"Obviously you need at least one coffee maker since no sane military commander would go to war without a ready supply of coffee." Truer words may have never been spoken.
@@Sammy_82 RE: "For the British it's tea. I heard their tanks used to have a built in kettle." That's actually true. Please see below . . . A boiling vessel is a water heating system fitted to British armoured fighting vehicles that permits the crew to heat water and cook food by drawing power from the vehicle electrical supply. It is often referred to by crewmembers (not entirely in jest) as the most important piece of equipment in a British armoured vehicle. The "Vessel Boiling Electric" or "BV" was an innovation at the very end of World War II, when the Centurion tank was introduced with the device fitted inside the turret. Previously, British tank crews had disembarked when they wanted to "brew-up" (make tea), using a petrol cooker improvised from empty fuel cans called a "Benghazi burner". Use of the BV enabled the crew to stay safely inside the tank and reduced the time taken for breaks. The first version, known as VBE No 1, began to be replaced in the early 1950s by the stainless steel No 2 version. A VBE No 3 had improved electrical sockets and was less prone to leakage. Besides being fitted to every tank designed since the Centurion, in the 1960s, the BV was fitted to the FV432 armoured personnel carrier for the benefit of the infantry carried on board. It is now fitted to almost every major type of vehicle used by the British Army. The principal use of the BV is to heat ration pouches or tins; the hot water is then used for making drinks or washing. The BV is cuboid and accommodates four tins; typically matching the crew numbers of an armoured fighting vehicle. Ration tins are supplied without adhesive labels so the surrounding water is not contaminated. A vehicle with a defective BV is declared unfit for purpose. The BV has recently been designated "Cooking Vessel FV706656" or "CV". It runs off the 24 Volt electrical system of the vehicle and is manufactured by Electrothermal Engineering Ltd in Rochford, Essex. Vehicles fitted with the BV include Challenger 2 tanks, MAN trucks, and Warrior, Warthog, Mastiff, Jackal and Foxhound armoured fighting vehicles, and earlier CVR(T) and CVR(W) vehicles. It is common practice for a junior member of a vehicle crew to be unofficially appointed "BV Commander", responsible for making hot drinks for the other soldiers. Similar heaters, designated "Heater, Water & Rations" (HMR), are now also fitted to many US fighting vehicles. Reference: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_vessel
Isaac, have you thought about writing a Sci-fi novel? With your military background and knowledge in science, I think you could write a really good military hard sci-fi.
I would argue that Battletech has two mechs that are plausible. The urbanmech. A barral shaped stumpy biped with a large cannon. And the locust, a light chicken walker with a laser and MGs. I don't believe these would work as envisioned in teh game at all in the real world. However I think an analog could be made. Then again. Tanks are better because they are low to the ground, and more stable. So are infantry, and drones. Also Battletech has PPCs.
@@dirus3142 They are impractical in the current paradigm of warfare, but you could envision an environment where they are useful. Perhaps they need to be huge because the preferred power supply, or a weapon system has a large optimal size. Maybe they don't need more than two legs, because the technology became reliable and sturdy (it's not like a tank needs 5 engines). Maybe the low profile isn't the priority, due to camo, armor, "force-fields" or carrying relatively large weapons (such as railguns) anyway. Perhaps the walkers could operate more like artillery and not as a frontline shock weapon system. Maybe a highly vertical, dense metropolis or a system of underground tunnels, would favor some sort of a climbing robot with prehensile limbs (which is probably as humanoid as you can get in a realistic setting).
Actually, i think titanfall mechs, appart from being bipeds and having hands, do have a concept which i beleive would work. First, they are a product of nessesity. The frontier wasn't bristling with military tech at first, so there wasn't a lot of heavy military vehicles at hand when the IMC came knocking for resources. However people found about this large corporation on the frontier that was making medium sized utility mechs and they kinda strapped guns on there and went with it. and second, they don't actually aim at replacing armored vehicles. Titans in themselves are actually fairly lightly armored, mostly focused on maneuvrability and utility. A lot of their hull space is occupied by sensors and optics to help manage aiming in chaotic environements, as much space as possible is allowed for power and weapons, and their size is gaged to not bother too much with ground pressure. They aim to give their pilot (a extremely agile soldier with a ton of utility, but extremely low in numbers) a heavy assault platform that would be fit for orbital deployement into diverse areas (that may not be suited for regular ground vehicles) and ususaly behind enemy lines or right in the middle of a warzone. I think making so mechs are more axed around suporting fire in areas where MBTs would struggle to navigate could be a good enough niche for them.
"weally, weally big." hahaha I have to say, you handle your speech impediment with great humor and class. You don't let the haters get to you; you want to talk about cool space stuff, so you do.
worst thing my man Issac ever did on this channel imo was to hire a speech coach... his voice is very calm, tranquil and melodic, and was the 1st clue that i was given that this guy actually knew what the hell he was talking about. I believe most people with unusual behavioural tendency's usually see reality for what it is with logic and compassion, we simply aren't wired in the head the way normal's are.
(Spoken in a thick southwest american accent) But.. but.. Muh Minovsky particles? What about muh muon-catalyzed fusion reactors? WHAT ABOUT MUH GUNDAMS? THEY CAN'T TAKE AWAY MUH GUNDAMS!
Gundams are not "giant" by any means (maybe with a few exceptions but they are very uncommon). The size of a gundam is merely about the size of a modern fighter. They seems to be quite big mainly because most time they were showed standing up. As for those robots which are indeed giant, they don't need to be scientific or realistic.
it shows that he can take extraordinary amounts of pain and exhaustion, because there is limited need for soldiers these days it is always easy to quit but it shows determination that he fought through it. It also shows his mental strength to take that hardship yet still maintain after years in combat
cyan eyed depending on what military he was in, I wouldn't say being a soldier automatically makes someone exemplary. was he in the Russian military? the US military? or what if he were a Nazi? did he fight in Vietnam? or was he fighting to create a state for Kurdistan?
Yas Oum Yas Oum then you don't know anything about being a soldier, it doesn't make you perfect but being a soldier in the first place requires discipline, dedication and a certain amount of courage. Now sure there are bad soldiers but generally speaking being a soldier says good things about you
"Though I wouldn't suggest shooting at something that big, since taking potshots at a warship the size of a country is probably picking a fight you don't want." Well put, Isaac.
Wow! I don't usually go in for hardcore realism, preferring to focus on suspension of disbelief, but this was actually really fascinating and helpful! Lot of epic weapons and potential weapons that you just don't think about if you stick to pew-pew lasers. That whole giant metal shield thing is pretty sweet. Subscribing!
Alastair Reynolds put out some dumb mines in one book where they had a relativistic speed spaceship pursuit. one molecule thick discs that were huge by area and if you hit such disc with lets say 10% of light speed it would do significant damage to your ship or even vaporize it. I love hard scifi :D
Generally if we speak about space combat it would most likely look like in The Expanse. Nano weapon and classical computer viruses are most deadly weapon ever. Especially if we deal with alien superpower. But if we speak about near future, then first of all I suggest everyone to play Kerbal Space Program to actually learn how space flight work, as that is something what most people still don't understand. Anyway from the get go we can exclude any space fighters as such ships simply would not work in ranges of space, even in our solar system. Missiles and for close quarters combat drones should do the job, even if we should suspect ships to have decent point defense. Ironically the classic laser (edit: though by that I mean broad range of ray-weapons with similar properties) is great solution for that, as it is faster then any missile and also could work as offensive weapon. Ironically canons most likely would play major role as without drag they would be quite devastating for sniping. For reminder rail-gun is just fancy version of that and it isn't really that strong as anime suggest. Anyway in space basically everything would happen on the range. It is why I suspect that major combat units would be Artillery Destroyer equipped in strong long range weapon and having decent mobility to avoid bullets. Cruisers would be useful only for specific purposes and basically largest and most versatile thing on battlefield, but also something what you really shouldn't put on the frontline (edit: They for example could be used for command and cleaning possible covers with drones and missile barrages). To be honest space combat would be actually something supper boring.
@@SergeyPRKL In reality it would not work. Space is simply to big to be capable hit anything even if we use all resources in our solar system. Especially as seed ship could be smaller then average probe.
NOTE: If you're commenting on how to get stealth to work in space, Nicoll's Law has already been played out here too, peruse the other comments first please :) For time constraints I will generally not respond to something someone else already asked and I answered, especially since the answer is usually "No, that won't work"
hmm i dont think you would be able to use a mini black hole as ammunition. you most certainly could use ammunition to cause said black hole by throwing a particle at extreme velocity and hope it hits something. for example the facility at CERN which basically fires particles at one another creating mini black holes for research. the problem with using mini black holes as ammunition is their life time, they are a strong center point of gravity as well so to effect big things in the way you would want them to you would need a bigger black hole. these problems can be circumvented by causing a black hole on the target with the fore mentioned particle hoping it hits another one or a bigger mass going fast enough to cause a bigger black hole on target. also why would magnetic shields not work against bullets? if your in space more likely than not the bullet was fired from a gauss or rail-gun which electromagnetic their bullet making them magnetic. unless the bullet was fired without being magnetized there is no reason why a strong enough magnetic shield would not work on them. from there there are three ways to handle this as an attacker; you put more force into the magnetic bullet or you change the magnetic field so the bullet is now attracted to the ship's shields quite literally. or do both at the same time changing the magnetic field an adding more force. essentially the ship's shields have turned the dumb bullet into a pseudo smart bullet. of course armor will work and help but no reason why a magnetic shield should not work unless they are firing WW1 or WW2 battleship gun shells without being magnetic. but if that were the case they would be extremely ineffective as in a single minuet light travels 11, 180,000 miles you would want to be at least double this distance to have a minuet to avoid lazers. an rail guns and gauss guns simply go faster a lot faster and while maybe still ineffective or not as effective as other weapons they would most certainly be more effective than a none magnetic bullet.
While, I do agree, I think that your assumption that engines are the reason for a lack of stealth in space is a bit flawed. Engines don't need to be fired, only thrusters. If you have enough Delta V, going in then your primary engines should never need to fire. You could fire your main engines a solar system away from the enemy and get the thrust you need then continue to the fight. I do agree with all your other arguments, however. Especially heat. It's extremely difficult to bleed off heat in space.
Awesome accent! I know it's not something an individual has control over, but you sound like the History Channel's dramatic reenactments of American Civil War officers. This is just an image I get from hearing your voice and in no way reflects my desire to pigeon hole you into a type cast. Keep up the great work on your videos! Cheers
I wake up to the smell of Thanksgiving turkey in the oven, 4 day weekend in front of me, and Isaac Arthur having just posted 30 minutes of Space Warefare. Best Thanksgiving ever.
I must point out a game/simulator that was released just recently called "Children of a Dead Earth" it gives a fairly accurate look at what Space Combat would be like.
I have thought of a concept space ship like what you said. You can have a ship the size of a large asteroid, maybe 20-70 kilometers and just cover it with an outer shield of space rocks about 1-8 meters thick. Most of the ship would be fuel, hangers, small crew quarters and other things that would be found on colony ships. You can use the outer shield as extra material to make even more warships and drones. The hanger doors and drives would be hidden in craters across the ship. Designs would vary to make it hard to recognize the ships and their classes or too make the ships look like different asteroids so none would look the same
@@kevinmathewson4272 your not wrong, I was initially thinking of using a tank of pure ice water near its surface to absorb the heat. Unless you have a better idea or anyone else because I’m all ears
@@tariqahmad1371 ice water is not cold enough. You need your ship to be the same temperature as an asteroid, and asteroids are extremely cold, far colder than ice water. Also, any heat sink is going to "fill up" with heat eventually, and then it'll start radiating heat out into space. the problem you're up against here is that an asteroid is basically at thermal equilibrium with the void of space. Asteroids generate virtually no waste heat of their own, just a tiny amount from radioactive atoms decaying inside them. If your ship generates more waste heat than asteroid of comparable size would generate, then your cover is blown as soon as you fill up your heat sinks. you can maybe disguise your ship inside a much larger object, like a rogue planet, and just drift through the cosmos without steering, passing off your heat as the natural decay of radioactive atoms inside this huge natural object, but a drifting rogue planet isn't much of a ship. Also, before you can hide inside a rogue planet, at some point you need to build one or travel to an existing one, and this event would be detectable. Your rogue planet might look totally natural once it's all set up, but anyone who's been watching that region of space already knows you're there.
The downside is that, any target civilisation would definetly track all larger objects headed thair way. Meaning a looong time passes before you reach the target. Change the course in any way to spped things up, and you'll raise suspicions, and a scout will be send to your location. Unless you get great timing with a natural headed asteroid in a reasonable amount of time, there's really no way of a surprise attack.
Hey Isaac. Have you heard of a plasma shield. Brookhaven national laboratory created one about 20 years ago. Military was interested in it to possibly stop shock waves. This is prob the closest thing to a real star wars shield I have heard of. They were even able to to use it to hold a vacuum from one side to atmospheric pressure. Ady Hershcovotch(the guy who designed and patented this) said it could hold against 9 atmospheres. That one is actually called a plasma window. Somewhat different from a plasma shield. The window design is a circular shape. Only prob is energy requirements. Think it needs abour 20kw per inch(in diameter). Oh and the plasma is at about 15000 Kelvin so that might be a small issue too. Wouldn't want to accidentally lean against it.
"Weally, really ,weekly big" written. You just made my day buddy :) as someone with a lisp when talking it's good to see you have gotten comfortable enough with and owned your speech issue enough to joke about it. Keep up the good work with the channel as well.
Your greatest disappointment was finding out Gundams aren't practical. My greatest disappointment was that war in space is EMPEROR-BE-DAMNED BORING and not like Star Wars, or Battlestar Galactica, or Star Trek, etc has shown me my whole life. *Sigh* Not that your video gave me that epiphany, but it just further nailed that into my head despite how incredibly detailed it was and how I wished my Uni teachers would be like you when they lecture.
Gundam in downsized version and in specific environment of space stations actually is quite practical. Also yes, space combat is boring, though not that much more then aerial combat. Also it usually depend on execution as for example The Expanse is amazing despite keeping fairy accurate space combat (yes, it was speed up comparing to books and I'm not sure how they fit all that weapons on Frigate, but still).
Flying around in pressure vessels attempting to poke holes in each other isn’t just boring imo, it’s boring some times and fucking terrifying at others
A weapon I always imagine would be prominent in space warfare is a laser missile. As in a missile with a laser on board. It can travel large distances to target and correct it's course to compensate for enemy's evasive action and when in close enough range fire a laser at it so it would have both the advantages of smart projectile and a lightspeed weapon. Since it would most likely be one-use weapon the laser will not need any cooling system, which take a lot of space and mass on normal lasers. And if what remains of the rocket manages to hit the enemy as well it will not be just a high-speed chunk of metal, but a high-speed blob of superheated metal, melted by the waste heat of a laser.
I think the usual notion on that score is a nuclear-pumped laser. Weber uses the notion in his books and a few other have too, and you'd probably use a similar approach with meson beam weapons.
The space combat in The Forever War was very interesting. Relativity effects for the crews and very high energy weapons of all types. Being tracked by a nuclear missile that accelerates at 10 gees, then doubles It's acceleration to 20 gees is a frightening proposition.
I also reccomend "The Lost Fleet" series if you want... well I'm not absolutely certain its hard scifi, came accross as such, but the author was ex Navy and played the organisation and logistics of real war straight.
Strettger Yeah i was just coming to Lost Fleet. It's not that special as is, but when it is several books and several types of battles it turned out to be very interesting. They did have FTL though and a surprising plot twist, alien neighbor who wished humans kills them selves so they don't need to use resources. But other than the FTL it was pretty hard scifi with pulling hig G:s, battles that lasted for a fraction of a second, kintic weaponry, orbital bombardment, when arriving from the FTL port (usually on edge of a star system) using the light hours advantage to scan the area, traveling days through the star system etc. etc.
On stealth: This is probably technically not stealth, but I think the easiest way to "hide" is use "dazzle stealth". Essentially, instead of trying to avoid detection, you surround yourself with a cloud of even noisier objects. The enemy will know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you're there, but won't know where you are exactly.
Yes, I suppose that would be more akin to a Flashbang though, the problem is they are hunting for you in every wavelength they can and things like decoys don't work well in space. Generally you will accelerate out of the zone of your dazzling objects too. But various point defense options might produce some of that effect anyway.
Matthew Campbell shouldn't speed be the best stealth? like finnishing an enemy before he can notice you would be the best way to prevent them from noticing you no? so I'm kinda disappointed he didn't refer to the dyson beam, cause that seems like the best weapon stealth wise. if your attack is moving with the speed of light there's no way for your enemy to react until it hits.
BosonCollider Well, I didn't pull the idea out of nowhere :) Though actually the idea came from how planes will deploy flares to avoid detection by heat-seeking weapons.
Just use plasma from your engine, it will help to keep the bubble around you during maneuvers. Sure it need a system to deploy, and it will reduce efficiency but it is doable.
So then I'm not the only one that always though it is odd for a giant battle robot to use artificial human hands to hold and fire giant guns that use a design adapted for human hands, rather than just have guns mounted on the robot's arms.
There absolutely will be mecha in a kardeshev 2 civ, simply because there will be trillions of nerd hobbyists working together to build them and go to skirmish with them for fun / honor.
Shoulder and arm mounted guns would be a sensible design but hands like a human would also come in handy to be able to pick up weapons from fallen enemies. They'd have to come from other giant robot's though unless the designer's give them human sized hands which I doubt.
Just out of curiosity, which branch were you in? I was in the Air Force, and did a tour of Iraq. I've also noticed that my favorite channels end up being fellow veterans, but I don't find out until a few months later.
It seems to happen a fair amount, lots of other vets on the channel. Anyway, Army 2003-10, but before the Army I was a civvy working at AFIT at Wright-Patt, which gave me a fondness for the service I suppose, I just happen to hate flying :)
Interesting -- I don't know the world population percentage of vet.s, but the U.S. rate is currently around 7.5% (maybe the global percentage parallels the U.S. within a factor or so). Any idea what your viewer vet-percentage is? (RET USAF, so this caught my eye.)
@@charlesrockafellor4200 RE: ". . . but the U.S. rate is currently around 7.5% . . ." What numbers did you use? I just looked up the following numbers: Number of US veterans = 17.4 million US population = 330.5 million Veteran percentage of population = 17.4 million / 330.5 million = 0.0526 = 5.3% References: (1) www.cnn.com/2014/05/30/us/department-of-veterans-affairs-fast-facts/index.html (2) www.census.gov/popclock/
Gundam would be possible in the future, with proper anatomy like those DARPA robots. But the energy consume would be a bitch for that, it will be the M1 abrams tank of MECH warfare. Now that Gundam in Odaiba is just a mascot with moving head, how about if the military really made one. It's just like the power armor prototype of the US military with it's cons are energy consumption and spare parts. Missile was a concept before, but it became real. Just like touchscreens, but it's upgrade will be hologram, cons will be radiation and eye damage. Did you know in Philippines that there is a secret US and Philippine military base in the mountains of Luzon, that mountain opens in half and some VTOL aircraft take off. It's just like in those old anime like Daimos and Voltes V were the war machines came out in the mountains. This place and this secret is classified and just told it to you, it actually started during cold war era, China might attack my country that's why they made that secret mountain underground base. Insert theme: Daimos opening
Romano Coombs, Macross/Robotech is great, but what is this artificial gravity they have? And I doubt in the real world people would be such huge fans of Minmay. At least not the Robotech version of her. (Mari Iijima, on the other hand, is more believable). The RX-78-2 Gundam (at 60ft.) was about 20ft. taller than the VF-1 in battloid mode, but 41ft. is still pretty big for urban warfare. In fact, combat for either in an Earth environment is fairly unbelievable considering the relative difficulty to operate as opposed to conventional mobile weapons. In this area, I suppose the VF-1 has an edge since it's transformable. Anyhow, it's important to take into account that by the 2nd century UC (Gundam) mobile suits had decreased significantly in height to about 49ft.. Not much taller than the VF-1.
LOVE the way the quote by Douglass Adams was presented at 9:00. "Space is Weally, Weally Big." Thus, putting together, the fiendishly dazzling writing style of Adams and the lisp of our fearless narrator. Brilliant!!!
I don't know if you ever get a chance to read your comments, but I just wanted to say that I really appreciate what you do. I really love to put on long science videos when I lie down to sleep, and your channel quickly became one of my all-time favorites. You're a great narrator, and you must do enormous amounts of research to put these together. Thanks, and I hope to see many more. :3
Have you by any chance read "The killing star" by Charles R. Pellegrino? It was the first time I was introduced to the implications of relativistic weapons and the first time I realized that space combat will never look like Star Trek. I think you implied that relativistic warheads aren't the ultimate weapons but practically you couldn't locate them. How would you defend against those?
:) I've referenced it a couple times in the Fermi Paradox video series, in terms of the notion of what we can say about aliens. As to relativistic weapons, they are pretty close to as good as you can get, since they are not easy to see once they get moving and give very little reaction time, but they're only good against non-mobile targets since they can't be easily steered and if they light up a maneuvering thruster you can see them.
place thin foil between you and possible direction of attack, it will destroy the projectile if it is not designed to penetrate such type of defense, which is easy to do, but there are countermeasures against countermeasures, can't tell, top secret information )) IDK level of security.
This is one of the first videos I watched when I first discovered your channel. It was thoroughly interesting then, but I've gone back to watch it again after learning more about science and futurism from yours and other channels, and as interesting as it still is, it leaves me with some questions. I am wondering about space warfare, not so much in regards to technology, but in regard to strategy. Let's take an example: humanity colonises a vast amount of the solar system, but doesn't quite reach Kardashev 2 level yet. We colonise various planetary and lunar bodies, use mine asteroids build massive solar collectors, orbital habitats and factories and so on. We have a lot of infrastructure spread out over a large area. It's quite likely that no part of this system can long survive without in isolation. Now, a colony in another solar system, founded a century or so earlier, decides to fight a war of independence against the overlords of Sol. (I realise politics in space is a whole topic on its own, but I'm using this as a way of having a force that is technologically and scientifically on a basically equal footing.) How do you defend an entire solar system at once. You can build intercept an enemy fleet, but they only need to get one of two ships in at a different point to effect some serious disruption to your entire infrastructure. Like, nowadays, soldiers can deal with the armed threats, because one man with most tech isn't going to do much damage to the vital parts of our infrastructure, and we have other organisations in place to find and stop the one man who has the tech to do vast amount of damage. But when the distance involved are so great that one well armed ship can slip into the solar system, millions of miles away from the fleet and start taking out your solar collectors, your mining facilities, even destroying your habitats and factories, long before the fleet can respond, it seems like a whole different ball game. You surely can't build that many fortified points around the solar system to stop everything - or if you could, that would at least make colonisation a whole lot more complicated, and we probably won't bother at first. And even if you could, why doesn't the fleet just spread out in the Oort Cloud and accelerate large bodies toward numerous targets, for example? Or any number of other schemes that don't actually require them to enter the solar system proper to fight this war. They can do massive damage from very far away if they are smart about it, and it will take the Sol system a long time to get out there and stop them. Now scale this up to a number of Kardashev 2 civilisations fighting each other... It seems to me like conventional ship vs ship fighting is going to be only a small part of space warfare. The bigger challenge is how to protect everything that isn't a warship or space fortress, and that's going to be highly dependant on strategy. Do you agree? Do you have any thoughts on how that might evolve? Do you know of any authors that have already explored these ideas?
If a alien Target is going to pass you at .1c, don’t get in a tail chase. Have a guy in a spacesuit open the air lock and chuck out a bucket of sand. Wide dispersal and traveling at a relative (to him) if 67 million mph. Tough to detect a grain of sand, and if only a couple of grains from that bucket hit him, target destroyed!
THAT EPISODE WAS REALLY CUTE ALL THE YIPS AND BARKS AND EVEN THE PILOIT OF THE SHIP [THE TACTICAL OFFICER] YIPING AT A UA-cam VIDEO OF A NORMAL DOG BARKING
10:15 "though I wouldn't suggest shooting at something that big, since taking potshots at a warship the size of a _country_ is probably picking a fight you don't want" tickles me in a way I can't really explain.
so, the graser would be the gamma ray weapon the Michael ship fired on larry niven's footfall? i remember reading an old article (from the 60's maybe) regarding how a nuclear blast could be redirected easily in almost any shape in space, so fusion bombs could be used as an unidirectional weapon, let's say as a form of artillery, to target fixed target on asteroids or planets
A bomb-pumped laser, yes, though its not as easy as some in scifi make it sound. For one thing the conventional explosives to set off the nuke are going to vibrate the hell out of the lasing tube.
+Isaac Arthur One would imagine at that point a mechanism similar to an xray machine would be used, utalizing a chunknof heavy metal as the lazing medium, not a silicon crystal noble gas combo.
If there was any warfare in space it would have to be 100% automated. It wouldn't make sense to put those humans and coffee makers they require on the warship. They weight a lot and acceleration they can withstand is pitiful(especially coffee makers).
:) Automation makes a lot of sense and a tiny drone that can react in nanoseconds and handle 1000 gees would seem best, and it is. The thing about warfare though is that wars are conducted by hitting your enemy where he's vulnerable. I am not going to go after my enemy's automated fleet, I am going to go after his people. I those are all on Earth, then I won't fight him in space, if they aren't, then I am going after the ships and stations with people on them. He will do the same, so the warfare conducted can't be completely automated.
+Isaac Arthur I think it would make much more sense to protect your bases and trade routs with your automated warships rather than arm ships that won't win any battles anyways.
" I am not going to go after my enemy's automated fleet, I am going to go after his people." I wouldn't - I'd go after his infrastructure and remove his ability to make war. My space based drones would be to accomplish that while preventing him from doing it to me.
As for relativistic missiles and stealth... wouldn't it be possible for, lets say, an alien race to fire a missile towards the sun, that would be aimed at exactly the right spot so that the sun's gravity would arc it directly towards the planet earth once it passed a certain point? Even if the arc was very slight, the sun itself would be in between the earth and the missile all the way until the missile was on the other side of the sun, and even then, the sunlight itself would obscure the missile, perhaps until it was too late for a defense to be mounted...? The key to this would be to angle the missile the right way, and to use the sun's gravity, rather than propulsion, to slingshot the missile at sufficient speed to seriously damage the planet, or a particular city, if your mathematics and knowledge of the planet were sufficient. This would also solve the problem of the fuel of the missile being detectable, as no fuel would be required, except on the initial launch towards the sun. Such a missile might be launched from the asteroid belt. If the missile (or asteroid) were painted jet black then even reflected light might not be seen. Or better yet, if it were painted with whatever color the corona of the sun would appear to be from earth. As for infrared signature... this too would be obscured by the sun as well. Such an attack, I would imagine, would not be at all difficult once we had sufficient resources in space. However, it would take a considerable amount of time to launch and produce the desired results. Would this solve for, theoretically at least, the stealth attack?
The simple answer is that while, like an idealized version of what you're describing, dirrectional stealth is possible to a degree, any civilization capable of waging war in space is always going to be watching you from multiple dirrections. We already have scientific satellites that aren't in Earth orbit, and we're not close to being able to engage in interplanetary war. A space defense force is going to have a system wide surveillance network with no blind spots, which is pretty easy to set up using legrange points.
Great idea, but also due to orbital physics, the faster the object goes, the less of the arc around the star the object will be going. Also anything going faster in velocity than the sun having a significant influence on the object to arc it away from hitting the target will probably not arc very much. Even then, past a certain speed, you don't have have to determine the arc because at that speed it won't arc at all. So you can just use mathematics to determine it's position when the object meets with the target.
Both have their place, but I've never been a morning tea person, probably because I mostly favor herbal ones. Amusingly pretty much every time you've heard my voice I was drinking tea not coffee, better for the voice.
You I just had a thought, sure you can't do conventional camo but what about dazzle camouflage? If you used the effect of interlocking patterns with surfaces that emit random wavelengths throughout the EM spectrum it could produce the same effect as old dazzle camo that would make the ship's speed and exact direction hard to judge.
*Humanity finds extraterrestrial spaceship light years away Scientists : It is estimated to be only slightly bigger than our modern rockets, and since it seems to be headed our way, we need to take action *After many warning signals, humanity decides to unleash a large portion of its weapons arsenal towards the mysterious ship SOME YEARS LATER : Scientists : We have good news, bad news, and worse news. The good news is that our entire arsenal hit the alien ship. U.N Leader : Good, now what's the bad news? Scientists : The bad news is that our original size estimates for the ship were incorrect... the ship is um.... well.... it's actually the size of a solar system, and now it's pissed. U.N Leader : oh dear god.... what's the worse news? Scientists : The worse news is that an entire fleet of these ships is now coming for us...... U.N Leader : Give me my gun. Scientists : what? Why? You can't fight these things off with a gun! We needed 100,000 missiles just to take down 1 ship's RADIO! U.N Leader : Well.....My plan only requires one bullet.
A disturbing thought: is far mor easy kill everything on the planet where your enemy lives than the fleet protecting it. And if you don't have to live there after things the idea becomes even more attractive.
Yep, planets are not terribly defensible, though there are ways. That's another reason I tend to point out on the channel that you are usually better off taking planets apart to make rotating habitats than terraforming them.
Yeah, but they probably will also be easier targets than a warship. Or anything built for warfare only. It's a good argument against the idea that colonize the solar sistem will prevent humanity extinction. It won't protect us from ourselves.
Honestly I would love to see an extended series of episodes covering specific aspects of space warfare. After all, we can't forget the #1 rule of warfare: Always have plenty of backup plans.
This video makes me love Star Trek even more. Many of the problems with other sci-fi battles addressed in this video are not seen in Trek. Some of the practicality of the future tech is explained away as, "We figured it out a long time ago, so it isn't a problem anymore." Now having 40 years for scientist to explore the ideas proposed in Star Trek, we can see if Star Trek still makes space warfare practical and possible: 1) Stealth Using magnetic fields to bend light (including infrared) around your ship to prevent enemy ships from seeing you is a technology being developed and has been proven in Proof of Concept experiments. The problem is that in order to guarantee invisibility, you'd have to bend light around you in a sphere to prevent your enemy moving in one small degree and changing the cloaking angle. This means that you would be bending incoming light from the enemy ship around you. In short, turning on your cloaking device will make it impossible for the enemy to find you, but would at the same time blind you. 2) Range Interestingly enough, weapon technology isn't were the advancement and accuracy is improved in Star Trek. The computing power and speed of Enterprise-D's main computer was almost accurately shown to be were computers will be in 300-400 years. Despite an enemy ship having 70 kilometers to maneuver in to perform evasive action, a super computer aiding the gunner on your ship will be able to "lock on" to the enemy. Scenario: Your gunner points the laser at the enemy. Knowing the direction it is going and it's speed means that the laser will actually fire in a slightly different position than where the gunner is aiming. The enemy commander would give the order to take evasive action. The computer would tell the gunner firing the weapon is not advisable at this point. After a few milliseconds to analyze the flight path of the enemy ship, the computer would be able to predict the enemy pilot's "random" direction. I put random in quotations because a person, alien or not, tend to favor a set pattern of variables. The computer knows that the pilot can choose any degree of movement between 1 and 360, and after watching the ship make it's random directional choices, it would also see the speed is constant as well. Since people love patterns subconsciously, the computer can make an educated guess as to which direction the pilot would make at any given moment. The computer would then tell the gunner the system has locked on to the ship. We have computers that can do this job well with 87% accuracy, and the longer the battle goes, the higher the accuracy. 3) Weapons Nope. Still Sci-fi. Star Trek's energy based weapons are talking science we haven't even begun to imagine how it works. 4) Defense Okay, so in fairness this technology is still being developed and no proof of concept has been done, but plasma windows could theoretically be used as shields.
DragonJedi0 Phasers are literally the CERN of Ginevra during at a ship millions of protons. Photon torped are anti-matter weapon, not so strange, we can already produce small quantity of anti-matter. Quantum torpedo are the only one that does not make sense.
“Plasma windows” can’t exist, what you probably mean is directed relativistic particles to destroy or stop missiles and absorb lasers, so it is far easier to use the straight metal shield described in the video.
assuming space warfare make any sense at all (because it's extremely costly and difficult), war in space would probably seem like the wars fought hundreds of years ago rather than modern wars. it would take months or years to move fleets and units from one place to another, to communicate, and logistics would be a pain in the ass. so unless FTL turns out to be possible, I don't see battles in space as realistic.
Generally how I tend to think of it, yes, but its really hard to say, also the sheer size of space faring civilizations means you could have a minor skirmish with a neighbor as an accident everyone wrote off and pretended didn't happen that might have involved thousands of kilometer long ship pounding on each other, and from the sheer scale of the civilizations involved it might be the equivalent of a bar fight breaking out between two nation's forces that had met for friendly maneuver exercises.
I thought you were going to say it would be the equivalent of two guys from different countries in a bar fight.. it would be so small and insignificant compared to the magnificence of a space faring civilazation, that it would not cause both of those major powers to go to war with each other.. ie. i'm pretty sure somewhere a Russian guy has kicked the ass of an American guy in some bar and no nukes were dropped between Washington and Moscow over it
it doesnt make semse to u because u cant imagine how the future will be like anyways, at some point in time whoever controls space will be the most powerful
I could see a random group doing organized attacks on targets in space just by accelerating debris to high velocities to hit the target. Again space warfare would probably be limited to 1-2 light years of range doing this technique. If a target is dormant and not planning on changing it's orbital trajectory then theoretically you could attempt to find where the target will be when your ammunition meets up with it. The relative speed between the object and whatever ship or space station will determine the extent of damage the object will do. The faster you accelerate the object, the closer you can predict where it will be compared to it's original position.
I think a good concept for interplanetary age civilizations would be a tethership. Unmanned, three or more masses connected by long variable length tethers and capable of high accelerations. Like yoyos or diabolos. These could sustain very fast back and forth accelerations over a long period of time without requiring any propellant, and they would be able to climb up and down in gravity wells by exchanging internal energy/angular momentum with their orbital energy/angular momentum. So they'd be very agile and difficult to hit with dumb and even some smart weapons. When fighting close to big asteroids or small moons they could quickly take cover behind it, or send down one of their extremities to pick rocks/ice up on the surface like a rotovator and toss it in any direction. The only thing that could reliably counter them would probably be to deploy them yourself, fire them towards the enemy and use your wires to cut the enemy wires. So one possibility for early space combat might actually be glorious melee engagements between ships made of megameter-scale wires.
Yup, that's more or less what I meant about using physical shield to tilt and whirl with, though I hadn't really considered using it in a gravity well. Those kind of ranges, planetary, it's really hard to miss anything that isn't smaller than a person and/or capable of super-salsa levels of acceleration.
You may use same principle for countermeasures, no need to cut wires If you like to hit the main mass, just maneuver your mass to hit his mass. Extension of that is kinda cloud of those things, again it can be counter measured with same thing, but it will be more efficient against all thing which were mention in this video. Basically all boils down to who is bigger. Also as note wires do not have to be permanent, so cutting may just not have effect you would like, just because there is basically nothing to cut.
Yeah I initially questioned if I should put a video out on Thanksgiving but then I remembered most folks would be sitting around at home waiting for Turkey anyway, or stuffed full of Turkey waiting for sleep, and apparently many find the episodes 'relaxing' :)
Space stealth I think is possible, but maybe not as effective as stealth on earth. I think it would be releasing lots of boxes smaller than the ship that are designed to emit lots of heat and amplify scanning signals (like how small ships have radar reflectors that make them appear larger than they are. I would also put radio emitters on these craft to fake transmission signals. A few ships that serve a saturation role like modern mine layers that constantly deploy swarms of these disposable boxes; these boxes could potentially be used for heat dissipation, put them near any radiant heat source and then jettison the now heated chaff. Pretty much flare saturation in space. This would make it harder to pick out the correct target since most combat would be outside of visual range. It could also act to fake larger numbers than exist in your fleet. Just a thought
@Jack McCabe Yeah the only problem I could see with it is that you would only want to deploy these counter measure once engaged, so it relies on you knowing when someone detects you.
Another excellent and educational episode! Also, I noticed at 24:13 you add the cast of "The Newsroom" such as Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, John Gallagher, Alison Pill, Thomas Sadoski, Dev Patel, Olivia Munn, and Sam Waterson, nice! :) And lastly, will you consider doing a video on space fighters?
Tim Robinson I lost it at that point, it's great that he's aware of how it sounds & doesn't let it bother him. I don't mind it at all. Heck, I hear so much intelligent stuff presented with that accent that I associate the accent with intelligence.
i totally dig it. one question though, as this is my first video that i have seen of his, but where was he born? i can't tell if i'm hearing an accent lol.
Could be you have and I just missed it or it was in a video I haven't seen yet :p. I'd actually be interested in a video on your background and experience though if you ever felt like doing one ;)
4:33 with SpaceX largest rocket "Starship" we could launch a telescope many times the size of the James Webb Telescope, or a cluster of them, or only one double or triple the size of JWST the ability to replace damaged mirrors & with decades of on-board fuel.
yeah he's talked about them quite a bit in his videos about colonization, I think he talks about them a lot in him interstellar colonization methods video, sorry I don't remember the exact name of the video :P
Amazing video!!! As far as shields, a friend of mine came up with a great idea: high-energy plasma trapped by a magnetic field. I'm not sure if the plasma would actually remain trapped (perhaps the poles would need to switch continuously), and it would be like a donut or innertube if protection, meaning your poles would be exposed; but it is an interesting idea.
A coworker had an interesting idea. Ships will always be expensive, so it would probably be more desirable to capture a ship rather than destroy it. So boarding actions might be more prevalent. He suggested that flamethrowers used to consume all the oxygen in a ship might be common. However that would be easily countered with personal air supplies.
noooo! Go into deep details, this is the internet, if one does not have time to watch the whole video, one can pause and resume when one can. Don't limit yourself by some arbitrary time constraints, just because everyone thinks that only 5-8 minute videos are popular with millennials. Fuck em! =) Hm.. I guess I still am one, at a very back end but still a millennial (I think I'm spelling this wrong:)so see, not all of us are self absorbed, bastards with short attention span. Hm.. I do have the latter one though:). On the other hand, that was very self absorbed of me, so I just contradicted myself. I mean, yes I understand - I am, most probably, in a minority. So yes, logically, you, most probably, should limit the length of videos to attract more subscribers. You deserve lot's and lot's more. So that was a pretty useless comment, then, was it? =)
Lol, the time limits imposed by myself aren't really about subscribers, it's about producing a quality product on a time scale, longer videos take longer to make at the same quality, and it is basically linear.
Isaac Arthur Ah, yea, didn't thought about this part ;) And that's why you should not listen to random idiots on the internet, because they are usually wrong ;)
They were right about it before though :) About a year and half a go I tried making shorter videos, I didn't like it but everyone advised it except my audience, so I went back to longer ones and noticed they always had way more likes, views, comments, shares, etc
Isaac Arthur that does not surprise me at all. Yes, I would agree, if you try to create a viral video, I would suggest keeping it quite short, but for almost anything else - it should be as long as it needs to be. At least for my taste;)
Isaac Arthur I'd say make it ad long as you want. if you feel one needs to be short then ok but you have stated soon many times that you couldn't get it to be with in 30 minutes the first scrip. sooooooo oooo make them long go into detail. we can tell that you love this and make this for others who loves this as wel.l so please if you enjoy making long videos please please please make them longer :). I love watching you're videos and some of them I know you wanted to make them longer so badly you can hear it in you're voice !!!! I'd do a poll on it and see how many people like them and only if you feel comfortable making longer videos. I have no clue how much time you can putt tord videos but hell you don't even monetize you videos so that alone tells us it's out of passion and not greed ! you draw in such a wonderful community as well .
The ratio of nerds to alpha males in the army might surprise you. Less than half (though it was a close half) of what I encountered was the alpha type. That may be because I'm a nerd, but that was my experience.
@@johntheherbalistg8756 I don't think those two are mutually exclusive, I've known plenty of nerds who have asserted their dominance... ... usually through T posing after rolling a nat 20 on an intimidation check...
I was a nerd/alpha and served proudly so Arthur is correct. I've been "Down Range", and even threw some 20 sided, 4 sided,10 sided, and 8 sided dice. Academic All American of my school along with 4.0 GPA in college. Not blowing my own horn here at all. I carry a few extra pounds and am working on social factors of declining historical civilizations and how it corilates to today... love your channel Arthur. Keep it up, and thanks for your service!
Yeah I wondered why the cylons were spending time eradicating humanity when no one had built a single Dyson sphere or swarm and 99.9999...% of galactic energy was radiating wastefully into space.
Hey Bill! Good to here from you. Anyway trying to figure out the motivations for anything that went on in BSG, classic or modern series, is usually a bad idea. There's a lot of 'Xanatos Pile Up' and crazy monkey logic in there.
LOVE THE TOPIC, LOVE THE VIDEO, LOVE YOUR WORK! I have no problem with the the audio, I understand it all and you did an amazing job, please keep it going until the day they(Alien) make first contact!
5:00 i would personally tell people to find a way to create a drive that uses the suns magnetic field to create a quantum locked state, then use that to move within a star system. Or use it to fling myself in a direction.
I was planning on sleeping tonight, but then I found your channel full of dozens of half hour videos. Thanks in advance for my exhausted day at work tomorrow, Isaac. (my R's sound funny too, so I love your wascally wabbit CC notices) Keep doing this, and make each video an hour. Because you're an actual fuckin' genius. We all love you Isaac!
Would it be possible to remain concealed by clinging to a much bigger object than the ship, like asteroid of appropriate size and hoping that it will screen us from the enemy? One could move such an asteroid with ship engines to intercept the enemy before he has a chance to detect the engine burn.
Michał Wojtas I think a rapidly accelerating asteroid that possibly makes course corrections would be suspicious, and even as fast as asteroids can move it would take a very long time to get where you are going if you are pretending to not be a spacecraft.
If there are people or operating machinery on the asteroid, or nuclear reactors, then it will glow in the infrared. If it changes course, at all, even by magical cold reactionless tech, it will be instantly detected by radar. (Assuming there is a radar sensor network, which atm there is mostly not.) If it uses any kind of engine that we can even imagine how to build, then it will probably be visible to the naked eye, let alone other sensors. Even with a magical invisible engine, the power source would be visible as heat, and (in future) maybe as a neutrino source. An asteroid big enough to hide all this stuff is hard to move, and requires bigger more visible engines and power sources - not a solution. There is no stealth in space. I've tried too. Smarter people than I have tried. Smarter people than THOSE have tried. Extremely smart people with advanced educations in the relevant fields have tried. Yet there is still no stealth in space.
The shrapnel cannons are my biggest concern. Seems so easy to accelerate a cloud of sand and send it at an enemy. Fast enough and it would cause significant damage.
"Obviously you need at least one coffee maker since no sane military commander would go to war without a ready supply of coffee." Truer words may have never been spoken.
Honestly, this is Rule #1 of combat: "Never go on campaign without a means of producing coffee for your troops."
For the British it's tea. I heard their tanks used to have a built in kettle.
@@Sammy_82
RE: "For the British it's tea. I heard their tanks used to have a built in kettle."
That's actually true. Please see below . . .
A boiling vessel is a water heating system fitted to British armoured fighting vehicles that permits the crew to heat water and cook food by drawing power from the vehicle electrical supply. It is often referred to by crewmembers (not entirely in jest) as the most important piece of equipment in a British armoured vehicle.
The "Vessel Boiling Electric" or "BV" was an innovation at the very end of World War II, when the Centurion tank was introduced with the device fitted inside the turret. Previously, British tank crews had disembarked when they wanted to "brew-up" (make tea), using a petrol cooker improvised from empty fuel cans called a "Benghazi burner". Use of the BV enabled the crew to stay safely inside the tank and reduced the time taken for breaks.
The first version, known as VBE No 1, began to be replaced in the early 1950s by the stainless steel No 2 version. A VBE No 3 had improved electrical sockets and was less prone to leakage. Besides being fitted to every tank designed since the Centurion, in the 1960s, the BV was fitted to the FV432 armoured personnel carrier for the benefit of the infantry carried on board. It is now fitted to almost every major type of vehicle used by the British Army.
The principal use of the BV is to heat ration pouches or tins; the hot water is then used for making drinks or washing. The BV is cuboid and accommodates four tins; typically matching the crew numbers of an armoured fighting vehicle. Ration tins are supplied without adhesive labels so the surrounding water is not contaminated. A vehicle with a defective BV is declared unfit for purpose. The BV has recently been designated "Cooking Vessel FV706656" or "CV". It runs off the 24 Volt electrical system of the vehicle and is manufactured by Electrothermal Engineering Ltd in Rochford, Essex. Vehicles fitted with the BV include Challenger 2 tanks, MAN trucks, and Warrior, Warthog, Mastiff, Jackal and Foxhound armoured fighting vehicles, and earlier CVR(T) and CVR(W) vehicles. It is common practice for a junior member of a vehicle crew to be unofficially appointed "BV Commander", responsible for making hot drinks for the other soldiers.
Similar heaters, designated "Heater, Water & Rations" (HMR), are now also fitted to many US fighting vehicles.
Reference: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_vessel
The militaries of the world march on caffine, and nicotine.
@@Sammy_82 still do, its super useful. not just for tea but hot water to cook and warm rations with too
Being in the military myself, I can attest that your rules of combat are 100% true, especially #1!
Isaac, have you thought about writing a Sci-fi novel? With your military background and knowledge in science, I think you could write a really good military hard sci-fi.
Oh please Isaac, I would preorder =)
Jesse Ward I love Isaac's videos and I agree, a novel quickly followed by a well crafted film would be legen... wait for it... dary LEGENDARY
Yes
As long as he wote it in a way to maintain his unique voice. So when you wead it you still felt like Issac was weading the stowy to you. ;-)
Yes, Yes, Yes!
“Giant robots are not practical war engines”
Only the humanoid ones.
I would argue that Battletech has two mechs that are plausible. The urbanmech. A barral shaped stumpy biped with a large cannon. And the locust, a light chicken walker with a laser and MGs. I don't believe these would work as envisioned in teh game at all in the real world. However I think an analog could be made. Then again. Tanks are better because they are low to the ground, and more stable. So are infantry, and drones.
Also Battletech has PPCs.
Death star 🤫
Gravitationally projected asteroid
@@dirus3142 They are impractical in the current paradigm of warfare, but you could envision an environment where they are useful. Perhaps they need to be huge because the preferred power supply, or a weapon system has a large optimal size. Maybe they don't need more than two legs, because the technology became reliable and sturdy (it's not like a tank needs 5 engines). Maybe the low profile isn't the priority, due to camo, armor, "force-fields" or carrying relatively large weapons (such as railguns) anyway. Perhaps the walkers could operate more like artillery and not as a frontline shock weapon system. Maybe a highly vertical, dense metropolis or a system of underground tunnels, would favor some sort of a climbing robot with prehensile limbs (which is probably as humanoid as you can get in a realistic setting).
Actually, i think titanfall mechs, appart from being bipeds and having hands, do have a concept which i beleive would work. First, they are a product of nessesity. The frontier wasn't bristling with military tech at first, so there wasn't a lot of heavy military vehicles at hand when the IMC came knocking for resources. However people found about this large corporation on the frontier that was making medium sized utility mechs and they kinda strapped guns on there and went with it.
and second, they don't actually aim at replacing armored vehicles. Titans in themselves are actually fairly lightly armored, mostly focused on maneuvrability and utility. A lot of their hull space is occupied by sensors and optics to help manage aiming in chaotic environements, as much space as possible is allowed for power and weapons, and their size is gaged to not bother too much with ground pressure. They aim to give their pilot (a extremely agile soldier with a ton of utility, but extremely low in numbers) a heavy assault platform that would be fit for orbital deployement into diverse areas (that may not be suited for regular ground vehicles) and ususaly behind enemy lines or right in the middle of a warzone. I think making so mechs are more axed around suporting fire in areas where MBTs would struggle to navigate could be a good enough niche for them.
"weally, weally big." hahaha
I have to say, you handle your speech impediment with great humor and class. You don't let the haters get to you; you want to talk about cool space stuff, so you do.
Yes, I loed that too :)
Funny, I thought he was giving the book,"Hitch Hickers Guide to the Galaxy" , by Douglass Adams a quick nod.
wayzors
worst thing my man Issac ever did on this channel imo was to hire a speech coach... his voice is very calm, tranquil and melodic, and was the 1st clue that i was given that this guy actually knew what the hell he was talking about. I believe most people with unusual behavioural tendency's usually see reality for what it is with logic and compassion, we simply aren't wired in the head the way normal's are.
i think his voice is VERY COOL.
Rule #1 : Learning from Isaac Arthur Videos is safer than actual space combat.
"Most disappointing moment of my life is when I realised that giant robots are just not practical war engines" lol Isaac I love you 😂
(Spoken in a thick southwest american accent)
But.. but.. Muh Minovsky particles? What about muh muon-catalyzed fusion reactors?
WHAT ABOUT MUH GUNDAMS? THEY CAN'T TAKE AWAY MUH GUNDAMS!
As an actual Southwest American I apply this as a piece of rhetorical self-deprecating humor.
id have to strongly agree with that statement.
Gundams are not "giant" by any means (maybe with a few exceptions but they are very uncommon). The size of a gundam is merely about the size of a modern fighter. They seems to be quite big mainly because most time they were showed standing up.
As for those robots which are indeed giant, they don't need to be scientific or realistic.
Drone and Uran 9 are real practical Gundam in military service.. it's not always giant, but small, fast, and lethal
Not just a genius and a born teacher but a soldier too. You sir, are an exemplary human being.
cyan eyed since when soldiers are exemplary ? I would say that it's the only thin'that stopped him from bein'exemplary
Since they saved your R's.
it shows that he can take extraordinary amounts of pain and exhaustion, because there is limited need for soldiers these days it is always easy to quit but it shows determination that he fought through it. It also shows his mental strength to take that hardship yet still maintain after years in combat
cyan eyed depending on what military he was in, I wouldn't say being a soldier automatically makes someone exemplary. was he in the Russian military? the US military? or what if he were a Nazi? did he fight in Vietnam? or was he fighting to create a state for Kurdistan?
Yas Oum
Yas Oum then you don't know anything about being a soldier, it doesn't make you perfect but being a soldier in the first place requires discipline, dedication and a certain amount of courage. Now sure there are bad soldiers but generally speaking being a soldier says good things about you
"Though I wouldn't suggest shooting at something that big, since taking potshots at a warship the size of a country is probably picking a fight you don't want." Well put, Isaac.
This man is massively underrated
Should store his mind in and AI or clone him for future purpose.lol
@@horatiohuffnagel7978 I suppose he already is storrd, an ai could watch the channel and mimic him, recent video on Tom Scott's channel about this
Isaac saved UA-cam for me.
Wow! I don't usually go in for hardcore realism, preferring to focus on suspension of disbelief, but this was actually really fascinating and helpful! Lot of epic weapons and potential weapons that you just don't think about if you stick to pew-pew lasers. That whole giant metal shield thing is pretty sweet. Subscribing!
Alastair Reynolds put out some dumb mines in one book where they had a relativistic speed spaceship pursuit. one molecule thick discs that were huge by area and if you hit such disc with lets say 10% of light speed it would do significant damage to your ship or even vaporize it. I love hard scifi :D
Generally if we speak about space combat it would most likely look like in The Expanse. Nano weapon and classical computer viruses are most deadly weapon ever. Especially if we deal with alien superpower. But if we speak about near future, then first of all I suggest everyone to play Kerbal Space Program to actually learn how space flight work, as that is something what most people still don't understand. Anyway from the get go we can exclude any space fighters as such ships simply would not work in ranges of space, even in our solar system. Missiles and for close quarters combat drones should do the job, even if we should suspect ships to have decent point defense. Ironically the classic laser (edit: though by that I mean broad range of ray-weapons with similar properties) is great solution for that, as it is faster then any missile and also could work as offensive weapon. Ironically canons most likely would play major role as without drag they would be quite devastating for sniping. For reminder rail-gun is just fancy version of that and it isn't really that strong as anime suggest. Anyway in space basically everything would happen on the range. It is why I suspect that major combat units would be Artillery Destroyer equipped in strong long range weapon and having decent mobility to avoid bullets. Cruisers would be useful only for specific purposes and basically largest and most versatile thing on battlefield, but also something what you really shouldn't put on the frontline (edit: They for example could be used for command and cleaning possible covers with drones and missile barrages). To be honest space combat would be actually something supper boring.
@@SergeyPRKL In reality it would not work. Space is simply to big to be capable hit anything even if we use all resources in our solar system. Especially as seed ship could be smaller then average probe.
NOTE: If you're commenting on how to get stealth to work in space, Nicoll's Law has already been played out here too, peruse the other comments first please :) For time constraints I will generally not respond to something someone else already asked and I answered, especially since the answer is usually "No, that won't work"
hmm i dont think you would be able to use a mini black hole as ammunition. you most certainly could use ammunition to cause said black hole by throwing a particle at extreme velocity and hope it hits something. for example the facility at CERN which basically fires particles at one another creating mini black holes for research. the problem with using mini black holes as ammunition is their life time, they are a strong center point of gravity as well so to effect big things in the way you would want them to you would need a bigger black hole. these problems can be circumvented by causing a black hole on the target with the fore mentioned particle hoping it hits another one or a bigger mass going fast enough to cause a bigger black hole on target.
also why would magnetic shields not work against bullets? if your in space more likely than not the bullet was fired from a gauss or rail-gun which electromagnetic their bullet making them magnetic. unless the bullet was fired without being magnetized there is no reason why a strong enough magnetic shield would not work on them. from there there are three ways to handle this as an attacker; you put more force into the magnetic bullet or you change the magnetic field so the bullet is now attracted to the ship's shields quite literally. or do both at the same time changing the magnetic field an adding more force. essentially the ship's shields have turned the dumb bullet into a pseudo smart bullet.
of course armor will work and help but no reason why a magnetic shield should not work unless they are firing WW1 or WW2 battleship gun shells without being magnetic. but if that were the case they would be extremely ineffective as in a single minuet light travels 11, 180,000 miles you would want to be at least double this distance to have a minuet to avoid lazers. an rail guns and gauss guns simply go faster a lot faster and while maybe still ineffective or not as effective as other weapons they would most certainly be more effective than a none magnetic bullet.
While, I do agree, I think that your assumption that engines are the reason for a lack of stealth in space is a bit flawed. Engines don't need to be fired, only thrusters. If you have enough Delta V, going in then your primary engines should never need to fire. You could fire your main engines a solar system away from the enemy and get the thrust you need then continue to the fight. I do agree with all your other arguments, however. Especially heat. It's extremely difficult to bleed off heat in space.
+sentinel you know i thought you would have mentioned the bending of light an there are a few ways you could go about doing it.
Awesome accent! I know it's not something an individual has control over, but you sound like the History Channel's dramatic reenactments of American Civil War officers. This is just an image I get from hearing your voice and in no way reflects my desire to pigeon hole you into a type cast. Keep up the great work on your videos! Cheers
You need nano materials laid out in a special way that would bend light around the object rendering it invisible.
I wake up to the smell of Thanksgiving turkey in the oven, 4 day weekend in front of me, and Isaac Arthur having just posted 30 minutes of Space Warefare. Best Thanksgiving ever.
Happy Thanksgiving! I'm jealous, we don't have Thanksgiving here in the UK so we have to wait till Christmas to have our turkey!
... do you have turkey rations there?
I must point out a game/simulator that was released just recently called "Children of a Dead Earth" it gives a fairly accurate look at what Space Combat would be like.
I went to the comments to say just that.
It’s a gigantic pain to play, though!
The tapered cylindrical ships could lend themselves well to containing rotating gravity rings!
To achieve stealth you just hide behind or within an asteroid or comet.
I have thought of a concept space ship like what you said. You can have a ship the size of a large asteroid, maybe 20-70 kilometers and just cover it with an outer shield of space rocks about 1-8 meters thick. Most of the ship would be fuel, hangers, small crew quarters and other things that would be found on colony ships. You can use the outer shield as extra material to make even more warships and drones. The hanger doors and drives would be hidden in craters across the ship. Designs would vary to make it hard to recognize the ships and their classes or too make the ships look like different asteroids so none would look the same
there's still the problem of heat
@@kevinmathewson4272 your not wrong, I was initially thinking of using a tank of pure ice water near its surface to absorb the heat. Unless you have a better idea or anyone else because I’m all ears
@@tariqahmad1371 ice water is not cold enough. You need your ship to be the same temperature as an asteroid, and asteroids are extremely cold, far colder than ice water. Also, any heat sink is going to "fill up" with heat eventually, and then it'll start radiating heat out into space.
the problem you're up against here is that an asteroid is basically at thermal equilibrium with the void of space. Asteroids generate virtually no waste heat of their own, just a tiny amount from radioactive atoms decaying inside them. If your ship generates more waste heat than asteroid of comparable size would generate, then your cover is blown as soon as you fill up your heat sinks.
you can maybe disguise your ship inside a much larger object, like a rogue planet, and just drift through the cosmos without steering, passing off your heat as the natural decay of radioactive atoms inside this huge natural object, but a drifting rogue planet isn't much of a ship. Also, before you can hide inside a rogue planet, at some point you need to build one or travel to an existing one, and this event would be detectable. Your rogue planet might look totally natural once it's all set up, but anyone who's been watching that region of space already knows you're there.
The downside is that, any target civilisation would definetly track all larger objects headed thair way. Meaning a looong time passes before you reach the target. Change the course in any way to spped things up, and you'll raise suspicions, and a scout will be send to your location.
Unless you get great timing with a natural headed asteroid in a reasonable amount of time, there's really no way of a surprise attack.
Hey Isaac. Have you heard of a plasma shield. Brookhaven national laboratory created one about 20 years ago. Military was interested in it to possibly stop shock waves. This is prob the closest thing to a real star wars shield I have heard of. They were even able to to use it to hold a vacuum from one side to atmospheric pressure. Ady Hershcovotch(the guy who designed and patented this) said it could hold against 9 atmospheres. That one is actually called a plasma window. Somewhat different from a plasma shield. The window design is a circular shape. Only prob is energy requirements. Think it needs abour 20kw per inch(in diameter). Oh and the plasma is at about 15000 Kelvin so that might be a small issue too. Wouldn't want to accidentally lean against it.
I love the number of "rule 1 of combat"
:)
Rule #2: You don't talk about fight club.
Alexander Grady Only the art of war has true authority on what #1 rule is. Then again Sun Tzu never even fought so....
@@PrivateSlacker rule #3; wear a G Shock
Rule #1 of combat : every rule is #1
"Weally, really ,weekly big" written. You just made my day buddy :) as someone with a lisp when talking it's good to see you have gotten comfortable enough with and owned your speech issue enough to joke about it. Keep up the good work with the channel as well.
Your greatest disappointment was finding out Gundams aren't practical. My greatest disappointment was that war in space is EMPEROR-BE-DAMNED BORING and not like Star Wars, or Battlestar Galactica, or Star Trek, etc has shown me my whole life.
*Sigh*
Not that your video gave me that epiphany, but it just further nailed that into my head despite how incredibly detailed it was and how I wished my Uni teachers would be like you when they lecture.
You dare curse the Emperor you heretic?
Gundam in downsized version and in specific environment of space stations actually is quite practical. Also yes, space combat is boring, though not that much more then aerial combat. Also it usually depend on execution as for example The Expanse is amazing despite keeping fairy accurate space combat (yes, it was speed up comparing to books and I'm not sure how they fit all that weapons on Frigate, but still).
FTL?
Flying around in pressure vessels attempting to poke holes in each other isn’t just boring imo, it’s boring some times and fucking terrifying at others
War in space can be whatever you want it to be considering we have never forght in space
Person A: "Did you see the clowns in the town square?"
Person B: "No. I was watching Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur on my phone."
A weapon I always imagine would be prominent in space warfare is a laser missile. As in a missile with a laser on board. It can travel large distances to target and correct it's course to compensate for enemy's evasive action and when in close enough range fire a laser at it so it would have both the advantages of smart projectile and a lightspeed weapon.
Since it would most likely be one-use weapon the laser will not need any cooling system, which take a lot of space and mass on normal lasers. And if what remains of the rocket manages to hit the enemy as well it will not be just a high-speed chunk of metal, but a high-speed blob of superheated metal, melted by the waste heat of a laser.
I think the usual notion on that score is a nuclear-pumped laser. Weber uses the notion in his books and a few other have too, and you'd probably use a similar approach with meson beam weapons.
The space combat in The Forever War was very interesting. Relativity effects for the crews and very high energy weapons of all types. Being tracked by a nuclear missile that accelerates at 10 gees, then doubles It's acceleration to 20 gees is a frightening proposition.
I also reccomend "The Lost Fleet" series if you want... well I'm not absolutely certain its hard scifi, came accross as such, but the author was ex Navy and played the organisation and logistics of real war straight.
Strettger oh
it is a great example of space combat, where the human occupant are cocooned inside protective gel to avoid getting squashed..
Strettger Admiral Geary :D
Strettger Yeah i was just coming to Lost Fleet. It's not that special as is, but when it is several books and several types of battles it turned out to be very interesting. They did have FTL though and a surprising plot twist, alien neighbor who wished humans kills them selves so they don't need to use resources. But other than the FTL it was pretty hard scifi with pulling hig G:s, battles that lasted for a fraction of a second, kintic weaponry, orbital bombardment, when arriving from the FTL port (usually on edge of a star system) using the light hours advantage to scan the area, traveling days through the star system
etc. etc.
On stealth: This is probably technically not stealth, but I think the easiest way to "hide" is use "dazzle stealth". Essentially, instead of trying to avoid detection, you surround yourself with a cloud of even noisier objects. The enemy will know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you're there, but won't know where you are exactly.
Yes, I suppose that would be more akin to a Flashbang though, the problem is they are hunting for you in every wavelength they can and things like decoys don't work well in space. Generally you will accelerate out of the zone of your dazzling objects too. But various point defense options might produce some of that effect anyway.
You mean like ICBM's already do with reflective balloon decoys?
Matthew Campbell shouldn't speed be the best stealth? like finnishing an enemy before he can notice you would be the best way to prevent them from noticing you no? so I'm kinda disappointed he didn't refer to the dyson beam, cause that seems like the best weapon stealth wise. if your attack is moving with the speed of light there's no way for your enemy to react until it hits.
BosonCollider Well, I didn't pull the idea out of nowhere :)
Though actually the idea came from how planes will deploy flares to avoid detection by heat-seeking weapons.
Just use plasma from your engine, it will help to keep the bubble around you during maneuvers. Sure it need a system to deploy, and it will reduce efficiency but it is doable.
the fact that you took into account your strange way of speaking and mentioned subtitles automatically made me respect you, subbed
So then I'm not the only one that always though it is odd for a giant battle robot to use artificial human hands to hold and fire giant guns that use a design adapted for human hands, rather than just have guns mounted on the robot's arms.
Odd doesnt mean freakin awesome though
There absolutely will be mecha in a kardeshev 2 civ, simply because there will be trillions of nerd hobbyists working together to build them and go to skirmish with them for fun / honor.
Shoulder and arm mounted guns would be a sensible design but hands like a human would also come in handy to be able to pick up weapons from fallen enemies. They'd have to come from other giant robot's though unless the designer's give them human sized hands which I doubt.
Modularity
@@RavensEagle Clearly the spec for USB-Mecha includes the ability to tweet at the enemy.
we may not know much but we know for sure; it will be grimdark and it will be endless
CrunchyNorbert Sir, that is the best profile pic I have seen ever
Iceday Face palm wizard aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
space marines!
for da emprah
*the war will be endless*
the orks: !!!WAAAAAAAGHH!!!
3:54 I feel like that parade was made for this exact comparison. Did you orchestrate an entire parade just for a wacky metaphor? Well played...
All the #1 rules had me lmao. Always great! Introductory stuff, but way better/more info than anything on discovery/history/pbs.
A youtuber that does subtitles? You just earned a subscriber from this hard at hearing man! Thank you for not forgetting about us deaf folks.
Just out of curiosity, which branch were you in? I was in the Air Force, and did a tour of Iraq. I've also noticed that my favorite channels end up being fellow veterans, but I don't find out until a few months later.
It seems to happen a fair amount, lots of other vets on the channel. Anyway, Army 2003-10, but before the Army I was a civvy working at AFIT at Wright-Patt, which gave me a fondness for the service I suppose, I just happen to hate flying :)
Interesting -- I don't know the world population percentage of vet.s, but the U.S. rate is currently around 7.5% (maybe the global percentage parallels the U.S. within a factor or so). Any idea what your viewer vet-percentage is? (RET USAF, so this caught my eye.)
Another vet here from Finland (:
@@charlesrockafellor4200 US Army 2000-2008. 11B2O. Bosnia 2002, Afghanistan 2004-2005. Hooah!!
@@charlesrockafellor4200
RE: ". . . but the U.S. rate is currently around 7.5% . . ."
What numbers did you use? I just looked up the following numbers:
Number of US veterans = 17.4 million
US population = 330.5 million
Veteran percentage of population = 17.4 million / 330.5 million = 0.0526 = 5.3%
References:
(1) www.cnn.com/2014/05/30/us/department-of-veterans-affairs-fast-facts/index.html
(2) www.census.gov/popclock/
I wouldn't mind, if the videos get a little bit longer, say one hour, but you wouldn't have to haste through them as much.
Me neither
+1on this idea.
i posted the same thing too.
I think most people here would even like to read/listen to you unused drafts
In fact I would love for them to be an hour or more
Realistic space warfare with real world technology? Children of a Dead Earth is the answer.
A very popular game on the channel it seems :)
Gundam would be possible in the future, with proper anatomy like those DARPA robots. But the energy consume would be a bitch for that, it will be the M1 abrams tank of MECH warfare.
Now that Gundam in Odaiba is just a mascot with moving head, how about if the military really made one. It's just like the power armor prototype of the US military with it's cons are energy consumption and spare parts.
Missile was a concept before, but it became real. Just like touchscreens, but it's upgrade will be hologram, cons will be radiation and eye damage.
Did you know in Philippines that there is a secret US and Philippine military base in the mountains of Luzon, that mountain opens in half and some VTOL aircraft take off. It's just like in those old anime like Daimos and Voltes V were the war machines came out in the mountains. This place and this secret is classified and just told it to you, it actually started during cold war era, China might attack my country that's why they made that secret mountain underground base.
Insert theme: Daimos opening
Romano Coombs, Macross/Robotech is great, but what is this artificial gravity they have? And I doubt in the real world people would be such huge fans of Minmay. At least not the Robotech version of her. (Mari Iijima, on the other hand, is more believable).
The RX-78-2 Gundam (at 60ft.) was about 20ft. taller than the VF-1 in battloid mode, but 41ft. is still pretty big for urban warfare. In fact, combat for either in an Earth environment is fairly unbelievable considering the relative difficulty to operate as opposed to conventional mobile weapons. In this area, I suppose the VF-1 has an edge since it's transformable.
Anyhow, it's important to take into account that by the 2nd century UC (Gundam) mobile suits had decreased significantly in height to about 49ft.. Not much taller than the VF-1.
This is the poll I suggested. I am happy :D
so did i!
Matthew Campbell you done well, boy
thank you great topic
yes
LOVE the way the quote by Douglass Adams was presented at 9:00. "Space is Weally, Weally Big." Thus, putting together, the fiendishly dazzling writing style of Adams and the lisp of our fearless narrator. Brilliant!!!
I don't know if you ever get a chance to read your comments, but I just wanted to say that I really appreciate what you do. I really love to put on long science videos when I lie down to sleep, and your channel quickly became one of my all-time favorites. You're a great narrator, and you must do enormous amounts of research to put these together. Thanks, and I hope to see many more. :3
Have you by any chance read "The killing star" by Charles R. Pellegrino? It was the first time I was introduced to the implications of relativistic weapons and the first time I realized that space combat will never look like Star Trek.
I think you implied that relativistic warheads aren't the ultimate weapons but practically you couldn't locate them. How would you defend against those?
:) I've referenced it a couple times in the Fermi Paradox video series, in terms of the notion of what we can say about aliens. As to relativistic weapons, they are pretty close to as good as you can get, since they are not easy to see once they get moving and give very little reaction time, but they're only good against non-mobile targets since they can't be easily steered and if they light up a maneuvering thruster you can see them.
place thin foil between you and possible direction of attack, it will destroy the projectile if it is not designed to penetrate such type of defense, which is easy to do, but there are countermeasures against countermeasures, can't tell, top secret information )) IDK level of security.
Hey, Rubashow, I remember you from Jingles' vids. A chance encounter. :)
John Michael Godier brought me here, and for that I thank him. I'm loving this channel.
This is one of the first videos I watched when I first discovered your channel. It was thoroughly interesting then, but I've gone back to watch it again after learning more about science and futurism from yours and other channels, and as interesting as it still is, it leaves me with some questions. I am wondering about space warfare, not so much in regards to technology, but in regard to strategy.
Let's take an example: humanity colonises a vast amount of the solar system, but doesn't quite reach Kardashev 2 level yet. We colonise various planetary and lunar bodies, use mine asteroids build massive solar collectors, orbital habitats and factories and so on. We have a lot of infrastructure spread out over a large area. It's quite likely that no part of this system can long survive without in isolation.
Now, a colony in another solar system, founded a century or so earlier, decides to fight a war of independence against the overlords of Sol. (I realise politics in space is a whole topic on its own, but I'm using this as a way of having a force that is technologically and scientifically on a basically equal footing.) How do you defend an entire solar system at once. You can build intercept an enemy fleet, but they only need to get one of two ships in at a different point to effect some serious disruption to your entire infrastructure.
Like, nowadays, soldiers can deal with the armed threats, because one man with most tech isn't going to do much damage to the vital parts of our infrastructure, and we have other organisations in place to find and stop the one man who has the tech to do vast amount of damage. But when the distance involved are so great that one well armed ship can slip into the solar system, millions of miles away from the fleet and start taking out your solar collectors, your mining facilities, even destroying your habitats and factories, long before the fleet can respond, it seems like a whole different ball game. You surely can't build that many fortified points around the solar system to stop everything - or if you could, that would at least make colonisation a whole lot more complicated, and we probably won't bother at first.
And even if you could, why doesn't the fleet just spread out in the Oort Cloud and accelerate large bodies toward numerous targets, for example? Or any number of other schemes that don't actually require them to enter the solar system proper to fight this war. They can do massive damage from very far away if they are smart about it, and it will take the Sol system a long time to get out there and stop them.
Now scale this up to a number of Kardashev 2 civilisations fighting each other...
It seems to me like conventional ship vs ship fighting is going to be only a small part of space warfare. The bigger challenge is how to protect everything that isn't a warship or space fortress, and that's going to be highly dependant on strategy. Do you agree? Do you have any thoughts on how that might evolve? Do you know of any authors that have already explored these ideas?
VERY HEAVY using clips from World War One.
World War One is a whole multi video mini series (if not MEGA series) by its self!
Thanks Issac Arthur!
"Weally weally weally big" lolololol you're a funny fellow, my friend. Thank you for your amazing videos. Highlight of my evenings.
youre a jerk for mocking kripke his channel is gweat
that part made me actually LOL, like a jolly santa laugh LOVE the vids, keep up the great work
If a alien Target is going to pass you at .1c, don’t get in a tail chase. Have a guy in a spacesuit open the air lock and chuck out a bucket of sand. Wide dispersal and traveling at a relative (to him) if 67 million mph. Tough to detect a grain of sand, and if only a couple of grains from that bucket hit him, target destroyed!
Also space-kitty litter, garbage, poo.....
Just found this channel. I'm impressed, and i'm not easily impressed. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and insight with us. cheers mate~
THAT EPISODE WAS REALLY CUTE ALL THE YIPS AND BARKS AND EVEN THE PILOIT OF THE SHIP [THE TACTICAL OFFICER] YIPING AT A UA-cam VIDEO OF A NORMAL DOG BARKING
10:15 "though I wouldn't suggest shooting at something that big, since taking potshots at a warship the size of a _country_ is probably picking a fight you don't want" tickles me in a way I can't really explain.
so, the graser would be the gamma ray weapon the Michael ship fired on larry niven's footfall?
i remember reading an old article (from the 60's maybe) regarding how a nuclear blast could be redirected easily in almost any shape in space, so fusion bombs could be used as an unidirectional weapon, let's say as a form of artillery, to target fixed target on asteroids or planets
A bomb-pumped laser, yes, though its not as easy as some in scifi make it sound. For one thing the conventional explosives to set off the nuke are going to vibrate the hell out of the lasing tube.
+Isaac Arthur One would imagine at that point a mechanism similar to an xray machine would be used, utalizing a chunknof heavy metal as the lazing medium, not a silicon crystal noble gas combo.
If there was any warfare in space it would have to be 100% automated. It wouldn't make sense to put those humans and coffee makers they require on the warship. They weight a lot and acceleration they can withstand is pitiful(especially coffee makers).
:) Automation makes a lot of sense and a tiny drone that can react in nanoseconds and handle 1000 gees would seem best, and it is. The thing about warfare though is that wars are conducted by hitting your enemy where he's vulnerable. I am not going to go after my enemy's automated fleet, I am going to go after his people. I those are all on Earth, then I won't fight him in space, if they aren't, then I am going after the ships and stations with people on them. He will do the same, so the warfare conducted can't be completely automated.
+Isaac Arthur
I think it would make much more sense to protect your bases and trade routs with your automated warships rather than arm ships that won't win any battles anyways.
" I am not going to go after my enemy's automated fleet, I am going to go after his people."
I wouldn't - I'd go after his infrastructure and remove his ability to make war. My space based drones would be to accomplish that while preventing him from doing it to me.
Kavetrol But the majority of the population is not military. Seems like a target of opportunity with little danger of return fire.
We would need really good AI cause the lag time to control automated weapons would be terrible.
As for relativistic missiles and stealth... wouldn't it be possible for, lets say, an alien race to fire a missile towards the sun, that would be aimed at exactly the right spot so that the sun's gravity would arc it directly towards the planet earth once it passed a certain point? Even if the arc was very slight, the sun itself would be in between the earth and the missile all the way until the missile was on the other side of the sun, and even then, the sunlight itself would obscure the missile, perhaps until it was too late for a defense to be mounted...? The key to this would be to angle the missile the right way, and to use the sun's gravity, rather than propulsion, to slingshot the missile at sufficient speed to seriously damage the planet, or a particular city, if your mathematics and knowledge of the planet were sufficient. This would also solve the problem of the fuel of the missile being detectable, as no fuel would be required, except on the initial launch towards the sun. Such a missile might be launched from the asteroid belt. If the missile (or asteroid) were painted jet black then even reflected light might not be seen. Or better yet, if it were painted with whatever color the corona of the sun would appear to be from earth. As for infrared signature... this too would be obscured by the sun as well. Such an attack, I would imagine, would not be at all difficult once we had sufficient resources in space. However, it would take a considerable amount of time to launch and produce the desired results. Would this solve for, theoretically at least, the stealth attack?
The simple answer is that while, like an idealized version of what you're describing, dirrectional stealth is possible to a degree, any civilization capable of waging war in space is always going to be watching you from multiple dirrections.
We already have scientific satellites that aren't in Earth orbit, and we're not close to being able to engage in interplanetary war. A space defense force is going to have a system wide surveillance network with no blind spots, which is pretty easy to set up using legrange points.
Great idea, but also due to orbital physics, the faster the object goes, the less of the arc around the star the object will be going. Also anything going faster in velocity than the sun having a significant influence on the object to arc it away from hitting the target will probably not arc very much. Even then, past a certain speed, you don't have have to determine the arc because at that speed it won't arc at all. So you can just use mathematics to determine it's position when the object meets with the target.
It wiuld be pretty much as vulnerable to interception as ICBMs on earth are. "Pretty much as vulnerable" being an euphemism for "very vulenrable".
Always love your thought provoking analysis. Keep up the good work.
You're playin it fast and loose Isaac! You really think you can keep a massive starship functioning with a skeleton crew and minimal coffee rations?
It worked for the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, I reckon it could work again.
@@theapexsurvivor9538 XD
Coffee! Every sane military drinks tea.
I mean cocoa I can except, we've got to give the submariners something.
Both have their place, but I've never been a morning tea person, probably because I mostly favor herbal ones. Amusingly pretty much every time you've heard my voice I was drinking tea not coffee, better for the voice.
Isaac Arthur Ah but serving good tea is the best way to check you have no communist spies in your ranks, they the consider all property theft.
lol :)
You I just had a thought, sure you can't do conventional camo but what about dazzle camouflage? If you used the effect of interlocking patterns with surfaces that emit random wavelengths throughout the EM spectrum it could produce the same effect as old dazzle camo that would make the ship's speed and exact direction hard to judge.
*Humanity finds extraterrestrial spaceship light years away
Scientists : It is estimated to be only slightly bigger than our modern rockets, and since it seems to be headed our way, we need to take action
*After many warning signals, humanity decides to unleash a large portion of its weapons arsenal towards the mysterious ship
SOME YEARS LATER :
Scientists : We have good news, bad news, and worse news. The good news is that our entire arsenal hit the alien ship.
U.N Leader : Good, now what's the bad news?
Scientists : The bad news is that our original size estimates for the ship were incorrect... the ship is um.... well.... it's actually the size of a solar system, and now it's pissed.
U.N Leader : oh dear god.... what's the worse news?
Scientists : The worse news is that an entire fleet of these ships is now coming for us......
U.N Leader : Give me my gun.
Scientists : what? Why? You can't fight these things off with a gun! We needed 100,000 missiles just to take down 1 ship's RADIO!
U.N Leader : Well.....My plan only requires one bullet.
lol, reminds me of an episode of outer limits.
an object the size of a solar system might not even notice such a small event as an "attack".
John Weck lol.
It's firework greeting!
A disturbing thought: is far mor easy kill everything on the planet where your enemy lives than the fleet protecting it. And if you don't have to live there after things the idea becomes even more attractive.
An autonomus mars colony could declare independence with a nuclear winter. For example.
Yep, planets are not terribly defensible, though there are ways. That's another reason I tend to point out on the channel that you are usually better off taking planets apart to make rotating habitats than terraforming them.
Yeah, but they probably will also be easier targets than a warship. Or anything built for warfare only.
It's a good argument against the idea that colonize the solar sistem will prevent humanity extinction. It won't protect us from ourselves.
have your own warfare space habitat. But sure there always a way to kill someone.
Javier Calvelo
That is easy, have projectiles in space ready to make dust from the mars. Dead mans hand.
Honestly I would love to see an extended series of episodes covering specific aspects of space warfare. After all, we can't forget the #1 rule of warfare: Always have plenty of backup plans.
This video makes me love Star Trek even more. Many of the problems with other sci-fi battles addressed in this video are not seen in Trek.
Some of the practicality of the future tech is explained away as, "We figured it out a long time ago, so it isn't a problem anymore."
Now having 40 years for scientist to explore the ideas proposed in Star Trek, we can see if Star Trek still makes space warfare practical and possible:
1) Stealth
Using magnetic fields to bend light (including infrared) around your ship to prevent enemy ships from seeing you is a technology being developed and has been proven in Proof of Concept experiments. The problem is that in order to guarantee invisibility, you'd have to bend light around you in a sphere to prevent your enemy moving in one small degree and changing the cloaking angle. This means that you would be bending incoming light from the enemy ship around you. In short, turning on your cloaking device will make it impossible for the enemy to find you, but would at the same time blind you.
2) Range
Interestingly enough, weapon technology isn't were the advancement and accuracy is improved in Star Trek. The computing power and speed of Enterprise-D's main computer was almost accurately shown to be were computers will be in 300-400 years. Despite an enemy ship having 70 kilometers to maneuver in to perform evasive action, a super computer aiding the gunner on your ship will be able to "lock on" to the enemy.
Scenario: Your gunner points the laser at the enemy. Knowing the direction it is going and it's speed means that the laser will actually fire in a slightly different position than where the gunner is aiming. The enemy commander would give the order to take evasive action. The computer would tell the gunner firing the weapon is not advisable at this point. After a few milliseconds to analyze the flight path of the enemy ship, the computer would be able to predict the enemy pilot's "random" direction. I put random in quotations because a person, alien or not, tend to favor a set pattern of variables. The computer knows that the pilot can choose any degree of movement between 1 and 360, and after watching the ship make it's random directional choices, it would also see the speed is constant as well. Since people love patterns subconsciously, the computer can make an educated guess as to which direction the pilot would make at any given moment. The computer would then tell the gunner the system has locked on to the ship.
We have computers that can do this job well with 87% accuracy, and the longer the battle goes, the higher the accuracy.
3) Weapons
Nope. Still Sci-fi. Star Trek's energy based weapons are talking science we haven't even begun to imagine how it works.
4) Defense
Okay, so in fairness this technology is still being developed and no proof of concept has been done, but plasma windows could theoretically be used as shields.
DragonJedi0 Phasers are literally the CERN of Ginevra during at a ship millions of protons.
Photon torped are anti-matter weapon, not so strange, we can already produce small quantity of anti-matter.
Quantum torpedo are the only one that does not make sense.
“Plasma windows” can’t exist, what you probably mean is directed relativistic particles to destroy or stop missiles and absorb lasers, so it is far easier to use the straight metal shield described in the video.
assuming space warfare make any sense at all (because it's extremely costly and difficult), war in space would probably seem like the wars fought hundreds of years ago rather than modern wars. it would take months or years to move fleets and units from one place to another, to communicate, and logistics would be a pain in the ass. so unless FTL turns out to be possible, I don't see battles in space as realistic.
Generally how I tend to think of it, yes, but its really hard to say, also the sheer size of space faring civilizations means you could have a minor skirmish with a neighbor as an accident everyone wrote off and pretended didn't happen that might have involved thousands of kilometer long ship pounding on each other, and from the sheer scale of the civilizations involved it might be the equivalent of a bar fight breaking out between two nation's forces that had met for friendly maneuver exercises.
I thought you were going to say it would be the equivalent of two guys from different countries in a bar fight.. it would be so small and insignificant compared to the magnificence of a space faring civilazation, that it would not cause both of those major powers to go to war with each other..
ie. i'm pretty sure somewhere a Russian guy has kicked the ass of an American guy in some bar and no nukes were dropped between Washington and Moscow over it
it doesnt make semse to u because u cant imagine how the future will be like
anyways, at some point in time whoever controls space will be the most powerful
@@isaacarthurSFIA Because someone insulted someone else's mother's tentacles.
I could see a random group doing organized attacks on targets in space just by accelerating debris to high velocities to hit the target. Again space warfare would probably be limited to 1-2 light years of range doing this technique. If a target is dormant and not planning on changing it's orbital trajectory then theoretically you could attempt to find where the target will be when your ammunition meets up with it. The relative speed between the object and whatever ship or space station will determine the extent of damage the object will do. The faster you accelerate the object, the closer you can predict where it will be compared to it's original position.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I think a good concept for interplanetary age civilizations would be a tethership. Unmanned, three or more masses connected by long variable length tethers and capable of high accelerations. Like yoyos or diabolos.
These could sustain very fast back and forth accelerations over a long period of time without requiring any propellant, and they would be able to climb up and down in gravity wells by exchanging internal energy/angular momentum with their orbital energy/angular momentum. So they'd be very agile and difficult to hit with dumb and even some smart weapons. When fighting close to big asteroids or small moons they could quickly take cover behind it, or send down one of their extremities to pick rocks/ice up on the surface like a rotovator and toss it in any direction.
The only thing that could reliably counter them would probably be to deploy them yourself, fire them towards the enemy and use your wires to cut the enemy wires. So one possibility for early space combat might actually be glorious melee engagements between ships made of megameter-scale wires.
Yup, that's more or less what I meant about using physical shield to tilt and whirl with, though I hadn't really considered using it in a gravity well. Those kind of ranges, planetary, it's really hard to miss anything that isn't smaller than a person and/or capable of super-salsa levels of acceleration.
You may use same principle for countermeasures, no need to cut wires If you like to hit the main mass, just maneuver your mass to hit his mass.
Extension of that is kinda cloud of those things, again it can be counter measured with same thing, but it will be more efficient against all thing which were mention in this video.
Basically all boils down to who is bigger.
Also as note wires do not have to be permanent, so cutting may just not have effect you would like, just because there is basically nothing to cut.
I would attack this with nuclear explosion. Let the tether ablate away under x-ray flux !
Resort to multiple blasts in order to leave no shadows.
Great episode! Each of the four topics covered deserves an in-depth episode, now!
“Your arm could be hundreds of kilometers long”
I don’t know why, but that made me chuckle
Thanks Issac! Now I have something to keep me entertained while my turkey is roasting. Coffee is brewing now! Jim
Yeah I initially questioned if I should put a video out on Thanksgiving but then I remembered most folks would be sitting around at home waiting for Turkey anyway, or stuffed full of Turkey waiting for sleep, and apparently many find the episodes 'relaxing' :)
The most powerful weapon is public relations. And the best way to eliminate enemies is not to make them in the first place.
Very true, though PR would not, for instance, be terribly useful against a pissed of AI or Hive Mind that was non-talkative.
Isaac Arthur Hive Mind? *Slides out Laspistol*
judgeomega Too late unless you're Switzerland.
@@fan9775 "Every time I hear the words Hive Mind I slide out my Laspistol"
10:30-36
Lmao.. You're killing me, Isaac!
Space stealth I think is possible, but maybe not as effective as stealth on earth. I think it would be releasing lots of boxes smaller than the ship that are designed to emit lots of heat and amplify scanning signals (like how small ships have radar reflectors that make them appear larger than they are. I would also put radio emitters on these craft to fake transmission signals. A few ships that serve a saturation role like modern mine layers that constantly deploy swarms of these disposable boxes; these boxes could potentially be used for heat dissipation, put them near any radiant heat source and then jettison the now heated chaff. Pretty much flare saturation in space. This would make it harder to pick out the correct target since most combat would be outside of visual range. It could also act to fake larger numbers than exist in your fleet. Just a thought
@Jack McCabe Yeah the only problem I could see with it is that you would only want to deploy these counter measure once engaged, so it relies on you knowing when someone detects you.
Another excellent and educational episode! Also, I noticed at 24:13 you add the cast of "The Newsroom" such as Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, John Gallagher, Alison Pill, Thomas Sadoski, Dev Patel, Olivia Munn, and Sam Waterson, nice! :) And lastly, will you consider doing a video on space fighters?
I know what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving, your channel.
Weally, weally weally big lol love it
Tim Robinson I lost it at that point, it's great that he's aware of how it sounds & doesn't let it bother him. I don't mind it at all. Heck, I hear so much intelligent stuff presented with that accent that I associate the accent with intelligence.
Tim Robinson He actually said the R's that time, though.
He has a great sense of humor! All his #1 rules of combat. LMAO!!
I had a high school science teacher that sounded just like him. So yeah I am used to hearing intelligent sounding stuff in that voice.
i totally dig it. one question though, as this is my first video that i have seen of his, but where was he born? i can't tell if i'm hearing an accent lol.
You start talking about "dumb" weapons and Marines show up on screen... I'm so triggered. :)
What was your MOS in the army?
talk about call of duty kids thinking military is the shits.. typical over infatuation with military paraphanelia ...
Lufasu Mafalu
Please mind your manners.
I love the way you talk.
This channel has inspired me a lot. So much that I finally started my own channel to talk about the future of energy and technology.
I was unaware you served in the military. Thank you for your service sir o7.
Thanks, I thought I'd mentioned it before but maybe not, I generally abhor doing biographical stuff.
Could be you have and I just missed it or it was in a video I haven't seen yet :p. I'd actually be interested in a video on your background and experience though if you ever felt like doing one ;)
It's a common request, so I'll probably do it eventually, but I don't think it would make a good video.
"Decafinated troops may mutiny" hahahahahaha. that was brilliant
Sir Isaac Arthur, I like the sound of that.
4:33 with SpaceX largest rocket "Starship" we could launch a telescope many times the size of the James Webb Telescope, or a cluster of them, or only one double or triple the size of JWST the ability to replace damaged mirrors & with decades of on-board fuel.
Best series currently available for science!
Have you ever thought about making a video about artificial gravity (gravity wells) and what might be the potential applications of it.t
yeah he's talked about them quite a bit in his videos about colonization, I think he talks about them a lot in him interstellar colonization methods video, sorry I don't remember the exact name of the video :P
Dylansgames the rotating habitats video also covers simulated gravity.
Just sarted the video
looks like a good one
Yup
it is a good one (1 like)
AW HELL YEAH
Amazing video!!! As far as shields, a friend of mine came up with a great idea: high-energy plasma trapped by a magnetic field. I'm not sure if the plasma would actually remain trapped (perhaps the poles would need to switch continuously), and it would be like a donut or innertube if protection, meaning your poles would be exposed; but it is an interesting idea.
A coworker had an interesting idea.
Ships will always be expensive, so it would probably be more desirable to capture a ship rather than destroy it. So boarding actions might be more prevalent.
He suggested that flamethrowers used to consume all the oxygen in a ship might be common. However that would be easily countered with personal air supplies.
noooo! Go into deep details, this is the internet, if one does not have time to watch the whole video, one can pause and resume when one can. Don't limit yourself by some arbitrary time constraints, just because everyone thinks that only 5-8 minute videos are popular with millennials. Fuck em! =) Hm.. I guess I still am one, at a very back end but still a millennial (I think I'm spelling this wrong:)so see, not all of us are self absorbed, bastards with short attention span. Hm.. I do have the latter one though:). On the other hand, that was very self absorbed of me, so I just contradicted myself. I mean, yes I understand - I am, most probably, in a minority. So yes, logically, you, most probably, should limit the length of videos to attract more subscribers. You deserve lot's and lot's more. So that was a pretty useless comment, then, was it? =)
Lol, the time limits imposed by myself aren't really about subscribers, it's about producing a quality product on a time scale, longer videos take longer to make at the same quality, and it is basically linear.
Isaac Arthur
Ah, yea, didn't thought about this part ;) And that's why you should not listen to random idiots on the internet, because they are usually wrong ;)
They were right about it before though :) About a year and half a go I tried making shorter videos, I didn't like it but everyone advised it except my audience, so I went back to longer ones and noticed they always had way more likes, views, comments, shares, etc
Isaac Arthur that does not surprise me at all. Yes, I would agree, if you try to create a viral video, I would suggest keeping it quite short, but for almost anything else - it should be as long as it needs to be. At least for my taste;)
Isaac Arthur I'd say make it ad long as you want. if you feel one needs to be short then ok but you have stated soon many times that you couldn't get it to be with in 30 minutes the first scrip. sooooooo oooo make them long go into detail. we can tell that you love this and make this for others who loves this as wel.l so please if you enjoy making long videos please please please make them longer :). I love watching you're videos and some of them I know you wanted to make them longer so badly you can hear it in you're voice !!!! I'd do a poll on it and see how many people like them and only if you feel comfortable making longer videos. I have no clue how much time you can putt tord videos but hell you don't even monetize you videos so that alone tells us it's out of passion and not greed ! you draw in such a wonderful community as well .
Giant robots arn't practical war engines. But giant megastructures are totally legit and feasible.
I was very surprised to learn that you were in the military. No offense, but I figured you were a tubby nerdy dude.
That too, I really need to jog more, and the military is full of nerds, rolling around some 20-sided dice is good way to unwind between patrols.
@@isaacarthurSFIA abs are made in the kitchen! no sugar less carbs lots of protein. guaranteed results. we love ya either way tho.
The ratio of nerds to alpha males in the army might surprise you. Less than half (though it was a close half) of what I encountered was the alpha type. That may be because I'm a nerd, but that was my experience.
@@johntheherbalistg8756 I don't think those two are mutually exclusive, I've known plenty of nerds who have asserted their dominance...
... usually through T posing after rolling a nat 20 on an intimidation check...
I was a nerd/alpha and served proudly so Arthur is correct. I've been "Down Range", and even threw some 20 sided, 4 sided,10 sided, and 8 sided dice. Academic All American of my school along with 4.0 GPA in college. Not blowing my own horn here at all. I carry a few extra pounds and am working on social factors of declining historical civilizations and how it corilates to today... love your channel Arthur. Keep it up, and thanks for your service!
Isaac, could you please publish a list of your "Rule #1's" It seems to me they would be hilarious when combined! LOVE YOUR CHANNEL!
This must be the best channel on youtube I found so far... Absolutely love it
Thank you Michal!
8:50
Glad I wasn't drinking anything so I didn't spill on myself.
:)
"Weally, weally, weally big"! LOL!
Maybe you don't have a speech impediment but just a bad editor?
you speak clear enough
Yeah I wondered why the cylons were spending time eradicating humanity when no one had built a single Dyson sphere or swarm and 99.9999...% of galactic energy was radiating wastefully into space.
Hey Bill! Good to here from you. Anyway trying to figure out the motivations for anything that went on in BSG, classic or modern series, is usually a bad idea. There's a lot of 'Xanatos Pile Up' and crazy monkey logic in there.
LOVE THE TOPIC, LOVE THE VIDEO, LOVE YOUR WORK! I have no problem with the the audio, I understand it all and you did an amazing job, please keep it going until the day they(Alien) make first contact!
5:00 i would personally tell people to find a way to create a drive that uses the suns magnetic field to create a quantum locked state, then use that to move within a star system. Or use it to fling myself in a direction.
thanks for crushing all my dreams in the first 9 seconds,,,
"Turn on the Closed Captions you Wascally Wabbits" Immidiately liked! Hahaha!
I need logistics.
Metal
Food
Energy
Etc
I like your attitude towards space warfare. I really really like it.
I was planning on sleeping tonight, but then I found your channel full of dozens of half hour videos. Thanks in advance for my exhausted day at work tomorrow, Isaac. (my R's sound funny too, so I love your wascally wabbit CC notices)
Keep doing this, and make each video an hour. Because you're an actual fuckin' genius. We all love you Isaac!
Have you ever made a list of the rules of war, like "The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries"?
Available here: www.ovalkwiki.com/index.php?title=The_Seventy_Maxims_of_Maximally_Effective_Mercenaries
Would it be possible to remain concealed by clinging to a much bigger object than the ship, like asteroid of appropriate size and hoping that it will screen us from the enemy?
One could move such an asteroid with ship engines to intercept the enemy before he has a chance to detect the engine burn.
Michał Wojtas I think a rapidly accelerating asteroid that possibly makes course corrections would be suspicious, and even as fast as asteroids can move it would take a very long time to get where you are going if you are pretending to not be a spacecraft.
If there are people or operating machinery on the asteroid, or nuclear reactors, then it will glow in the infrared.
If it changes course, at all, even by magical cold reactionless tech, it will be instantly detected by radar. (Assuming there is a radar sensor network, which atm there is mostly not.)
If it uses any kind of engine that we can even imagine how to build, then it will probably be visible to the naked eye, let alone other sensors.
Even with a magical invisible engine, the power source would be visible as heat, and (in future) maybe as a neutrino source.
An asteroid big enough to hide all this stuff is hard to move, and requires bigger more visible engines and power sources - not a solution.
There is no stealth in space. I've tried too. Smarter people than I have tried. Smarter people than THOSE have tried. Extremely smart people with advanced educations in the relevant fields have tried. Yet there is still no stealth in space.
I think rule number one of combat is to only have one rule :P
The shrapnel cannons are my biggest concern. Seems so easy to accelerate a cloud of sand and send it at an enemy. Fast enough and it would cause significant damage.
IN DOGS IN SPACE, THEY ALSO HAVE MESON WEAPONS ON THEIR SHIPS WHICH CAN ALSO PASS-THROUGH FORCE FIELDS AND THEY HAVE MESON WEAPONS AS BLASTERS