One of the reasons I love the Mass Effect Trilogy is that if you read the codexes you find out that their "shields" are actually a sophisticated electromagnetic field that only activates when your ship or hard suit's sensors detect an object of sufficient velocity.
Same as in Robotech . They didnt have force field protecting the whole ship , they used roller controls to predict where an impact would happen and focus the repulsor shield in that spot .
@@chrismsmalley2626 well...they did at one point have a spherical shield...only used it twice IIRC. Once it overloaded and took out a city in Ontario IIRC, and the other was after they launched a Macross Missile Massacre inside Dolza's fortress to protect from the thousands of nu...I mean Reaction Missiles they just unleashed.
@@wilemelliott IIRC one problem was that the barrier shield system sucked so much power that most other systems turned off? Btw, fun note: Robotech "reflex weapons" were "reaction weapons" in Macross, short for "NUCLEAR reaction weapons". :-D
Semantical clarification: When a weather balloon rises in atmosphere, the outside pressure drops, but the inside pressure stays constant. It's the difference between the two that causes it to expand as it flies higher.
Yup. The problem with keeping air in your lungs in a vacuum is PxV=nxRxT so the lower the pressure, the larger the volume of the air. If P=0 then the air wants to occupy a volume larger than the capacity of your lungs.
No, the pressure drops as it expands. If you've got the same quantity of helium in a large space as a small one, the large space will be at lower pressure, all other things being equal. The pressure inside the flexible membrane of the balloon matches the external pressure (plus a bit for the tension in the rubber). It's the _similarity_ between outside and inside that causes it to expand.
5:40, that's not how reactive armor works. You’re describing APS, or Active Protection System. Reactive armor, or more accurately ERA Explosive Reactive Armor, explodes when it is impacted by a projectile of sufficient energy to trigger it, either dispersing the superplastic jet of a HEAT projectile, or destabilizing or breaking a kinetic penetrator. ERA is what’s on the M60 tank in the picture. APS does exist and is starting to become more widely used in the Israli Trophy system, Russian Arena, and Chinese GL5.
Circulatory system isn't exposed to the outside air since it is an enclosed system. The water in your veins will remain at it's current pressure for a while. The water exposed to the vacuum such as eyes,nose and mouth will evaporate.
Yes, and boiling point of water in vacuum is same as freezing point (no liquids in zero pressure). Human skin can hold enough pressure to prevent water from boiling.
@@NightRaven-lh1bf Nope. The wound will freeze solid before a low pressure wave courses through your veins. You may lose centimeters of vein, but it will not be a systemic failure across the body.
I would add one thing- something that has really impressed me about Mobile Suite Gundam is that the crews of spacecraft, even mecha pilots, don space suits before battles. Only high level leaders (General Revel) and hot shots (Char) dispense with them because they have meters of plot armor. Everyone else, even Amuro Rey, sensibly donned their space suits before going into battle.
stargate sg1 did the same thing when Teal'c and O'neill had to vacate their booby trapped x-301 hybrid glider to get ringed up in a cargo ship.....; been binge watching the Expanse, there's a scene where a guy is eva and has to open his visor to get an object out of his helmet.....
BSG also had a go at it. Chief and Callie were trapped somewhere, and had to make it to a Raptor for evac. But there was no way to get to the Raptor except for for thru the void. They took a few deep breaths, exhaled as hard as they could, then went for it. Once inside the Raptor and it repressurized, they were quite shaken up and not doing so hot, even though the exposure was only a few seconds.
Shields : Star Trek get this right, Navigational Deflector is a low power forward only shield for tiny particles, and tractor and deflector beams for anything larger, better then blowing things up, move them aside, and only block them if very small/light with a minimal Shield - the main shields are not always on, only used in battle, and constantly fluctuate so you can predict when to fire through them just like firing through the propeller of a fighter plane
Ship CIWS can still have human oversight and be fired manually. Also tank reactive armor plates are NOT automated that fire out explosive projectiles to intercept incomings (that would be hardkill APS)
I apologise, I've got to correct a few things again. Firstly, it isn't a bridge, that's the station from where the ship is piloted, so in real life the wheel of the ship. The actual name for the room, that is always called the bridge is actually called the combat/central information centre. secondly your blood doesn't actually boil, because it has enough pressure, and your skin just about keeps it a liquid. instead any liquid on the surface of your body will boil, like sweat and tears on your eyes. Thirdly radiation from nuclear bombs isn't really a problem, any ship designed to last longer than 1 month in space, outside of a planets orbit, will have radiation shields to stop the local star cooking the inhabitants, that nukes wouldn't be a problem radiation wise, and end up having to have direct hits to do any damage, because as you said, no blast wave, but the EMP could take out all an shielded things like antennas. Lastly explosive reactive armour has no sensors, it is pressure triggered, if something big enough hits it will be set off, what you were describing was an active protection system, eg the Israeli trophy system, or Russian Arena. Again you FAILED to mention how space fighters are just a stupid useless idea, that is only used because of the romance of ww2., but oh well.
Its not uncommon for the bridge and CIC to be integrated. And for your last point, he essentially said that last episode when talking about how dog-fighting won't be a thing in space. Negating the need for space fighters. He also said how it was popularized by Star Wars and George Lucas was inspired by WW2.
CIC is never on a bridge. The CIC is always deep within the ship. As to nukes, you might want to look up nuclear effects in space on the Atomic Rockets site. They get deep into the physics of mostly near-future hard scifi, including expanse-like scenarios. Make sure you don't need to get anything done that day though cuz the site tends to eat up one's day.
That ain't how reactive armor works bud. It's designed to not explode when hit by small arms fire but detonate when hit by certain types of armor piercing ammunition to disrupt the finely tuned mechanisms of those devices.
Surface warfare ships don't use those pretty glass-lined bridges during combat, they have incorporated combat command centers deep in the hull as described in the video since before WW1.
Thats why i like the Starships from the Perry Rhodan pulp novel series. It startet in the 60s and is still running today. Even back then they described the ships as spherical with the engines at the equator of the sphere. The Command Center was in its middle and armored equaly to the hull with its own Life support system. Also all important System were triple reduntant.
You touched on this in part 1 but I think Babylon 5 also does a fairly decent job portraying how space combat should be with some of these examples also. The use of interceptor projectiles are featured heavily in the show. Some ships have more of an interior bridge design also.
I agree about computer-controlled point defense systems being better than human gunners trying to shoot down enemy missiles: they can 'see' further, react quicker, and shoot more accurately, and the stark lack of them (and of electronic warfare) is disappointing in a lot of science fiction. That said, point defense systems are one of those things that either works flawlessly, or not at all. Also, unlike shields, point defenses are by definition reactive: the enemy has to have already shot first before the PD system can start trying to figure out what to do. If the enemy missile is stealthy enough to sneak up on the target, scatters into multiple sub-munitions, launches decoys, or is just plain super fast, the PD system might not have enough time to engage and destroy it. Granted, those are issues more in line with ICBMs than with cruise or air-to-air missiles, but if we're talking future-tech, then nothing is really off the table.
After watching the quick scene in The Expanse where the belter opens his visor and wipes his face and puts it back down, I had to look up as to what the effects of vacuum actually were. It turns out that like so many other things, they nailed it and that a short exposure like that wouldn't be too big of a deal. Lack of oxygen is the big killer and as mentioned will take you out pretty quickly as any remaining air in your lungs will be expelled.
BattleStar Galactica ships versus Expanse ships in a battle. It has to be done now. …The Cylons will just cheat and hack the Expanses computers though.
Not a fair fight. Battlestars have dozens of turret mounted rail guns, an overwhelming amount of flak and point defense guns, enough armor to withstand multiple hits from nukes, and the ability to generate their own wormhole on demand to instantly GTFO (though there fighters are of questionable use).
The cylon hacking pretty much relied on having a backdoor in a comically unsecure taclink network. Any decent system wouldn't be able to be hacked into as easy as in the BSG series.
@@F6FHellcat5 The cylon hacking of the entire defense force relied on a backdoor. The cylon's ability to hack any particular ship, however, was established to be 100% real and independent of pre-war interference.
@@officaloutsidegames Given your abnormal writing, I seriously doubt your educational background. That's not how sentences work, nor paragraphs either Also the word is "expect" not "except"; is English your 2nd or later language? But the way to hack a computer network which is completely wired (as opposed to wireless, which "that episode" specifically did to increase computation capacity) is to first look for communication computers and trick them into letting you send messages further along the network. It's the equivalent to sending a ping to all 65k ports that a computer uses and finding one that accepts commands, then seeing which exploit allows you to run executable code that you can then use to hijack the whole computer... then with a trusted network asset, you move on to corrupt the remainder of the network. You can't tell me that the Galactica refuses incoming communication requests unless they are specifically looking to receive a transmission.
Also, the amount of radiation in space means that you will very likely get some pretty substantial radiation burns/exposure with even minor direct exposure. Something else that isn't covered in space battles, why does no one ever wear some sort of survival suit in case they get blown into space? Ship crews wear these types of suits in Arctic regions in case they get washed overboard, so one would think that combat crews of the future would do the same.
They do in BSG. One whole episode where Kara Thrace crashes on an unbreathable moon and has to find a way off/back before her air runs out. Another whole episode where Lee's ship gets destroyed, but he survives to just float helplessly around like debris watching as two battlestars and two base ships slug it out in front of him. (One of their best episodes, I thought.)
@@rsrt6910 In their fighters yes, but no environment suites on the the larger ships. B5 also does this in their fighters. The only scifi I know where they suite up before battle on their fleet ships is the honor verse series
In the Expanse - that badass belter (who later directed his ore load to a martian customs ship) did open his helmet in the vacuum to remove a shorted wire. Was quite good scene, from point of viewing and science. :)
This comment might be more appropriate for the last video, but when it come to the manned fighters, I would imagine that if space combat were to be a thing they would all be remotely piloted if not completely computer controlled. Heck maybe a combination where people pick the targets and drones then do their thing.
@@peterkrochmalni673 of course you can hack a person. Conspiracy theories hack people all the time using exploits on the known hardware vulnerabilities of the human brain. That does take a bit longer than a dogfight to accomplish though. That said, even if you can't hack a person, you can hack everything that the human depends on to do their job. Since the person depends entirely on sensors to tell them most of what they know about the outside world, once you've given their mothership as the target location, then you can sit back and wait for the totally not hacked human to commence attack runs on their own side.
Maybe to protect the bridge of a ship but to keep the windows you can have a sort of armor shutter system (kinda like the metal shutters some corner shops have) then you can use sensors and cameras during a battle so when it's all clear the shutters can reel back and the windows are undamaged
Can you please do an explanation of the size of space and how movies get that wrong a lot. The difference between a solar system, a galaxy and a universe. Space is really really mind blowing big.
5:40 Thats not how reactive armor works at all. Reactive armor (or precisely explosive reactive armor or ERA) is basically a thin armor plate on top of a layer of explosives that sits on top of the main armor. The idea is, that when a HEAT round strikes, the metal jet created by that round will ignite the explosive under the armor panel, which will in turn counter and destabilized the metal jet, which would otherwise melt through incredibly thick armor plates. Similarly sabot rounds also have their effect diminished significantly, as they are usually at their thermal limit from air resistance alone (these things go really fast), and additional heat and shockwave from the explosion will completely melt and disintegrate them. Naturally, having armor that literally explodes outward is problematic for any friendly infantry that might be near the tank (for example using it for cover). Thats for example why German Leopard 2 tanks dont use the concept at all. What ERA does not do is throw the armor panel at the projectile to meet it halfway. Standoff armor like WWII era Schürzen on German tanks fulfilled that idea, though the armor was just positioned at a distance and not propelled there by an explosion in the last milisecond. If you absolutely want to throw stuff at projectiles with explody stuff, try chaff, which essentially launches a shotgun of dense dust into the path of an incoming projectile (typically a HEAT based warhead, preferably a missile, but shell works just as well) in the hopes of the dust triggering the extremely sensitive fuze.
I believe Star Wars has close range space battles because their weapons lack range. This was seen in TLJ (still doesn't excuse the chase) and on different other occasions like when the Falcon couldn't shoot down a TIE because it was out of range.
I always get rather irritated by the idea of the Kesler syndrome. If a cloud of debris is in approximately stable orbit, it is moving at the same speed as anything else in stable orbit and is therefore NOT the dangerous cloud of death flak portrayed in movies like Gravity, destroying everything else in orbit and feeding itself from the wreckage. In fact, even if it DID cross with something moving at a significantly different speed, it would shrink, not grow, because all pieces that collided would either slow down from hitting something in front of them, causing them to fall out of orbit to the planet below, or they would speed up from being struck by a faster object from behind, causing them to spin out of orbit into space. Either way, the cloud loses mass. And I doubt the object they destroyed would randomly be given the correct velocity for a stable orbit.
The shields interfering with weapons and communications is something that was touched on in Star Trek once upon at time. It only happened when convenient to the plot, of course.
Great video. Always enjoy them. Have you read the Star Carrier series by Ian Douglas? That series seems to do space battles better than most movies. It takes into effect of ships traveling at light speed and how to do space combat in more practical scientific way. Pretty cool stuff.
One of the things missed in this vid I think is that any independent FTL/shield capable ship has one hella power plant. The volatility of said plant in battle could theoretically keep debris fields down but at the cost of less survivors. The reasoning is that assuming that the powerplant did not hold or the damage is enough to throw the power system out of alignment enough to cause a chain reaction across the ship means you dont survive, that would not cause debris fields that large unless its part of the outer hull that got ejected off the ship and was not turned into energy. A good example of this is the Honor Harrington novels where lucky shots to power systems upset the magnetic bottles on fusion plants and boom mini sun and no chance at survivors.
Correct . 1 bar in space is the level of vacuum measured by displacement of inches of Mercury , the same as the pressure you would feel at 33 feet under water . Very nicely said .
@Innocent Bystander and pi anywhere else in the world is 3.14159.... except in the state of Indiana where it is locked down at 3.15. Pretty stupid , i know .
Suggestion: Portray the PERFECT (most realistic) space battle, like it should be and we will become in the future. This can be a rather long project, but maybe design some stuff, ships like they should be, with the right things, and fighters too, and portray the most realistic space battle you should. As said, SUGGESTION, so maybe do it, maybe no, just see.
Others have pointed out that fluids inside you won’t boil as your skin is tough and provides the necessary pressure to keep things nice and liquid with the exception of small capillaries at the surface of your skin. It’s also been reported you may feel the saliva on your tongue boil. However... There is a situation where your body will burst from a pressure change. Divers on the Byford Dolphin oil platform were decompressing from 9 Atmospheres back down to 1 when the hatch failed catastrophically due to human error and they almost instantaneously exploded.
With explosions the shockwave would probably travel through the air within the ship itself so a shockwave wouldn't entirely be gone just redirected like a shape charge
If we ever make any kind of energy field, it will be point shield. You would aim the shield which only cover a small surface area in the direction where fire comes from.
8:20 that’s not necessarily true. In truth, the temperature in space would vary greatly depending on a number of factors. A good demonstration of this can be seen in the film “Sunshine”.
Space is technically cold. Energy can't be destroyed and the same goes for heat. Heat needs to be converted or transferred. And vacuum lacks the mass to transfer heat.
Armored Core 4 has what would consider a more realistic shield strategy. They use a field of what they call Kojima Particles to more slow or redirect incoming weapons fire around your mech.
Where shields are concerned, I’m not sure if it would make a difference, but I feel that I should point out that in Star Wars, Star Trek, and shows like them, the combatants are often using energy weapons, not projectile weapons.
Shields have issues beyond what he mentioned and even what he said was a massive understatement. Consider a sheild covering an area of 100m², every m² now has to have the same output. So if it can stop a projectile that impacts 1m² with 100N of force, it now has to have that same strength in all 100m² as it can't be reactive, it has to be proactive. Meaning if your sheild could in theory stop a blast at one area, it has to have the energy to stop that same blast across its entire area at the same time. So your sheilds energy requirements are reasonably orders of magnitude higher than the firepower capacity of your enemy. He also said its likely to block communications, that's true but it also blocks sensors just as effectively. A sufficiently powerful sheild not only makes you deaf, but blind as you can't leave holes in it. If you leave part of the EM spectrum open to "see" through, it's only a matter of time before your enemy finds a way to shoot a weapon in that spectrum. That said, there is 1 case in scifi were this isn't actually an issue, as the sheilds are used intelligently. In Halo Covenant warship sheilds open and close to allow weapons fire out, this would also allow communications and sensors to operate. A smart species would figure out how to use layered sheilds with gaps to allow themselves to see and hear. That said a smart species would also learn how to be really creative and use sheilds as a weapon. Wrapping your ship in them is nice defensively, but wrapping your enemies ship in them makes them a perfect offensive weapon. The enemy now can't fire at you, they can't even see you. You can move around outside the sheild and either contract it to crush ships, open sections to fire through, or just be mean in general. When you decide a piece of scifi tech exists in a universe, you need to start thinking about how can I use this in ways it's not intended for, but are oddly effective, as that's what soldiers would end up doing.
Defense has not always been less powerful than offense. Just because the last few hundred years have gone that way doesn't mean that the trend has to continue. After all, full plate armor was the most important piece of equipment a person could have for quite a while. It is like a never-ending race that is mostly neck and neck.
@@georgethompson913 To be fair strategical defense is a different thing than personal defense. Fortresses, even underground ones, were actually incredibly vulnerable to the largest guns of the day, suprisingly less effective than simple holes in the ground because the biggest guns could punch through rediculous amounts of defensive armoring.
I don't think it's one of the Merkava tanks, since their front-engine arrangement means the front end is blockier and the turret is set further back. At a guess, I'd say it's probably a Magach, an extensively updated, Israeli-made version of the US M60 'Patton' tank.
I think the reason why Star Wars ships have gunners and turrets controller by humans is because in the future if you have everything controlled by computers, they can be hacked, making them useless. So perhaps we go to computers for everything then eventually computers are rendered useless by disruption tech.
Technically in cannon there was a long term technical degradation in the empire/republic from its more golden eras. IRL it just looks cool and is more relatable. To the hacking comment, this is why you would hard wire said guns with multiple connections to a sub comp that cannot be connected to by a wireless/comm signal and all maint is done with plug in controls. Alongside the sub comp taking over control and only going to a defensive role if it cant reliably a IFF from any targets. As well you are never talking to the person your fighting till after the battle and even then your always running a trojan/AV scan of any incoming transmissions just for sore loser syndrome.
Turret gunners in WW2 were woefully inaccurate too. The studies of the effectiveness of B-17s even with the advantage of multiple craft overlapping fields of fire are depressing. And the CIC has replaced the bridge as the command center of naval vessels since WW2.
7:16 Well the engines were also heavily damaged, and the executor could be controlled from other parts of the ship, it’s just that the damage to the engines were so extreme it was a lost cause.
Add: Nuclear reactors do not explode. Extra Note: The Galactica had blast shielding that would close over all the windows during combat. This let them enjoy the view outside combat while still being safe within it.
In the expanse, why aren’t lasers used as weapons or point defense cannons?Today, humanity is using lasers on US Navy ships to defend against drones, so it would make sense that in the future of the expanse, that laser weapons technology would be significantly more advanced
Four reasons: a) lasers (even the ones the Navy is using) take time to heat up the incoming drone/missile to damage it. b) because, unlike bullets, lasers disperse over distance, and given the distances we're talking about in space, an enemy laser or particle beam is unlikely to do anything to your ship, other than alert it to where the enemy is, c) destroying a drone in an atmosphere creates debris that is far less aerodynamic and has far less inertia than the original drone/missile, causing it to dissipate kinetic energy, slow and fall far short or its target, where destroying a missile is space creates debris that is still hurtling toward you withe the same mass and kinetic energy as the original missile/drone and, d) solid metal ordinance won't just explode unless the laser uses an INSANE amount of power, and since no means of energy transfer is perfect, that means the ship needs some way of dissipating a lot of waste heat which, as I pointed out in "b" above, will definitely alert the enemy to your location on infrared. So as it turns out, the Expanse and Battlestar Galactica got it right, bullets and shells are the perfect weapons for use in a space battle.
As for energy shields ... there is one real life form of armor which is a bit similar. Electric armor is basically a bug zapper amped up enough to zap anti-tank rounds. It doesn't require much continuous power, just enough to keep it charged up like a capacitor.
My Imperial Infantrymans primer informs me that you're wrong...I simply hold my breath, pinch my nose and wait for rescue in the very unlikely event of space ejection.
A well armored ship could probably survive debris flying in the same orbit. Differing orbits are where things get very hairy. What triggers me the most after a few years of playing KSP is how debris fields and asteroid fields are portrayed as objects staying close together.
I would have mentioned the heat problem for a space ship. Namely that it's incredibly hard to remove heat from a spacecraft and any combat vessel will need a cooling solution for crew compartments, computers and weapons systems. Letting a gun barrel get hot could mean that it's out of commission for hours.
Technically yes, technically no. The reason I say this is that it really depends on if your doing fighting around a solar system or in deep space. Assuming material science when we go interstellar actually changes with more elements and alloys that have different cooling and heating properties and expansion contraction rates, the only true time you would have to worry about overheating would be when next to or close enough to a stellar system in the life sweet spot. The farther from the life sweet spot you are your more likely going to need to generate and use heat to keep yourself alive, because even with the best insulation between your hull and primary living areas a spaceship bleeds heat. While close into the spot your quite correct that getting rid of excess heat would be a problem especially in a very active battle assuming your doing dogfighting of course. Otherwise the guns themselves would actually be more in danger of vacuum welding when in deep space if they have any moveable parts exposed outside the hull. If you have them as stowable weapons the hatches could also succumb to vacuum welding which makes them less useful.
I like that quote from Mass Effect where the guy is yelling at recruits that if you fire a weapon and miss in space some poor jerk on a planet thousands or millions of years later is going to be walking along and then get blasted by the rail gun projectile.
Actually a better real-world example that everyone can examine is how scuba divers ascend from deep water. To pique your interest is this little tidbit. I read a while back that one of the tests for getting certified to really deep is you have to ascend from the 100ft point without air. And you have to do it slowly or else you risk getting the bends. The really freaky part of the rise is what you have to do with the air in your lungs. You take a deep breath from your tank and then take the mouth piece out. And then, as you rise, you slowly let the air out of your lungs. Until you reach the top and let out a lungful of air.
the movie Outland (from the 80's), with Sean Connery, was about a mining operation on Jupiter's moon Io, and they showed that when a body is exposed to vacuum, like the weather balloon it would explode. what are your thoughts on this?
gravity actually gets orbital mechanics very wrong. the debris field is orbiting once every 90 minutes... guess what...so is everything else, so the reality would be: we've got a debris field on the other side of the planet we'll keep an eye on it shouldn't affect your mission at all oh, and can you give us a small burn there's a satellite passing within 25 miles of you in 3 days that we would prefer to be a bit farther away
Calling it now. Decades from now there are going to be orbital cleaning services that send ships with massive electromagnets to clean up debris fields.
@@rsrt6910 That would be a good name for the company. Nice play on words. And once the first mess is cleaned up, you just wait for the next one. There will always be a next one.
I actually disagree with your view on view screens on the bridge. If your ships power is knocked out you are blind without a view screen or port. Personally I'd rather see the torpedo coming than be dead not knowing why.
The incoming ordinance will be traveling at speeds that are impossible to actually see, at ranges that are impossible to where it came from, so even with a clear, unobstructed view of space, you'll STILL never see the torpedo coming and STILL be dead and not know why.
if you dont want to die, you might want to serve in a navy not stupid enough to put windows on a spaceship built for war. get yourself some good redundant power supply.
"Star Wars doesn't do a terrible job portraying what happens to a person when exposed to vacuum." .... then proceeds to list all the ways Star Wars got the scene with Leia in space dead wrong, LOL :D For a start she should of been dead from the blast of the torpedo hitting the bridge, but, if by some miracle, that and the debris flying around her didn't kill her odds are she wasn't attempting any special breath mediation as she didn't know she was about to be in deep space, which means in seconds she would be dead. BUT, if by some miracle she didn't die through lack of air in her lungs she WOULD die from her blood boiling off. Well, unless she has plot armour created by Rian Johnson :D
To be fair to Star Wars, the blood thing just isn't true. Leia's lungs may well be trashed, and if they were the blood leaking there may boil, but if she had breathed out coincidentally the body is quite capable of maintaining pressure on the circulatory system in vacuum, at least for long enough that it won't be a problem any more...
EVE Online (I know it isn't a film, sue me) does energy shield power consumption quite well: try equipping even a small shield module and watch your CPU and power grid drop tremendously. Also, I can't remember the last time I engaged an enemy inside a 20km range.
break shields into small panel sections and power them on only when the projectile is about to hit like a active protection system because you can't stop energy weapons
Does anyone remember the movie "Outland", where if you were exposed to vacuum your body simply exploded? Dunno how realistic it was, but it was pretty cool...
If you would have taken a scuba diving course, you would know lungs wouldn't poop like a ballon. Holding your breath in a vacuum is the equivalent to hold your breath 10m depth and accending. It can cause Pulmonary barotrauma which can lead to air escaping to the bloodstream and other body tissue. That´s a lethal injury but can be treated. So I would guess the lack f oxygen would be a much bigger issue. The best-case scenario would be if it was possible to release half of the air in your lungs to compensate for the expanding air. But I believe it would be very difficult to pull off with the very sudden and drastic change of air pressure.
The only issue with a bridge being buried deep within the ship is that you need a quick way to evacuate said ship. The Lamda-Class shuttle addressed this problem quite well by designing the control module(cockpit) to detach and serve as a secondary craft. There's no reason why the command module(bridge) of a capital ship couldn't be similarly designed and It would be JUST LIKE most Imperial officers to bug out leaving their crews to die.
Dunno, do I WANT to be in a lightly armored shuttle, naked in the middle of a battle that, apparently, I'm already losing in my well armed and armored fighting ship? or do I want to be buried deep withing said armed and armored fighting ship? I think escape pods on fighting ships are structural weak points that only serve as convenient cans to hold prisoners for the victors... or target practice.
"Makes no sense to make such a large ship and leave your most important parts sitting above the ship" You mean like the control towers on naval carriers?
Windows have an other huge flaw, no matter what material they are made off, they are designed to let light in the visible spectrum through. This is exactly the same spectrum that lasers are operating in, so basically a window will not stop lasers.
Also very good, but again, foresight. You can't claim that space battles will be this way or that way until it happens. Look how fast the battlefield has changed in 100 years. Now extrapolate that another 100 years. Missiles and bullets may be obsolete. Railguns, lasers, microwaves, or even just a giant, solid slug of metal (all of which we have now too) could be the weapon of space combat. The biggest problem with the way the Expanse does space combat is everyone knew EXACTLY what the other side had for weapons and defense. It wasn't until season 5 that someone finally just threw a bunch of rocks at a ship to destroy it.
Mass effect Debris Mass effect does show how hazardous debris can be. It is inadvisable for any ship to attempt to land on earth without kinetic-barriers as there is so much debris in earth from 21st century space exploration that it poses a hazard, especially for smaller ships. In the battle of the citadel, after sovereign is destroyed, debris is rained all over the station, causing massive damage and 2 years later, they are still nowhere near finished with repairs Explosions Once again mass effect loves long range combat. I also heard somewhere that another reason that ships prefer long range is because each slug from the main gun of a dreadnought for example has more then double the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. This could pose a danger to not just the target but also the shooter Defenses I like mass effect defenses, they consist of 3 parts. GARDIAN point defense lazers similar to the expanses point defense. These are short range lazers, designed to swatt down enemy fighters or torpedos. The only way to get past them is to overwhelm them with too many targets use a projectile or energy based weapon such as a rail gun or lazer Kinetic-barriers barriers consist of tiny emitters scattered throughout the hull. Once they detect a projectile traveling above a cirtain speed, they generate rapidly spinning mass effect fields in a localized area, that deflects those projectiles. The only way to get past them is by overloading the generators with repeated hits or use the disruptor torpedos that made it past the lazers. These torpedos are specially designed to punch holes through barriers and damage the emitters. The last layer of defense is layers of ablative armor that are designed to boil away when heated. This spreads out the heat of energy based weapons and ultimately deals less damage. The only ways to get passed this would be repeated lazer strikes until u boil through all the armor or disable the barriers, allowing u to hit the armor with kinetic projectiles. Due to the fact that lazers can bypass most defenses, its not uncommon to see frigates using advanced GARDIAN systems as an offensive weapon in close quarters combat Automated defenses Artificial intelligence is illegal in the Mass effect universe and most ships make do with simple minded virtual intelligences which work for automated defenses such as GARDIAN but can't react to change in combat situations the same way organics can, which is why primary weapons are still operated manually Windows Mass effect ships have windows but only exist to drive up recruitment. In combat however these windows can be sealed by sheets of ablative armor. The bridge is divided into 2 parts, the helm and the CIC. The CIC has no windows but the helm does and much like the rest of the windows, they do seal. Incase of a hull breach in the helm, the room can be sealed off from the CIC and be depressed, buying the crew enough time to get to the escape pods. Exposure to vacuum The destruction of the Normandy in mass effect 2 shows this off quite well. U don't see it happen but later in the game u hear that comander shepherd sustained massive amounts of nerve damage due to vacuum and subzero temperatures. My guess is that the comanders body probably got so cold that he became hypothermic
Actually, depictions of death in space via movies and science fiction shows is a very interesting subject. Each show or film seems to have different ideas of what would happen and the damage even minor exposure would cause. That's probably a really interesting idea for a future video. I'm sure there must be some studies on the subject but I can't bring myself to look into animal testing done in space. I guess it forms a better use of animal testing than lipstick and beauty product testing, but still a subject I couldn't bring myself to research!
Come on Al . Leia didnt get sucked out into space ? The breech happened that ripped open the hull on the Mon Calamari ship and the explosive pressure threw her out into open space . And when she woke up out in space she didn't fly back to the airlock , she extended her hand and using the force she pulled the whole ship to her . I was going to say she pulled the entire universe to her but thats grasping at straws . She probably just pulled the ship...i hate Star Wars but that scene made me , a 6'4" 335 lb bearded dude, tear up . Why didnt anyone bring up the force field protected hangar bays on the enterprise? Or the pel-tak on an El'kesh of Stargate SG1 ?
What's not mentioned about computer controlled combat is it will _filter down to the Human level._ Combat robots will be able to put a bullet through your eye at extreme range before the nerve impulses telling you the bot is there have traveled across your brain (like the aforementioned bullet is currently doing). And then the rest of the guys in your unit will be taken out in the same precision autofire burst. That is what will end using human soldiers - we will become like horse calvary going against tanks. And a horse can be taken out with a minor wound while a combat robot could be blown in half (a heavily armoured half) and still keep fighting. That's something you don't see in Humans fighting machines like Cylons, Terminators, or the droids from Elysium. In *Elysium* during the data heist, when the bodyguard droid does a ID scan of Matt Damon, it should have been able to *shoot Matt Damon* in the retina just as easily. [Back in the early 2000's a standard human _machine gun_ fitted to a prototype robot (called a S.W.O.R.D) could bullseye a apple at 300 metres]. _So progress does have some benifits…. Shooting Matt Damon in the face_
One of the reasons I love the Mass Effect Trilogy is that if you read the codexes you find out that their "shields" are actually a sophisticated electromagnetic field that only activates when your ship or hard suit's sensors detect an object of sufficient velocity.
Same as in Robotech . They didnt have force field protecting the whole ship , they used roller controls to predict where an impact would happen and focus the repulsor shield in that spot .
@@chrismsmalley2626 well...they did at one point have a spherical shield...only used it twice IIRC. Once it overloaded and took out a city in Ontario IIRC, and the other was after they launched a Macross Missile Massacre inside Dolza's fortress to protect from the thousands of nu...I mean Reaction Missiles they just unleashed.
@@wilemelliott IIRC one problem was that the barrier shield system sucked so much power that most other systems turned off?
Btw, fun note: Robotech "reflex weapons" were "reaction weapons" in Macross, short for "NUCLEAR reaction weapons". :-D
Semantical clarification: When a weather balloon rises in atmosphere, the outside pressure drops, but the inside pressure stays constant. It's the difference between the two that causes it to expand as it flies higher.
More like factual clarification.
Yup. The problem with keeping air in your lungs in a vacuum is PxV=nxRxT so the lower the pressure, the larger the volume of the air. If P=0 then the air wants to occupy a volume larger than the capacity of your lungs.
No, the pressure drops as it expands. If you've got the same quantity of helium in a large space as a small one, the large space will be at lower pressure, all other things being equal. The pressure inside the flexible membrane of the balloon matches the external pressure (plus a bit for the tension in the rubber). It's the _similarity_ between outside and inside that causes it to expand.
5:40, that's not how reactive armor works. You’re describing APS, or Active Protection System. Reactive armor, or more accurately ERA Explosive Reactive Armor, explodes when it is impacted by a projectile of sufficient energy to trigger it, either dispersing the superplastic jet of a HEAT projectile, or destabilizing or breaking a kinetic penetrator. ERA is what’s on the M60 tank in the picture.
APS does exist and is starting to become more widely used in the Israli Trophy system, Russian Arena, and Chinese GL5.
Thank you, I was about to say the exact same thing.
Yup. Was coming to say the same thing, too.
Circulatory system isn't exposed to the outside air since it is an enclosed system.
The water in your veins will remain at it's current pressure for a while.
The water exposed to the vacuum such as eyes,nose and mouth will evaporate.
Yes, and boiling point of water in vacuum is same as freezing point (no liquids in zero pressure). Human skin can hold enough pressure to prevent water from boiling.
Beat me to it, nuts
Water in your eyes will boil away. Until the remaining water gets so cold, because turning water into gas takes a lot of energy, it will freeze.
Oxygen and CO2 will dissociate from your blood in your lungs much faster than at pressure and you will suffocate much faster.
@@NightRaven-lh1bf Nope. The wound will freeze solid before a low pressure wave courses through your veins. You may lose centimeters of vein, but it will not be a systemic failure across the body.
I would add one thing- something that has really impressed me about Mobile Suite Gundam is that the crews of spacecraft, even mecha pilots, don space suits before battles. Only high level leaders (General Revel) and hot shots (Char) dispense with them because they have meters of plot armor. Everyone else, even Amuro Rey, sensibly donned their space suits before going into battle.
“Windows are structural weaknesses. Geth do not use them”
Geth are the builders of the protomolecule
geth are the budgets version of necrons
unless your whole ship is built of a transparent material, and that material is the strongest material known...
Titan A.E. did the vacuum thing in the beginning where the main char. was told to exhale before going to do a bit of EVA
stargate sg1 did the same thing when Teal'c and O'neill had to vacate their booby trapped x-301 hybrid glider to get ringed up in a cargo ship.....; been binge watching the Expanse, there's a scene where a guy is eva and has to open his visor to get an object out of his helmet.....
BSG also had a go at it. Chief and Callie were trapped somewhere, and had to make it to a Raptor for evac. But there was no way to get to the Raptor except for for thru the void. They took a few deep breaths, exhaled as hard as they could, then went for it. Once inside the Raptor and it repressurized, they were quite shaken up and not doing so hot, even though the exposure was only a few seconds.
"Exhale!" Titan A.E.
Good man
Love that
Excellent
Shields : Star Trek get this right, Navigational Deflector is a low power forward only shield for tiny particles, and tractor and deflector beams for anything larger, better then blowing things up, move them aside, and only block them if very small/light with a minimal Shield - the main shields are not always on, only used in battle, and constantly fluctuate so you can predict when to fire through them just like firing through the propeller of a fighter plane
Love the channel bro been watching your channels for years now
Jonathan Boyd same
Ship CIWS can still have human oversight and be fired manually. Also tank reactive armor plates are NOT automated that fire out explosive projectiles to intercept incomings (that would be hardkill APS)
they are initiated manually...basically all humans do is flip off the safety. Sort of like letting a dog off a leash and saying "Sick em"
they are "human on the loop" not "human in the loop" and never "human is the loop"
For the space battles in the last Jedi, it's pretty much everything. You would have trouble finding any logic in any of them.
That's because there is trouble finding any sense in any of Star Wars movies at all.
@Prithu doesn’t change the fact that TLJ is complete horse sh!t of a movie from a story perspective...
I apologise, I've got to correct a few things again.
Firstly, it isn't a bridge, that's the station from where the ship is piloted, so in real life the wheel of the ship. The actual name for the room, that is always called the bridge is actually called the combat/central information centre.
secondly your blood doesn't actually boil, because it has enough pressure, and your skin just about keeps it a liquid. instead any liquid on the surface of your body will boil, like sweat and tears on your eyes.
Thirdly radiation from nuclear bombs isn't really a problem, any ship designed to last longer than 1 month in space, outside of a planets orbit, will have radiation shields to stop the local star cooking the inhabitants, that nukes wouldn't be a problem radiation wise, and end up having to have direct hits to do any damage, because as you said, no blast wave, but the EMP could take out all an shielded things like antennas.
Lastly explosive reactive armour has no sensors, it is pressure triggered, if something big enough hits it will be set off, what you were describing was an active protection system, eg the Israeli trophy system, or Russian Arena.
Again you FAILED to mention how space fighters are just a stupid useless idea, that is only used because of the romance of ww2., but oh well.
Its not uncommon for the bridge and CIC to be integrated. And for your last point, he essentially said that last episode when talking about how dog-fighting won't be a thing in space. Negating the need for space fighters. He also said how it was popularized by Star Wars and George Lucas was inspired by WW2.
CIC is never on a bridge. The CIC is always deep within the ship. As to nukes, you might want to look up nuclear effects in space on the Atomic Rockets site. They get deep into the physics of mostly near-future hard scifi, including expanse-like scenarios. Make sure you don't need to get anything done that day though cuz the site tends to eat up one's day.
That ain't how reactive armor works bud. It's designed to not explode when hit by small arms fire but detonate when hit by certain types of armor piercing ammunition to disrupt the finely tuned mechanisms of those devices.
Thanks for that. Meaningful commentary in consideration format. Thanks
Great stuff and thank you for citing the expanse quite a bit, a true role model for realistic space combat
Surface warfare ships don't use those pretty glass-lined bridges during combat, they have incorporated combat command centers deep in the hull as described in the video since before WW1.
Been watching generation tech for a while now and I never new about this channel
Man I’m loving these daily videos! So great when stuck at home trying not to die
Thats why i like the Starships from the Perry Rhodan pulp novel series. It startet in the 60s and is still running today. Even back then they described the ships as spherical with the engines at the equator of the sphere. The Command Center was in its middle and armored equaly to the hull with its own Life support system. Also all important System were triple reduntant.
You touched on this in part 1 but I think Babylon 5 also does a fairly decent job portraying how space combat should be with some of these examples also. The use of interceptor projectiles are featured heavily in the show. Some ships have more of an interior bridge design also.
I agree about computer-controlled point defense systems being better than human gunners trying to shoot down enemy missiles: they can 'see' further, react quicker, and shoot more accurately, and the stark lack of them (and of electronic warfare) is disappointing in a lot of science fiction.
That said, point defense systems are one of those things that either works flawlessly, or not at all. Also, unlike shields, point defenses are by definition reactive: the enemy has to have already shot first before the PD system can start trying to figure out what to do. If the enemy missile is stealthy enough to sneak up on the target, scatters into multiple sub-munitions, launches decoys, or is just plain super fast, the PD system might not have enough time to engage and destroy it. Granted, those are issues more in line with ICBMs than with cruise or air-to-air missiles, but if we're talking future-tech, then nothing is really off the table.
Love your vids :D keep it going!!
After watching the quick scene in The Expanse where the belter opens his visor and wipes his face and puts it back down, I had to look up as to what the effects of vacuum actually were. It turns out that like so many other things, they nailed it and that a short exposure like that wouldn't be too big of a deal. Lack of oxygen is the big killer and as mentioned will take you out pretty quickly as any remaining air in your lungs will be expelled.
Also, Peter Quill (aka, Starlord) ROUTINELY rockets around for short hauls wearing nothing more than his breathing mask and his duster.
BattleStar Galactica ships versus Expanse ships in a battle.
It has to be done now.
…The Cylons will just cheat and hack the Expanses computers though.
Not a fair fight.
Battlestars have dozens of turret mounted rail guns, an overwhelming amount of flak and point defense guns, enough armor to withstand multiple hits from nukes, and the ability to generate their own wormhole on demand to instantly GTFO (though there fighters are of questionable use).
The cylon hacking pretty much relied on having a backdoor in a comically unsecure taclink network. Any decent system wouldn't be able to be hacked into as easy as in the BSG series.
@@F6FHellcat5 The cylon hacking of the entire defense force relied on a backdoor. The cylon's ability to hack any particular ship, however, was established to be 100% real and independent of pre-war interference.
@@officaloutsidegames Given your abnormal writing, I seriously doubt your educational background. That's not how sentences work, nor paragraphs either Also the word is "expect" not "except"; is English your 2nd or later language?
But the way to hack a computer network which is completely wired (as opposed to wireless, which "that episode" specifically did to increase computation capacity) is to first look for communication computers and trick them into letting you send messages further along the network. It's the equivalent to sending a ping to all 65k ports that a computer uses and finding one that accepts commands, then seeing which exploit allows you to run executable code that you can then use to hijack the whole computer... then with a trusted network asset, you move on to corrupt the remainder of the network. You can't tell me that the Galactica refuses incoming communication requests unless they are specifically looking to receive a transmission.
@@officaloutsidegames google "code injection" cheers! It is probably possible through radars with modern tech, though that's purely speculative.
Also, the amount of radiation in space means that you will very likely get some pretty substantial radiation burns/exposure with even minor direct exposure.
Something else that isn't covered in space battles, why does no one ever wear some sort of survival suit in case they get blown into space? Ship crews wear these types of suits in Arctic regions in case they get washed overboard, so one would think that combat crews of the future would do the same.
Ships designing for long space travels will protect you From radiaton
They do in BSG.
One whole episode where Kara Thrace crashes on an unbreathable moon and has to find a way off/back before her air runs out.
Another whole episode where Lee's ship gets destroyed, but he survives to just float helplessly around like debris watching as two battlestars and two base ships slug it out in front of him. (One of their best episodes, I thought.)
@@rsrt6910 In their fighters yes, but no environment suites on the the larger ships. B5 also does this in their fighters. The only scifi I know where they suite up before battle on their fleet ships is the honor verse series
6 MORE things
Welp, here we go again...
In the Expanse - that badass belter (who later directed his ore load to a martian customs ship) did open his helmet in the vacuum to remove a shorted wire. Was quite good scene, from point of viewing and science. :)
Yeah. I learned that it's better to stay on earth, and avoid space like the plague. Thanks. Great video as always. Humanity First!
Sad thing is, if ur on Earth, ur probably not avoiding the plague. 😆
Wait.
I thought, according to Agent Smith, that HUMANITY was the plague?!
This comment might be more appropriate for the last video, but when it come to the manned fighters, I would imagine that if space combat were to be a thing they would all be remotely piloted if not completely computer controlled. Heck maybe a combination where people pick the targets and drones then do their thing.
rufinator and, if the drones get hacked?
You can’t hack a person.
@@peterkrochmalni673 of course you can hack a person. Conspiracy theories hack people all the time using exploits on the known hardware vulnerabilities of the human brain. That does take a bit longer than a dogfight to accomplish though. That said, even if you can't hack a person, you can hack everything that the human depends on to do their job. Since the person depends entirely on sensors to tell them most of what they know about the outside world, once you've given their mothership as the target location, then you can sit back and wait for the totally not hacked human to commence attack runs on their own side.
Great content, guys!
Maybe to protect the bridge of a ship but to keep the windows you can have a sort of armor shutter system (kinda like the metal shutters some corner shops have) then you can use sensors and cameras during a battle so when it's all clear the shutters can reel back and the windows are undamaged
Can you please do an explanation of the size of space and how movies get that wrong a lot. The difference between a solar system, a galaxy and a universe. Space is really really mind blowing big.
Enders Game was a way better form of space battle . Sacrifice some to win if you have to?
Space core: "Space!"
Adventure core: "There's nothing IN space, that's why it's called SPACE!"
also,
Morty: "There's snakes in space?!"
Ricky: "There LITERALLY EVERYTHING in SPACE!"
Beltalowda!
I still miss one big problem with most sci-fi battles in movies and tv you havent coverd yet; sound. There is no sound in space!
That was one of the things I really appreciated about Firefly. All the deep-space scenes had no sound effects, just those awesome fiddle reels.
tba113 I agree, but one sci-fi show that took this even more sereously is Battlestar Galactica👌
But, but, if there's no sound, how will anyone hear you scream?
5:40
Thats not how reactive armor works at all.
Reactive armor (or precisely explosive reactive armor or ERA) is basically a thin armor plate on top of a layer of explosives that sits on top of the main armor. The idea is, that when a HEAT round strikes, the metal jet created by that round will ignite the explosive under the armor panel, which will in turn counter and destabilized the metal jet, which would otherwise melt through incredibly thick armor plates. Similarly sabot rounds also have their effect diminished significantly, as they are usually at their thermal limit from air resistance alone (these things go really fast), and additional heat and shockwave from the explosion will completely melt and disintegrate them. Naturally, having armor that literally explodes outward is problematic for any friendly infantry that might be near the tank (for example using it for cover). Thats for example why German Leopard 2 tanks dont use the concept at all.
What ERA does not do is throw the armor panel at the projectile to meet it halfway. Standoff armor like WWII era Schürzen on German tanks fulfilled that idea, though the armor was just positioned at a distance and not propelled there by an explosion in the last milisecond. If you absolutely want to throw stuff at projectiles with explody stuff, try chaff, which essentially launches a shotgun of dense dust into the path of an incoming projectile (typically a HEAT based warhead, preferably a missile, but shell works just as well) in the hopes of the dust triggering the extremely sensitive fuze.
I believe Star Wars has close range space battles because their weapons lack range. This was seen in TLJ (still doesn't excuse the chase) and on different other occasions like when the Falcon couldn't shoot down a TIE because it was out of range.
I always get rather irritated by the idea of the Kesler syndrome. If a cloud of debris is in approximately stable orbit, it is moving at the same speed as anything else in stable orbit and is therefore NOT the dangerous cloud of death flak portrayed in movies like Gravity, destroying everything else in orbit and feeding itself from the wreckage.
In fact, even if it DID cross with something moving at a significantly different speed, it would shrink, not grow, because all pieces that collided would either slow down from hitting something in front of them, causing them to fall out of orbit to the planet below, or they would speed up from being struck by a faster object from behind, causing them to spin out of orbit into space. Either way, the cloud loses mass. And I doubt the object they destroyed would randomly be given the correct velocity for a stable orbit.
Titan A.E got the exposure to space right. ^.^ Even had one character tell the other to exhale XD
Feyyore Dirkear that is a great movie, and I remember that scene. Yes!
The shields interfering with weapons and communications is something that was touched on in Star Trek once upon at time. It only happened when convenient to the plot, of course.
Great video. Always enjoy them. Have you read the Star Carrier series by Ian Douglas? That series seems to do space battles better than most movies. It takes into effect of ships traveling at light speed and how to do space combat in more practical scientific way. Pretty cool stuff.
One of the things missed in this vid I think is that any independent FTL/shield capable ship has one hella power plant. The volatility of said plant in battle could theoretically keep debris fields down but at the cost of less survivors. The reasoning is that assuming that the powerplant did not hold or the damage is enough to throw the power system out of alignment enough to cause a chain reaction across the ship means you dont survive, that would not cause debris fields that large unless its part of the outer hull that got ejected off the ship and was not turned into energy. A good example of this is the Honor Harrington novels where lucky shots to power systems upset the magnetic bottles on fusion plants and boom mini sun and no chance at survivors.
Think you could do a video on what weapons are suitable for starship combat?
In a vaccum there is only a difference of 100 kilo pascals air pressure, it's like the difference of diving 11 meters (33 feet) deep.
Yeah but gas and liquid behave very differently comparitvely. Like your blood won't boil from the difference in pressure in the case of water
Correct . 1 bar in space is the level of vacuum measured by displacement of inches of Mercury , the same as the pressure you would feel at 33 feet under water . Very nicely said .
@Innocent Bystander and pi anywhere else in the world is 3.14159.... except in the state of Indiana where it is locked down at 3.15. Pretty stupid , i know .
@@chrismsmalley2626 Thanks!
33 feet is = 10 meters.
Suggestion: Portray the PERFECT (most realistic) space battle, like it should be and we will become in the future. This can be a rather long project, but maybe design some stuff, ships like they should be, with the right things, and fighters too, and portray the most realistic space battle you should. As said, SUGGESTION, so maybe do it, maybe no, just see.
Others have pointed out that fluids inside you won’t boil as your skin is tough and provides the necessary pressure to keep things nice and liquid with the exception of small capillaries at the surface of your skin. It’s also been reported you may feel the saliva on your tongue boil. However...
There is a situation where your body will burst from a pressure change. Divers on the Byford Dolphin oil platform were decompressing from 9 Atmospheres back down to 1 when the hatch failed catastrophically due to human error and they almost instantaneously exploded.
With explosions the shockwave would probably travel through the air within the ship itself so a shockwave wouldn't entirely be gone just redirected like a shape charge
If we ever make any kind of energy field, it will be point shield. You would aim the shield which only cover a small surface area in the direction where fire comes from.
Stargate SG-1 did a good job on effects of the vacuum on human body (the episode with the flight test of the refurbished death gliders).
8:20 that’s not necessarily true. In truth, the temperature in space would vary greatly depending on a number of factors. A good demonstration of this can be seen in the film “Sunshine”.
Space is technically cold. Energy can't be destroyed and the same goes for heat. Heat needs to be converted or transferred. And vacuum lacks the mass to transfer heat.
Armored Core 4 has what would consider a more realistic shield strategy. They use a field of what they call Kojima Particles to more slow or redirect incoming weapons fire around your mech.
Where shields are concerned, I’m not sure if it would make a difference, but I feel that I should point out that in Star Wars, Star Trek, and shows like them, the combatants are often using energy weapons, not projectile weapons.
Shields have issues beyond what he mentioned and even what he said was a massive understatement.
Consider a sheild covering an area of 100m², every m² now has to have the same output. So if it can stop a projectile that impacts 1m² with 100N of force, it now has to have that same strength in all 100m² as it can't be reactive, it has to be proactive. Meaning if your sheild could in theory stop a blast at one area, it has to have the energy to stop that same blast across its entire area at the same time. So your sheilds energy requirements are reasonably orders of magnitude higher than the firepower capacity of your enemy.
He also said its likely to block communications, that's true but it also blocks sensors just as effectively. A sufficiently powerful sheild not only makes you deaf, but blind as you can't leave holes in it. If you leave part of the EM spectrum open to "see" through, it's only a matter of time before your enemy finds a way to shoot a weapon in that spectrum.
That said, there is 1 case in scifi were this isn't actually an issue, as the sheilds are used intelligently. In Halo Covenant warship sheilds open and close to allow weapons fire out, this would also allow communications and sensors to operate. A smart species would figure out how to use layered sheilds with gaps to allow themselves to see and hear. That said a smart species would also learn how to be really creative and use sheilds as a weapon. Wrapping your ship in them is nice defensively, but wrapping your enemies ship in them makes them a perfect offensive weapon. The enemy now can't fire at you, they can't even see you. You can move around outside the sheild and either contract it to crush ships, open sections to fire through, or just be mean in general. When you decide a piece of scifi tech exists in a universe, you need to start thinking about how can I use this in ways it's not intended for, but are oddly effective, as that's what soldiers would end up doing.
Defense has not always been less powerful than offense. Just because the last few hundred years have gone that way doesn't mean that the trend has to continue. After all, full plate armor was the most important piece of equipment a person could have for quite a while. It is like a never-ending race that is mostly neck and neck.
Hell in ww1 defense was strategically favourable against offense.
@@georgethompson913 To be fair strategical defense is a different thing than personal defense. Fortresses, even underground ones, were actually incredibly vulnerable to the largest guns of the day, suprisingly less effective than simple holes in the ground because the biggest guns could punch through rediculous amounts of defensive armoring.
Great video! I have a question, what's the name of the tank at 5:40 ?
I don't think it's one of the Merkava tanks, since their front-engine arrangement means the front end is blockier and the turret is set further back. At a guess, I'd say it's probably a Magach, an extensively updated, Israeli-made version of the US M60 'Patton' tank.
That's an M60, and it has ERA, not APS.
I think the reason why Star Wars ships have gunners and turrets controller by humans is because in the future if you have everything controlled by computers, they can be hacked, making them useless. So perhaps we go to computers for everything then eventually computers are rendered useless by disruption tech.
Nah, it's because it's not the future. It's really a long long time ago :-) Go and watch Bad Lip-Reading - Not the future.
Technically in cannon there was a long term technical degradation in the empire/republic from its more golden eras. IRL it just looks cool and is more relatable. To the hacking comment, this is why you would hard wire said guns with multiple connections to a sub comp that cannot be connected to by a wireless/comm signal and all maint is done with plug in controls. Alongside the sub comp taking over control and only going to a defensive role if it cant reliably a IFF from any targets. As well you are never talking to the person your fighting till after the battle and even then your always running a trojan/AV scan of any incoming transmissions just for sore loser syndrome.
Oh yes..let's see a part 3, ,please.
Turret gunners in WW2 were woefully inaccurate too. The studies of the effectiveness of B-17s even with the advantage of multiple craft overlapping fields of fire are depressing. And the CIC has replaced the bridge as the command center of naval vessels since WW2.
7:16
Well the engines were also heavily damaged, and the executor could be controlled from other parts of the ship, it’s just that the damage to the engines were so extreme it was a lost cause.
Naomi's space walk in the expanse was the best representation of space on a human body
Add: Nuclear reactors do not explode.
Extra Note: The Galactica had blast shielding that would close over all the windows during combat. This let them enjoy the view outside combat while still being safe within it.
In the expanse, why aren’t lasers used as weapons or point defense cannons?Today, humanity is using lasers on US Navy ships to defend against drones, so it would make sense that in the future of the expanse, that laser weapons technology would be significantly more advanced
Four reasons:
a) lasers (even the ones the Navy is using) take time to heat up the incoming drone/missile to damage it.
b) because, unlike bullets, lasers disperse over distance, and given the distances we're talking about in space, an enemy laser or particle beam is unlikely to do anything to your ship, other than alert it to where the enemy is,
c) destroying a drone in an atmosphere creates debris that is far less aerodynamic and has far less inertia than the original drone/missile, causing it to dissipate kinetic energy, slow and fall far short or its target, where destroying a missile is space creates debris that is still hurtling toward you withe the same mass and kinetic energy as the original missile/drone and,
d) solid metal ordinance won't just explode unless the laser uses an INSANE amount of power, and since no means of energy transfer is perfect, that means the ship needs some way of dissipating a lot of waste heat which, as I pointed out in "b" above, will definitely alert the enemy to your location on infrared.
So as it turns out, the Expanse and Battlestar Galactica got it right, bullets and shells are the perfect weapons for use in a space battle.
Lol @ Lucille Ball 😂
Btw, nothing is prettier than the flak barrier the BSG creates
I have such fond memories of Lee turning into the flak shield trying to stop that heavy raider...
No fighting in space kids!! ☠
As for energy shields ... there is one real life form of armor which is a bit similar. Electric armor is basically a bug zapper amped up enough to zap anti-tank rounds. It doesn't require much continuous power, just enough to keep it charged up like a capacitor.
My Imperial Infantrymans primer informs me that you're wrong...I simply hold my breath, pinch my nose and wait for rescue in the very unlikely event of space ejection.
A well armored ship could probably survive debris flying in the same orbit. Differing orbits are where things get very hairy.
What triggers me the most after a few years of playing KSP is how debris fields and asteroid fields are portrayed as objects staying close together.
I would have mentioned the heat problem for a space ship. Namely that it's incredibly hard to remove heat from a spacecraft and any combat vessel will need a cooling solution for crew compartments, computers and weapons systems. Letting a gun barrel get hot could mean that it's out of commission for hours.
Bruh
and thats why we use droplet radiators
Technically yes, technically no. The reason I say this is that it really depends on if your doing fighting around a solar system or in deep space. Assuming material science when we go interstellar actually changes with more elements and alloys that have different cooling and heating properties and expansion contraction rates, the only true time you would have to worry about overheating would be when next to or close enough to a stellar system in the life sweet spot. The farther from the life sweet spot you are your more likely going to need to generate and use heat to keep yourself alive, because even with the best insulation between your hull and primary living areas a spaceship bleeds heat. While close into the spot your quite correct that getting rid of excess heat would be a problem especially in a very active battle assuming your doing dogfighting of course. Otherwise the guns themselves would actually be more in danger of vacuum welding when in deep space if they have any moveable parts exposed outside the hull. If you have them as stowable weapons the hatches could also succumb to vacuum welding which makes them less useful.
I like that quote from Mass Effect where the guy is yelling at recruits that if you fire a weapon and miss in space some poor jerk on a planet thousands or millions of years later is going to be walking along and then get blasted by the rail gun projectile.
Actually a better real-world example that everyone can examine is how scuba divers ascend from deep water. To pique your interest is this little tidbit. I read a while back that one of the tests for getting certified to really deep is you have to ascend from the 100ft point without air. And you have to do it slowly or else you risk getting the bends. The really freaky part of the rise is what you have to do with the air in your lungs. You take a deep breath from your tank and then take the mouth piece out. And then, as you rise, you slowly let the air out of your lungs. Until you reach the top and let out a lungful of air.
the movie Outland (from the 80's), with Sean Connery, was about a mining operation on Jupiter's moon Io, and they showed that when a body is exposed to vacuum, like the weather balloon it would explode. what are your thoughts on this?
gravity actually gets orbital mechanics very wrong.
the debris field is orbiting once every 90 minutes...
guess what...so is everything else, so the reality would be:
we've got a debris field on the other side of the planet
we'll keep an eye on it
shouldn't affect your mission at all
oh, and can you give us a small burn
there's a satellite passing within 25 miles of you in 3 days that we would prefer to be a bit farther away
Unless they're in different orbits. Polar and equatorial orbits pass each other.
Sir!
How DARE YOU bring REALITY into this discussion!
Calling it now. Decades from now there are going to be orbital cleaning services that send ships with massive electromagnets to clean up debris fields.
I was thinking vacuum cleaners... but what would be left after all the vacuum was sucked up?
@@rsrt6910 That would be a good name for the company. Nice play on words. And once the first mess is cleaned up, you just wait for the next one. There will always be a next one.
Windows are a structural weakness....Aesthetically pleasing at times but they will always be a structural weakness.
Beltalowda, do a video on Ashford getting spaced. Sasa ke?
What movie is the footage from 1:15 from?
Great vid
Nice one
I actually disagree with your view on view screens on the bridge. If your ships power is knocked out you are blind without a view screen or port. Personally I'd rather see the torpedo coming than be dead not knowing why.
The incoming ordinance will be traveling at speeds that are impossible to actually see, at ranges that are impossible to where it came from, so even with a clear, unobstructed view of space, you'll STILL never see the torpedo coming and STILL be dead and not know why.
if you dont want to die, you might want to serve in a navy not stupid enough to put windows on a spaceship built for war. get yourself some good redundant power supply.
"Star Wars doesn't do a terrible job portraying what happens to a person when exposed to vacuum." .... then proceeds to list all the ways Star Wars got the scene with Leia in space dead wrong, LOL :D For a start she should of been dead from the blast of the torpedo hitting the bridge, but, if by some miracle, that and the debris flying around her didn't kill her odds are she wasn't attempting any special breath mediation as she didn't know she was about to be in deep space, which means in seconds she would be dead. BUT, if by some miracle she didn't die through lack of air in her lungs she WOULD die from her blood boiling off. Well, unless she has plot armour created by Rian Johnson :D
What?!
Are you saying that being blasted through a sheet of bullet proof glass might cause, I don't know, some kind of physical trauma?!?!?
To be fair to Star Wars, the blood thing just isn't true. Leia's lungs may well be trashed, and if they were the blood leaking there may boil, but if she had breathed out coincidentally the body is quite capable of maintaining pressure on the circulatory system in vacuum, at least for long enough that it won't be a problem any more...
EVE Online (I know it isn't a film, sue me) does energy shield power consumption quite well: try equipping even a small shield module and watch your CPU and power grid drop tremendously. Also, I can't remember the last time I engaged an enemy inside a 20km range.
break shields into small panel sections and power them on only when the projectile is about to hit like a active protection system because you can't stop energy weapons
Does anyone remember the movie "Outland", where if you were exposed to vacuum your body simply exploded? Dunno how realistic it was, but it was pretty cool...
If you would have taken a scuba diving course, you would know lungs wouldn't poop like a ballon. Holding your breath in a vacuum is the equivalent to hold your breath 10m depth and accending. It can cause Pulmonary barotrauma which can lead to air escaping to the bloodstream and other body tissue. That´s a lethal injury but can be treated. So I would guess the lack f oxygen would be a much bigger issue. The best-case scenario would be if it was possible to release half of the air in your lungs to compensate for the expanding air. But I believe it would be very difficult to pull off with the very sudden and drastic change of air pressure.
The only issue with a bridge being buried deep within the ship is that you need a quick way to evacuate said ship. The Lamda-Class shuttle addressed this problem quite well by designing the control module(cockpit) to detach and serve as a secondary craft. There's no reason why the command module(bridge) of a capital ship couldn't be similarly designed and It would be JUST LIKE most Imperial officers to bug out leaving their crews to die.
Stupid reason.
Dunno, do I WANT to be in a lightly armored shuttle, naked in the middle of a battle that, apparently, I'm already losing in my well armed and armored fighting ship? or do I want to be buried deep withing said armed and armored fighting ship?
I think escape pods on fighting ships are structural weak points that only serve as convenient cans to hold prisoners for the victors... or target practice.
Hey guys have any of you read expeditionary Force Series they've got a lot of great explanations and how modern space combat what would happen
"Makes no sense to make such a large ship and leave your most important parts sitting above the ship"
You mean like the control towers on naval carriers?
Windows have an other huge flaw, no matter what material they are made off, they are designed to let light in the visible spectrum through.
This is exactly the same spectrum that lasers are operating in, so basically a window will not stop lasers.
Again the lost fleet does great all of this. They use space vessels that are based on Submarine. Submarines have a lot in common with space combat.
"windows are a structural weakness"
The pillar of autumn:😳
How dare you cast dispersions on the battle in Serenity, have at you sir, Tie Fighter Queensbury Rules
NightRaven 1901 How dare you insult me! Thats it, AT-AT Duel at Dawn!
@@NightRaven-lh1bf Go git 'em Raven.
Also very good, but again, foresight.
You can't claim that space battles will be this way or that way until it happens.
Look how fast the battlefield has changed in 100 years. Now extrapolate that another 100 years. Missiles and bullets may be obsolete. Railguns, lasers, microwaves, or even just a giant, solid slug of metal (all of which we have now too) could be the weapon of space combat.
The biggest problem with the way the Expanse does space combat is everyone knew EXACTLY what the other side had for weapons and defense. It wasn't until season 5 that someone finally just threw a bunch of rocks at a ship to destroy it.
Mass effect
Debris
Mass effect does show how hazardous debris can be. It is inadvisable for any ship to attempt to land on earth without kinetic-barriers as there is so much debris in earth from 21st century space exploration that it poses a hazard, especially for smaller ships. In the battle of the citadel, after sovereign is destroyed, debris is rained all over the station, causing massive damage and 2 years later, they are still nowhere near finished with repairs
Explosions
Once again mass effect loves long range combat. I also heard somewhere that another reason that ships prefer long range is because each slug from the main gun of a dreadnought for example has more then double the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. This could pose a danger to not just the target but also the shooter
Defenses
I like mass effect defenses, they consist of 3 parts.
GARDIAN point defense lazers similar to the expanses point defense. These are short range lazers, designed to swatt down enemy fighters or torpedos. The only way to get past them is to overwhelm them with too many targets use a projectile or energy based weapon such as a rail gun or lazer
Kinetic-barriers barriers consist of tiny emitters scattered throughout the hull. Once they detect a projectile traveling above a cirtain speed, they generate rapidly spinning mass effect fields in a localized area, that deflects those projectiles. The only way to get past them is by overloading the generators with repeated hits or use the disruptor torpedos that made it past the lazers. These torpedos are specially designed to punch holes through barriers and damage the emitters.
The last layer of defense is layers of ablative armor that are designed to boil away when heated. This spreads out the heat of energy based weapons and ultimately deals less damage. The only ways to get passed this would be repeated lazer strikes until u boil through all the armor or disable the barriers, allowing u to hit the armor with kinetic projectiles.
Due to the fact that lazers can bypass most defenses, its not uncommon to see frigates using advanced GARDIAN systems as an offensive weapon in close quarters combat
Automated defenses
Artificial intelligence is illegal in the Mass effect universe and most ships make do with simple minded virtual intelligences which work for automated defenses such as GARDIAN but can't react to change in combat situations the same way organics can, which is why primary weapons are still operated manually
Windows
Mass effect ships have windows but only exist to drive up recruitment. In combat however these windows can be sealed by sheets of ablative armor. The bridge is divided into 2 parts, the helm and the CIC. The CIC has no windows but the helm does and much like the rest of the windows, they do seal. Incase of a hull breach in the helm, the room can be sealed off from the CIC and be depressed, buying the crew enough time to get to the escape pods.
Exposure to vacuum
The destruction of the Normandy in mass effect 2 shows this off quite well. U don't see it happen but later in the game u hear that comander shepherd sustained massive amounts of nerve damage due to vacuum and subzero temperatures. My guess is that the comanders body probably got so cold that he became hypothermic
a vacuum makes a young boy very happy when hes alone in his room haha
Trek shields are not always on, they only active when turned on and have limited abilities.
Actually, depictions of death in space via movies and science fiction shows is a very interesting subject. Each show or film seems to have different ideas of what would happen and the damage even minor exposure would cause. That's probably a really interesting idea for a future video. I'm sure there must be some studies on the subject but I can't bring myself to look into animal testing done in space. I guess it forms a better use of animal testing than lipstick and beauty product testing, but still a subject I couldn't bring myself to research!
U should make a part 3
That’s a horrible thought of having your lungs just instantly explode....
Come on Al . Leia didnt get sucked out into space ? The breech happened that ripped open the hull on the Mon Calamari ship and the explosive pressure threw her out into open space . And when she woke up out in space she didn't fly back to the airlock , she extended her hand and using the force she pulled the whole ship to her . I was going to say she pulled the entire universe to her but thats grasping at straws . She probably just pulled the ship...i hate Star Wars but that scene made me , a 6'4" 335 lb bearded dude, tear up . Why didnt anyone bring up the force field protected hangar bays on the enterprise? Or the pel-tak on an El'kesh of Stargate SG1 ?
What's not mentioned about computer controlled combat is it will _filter down to the Human level._ Combat robots will be able to put a bullet through your eye at extreme range before the nerve impulses telling you the bot is there have traveled across your brain (like the aforementioned bullet is currently doing).
And then the rest of the guys in your unit will be taken out in the same precision autofire burst.
That is what will end using human soldiers - we will become like horse calvary going against tanks.
And a horse can be taken out with a minor wound while a combat robot could be blown in half (a heavily armoured half) and still keep fighting. That's something you don't see in Humans fighting machines like Cylons, Terminators, or the droids from Elysium.
In *Elysium* during the data heist, when the bodyguard droid does a ID scan of Matt Damon, it should have been able to *shoot Matt Damon* in the retina just as easily.
[Back in the early 2000's a standard human _machine gun_ fitted to a prototype robot (called a S.W.O.R.D) could bullseye a apple at 300 metres].
_So progress does have some benifits…. Shooting Matt Damon in the face_
In the anime series "Planetes" they talk heavily about the Kessler effect