/k/ - Weapons

No.

The ideal shape for a combat spacecraft is a gently tapered cone. It maximizes the effects of sloped armor, minimizes the cross section presented to the enemy, and ensures all your guns can fire at the same target.

Guns generate recoil/thrust bro, you’re gonna be bouncing all over the place in space trying to track a target in space

Also

>fighters

>not drone missles with more missles tacked onto them

>>605814

Would this all apply to non kinetic weapons? Sphere might be easier to turn with thrusters, though is the shape that important in space, with all the turning and stuff. I suppose shape would depend more on how are engines/rooms, especially storage ones are allocated.

>>605815

Lasers do not have recoil and are of more use in space.

>>605810

Sphere or hemisphere allows maximum surface area for placing of guns, but as >>605814 points out there are other considerations beyond that. A wedge or cone will work much better.

>>605818

Lasers do have some amount of recoil to them, albeit not much. There are several other problems inherent to them compared to kinetic weapons, however: inverse-square law means lasers lose energy over distance relatively quickly, and would need serious heat management on account of there being no convection currents in a vacuum, just the relatively slow radiation. Bullets by contrast will hold their energy more or less indefinitely until they hit something or gravity starts pulling on them from a direction opposite their motion. And while kinetic guns will heat up as well, they don't heat up as quickly as lasers would and as such would be easier to manage. The other thing with lasers is that they'll transfer energy to the target primarily through heat, and it's relatively easy to use ceramics and similar materials to disperse heat over a wide area and reduce its effects.

>>605818

>Lasers do not have recoil and are of more use in space.

>All space ships have considerable armor and considerable heat shielding/reflecting/absorbing systems.

>Let's use the one thing that won't work and will likely make the attacking ship explode from overheat.

Laser weaponry in space is about the stupidest there is.

Piston HEAT charges is where it's at.

Gently push it out of the ship for minimal recoil, explode shortly after at a safe distance from the ship, high explosive, shaped projectile meet no resistance and proceed toward enemy ship at a stupid speed.

>>605818

Cheap enough lasers are at best 20% thermally efficient, and that's pushing it. A combat laser, ruggedized, would be about 4-5% thermally efficient.

Meaning for 1kJ energy delivered into the enemy, you're stuck with 19kJ of thermal energy to get rid of on your ship.

It only makes sense if you're a ship, with access to an ocean of coolant, shooting at an airplane or missile, which has no coolant and lots of sensitive equipment.

>>605821

>inverse-square law means lasers lose energy over distance relatively quickl

Can you explain in a bit more detail? lasers are ineffective on earth because of air and, more importantly completely ineffective in rain or fog, but in open space they would be a lot better, as i understand it.

>Lasers do have some amount of recoil to them

Well this is almost non existent, you'd need to have huge surfaces and high intensity of the laser to reach even near the kinetic weapons' recoil. What is estimated surface required for a solar sail to do anything or earth's distance from the sun?

> Bullets by contrast will hold their energy more or less indefinitely

Lasers have a lot better velocity which is a lot more important with space distances.

>disperse heat over a wide area and reduce its effects.

The point is you need to lose heat effectively, not absorb it, which is a serious problem even if you made your ship out of diamonds.

>>605827

>considerable armor and considerable heat shielding/reflecting/absorbing systems

What other systems do spaceships have aside from heat sinks that allow to passive protection against heat. If faced with a proper heating they do not really have much to offer in terms of protection. Keeping liquid nitrogen on board for cooling, maybe?

>Piston HEAT charges

Unnecessary complexity, kinetic speeds and explosions near your ship?

>>605833

Isn't it easier to protect yourself from heating weapons then for the enemy to protect his hull?

>>605839

Ok, thanks for the info.

>>605839

>that diagram

Unlike a lightbulb a laser is a coherent beam of light which means it doesn't spread out over distance in that manner. However your points about waste heat are valid.

>>605842

A "true" laser wouldn't, but true lasers don't exist, for the same reason frictionless vacuums don't exist. Any laser you care to build will still slowly spread out over time and lose energy in the same way a conventional light source would.

>>605844

Its true that perfectly collimated beams do not exist in the real world but a properly designed and calibrated laser still can engage targets many thousands of kilometers away in space.

>>605831

A cylinder can't maneuver in every direction, or change direction instantly.

Should a 4 gauge shotgun be top loading or bottom loading? Would speed loaders like vid related work without those metal guides that would get in the way of loading loose shells. Maybe it can be removable.

>>605821

>inverse-square law means lasers lose energy over distance relatively quickly

They don't lose energy, the energy is just spread out. An important distinction(depending on the size of the target, of course).

>>605810

jesus christ this shit again

missiles are the only viable option for space warfare

space 'fighters' will exclusively be missile carriers

the only potential use for lasers & guns is point defense

>>605851

Something like the Soyuz would most likely be the first space fighter. Just replace the orbital module with something like a missile launcher or, as you mentioned, recoil-less guns.

Imagine the kind of gimballing you'd need to keep a laser focused on one square foot of hull at fifty thousand kilometers.

>>605857

Yes it can. This is space, there's no air resistance. A box, cylinder, sphere, or rhombus all have the same maneuverability. Especially if they are using gyros to turn, and in some cases (longer rectangles or cylinders) the length of the craft might actually help it turn if it used attitude thrusters.

Depending on what weapons are being used, it might not even have to turn. A missile will turn itself…

>>605836

Dubious. Even if so, why waste mass on it when you can have a weapon which works better?

If you want low recoil and miss rate, go with missiles. If you want low latency and miss rate go with a cannon. If you want low recoil and latency go with EFP.

As far as I'm concerned a starship would have all of those, an EWAR suite, decoys, and yes even a laser. If nothing else, it could be used for communication, power transfer to decoys, or blinding missile optics.

After this thread, I think the most cost effective way would be a fleet of drone cone head to directly ram enemy space station.

Only metal and engine required, cost efficient.

>>605922

Yeah, alright, not a bad idea. I have an idea to make it even more deadly; add explosives into the cones. The cost/damage ratio would be even better. And if you added a way to propel them and maneuver them, like a rocket or something, you could get up to insane speeds and adjust for any maneuvering the enemy makes. Wow damn, how has no one thought of this before, this is ingenious.

>>605928

The rocket is the engine, retard.

Going at high speed alone is enough, no need for explosive at all.

>>605930

A kilogram of industrially produced RDX costs $30-$50, plus markup. Impact fuses can be made in a kitchen for nothing. 100 bucks more than quadruples its effectiveness, and you're talking about cost effectiveness here spergook.

>>605931

As opposed to nothing with just hardened cone head and a high speed engine?

>>605932

How retarded are you? You're basically describing a missile capable of operating in space so you're already 100000+ in the hole per unit regardless of whether you put explosives in it, and you don't even have it up in space yet thats just the production cost.

Now to make an effective mass driver you need either lots of mass or lots of speed (meaning lots of fuel, meaning lots of mass) so its going to cost way more per unit than if you put a couple hundred dollars worth of boom juice in the damn thing to begin with.

>>605950

Not joking, anime has toyed with this idea i.e. the buster fleet in Diebuster.

>>605961

But the point is that there is no need for explosive, you still achieve penetration with the cone head.

>>605900

We have space telescopes that can keep steady for days so they can take pictures of distant galaxies. We can keep rotating a satellite in the same exact direction for months every orbit while it takes long exposure after long exposure.

I would say that we have the technology to focus a laser on a target that is within a few dozen earth radii.

>>605854

The best lasers can manage a meter-wide beam at around 100km. Even at those ranges, you'd need a laser capable of tens of megawatts to meaningfully damage a properly armored warship.

Lasers do have some value (being able to directly target specific points on the enemy vessel is always useful) but they're not the superweapon you think they are.

>>605922

It's not that bad of a concept. The main problem would be the propulsion: you'd need something with enough dV to reach the target at a suitably high speed and enough thrust/weight to perform terminal maneuvers, while also being cheap and light enough to be launched en masse.

>>606003

psst its easier to focus on things that are farther away

>>606009

>while also being cheap and light enough to be launched en masse.

This is after we build a dyson swarm and achieve FTL. Energy isn't an issue. Most of this shit would be built in orbit anyway

>>605831

Would they be called missiles or torpedoes?How do you distinguish the two in space?

>>606030

Depends if you're pretending you're an aircraft or a naval vessel that day. I always assumed torpedoes would be big, slow, and meant to be used against spacecraft that are also large enough to launch torpedoes. Whereas missiles would be smaller, more maneuverable, and meant for fighters and such if such designations would even mean anything in actual space combat, as opposed to sci-fi WWII with flashy lights.

>>605922

I call it the Space Knight Fleet, cuz this is basically knight maneuvering like in the Middle Ages.

>>606035

Maybe it could be determined on how big it is compared to the ship.

>>605878

What about loitering EFP munitions?

The ideal ship is a cone of reflective and ablative armor, scattered with PD and radiators, using casaba howitzer (nuclear EFP) missiles for expensive weapons, or railguns for cheap weapons.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php

>>605810

>Is a spherical craft with guns sticking out ever where the ideal space fighter?

No, the ideal shape for a space fighter or any space combat ship is going to be an pyramid or cone.

Manned fighters are not likely to be a thing outside of planetary policing though. Fighters require enough fuel to accelerate to the target, maneuver, return home, and decelerate for landing. Compare that to a disposable bot. If the bot has the same fuel capacity then it can go farther and get there faster, fight longer, pull harder turns, and doesn't need to be recovered. It's not as dramatic but it is smarter.

The ideal drone fighter would look like a cross between a Star Fury from B5 and a Viper from BSG. Thruster clusters mounted on booms (arms) sticking out from the main body in the rear with one more mounted in the nose to facilitate flips. The majority of the craft volume would be occupied by either fuel or reaction mass. There may or may not be a large central thruster in the rear of the craft but it may not be needed since the maneuvering thrusters may be capable of propelling it fine on their own.

There would be little point to mounting a laser on such a craft since the mother ship would be able to mount several lasers much larger and more powerful, and those lasers would be able to reach the target much faster than the fighter.

The weapons will likely be mostly nuclear tipped missiles with perhaps a single cannon for intimidation or precision work.

>>606030

We need entirely new names, none of the earth-based ones apply.

A space weapon is basically a small autonomous spaceship.

It's likely launched out of a cannon to about 2km/s.

After initial launch it boosts itself to 10km/s over a period of hours. Then it may coast for hours or days on a single orbit looking for enemies.

After that it would change direction or boost toward an enemy for hours.

Then it will coast toward the enemy location for a few hours.

And finally it will do minor maneuvers on approach to the enemy (approach equaling 1,000km).

When its sure enough, it will release a cloud of ball bearings and begin electronic warfare on the enemy, trying to confuse its radar system.

The weapon is hoping the enemy won't be able to locate the cloud of bearings with radar in time to evade.

Or if the enemy does evade successfully, at least it forced him to waste reaction mass maneuvering.

Reaction mass being water usually - a few such maneuvers will eventually cause the enemy to either kill himself of thirst/lack of air, or strand himself on a vector that can be easily bombarded.

What the hell do you call that?

It's a drone, shell, missile, mine, torpedo, flak, decoy.

Good luck describing it in one word.

>>606247

None of that is how anything works.

An object going 2km/s would not be able to sustain any earth orbit. But I'm guessing you mean launched out of something already in orbit; so if it's launched at 2km/s from something already in earth orbit the munition's orbit would then be elliptical. A 10km/s orbit is slightly above the standard height for commercial satellites of 7.5km/s, so with what you're describing it would slow itself down. It makes no sense to have a single patrolling munition compared to how it does and will work- a target is spotted, a carrier gets itself into effective range, a large number of missiles are launched and create an intercept vector, preferably in the exact opposite direction of the target so speeds are effectively doubled.

>>605878

Wrong

Semi-correct

Right and Wrong

Missiles will always be short ranged in space because in order to maneuver they will have to use thrusters meaning that any missile in space will be mostly thrusters and fuel. Compared to a missile on Earth that uses relatively little fuel and then glides towards target they will have virtually zero range.

Kinetics will be the long range weapon of choice as it's the only weapon viable at such ranges.

>>606278

Most likely scenario is you are on 400km altitude orbit, trying to hit someone on 500km orbit. Or vice versa.

Solid rocket fuel is not useful, those burn out in seconds and have no ability to engage or force the enemy to maneuver. Space weapons MUST be powered by ion or plasma thrusters. Nothing else will give you the ridiculous time and delta v necessary to change orbits.

Given that…. why wouldn't you give your missile an extra boost at the start with a cheapo CLGG launch? In fact you have to do it, if you want to give your weapons carrier ANY standoff range.

I don't understand most of your post, why does the weapon need a circular sustainable orbit??

>>606304

> Compared to a missile on Earth that then glides towards target

Do you have a brain tumor?

If your projectile cannot maneuver then it is regulated to distances where the enemy does not have time to react.

Missiles will intrinsically always have a larger range in space.

>>606315

>why wouldn't you give your missile an extra boost

If my goal was to immediately change its orbit you're right. But with that comes the caveats of being unable to launch multiple simultaneously and being unable to delay a launch, i.e having it float alongside you for a period of time.

>why does the weapon need a circular

It doesn't necessarily, but if your munition happens to be near the periapsis of its elliptical orbit when a target arrives, or not even 100% the periapsis, there's many more inconvenient places they could come in if you're elliptical, it would cost multiple times more delta-v and take longer to intercept.

>sustainable

You were talking about guided mines essentially, that sit in orbit for long periods of time.

>>605814

>gently tapered cone

With hemispherical back. Such back alone reduces RCS of cone by a factor of x100

>>606361

>mech trash again

I swear I keep seeing this image over and over. Limbs are shit compared to gyros, and there is no need to make an over-complicated design as with a mech.

>>606361

>What about mech? Limb movement allows free spining and direction facing without burning fuel.

You can get the same effect of spinning limbs with flywheels. Except the flywheel is more compact, easier to build and maintain, can house batteries or other components, and it isn't a stupid fucking mech leg. Mechs have never and will never make any kind of sense in any environment. Everything they can do can be done better and cheaper by something else that already exists.

>So Star Destroyer?

Yeah, that basic shape is right. The internal layout is all wrong and the weapons are a joke, but it's for pew-pew space opera, not hard SF.

>>606365

The engine placement of the N1 makes them unstable and needlessly expose the pilot to exhaust hazards.

>>605950

You would want manned fighters because completely unmanned weapons is a bad idea. It fucks up and everyone dies including you. If the enemy can hack it you're in an even worse state.

It's super easy to threaten enemies in space. They have no way to get into cover. If you have any way to target them they're pretty much fucked. Space ships are not going to be small fighters, they're going to be colony ships of sorts. They will be equipped with rail guns because it's super effective to throw small objects at hyper speeds in order to cause nuclear weapon tier destruction. Especially when you can pick up an asteroid and it requires minimum processing to launch out the guns.

>>606398

Limbs are incredibly useful things to have. In space where weight isn't an issue limbs may end up being the optimal option for weaponry.

>>606316

The gun launcher is a self contained concept, you can take the weapon and push it away from the ship, it will work just as well. That's why thinking of it as a missile or a shell is silly, it's so many different things.

>that sit in orbit for long periods of time.

Nah it's just a fact that it takes days to change an orbit, anywhere from an hour to a day in the Earth-Moon system. Then, once the orbit is changed, it doesn't mean the enemys orbit is at the same angle, so you have to wait in that orbit until you can spot the enemy, after which another boost is required to catch him.

2km/s will change a lot of orbits, the extra ion boost is needed to actually turn to attack an enemy while both the weapon and the enemy are in the same orbit, or to escape and kill an enemy on approach to the planet.

>>606398

It's the same faggot who reposts it in every space thread.

>>606361

>Limb movement allows free spining and direction facing without burning fuel.

And just how the fuck do you power the limb movement? Do you think its just magic like in your fucking korean cartoons?

>>606417

What material is the railgun going to be made out of? Magic metal?

>>606417

Space combat isn't in visual range, you can't point at a guy and want him gone.

The very nature of space instead means you have to rely on munitions that are so incredibly smart, they're comparable to a manned fighter.

It's less "shoot that guy in front of us!" and more "find where that guy is and kill him tomorrow!"

>It's super easy to threaten enemies in space. They have no way to get into cover.

Neither does an asshole mooning me from across the valley, but if he's 800m away and all I have is a shitty 5.56 with 3MOA accuracy…. he's got plenty of cover. Space is all about range and range presents its own difficulties especially when your bullets have to travel for hours at "point blank" range.

A railgun is completely useless, it is not cheap to have to carry around dozens of replacement barrels because each is only good for a few shots. Or to carry hundreds of tons of capacitors and reactors and thousands of tons of coolant just to use this inefficient system of launching a dumb rock at an enemy that can evade with a freaking solar sail. I don't know where you got a hardon for railguns but my suggestion is to do equations in your head.

>>606409

Yes, but you're forgetting one thing.

A E S T H E T I C

>>606237

>The ideal drone fighter would look like a cross between a Star Fury from B5 and a Viper from BSG.

The closest thing to that may be the B5 Thunderbolt fighter, which has some damn fine aesthetics as well. I always liked the White Star, which is probably the only other fictitious spaceship with looks as sweet as the Naboo starfighter. The whole concept of the White Star as a medium cruiser that handles practically like a heavy fighter or gunship was amazing, and a picture of it should be posted so people who haven't seen it can salivate.

>>606408

https://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nebula-class_Star_Destroyer

Here's a version of the Star Destroyer that comes from the Expanded Universe. It fixes many of the Imperial-class's design flaws, particularly the exposed bridge tower.

>Mechs have never and will never make any kind of sense in any environment. Everything they can do can be done better and cheaper by something else that already exists.

You might never have traditional mecha in a military setting due to the complexity of the hardware, but you could have traditional military vehicles like tanks and fighters acquiring more mech-like traits. You could even have an all-environment mech-like vehicle that transforms into different forms to negotiate different areas, but it probably wouldn't look humanoid.

>>606439

Did you miss the entire point that space ships won't be small manned craft like our ships are? They're going to be absolutely massive. There's no reason to make a ship to travel between worlds that isn't self sustaining, it's just too dangerous where failure kills you. Think closer to Star Trek than Star wars.

>>606465

Helicopter maintenance and aircraft maintence is on par with a mech's maintenance once you get past the baby stage we're at now.

>>606516

You sure are angry at people for discussing military use mechanical machines. It's almost like tanks exist and small robots are already seeing military use in bomb disposal/rescue missions.

>>606514

At even orbital ranges a ship the size of new york city can easily avoid a fucking railgun shot, because it would take four hours for the bullet to reach it. And that's assuming the projectile even hits…. if its built like the space station the railgun shot might go clean through without touching anything, or might just depressurize a minor section.

You still have not addressed:

>A railgun is completely useless, it is not cheap to have to carry around dozens of replacement barrels because each is only good for a few shots. Or to carry hundreds of tons of capacitors and reactors and thousands of tons of coolant just to use this inefficient system of launching a dumb rock at an enemy that can evade with a freaking solar sail. I don't know where you got a hardon for railguns but my suggestion is to do equations in your head.

>>606523

<Technology doesn't advance so it's always going to exactly as it is now.

>>606530

Honestly I don't know how people can as stupid as you are and not realize it. If I was as dumb as you are I'd kill myself. Tell me, how would tech advancements solve this problem of 'it cannot maneuver'. Oh, of course, because it's completely non descript and unprovable you can say they're gonna make a $1 FTL drive and put it in the shell.

>>606514

>Helicopter maintenance and aircraft maintence is on par with a mech's maintenance once you get past the baby stage we're at now.

Helicopter maintenance and the maintenance of high-performance jets like the F-22 costs a pretty penny, so your mech had better do enough to justify it, or else it has to have a unique capability like a helicopter's ability to linger over a target and perform VTOL. My faith in the power of a true mech, as opposed to a conventional vehicle with mech-like qualities, is stronger than that of many here. Unfortunately, the designs of the mecha theorists of today are still too focused on replacing existing aircraft and ground vehicles when they should be focused on carving out a new role for mecha. A mech is going to be to other vehicles like a chopper is to a jet. Both are aircraft, but the similarities of the two types of craft are far outweighed by their differences.

>>606519

>If I call my dick a military use liquid dispenser

I think I'm going to start calling my dick this.

>>606523

The best use for a railgun on a spaceship would be for a ship designed especially for orbital bombardment. It'd be totally worthless in ship-to-ship combat. Missiles will be the bulk of a space cruiser's weapons. Lasers will only have any use for point defense. If you want a weapon for space battle cruisers that approximates machine guns, you're probably looking at a rapid-fire particle cannon because recoil will be a much greater concern than with a maritime naval ship, meaning your projectile has to be a hell of a lot smaller and lighter if you want to get it up to a speed where it would be useful in space combat. Particle cannons have the potential for their projectiles to reach high relativistic velocities.

>>606530

This post is so meaningless it hurts. In a thread where discussion is about potential weapon systems based on what we know and already possess/research, positing a system that relies exclusively on vague handwaved miracle technology with no particular research or developments provided to back up the possibility of them existing is useless. You might as well claim that this super science will make it possible to generate portals directly to the heart of suns within the enemy spaceship and render all ballistics useless because it's not as if "Technology doesn't advance so it's always going to be exactly as it is now."

>>606604

>>606604

An Imperial admiral would tell you that the solution to this is to just not get flanked. It's true that Star Destroyers are much more limited from the sides and especially from the rear, but Star Destroyers carry 72 TIE fighters and various other ships. Star Destroyers have a much better chance in a realistic space combat environment than most Rebel capital ships. If you support a Star Destroyer squadron with some good frigates and light cruisers, you can fix the flaws of their wedge design. Every ship is going to have something it's not good at, and you need to think in terms of how a fleet of ships would operate to cover for each other's weaknesses instead of focusing exclusively on individual ships.

>>606628

You might not have space marines using lasers or plasma swords, but cool exosuits have a very good chance of happening, so it's not a total loss.

>>605810

space fighters will be shaped either for maximum agility or to be as stealthy as possible

until we come up with some exotic energy superweapons the only truly viable weapon in space will be missiles so the biggest priority will be placed on detecting and accurately tracking hostiles while not getting hit yourself

nobody will bother with armor because a collision from a missile at 0.05c will instantly fuck up any size of ship

>>606667

Stealth in space is impossible. Your heat signature will be obvious.

>>606530

I'm sorry but railguns are NEVER going to improve enough to be a viable weapon.

2,000 years from now when railgun shots are traveling at mach 100, there's going to be some cheapo particle beam weapon which fires the same energy value at .98c.

Just drop the hardon, do what you're told for once. Think of the queen.

>>606538

>particle cannon

Exactly.

>>606646

It doesn't even have to use external thrusters, those waste reaction mass. Modern satellites use torque attitude control. Basically they use a servomotor to spin a heavy weight within the satellite in order to turn it in the opposite direction with the torque.

>>606426

>And just how the fuck do you power the limb movement?

Traditional power sources. To move in space you need to expel mass as there's nothing to push on, but all your internal power could be done the same way modern ships are done. That is realistic space flight 101.

>>606930

Are you being ironic?

This has just turned into a retard containment & fantasy thread.

>>606714

Solid projectile railguns are retarded granted but plasma railgun are a thing.

>>606945

>Being so retarded you don't even understand the concept of analogy and exemplification

You must have a list of illustrated instructions reminding you how to breathe hanging from your wall because this level of stupidity is unfathomable.

>>606930

Let me explain this in terms that your retarded monkey brain can understand.

Changing direction in atmosphere is cheap. You point your missile's aerodynamic surfaces in the right direction, and your 300m/s forward speed is turned into 250m/s of lateral speed for no fuel cost.

Changing direction in space is really fucking expensive. In order to turn a missile around you have to first stop completely, which costs just as much fuel as it did to get up to speed in the first place, then spend that same amount of fuel a third time to get back up to speed. The end result is that you close at probably a third of the speed of a missile that you launched directly at the target.

>>606935

>You're also use arbitrary numbers for the total number of weapon placements in that picture you fucking strawmanning nigger.

The total number of guns is arbitrary you retarded chimp. It doesn't fucking matter if the ship has 12 guns or 120000 or 2, as long as they're evenly distributed the geometry is the same.

>You bitch about people analoguing space combat to naval combat yet you exemplify your "point" by confining spaceship combat to a 2 dimensional scenario. In case you've forgotten, you can spin a spaceship in 3 different axis at will

The ship either facing you or perpendicular to you. Whether the enemy is pointing up or to the side makes absolutely no difference.

>this is a fucking problem for wedge-shaped ships because it exposes more of their surface area if you turn them sideways to point all of its available guns at the enemy

What the fuck are you even talking about? The cone and wedge layouts have all guns facing forward, that's their entire fucking purpose.

>>606930

What prevents my ship from turning as well?

Or firing on the missile that actually slows to zero relative speed at one point?

What prevents my ship from firing on your ship from over 2x the range, because for some reason your stupid missile wasted half its fuel turning, and thus your weapons have less than half the range of mine?

>>606935

>accuses me of two dimensional thinking

>misses the fact that I'm comparing cones to spheres

>he compares flat 2D wedges to spheres and cylinders

That's pretty fucking funny.

YOU ARE DUMB.

>>606970

You weren't being ironic.

Jesus Christ.

Please read any book about orbital mechanics. Play any game with orbital mechanics. For fucks sake, watch a Youtube video about orbital mechanics. You are dumb, get out of the thread until you even have a slight clue about what you're talking about.

>>606972

>orbital mechanics

We're explicitly talking about space combat away from orbit. This entire fucking thread is about outer space combat, you fucking dumbass. Pay attention. Or even better, just stop posting.

>>606982

Oh, so combat multiple lightyears outside the solar system? That would exasperate the point even more. Point to where in the op it says this anyhow you braindamaged chimpanzee.

>>605842

Ever heard of uncertainty principle? If all particles shared identical momentum (direction and wavelength, i.e. perfectly coherent) then location would be undefined, as if the photons were outside of the universe. Therefore any laser beam would diverge at least a little. Practical tightly focused laser beams diverge by a few centimeters for every kilometer, making them unusable at space warfare distances.

>>606988

The entire idea that a rocket would burn the whole time is retarded. You get maybe 1 minute worth of fuel, that's nowhere near enough to reach the enemy in space. Because the rocket would definitely miss by a wide margin at that distance and will have to adjust trajectory radically during approach, the idea that you wouldn't need to slow down near enemy is retarded. Because missile can accelerate at 50g and you'd be lucky to get 5g out of your battleship, the idea that it can somehow outrun a missile is pants on the head retarded.

>>607016

Any ship with a spinal mounted gun is going to be good because it's easy to integrate that into a cone or wedge design. Even though it's a more efficient use of space to make a cone design, I could see a wedge design being used for ships that can operate either in space or in atmosphere. The wedge has the potential to be used as a flying wing, which the cone can't do.

>>606336

>400 years in the future, interstellar humanity

>israel

>reformed soviet union

>space arabs buying old weapons from ussr

What is this, cold war in space? No nation lasts that long.

>>607043

Now there's a nightmare of a ship you wouldn't want to meet in a dark space alley. IIRC the Eclipse has the only spinal mounted gun in all of Star Wars except one Zann Consortium ship from Empire at War and the Death Star superlaser, if you want to count that.

>>607075

Plasma and ion thrusters are so slow that an NTR-equipped vessel could easily just sidestep them (a 20m/s burn half an hour from intercept puts you well outside any ion rocket's maneuvering envelope), and any practical plasma thruster has at best around 2-4 times the specific impulse of a typical NTR (~15-25km/s vs. 6-8km/s) so don't get any funny ideas about out-enduring your enemy.

>>607129

NTR is fine once we figure it out, the point is that it won't be a freakin' chemical rocket.

>>607075

Check out my awesome rocket design: it's a normal chemical rocket. My ship's rocket launcher shoots it at several kilometers per second. Then it just coasts because your ebin ion engines can't maneuver for crap anyway. Once in few tens of miles range, it does a trajectory adjust burn and hits you no matter what kind of maneuvering you were to try even if that's using powerful chemical engines, nevermind low impulse crap like ion engines.

>>607131

You're Canadian, NTR should come naturally to you.

>>607182

Chemical rockets are gay as fuck. Use ion thrusters to get the missile a safe distance from the ship beofre firing the fission thrusters

>>607075

>ion/plasma

they're as effective as blowing air in the opposite direction you want your ship to go. fucking electromagnetic propulsion has better chances than your meme ideas

stupid-ass leaf

>>607182

Low impulse engines are ideal for small craft, increasing their dV significantly compared to a chemical rocket and its fuel taking up the same amount of space. Seeing how missiles themselves don't need fast propulsion like they do in atmosphere and are more limited by range I would probably expect some type of low impulse engine missile to exist in the future. Terminal guidance could solved by an extremely small amount of reaction control monopropellant that could feasibly use the same fuel as the main engine.

>>607031

Damn, turns out Warhammer 40K has realistic design.

Space Marine when?

>>607182

>>607172

>>607129

OK since you seem to understand a bit more, I was talking about delta v and trying to simplify it. Sorry if the oversimplification confused some. But this guy >>607188 can just go fuck himself because he doesn't even understand what ion propulsion is.

The point is that the type of engines used in space combat for ships or weapons both have to be equivalent to the engines we are researching (or in production) currently for planned mars missions. And this includes wars in the earth-moon system because you need a similar delta v budget for all of this.

The JUICE mission uses about a dozen engines, most of which are some variant of ion propulsion - polarized particle fuel accelerated by electromagnet.

>>607184

I knew my wife and my wifes son were spending too much time in the sauna.

>>607190

S P A C E F O R C E

P

A

C

E

F

O

R

C

E

>>607190

>>607232

Too bad that we wont have nuclear-powered spaceships as the international law prohibits carrying out any nuclear explosion on the ground and in the atmosphere since the '60s.

>>607232

NPP is most effective in the atmosphere, where the atmosphere confines the nuke blast and cushions the spacecraft. In space you're better off with z-pinch drive if that's what you want…. bit expensive/wasteful for a military ship drive.

Also this is verging on scifi shit because we're talking current tech in the thread, and best current tech is something like vasimr or hall effect.

>>607251

The part about working better in an atmosphere is doubtful and I wonder if you can prove that. Other rockets don’t work better in atmosphere despite having air to “push off of”. It’s particularly bad in NPP’s case because the pusher plate would be built to the exact specifications needed to survive thrust in a vacuum, to save mass (obviously). Adding the stipulation that it also be required to resist an air blast many times more forceful would increase the structural requirements of the plate along with the rest of the ship’s exterior.

>>607260

NPP bears no similarity to "other rockets", although altitude does affect the thrust of rocket engines for different reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altitude_compensating_nozzle

The overpressure in any chemical explosion comes mostly from the actual constituent elements of the explosive moving outward in a rapid fashion and very minimally from heating the air around it. The overpressure in a nuke comes entirely from radiation superheating the air, the elements of the nuke itself aren't the explosive part. tl;dr for a nuke less air = less explosive force.

Using NPP in space is really more like using a solar sail than a pogo stick on a bomb. In fact in order to get any useful thrust in space using NPP you have to coat the push plate in something ablative, so the radiation will superheat a layer of the push plate and cause the layer of push plate to explode. It's very wasteful.

>>607265

Nuclear shaped charges don’t only create radiation, they use a neutron reflector to vaporize filler material into a jet that hits the pusher plate at a large fraction of the speed of light within microseconds. That’s a lot of kinetic energy without air as a transfer medium. And where does that atmospheric gas in the jet’s path go? Not a nuclear physicist but my guess is from high temp/pressure to lower temp/pressure: tangentially to the direction of the jet, i.e. not into the pusher plate.

As for air acting as a cushion, that’s the hydraulic suspension system’s job. Any cushioning effect imposed by air is just drag you want to avoid.

>>607297

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/radiators.html

In reality heat management in space is relatively easy compared to other challenges. I could see PD lasers targeting radiators or solar panels opportunistically, though. They present a weak spot.

>>607288

>>607297

So not only are we bringing up untested technology but napkin shit that hasn't even been designed properly.

Why not just hang create and destroy a bunch of black holes in front of the spaceship? You'll accelerate a lot faster.

>>607302

What the fuck?

>>607232

For bonus points, add some bomb pumped lasers into the mix.

Throw out bundles of disposable laser rods with each nuke. Gamma rays from the nuke power the lasers, which get off one good shot before being destroyed in the blast.

>>607302

Would ion cannons have a better result than particle cannons? Quantum effects become negligible at distances above 100 nm, so ions have to act more like bullets, wouldn't they?

>>607302

Would ion cannons have a better result than particle cannons? Quantum effects become negligible at distances above 100 nm, so ions have to act more like bullets, wouldn't they?

>>607335

An "ion cannon" is just a particle accelerator using ionized atoms. We are not living in a sci-fi book anon, particle accelerators take a tremendous amount of energy and absolutely flawless manufacturing. Thus they are retardedly expensive while still having similar, usually even more extreme versions issues of lasers, such as diffusion over distance and ease of defendability compared to mundane missiles. They superheat things; like lasers. This was actually the focus of a US study called "Beam Experiments Aboard a Rocket", go figure, wherein they tested a legitimate ion cannon, a particulate accelerator using ionized hydrogen atoms. Here's a quote:

>The results of this analysis indicate that the beam divergence remained at 1 ± 0.3 mrad, at least out to about 1 km, which was the effective range

>>607335

>>607336

Thats true but sometimes you WANT quantum effects. An electron particle weapon can for example quantum tunnel through surfaces of armor before braking radiation caused it to damage it in completely weird ways. In fact its practically impossible to armor against it.

>>607352

> impossible to armor against it

Except with 1cm of garden variety ceramics or aerogel

>>607352

The real advantage to using charged particles like protons or electrons is that when they collide with a metal surface they cause x-rays to be emitted from the material as they move through. It's how medical x-ray machines work. It's also why radioactive material glows blue in water.

>>607354

You are dumb.

>>607357

Do you unironically think that "electrons" can spontaneously "quantum tunnel" through things on impact? It's like reading something a 5yr/o dreamed up in his head.

>>607359

No, tunneling occurs at the very surface level of the armor, the particle doesn't go all the way through it and i never said that. Why don't you go stand in an open field during a thunderstorm with a metal rod and a cube of aerogel you fucking faggot.

You. Are. Dumb.

>>607300

In reality, none of the spacecraft in use today carry nuclear reactors and military lasers. Your argument is invalid.

>>605827

>all space ships have considerable armor

Armor = weight. For the forseable future, everything in space is going to be as light as possible, to the point of being made out of toothpick-sized structural elements and a skin the thickness of foil.

Also, armor does very little against anything that causes thermal damage, especially in the vacuum of space, where thermal dissipation is extremely low.

>and considerable heat shielding/reflecting/absorbing systems

For heat shielding, see my statement on armor. For heat dispersal, you've got only radiation, as conduction and convection don't work in space. So you either have radiators the size of a sizable asteroid, or you have very little thermal dissipation capability.

At the end of the day, lasers are a stupid space weapon for the reason >>605833 mentions. They're sub-50% thermally efficient, so by the time you've pumped enough energy into the enemy spacecraft to destroy it, you've long since destroyed your own spacecraft.

>>607366

Then it doesn't defeat armor then. Lay off the diversity cock, do some research, and go to bed for school.

>>607341

So it's basically just as bad as a laser if not worse as far as beam coherence goes. I originally brought the particle cannon up just to have a future weapon that approximates a machine gun because some other people were talking about it, but it's too bad that it's so similar to a laser in terms of its problems. My thought was that you could get a weapon that fulfilled roughly the same purpose as a laser but with more efficiency. It's probably all the same in the end though. I doubt that a space cruiser could ever actually hit another ship with anything but missiles in 99% of situations anyway.

>>607372

How strong does a magnet have to be to be able to reliably alter the course of a charged particle beam enough to stop it from hitting the ship's armor, or at least to make it impact the armor at a shallow angle? We're going to have to do some math for that, because you're looking at particles going at a substantial fraction of c.

>>607372

No you cant, any field you could generate to block a beam would have to be pulsar sized, even the earths magnetic field only gently curves beams which is something an attacker can easily compensate for when firing on a field source. Problem 1 you cant make a powerful enough field.

A weaker field YOU generate, weak enough not to damage your electronics, would deflect maybe 10% of the beam and actually attract ions near the poles and suck them in.

The best armor for electron beams would be some hull plating thats metallic and conductive, very thick, and then jettison the hot/radioactive armor plating.

>>607373

Quantum tunneling provides the bite factor which is crucial to defeating armor. Otherwise all you get is minor heating and the beam bounces off.

>>607409

Ant charged beam is going to create a self stabilizing magnetic field as it travels, like why wires with current going through them will have magnetic fields. This is enough confinement for a very long range indeed, from a hairs widty beam you might get to football sized at normal engagement ranges (50,000km).

Also neutral particle beams are a thing if you want to hit a ship orbiting mars from a ship orbiting earth.

Btw all this talk of particle beams is just to shut up the railgun baby with his 2000 years from now mach 1000 magical railgun. Particle beams arent tested as weapons and the discussion is useless in the thread (except wherever i go i keep tripping over uneducated nitpicking autists)

>>607366

>I never said that

<An electron particle weapon can for example quantum tunnel through surfaces of armor

You might miss your bedtime anon, mommy might find you up and put you in the time-out chair. Wouldn't want to loose dessert, would you anon.

>>607368

Well nuclear reactors sure, but that presents a whole fuckton of issues besides heat management. And again there have been tests done with 'military lasers', and albeit 4min long, none of the one's I've checked out list heat damage as a potential risk. The solution is big ass folding radiators.

>>607437

Jesus christ he's still going at it

The entire point of 'quantum tunneling' is that it doesn't leave a mark on whatever barrier it hits and a tiny, tiny fraction of electrons still get through and then dissipate after ten nanometers. Make up your mind, does it magically teleport the beam through or does it magically melt armor faster than a laser? You can't even stay consistent inside your fantasy universe.

>>607447

He is probably talking about the tendency for electron beams to create bremsstrahlung when they hit a piece of dense material. Which isn't even quantum tunneling, as far as I know.

>>607232

Nuclear propulsion sets a minimum size limit on your vessel, due to minimum size of propellant "pellets". An anti-ship missile is about an order of magnitude below that.

>>607189

High delta V not gonna worth a damn if it takes 3 months to actually get there. An attack missile is a type of vessel that needs high impulse to do sharp maneuvering, dV be damned.

>>607466

>they're yuge targets to hit

the radiators are yuge and easy targets to hit

>radiator's

radiators

polite sage for triple post

>>607466

>>607447

>surface

>completely through armor

Might not want to call other people children until you learn to read mate.

>>607449

First they quantum tunnel, then they produce braking radiation. Ctrlf braking radiation I mentioned it seperately earlier.

If there was no quantum tunneling, such as with an atomic beam (hydrogen atoms), at oblique angles you get more bouncing off.

Im going to draw a diagram later.

>>607466

Collapsable armored radiators are a must. Radiator struts must be convertible into emergency droplet radiators backing the main radiators up. Pieces of hull armor should be designated heat sinks and capable of being jetissoned as a backup backup. There must be a bypass which permits reaction mass to be pumped directly into the reactor as a backup backup backup. And finally reactor must be capable of being jetisonned, preferably on a roman candle of death aimed at the enemy, in case of total overheat as a backup backup backup backup.

There are probably a few backups Im forgetting.

>>607537

Why use ice when there's plenty of things floating around that are far denser, harder, and stronger like stone or metal. It's not like you have to worry about weight as much since you're in space.

>>607552

High Specific Heat. Water is fucking king when it comes down to absorbing energy, not so much for metal.

>>607559

Ice can work as ablative armor.

>>607372

Is that a glocknade?

>>605810

No.

The best space fighter would be a simple rod. Big gun up front, low profile for return fire.

Depending on if you bother to armor it, or need to expand the outer area, you can cone it, but, basically, you want the front towards the enemy, with as small a profile as possible.

>>607524

>cpg

Is this from a video game?

>>607598

What makes you say that normally big engines in the back make no sense? Every reasonable spacecraft design ever conceived of has big engines in the back, with the exception of solar sails or some interstellar ships that use a pull configuration. You would need to come up with a very good reason to do anything but a single large engine mounted on the centerline.

>>607708

Engines in the back is putting the cart before the horse, meaning that the spaceship has to be made rigid in order to distribute force properly. If the engines are in the front, then the spacecraft structure doesn't have to be rigid, it can be floppy. This means you're relying on tensile strength of materials, not compressible, which means ~70% weight savings.

It's the same reason modern bridges are suspension bridges, suspending them saves a lot more on weight than building rigid structures would.

I think it's a bad idea because it limits maneuverability, and also your spacecraft has to be rigid anyway because of armor mass.

>>607709

Horses don't emit 10 million degree radioactive exhaust that the cart has to slog through. And staying out of that plume requires design compromises that turn the ship into a kilometers-long ribbon you can't even see. Like I said, only good for an interstellar ship that drives in a straight line for years.

People want nice, firm, rigid spaceships. Not floppy ones.

>>607715

Not disagreeing with you or attacking you, just answering a question. I'm one of these people who enjoys a rigid tough spaceship, especially for war… and I did also mention the issue with maneuverability. It might make sense for certain supply vessels, probes and AKV weapons to be in pull configurations.

>>607537

Water is heavy, especially for its strength. If you want it for radiation shielding against alpha, beta, and neutron then you're better off with wax since it's got more hydrogen per molecule, is about as heavy for the same volume, and has higher melting and boiling points.

If you want to shield against gamma or have some structure to your ship, then you will need lead for shielding, and steel for structure. You might be able to get away with a lot of carbon fiber for the structure, but the only substitutes for good ol' Pb as gamma shielding are actinides like Uranium, and that has its own handling issues.

>>607865

A nuclear shape charge has never been tested, even the napkin designs are basically napkin tier. The only test ever done for NPP was someone throwing teaspoons of C4 out of a trash can sized target.

The thread is mainly for current tech.

>>607960

I dream of Casaba Howitzers.

>>608078

>it's just a bomb with propellant mass on one side

That is a "nuclear shaped charge". Because of how fast a nuclear explosion is, the cup shape is unecessary, as are special metals.

The tamper material can be just some lead or some other heavy material, and just a cone of it needed.

>>608327

What do the words “radiation case” mean to you?

>>607043

>if the cannon wasn't off-center

It isn't, that's just a problem with the perspective. It also has a 90 degrees firearch.

>conning tower

It's even funnier than that, because that is supposed to be the bridge.

>>608327

OK you are really rude for no reason.

I don't know if something bad is happening in your life, if you're stressed, but that's no reason to take it out on fellow kommandos.

breaking news, I guess. NASA not allowed to look at the sun.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-15/mysterious-observatory-evacuation-stirs-foreign-power-spying-us-missile-base

Does anybody know about this? What reasons would they have to shut down this telescope aside from spaceships?

>>608527

It probably has something to do with the fact that they're right next to a huge missile test range.

>>608539

>>you disagree with me

>>THAT MUST MEAN YOURE A KIKE DEMON

When comming from the regulars in here that is likely to be a fact.

>>608553

I was here before any hungarian flag showed up. In fact I remember giving boners about rifle grenades, light tanks and CAS/COIN to a hungarian.

This guy is probably just stressed in real life.

>>608527

It's just one observatory.

That's negligible as far as aerospace surveillance goes, not only because astronomical telescopes, espec. solar ones are useless for such purposes.

The FBI involvement was probably some unrelated issue.

>>607960

>NPP and Orion are the same thing

No you nigger, they aren't. NPP/Nuclear Thermal refers to strapping a nuclear reactor ontop of a pipe full of hydrogen (or any other propellant) to heat it up and use it to push the ship forwards. Orion chucks an unidirectional nuke out the back to shove a shitton of force onto a pressure plate which kicks the ship forwards. Both use nuclear energy to make a thing go fast, but they're both very different

>A nuclear charge has never been tested

But we have, and we even have video evidence: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/67684

embed related

>the only test ever done for NPP was someone throwing teaspoons of C4 out of a trash can sized target.

<what is NERVA

<what is project rover (https://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue1_2011/story4a.shtml)

Did flags get disabled, or is that just me?

>>606604

Flanking isn't a thing in space. All your weapons pointed in one direction is actually a pretty good thing. Imagine having half your weapons unable to engage any given target.

The Star Destroyer is a bad design, but not because of the wedge shape. The conning tower is the biggest weakness. Even if you needed the shield/sensor domes up that high (if that's really what those are) you wouldn't put the command bridge up there.

>>606629

If you fire a missile into my exhaust plume I'm going to laugh at you over all frequencies.

>>606714

>Never going to be a viable weapon

Let me know when we have perfect mirrors with zero attenuation. Oh wait, that literally cannot physically happen.

>>606426

>Fuel

I think you mean reaction mass. Fission or fusion fuel is effectively limitless for any actual combat mission.

>>606523

>Spend all your reaction mass and heat buffer trying to avoid tiny rocks which would core you if you didn't keep moving your enormous ship to compensate for the fact that I can see where you are at all times and exactly what your velocity is.

If you can overcome inertia and thermodynamics, you might get away with that.

>>606667

>Space fighters

There will never be anything like that. It'll be drones.

>Muh jamming

Everyone is going to be jamming each other as much as possible at all times. Missiles and drones are still going to work based on internal guidance systems.

>>606930

This doesn't work in space. Every m/s of DV you pump into going in one direction is another m/s you have to push in the opposite direction to turn around. If you fly past my ship with your missile, you need to burn as much fuel to stop and then start again. You don't know this because you're a brainlet. There's no atmosphere to take advantage of. Also, if you fire a missile from directly behind me, the drive exhaust will atomize it long before it can do anything useful. Good job.

>>607297

Finally, someone who gets it.

>>607300

Uh, no. You know those gigantic concrete towers they have at nuclear plants? That's to cool the reactor in the atmosphere. Now try doing that in space.

>>608078

>Parallel.

If those were actually radiators they'd be heating each other up and frying the pilot in a giant convection oven.

This thread is full of morons who know nothing about space travel, physics or space warfare. There's a few of you who aren't complete retards though.

>>608924

> have video evidence

This is C4 powered scale model not nuke powered full vehicle.

There is Russian paper on this matter. Basically this nuclear shaped charge is ultimate weapon. Its shockwave propaganates too fast that no conventional amortization system work at this pressures and velocity. For the wave ship would act as solid object with compression shockwave going along its length destroying everything. As solution to this paper suggests making amortization system of hundred meters of layers of oil mist suspended between craft and shaped charge. This mist should be carefully aligned with increasing density towards craft. You can imagine difficulties of making this work in the real word. So no Oion is a little bit more tricky than slapping plate on spring to the cabin. And no working craft was ever tested. Casaba howitzer most probably was and is in the nuke arsenals.

>>608924

>nuclear pulse propulsion isn't the same thing as nuclear pulse propulsion

>nuclear pulse propulsion is the same thing as a nuclear thermal rocket

Please stop.

>>608925

Please go back to Reddit and stay there.

>>608943

>RORSAT

>2 kilowatts of power

Wow.

You are the retard here. Do you have any idea what kind of power you'd need to have a feasible spaceship capable of firing lasers or moving at any thing fast enough for any sort of reasonable combat out of a single orbit? An open-cycle gas core engine has an exhaust temperature around 5000 degrees Fahrenheit. Most of that is going out the rocket bell, but you still need to vent the waste heat, which is going to be significant (This is a 3000 to 4000 MEGAwatt power output, by the way. 2 Kilowatts is nothing.)

Anyways, shut your cock hole and stop posting about things you've never even read about, much less grasp in the slightest.

>>608951

>Muh reddit

Ah, the sweet cry of the buttblasted with no real reply.

>>608972

Honestly it's just funny reading your post and seeing you having this flailing spergout while at the same type showcasing your complete lack of a connection with reality. Yeah, y'know the big nuclear power plants that power entire cities? Those're the ones that put out 3000-4000 megawatts.

>5000 F

Is that supposed to be impressive? Chemical rockets are 5,500F+ regularly. You probably read a popsci article or something and went 'wow, that sounds high.'

Funny you ask me, because I really don't think you do understand what kind of power is needed for lasers. I'll drop a hint for ya; the absolute highest power industrial lasers that're used for cutting through metal in an instant use up 20kw of power… and they also have this thing called the Firestrike, a potential military field-use laser, that uses 15kw of power.

I can't picture you as anything other than some assblasted underage spic. There's only a few types of people in this world who throw fits of your magnitude and just keep on spitting out stuff to cover their ass, and I've known underage spics to be the most likely.

>>608989

Time to chew you up piece by piece.

>Honestly it's just funny reading your post and seeing you having this flailing spergout while at the same type showcasing your complete lack of a connection with reality. Yeah, y'know the big nuclear power plants that power entire cities? Those're the ones that put out 3000-4000 megawatts.

First off, the USA has 99 reactors which put out about 100,000 MW of power. So no, we're gonna need more than what we have.

>Is that supposed to be impressive? Chemical rockets are 5,500F+ regularly. You probably read a popsci article or something and went 'wow, that sounds high.'

The F-1 rockets burned for about 150 seconds and then died out, all without atmosphere, which isn't what we're talking about.

>Funny you ask me, because I really don't think you do understand what kind of power is needed for lasers. I'll drop a hint for ya; the absolute highest power industrial lasers that're used for cutting through metal in an instant use up 20kw of power… and they also have this thing called the Firestrike, a potential military field-use laser, that uses 15kw of power.

The smallest effective military laser of any use is 60kw. It's been tested at (1 mile away!) and takes several seconds to burn out a small drone or skiff. It has the benefits of the atmosphere and earth to bleed the heat.

>I can't picture you as anything other than some assblasted underage spic. There's only a few types of people in this world who throw fits of your magnitude and just keep on spitting out stuff to cover their ass, and I've known underage spics to be the most likely.

I'd say you're projecting, but you're probably actually a nigger.

Keep coming, I can easily destroy anything you have to say because I actually do this as a job and you're a retard nigger who can't even read.

>>608991

With atmosphere, I mean. It's obviously much harder in vacuum to bleed heat.

>>609005

>Crashing a colony into a world that could have supported them.

Uh, no. You'd be dead. Soon as you start deorbiting you'd be shot into shit. You have no reason to even do that ever, so it's basically a declaration of war.

>>609068

So you're baiting, alright.

>>609066

>I can't read: the post

>>609067 is not a nigger and thus can actually read what I wrote correctly.

>>609073

You don't need to post pictures of your family, we already know based on your reading comprehension.

The point is you need to generate 3000-4000 MW just for a thrust that can get you anywhere quickly enough to do any good. On top of that, if you want to use weapons, you need to generate the power for that too. Now outside of that, the rest of the systems probably won't need anything close to that, but you're still stuck with the problem that your reactor(s) generate massive amounts of waste heat as will any weapons when they fire (except for something like a conventional cannon, but that probably isn't a viable weapon system except at the closest ranges)

You really only have black body radiation as a method to expel heat and if you're burning your main drive and/or firing weapons (and if you're firing weapons, you'd better be accelerating) you'll generate far more heat than you're losing naturally. You'll cook your components or your crew quickly. There's some options here: Heat pumps might be able to collect heat into coolant reservoirs for a while, but eventually that won't be enough. At this point you can either dump the coolant into space, which only delays the problem, or you can extend radiators to maximum your surface area and pump the coolant through the radiators to let as much of it radiate out into space. This will take time. It's possible to potentially have enough or big enough radiators to dumb more heat than you can generate, but if you're in combat, those radiators might get hit. You can armor radiators to some degree, but the more you do so, the less efficient they become, so it's a trade off.

>>609137

An NTR's reactor doesn't need an external cooling system, that would defeat the whole purpose of a thermal rocket. The actual powerplant would be in the low tens of megawatts and could easily be cooled with a pair of reasonably sized (20x10m) radiators on opposite sides of the ship, which would be a difficult target from their best angle and nearly impossible to hit from their worst.

>>609144

You're not wrong, but you will still need some radiators for the waste heat. I've heard all sorts of numbers, but I still think you'd cruise around with radiators deployed under non-combat conditions. (Outside of low orbit though.)

All of this goes back to the moron who said that because the Russians put 2kw reactors into orbit meant that a 5000mw reactor wouldn't have any heat problems.

>>609137

why, exactly, does a powerplant on a spacecraft need to generate more than a power plant on earth that powers cities

You have said:

>propulsion

>powering weapons

neither of which require anywhere near that level of power. as proven, a 2kw reactor can indefinitely power a spaceship. for fucks sake, a tiny array of RTGs can power a spaceship without weapons. i really gotta wonder where your numbers are coming from. wait, they're not coming from anywhere, you're pulling them out of your ass to damage control your retardation

>>609173

>In reality heat management in space is relatively easy compared to other challenges

go back to mexico

>>608925

How is a mirror going to stop a railgun shot?

>>609196

A claymore actually spreads out shot, the casaba design focuses it. Either way youre inventing new terms.

>>609185

NTR has reactors with about 4500mwt, the russian spy sats only had enough power to run a radar dish constantly and communicate with earth.

>>609185

Because to get a decent amount of thrust to actually move between planets and thus fight interplanetary wars, you need a reactor that can put out about 3000-4000 MW, maybe more if you really can take the heat.

>a 2kw reactor can indefinitely power a spaceship

This is as stupid as saying that a AA battery can power a flashlight so it should also be able to power Wrigley Field because it also has lights. You are a proven nigger. Let me spell it out for you: the Buk sats were satellites. They didn't have weapons, life support, or interplanetary engines. They just coasted in orbit. That's it.

> i really gotta wonder where your numbers are coming from. wait, they're not coming from anywhere, you're pulling them out of your ass to damage control your retardation

This document, nigger. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19710025786.pdf

>>609203

You misunderstand. Mirrors and lenses are the primarily limitation of laser weapons, you'll never get perfect efficiency and the farther away your target is, the less effective the laser becomes. It sounds weird, but lasers are better at close range because they can focus more coherently.

>>609196

>he doesn't know about asymmetric tamping

>>609200

>Unless the cylinder is in interstellar void, there is no reason use dangerous and finicky reactors instead of solar energy, even at Neptune or Pluto

Then why do probes the size of compact cars that operate on just a few watts need reactors to operate at or past Jupiter? One of the main reasons that we don't send more probes to the outer planets is because NASA is running out of the Pu240 needed to operate the RTGs on those probes ever since the breeder reactors were shut down.

As for the TIE, if those were going to work as radiators they'd have to be combined into a single plate and laid flat, either radiating straight up and down or side to side. Having two on either side of the cockpit with the plumbing on the inside would roast the pilot.

>>609208

Nah you misunderstand, follow up the comment thread. You responded to a railgun post with a mirror comment.

>>609265

Straw clutching competition or something?

>>609404

I'm afraid the misunderstanding is still yours.

The comment I was replying to was:

>I'm sorry but railguns are NEVER going to improve enough to be a viable weapon.

>2,000 years from now when railgun shots are traveling at mach 100, there's going to be some cheapo particle beam weapon which fires the same energy value at .98c.

The point of my comment was that lasers, which are the only non-science fantasy directed energy weapons (currently) become increasingly less effective at range because of fundamental limitations in mirrors and lensing.

Perhaps I should have more verbose, but for the foreseeable future, railguns are a far better choice for long-range combat than lasers.

The problem with railguns now is that they're trying to do the wrong thing with them. This is somewhat necessary to test it, but a big single shot is a mistake. A stream of much smaller projectiles would be a lot less of a hassle in terms of ablation, erosion and heat. Mathematically, there's no reason we couldn't have projectiles going at 10km/s in space. There's issues with that on earth of course, but not in space.

>>609423

Not that Strelok but…

The problem with railguns isn't a lack of kinetic energy retention, it's hitting a target that has ample opportunity to move out of the way of a shot it can see coming. You won't know you're getting shot at with a laser until it hits you. You will only get a brief few seconds warning from a proton beam. But at the distances that ships are likely to engage each other you will likely have upwards of an hour notice with a railgun slug or guided missile that won't be able to correct course enough to compensate for evasive maneuvers by the target due the missile having limited ∆V in order to minimize projectile mass and the energy required to accelerate it, and maximize V0. The only way that the missile will be able to compensate will be by shattering into a thousand glistening shards some time before impact. That is certainly possible, and would increase hit probability, but at the cost of terminal performance. Instead of penetrating several layers of wimple shields it will pepper the outermost layer that hasn't been compromised yet. The alternative of a stream of small bullets would have even less opportunity to course correct, or be fitted with a remote operated payload.

Space ships will use a variety of weapons to incapacitate each other, but the first weapon fired in almost every encounter will be a laser, if for no other reason than to blind passive sensors.

Particle beams, either electron or proton, will be useful for both irradiating crews and frying electronics and mechanical systems such as the reaction wheels and gyros that ships will rely on for no-fuel rotations. Imparting enough of a charge to the housing could cause arcing that could, in theory, spot weld the wheels in place, paralyzing the craft's ability to orient itself. This is thought to have killed several satellites already.

>>609208

>you need a reactor that can put out about 3000-4000 MW

not going to repeat myself.

if i said 'oh no, it actually needs a gorrilion gigawatts to 'have enough thrust'' it would hold the same level of validity of what you are saying

>They just coasted in orbit. That's it.

yes, this is my point. the basic energy required to run a spacecraft is tiny. the ISS does not require near that amount of power for life support. we already have "interplanetary engines", that's a meaningless term

> https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19710025786.pdf

did you even read your own link you braindead niggermonkey? it's analyzing radiation dosage from a reactor

>Calculations were performed to determine the radiation dose rate and total dose to the crew of a gas-core nuclear rocket from the fission fictgments located throughout the plume volume.

not even remotely related

drown yourself in a bathtub faggot

>>609491

> you will likely have upwards of an hour notice with a […] guided missile

correct

> that won't be able to correct course enough to compensate for evasive maneuvers

wrong

the range on any near-future laser is teeny compared to a missile, especially any conceptional ASW space missile swarm

i've already said my spiel multiple times in this thread. the most likely application for lasers is final measure PD

>>609555

Oh jesus, a hungarian subhuman telling us about things. How many men have you landed on the moon?

>TIE

Sure, the idea of a big radiators or solar collectors could work. Not in the context of Star Wars, but whatever. R. Mcquarrie awns't involved in the story.

>Good job arguing with imaginary people. You are retarded.

<George Lucas didn't say this was intended to reflect WW2 fighter/bomber scenarios.

>>609555

I have nothing wrong with what you say, for the most part. You might have understood TIE guy but either way, you're good.

>>609398

>The X-Wing makes more sense because at least there you could argue the wings could act as radiators and keeping the weapons apart would at least prevent the concentration of heat during battle.

https://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TIE_Hunter

This is probably what you're looking for. Sadly the much-lauded TIE defender would actually be pretty crappy in a real space battle because its profile is too large. I played X-Wing Alliance way back in the day and never had a problem shooting them down despite their agility, shields and weaponry because they're just too easy to hit. Starfighters in general aren't fuel efficient either. You probably wouldn't have any ships smaller than Millennium Falcon-sized. The basic design of the Falcon isn't too bad aside from the nonsensical side cockpit placement, which was corrected for XWA's YT-2000.

https://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/YT-2000

XWA is the only game in the X-wing series that allows you to pilot Corellian YT-series ships, and it's amazing how much of a difference the top and bottom turrets make because they allow omnidirectional fire. No other ships have this in the X-wing games. Of course in a real space battle those turrets would be primarily used to shoot down incoming missiles. One improvement for the turrets would be to outfit them on each side with the missile launchers found on this:

https://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Missile_Boat

This bad boy has an absolute fuckton of missiles just as its name implies. It has enough of a focus on missiles to seem more realistic than other SW fighter craft, and it beats the hell out of them in a fight, but fighters will never be heavily armored or shielded enough to justify the expense of putting that many missiles on them in real life. Putting them on a gunship is better.

>>609423

Lasers and railguns are both deficient for space combat. Best is this >>606247 within our timeframe, or a particle beam in the far future.

>>609659

He doesn't understand that a nuclear shaped charge means that it's not omnidirectional, that the majority of the force is focused in a direction.

He's comparing that to high explosive shaped charges, which come in many different shapes and sizes, but he's picking HEAT to compare the completely different NPP concept to'.

In other words it's a fucking retard, stop talking to it.

>>609659

Correction, that should have said tungsten plate. I don't remember where I got iron from. The weaponized version of this used plates made of lighter materials like hydrocarbon foams or aluminum.

>>609670

No.

You can send 200 missiles.

And yet, if I have a half dozen lasers or a few rail guns, I can destroy anything you sent at me. (within reason)

>>609783

No, you cant.

>>609807

Small planetary dyson swarms can intercept RKMs, and besides if your species has any intelligence you have most of your people living off planet in maneuvering orbital habitats where they can't be hit.

>>609807

> its exact motion and position can never be determined

Then how the fuck do you target a planet wandering in space with it?

>>609807

>You are probably better informed than the sperg on NPP, but the attempt to make the nuclear explosion itself directed is most probably overthinking from whoever came up with the original concept. The only thing that really needs to be directed is the flight of the propellant debris, so the sperg was right in the sense it doesn't have to be a shaped charge any more than a Claymore mine.

The problem with just using the plate one the side of a nuke is that about 90% of the energy from the blast will be wasted. Using good case design to channel most of the radiation in a single direction can result in up to 80% of the energy released being used. Again, this isn't some overthought sci-fi nonsense, this is how thermonuclear bombs work. You can't just set off a fission bomb next to a pile of Lithium Deuteride and expect it to go off. You need to reflect the radiation so that it compresses the fusible material, and to do that you need a radiation-reflecting case. Project Orion used the same technology that is used in thermonuclear bombs, just adapted to a different purpose.

On top of that, it's not even the only way to have Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. Some alternative designs do away with the bomb case entirely and use magnetic fields or lasers to compress pellets of fusion fuel. Those are more speculative and may not be possible, or at least not practical.

>But whatever, the concept itself has a poor delta-V.

It actually has some of the best ∆V of any proposed system. And the efficiency of the system goes up with the size of the craft. Very big ships, we're talking 3,000 tons or people and cargo, could be propelled to Jupiter and back in less time than it takes to get a car-sized probe to Mars with chemical rockets.

The reason has is that nuclear reactions are a million times more energetic than chemical reactions. It's not an exaggeration to say that this is the only drive system that could be built with existing technology that could get humans to another star system within a reasonable time frame (about 400 years to Proxima)

>>609847

From point of view of RKV, it is seeing the light from a star that gets bounced off the planet, and the planet is in a stable orbit.

However from point of view of defender, the RKV is getting hit by the light of the star, and then the reflection of that light takes a lot of time to reach sensors. Meanwhile RKV is moving so fast that any course correction puts it millions of kilometers away from where it should be.

>>609848

The magnetic design is the best. It can also use a magnetic field instead of the push plate, and at high enough velocities it can use the magnetic field as a bussard collector and feed a Z pinch drive.

I can't bewiewe nobody has posted this hewe yet. Time to wemedy this faiwuwe!

>>609807

You'd need a large swarm of them to have any chance to actually hit anything at interstellar range. At relativistic speeds, course correction is just as difficult as being accurately targeted.

That said, a sufficiently large and dense cloud of shrapnel shot in the way of the projectiles should at least severely damage them, when they hit it with relativistic speed.

Unless they have some protection from space debris and micro-meteoridae, which is obligatory if they want to reach the target.

>>609847

Determined by an external observer, not by itself, logically.

>>609813

>Small planetary dyson swarms can intercept RKMs

Dyson swarms surround stars, not planets, and they can't intercept anything.

Species of any intelligence know that maneuvering orbital habitats are an oxymoron.

>>609398

>gravity is a Jewish conspiracy and the planets are held in orbit by electromagnetism

You must be quite dense if you don't understand the idea that gravity is a form of electromagnetism doesn't mean that gravity doesn't exist. It just means gravity isn't a mystical force that is created by bending a concept called space. Which seems much more logical to me than the claim that space and time are just separate components of reality that you can twist and bend.

>the sun isn't a ball of super-dense plasma, but is instead a solid iron sphere or persistent ball lightning or whatever

Is it really that hard for your negroid brain to retain and interpret new information that contradicts what you've learnt earlier? The theory is that they are externally powered, and that they are gigantic charged bodies surrounded by plasma. Here's a fresh video on this very subject.

>>610196

The number of Hungarians here is not only more than 0, it's also more than 1. In other words, you are replying to two completely different anons. And the way you mash together separate posts in a random way tells me that you are not familiar how formatting works here. Now tell me, do you honestly believe that space is a flat surface that you can bend like if it was a tablecloth?

>>610153

>Dyson swarms surround stars, not planets,

Ok we'll call a dyson swarm that orbits a planet "Autistic Hungarian Swarms", and they can most certainly maneuver to intercept an RKV.

>maneuvering orbital habitats are an oxymoron

We'll call orbital habitats that can maneuver "Autistic Hungarian Habitats", will that satisfy your anal retentive sensibilities? Do you have anything else to nitpick mlord?

>>610202

>The number of Hungarians here is not only more than 0, it's also more than 1.

To be honest, I'm surprised the number of literate Hungarians is more than 1.

Space does indeed warp around massive objects, really everything with mass to some extent. Gravity is also one of the 4 fundamental forces. It has the weakest effect close up but it makes up for that by having the longest reach.

I'd like to continue this but I am at university right now and I have physics work to do.

>>610247

So your mind completely shuts down when you encounter a conflicting theory, and you start acting snarky instead of engaging it.

>>610253

Not to be suffacious, but the other Hungarian is doing exactly that. In fact that's why people are pissed off at him.

To come in the thread with that flag and pretend like "hey guys why dont we just talk rationally" is going to work is fucking insane. You're just going to piss off people even more.

>>610253

>vague collection of incomplete ideas, insufficient for making predictions

>theory

>>610284

Most space news are all about these cool new discoveries that were completely unexpected and can't be explained. Meanwhile they are cranking out stuff like vid related.

>>610428

>pseudoscience

The tectonic theory was also "pseudoscience" until it was accepted by the mainstream. That word is really the scientific equivalent of "dats andisemitic".

>that blogpost

The part about the neutrinos is really the main weakness of the model of an externally-powered sun, but I don't see how one could argue that it completely demolishes their whole theory when the other side has many more and greater problems with the standard model.

As for the GPS and red shift:

https://invidio.us/watch?v=CGZ1GU_HDwY

https://invidio.us/watch?v=DdNopoXhEuk

>Also made up by a mutt.

Einstein was a literal kike, and yet this is your problem? Besides, who are you talking about exactly?

>Egely

I'm not familiar with him, and so I can't comment on that.

>>610898

This isn't pseudoscience like plate tectonics, it's pseudoscience like the flat earth theory. It's almost instantly provable incorrect.

>Einstein was a literal kike

What does Einstein have to do with anything? He literally worked in a patent office stealing incoming patents, cribbed from Lorentz and got Mileva Maric to explain it to him.

>>607237

Loophole

>make parts on Earth

>use conventional rockets or space elivator to propel the parts into space

>assemble nuclear powered ships in space

>???

>profit

>>611228

Probably a good idea. Now we only have to find a way not to throw countless amount of money on uncivilized monkeys and we are good to go.

>>611228

The problem with that is that Orion ships are heavy as fuck, and the best way to carry heavy cargo into space is, orion itself.

I don’t know if anyone said this yet, I’ll read the thread later.

If this ship doesn’t have some kind of weird high-physics propulsion, wouldn’t it be great if it had thruster guns?

>>611249

Maybe you could break it down into a fuckload of shipments, rather than 5 or 6 loads, you could do fuckin 5000 loads.

We already have the tech required to make reusable rockets, so now it's time we start putting it to use.

>send shit into space

>land rocket

>send more shit into space

You would have to make use of a kickass space-station/factory

You would dump parts off at a depot, and the staff would run it into a factory, and slowly but surely, assemble the ship.

If you made it modular enough, you could use the space station to assemble all kindsa shit.

>>611244

Simply not paying the 2 trillion for the F-35 or the 3 trillion for Iraq war would have funded putting 2 billion people into space.

That's every white plus livestock.

>>611336

>putting 2 billion people into space.

on permanent orbital housing. not just putting them up there to do 1 orbit and die.

>>611323

That's expensive, and besides, Orion's best use is in chucking shit into space anyways. If you're just going to do that then use Nuclear Thermal or Z-Pinch instead.

>>611358

This.

Besides it uses tiny nukes, 20-50x smaller than the one that took out even Nagasaki. A single Orion nuke would have trouble causing a traffic jam in New York. Pop them over some ocean platform, or some isolated island, or fucking Antarctica if you're worried, and it solves the pollution problem.

Only Russia and America are limited by NPT and test ban treaty. Canada could do it tomorrow and it wouldn't break any laws.

>>611360

>leafs with nukes

Now that's terrifying.

>>611360

Huh, never knew that a nuclear blast could sound so anticlimactic.

>>611228

At that point you may as well start mining Asteroids and build Space /k/olonies.

Off topic question but I wonder how cheap Space exploration&armament would become once the first pair of O'Neill cylinders attained near-100% self-sufficiency in terms of industrial resources and 90% in terms of food.

>>611404

You don't need to carry nukes onboard or have a push plate of any kind, including the kind with shock absorbers.

See >>612735

>verne gun

>>605810

Asking for the ideal space fighter is like asking for the ideal weapon. It depends on the circumstances. If you want speed and maneuverability first and foremost, then sure, a sphere would be good, but there are probably a million different just as viable ships out there that would excel at different areas.

Space ships should just be submarines with the sail cut off.

>There is no reason for windows when you have a bunch of equipment made for looking at things with every other sense

>the shape is designed to withstand pressure better than literally anything else besides a perfect sphere

>systems designed to keep water out could be equally used for keeping air in (i.e. prevent space from coming in.)

t. guy who works on a submarine.