave (fragmentation, or shaped charge).
#3-4) You need quite a bit of C (or H) to stop the Neutron flux of a decent nuke. But if you build your ship smart your handy little fuel tanks will do the job. ;-)
#5) Arguable. _Current_ lasers aren't up to doing that. It's theoretically possible to get throughputs way, way higher than that. In a few centuries it's likely that practical weapon lasers are commonplace.
#6) Cooling a spacecraft is horrible work. Radiative cooling is the worst way possible to do it, and the only way possible in space. When you end up needing square miles of radiators you end up without a practical warship...
#7) Dependent on engine and weapon capabilities. With practical lasers you'll be shooting at 1000's of km. Without practical lasers your best bet is probably missiles with shaped charge/Casaba howitzer nuke heads. Again very long range. 10's of km is if the enemy's defenses is tougher than your long-range firepower - and you're fast enough (accelleration + delta-V) to force an engagement.
Well, you may be able to go faster at full afterburner, but outside of an emergency it's a terribly inefficient waste of fuel when the inertia will get you there eventually on its own.
My favourite space combat book series is The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell. The detail and realism of the battles and ships is terrific. The limitations of the speed of light are addressed in almost every action so realistically. I would highly recommend it for any fan of space combat.
Actually you would be able to hear the sound of your engine from inside the spacecraft...
Because you have oxygen and a regulated pressure in there. If it was space, you would blow up inside your ship because your body produces enough pressure to even out with the atmosphere pressure on Earth. Now take that body pressure moving to the outside in space and you have a human blown to smithereens because there is no pressure in space.
+SansYT This is not true human skin is more than elastic enough to handle a 1 atm pressure difference lets face it in reality every one of us already knows this since diving down to 20m in water doesn't cause the water pressure to tear through your skin. But if logic alone isn't enough to convince you then bear in mind that at least one person has survived at least 30 seconds exposure to a vaccum equal to that of space during a NASA space suit test where the suit failed in a vaccum chamber. The survivor unsurprisingly was in no way exploded thus the surviving part sure they received a number of issues but nothing so dramatic or fatal.
No actual exposure to vaccum would be a somewhat slower and crueller end than you make out the ultimate cause of death will be plain and simple suffocation though the injuries sustained while not fatal in themselves they would induce severe agony.
Seraphina S is correct. Skin is one of the most elastic substances in the world, even says so in the Bible that Moses tied his ass to a tree and walked 30 miles!
I am pretty sure Joe Haldemans book The Forever War had a very realistic aproach to space battles. They were fought over hundreds of years, one small projectile being fired and reaching it target 30 years later.
lol. A bullet get's fired and the guys on the other side see it 10 years before it's gonna hit. "Let's just move out of the way".
In the novel they don't see anything coming, because the projectiles are microscopic (at nearly the speed of light, their impact has still the energy of a nuke). If the crew notices, they are pursued by an enemy ship, all they can do is to get into high-pressure chambers supporting the body against acceleration and than the ships computer is doing evasive maneuvers at nearly 100 Gs. It is a really scary scenario and the soldiers are completely dependent on the technology. They could die in an instand and there is nothing they can personally do against it.
Absolutely. The main thing missing from every movie space battle is the fact that it would all be handled by computers. Even today, aircraft fighter systems are capable of automatically identifying approaching enemy by their engine signatures and launching active homing weapons all beyond visual range. The "death blossom" battle mode in "The Last Starfighter" comes close to what it might look like. Yes, the limitation will be the ability of the human crew to stand the computer-driven roller coaster.
+Kirk Darling was that why the whole "Let go, Luke" scene in SW was such a big deal?
Heck, I used to hit wamp-rats back home . . . they're not much bigger than 2 meters . . .
I'm an engineer and I totally understand what you're stating BUT the battles are SO COOL! :P lol I think we will still fight in space it will just be very different from "Star Wars" and FAR more limited. I have this feeling human nature will not change in outer space, if we ever get there for real, someone is bound to want more. P.S. Think of all those shows that already had us living in space by now...
In most science fiction movies and TV shows, it's more about creating an exciting drama and less about actual science, even in shows such as Star Trek
For anyone that doesnt understand physics in space, it would be so confusing and offputting. I would like to see a tungsten magnetic projectile be launched from 100s of kilometers away tho
I believe that space battles will be like this: Fighters will fire short bursts with engines and their weapons will be rail guns. (Rail guns are real. Search it up.) Present-day rail guns are already powerful, and by the time there's space battles, they will be even more powerful. In later years, plasma cannons containing unstable plasma will be used. The sheer energy needed for light travel will make it hard for it to be implemented into battles. Instead, warships will use bigger engines, and like fighters, use short bursts from their engines. The result will be battles fought with enemies far away. If this gets enough likes I'll talk about the designs and tactics for space battles and space warships.
I'm looking forward to the Expanse series (the first season just ended). I've read the books, and the space battles are quite ... different from what we're used to watch. Ships generate some sort of SF-y "thrust gravity" which means that a ship HAS to accelerate in order to generate artificial gravity, and in close combat this means that ships sometimes pull out as much as 12 or 14 G in order to avoid projectiles... which in turn would render a person unconscious if it weren't for the force-absorbing gels and hormone injections. Projectiles are ballistic, rely on the same propulsion as ships and are shot from tens of thousands of miles away, which means it can take DAYS for a torpedo to get from one ship to another. Communications are a mess, just like the 18th century naval battles you mentioned. It can take 40+ minutes to get feedback about a battle, which is quite frustrating in the thick of action :)
Most earthling screen writers don't have a clue how space battles are actually fought, but the Anime series "Starship Operators" gets them surprisingly right. Long-distance battles between ships (similar to earthlings' over-the-horizon marine warfare), no sound in space, more or less correct handling of inertia, as well as an emphasis on every space engineer's main problem : Heat dissipation.
Oooh, gotta check that series out :D
The anime series, " Legend of the Galactic Heroes" does put a lot more stock in science as well such as slow communications due to the expanse of space, and including an interesting use of gravity concerning large objects in warfare. Though I am still willing to bet that not everything concerning physics in the show was entirely spot-on.
Zogg I miss your videos! They are so awesome, also why didn't you finish the series on No Edge?
Jan Cillié Louw I will. But alas, I'm on another near-lightspeed trip right now, so it will take a while in your timeframe.
[Off-character explanation: I've a lot of work right now, but I'll finish the third part as soon as I've more time.]
Great can't wait, me and my fellow second year theoretical physics friend enjoy all your videos tremendously.
How you could do six minutes on the foibles of physics in modern sf media and not discuss how Babylon 5 is the only show that got it *right*, I have no idea.
Fjordstone Because that's what we're talking about down here in the comments!
It's Okay To Be Smart Dude, battle star did a pretty good job on the this (at least on the thrust vectoring and RCS port control)
The troll scout I was thinking the same thing.
***** Yeah, the magic shields suck a lot out of Star Trek's combat - I remember watching some major engagement in Deep Space Nine with shot after shot being harmlessly neutralised by the enemy shields, and my dominant emotional response being boredom, and comparing it to what B5 did with its battles, where any shot on target meant chunks of enemy ship taking heavy damage...
Tiwaking Tiwaking
Yeah, the magic shields and fist-fights on the planet below worked well for the smaller, more isolated stories of the original series - not so well for the always-connected Federation of Next Generation and later, where it was routine to be able to call upon a fleet when in need rather than meeting other first-rate starships only rarely when not at base...
The "starfury" fighter craft from Babylon 5 address a lot of the flaws you mention. In fact, according to JMS, there was some NASA involvement in their design (can't remember if it was before hand, or afterwards, giving them kudos for well thought out work). They use their momentum to great advantage, using directional thrusters to spin around on their axis while still moving forward so they can fire at the enemy behind them.
*It is interesting that so many people are discussing the finer details of space battles and passing over the concept we learned from Hollywood(TV and films) that battles(particularly space battles) are a mainstay of plot devices. This is because war - and the good chance of dying - is dramatic.
*So, stories of life in space follow the same old garden path as pre-spaceflight movies(and TV) that warfare is a standard plot device. The reason no stories about normal life in space were ever popularized is that the editors of sci-fi mags and book publishers told writers they didn't want stories about normal life in space.
*Using words like"I'm not gonna pay for this idyllic swill, get me some drama, I want space battles, gimme some action!" the norms we accept came from middle-aged men who wanted to sell product. Paying attention to what people wanted came later, all he could know anything from was what sold. Also space story details were mixed with other genres that sold, so we get space romances, space detectives, and space zombies.
*Also, it's great to see so many critiquing old space films and TV series. This means there are lots of people knowing details to criticize the writers/producers of those old shows(and Boy, do I ever wish you had a TARDIS to go hit Irwin Allen with pepper spray or a Tazer!) and so the higher standards means we get to see a bit more realism.
*But the main selector of plausible science detail is still the producers, and their limitations are knowledge, and the money to produce the work - which often comes from others - who may want to influence the story(or the science).
*If Humans ever encounter another race of space-faring intelligent life, we had better hope it's not one that is experienced in real space warfare. And that they won't think we're good to eat.
Why would Aliens eat us? Considering that it would take a long time to travel through space they would surely have the means of producing food to keep themselves alive. Also eating us can come with the risk of contracting diseases that could kill them. And surely they would have more of a preference for artificial food which would be more healthy and taster than us. Also eating other species would likely garner them a bad reputation with other species.
not to mention that our proteins are not only different but folded in certain ways. They would need a really good food processor.
I refuse to believe that we won't be able to have battles and wars conducted in space.
Alex Mckillmore I think a lot of these are on how beginning era of space flights would go because of our low tech, as he compared us to being like colonial style battling. However later on perhaps when the technology is greater, there's always the fact of manipulating physics to actually achieve space battles as you'd envision.
Alex Mckillmore He didnt say that we couldnt, just that it would be highly unlikely, due to the fact that it would be so freaken hard and so much trouble that people would probably just say the hell with it. I mean come one, what we going to shoot at each other. Bullets would be useless, so would rockets or any other type of rocket propelled weapons or any weapons that use any sort of combustion to do its destruction. Cause in space theres no air, no air, no fire, no fire, no explosion. We would have to baisiclly resort to lobbing rocks at each other, unless someone found a way to practically made lasers more effective and less huge then they would have to be as of right now to do any real damage to a large object such as battle ship at any distance. plus i dont know of anyone that would be wiling to go out into space where theres no air and that the smallest crack in your "windshield" would mean death and let someone shoot at them and you could also die by simply being disabled and drifting away for ever. So yeah, i dont know if people in the future are going to be anymore willing to do all that then we would be now. But who knows, maybe in the future people will be like in the movie idiocracy and will have just gotten dumber and dumber and be willing to go out into space and blow each other up by hurling rocks at one another...lmao.
You're clearly unaware that humans have long been sending rockets into space, powered by liquid oxygen. Even the Nazi V2 rockets were space-capable. Bullets would also work in space as they contain their own oxidizer in the powder. With that being said, there's also rail gun technology which would work in space. Your assessment of vulnerabilities in any future space conflict is also flawed as people have fought in comparably hostile environments in the past. The threat of insta-kill by no means dissuades people from spanking each other.
Nathan Luevano You never know what's possible. Hell, we just discovered a method of thrust that spits in the face of physics as we know it. Battle of Endor, please! (No, kidding, I wish you nothing but peace, future galaxy citizens.)
Alex Mckillmore
Battles in the middle of space are unlikely unless we find a
way to disrupt each other’s propulsion, space is simply way too big and without
a way to interdict no fleet would ever need to engage the larger one (or even
come close enough to each other to be detected). Battles over space stations
and colonies however could come in the distant future, because unlike the
vastness of space these things would both have strategic and economic value and
be located in a particular spot.
David Webber's 'Honor Harrington' series feels like it gets pretty close. That assumes his impeller drive is feasible though which it probably isn't.
The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell is also pretty good
This Is why there is so much stuff on the internet explaining Star wars physics, anybody who's not really into Star wars doesn't know it but there's an entire section of the internet dedicated to explaining everything it is one of the most fleshed out fiction universes ever and there's an explanation for almost everything
Star Trek phasers aren't lasers; they emit nadion particle beams. The word particle indicates that it's some form of matter that's actually being shot.
But lasers are just collimated photon particle beams. Tomayto, Tomahto.
"fire the retro rockets and futon torpedoes, and make us go that-a-way"
One set of books I read with what seemed like good space battle physics is the Star Carrier books by Ian Douglas. I recommend these books, it's a great series, very easy to get into.
I found Ian Douglas's depictions of space combat (most notably in the Star Carrier series) to be generally believable while still being fairly action packed. In general combat takes place on a solar system wide scale, relying on controlling the gravitational "high ground", and attacks at near lightspeed to keep the enemies from reading your hand.
It does rely on a couple technologies that may not be entirely plausible, instead of reactive thrusters attack craft use drives that project gravitational singularities in the desired direction of travel, which seems to violate conservation of energy, and I don'te remember exactly how they dealt with the tidal forces. On the other hand, such technologies were rather crucial in maintaining narrative pace.
Consider Pleabus: "were gunna blow up your 30km wide giant ring... a week from now; dont say we didnt warn you."
I am currently reading the Expanse series, and I think that the attention to how a space battle is conducted and the focus on keeping the technology and limitations realistic is really well written.
The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell is both a good story line and does a reasonable job at hitting the physics
This ^ I was amazed by the way Campbell wrote the space battles.
"The Lost Fleet" series by Jack Campbell has some pretty fun space battles with the time delay as a main component. They basically have to predict where the enemy will be and then wait to see if their shots even hit.
Indeed, also throwing rocks at planets as the best projectile weapons
Agreed... Much more realistic than most of them, and there is a lot of downtime and planning before encounters.. And when there are hits, they are usually fairly catastrophic to a ship.
Was looking for someone to mention this series. It is probably the most accurate to how it would really be done. Long, slow, with short bursts of action followed by hours/days off more planning.
Babylon 5 used the best space battle physics I'm aware of in TV or movies, though it was vastly compressed in terms of distances involved. It kind of has to be, though, to have any entertainment value. If the jump gate were actually a realistic orbital distance away from the station, both would be basically invisible to each other, which isn't very fun to watch. So distances are short, and plasma weapons travel really, /really/ slowly. Like maybe... 4 m/s slowly. But they do use Newtonian physics, with short thruster bursts, maneuvering thrusters on the corners of X-shaped craft for maximum torque, and tactics that such physics enables, such as spinning around to glide backwards under momentum, while shooting at an enemy that was 'behind' before flipping around.
I've never seen -any- popular media deal with real orbital mechanics, however, and that's not too terribly surprising, as they're -so- counterintuitive most people would yell at the screen about how stupid it looks to thrust completely the wrong way most of the time. XD
The best space combat in a video game was probably Independence War 2. And of course, for real space flight mechanics, it's tough to beat Kerbal Space Program. ;)
I figure space combat could go one of two ways based on how our tech/science is progressing:
A short range slugfest using EM accelerated guns, possibly warheads and missiles, possibly particle weapons as well. The range would would be short enough that light delat would be minimal -best example would be something like BSG.
A really long range affair using semi or fully autonomous drones and missiles.
Ships would move around while at the center of a spherical swarm of sentry drones that are far enough away that they are able to detect threats several minutes before the main ship.
Combat drones would then be dispatched to the area where the probability of the threat's presence (calculated by projecting its course with whatever data they had gathered thus far) is highest. The drones would be ordered to find the target, determine the best way to destroy and then attack, probably with missiles or anything effective against ships really.
Probably the best example of this type would be Andromeda.
If I had to guess, I'd say that the latter scenario is more likely.
The Expanse gets the physics correct and is an awesome space opera. The first couple of episodes were slow, but the series completely makes up for it.
getting it right- The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell
Katie Britt That was the inspiration for mentioning tactics that use light speed as an advantage!
Yeh i totaly agree the lost fleet is the excuse the wording down to earth representation of space combat.
I dont think anyone would go see a sci fi film where there was no sound or "laser" blasts, Half of your movie going experience is audio effects like the "roar" of tie fighters. The whole point to go to the movies is to ESCAPE reality in the first place.
For some reason I cannot read your book,
+David Foust In Battlestar Galactica space combat was silent. But there was an awesome soundtrack to make up for it.
+The User formerly unknown as himself Some sci-fi series justify the sound in space thing by saying that pilots have a system that generates sounds for the events that happen outside of their spacecraft to increase their awareness of what is happening.
+The User formerly unknown as himself Or heard from the perspective of the pilot, who only hears their own engines and guns. Great show.
+David Foust Limitations can create amazing solutions. Creativity through adversity. Why not have a musical score playing that has beats in time with weapon blasts, or hits? Sounds could also be played whenever inside a shit firing or getting hit. Battle Star Galactica did this, Babylon 5 did it in some episodes. Did you see moon? That's a tense movie.
Doing what's easy doesn't necessarily produce what is best. Star Wars was great but we've seen that already - and they're making more (which will hopefully be good). Just repeating what has already been done is lazy, and when you spread that attitude to all corners of movie making, you get lackluster results.
The closest I've ever seen anyone get to how real space battles might work would be the halo novels (More specifically the ones written by Eric Nylund) where two fleets sit a long way apart and fire missiles and lasers at each other with advanced targeting systems
Kim Stanley Robinson, Mars Trilogy? There's not a straight up space battle yet (halfway through the series) but I think his general outline of physics in varying atmospheres and distances is reasonably accurate. Anyone care to discuss?
While Babylon 5 treated space combat much like Great War naval engagements, they did the design of a space fighter right. The Starfury uses Newtonian maneuvering and only fires its engines and thrusters to maneuver. The positioning of the engines on 4 outward struts gives a good moment arm while making the major inertial axis point forward for stability. The weapons are placed along with the pilot in the center to prevent firing from influencing the balance too much. The use of pulsed energy weapons is a stretch of the imagination but if we harness plasma it might just do the trick.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfury
Metallic projectiles & strong magnets. Definitely like battles from the Age of Sail. And yes, neutrino bursts (why destroy a ship when you can kill its crew & take it for yourself?)--but seriously, if you got technology to go to stars then there's definitely a way to shield from neutrinos, OR EMP pulses that render onboard electronics dead.
Space battles will definitely be fought by unmanned drones. And for inter-planetary, super massive projectiles are the way to go. Think towing an asteroid or sumthing..haha
Cool video! Fascinating premise!
How would you kill someone with neutrinos???
what-if.xkcd.com/73/
The "Lost Stars" series by Jack Campbell describes space travel and warfare perfectly. Hours of waiting around, then having combat last mere seconds because of the speeds at which 2 forces are going when they engage, having to swing the ship around to brake, the distance traveled, the targeting systems, etc.. All very fascinating. Not to mention they're great books.
probably one of my favorite videos just because of the themes in the background
For accurate space war I'd suggest Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund
For one, if war was common in space, we would likely all be using robotic craft that are programmed to attack enemies when they get within a certain distance. I am unsure that there wouldn't be close up battle, not dog fighting, but close battles as the example set forth that you'd be only fighting past images if you are too far away, rendering distance combat somewhat futile.
It's a great video and the mistakes in movies are many. It probably has been mentioned before, but a scifi story that, I think, gets space battles right is 'The Forever War'. It is a three part comic by Belgian comic artist Marvano. It not only deals with war, its brutalising effects and the bureaucracy, but also with the gravitational forces working on the human body at such great speeds. It is also fascinating when you see the accelerating age difference between the space warriors and their family left behind on earth while they travel amongst the stars. Absolutely a great read!
I'm doing a personal project with space battle right now, this video helped me a lot thank you :D
You are totally right about this BUT Star Wars is not a good example.
It is NOT a sci-fi, but a fairy tale.
Well Lucas tried to go for the sci-fi in episode-1, which is why it failed so hard.
How is Star Wars not science fiction?
Agreed, please do elaborate.
The original series did not have any scientific explanation about any technology. All the explanation you were geting was spiritual. A fairy tale with futuristic elements, blades of light, the hold sorcerer, now using the force instead ,mana, but the story was never mentioning anything of the technological issues, how humanity got to that stage, and so on. If lucas did not do this, it would be too similar to the original Kurosawa film he was copying.
Ol` Lucas did try to make it into a Sci-fi, started to put attempts to explain stuff, even tried to explain the force with the midicloreans, nobody liked the idea. We wanted our fairytales with magic knights who move object with their shear will, predict the future, and always picks up the fight against the darkness with his shining blade.
People those days, who wanted to see sci-fi, were watching startrek
That IS sci-fi.
As the matter of fact, a perfect example of pairs to get for fairytale and sci-fi
SciFi: fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.... Where does it say that SciFi has provide explanations for it's technology?
its basic common sense.
Scifi in general focuses on the scientific part of the story, that is the exact reason it`s called SCIECNE fiction.
Fairy tales focus on the spiritual part. I cant really belive I had to pinpoint this out for you man... >.>
Towards the end of Larry Niven's novel "Protector" there is a battle between protagonists in starships powered by Bussard Ramjets. They use projectile weapons, aimed and fired by hand, and at the end the heroes ships tuns it's huge magnetic field scoops over the enemy ship. I think that that would at the very least destroy it's control systems. Written in 1973!
cool idea.. but the problem is that an alien ship probably isn't made of metal... :/
The hero and the enemy in this story had identical ships. It's well worth the read.
this UA-cam channel is awesome! why am I just finding out about this now?!?
at least I don't have to wait for new videos to come out. it almost feels like I'm from the future!
pew pew pew!
I did a writeup one time for a story where one of main torpedoes used carried hundred or thousands of hardened projectiles in the warhead, when launched it would home in on it's target, calculate the intercept envelope to it, and then detonate it's shaped explosive, sending a lethal cloud of high-velocity projectiles that the target ship would have to fly through. Now this was a universe really without effective forms of shielding, so it would be up to hull plating to defeat kinetic impacts, but the abrading effect of the warhead's projectiles would do some nasty damage to that hull plating, if not swiss-cheesing it completely. It had a high impulse thruster for accelaration, and some ability to try to avoid being hit by point-defense weapons on it's target, but it only had to get close enough on it's intercept path, and then detonate. At which point no point defense would be able to stop it's cloud of projectiles.
what if the thrusters on an x-wing or any other craft in the star wars universe are non-directional, sure they may emit plasma exhaust from the rear of the spacecraft, but their main mechanism of action is pushing on spacetime to accelerate the ship in any direction without the need for the ship to change orientation? meaning that while Luke appears to be accelerating forward for the entire duration of his trip to Dagobah, he's actually slowing down and matching the planet's orbital velocity, even though his ship is orientated the opposite direction conventional engines would need to accomplish this, it would be advantageous to allow the pilot and weapon systems to face in a different direction to the forward acceleration of the ship. The spacetime and gravity manipulation capabilities that the ships clearly have could protect their occupants from the g-forces that a ship undergoing conventional acceleration would be subject to. The degree to which they can compensate seems to be dependent on the size of the ship and the magnitude of the force it needs to cancel out, hence why we see fighter pilots take long curved turns, to keep the g-forces on them to tolerable levels and have them pushing the pilot back into their seat if the ship's inertial manipulation systems are pushed to the limit.
Dom Vasta ^^ this... oh so this. but the problem is we see droids do the same ... so... yeah...
I feel like a lot of these shows explain away the problems you bring up. RCS thrusters, for example, can be found on most star trek ships and are protected by their shields, so there's no need for reaction control wheels. Or maybe you do need to keep your engines on in space combat, despite Newton's first law, because your enemies have their engines on to match your speed -- it's the only way to avoid being out-maneuvered (Stargate: Atlantis). Broadside attacks as in BSG may be preferred for a number of reasons: If you're using lasers, like you said, their power diminish at long range. If you're using missiles like the Cylons, you don't want to give the enemy time enough to intercept them with countermeasures. And so on....
According to the Traveller Role Playing Game, most battles in space are actually fought near the vicinity of worlds and planets, mostly fighting for control of said worlds....
Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant paid a lot of attention to physics. And more recently, The Expanse did a good job including Coriolis Effect on liquid pouring in a frame of reference rotating for "gravity"
Came here expecting Babylon 5 to be mentioned - looking at the comments, I'm glad at least I wasn't the only one lol.
if you want to destroy a planet fast you should put some humans on it!
well it took us idk 3.5 million (idk if my source is correct) and we have already fucked it up bad enough but were not even done!
steven ratmansky we are on earth for ~6MY and became "Humans" (with agriculture) ~10TY ago. in the last ~150 (maybe more) years we started using coal and emitting tons of CO2 so to destroy a planet we need 2 BIG nations that have nuclear weapons and both have a Putin in charge, tell one something bad about the other, go out in space and watch.
Shut up, and stop complaining about the chance to live and having the consciousness to make the assumptions about every Human being.
Cale Nancarrow Well said. This anti-human postmodernist stance has already gotten far past its lifespan.
You call 200 thousand years of existence fast? You call the current planet destroyed? I would say it was a failure, and it was done very slow. I would say the best way to destroy a planet is technologically advanced psychopaths.
You made a point about the problems distance plays on time. I'm very interested in this concept and have had some of my own ideas about it.
For a very distant future where the technology is there for us to even attempt a Star Wars-esq battle, where multiple ships are traveling from different destinations at different speeds over vast distances in space, the logistics of any mass organization of force is mind blowing. We would be orchestrating battle plans for battles that we would never witness. The outcomes of which would not be felt for so long that we would need every ship to be aware of every contingency plan so that they could react in any organized manner. Our "wars" would at best be a game of probabilities.
Now imagine if we are traveling at high enough speeds for time dilation to occur. You would have to take into account the pace of human advancement. If you're on a vessel traveling somewhat near the speed of light, by the time you arrive anywhere your ship is probably already out dated. If you're traveling at high enough speeds for extremely long periods of time (withing the span of a human life) you would have to make assumptions of where and when you would need a show of force and send it possibly years in advance for them to arrive at the same time, newer, faster models of ship would arrive. Its a task so ill suited that i doubt a problem would exist in all of humanity for us to ever even try.
I would argue the original Dune series got it best, where ships are used almost exclusively for transport and most of the fighting actually occurs on planets. The holtzman field/effect, makes an impact on land fighting, but there is almost no open space battles for what is arguably the greatest sci-fi series of all time.
I think any space battles in the future would be between unmanned drones shaped like cubes. They could react and maneuver better than human piloted craft. Drag isn't a factor so the craft wont need to be aerodynamic. It could have thrusters on each side of the cube.
Weapons seem much more complicated though. Gun like weapons seem like the best bet because lasers spread out explosions have no medium to create a shockwave in, but the recoil from firing a gun in space would push the craft in the opposite direction. I'm honestly not sure what the best thing to use is. Maybe something like a torpedo, that is gently released from the craft, so no recoil, then takes off on it's own to track and make contact with the target before exploding and throwing shrapnel. Maybe EMP would be the most effective way of making a target not combat effective. It's not gonna do much if the circuits are fried. Life support systems would fail. But then again, would EMP weapons even induce a potential in a target when there's no path to ground? Man, space combat is nuts.
Your ideas are all based on an enemy craft using electronics... it's fine if you're fighting the Russians heh.. but fairly useless otherwise.
One of the best ways is to send Matrix style sentinels to latch onto the enemy craft and cut into the hull.
Another way would be to force the nearest star to go super nova
Tripcore what else would power enemy ships?
Matt T "what else would power enemy ships?"
Gravity.
Matt T I'm referring to alien ships btw
i think a space craft wound be a cone, so that when projectiles are shot at it there is a higher chance of them being deflected. there is no worry about not facing the enemy because space is so large you'll see them coming a long way away.
I'm going to toot my own horn here.
While you can question some of the underlying assumptions about the energy density of the drive technology (too high) and the energy density of the lasers (too low, perhaps), a boardgame I wrote (Attack Vector: Tactical) gets more of this stuff correct than anything else on the market.
I'd put a link to the product information page, but I'm in the middle of a web-site redesign and move at the moment.
You'll have to settle for some reviews. :)
www.wargamer.com/article/1760/attack-vector:-tactical
boardgamegeek.com/thread/231608/attack-vector-tactical-review
Attack Vector has fully Newtonian 3D movement, with the special case rules for fighting in near planetary orbit. It's also got fuel (including your ship's thrust increasing as the tanks run dry, and I do the calculus for you for determining total delta-V). It's got lasers that have energy density per unit area fall off at 1/r^2, and kinetic weapons where damage increases at mass times v^2.
No squishy force fields, everything is armored, using high tech composites in layers like whipple shields. You have onboard reactors, radiators that retract in combat, heat sinks to store waste heat while in combat, and power is stored in giant capacitor arrays for later use.
And those cool looking wings on your attack frigate? *No help at all.*
Depends if there are thrusters on the tips of those wings or if they are also used as radiators for heat build up. Just saying... :-)
I think I remember B5 Thunderbolts making use of short bursts from maneuvering thrusters (possibly also referring to limited reaction mass? it has been a while), so I'll give them a brownie point on this discussion.
I also think non-thruster based maneuvering was cited as a rationale for why Mobile Suit Gundam declared giant robots more maneuverable than, say, a sphere with a couple rocket motors.
There are many reasons to appreciate giant battling robots, but most of them require a complete disregard for the laws of physics. :-)
Joshua Rogers also, the Centauri used mass drivers to devastate the Narn home world.
I suppose the weapons in space used for ship-to-ship combat would be fired INSIDE the craft, And the projectile would pass down
a tube with an airlock at the end.
The video game "Independence War" had a warship that basically worked like the Starfury of B5. Was really fun to pilot.
Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep" had space battles in which the ships had to get the warheads synchronized with the jump pattern of the enemies. Meaning getting the warhead to where the ship will likely be next. That I think will be what realistic space battles would be about. Predicting the other's speed, vector and inertia and getting a weapon there first.
Anyone interested - check Children of a Dead Earth. Its a space combat simulator developed to be as realistic as possible.
The TV series "Babylon 5" had a fairly realistic physics model for its space battles. I loved one sequence where a bad guy gets on our hero's tail, oh no! What will our hero do? Well he just flips his fighter over 180 degrees (still traveling the same direction) and blasts the bad guy! Too bad Luke didn't figure that one out...
the problem with b5 is how the macro scale battles were meh at best
Just about to make a space comic! I'll have to keep this in mind! Thanks for making this video!
star wars space battle: *exists*
physics: ight i'ma head out
Guidance systems aside, missiles in space _are_ practical. Just as bullets are able to fire in vacuum because gunpowder carries its own oxidizers, high explosives also carry their own oxidizers. If any explosive relied on atmospheric oxygen, they would have a very small blast indeed (or need to be pre-mixed before ignition, as in the case of fuel-air explosives).
It's probably already been said, however, Babylon 5 had very realistic space battles that appeared to be conceived of with the laws of physics in mind.
I'll note the "mass drivers" used to destroy Narn were very realistic.
As to the subject of the video here, the Ares Starfuy Terran Space Fighter (Mark 1) was where I started my line of thinking here. However, yes, despite the horror of such weapons, the Mass Drivers / Gauss Rifles the Centauri used on the Narn was great physics.
This video is pretty great. I've been watching a bunch of star trek voyager lately and wondering about why they don't just turn off their engines and coast to preserve energy. that question has lead me on a wonderful journey around the internet, and now i know all about various forms of ftl travel in science fiction and now about space battles.
Thanks. Stephen R. Donaldson's GAP series does an excellent job of taking into account space battles using lasers and relativity.
What with the development of drones and such, I highly doubt there'll be such a thing as manned space combat.. It'll most likely be a couple of guys on a far away space station somewhere, sitting behind a bunch of high tech screens and controls, piloting unmanned spacecraft..
jarnomiedema That brings into play the lag time of communications though. If a decision needs to be made, do you want minutes or even hours between ship and pilot? And if you have artificially intelligent robotic piloting systems, can they react to unexpected mission questions in the same ways as creative human pilots?
I was going to put all that in this video, but it would have like doubled it in length! Incredibly good questions and something to discuss though.
It's Okay To Be Smart
Very good.
Owned by "Its Okay to Be Smart"!
It's Okay To Be Smart Do a Part 2?
It's Okay To Be Smart or we could learn more about how ants do there task without a central intelligence and apply it to drones to achieve there mission. Or we can learn more about quantum entanglement so we can control the drones without latency.
We are likely to have conflict as soon as extraplanetary settlements no longer feel obligated to send back cash/goods. Remember how the, then future, USA didn't want to send cash back home? Same deal. Or earlier when Britain didn't want to be under the thumb of Rome. Or India under the thumb of Britain. Even an all out Imperial hegemony tends to wane after a while (see 400 AD Rome, Teotihuacan, or 1800s Britain)
I'd say something like 100 years after initial settlement. "War" could possibly be mass-drops. Any spacefaring nation could afford it. It's really low tech: Just point it, speed it up, and release. Then drive them in dark from out system at relativistic speeds (like 5% C), leaving defense all but impossible. Level a continent with a few big rocks, and that's it. Just a big old buckshot to the system.
+fex144 I agree, once your space outpost has the ability to exist without the support of a parent planet or society they tend to chaff under remote rule. Some of your historical examples also shed light on the problem of keeping remote outposts under rule of the parent society, the vast distances and expenses. Military occupation tends to be expensive and with large travel times they become vulnerable to insurgency with long slow supply lines.
Lensflare Deviant
Yes it seem to largely depend on the remoteness of the outpost/settlement. Travel time will likely be a big piece of this puzzle. If a roundtrip is a single day, then the military can get there almost immediately to quell an uprising. Remoteness is key.
Can I also point out that without air and the restrictions of a curved surface, ships could literally spot each other from thousands of miles away, so space battles probably wouldn't be reminiscent of 17th century naval engagements.
Also, missiles could still be useful. Without air resistance, they could accelerate to extremely high velocities, punch through armor, and explode inside the target. Much like modern APHE rounds, except with a guidance system.
However, in the advent of reactive armor and laser-based point defense systems, the effectiveness of missiles in futuristic space warfare would be questionable
One way, to do a space-Battle is still untapped by you: Computer-Warfare or Digital Warfare.
As shown in the Anime "Bodacious Space Pirates", it is described as Hacking the Target-Ship's Computers, in order to prevent them from using their Battle-Capabilities.
This method was also used by the Cylons in the more-known Battlestar Galactica-Remake-Series.
While the Anime was simply using this to enable the "Piracy"-Acts(they were hired by the Companies, to simply put up a show, and everything they took from the Victims" was returned), in BattleStar Galactica it was used to initially disable the Targets, and then destroy them with conventional means.
Now imagine such an attack being successful on a Starfleet-Ship, if the Attacker manages to take control over the entire Computer-System, it would be possible to use it, to either kill everyone onboard, by flushing all Atmosphere, or even more Drastic, to disable The Warpcores Protection-Systems, destroying the entire ship without wasting as much Ressource as Conventional Attacks would.
The Babylon 5 Battles were pretty decent. They had fighters that changed orientation to fire but kept their linear momentum. NASA even wanted to use the designs. And the Spacestation had more practical defence system, which shot short range projectiles to intercept long range projectiles and Plasmafire.
space battles would probably play out like submarine engagements. with both ships looking for the other by detecting radio waves or heat/energy emissions. also, yes the farther away you can engage your enemy the better, but it is extremely unreliable and inaccurate especially firing at a ship which can maneuver. each warship would also have some sort of dedicated role in combat; like battleships have the most firepower and destroyers being the most maneuverable. fighters are tricky because of the fact of constantly firing up their engines to turn and maneuver, I think that is why they always have their engines on so they can quickly move and maneuver. this is all my opinion.
joseph pender They had an episode of the original Star Trek where they were hunting a Romulan ship with a cloaking device. It was very much a sub vs. destroyer fight. I think the reality would be, "every ship a submarine," though. Notice how modern ships and fighters are going stealthy. I expect that trend to continue. Weapon are getting so accurate/powerful that you can't afford to let your enemy get off a single shot.
Kenneth Pryde that's a cool thought. I think space battles may have different stages. the first stage would be locating the enemy ship/fleet. the second stage would either be closing the distance between the ships in order to be effectively accurate or engage from a distance. there would probably be more, but I can't really figure out how. also strike craft would not that effective in attacking vessels over a large distance since they don't carry a lot of fuel. they would be used more as a defense perimeter or scouting the enemy. it's impossible to tell how it would actually play out.
joseph pender A thought: Artificial Intelligence will likely run everything by the time we are spread out enough in the solar system for armed conflict to arise. Warships would be run by machines and launch huge smart-missiles with detonation lasers as their payload. The "strike craft" would race to within a few kilometers and set off it's nuke, destroying itself and lasing the target...
That's assuming the machines let us play war for real at all. Most likely they'll tell us to stop bullying each other and to go play nice.
+Kenneth Pryde never thought of that, but we would probably use virtual intelligence instead of artificial, the reason being is that artificial intelligence is to unpredictable and can learn extremely fast. virtual intelligence can't think for itself and has is programmed rather than created. like I said, it's impossible to tell how these things could play out.
joseph pender I don't think true artificial intelligence is possible. Like you said, it would be "virtual intelligence": a machine programmed to behave like it was a person. However, VI is still going to be so much smarter than us that it will likely begin to make most of our decisions for us. Set up by men, yes, but designed to control us.
Imagine a machine programmed to learn how to manipulate people. Not a blanket approach, but machines that target each individual person on the planet with specific individual stimuli. Your choices in every facet of your life would be carefully guided so that you would "choose" where to work, what to eat, who your friends are... Unless you were in the know, you might never have an inkling that those "choices" were never really yours.
So, "No, go play nice," could very well be the future of war. :D
Robert Heinlein recognized this in his Lazerus Long books when he noted that, "The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary."
He understood that combat in space, from a practical standpoint, would be an impractical affair.
For a trek-style space opera, Andromeda was surprisingly good at this: space battles were led at the distance of light seconds thorugh the use of unmanned drone fighters, relativistic kinetic kill missiles, and point defense lasers. Every important system in the ships was redundant and the ships were huge, but with a lot of empty spaces to make hits less devastating. No shields, IIRC, but point defens lasers and I think kinetic weapons plus ablative armor. The maneuvers also looked less like dogfights, at least for the bigger ships, with turning in spot without changing movement direction, in one episode this was even being used to lauch some junk as kinetic impactors from mostly unarmed freighter's cargo bay, with the freighter turning the bay towards the target, opening it and reverse-thrusting hard to let the package flying.
I haven't seen B5, but Andromeda had the most realistic space battles I've seen, all things considered.
I think David Weber's honorverse have it mostly right. It is acceleration there that is more important than speed. They do have ships that have heavy acceleration like 500g and missiles that have a much higher acceleration. They do have reaction-less engines fueled by fusion reactors for their ships. In the beginning this series looks a lot like a space version of 1800s ship combat with "wall of battle" compared to "line of battle"
Per Trygve Myhrer Yeah, the Honorverse does a lot right, but at least some of that is because the invented physics "just happens" to dictate 18th/19th century navies in space. Is it really doing it right when you change the laws of physics to make things work the way you want them to?
On the other hand, at least Weber does make his revised physics explicit.
+Guy Smith Every reader has it taste, for example i love those battles. And I admire David Weber for believability of his worlds (politics, relationships, economics, diplomacy...) but back to space battles:
Techically speaking I think the Honorverse principles seem to me as sound for battles in space. Its practically a carrier/fighter style warfare. Carrierships with crews launches automated fighters to deliver high yield nuke/energy weapons to range of the target ship. Munition/spent resources could be a drawback, but in terms of tactical advantage (range) its far superior to any other tactics I can think of..
***** Early Honorverse novels have long-range, largely ballistic, missile duels. Slightly later there are even longer-range missiles, and then they introduce actual carrier craft with manned fighters, which make somewhat less sense in space combat - the reasons aircraft carriers are so useful in contemporary combat have to do with height advantage (only a factor in space combat at really long ranges) and longer visual range due to the curvature of the Earth (not a factor in space combat). What LACs do offer is force distribution - rather than having the firepower of a superdreadnought permanently concentrated in one place and one place only, you can spread that same firepower over a dozen star systems - though, obviously, there's a risk there of being mopped up piecemeal by a more concentrated force.
The automated, disposable missiles do make a lot of sense.
+rmsgrey Carrier / LAC (light attack craft) is a very viable concept in space too. The distribution of firepower is little bit questionable, because Carrier + LACs have smaller combined firepower than Superdreadnought, but definitely worth considering. No offense, but you are missing one MAJOR point - communications loop. LACs are quite literally distributing fire control system too. I know that sufficiently capable AI should be able to do that too (Apollo systems comes to mind - later in the series).
Problem is when you are starting the engagement in distances over 3Gm light based communications have a delay 10s+ one way. Missile tracking system could still be fairly accurate, but even would be suspect. With low acceleration ships it doesnt have to be a problem, but especially in honoroverse that is a major limiting factor.
In summary Long range missile system probably makes most sense. Missile delivered plasma cannon / high yield nuke / laser would be probably the best "solution" for space combat. But it has a MAJOR drawbacks too - Electronic warfare would became probably a huge factor.
*****
The main problem with LACs is that they carry life support, shielding, point defences, and counter-missiles, as well as having to limit acceleration to something humans can survive, and needing enough power and reserve thrust to make it back to the carrier. Yes, the shorter c&c loop gives LACs an edge in fire control, but, even without Apollo's FTL-comms missile, using a telemetry drone as a relay would allow the use of a full capital ship's computational resources without needing to strap on life support etc. In fact, pretty much from their first deployment, Ghost Rider recon drones' real-time intelligence has been halving the Manties' response loops.
Anything that has to worry about what happens after it attacks is going to be less optimised for offense than something disposable.
As for relative firepower, an SD(P) has more missile firepower than anything else in space, but a CLAC can deploy more grasers than any other hyper-capable hull can muster. And in the novels, both Silesia and the Talbot sector have been seeing LAC wings deployed as detached rear-area security and anti-piracy forces.
Scott G. Geir's _Genellan, Planet fall_ might be one of those that got it more right than most.
The "I-War" aka "Independence War" series from Infogrames got it right too... Newtonian physics and everything. I loved those space sims ... :D
In "I-War" you could do 'funny things' like e.g. grab a cargo container, dock with it ... find a nice enemy capital ship, accelerate towards it ... and then let go of the cargo container. Result: Cargo container slams full-speed into the capital ship while you stay out of range of their defenses ...
A cargo container put in motion stays in motion until it slams into a capital ship at 8000 m/sec ... ;-) (Isaac Newton)
Drazenko Djuricic
relativistic kinetic weaponry is the most deadly, if you can hit your target.
Asbjørn Grandt ... the bigger problem being releasing the container in time so you don't slam into the target too .... XD
Now I want to see a movie or even just a short video showcasing how a realistic, futuristic, space battle would look like.
Cool video. Thanks for this smart look at space battles. My own point of view future science fiction will focus on more positive aspects of human space exploration. Like making contact with other intelligent lifeforms in peace and mutual curiosity, discovering more of the cosmos, colonising other planets in a sustainable manner, scientific discoveries, social, religious & political maturity etc. :)
How about the Gundam series? Unlike so many other series, it actually tries. Sure it's battle with giant robots, but still.
Gundam and Classic Star Trek (as in, 1965 before the networks started screwing it) are the only TV science fictions that have a modicum of realistic space war... and even that is very fantastical.
Well Gundam tend to be pretty good about it as long as it doesn't involve anything Newtype related. 08th MS team (sure, this one is mostly on the ground), Gundam Thunderbolt and Stargazer I think are some of the best examples. Some others do a good job, just not to the same extent as those three.
And I just remembered another series that did it somewhat well, Knights of Sidonia.
***** Newtypes and similars are a free pass. I'm only talking about tech.
***** I brought them up due to their prone habit of affecting tech with their hocus pocus.
While I dislike how inaccurate space battles tend to be, would it really be that entertaining to watch, say, Star Wars, without the fireballs and their sound effects? Probably not. So while realism is nice and all, I think fiction can stray a bit from it.
Think of The Wall from A Song of Ice and Fire, or magic from LotR, Harry Potter, etc. People don't nitpick fantasy about realism, so why do they do it to sci-fi? After all, it *is* science *fiction*.
gingergamergirl98 Because of the word "science". If they just called it "space opera", no one would care. It's like calling something "historical fiction" and having fireballs and steam powered trolls in it. Not wild about fireballs, but a steam powered troll sounds awesome. It just doesn't belong in the "historical fiction" genre.
Kenneth Pryde I guess, but I just think it's sorta unfair is all.
Just went on a wild Odyssey from a half remembered TikTok to a risky Google to an iMessage search to a Spotify search to perusing the catalog of the man who scored the internet Kevin MacLeod to delving the depths of this channel's catalog and for all that I heard and saw, I cannot answer the original question, nor really any question I had along the way, but I do now know that the former theme of It's Okay to Be Smart, as heard in this video, is Ouroboros by Kevin MacLeod from 2014's “Hard Electronic”
For some good writing with what space battles would be like try CJ Cheryh and the Downbelow Station series and Merchanter series. She makes good use of the terror in not knowing where your adversary is at near light speeds, as well as the sheer frailness of space craft.
Elibeth Moon's Vatta's WAr has interesting spaceship combat.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatta%27s_War
space battles will just be a bunch of men in space suits launched at each other with knives.
Poke a hole in any suit and you win :)
I know I am a bit late, but the actual fights in the scifi show the expanse are really good and really close from what you explained in this video. Cheers ^^
I'm currently bouncing around the idea for a Scifi webcomic, to get myself back into the habit of drawing. I was going to make it Science Fantasy, closer to something like Star Wars, with magic in space, but seeing this makes me want to throw in some hard scifi when it comes to things like space battles. I mean, I think I can have battlemages focusing their magics to harness a butterfly effect like chain reaction that makes a missile malfunction, hint at mechanics like gyroscope orientation in space craft and neutron radiation cannons. A doomsday device could easily be a telephone pole sized bar of titanium.
I seriously hope we'll stop fighting each other by the time we have this technology lol
welcome to Macross.... and or Gundam
projectile weapons still work
Gundam is great since there is no FTL and humans are barely past the moon
one the biggest weapons in Gundam is dropping LARGE masses on the earth
why build nukes when you can drop a mega ton rock with a lot less work
the energy weapons are basically charged plasma
AND they get not needing thrust thing right
the whole point of humanoid robots is to control movement a bit like an ice skater does
there is even an in show device called an 'AMBAC' (Active Mass Balance Auto-Control)
Elios0000 Meat thinks too slow and being large means you are a big target. As much as I love mecha, they are likely to remain fantasy.
I love the battle in Neptune's Brood. It's very rare that real hard science fiction has any space battle in it, because it's impractical, but that's the beauty of it.
in the nights dawn books, there is actually a really realistic description of space battles. not much dog fighting but continuously accelerating in a specific direction while firing multi functional AI controlled missiles with ecm, plasma cloud (for cover), nuclear (mostly fusion), kinetic shrapnel and antimatter warheadsoh and lasers, heat dissipation (and storage), turning maneuvers for better heat distribution and - instead of energy shields - molecular binding generators which amplify the structural stability of the armor
its really worth to read
Battlestar Galactica did it right!
Use le Force!
nice me me
Only if you wish to le surrender
We are taking a test on this stuff tomorrow so nice shirt and vid!
if you're looking for something to watch that does this well, The Expanse is where it's at. the parts that aren't space battles (ie, most of it) is really good too