Yea, I was a little worried that orbital mechanics wouldn't be discussed, considering it is the only movement you can do efficiently and within the realm of reason without some sort of 'warp drive' tech. But then I hear mentions of Kerbal Space Program? Okay, they've probably got a grip on things like that, at least a little, if not quite a good grasp of it.
I really liked the depiction of Mass Space Warfare on the show “Legend of the Galactic Heroes”: thousands of ships fighting at exrteme distances with well-thought ships for said purpose and the problem of interstellar logistics
Children of a Dead Earth is an excellent simulation of this, definitely the best I’ve found. I’m also drawing on The Expanse. I also disagree with a number of points in this video. As I see it, space warfare will be carried out primarily by drones and missiles. A drone is capable of surviving many orders of magnitude more acceleration than a human body, allowing much more nimble flight. Drone/Missile combat would also minimize loss of human life, allowing armies to keep around a very highly trained corps of pilots without undue risk to their lives. Therefore, capital ships/super carriers could serve an integral role in space warfare, namely that of drone carrier. Even in areas as small as our solar system, communication lag due to the speed of light quickly becomes significant, so a command post on a planet is not viable. The drones would also not carry enough dv for the larger orbital maneuvers, as too much fuel would slow it down. As such, a carrier would both serve as the C&C for the drone fleet, and as a way for it to move around a solar system. I also disagree with your assessment of projectile weapons. If the first priority was keep orbital paths clear, people wouldn’t fight in the first place, since any combat is going to shear bits and pieces off a ship, leaving shards in orbit as dangerous as a standard projectile. Also, projectiles maintain energy much, much more efficiently over distance compared to lasers, so while lasers might be instant, they’re much more energy hungry compared to simply chucking a bunch of rail gun rounds or similar at the enemy. See worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/32549/attenuation-of-a-laser-in-space for more info. On a totally unrelated note, if anyone is really interested in this kind of realism, along with light orbital dynamics, I very highly recommend Children of a Dead Earth Edit: The discussion down below is excellent, fleshes out some issues I had with my criticisms, as well as making some entirely new excellent points. It may not be your area of expertise Spookston, but some of your fans are clearly passionate about it
A thing I think many people miss with railguns is that it doesn't just have to be a chunk of metal it can be a shell potentially having nuclear warheads inside
Absolutely. Besides, its not like dangerous and lethal leftovers of warfare have ever been a concern before. Minefields and other unexploded ordnance is testament to that very fact.
You misquoted one of the greatest lines in Halo history. Is "Then it is an even fight." Not "fair." And the reason he says is even is not just to sound badass, but because 3 plus 1 equals 4 which is an even number. How did you even managed to get 69 likes when you misquoted this?
I've heard the "Space combat will be long range sniping matches with lasers and/or missiles" a lot, and let me tell you. In 1914 people thought normal infantry combat would be long range sniping matches with long rifles and formation maneuvers. Point is that we have no idea what Space combat looks like because we've never had it. Maybe we get to that point and all our space fighters end up so heavily armored they just ram each other to death, we don't know.
I know this is two years old but whatever. Space combat will be a lot more analogous to naval combat, which has developed into over the horizon combat. Really all forms of warfare have developed to be from further distances, simply due to the increasing range and accuracy of weapons making it much less dangerous and more flexible to attack.
Bad example, space battles will surely be of long range sniping matches. As the second closest thing to it is air to air fights which are usually long range assaults by modern fighter craft. In which, dog fighting is not practiced anymore.
@@SarsstudioHD long range combat neglects the problem of holding territory in deep space. Sure if you want to destroy something do it from a distance. But sending invading fleets will require something other than rail guns and missiles. You'll need actual people/robots to maintain and hold onto strategically significant points of interest in space.
I think the best example of space combat in the future can be found in The Expanse. When we look at their spacecraft, the only thing that cant be properly explained in real world physics is the Epstein drive, wich is a very fuel efficient engine. Long range missiles for primary combat, Gauss rifles for medium range and CIWS autocannons for point defense. There are no gravity on these ships, no aerodynamic shapes, no magical G force absorbing materials. No superfast engines. You travel like in real life. Planetary orbits, slingshotting using gravity bodies. Pretty much what Spookston said. Perhaps the only part were they drift is the G-juice they inject in mass accelerations and de-accelerations
@@F4Wildcat hmm actually, the expanse ships do have gravity. They create gravity in the way they move. An even if they didn't, we can already create artificial gravity. It would be expensive but we could do it. In fact we do this for exercise rooms for astronauts in space to help them keep in shape
@No Subs Cybernetics/removing of the human body is a Insanely long way off, at least more then 500 years a way. Fusion engines are...well something we can already do, just not very effectively. EVERYTHING in The Expanse (-aliens) could easily be done in under 100 years. Also lasers only produce very small amounts of thermal energy that can be removed, just think about how bi-prop engines do not melt when touching gases over 5000F.
That heavily depends, but given that modern materials and energy (weapon) science is going the trajectory established by Battletech... Well, it'll be 'fun' in the 'hundreds of km' sort of way.
@@TheNicestPig Eh, not as likely as you think if the game Children of a Dead Earth (aka 'the most realistic space combat sim mankind has ever made yet') has taught me anything. Lasers can reach out to a megameter (1k km) if you got the right setup, but that is generally useless (and this is with a solid-state setup). You are more likely to engage at 100s of km more often than not. Kinetic weapons are even WORSE were getting close to 100km is a rarity and you're more likely to see a kinetic weapon start firing at dozens of km at most...
@@TheTrueAdept i'd imagine guided kinetic weapons with a a few thousands meters per seconds deltaV of manuevering fuel (already achieavable by today's spacecrafts) could reach the oposite side of a planet's orbit in a reasonable time (i.e not the wait for transferwindow and do efficient burns like normal spacecrafts that'd take a a day or two). Relative speed at collision point could be in the kilometers per second range and cause massive damage.
That and the fact that most spacecraft have *intense* heat shielding, and it'd only gets better as spacecrafts explore more hostile enviroment like Venus and stuff.
@@TheNicestPig Would get its ass kicked by a pulse FEL. A powerful enough pulse FEL would simply have a damage profile similar to kinetics. Then there is the fact that you'll have a visual, UV, or X-Ray beam/pulse as well, which means anti-heat shielding isn't going to work.
Go play, "Children of a Dead Earth" to get a (very) rough idea. It's my current benchmark for realistic space combat* *Still ignores several concepts that I would consider key, but I haven't found anything better
Practically the only failing of that game is how much it trivialises the material-logistic element, by basically letting everyone use Star Trek's replicators. Sure, it makes the tactical element considerably easier to focus on, but at the same time, it reduces the engineering to finding the perfect ratio of spider-silk and rubber to wrap your big half-molten, osmium-spewing reactor in.
@@jonskowitz True. I just feel it's the only one that actually hurts the game with its absence. Not that I hadn't fantasised about how much fun I could have if I had the ability to tack a grand(ish)-strategic(very ish) mode to the thing.
@@Neuttah It´s not really supposed to be about strategy and logistics and such. The only point of the game is to make a as realistic as possible simulation of space combat and see how it plays out and what works.
@@XMysticHerox Yeah, yeah, sure, and it works great as a fritionless plane (or, as case may be, double cone) for perfect vehicles. But tactics hinge on strategy, both lean heavily on logistics, which in turn, rely entirely on the material and technological resources available. I know it's a massive nit that I'm picking. Especially since I'm about one failed transaction from sinking a few dozen more hours into it, now that Corona has me in the fridge until further notice.
My money's on missiles being the primary weapon, maybe bomb-pumped laser warheads like in the Honorverse, with ship mounted lasers being secondary or point defense armament. Why let the enemy closer than you have to? I suspect battles will be short; a massive missile volley at the start, then whoever came out worse trying to break off while the other side tries to finish them off with lasers and/or kinetics. Speaking of the Honorverse, I think David Weber initially was just doing Hornblower in Space (ships-of-the-wall exchanging broadsides with gamma ray lasers instead of 64 pounders) but eventually realized that's probably not how combat would work, hence podnaughts, a much more realistic take, at least by space opera standards. Edit: My deepest apologies for overestimating the intelligence of a UA-cam comment section. You would think we'd all know better by now. A bomb-pumped laser uses a nuclear explosion to power lasing rods (the Strategic Defense Initiative planned on up to 50 rods per bomb), generating a very brief X-ray laser. As a missile warhead, this means it doesn't need to make it all the way to the target, greatly reducing the chance of interception by point defense. When in range, lasing rods separate and point themselves at the target, the nuke goes off, and in the moment before the rods are destroyed they shoot a powerful beam at whatever they're pointing at, ruining it's day. I could easily see it becoming the weapon of choice in future space combat. It's already well within our technical abilities with today's technology.
I haven't read the Honorverse but without that context "laser warheads" makes me angry. Please tell me you're not suggesting lasers that carry a payload.
Bomb pumped lasers. Use a nuke to generate gamma rays, then use a lensing for to focus the rays towards a target. The technology was first conceived in the US Space Defence Initiative.
@@georgethompson913 Any designer worth their salt would have them. The U.S. paid dearly for thinking that close range fighting was dead. We buried a lot of pilots for that oversight. Thankfully, it's a lesson we have not forgotten so far.
Dude, have you seen The Expanse? Space battles there are almost everything you said, with orbital tragectories, no energy shielding, guided munitions and active protection systems, super long BVR ranges, spacecraft are usually only for space and not atmosphere, etc...
The expanse's depiction of space combat is pretty good, and the peculiarities of space combat create some odd/interesting situations, like penetrating shots quite often inflicting only minor damage, missile chases, and using orbital mechanics to be stealthy.
@@es4583 autocannons aka CIWS is cheaper and already exist in military in real life, particle beams or lasers are too expensive and has other logistical issues such as short life span, also lasers it's not that powerful there is a lots material in real life has very effective capabilities to counter laser weapon
@@wow664112 The problems you bring up with lasers would be easily solved in time to be used by spaceships since they would be a better weapon. Lasers would be powerful enough to do their job with the amount of energy the ship would be using. Such things are not even big problems though. Expensive better weapon > cheaper worse weapon.
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 lasers has too many problems at least in the expanse universe,in the show they did try to use lasers before, Behemoth has most powerful communications laser in the expanse universe which they modified into directed energy weapon, the biggest problem with directed energy weapon is that they need to constantly fire on 1 position untill laser overheat enemy spacecraft and that also require maintain your own spacecraft in the same position,this is highly unrealistic in a space warfare because spacecraft are very maneuverable and fast and they can engage in long distance
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 Expensive weapon not alway means better, you have to take production cost and maintenance into account, for example on paper Panther tank are way better than T-34 or M4 Sherman but we all know what happen to germany in the end
@@wow664112 That is very true but sometimes it is better to have a better weapon. I think a laser would be better for long distance but it would have to be fast firing. If so it would be fine if it can only shoot at one at a time. At least it should have one laser and then some other secondary/primary weapons.
I like the way the Expanse went about it, even though the more complex mechanics are largely ignored: - very low ranges would use either ballistic weaponry or lasers (since at higher distances a laser can't be focused enough to be of significant use), which would also be used to neutralize missile weaponry - middle ranges outside the focus of a laser or dispersion of a turret would use a rail gun, up until the limits for the targeting system to accurately aim it or the target's reaction time - guided missiles for anything above
If you want my opinion, I personally think that space combat would be similar to how it's portrayed in the Expanse. Spacedock has a very good breakdown of how Expance space combat works, I think you'll find it enlightening.
@@Thorgon-Cross They might be for entertainment, but that doesn't mean that they don't deeply discuss the most plausible of options. And he's _quite_ a bit more well informed that Spookston.
Lasers have a lot of profound problems as weapons if we aren’t being fanciful about their future capabilities. We understand how a missile works extremely well, however, and they can be given multiple different mission profiles. Lasers are an important tool to consider, but bloom and heat output issues *significantly* dash any kind of dreams of using sufficiently powerful ones at lightsecond ranges for the foreseeable future. The world of Actual Mechanics is often counterintuitive.
2:00 gundam uses this in the original series from 40 years ago. A giant space colony was Gassed then sent on a collision course with Earth. The plan was to bring a swift end to the war so people born in soace could gain independence...but it missed the HQ in a geo front in the Amazon rain forest and hit Sydney Australia(F for Australia). So the war continued. 2:20 Gundam also covers this. With battles that take place after the war are sometimes fought amongst the rubble of the original war. Edit:But thats gundam and thus not realistic. Just something to point out about one of my favorite franchises. As it likes to keep more track of stuff like that than other series do.
Surprisingly, aside from preferring giant robots, and the whole minovsky particles/reactors thing, it's got a lot of realism. Proper orbital mechanics, realistic space colonies, ships that have rotating sections for gravity. The giant robots are a bit excusable too, since they were improvised weapons by the Zeons made from humanoid vehicles designed for construction work. They also do a lot with the humanoid shape to take advantage of it, such as using limbs to rotate without burning RCS. It's a really odd mix of realism in some places, potentially impractical in others, and absolute make believe (Minovsky physics). In the main-line originals, they even go as far as having ships and the mobile suits use ballutes for aerobraking and space-to-ground landings.
@@thano8499 conflict war can cause people anger off and global chaos has noise earrape and gundam is about thing killing each other you owned people and now has lost by graveyard of team killer
Garden features one of my favorite space combat weapon systems as well. Screens of automated directed energy drones That double as point defense and unmanned attack craft. Those drone screens put out lasers, missiles, anti-detection chaff. And massively increase the angles of attack of a vessel.
There's a game on steam called "Children of a Dead Earth" which does a pretty good job of showing near future hard sci-fi space combat. It is basically a murderous version of kerbal space program with more in depth component design. I would recommend it if that sounds appealing to you.
@ that seems very single minded. The expanse is one of the most scientificly accurate shows ever produced. The show is really one of a kind. On the other hand I can understand how the dark lighting and drama can be off-putting to some.
@ it's not perfect by any means but it's the best I've ever seen. Particullarly the way they represent the problems of high G loads and lack of gravity experienced in space flight.
@ well the idea is that the travel they use is very much plausible and even near future. The only thing they have that we don't is the "epstien" drive that enables them to perform very long burns. Such a technology is probably possible and may be seen within the next century or two.
One thing you might want to consider in ship size is that bigger allows you more room for supplies and systems, the farther you want your ship to go, the bigger it needs to be to hold supplies. Food, water, air recycling. Biig capital ships would be a must if you wanted to attack another planet, or something even further away like bases in the Oort cloud, or another star. (At least assuming you wanted to go there in person.) If you didn't, you'd probably just send asteroids or relativistic kill missiles. If we want to factor in light lag, you'd definitely want to send people if it's combat in the Oort cloud or farther. Having to wait hours for drones to respond to new orders would be very disadvantageous to the home force. So a big capital ship that houses your people, and acts as a drone control point would be ideal. You'd also likely want something big if it contained an AI too, more room for more memory and power/cooling for your AI fleet controller. That big ship can also have really big engines with massive nozzles that get you better ISP, thus better fuel efficiency. Make this massive high efficiency ship a carrier for your smaller combat drones, and you get a lot of advantages. The square cube law can also work in favour for big ships too, if you double the internal volume, you don't need double the armour, or double the systems/crew. a 25x25x50 ship versus a 50x50x100 ship likely doesn't need to double the crew, meaning less proportional space dedicated to sleeping, life support etc. More space for supplies, propellant, munitions or weapons. As for crushing under change in velocity, you'd have to plot your maneuvers to take your structural integrity into account, or spread the force out with smaller RCS thrusters to spread out the structural load more. You'd want to keep your big long-range ships far from the engagement though, as far as you can, while maintaining good signal time to your drones.But inevitably some enemy drones or missiles will slip through, so you'd want your big ship to be able to defend itself. Big ships can also mount big weapons, useful for threatening whole planets with orbital barrages, or taking out targets too tough for your drones. Depending on how far you're going, you might need to bring an entire self sustaining city with you if you were bringing people, even if you could move close to, or at light speed. Realistically, there's no 'one size fits all' answer for space combat, just like there isn't for naval, air or ground combat. I'd argue space is even less one size fits all than any other, due to the vast disparity of distances involved. Before anyone goes and responds to this, _please_ at least understand the square cube law, and how it can work in the favour of larger things, I recommend watching Issac Arthur for further perspective on how a larger ship can be more efficient than a smaller one. ua-cam.com/video/V4ddnrBT6hE/v-deo.html
@@anotheralpharius2056 Maybe if you discount the ships being designed like cathedrals, being made of bricks, and _literally_ using magic to travel through space... What I'm saying is that realistically, in space combat, you'd need carriers to move your drones and missiles, and local command to avoid light lag. And pointing out that in the case of ships, square cube law can be an asset, over a detriment, something Spookston has missed.
Actually, capital ships being larger is better. One main reason; the square-cube law is on your side. Quadruple the surface area of the ship and you have eight times the space inside for more missiles, facilities, armour and accommodations. The internal volume of the ship being immense is great.
You also have to expend 8 times as much fuel to move while also being 8 times slower, and thats not even touching on problems like being easier to hit, greater waste heat generation or structural integrity of the vessel and others. So, as much as I'd want it too, bigger =/= better
@@didekjozwiak You wouldn't need eight times as much fuel since you're not increasing mass by eight times [only volume since it's a ship and has space inside] but you'd have room for eight times as much fuel. And you'd probably use fusion power anyway. Heat? Eh, it's space. Heat sinks and cooling fins would be perfectly suited to it. Integrity? It could have eight times as much armour. It would be stronger. Sorry, bigger is absolutely better here.
Daniel Jóźwiak like spookston said, it depends on the vessel itself like for example, for all we know the ship could have the same kind of honeycomb structure like the Halcyon class cruisers of Halo, or the element zero tech of Mass Effect, although their use of it is why their ships are so small
There’s a game called “Children of a Dead Earth”. Good game, if we enter into “Space combat” that’s a fantastic example, and is very very pretty to watch fights in, and it proposes a trifecta of options. Missiles, Kinetic Weapons and Lasers. Kinetic weapons are great at putting out massive amounts of damage, as even 2-5mm k-slugs would do horrific damage to most lightly armored ships. Lasers can burn through hulls, but only at close range, doubling as effective countermeasures to missiles- which can swarm and overwhelm k-slug defenses and multipurpose guns but struggle against far more accurate laser systems which can prematurely detonate missiles, their heat dispersion panels, or their engines, dodge them outright with clever maneuvering or deploy distracting countermeasures, but are also equally effective at all ranges, but can be made to excel in a niche. Agile countermeasure evaders, long-range nuclear cruise missiles, or close-in swarmers to swamp even laser defenses, or a big, armored missile designed to deflect all incoming fire before slamming into the ship and detonating, or my favorite- unmanned drone swarms that swamp the enemy with k-slugs before slamming themselves Into enemy ships- terminally ending both careers. Warfare will be a trifecta between those three aspects, short ranged lasers, medium ranged rapid-fire guns, or long-ranged missiles.
Re: kinetic weapons and missiles being bad because of debris. 1. I fail to see how bullets flying around on likely decaying orbits (you've just added a km/s to their velocity that probably isn't pure prograde) to harmlessly reenter are anywhere near as dangerous as the debris created by blowing up ships with said bullets.
@@coziiikinz5658 then again, this doesn't necessarily follow. Much like how he mentioned that you can end a battle just by overheating or disabling critical systems, projectiles can be employed in much the same way. If you look at Children of A Dead Earth gameplay, unless you're flinging nukes around, projectile engagements rarely result in the splintering of enemy warships. Rather, key systems are sniped out and the warship loses its crew or its effectiveness, thus ending the engagement
1. We will probably not just fight in a gravity well of a planet all the time, so ordinance would be free to travel around for eternity until they hit something. A round fired in the asteroid belt could hit a ship or station on the other side of the system decades later. 2. A round will travel significantly faster and hence with more kinetic energy that a piece of debris. Faster rounds mean less reaction time for the enemy and higher accuracy for the shooter. while a piece of debris might only have only a fraction of the kinetic energy that hit it, as the energy is absorbed by other pieces. 3. Rounds might be designed for piercing armor with a tungsten carbide jacket or might have delayed explosive charge inside. Or might be designed to flatten it self to transferring all the kinetic energy unto the target without passing through. While getting hit by either will ruin your day, getting hit with rounds specifically designed to kill/cripple ships is more dangerous that a piece of a coffee table.
Well that depends on whether the object is actually in a decaying orbit. Most orbits do not decay. Its path would have to cut close to the atmosphere for there to be any effect and even then it could linger for several years. It end up in a higher orbit it could remain for millions of years. Then the problem is the same with the terrestrial mine field, it continues to be a hazard long after the war.
@@dsdy1205 even small precision based armaments would cause shrapnel, would it not? Just simple penetration of armor would sling shrapnel about I would think
4:12 "Starting a fight in space is kind of like being the first to use nuclear weapons in actual combat. Nobody would want to be the first person to do it. America: *whistles while avoiding eye contact*
That Mass Effect clip is my favorite thing about space combat. A missed shot could be just as devastating to your enemies somewhere as it would be to your allies. It could keep traveling until it strikes a space station or even Earth. Basically, it would be a massive bruh moment.
So on top of tanks and mechs, you're also covering space-related topics... Now I REALLY would love to see you cover Gundam since they have stuff for all three. (Would recommend sticking with UC Gundam since it's more grounded than the spin-offs)
Ace Combat 7 had an example of Kessler synthcool in modern times. Both sides of the war launched anti-sat missiles at each others satellites, and the cascading effect destroyed all commercial satellites along with it, putting the world in an information blackout. Pls do a video on Ace Combat
You may like a book called Expeditionary Force, its about a US Army specialist whom teams up with some SF cats from other nations and a super advanced AI, the thing i like about the series is how intricate and planned out the space combat is, every single battle has weeks of planning behind it all leading up to an either sneakily hyper jumping a bomb into another ship or getting to a system last so theyd get hours old data on the other ship and be able to lob some mazer beams (super lasers) at its flight path, finishing a battle in the same nanosecond it began
I predict that in space warfare the combatants will rarely, if ever, come within visual range of each other. Most likely, the most they'll ever see of each other will be miniscule pinpricks of light, that only stand out among the sea of stars because they are moving.
Fascinating. One thing I didn't see mentioned was how spacecraft were used the Starship Troopers book. While spacecraft were capable of fighting each other, their main purpose was transporting troops, and dropping them onto the surface. The main requirement was carrying the assigned amount of troops, and being tough enough to last long enough to pick them back up.
You should do Resistance: Fall of Man for your next tank video. That game has pretty realistic looking human tank and jeep and two Chimeran vehicles you will probably have a field day with
The problem with guided munitions is that you could see the munition incoming long before it reaches you, especially if its a long distance fight like you described.
I was a little worried that orbital mechanics wouldn't be covered in depth, considering it is the only movement you can do efficiently and within the realm of reason without some sort of 'warp drive' tech. But I was quite pleasantly surprised when Kerbal Space Program was mentioned! Great vid!
Well. Tbh for me at least, we will never know what space combat will be like, because we doesn't have the technologies for that to happen yet. I mean, there's a reason Halo or any sci fi setting have a very standard fleet roster not very different than today Navy, because they base space combat on modern naval warship roster to develope their navy ( Fighter, Frigate, Carrier, etc....) and base their space combat tactic on modern naval tactic. The only series, for me at least, have *the most realistic* space combat that is based on our current technological advance is *The Expense* . For example, even the smallest warship class both UN and MCR have a sizeable crew component , and there's no single man fighter craft in there. Also ship combat each other using regular projectile weapon, missile. The only weapon that can somewhat count as fictional is railgun, and even that is already in prototype stage. ;)
As an SFIA channel regular, a few points 1. There is no such thing as stealth in space, a sufficiently powerful telescope or radar could see you halfway across the universe. 2. Lasers would be common, but I suspect gamma ray lasers or meson beams (rapidly decaying particles) would be more popular. As these could go straight through any armor. 3. Kinetic weapons would be very popular at long range. They don’t lose power over distance and are much easier to deal damage with. Additionally, our current lasers, even if absurdly powerful, could not hope to hurt something at even lunar distances, RKMs are a different story there. 4 and finally. Kessler syndrome would be a nuisance at worst for any major spacefaring civilization at ship-sized scales, but would still have great political influence due to the difficulty to clear debris with point defense lasers. This changes when the number of ships involved increases to what a heavily industrialized power would have. Which would be capable of producing millions of ships per day.
Every star wars Ship formation is an extrapolated 2D, and has no effectiveness in real life. and in alot of scenarios star wars is a blatant rip off of WW2 tactics. literally a triangle, shape is better than flat starwars crap.
@@cosmichay74 Your confusing ship shape with an arrangement of ships in 3D space. and even then, No. every object has 6 degrees of freedom, now we play the game of removal. 1) direction, 2) limitations on rotation in axis of direction. 3) now build control surfaces in 3D and place thrusters in a manner to prevent roll and have a landing gear...Finally get it all to fail safe as an aircraft falling to a planet. You end up with a ship not dissimilar to the star wars troop carrier. if your curious to formation tactics see: ua-cam.com/video/zUe6Rg0aUO4/v-deo.html
a common trope in sci-fi or sci-fantasy stories is some kind of shielding unit/grid on ships that can protect from light space debris. assuming such is possible irl one could use that same concept for a number of purposes. For instance a non-combat role that shielding units could be used for is debris-cleanup and controlling kessler syndrome by extending a large net-like structure out of a satellite with shielding units on the intersections of the structure to catch small pieces of debris(or at the very least slow them down enough to go sub-orbital. honestly as a literary exercise it's so fun to just go "Here is a potential technology from a sci-fi universe, what can/could people use that for in a way that makes sense?"
The lost fleet book series has interesting space combat with time delay for communications and visual spotting, the most used weapon are grape shot and solid projectiles all fired on computer predictions, its a good read and an interesting view on the effects of long term conflict.
it has decent showing of why stationary defenses aren't always cut out to help in space conflicts for long. planetary cannons cannot maneuver from tungsten rods and stations cannot move very fast out of orbit. ecm and macross missile maneuver at jump points from different factions were neat as well.
It will completely depend what part of space we are looking at. Combat in the dark and icy reaches of the outer solar system will likely look similar to submarine warfare; being all about stealth and endurance and staying hidden. Combat in low earth orbit could look in parts like you imagined it.
Here are ideas for your next vid 1. What's wrong with tanks and ifvs used in Endwar 2. What's wrong with tanks and ifvs used in fuel of war Frontline 3. What wrong with Tau vehicles in Dawn of war
Logic: space combat is overestimated, too dramatic and has nothing to do with real life. (enters the Vengeful Spirit aka Traitor's Hand) Logic: well... on the other hand it's just a theory, e-he... pls don't kill me.
warhammer 40k seems to fit with all of the points he makes except the ship size thing and he seems to not think about having to travel long distances and the need for supplys
Read a book that sort of addressed the distance issue. When ever they did space combat the ships were always at least a couple light minutes apart. So they were always a few minutes behind on the info they getting and it took a while for even lasers to reach.
Another thing to add about when it comes to exiting the planet's atmosphere, is the planet's gravitiantional forces or pull. I'm not an expert when it comes to astronomy and science or anything related to both, but I knew that different gravity would mean different effects on the spacecraft upon exiting and entering the atmosphere The higher the planet's gravity the more power it would require for the spacecraft to exit or enter into and that would mean more resources and fuel being spend. But I'm pretty sure in the sci fi fiction or in the future there would ships that has engines that're able to have enough power and efficiency to go out the planet's atmosphere without issues or entering it safely without being burned to crisp while spinning out of control
An effective counter to SPAAACE LAAASEERS would be literally to point a giant mirror in the general direction you believe you are being shot from. It is light after all, how else do you see your pretty face in the morning.
Up until mirror gets a tiny imperfection, which instantly compromises it and allows laser to melt it. Or until laser simply works on different frequencies, than mirror is designed to reflect, and melts it regardless.
So this is on of my favorite topics as an aerospace engineer. A few notes, laser main issue is that they take time to deal damage, they will only be useful vs sensitive sensors etc. IE it becomes useful versus missile warheads, or as a electronic warfare system. Also the combat would change greatly depending on where your fighting, solar and planetary orbits are very different, IE the amount of cover. Space warfare would come down to almost entirely electronic warfare or using terrain to avoid getting one shot. Thus it would be closest to either tank or submarine warfare vs surface ship or dog fights. Additionally, the massive risk of damage to digital electronics from radiation or EMPs etc would mean analog or human systems might also rather important, ala battle star Galactica. Drones would also be everywhere. The "terrain" would be determined as to how a sensor signal would be effected and how safe it is to remain there, such as the presence of radiation belts micro meteors, proximity to the sun etc. In addition to inter orbit attacks, IE its easy to attack from a lunar orbit to a earth one but not so easy the other way around. Also with ship sizes, you couldn't bring a large ship into an average sized planets orbit, the different parts of the ship would feel different forces of gravity different, a good way to think of would be ship draft, litoral vs blue water. Either causing stress on it or forcing into an orientation, useless it was really massive (more on that in a bit). For solar orbit you could, in fact if you grab and asteroid, a mostly solid one (most are more like massive balls of gravel glued together loosely) and strap some slow but effective engines (mag sails, solar sails, ion engines etc) and missile systems. you have a capital ship whose insides are radiation harden for crew. You could then use this new capital ship and slowly push into a planets orbit as a new moon to control the air space. Also I wonder what you think on a combo of your two favorite sci fi tank troupes, hover tanks and walkers. Ie use the two systems to cover for each other and result in movement like a "swimming" hippo, wierd analogy but hippos are denser then water and have some interesting movement as a result. That and smaller hover bikes like speeders, the ground clearance from hovering would allow to clean terrain that a reasonable sized wheel would generally struggle with for a vehicle of that size.
You should check out Children of a Dead Earth. It´s a very realistic Space Combat simulator. You can actually just burn towards where you want to go. It´s just horribly inefficient. However if somehow fuel wasn´t a factor which is usually the case in space operas then you could absolutely do this. It is much faster than normal orbital maneuvers. If you had plenty of Delta V you´d just burn towards where you want to go in combat. In a realistic scenario at least missiles would likely just burn towards the target at most ranges.
Nah, someone will develop a sort of space ideology that, much like communism, leads people to mass revolution toward a paradise utopia fun land, only to leave the nation vulnerable to a powerful dictator.
Just like in earth, some area in space contains higher concentration of specific resource, and/or easier to get to and bring to where they are needed. Taking control of them means cheap resource for the economy.
Hey Spookston, thanks for this! This video is very educational and informative! After doing a lot of reading on space combat, I have come to the same conclusion as you as to why space combat in sci-fi will be nothing like in real life. It just goes to show you that truth is stranger than fiction, eh? Hopefully, that will never happen for the reasons you stated. Anyway, I look forward to seeing more of your videos! You just earned a new subscriber! :)
I find it funny the difference between my two favorite UA-cam science people Isaac Arthur: In space bigger is almost always better Spooks: Smaller is better for deceleration and maneuvering But as you said differing opinions is what makes things like this fun to talk about!
@Spookston If you want an actual realistic space fighting game play "Children Of a Dead Earth" is incredible. Also in regards of the "long range laser engagements" I disagree, most things would probably have to be quite close, when using lasers at long range they would have a considerable delay, since light moves....at the speed of light you would be aiming at the past position of a target, and it would arrive when the target will have already moved, hence having to precede the target by two times where a small change in direction could make a complete miss while using a weapon system designed to be accurate and have a small cone of fire. A fight from here to the Sun, let alone targets much further away, there would be 8 minutes of delay from impact, hence we would see a target that distant 8 minutes in the last and have to shoot it a total of 16 minutes ahead, and a small target might need almost nothing to completely change course. Overall laser warfare might be useful in situations where you need the quickest hit on a target which position you know for sure, something like Earth to Moon warfare or hit and run attacks on unsuspecting targets. Also the cone of fire of lasers gets larger with distance, at best it means that it becomes less powerful, at worst it means that the shot will be ineffective, our best lasers can't even land a precise hit on the moon (though there's the atmosphere there, which is also why Musk idea of laser delivered internet is stupid really) and even with a big advancement in technology it's hard to think it will become such an effective weapon, the best strategy for now might be going full speed against the enemy and shooting from there, or using autonomous weapons that can hit the enemy (Children of a dead earth does a good job with iit)
Tbh one of the best ways that space combat was shown in my opinion was in series "star carrier" by Ian Douglas. He thought about most things others ignored not only in combat aspects but also society, aliens, and politics are much more though out then in nearly any other book I have ever seen maybe except "the expanse" which I consider equal. He took into consideration so much, starting from time dilation caused by extreme speeds, communication difficulties caused by ships being multiple light minutes apart, the different ways alien biology would influence the design of their ships and their strategy. He even considered that due to the insane distancing in the cosmic environment stealth would just be trying to seem like a chank of space rock instead of the ship.
Very good video! I was worried for a minute that you hadn't played enough KSP, but I see I was wrong. Also, there might be a place for kinetic weapons of relitavely small caliber in space combat. Due to delta-v limits, .223 caliber weapons might well be more than adequate for the main gun of a cruiser.
To your point about capital ships. I'd think the further way from the nearest planet/station you are operating, the more sense it makes to have a capital ships. The smaller ships you propose definitely make sense in Orbits closer to the planet than the high orbit. However if in a hypothetical scenario you need to get to another planet (i.e. Mars or idk), the supply capacity of smaller ships become an issue since they have less space for storage. Capital ships could carry these smaller ships, fuel, food, weapons, ammo and other supplies the ships and crews need and let the smaller ships engage the enemy at the target destination, while sitting at a safer distance. They could also possibly act as a repair yard for damaged ships.
My thoughts on it are it would most likely be used as orbital bombardment with a giant railgun like a irl mac cannon not accually fighting ships in space they would just find ways to bring ships down and burn up or crash as the ships would most likely be so small that it wouldn't be a massive issue for things on the ground
Small space fighters flying from ground into orbit is unrealistic, but the issue of getting in and out of orbit can be solved with specialized carriers. That way it can also save tons of fuel for actual combat and possibly even install solar generators for it to be efficient. Long range sniping battles have always been a given. Even modern aerial warfare is the same where dogfighting is essentially non-existent for the latest gen aircraft, since you have gps, radars and whathave you instruments to launch a subsonic missile away from visual range.
also, lasers dont stay as tight beams, but a small pellet of iron moving at a few tens of KM/s stays just as deadly no matter the range. another benefit of hypervelocity projectiles like that is that they will escape the solar system entirely if just fired into the void, so no leftover debris.
There is a series of sci fi books called the lost fleet which has an interesting take on space combat. Essentially the ships joust, making fast passes in fleet formations and spitting out grapeshot for the other fleet to run into with particle beams (called hell lances) being for more precision close range work, and missiles being more of a longer range clean up weapon. Railguns are primarily for stations and planetary bombardment since it would be too hard to effectively use against ships. The tactics are closer to age of sail ship combat with it being more about the fleet formation and approach.
Cool video. A nearish future and grounded in reality take. The rules change when faster than light tech is on the table. If the technology is sufficiently advanced and compact you could have FTL rockets. If you also have the sci fi trope that breaking out of a gravity well is trivial (and doesn't even require explanation) then sufficiently thick armour and counter measures could deal with debris. Could make an interesting video.
Wouldn't debris be burned up on reentry? Even quite sizeable asteroids are completely burned away before contacting a planet's surface, and debris from weapons in space would likely be far smaller, so even if it were less susceptible to burning up based on materials its made from, it still likely wouldn't contact the planet below, as it's just not big enough (of course the carcass of an entire capital ship is a different matter entirely). I guess it would pose a threat to the ship itself, or to nearby stations, but this is why I wouldn't suspect space combat to happen the way many franchises depict, with broadsides like old man-of-wars, or with gunfire at all... We already have anti-aircraft missiles capable of hitting targets accurately at ranges of 100km or more, so why wouldn't we be using missiles to engage targets from a good thousand miles away in space? Given advanced radars and other such detection methods, this seems most likely. Funnily enough, Halo seems to go both ways, with a prominent missile sequence at the beginning of Halo 4, but then most capital ship combat taking place with guns in either broadside arrangements, or many turrets. This is also how Star Wars does space combat primarily, and I can't speak much for Star Trek or Warhammer since I've no real experience with them. Star Citizen also seems to mesh the two together, and I guess the excuse is that active defense systems have gotten near impenetrable to smaller missiles, but I feel like larger missiles (take the Patriot missile as a modern day example), would likely have countermeasures of their own - an active defense system onboard the missile itself, designed to defeat the counter-projectiles launched by the target. This kind of weapon would be extremely expensive however, necessitating smaller craft to engage where possible. Large ships are also logistically viable as both transports and terror weapons, which is what Star Wars' Star Destroyers were designed primarily to be (despite the misnomer... thanks sci-fi/fantasy nerds). Smaller vessels can't be flying around at all times - overheating would be a big issue like you said, and the more nimble and responsive you want to make them, the less endurance they'd have, necessitating a larger mothership. Space combat brings both a modern day navy AND naval air force into the same playing field, blurring the lines between them, so I feel like ships would scale up and up and up depending on what was needed for certain forces in certain campaigns.
I would assume larger craft would be used for longer distance missions and that weapon range would probably never be a problem again too, just to add to what you said.
I highly recommend you the simulator Children Of A Dead earth. Its a pure blood space warfare simulator that explores the physics and the engineering of space warfare.
The thing everyone seems to forget is time. Time is a serious factor in all space engagements. With even in-system locations hours or days apart at light speed, arriving forces are masked by the fact that the light displaying their arrival hasn't reached to the forces currently in-system. Likewise, time dilation occurs as speed increases so firing solutions become harder to coordinate with any speed, and especially so if the enemies are making firing-passes as the relative speed between forces would be immense. Communication between ships would be time-delayed even if they're relatively close and distorted if they're moving at any significant fraction of the speed of light. Commanders are having to guess the enemy's course of action before they can see said action because the light from those actions hasn't reached the commander's position yet. Incredibly complex stuff. I think the best portrayal of space combat comes from The Lost Fleet series of books by Jack Campbell (John Hemry). Every decision in the books is weighed by the characters within the perspective of time. Each order given with a future timestamp for execution.
Debris isn't as much of an issue as you would think unless its hurling directly towards you and you have no way of avoiding it. Because of how much empty space there is the odds of debris coming back to bite you are almost non existent. So bullets and missiles are free game . Especially missiles considering the engagement ranges you would be talking about.
My personal favourite depiction of future space combat is by polish author Michał Cholewa in his books: There are ships roughly corresponding to naval fleets in terms of size and firepower. Yes, lasers are a thing, both short and long range and they are devastating, short burst wrecks a ship. However every ship is covered in deflection coating which disperses laser energy and makes it harmless. That's why mostly combat is based around attack and defense rockets. Attack rockets are really fast, their objective - get close to the ship, explode and send out gigantic DU splinters to break through ships hull. If the strike damages deflection coating then long range laser is used if angle is right to finish the enemy off. Defensive rockets are designed to intercept the above in a thermonuclear blast. Tungsten rods are also an option as they are practically undetectable and can take out stationary/predictable target without warning. There is electronic warfare involved as well. Oh, and battles are fought over tens of thousands of kilometers, no visual contact. Unfortunately I am not sure if books are available in English.
I think Ablative armor, much like the type that went under the crew pods of the early space Race, would become the go-to method of absorbing laser fire. You wouldn't even need to cover the ship: Just build an ablative armored cone on one side and face it towards the enemy. Mount a laser poking around one side and your gold. Properly designed the ablative plates could be replaced in the time between your first rendezvous (here defined as 'the time your ships are within LOS and range* of each other'') and the next, IF you are capable of getting someone or something to repair it. *A note on range: Don't discount maneuvering in a space dogfight: If you're engaging an enemy 4 light-seconds away, that means there's AT LEAST 8 seconds between when the target was in that place going that way, and when the laser you fire makes contact with the target. That's good amount of time for the target to make a course adjustment so you miss entirely. You can try to compensate by firing multiple lasers but the enemy has full freedom of movement and can pick literally any direction at random. So there is a max range in space: It's the range at which the enemy CANNOT get out of the way of your attack in time, and that'll depend on the enemy's mass, engine power, and the type of ordinance you got. A missile is actually to be great for a kill if you don't care for debris, because it can change course after launch.
I do believe that there would be capital ships in space combat because it could fill multiple roles it can fight when needed, it could be used to repair and rearm smaller craft, it could also be used to gather materials for repair, rearm and possible building new ships kind of like the mothership in the home world games.
One of the best ideas for minimizing kessler syndrome is lasers. We already have computer controlled lasers that are accurate enough to fry parasites on farm salmon, and if we just scale one up, we can use the laser to heat up said space debris to either accelerate it away or decelerate it into a suborbital velocity.
Idk if you read my comment tgat had some suggestions and praise spook, but one of my points was to mix up your content, and add more personality. You covering space combat was exactly what I meant and it seemed like the tone was much more conversational which is a step in the right direction as sometimes, especially if you watch multiple of your videos in a row, it can feel like your reading an essay rather than having a cool conversation about warfare and tanks and such with us. Anyway, great job man, keep on being one of my favorite youtubers. (One of the VERY few that I will click on everytime no matter the title or content)
Pretty sure the 2004 Battlestar Galactica Show did a good representation on space combat, with how the fighters have side thrusters, to manuver, take advantage of no gravity to glide or strafe, use conventional cannon shells and missiles for space combat.
Did you read the book The Forever War by Joe Haldeman? He does a fantastic job of answering that very question. In a pretty boring, but interesting way. About midway through the book there's a chapter where an enemy ship happens to be in the same orbit of a planet the protagonist ship. What follows is a weeks long orbital fight between to Troop carries trying to shoot each other everytime they meet up while also trying to conserve their fuel. To date I still think it's the most realistic depiction of what a space dogfight would look like.
given the extreme precision required to perform manoeuvers in space, it would probably more revolve around using dazzlers and other similar effect mechanism to just lead the ennemy ship into making errors during his manoeuvers (and so, potentially crash on something, or get lost on an unnintended trajectory ,etc...). it has the potential of ruining an spaceship, but has the advantage of being easyer to deny than actually shooting with an weapon.
I think The Expanse has the most scientifically accurate take on what space combat will be like. It includes rail guns being actually very hard to dodge, at least at intermediate range, since their slugs can be accelerated to such high speeds, especially in a vacuum
The Ark cutscene in Halo 3 is IMO one of the greatest of the whole series, the music and everything is just baller
microcat4 I’ve played that mission over 30 times lmao
Yea, that ship master is pure badass too.
BURN THEIR MONGREL HIDES
@@IronFreakV kick the door
“Ship Master, They outnumber us 3 to 1.”
“Then it is an even fight.”
at first i was like "i wonder if he's going to talk about orbital mechanics"
and then he said kerbal space program, and i stopped worrying
Yea, I was a little worried that orbital mechanics wouldn't be discussed, considering it is the only movement you can do efficiently and within the realm of reason without some sort of 'warp drive' tech. But then I hear mentions of Kerbal Space Program? Okay, they've probably got a grip on things like that, at least a little, if not quite a good grasp of it.
@@renametowhatuwant4174 space like a depression was everywhere
I already learned all of this because of that game. It's so good. It should be used as a learning tool in schools.
@@renametowhatuwant4174 you don't need a warp drive to ignore orbital mechanic... Just a very efficient torch drive. Ever watched The Expanse?
I really liked the depiction of Mass Space Warfare on the show “Legend of the Galactic Heroes”: thousands of ships fighting at exrteme distances with well-thought ships for said purpose and the problem of interstellar logistics
Exactely what I was about to type, with however a point of reserve with regards to how effective some of the proposed formations would be.
hm
What about interstellar, where most weapons used are torps, and only in close range do they use railguns and ciws
@@ALV694 there was combat in interstellar?
@@ALV694 Do you mean The Expanse?
Children of a Dead Earth is an excellent simulation of this, definitely the best I’ve found. I’m also drawing on The Expanse.
I also disagree with a number of points in this video.
As I see it, space warfare will be carried out primarily by drones and missiles. A drone is capable of surviving many orders of magnitude more acceleration than a human body, allowing much more nimble flight. Drone/Missile combat would also minimize loss of human life, allowing armies to keep around a very highly trained corps of pilots without undue risk to their lives.
Therefore, capital ships/super carriers could serve an integral role in space warfare, namely that of drone carrier. Even in areas as small as our solar system, communication lag due to the speed of light quickly becomes significant, so a command post on a planet is not viable. The drones would also not carry enough dv for the larger orbital maneuvers, as too much fuel would slow it down. As such, a carrier would both serve as the C&C for the drone fleet, and as a way for it to move around a solar system.
I also disagree with your assessment of projectile weapons. If the first priority was keep orbital paths clear, people wouldn’t fight in the first place, since any combat is going to shear bits and pieces off a ship, leaving shards in orbit as dangerous as a standard projectile. Also, projectiles maintain energy much, much more efficiently over distance compared to lasers, so while lasers might be instant, they’re much more energy hungry compared to simply chucking a bunch of rail gun rounds or similar at the enemy. See worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/32549/attenuation-of-a-laser-in-space for more info.
On a totally unrelated note, if anyone is really interested in this kind of realism, along with light orbital dynamics, I very highly recommend Children of a Dead Earth
Edit: The discussion down below is excellent, fleshes out some issues I had with my criticisms, as well as making some entirely new excellent points. It may not be your area of expertise Spookston, but some of your fans are clearly passionate about it
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A thing I think many people miss with railguns is that it doesn't just have to be a chunk of metal it can be a shell potentially having nuclear warheads inside
Absolutely. Besides, its not like dangerous and lethal leftovers of warfare have ever been a concern before. Minefields and other unexploded ordnance is testament to that very fact.
It should be noted that drones could also be used as a form of point defense for larger ships.
A person that disagrees with someone using good argumentation on Internet?
You can call yourself a man of culture
"Reality doesn't always make sense."
PLEASE EXPLAIN THIS TO EVERYONE.
For 50 years the two largest global powers adopted a military doctrine of "Yeah, Well if I'm dying your dying too god damn it!".
@@ummdustry5718 alongside with the rest of the world
Do you have a full understanding of reality for it to make sense?
@@MNanme1z4xs What that quote means is what is real doesn't always line up with what the layman expects.
@@thano8499 We evolved to reproduce, get food, and avoid being eaten by lions. Everything else has to be worked out the hard way.
"Shipmaster they outnumber us three to one!"
"Then it is a fair fight"
Absolutely classic line! 😁👍👍
You misquoted one of the greatest lines in Halo history. Is "Then it is an even fight." Not "fair." And the reason he says is even is not just to sound badass, but because 3 plus 1 equals 4 which is an even number. How did you even managed to get 69 likes when you misquoted this?
@@Charlisimo123 adding the numbers to obtain an even one is very Sheldonesk and as it wasn't an odd number then it would be acceptable☺.
@@Charlisimo123 lmao Even
I've heard the "Space combat will be long range sniping matches with lasers and/or missiles" a lot, and let me tell you.
In 1914 people thought normal infantry combat would be long range sniping matches with long rifles and formation maneuvers.
Point is that we have no idea what Space combat looks like because we've never had it. Maybe we get to that point and all our space fighters end up so heavily armored they just ram each other to death, we don't know.
That's true I mean who knows maybe we will develop effective shielding so that ships have to get in distance in order to do damage
@@Le-eu4bf yea no lol.
I know this is two years old but whatever.
Space combat will be a lot more analogous to naval combat, which has developed into over the horizon combat. Really all forms of warfare have developed to be from further distances, simply due to the increasing range and accuracy of weapons making it much less dangerous and more flexible to attack.
Bad example, space battles will surely be of long range sniping matches. As the second closest thing to it is air to air fights which are usually long range assaults by modern fighter craft. In which, dog fighting is not practiced anymore.
@@SarsstudioHD long range combat neglects the problem of holding territory in deep space. Sure if you want to destroy something do it from a distance. But sending invading fleets will require something other than rail guns and missiles. You'll need actual people/robots to maintain and hold onto strategically significant points of interest in space.
I think the best example of space combat in the future can be found in The Expanse. When we look at their spacecraft, the only thing that cant be properly explained in real world physics is the Epstein drive, wich is a very fuel efficient engine. Long range missiles for primary combat, Gauss rifles for medium range and CIWS autocannons for point defense. There are no gravity on these ships, no aerodynamic shapes, no magical G force absorbing materials. No superfast engines. You travel like in real life. Planetary orbits, slingshotting using gravity bodies. Pretty much what Spookston said.
Perhaps the only part were they drift is the G-juice they inject in mass accelerations and de-accelerations
@James Harding Wow didnt knew that, thanks!
@@F4Wildcat hmm actually, the expanse ships do have gravity. They create gravity in the way they move. An even if they didn't, we can already create artificial gravity. It would be expensive but we could do it.
In fact we do this for exercise rooms for astronauts in space to help them keep in shape
Children of a Dead Earth > the expanse >> most every other scifi space travel and combat
The numbers on the Epstein drive line up decently with an effective fusion thruster. It's a future-tech item, but not an implausible one.
@No Subs Cybernetics/removing of the human body is a Insanely long way off, at least more then 500 years a way. Fusion engines are...well something we can already do, just not very effectively. EVERYTHING in The Expanse (-aliens) could easily be done in under 100 years. Also lasers only produce very small amounts of thermal energy that can be removed, just think about how bi-prop engines do not melt when touching gases over 5000F.
That heavily depends, but given that modern materials and energy (weapon) science is going the trajectory established by Battletech...
Well, it'll be 'fun' in the 'hundreds of km' sort of way.
More like thousands.
@@TheNicestPig Eh, not as likely as you think if the game Children of a Dead Earth (aka 'the most realistic space combat sim mankind has ever made yet') has taught me anything. Lasers can reach out to a megameter (1k km) if you got the right setup, but that is generally useless (and this is with a solid-state setup). You are more likely to engage at 100s of km more often than not. Kinetic weapons are even WORSE were getting close to 100km is a rarity and you're more likely to see a kinetic weapon start firing at dozens of km at most...
@@TheTrueAdept i'd imagine guided kinetic weapons with a a few thousands meters per seconds deltaV of manuevering fuel (already achieavable by today's spacecrafts) could reach the oposite side of a planet's orbit in a reasonable time (i.e not the wait for transferwindow and do efficient burns like normal spacecrafts that'd take a a day or two).
Relative speed at collision point could be in the kilometers per second range and cause massive damage.
That and the fact that most spacecraft have *intense* heat shielding, and it'd only gets better as spacecrafts explore more hostile enviroment like Venus and stuff.
@@TheNicestPig Would get its ass kicked by a pulse FEL. A powerful enough pulse FEL would simply have a damage profile similar to kinetics. Then there is the fact that you'll have a visual, UV, or X-Ray beam/pulse as well, which means anti-heat shielding isn't going to work.
Go play, "Children of a Dead Earth" to get a (very) rough idea. It's my current benchmark for realistic space combat*
*Still ignores several concepts that I would consider key, but I haven't found anything better
Practically the only failing of that game is how much it trivialises the material-logistic element, by basically letting everyone use Star Trek's replicators.
Sure, it makes the tactical element considerably easier to focus on, but at the same time, it reduces the engineering to finding the perfect ratio of spider-silk and rubber to wrap your big half-molten, osmium-spewing reactor in.
That would be one of the things it ignores. Equipment reliability would be another, static defenses a third
@@jonskowitz True. I just feel it's the only one that actually hurts the game with its absence.
Not that I hadn't fantasised about how much fun I could have if I had the ability to tack a grand(ish)-strategic(very ish) mode to the thing.
@@Neuttah It´s not really supposed to be about strategy and logistics and such. The only point of the game is to make a as realistic as possible simulation of space combat and see how it plays out and what works.
@@XMysticHerox Yeah, yeah, sure, and it works great as a fritionless plane (or, as case may be, double cone) for perfect vehicles.
But tactics hinge on strategy, both lean heavily on logistics, which in turn, rely entirely on the material and technological resources available.
I know it's a massive nit that I'm picking. Especially since I'm about one failed transaction from sinking a few dozen more hours into it, now that Corona has me in the fridge until further notice.
My money's on missiles being the primary weapon, maybe bomb-pumped laser warheads like in the Honorverse, with ship mounted lasers being secondary or point defense armament. Why let the enemy closer than you have to? I suspect battles will be short; a massive missile volley at the start, then whoever came out worse trying to break off while the other side tries to finish them off with lasers and/or kinetics.
Speaking of the Honorverse, I think David Weber initially was just doing Hornblower in Space (ships-of-the-wall exchanging broadsides with gamma ray lasers instead of 64 pounders) but eventually realized that's probably not how combat would work, hence podnaughts, a much more realistic take, at least by space opera standards.
Edit:
My deepest apologies for overestimating the intelligence of a UA-cam comment section. You would think we'd all know better by now.
A bomb-pumped laser uses a nuclear explosion to power lasing rods (the Strategic Defense Initiative planned on up to 50 rods per bomb), generating a very brief X-ray laser. As a missile warhead, this means it doesn't need to make it all the way to the target, greatly reducing the chance of interception by point defense. When in range, lasing rods separate and point themselves at the target, the nuke goes off, and in the moment before the rods are destroyed they shoot a powerful beam at whatever they're pointing at, ruining it's day.
I could easily see it becoming the weapon of choice in future space combat. It's already well within our technical abilities with today's technology.
I would expect close in weapons to still exist as "just in case" weapons.
I haven't read the Honorverse but without that context "laser warheads" makes me angry. Please tell me you're not suggesting lasers that carry a payload.
Bomb pumped lasers. Use a nuke to generate gamma rays, then use a lensing for to focus the rays towards a target. The technology was first conceived in the US Space Defence Initiative.
@@ReddwarfIV oh thank God.
@@georgethompson913 Any designer worth their salt would have them. The U.S. paid dearly for thinking that close range fighting was dead. We buried a lot of pilots for that oversight. Thankfully, it's a lesson we have not forgotten so far.
Dude, have you seen The Expanse?
Space battles there are almost everything you said, with orbital tragectories, no energy shielding, guided munitions and active protection systems, super long BVR ranges, spacecraft are usually only for space and not atmosphere, etc...
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Is it so hard to believe that someone might like a video before watching it?
@@mintysushi494 no not really
@@fleabagzilla1792 exactly
@@mintysushi494 BTW i subbed to you
The expanse's depiction of space combat is pretty good, and the peculiarities of space combat create some odd/interesting situations, like penetrating shots quite often inflicting only minor damage, missile chases, and using orbital mechanics to be stealthy.
@@es4583 autocannons aka CIWS is cheaper and already exist in military in real life, particle beams or lasers are too expensive and has other logistical issues such as short life span, also lasers it's not that powerful there is a lots material in real life has very effective capabilities to counter laser weapon
@@wow664112 The problems you bring up with lasers would be easily solved in time to be used by spaceships since they would be a better weapon. Lasers would be powerful enough to do their job with the amount of energy the ship would be using. Such things are not even big problems though. Expensive better weapon > cheaper worse weapon.
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 lasers has too many problems at least in the expanse universe,in the show they did try to use lasers before, Behemoth has most powerful communications laser in the expanse universe which they modified into directed energy weapon, the biggest problem with directed energy weapon is that they need to constantly fire on 1 position untill laser overheat enemy spacecraft and that also require maintain your own spacecraft in the same position,this is highly unrealistic in a space warfare because spacecraft are very maneuverable and fast and they can engage in long distance
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 Expensive weapon not alway means better, you have to take production cost and maintenance into account, for example on paper Panther tank are way better than T-34 or M4 Sherman but we all know what happen to germany in the end
@@wow664112 That is very true but sometimes it is better to have a better weapon. I think a laser would be better for long distance but it would have to be fast firing. If so it would be fine if it can only shoot at one at a time. At least it should have one laser and then some other secondary/primary weapons.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off shoulder of Orion...
I like the way the Expanse went about it, even though the more complex mechanics are largely ignored:
- very low ranges would use either ballistic weaponry or lasers (since at higher distances a laser can't be focused enough to be of significant use), which would also be used to neutralize missile weaponry
- middle ranges outside the focus of a laser or dispersion of a turret would use a rail gun, up until the limits for the targeting system to accurately aim it or the target's reaction time
- guided missiles for anything above
If you want my opinion, I personally think that space combat would be similar to how it's portrayed in the Expanse. Spacedock has a very good breakdown of how Expance space combat works, I think you'll find it enlightening.
@No Subs No do not watch Issac Author videos for realism, He even says his videos are for entertainment, not scientific.
@No Subs These and more are the reasons I stuck to closer range engagements with energy weapons.
@@Thorgon-Cross They might be for entertainment, but that doesn't mean that they don't deeply discuss the most plausible of options. And he's _quite_ a bit more well informed that Spookston.
Lasers have a lot of profound problems as weapons if we aren’t being fanciful about their future capabilities. We understand how a missile works extremely well, however, and they can be given multiple different mission profiles. Lasers are an important tool to consider, but bloom and heat output issues *significantly* dash any kind of dreams of using sufficiently powerful ones at lightsecond ranges for the foreseeable future. The world of Actual Mechanics is often counterintuitive.
2:00 gundam uses this in the original series from 40 years ago. A giant space colony was Gassed then sent on a collision course with Earth. The plan was to bring a swift end to the war so people born in soace could gain independence...but it missed the HQ in a geo front in the Amazon rain forest and hit Sydney Australia(F for Australia). So the war continued.
2:20 Gundam also covers this. With battles that take place after the war are sometimes fought amongst the rubble of the original war.
Edit:But thats gundam and thus not realistic. Just something to point out about one of my favorite franchises. As it likes to keep more track of stuff like that than other series do.
Surprisingly, aside from preferring giant robots, and the whole minovsky particles/reactors thing, it's got a lot of realism. Proper orbital mechanics, realistic space colonies, ships that have rotating sections for gravity. The giant robots are a bit excusable too, since they were improvised weapons by the Zeons made from humanoid vehicles designed for construction work. They also do a lot with the humanoid shape to take advantage of it, such as using limbs to rotate without burning RCS. It's a really odd mix of realism in some places, potentially impractical in others, and absolute make believe (Minovsky physics). In the main-line originals, they even go as far as having ships and the mobile suits use ballutes for aerobraking and space-to-ground landings.
@@thano8499 conflict war can cause people anger off and global chaos has noise earrape and gundam is about thing killing each other you owned people and now has lost by graveyard of team killer
@@nichsa8984 What..?
Garden features one of my favorite space combat weapon systems as well. Screens of automated directed energy drones That double as point defense and unmanned attack craft. Those drone screens put out lasers, missiles, anti-detection chaff. And massively increase the angles of attack of a vessel.
There's a game on steam called "Children of a Dead Earth" which does a pretty good job of showing near future hard sci-fi space combat. It is basically a murderous version of kerbal space program with more in depth component design. I would recommend it if that sounds appealing to you.
See The Expanse series, and more realistically, Children of a Dead Earth :D :D
#theexpanse #childrenofadeadearth
@ yea!!! the expanse is the shit!!!
@ that seems very single minded. The expanse is one of the most scientificly accurate shows ever produced. The show is really one of a kind. On the other hand I can understand how the dark lighting and drama can be off-putting to some.
@ it's not perfect by any means but it's the best I've ever seen. Particullarly the way they represent the problems of high G loads and lack of gravity experienced in space flight.
@ well the idea is that the travel they use is very much plausible and even near future. The only thing they have that we don't is the "epstien" drive that enables them to perform very long burns. Such a technology is probably possible and may be seen within the next century or two.
@ The epstein drive is literally just a fusion engine. Idk about any of the portal stuff I haven't gotten that far.
One thing you might want to consider in ship size is that bigger allows you more room for supplies and systems, the farther you want your ship to go, the bigger it needs to be to hold supplies. Food, water, air recycling. Biig capital ships would be a must if you wanted to attack another planet, or something even further away like bases in the Oort cloud, or another star. (At least assuming you wanted to go there in person.) If you didn't, you'd probably just send asteroids or relativistic kill missiles.
If we want to factor in light lag, you'd definitely want to send people if it's combat in the Oort cloud or farther. Having to wait hours for drones to respond to new orders would be very disadvantageous to the home force. So a big capital ship that houses your people, and acts as a drone control point would be ideal. You'd also likely want something big if it contained an AI too, more room for more memory and power/cooling for your AI fleet controller. That big ship can also have really big engines with massive nozzles that get you better ISP, thus better fuel efficiency. Make this massive high efficiency ship a carrier for your smaller combat drones, and you get a lot of advantages.
The square cube law can also work in favour for big ships too, if you double the internal volume, you don't need double the armour, or double the systems/crew. a 25x25x50 ship versus a 50x50x100 ship likely doesn't need to double the crew, meaning less proportional space dedicated to sleeping, life support etc. More space for supplies, propellant, munitions or weapons. As for crushing under change in velocity, you'd have to plot your maneuvers to take your structural integrity into account, or spread the force out with smaller RCS thrusters to spread out the structural load more.
You'd want to keep your big long-range ships far from the engagement though, as far as you can, while maintaining good signal time to your drones.But inevitably some enemy drones or missiles will slip through, so you'd want your big ship to be able to defend itself. Big ships can also mount big weapons, useful for threatening whole planets with orbital barrages, or taking out targets too tough for your drones. Depending on how far you're going, you might need to bring an entire self sustaining city with you if you were bringing people, even if you could move close to, or at light speed.
Realistically, there's no 'one size fits all' answer for space combat, just like there isn't for naval, air or ground combat. I'd argue space is even less one size fits all than any other, due to the vast disparity of distances involved.
Before anyone goes and responds to this, _please_ at least understand the square cube law, and how it can work in the favour of larger things, I recommend watching Issac Arthur for further perspective on how a larger ship can be more efficient than a smaller one. ua-cam.com/video/V4ddnrBT6hE/v-deo.html
Really great points!
everything that I see makes 40k make sense and seem realistic
@@anotheralpharius2056 Maybe if you discount the ships being designed like cathedrals, being made of bricks, and _literally_ using magic to travel through space...
What I'm saying is that realistically, in space combat, you'd need carriers to move your drones and missiles, and local command to avoid light lag. And pointing out that in the case of ships, square cube law can be an asset, over a detriment, something Spookston has missed.
Actually, capital ships being larger is better. One main reason; the square-cube law is on your side. Quadruple the surface area of the ship and you have eight times the space inside for more missiles, facilities, armour and accommodations. The internal volume of the ship being immense is great.
You also have to expend 8 times as much fuel to move while also being 8 times slower, and thats not even touching on problems like being easier to hit, greater waste heat generation or structural integrity of the vessel and others. So, as much as I'd want it too, bigger =/= better
Moar boosters!
A larger ship would essentially means a larger mass. As per Newton's law, a larger mass require a larger force to move it and stop it
@@didekjozwiak You wouldn't need eight times as much fuel since you're not increasing mass by eight times [only volume since it's a ship and has space inside] but you'd have room for eight times as much fuel. And you'd probably use fusion power anyway.
Heat? Eh, it's space. Heat sinks and cooling fins would be perfectly suited to it.
Integrity? It could have eight times as much armour. It would be stronger.
Sorry, bigger is absolutely better here.
Daniel Jóźwiak like spookston said, it depends on the vessel itself like for example, for all we know the ship could have the same kind of honeycomb structure like the Halcyon class cruisers of Halo, or the element zero tech of Mass Effect, although their use of it is why their ships are so small
There’s a game called “Children of a Dead Earth”. Good game, if we enter into “Space combat” that’s a fantastic example, and is very very pretty to watch fights in, and it proposes a trifecta of options. Missiles, Kinetic Weapons and Lasers. Kinetic weapons are great at putting out massive amounts of damage, as even 2-5mm k-slugs would do horrific damage to most lightly armored ships. Lasers can burn through hulls, but only at close range, doubling as effective countermeasures to missiles- which can swarm and overwhelm k-slug defenses and multipurpose guns but struggle against far more accurate laser systems which can prematurely detonate missiles, their heat dispersion panels, or their engines, dodge them outright with clever maneuvering or deploy distracting countermeasures, but are also equally effective at all ranges, but can be made to excel in a niche. Agile countermeasure evaders, long-range nuclear cruise missiles, or close-in swarmers to swamp even laser defenses, or a big, armored missile designed to deflect all incoming fire before slamming into the ship and detonating, or my favorite- unmanned drone swarms that swamp the enemy with k-slugs before slamming themselves Into enemy ships- terminally ending both careers. Warfare will be a trifecta between those three aspects, short ranged lasers, medium ranged rapid-fire guns, or long-ranged missiles.
Flying pressure vessels around in space and trying to poke holes in each other. Fun!
Hey Spookston look up Atomic Rockets if you can they could help you out with this type of stuff.
Seconded: it has taught me everything I need to know about space travel
Re: kinetic weapons and missiles being bad because of debris.
1. I fail to see how bullets flying around on likely decaying orbits (you've just added a km/s to their velocity that probably isn't pure prograde) to harmlessly reenter are anywhere near as dangerous as the debris created by blowing up ships with said bullets.
His point was that kinetic weapons instead of disabling a ship would blow it to pieces, such as those of anti-satellite missiles
@@coziiikinz5658 then again, this doesn't necessarily follow. Much like how he mentioned that you can end a battle just by overheating or disabling critical systems, projectiles can be employed in much the same way. If you look at Children of A Dead Earth gameplay, unless you're flinging nukes around, projectile engagements rarely result in the splintering of enemy warships. Rather, key systems are sniped out and the warship loses its crew or its effectiveness, thus ending the engagement
1. We will probably not just fight in a gravity well of a planet all the time, so ordinance would be free to travel around for eternity until they hit something. A round fired in the asteroid belt could hit a ship or station on the other side of the system decades later.
2. A round will travel significantly faster and hence with more kinetic energy that a piece of debris. Faster rounds mean less reaction time for the enemy and higher accuracy for the shooter. while a piece of debris might only have only a fraction of the kinetic energy that hit it, as the energy is absorbed by other pieces.
3. Rounds might be designed for piercing armor with a tungsten carbide jacket or might have delayed explosive charge inside. Or might be designed to flatten it self to transferring all the kinetic energy unto the target without passing through.
While getting hit by either will ruin your day, getting hit with rounds specifically designed to kill/cripple ships is more dangerous that a piece of a coffee table.
Well that depends on whether the object is actually in a decaying orbit. Most orbits do not decay. Its path would have to cut close to the atmosphere for there to be any effect and even then it could linger for several years. It end up in a higher orbit it could remain for millions of years. Then the problem is the same with the terrestrial mine field, it continues to be a hazard long after the war.
@@dsdy1205 even small precision based armaments would cause shrapnel, would it not? Just simple penetration of armor would sling shrapnel about I would think
4:12 "Starting a fight in space is kind of like being the first to use nuclear weapons in actual combat. Nobody would want to be the first person to do it.
America: *whistles while avoiding eye contact*
All hail the space force
That Mass Effect clip is my favorite thing about space combat. A missed shot could be just as devastating to your enemies somewhere as it would be to your allies. It could keep traveling until it strikes a space station or even Earth.
Basically, it would be a massive bruh moment.
Please do a video on the ships of The Expanse.
You should watch the expanse! That shows what space combat could be like.
Harry Tinsley With energy shields and plasma-based weaponry?
@@peterkrochmalni673 It has neither of those things.
Avensis Astari So, if they go up against the Klingons they’re screwed.
@@peterkrochmalni673 lol :D
@@peterkrochmalni673 If they ever get to meet Klingons in the first place. Expanse ships dont have FTL.
So on top of tanks and mechs, you're also covering space-related topics...
Now I REALLY would love to see you cover Gundam since they have stuff for all three.
(Would recommend sticking with UC Gundam since it's more grounded than the spin-offs)
Ace Combat 7 had an example of Kessler synthcool in modern times. Both sides of the war launched anti-sat missiles at each others satellites, and the cascading effect destroyed all commercial satellites along with it, putting the world in an information blackout.
Pls do a video on Ace Combat
only 500 hours on KSP?
pathetic.
So he learned how to raise his helmet visor and flip the ignition switch.....
@@Magavynhigara yeah, he also knows how to balance his centers of Mass, Lift and Thrust for airplanes... Hopefully
Answer:
Look at Halo. Well, NOTHING like it:D
You may like a book called Expeditionary Force, its about a US Army specialist whom teams up with some SF cats from other nations and a super advanced AI, the thing i like about the series is how intricate and planned out the space combat is, every single battle has weeks of planning behind it all leading up to an either sneakily hyper jumping a bomb into another ship or getting to a system last so theyd get hours old data on the other ship and be able to lob some mazer beams (super lasers) at its flight path, finishing a battle in the same nanosecond it began
Ther is a book series called “the lost fleet” that shows how space warfare will play out with some limitations
Could play out
I agree
@@xjullrich species humanoid hybrid limitation:
need food supply
I predict that in space warfare the combatants will rarely, if ever, come within visual range of each other. Most likely, the most they'll ever see of each other will be miniscule pinpricks of light, that only stand out among the sea of stars because they are moving.
My favorite youtuber that looks at stuff
Fascinating.
One thing I didn't see mentioned was how spacecraft were used the Starship Troopers book. While spacecraft were capable of fighting each other, their main purpose was transporting troops, and dropping them onto the surface. The main requirement was carrying the assigned amount of troops, and being tough enough to last long enough to pick them back up.
You should do Resistance: Fall of Man for your next tank video. That game has pretty realistic looking human tank and jeep and two Chimeran vehicles you will probably have a field day with
The problem with guided munitions is that you could see the munition incoming long before it reaches you, especially if its a long distance fight like you described.
I don’t think soldiers will feel any pressure from fighting in space.
I was a little worried that orbital mechanics wouldn't be covered in depth, considering it is the only movement you can do efficiently and within the realm of reason without some sort of 'warp drive' tech. But I was quite pleasantly surprised when Kerbal Space Program was mentioned! Great vid!
Well. Tbh for me at least, we will never know what space combat will be like, because we doesn't have the technologies for that to happen yet.
I mean, there's a reason Halo or any sci fi setting have a very standard fleet roster not very different than today Navy, because they base space combat on modern naval warship roster to develope their navy ( Fighter, Frigate, Carrier, etc....) and base their space combat tactic on modern naval tactic.
The only series, for me at least, have *the most realistic* space combat that is based on our current technological advance is *The Expense* . For example, even the smallest warship class both UN and MCR have a sizeable crew component , and there's no single man fighter craft in there. Also ship combat each other using regular projectile weapon, missile. The only weapon that can somewhat count as fictional is railgun, and even that is already in prototype stage. ;)
40k also works for this
We do have tech to fight in space, just no reason to.
As an SFIA channel regular, a few points
1. There is no such thing as stealth in space, a sufficiently powerful telescope or radar could see you halfway across the universe.
2. Lasers would be common, but I suspect gamma ray lasers or meson beams (rapidly decaying particles) would be more popular. As these could go straight through any armor.
3. Kinetic weapons would be very popular at long range. They don’t lose power over distance and are much easier to deal damage with. Additionally, our current lasers, even if absurdly powerful, could not hope to hurt something at even lunar distances, RKMs are a different story there.
4 and finally. Kessler syndrome would be a nuisance at worst for any major spacefaring civilization at ship-sized scales, but would still have great political influence due to the difficulty to clear debris with point defense lasers. This changes when the number of ships involved increases to what a heavily industrialized power would have. Which would be capable of producing millions of ships per day.
Every star wars Ship formation is an extrapolated 2D, and has no effectiveness in real life. and in alot of scenarios star wars is a blatant rip off of WW2 tactics. literally a triangle, shape is better than flat starwars crap.
Isn't a cylinder or sphere better for a spacecraft?
Well yeah, we all know star wars space combat is glorified naval warfare
@@mxm23adregalusandmore62 that was what it was meant to be based off of. Cant hate it for being what it was suppose to be.
@@cosmichay74 Your confusing ship shape with an arrangement of ships in 3D space. and even then, No. every object has 6 degrees of freedom, now we play the game of removal. 1) direction, 2) limitations on rotation in axis of direction. 3) now build control surfaces in 3D and place thrusters in a manner to prevent roll and have a landing gear...Finally get it all to fail safe as an aircraft falling to a planet.
You end up with a ship not dissimilar to the star wars troop carrier. if your curious to formation tactics see: ua-cam.com/video/zUe6Rg0aUO4/v-deo.html
@@mxm23adregalusandmore62 um..... no. air combat
a common trope in sci-fi or sci-fantasy stories is some kind of shielding unit/grid on ships that can protect from light space debris. assuming such is possible irl one could use that same concept for a number of purposes.
For instance a non-combat role that shielding units could be used for is debris-cleanup and controlling kessler syndrome by extending a large net-like structure out of a satellite with shielding units on the intersections of the structure to catch small pieces of debris(or at the very least slow them down enough to go sub-orbital.
honestly as a literary exercise it's so fun to just go "Here is a potential technology from a sci-fi universe, what can/could people use that for in a way that makes sense?"
The game "Children of a dead Earth" is said to be the most accurate simulation of space war fair.
The lost fleet book series has interesting space combat with time delay for communications and visual spotting, the most used weapon are grape shot and solid projectiles all fired on computer predictions, its a good read and an interesting view on the effects of long term conflict.
it has decent showing of why stationary defenses aren't always cut out to help in space conflicts for long. planetary cannons cannot maneuver from tungsten rods and stations cannot move very fast out of orbit. ecm and macross missile maneuver at jump points from different factions were neat as well.
I recommend y’all watch the expanse it’s the closest to what space combat would be
It will completely depend what part of space we are looking at.
Combat in the dark and icy reaches of the outer solar system will likely look similar to submarine warfare; being all about stealth and endurance and staying hidden.
Combat in low earth orbit could look in parts like you imagined it.
40K music in the background. Most realistic of sci-fi universes hehehe.
it fits almost all of his points
Here are ideas for your next vid
1. What's wrong with tanks and ifvs used in Endwar
2. What's wrong with tanks and ifvs used in fuel of war Frontline
3. What wrong with Tau vehicles in Dawn of war
Logic: space combat is overestimated, too dramatic and has nothing to do with real life.
(enters the Vengeful Spirit aka Traitor's Hand)
Logic: well... on the other hand it's just a theory, e-he... pls don't kill me.
warhammer 40k seems to fit with all of the points he makes except the ship size thing and he seems to not think about having to travel long distances and the need for supplys
@@anotheralpharius2056
Arkrist Vane
: trust to the sons of Alpharius. Keep them close... but not too close.
@@anotheralpharius2056 supply metal garbage too expensive
The warfare you described is exactly like legends of the galactic hero, I’d suggest everyone look up that show it’s fun
Spookston, I'd strongly recommend reading some pages on Atomic Rockets.com Lots of information on these subjects.
Read a book that sort of addressed the distance issue. When ever they did space combat the ships were always at least a couple light minutes apart. So they were always a few minutes behind on the info they getting and it took a while for even lasers to reach.
just see "homeworld" saga :D
Another thing to add about when it comes to exiting the planet's atmosphere, is the planet's gravitiantional forces or pull.
I'm not an expert when it comes to astronomy and science or anything related to both, but I knew that different gravity would mean different effects on the spacecraft upon exiting and entering the atmosphere The higher the planet's gravity the more power it would require for the spacecraft to exit or enter into and that would mean more resources and fuel being spend. But I'm pretty sure in the sci fi fiction or in the future there would ships that has engines that're able to have enough power and efficiency to go out the planet's atmosphere without issues or entering it safely without being burned to crisp while spinning out of control
An effective counter to SPAAACE LAAASEERS would be literally to point a giant mirror in the general direction you believe you are being shot from. It is light after all, how else do you see your pretty face in the morning.
Up until mirror gets a tiny imperfection, which instantly compromises it and allows laser to melt it. Or until laser simply works on different frequencies, than mirror is designed to reflect, and melts it regardless.
Can aerogel protect against laser?
FINALLY. a realistic projection of an exospheric/ orbital battlespace and space warfare. God bless you.
Begin the Meteorblitzkrieg
So this is on of my favorite topics as an aerospace engineer. A few notes, laser main issue is that they take time to deal damage, they will only be useful vs sensitive sensors etc. IE it becomes useful versus missile warheads, or as a electronic warfare system. Also the combat would change greatly depending on where your fighting, solar and planetary orbits are very different, IE the amount of cover. Space warfare would come down to almost entirely electronic warfare or using terrain to avoid getting one shot. Thus it would be closest to either tank or submarine warfare vs surface ship or dog fights. Additionally, the massive risk of damage to digital electronics from radiation or EMPs etc would mean analog or human systems might also rather important, ala battle star Galactica. Drones would also be everywhere.
The "terrain" would be determined as to how a sensor signal would be effected and how safe it is to remain there, such as the presence of radiation belts micro meteors, proximity to the sun etc. In addition to inter orbit attacks, IE its easy to attack from a lunar orbit to a earth one but not so easy the other way around.
Also with ship sizes, you couldn't bring a large ship into an average sized planets orbit, the different parts of the ship would feel different forces of gravity different, a good way to think of would be ship draft, litoral vs blue water. Either causing stress on it or forcing into an orientation, useless it was really massive (more on that in a bit). For solar orbit you could, in fact if you grab and asteroid, a mostly solid one (most are more like massive balls of gravel glued together loosely) and strap some slow but effective engines (mag sails, solar sails, ion engines etc) and missile systems. you have a capital ship whose insides are radiation harden for crew. You could then use this new capital ship and slowly push into a planets orbit as a new moon to control the air space.
Also I wonder what you think on a combo of your two favorite sci fi tank troupes, hover tanks and walkers. Ie use the two systems to cover for each other and result in movement like a "swimming" hippo, wierd analogy but hippos are denser then water and have some interesting movement as a result. That and smaller hover bikes like speeders, the ground clearance from hovering would allow to clean terrain that a reasonable sized wheel would generally struggle with for a vehicle of that size.
Never thought I'd be hooked into military style videos by a furry.
You should check out Children of a Dead Earth. It´s a very realistic Space Combat simulator.
You can actually just burn towards where you want to go. It´s just horribly inefficient. However if somehow fuel wasn´t a factor which is usually the case in space operas then you could absolutely do this. It is much faster than normal orbital maneuvers. If you had plenty of Delta V you´d just burn towards where you want to go in combat. In a realistic scenario at least missiles would likely just burn towards the target at most ranges.
"There's more resources in space than we are ever likely to need, so there is no reason for conflict."
My friend, have you heard of capitalism? hahaha
Not even capitalism, but competition. One country may have all they need, but why let a rival get any?
Nah, someone will develop a sort of space ideology that, much like communism, leads people to mass revolution toward a paradise utopia fun land, only to leave the nation vulnerable to a powerful dictator.
Just like in earth, some area in space contains higher concentration of specific resource, and/or easier to get to and bring to where they are needed. Taking control of them means cheap resource for the economy.
Organic compound, bio resources & water are less resources in space!
Hey Spookston, thanks for this! This video is very educational and informative! After doing a lot of reading on space combat, I have come to the same conclusion as you as to why space combat in sci-fi will be nothing like in real life. It just goes to show you that truth is stranger than fiction, eh? Hopefully, that will never happen for the reasons you stated. Anyway, I look forward to seeing more of your videos! You just earned a new subscriber! :)
I find it funny the difference between my two favorite UA-cam science people
Isaac Arthur: In space bigger is almost always better
Spooks: Smaller is better for deceleration and maneuvering
But as you said differing opinions is what makes things like this fun to talk about!
@Spookston If you want an actual realistic space fighting game play "Children Of a Dead Earth" is incredible.
Also in regards of the "long range laser engagements" I disagree, most things would probably have to be quite close, when using lasers at long range they would have a considerable delay, since light moves....at the speed of light you would be aiming at the past position of a target, and it would arrive when the target will have already moved, hence having to precede the target by two times where a small change in direction could make a complete miss while using a weapon system designed to be accurate and have a small cone of fire. A fight from here to the Sun, let alone targets much further away, there would be 8 minutes of delay from impact, hence we would see a target that distant 8 minutes in the last and have to shoot it a total of 16 minutes ahead, and a small target might need almost nothing to completely change course. Overall laser warfare might be useful in situations where you need the quickest hit on a target which position you know for sure, something like Earth to Moon warfare or hit and run attacks on unsuspecting targets.
Also the cone of fire of lasers gets larger with distance, at best it means that it becomes less powerful, at worst it means that the shot will be ineffective, our best lasers can't even land a precise hit on the moon (though there's the atmosphere there, which is also why Musk idea of laser delivered internet is stupid really) and even with a big advancement in technology it's hard to think it will become such an effective weapon, the best strategy for now might be going full speed against the enemy and shooting from there, or using autonomous weapons that can hit the enemy (Children of a dead earth does a good job with iit)
Tbh one of the best ways that space combat was shown in my opinion was in series "star carrier" by Ian Douglas. He thought about most things others ignored not only in combat aspects but also society, aliens, and politics are much more though out then in nearly any other book I have ever seen maybe except "the expanse" which I consider equal. He took into consideration so much, starting from time dilation caused by extreme speeds, communication difficulties caused by ships being multiple light minutes apart, the different ways alien biology would influence the design of their ships and their strategy. He even considered that due to the insane distancing in the cosmic environment stealth would just be trying to seem like a chank of space rock instead of the ship.
Very good video! I was worried for a minute that you hadn't played enough KSP, but I see I was wrong.
Also, there might be a place for kinetic weapons of relitavely small caliber in space combat. Due to delta-v limits, .223 caliber weapons might well be more than adequate for the main gun of a cruiser.
To your point about capital ships.
I'd think the further way from the nearest planet/station you are operating, the more sense it makes to have a capital ships. The smaller ships you propose definitely make sense in Orbits closer to the planet than the high orbit. However if in a hypothetical scenario you need to get to another planet (i.e. Mars or idk), the supply capacity of smaller ships become an issue since they have less space for storage.
Capital ships could carry these smaller ships, fuel, food, weapons, ammo and other supplies the ships and crews need and let the smaller ships engage the enemy at the target destination, while sitting at a safer distance. They could also possibly act as a repair yard for damaged ships.
Aircraft carrier fleet in space - to make it short ^^
My thoughts on it are it would most likely be used as orbital bombardment with a giant railgun like a irl mac cannon not accually fighting ships in space they would just find ways to bring ships down and burn up or crash as the ships would most likely be so small that it wouldn't be a massive issue for things on the ground
Small space fighters flying from ground into orbit is unrealistic, but the issue of getting in and out of orbit can be solved with specialized carriers. That way it can also save tons of fuel for actual combat and possibly even install solar generators for it to be efficient.
Long range sniping battles have always been a given. Even modern aerial warfare is the same where dogfighting is essentially non-existent for the latest gen aircraft, since you have gps, radars and whathave you instruments to launch a subsonic missile away from visual range.
also, lasers dont stay as tight beams, but a small pellet of iron moving at a few tens of KM/s stays just as deadly no matter the range. another benefit of hypervelocity projectiles like that is that they will escape the solar system entirely if just fired into the void, so no leftover debris.
You should do a video covering The Expanse, best live action portrayal of space-warfare I've seen.
There is a series of sci fi books called the lost fleet which has an interesting take on space combat. Essentially the ships joust, making fast passes in fleet formations and spitting out grapeshot for the other fleet to run into with particle beams (called hell lances) being for more precision close range work, and missiles being more of a longer range clean up weapon. Railguns are primarily for stations and planetary bombardment since it would be too hard to effectively use against ships. The tactics are closer to age of sail ship combat with it being more about the fleet formation and approach.
Next video idea,
Space close combat (personal to personal).
There is a game call *Boundary* , a space fps game that you might interest in.
Cool video. A nearish future and grounded in reality take. The rules change when faster than light tech is on the table. If the technology is sufficiently advanced and compact you could have FTL rockets. If you also have the sci fi trope that breaking out of a gravity well is trivial (and doesn't even require explanation) then sufficiently thick armour and counter measures could deal with debris. Could make an interesting video.
Wouldn't debris be burned up on reentry? Even quite sizeable asteroids are completely burned away before contacting a planet's surface, and debris from weapons in space would likely be far smaller, so even if it were less susceptible to burning up based on materials its made from, it still likely wouldn't contact the planet below, as it's just not big enough (of course the carcass of an entire capital ship is a different matter entirely). I guess it would pose a threat to the ship itself, or to nearby stations, but this is why I wouldn't suspect space combat to happen the way many franchises depict, with broadsides like old man-of-wars, or with gunfire at all... We already have anti-aircraft missiles capable of hitting targets accurately at ranges of 100km or more, so why wouldn't we be using missiles to engage targets from a good thousand miles away in space? Given advanced radars and other such detection methods, this seems most likely.
Funnily enough, Halo seems to go both ways, with a prominent missile sequence at the beginning of Halo 4, but then most capital ship combat taking place with guns in either broadside arrangements, or many turrets. This is also how Star Wars does space combat primarily, and I can't speak much for Star Trek or Warhammer since I've no real experience with them. Star Citizen also seems to mesh the two together, and I guess the excuse is that active defense systems have gotten near impenetrable to smaller missiles, but I feel like larger missiles (take the Patriot missile as a modern day example), would likely have countermeasures of their own - an active defense system onboard the missile itself, designed to defeat the counter-projectiles launched by the target. This kind of weapon would be extremely expensive however, necessitating smaller craft to engage where possible.
Large ships are also logistically viable as both transports and terror weapons, which is what Star Wars' Star Destroyers were designed primarily to be (despite the misnomer... thanks sci-fi/fantasy nerds). Smaller vessels can't be flying around at all times - overheating would be a big issue like you said, and the more nimble and responsive you want to make them, the less endurance they'd have, necessitating a larger mothership. Space combat brings both a modern day navy AND naval air force into the same playing field, blurring the lines between them, so I feel like ships would scale up and up and up depending on what was needed for certain forces in certain campaigns.
Watch The Expanse Koala
I would assume larger craft would be used for longer distance missions and that weapon range would probably never be a problem again too, just to add to what you said.
I highly recommend you the simulator Children Of A Dead earth. Its a pure blood space warfare simulator that explores the physics and the engineering of space warfare.
The thing everyone seems to forget is time. Time is a serious factor in all space engagements. With even in-system locations hours or days apart at light speed, arriving forces are masked by the fact that the light displaying their arrival hasn't reached to the forces currently in-system. Likewise, time dilation occurs as speed increases so firing solutions become harder to coordinate with any speed, and especially so if the enemies are making firing-passes as the relative speed between forces would be immense. Communication between ships would be time-delayed even if they're relatively close and distorted if they're moving at any significant fraction of the speed of light. Commanders are having to guess the enemy's course of action before they can see said action because the light from those actions hasn't reached the commander's position yet. Incredibly complex stuff.
I think the best portrayal of space combat comes from The Lost Fleet series of books by Jack Campbell (John Hemry). Every decision in the books is weighed by the characters within the perspective of time. Each order given with a future timestamp for execution.
Debris isn't as much of an issue as you would think unless its hurling directly towards you and you have no way of avoiding it. Because of how much empty space there is the odds of debris coming back to bite you are almost non existent. So bullets and missiles are free game . Especially missiles considering the engagement ranges you would be talking about.
Me: *clicks on video, expecting a good explanation about the topic*
**Ark soundtrack starts**
Me: *E P I C*
All hail Spookston, Master of Space Flight (through 500+ hours of Kerbal Space Program)!
My personal favourite depiction of future space combat is by polish author Michał Cholewa in his books:
There are ships roughly corresponding to naval fleets in terms of size and firepower.
Yes, lasers are a thing, both short and long range and they are devastating, short burst wrecks a ship.
However every ship is covered in deflection coating which disperses laser energy and makes it harmless.
That's why mostly combat is based around attack and defense rockets.
Attack rockets are really fast, their objective - get close to the ship, explode and send out gigantic DU splinters to break through ships hull. If the strike damages deflection coating then long range laser is used if angle is right to finish the enemy off.
Defensive rockets are designed to intercept the above in a thermonuclear blast.
Tungsten rods are also an option as they are practically undetectable and can take out stationary/predictable target without warning.
There is electronic warfare involved as well.
Oh, and battles are fought over tens of thousands of kilometers, no visual contact.
Unfortunately I am not sure if books are available in English.
you could have used Space Engineers - as space combat is used with custom builds and sorta good physics
or the expanse
The Expanse.... awesome show and keeps it simple, railguns, torps and point defence turrets.
I think Ablative armor, much like the type that went under the crew pods of the early space Race, would become the go-to method of absorbing laser fire. You wouldn't even need to cover the ship: Just build an ablative armored cone on one side and face it towards the enemy. Mount a laser poking around one side and your gold. Properly designed the ablative plates could be replaced in the time between your first rendezvous (here defined as 'the time your ships are within LOS and range* of each other'') and the next, IF you are capable of getting someone or something to repair it.
*A note on range: Don't discount maneuvering in a space dogfight: If you're engaging an enemy 4 light-seconds away, that means there's AT LEAST 8 seconds between when the target was in that place going that way, and when the laser you fire makes contact with the target. That's good amount of time for the target to make a course adjustment so you miss entirely. You can try to compensate by firing multiple lasers but the enemy has full freedom of movement and can pick literally any direction at random. So there is a max range in space: It's the range at which the enemy CANNOT get out of the way of your attack in time, and that'll depend on the enemy's mass, engine power, and the type of ordinance you got. A missile is actually to be great for a kill if you don't care for debris, because it can change course after launch.
I do believe that there would be capital ships in space combat because it could fill multiple roles it can fight when needed, it could be used to repair and rearm smaller craft, it could also be used to gather materials for repair, rearm and possible building new ships kind of like the mothership in the home world games.
The expanse is a great hard scifi series that does space combat very well
One of the best ideas for minimizing kessler syndrome is lasers. We already have computer controlled lasers that are accurate enough to fry parasites on farm salmon, and if we just scale one up, we can use the laser to heat up said space debris to either accelerate it away or decelerate it into a suborbital velocity.
The expanse is the closest future of space warfare that ive ever seen also spook pls make these kind of vids again
Idk if you read my comment tgat had some suggestions and praise spook, but one of my points was to mix up your content, and add more personality. You covering space combat was exactly what I meant and it seemed like the tone was much more conversational which is a step in the right direction as sometimes, especially if you watch multiple of your videos in a row, it can feel like your reading an essay rather than having a cool conversation about warfare and tanks and such with us. Anyway, great job man, keep on being one of my favorite youtubers. (One of the VERY few that I will click on everytime no matter the title or content)
Pretty sure the 2004 Battlestar Galactica Show did a good representation on space combat, with how the fighters have side thrusters, to manuver, take advantage of no gravity to glide or strafe, use conventional cannon shells and missiles for space combat.
Also actually in the Halo lore many of the space engagements were long range shooting matches. Fighter and boarding craft were used to a lesser degree
This channel answers the most complex combat consequences such as vehicle and war themes
Did you read the book The Forever War by Joe Haldeman? He does a fantastic job of answering that very question. In a pretty boring, but interesting way.
About midway through the book there's a chapter where an enemy ship happens to be in the same orbit of a planet the protagonist ship. What follows is a weeks long orbital fight between to Troop carries trying to shoot each other everytime they meet up while also trying to conserve their fuel. To date I still think it's the most realistic depiction of what a space dogfight would look like.
given the extreme precision required to perform manoeuvers in space, it would probably more revolve around using dazzlers and other similar effect mechanism to just lead the ennemy ship into making errors during his manoeuvers (and so, potentially crash on something, or get lost on an unnintended trajectory ,etc...). it has the potential of ruining an spaceship, but has the advantage of being easyer to deny than actually shooting with an weapon.
I think The Expanse has the most scientifically accurate take on what space combat will be like. It includes rail guns being actually very hard to dodge, at least at intermediate range, since their slugs can be accelerated to such high speeds, especially in a vacuum