Capacities of military and civil spaceships
chorned...@hushmail.com
One obvious consideration would be: a space warship has to bear much
resemblance to a civil spaceship. Space warships can and will use all
technologies that are available and useful.
Plus - there would not be any space wars unless space wars generate
return from investment for the winners. And this means civil space
travel has to generate retun from investment.
(An exception might be if civil travel is routed exclusively through
portals, which are easy to defend and therefore wars have to employ
spaceships).
Which SF writings describe the similarities and differences between
civil and military spaceships?
Cyril
> Which SF writings describe the similarities and differences between
> civil and military spaceships?
A good sf read with description on military spacecraft is "The Mote in
Gods's Eye". Good description on military space craft and some civilian
craft.
Stephen Horgan
chorned...@hushmail.com wrote:
> What would military spaceships be like?
>
> One obvious consideration would be: a space warship has to bear much
> resemblance to a civil spaceship. Space warships can and will use all
> technologies that are available and useful.
>
Military sci-fi with huge military space vessel crews seem stuck in
some world war two paradigm. Even modern submarines, probably the
closest equivalent, have only crews of a hundred or so. Space warcraft
even of the largest size may see that reduced to a few dozen sapients
at most. Of course, there may be hundreds of robots. There would also
be extensive use of computers and advanced displays and little in the
way of verbal orders, at least on the bridge.
> Plus - there would not be any space wars unless space wars generate
> return from investment for the winners. And this means civil space
> travel has to generate retun from investment.
>
It means that there has to be something in space worth defending and
attacking, which is not quite the same thing. War is not always a
commercial proposition.
walt moffett
or Chandler's Grimes novels and shorts.
John Fairhurst
>
>Automation and very small crews, as distinct from any carried troops.
>Military sci-fi with huge military space vessel crews seem stuck in
>some world war two paradigm. Even modern submarines, probably the
>closest equivalent, have only crews of a hundred or so. Space warcraft
>even of the largest size may see that reduced to a few dozen sapients
>at most. Of course, there may be hundreds of robots. There would also
>be extensive use of computers and advanced displays and little in the
>way of verbal orders, at least on the bridge.
In the historic world, it's actually commercial vessels that have gone for
mass automation rather than their naval counterparts. Part of this is cost of
course - extra crew on mercant vessels have to have bunkspace and provision
for food, which takes out space from valuable cargo space - and don't mention
cruise liners here - the passengers are as much 'cargo' as those bales of
wool, and much of the crew of cruise ships are there to pamper that cargo...
Military vessels overcrewed for tonnage basically to provide the bodies to
fight the vessel. Modern warefare scenarios have allowed more automation
thanks to the unlikelihood of the vessels survival in a nuclear style
battlefield.
--
John Fairhurst
jo...@johnsbooks.co.uk
http://www.johnsbooks.co.uk/
omnivo...@yahoo.com
With the price of robots? Not at all! Mebbe a robot pilot, the rest
of the crew will be expendable humans.
Pace Asimov.
Caroline
The Thunder Child
http://thethunderchild.com
Matthias Warkus
> Plus - there would not be any space wars unless space wars generate
> return from investment for the winners.
I greatly doubt that.
mawa
Steve Smith
REDUNDANCY - a human crew can still survive, repair and fight the vessel
even when the power goes out - electronics can't.
The military alway have at least 3 completely separate sets of control
systems in any vessel
Jonalpha
Stephen Horgan
the power goes out. With extensive use of robots it is likely that each
will have independent power anyway.
Stephen Horgan
omnivo...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >> Of course, there may be hundreds of robots.
>
> With the price of robots? Not at all! Mebbe a robot pilot, the rest
> of the crew will be expendable humans.
>
electronic devices. Why would this change in the future? A combination
of robots and AI systems could effectively fill most of the 'crew'
positions on a space vessel. Humans would be 'officers', with primary
executive decision making responsibility.
William F. Adams
> Which SF writings describe the similarities and differences between
> civil and military spaceships?
I think C.J. Cherryh's ``Merchanter'' novels are among the best
examining such. Very plausible, w/ good physics (modulo that blasted
FTL magic-like technology), esp. in terms of the interaction of the
human body w/ acceleration.
I think _Merchanter's Luck_ makes for a good introduction, giving one
enough interest to make _Downbelow Station_ palatable.
Heavy Time and Hellbender are spot on for this topic, dealing w/ how
rider ships come into existence.
_Rimrunner_ has a very military orientation as well.
William
Jordan
Stephen Horgan wrote:
> chorned...@hushmail.com wrote:
> > What would military spaceships be like?
> >
> > One obvious consideration would be: a space warship has to bear much
> > resemblance to a civil spaceship. Space warships can and will use all
> > technologies that are available and useful.
> >
> Automation and very small crews, as distinct from any carried troops.
> Military sci-fi with huge military space vessel crews seem stuck in
> some world war two paradigm.
Depends on how big the spaceship is. A very big space warship might
have a crew that was "very large" compared to modern surface-naval
warships, while still being heavily automated.
> Even modern submarines, probably the
> closest equivalent, have only crews of a hundred or so. Space warcraft
> even of the largest size may see that reduced to a few dozen sapients
> at most. Of course, there may be hundreds of robots.
If the robots be sapient, then they are also "crew."
> There would also
> be extensive use of computers and advanced displays and little in the
> way of verbal orders, at least on the bridge.
Depends what you mean by "verbal orders." If you are restricting the
term to mean "the production of speech using the natural human
apparatus," then yes; if you expand it to include orders thought by one
sapience to another through the ship's datanet, then no.
> > Plus - there would not be any space wars unless space wars generate
> > return from investment for the winners. And this means civil space
> > travel has to generate retun from investment.
> >
> It means that there has to be something in space worth defending and
> attacking, which is not quite the same thing. War is not always a
> commercial proposition.
I think it's a fairly safe bet that there is "something in space worth
defending and attacking," at least in a far-future context where
Mankind has had time to expand through the Universe, or at least Solar
System. Earth is, after all, only one planet among many.
- Jordan
David Johnston
wrote:
>
>Stephen Horgan wrote:
>> chorned...@hushmail.com wrote:
>> > What would military spaceships be like?
>> >
>> > One obvious consideration would be: a space warship has to bear much
>> > resemblance to a civil spaceship. Space warships can and will use all
>> > technologies that are available and useful.
>> >
>> Automation and very small crews, as distinct from any carried troops.
>> Military sci-fi with huge military space vessel crews seem stuck in
>> some world war two paradigm.
>
>Depends on how big the spaceship is. A very big space warship might
>have a crew that was "very large" compared to modern surface-naval
>warships, while still being heavily automated.
The Death Star for example.
>
>> Even modern submarines, probably the
>> closest equivalent, have only crews of a hundred or so. Space warcraft
>> even of the largest size may see that reduced to a few dozen sapients
>> at most. Of course, there may be hundreds of robots.
>
>If the robots be sapient, then they are also "crew."
>
>> There would also
>> be extensive use of computers and advanced displays and little in the
>> way of verbal orders, at least on the bridge.
>
>Depends what you mean by "verbal orders." If you are restricting the
>term to mean "the production of speech using the natural human
>apparatus," then yes; if you expand it to include orders thought by one
>sapience to another through the ship's datanet, then no.
Although frankly, assuming that you don't have your brains all plugged
into the ship's computer, there's no good reason not to give verbal
orders to that guy sitting right in front of you. People who text
message the person they are sitting beside are silly.
Michael Grosberg
chorned...@hushmail.com wrote:
> What would military spaceships be like?
>
> One obvious consideration would be: a space warship has to bear much
> resemblance to a civil spaceship. Space warships can and will use all
> technologies that are available and useful.
why? are warplanes similar to civilian aircraft? Most civilian
transportation is achieved using huge, relatively slow jet airplanes
carrying up to 500 passengers. Jet fighters, on the contrary, are small
fast affairs with one or two crewmembers.
In war you don't want all your firepower concentrated in one big easy
to hit target: you want to spread it out. I imagine future space war
will use flocks of small ships, each controlling a host of even smaller
drones. Some will just be relativistic kill vehicles, designed to crash
into enemy ships. Some will be small nukes with engines. Maybe some
will be Von neumann machines to convert nearby asteroids into more
warships. There will have to be a support sructure but this can also be
split into many smaller ships: long-range carriers for 3-5 space
fighters. Small, expendable robotic ammo/fuel/consumables freighters
that launch into the battlefield to rearm and refuel the fighters, then
return to planetary/cometary/asteroid bases.
Wayne Throop
:: some world war two paradigm.
: Depends on how big the spaceship is. A very big space warship might
: have a crew that was "very large" compared to modern surface-naval
: warships, while still being heavily automated.
Seems to me "might" and "depends on how big" render this pretty lame as
a justification for large crews into an indefinitely advanced future.
:: Even modern submarines, probably the closest equivalent, have only
:: crews of a hundred or so. Space warcraft even of the largest size
:: may see that reduced to a few dozen sapients at most. Of course,
:: there may be hundreds of robots.
: If the robots be sapient, then they are also "crew."
Indeed, but what if they aren't sapient. Hey, they "might" not be.
Of more interest, do you have any *reason* to suppose they would be?
Ultimately, a single sapient would suffice. After all, there's a single
sapient in your body (more or less), yet endless maintenance self-repair,
damage control, and defense drones. If there's some reason spaceships
shouldn't trend in that general direction over long timeframes (eg,
the multiple hundreds of years involved in the typical Weberverse),
I'm unaware of it.
Plus, of course, the typical Weberverse involves huge crews of hundreds
or thousands of unaugmented or only mildly augmented mk I hooman beans.
This seems quite unlikely. Especially unlikely is the Honorverse, where
after hundreds of years of huge crews, designers hit themselves on their
foreheads and say "D'OH! we could have been using automation all this time",
and crews get reduced drastically. One could argue that nobody bothered
doing this because nobody was in this kind of protracted war for hundreds
of years, and of course there's no AI in the Honorverse to allow the
ship to think for itself, or multitask battle repairs,
but it's a pretty small figleaf.
The generalization of that problem, is to transplant a current (or
relatively recent past) "we're making progress" mindset into a future
where hundreds of thousands of years of stasis have occured, without
much apparent reason why this progress hadn't already happened.
Vaguely similar notion of single-sapient-per-large-complex-system,
see also "Major Operation" by White. Possibly see also "Mayflies"
by O'Donnell, possibly "Reckoning Infinity by Stith, and
maybe possibly even "Rendesvous with Rama" by Clarke.
Or... juxtaposing oddities, "Path of the Fury" (and/or "In Fury Born")
by Weber. Here we have the single-spaient scheme starship as a
recent development juxtaposed with crew-of-thousands-battleship scheme.
But... why it was a *recent* development is... moderately obscure. Again,
"progress happens" mindset projected into the far future, yields strong
suspension-of-disbelief requirement. Well... you also have a surviving,
non-material Greek Fury name of "Tisiphone" to not-disbelieve also,
though that one is amenable to various simple or simple-ish workarounds,
compared to the "d'oh, we can automate everything" recent headslap after
a thousand years.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Matthias Warkus
> I imagine future space war
> will use flocks of small ships, each controlling a host of even smaller
> drones.
No, it won't. We've been over this many times. Fighters in space don't
make sense because the attainble speed of craft grows with the amount
of reaction mass they can carry, there is no means of converting
momentum from one direction to another, and stopping to refuel has zero
advantages over just carrying more mass.
mawa
IsaacKuo
This really depends on a lot of assumptions, which may or may
not be valid in all circumstances. For example, the assumption
that there is no means of converting momentum from one
direction to another is invalid near a planet with significant gravity.
A "carrier" which launches fighters while in orbit around a planet
can rendesvouz with them again within a half orbit, depending on
the direction of launch. Maneuvers around Jupiter or Saturn allow
for slingshots around large moons to choose from a wide array
of directions with relatively little delta-v. Maneuvers near a
Lagrange point can also take advantage of using a small amount
of delta-v to have a large effect on one's trajectory.
Isaac Kuo
William F. Adams
> Although frankly, assuming that you don't have your brains all plugged
> into the ship's computer, there's no good reason not to give verbal
> orders to that guy sitting right in front of you. People who text
> message the person they are sitting beside are silly.
I can think of a couple:
- security --- maybe you need to reference a system or capability in
the order which not all personnel in earshot are cleared for
- unambiguity --- no chance for mis-perceiving an identification
string, hard to spell name &c.
- prioritization --- I often e-mail co-workers who are within earshot
for matters which should be low priority for them, even though it might
be my ownly priority at the moment. This allows them to deal with the
matter at their convenience, w/o interrupting anything more important.
To get back on topic, one thing which needs to be emphasized is that
all of this speculation has to be shaped by assumptions:
- will there be a reactionless drive allowing small craft to travel
arbitrarily long distances?
- Will FTL even be possible? If so, what size will a star drive be?
How expensive?
You're not going to have X-Wings unless you have reactionless
propulsion systems and star drives are quite small and relatively
inexpensive.
William
IsaacKuo
> In war you don't want all your firepower concentrated in one big easy
> to hit target: you want to spread it out.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Some systems don't scale down very
well, like lasers where effective range depends on the mirror
diameter. Armor protection also favors fewer larger platforms.
While the amount of armor protection required to survive a
missile impact may be implausibly heavy, armor protection
and countermeasures against long range laser fire may be quite
practical.
> I imagine future space war
> will use flocks of small ships, each controlling a host of even smaller
> drones. Some will just be relativistic kill vehicles, designed to crash
> into enemy ships.
I don't see relativistic drones as likely weapons. Due to the
challenges of accelerating a solid object up to relativistic
speeds without actually melting/vaporizing it, a relativistic
kill vehicle needs a long straight acceleration run to get up
to speed--we're talking multiple AU's in length, and an
acceleration run of many hours or days. An incredible
expenditure of energy is involved, and the target can
pretty cheaply stop the incoming with a slow moving defensive
"dust cloud". The drone, moving at relativistic speeds, can't
alter it's course by any significant angle, so the target can
very precisely determine the exact incoming path the incoming
must take in order to actually hit. Upon impacting the dust
cloud, which may be hundreds of kilometers away from the
target, the RKV's own kinetic energy converts the incoming
and the dust cloud into a spectacular spherical explosion
of plasma.
Now, the RKV was originally accelerated up to speed using
either a laser or particle beam of some sort, or using a
pre-prepared "runway". A pre-prepared "runway" isn't
plausible because it requires so much longer just to prepare
and the target then has to cooperate by passing right in
front of it at the right time. That leaves some sort of
interplanetary class laser or particle beam--which IMHO
would be a much better weapon to use directly on the
target. With a laser or near-c particle beam, there's no
minimum range and no multi-hour acceleration run delay.
The target has little or no warning rather than perhaps
many days worth of warning. It just gets hit out of the
blue.
There's of course the popular notion of an interstellar planet
killing RKV. This weapon requires weeks of acceleration
time to get up to near-c speeds, but presumably it's done
from far away across the galaxy that the amazingly
powerful acceleration beams aren't noticed by the target.
Even so, I think interstellar lasers make better planet
killers. Between Nicoll-Dyson and X-Ray bombtrack
concepts, there are a number of possible ways to
implement an interstellar planet-killer laser that offers
all the planet killing potential with none of the possibility
of any defense. (Interstellar RKVs can be defended
against using "dust cloud" defenses.)
> Some will be small nukes with engines.
I like the idea of small nukes with engines, but for propulsion
rather than as weapons. A mag-orion drive can be remotely
"fueled" using small dumb nuke "drones" which are little
more than spinning slugs with a sideways pointing nozzle.
These are launched from home base or a "carrier" toward
the target zone using a mass launcher. Firing a laser pulse
at the drone vaporizes a bit of propellant, which escapes
out the sideways pointing nozzle to produce a sideways
impulse. These sideways impulses are used to adjust the
course of the dumb drones--at the start to send them at the
precise tranfer orbit required, and at the end to send them
toward the target ship's magsail.
Using these small nukes, it's possible for the target sailship
to decelerate at the target zone without expending on board
fuel. The nuke drones simply detonate at the appropriate
position to decelerate the magsail. There's no need to waste
effort decelerating the drones themselves to match the
target's velocity. There's no need for a precision "pickup"
since the magsail may be several kilometers in diameter.
In fact, the magsail could be extremely large if an M2P2
were used. An M2P2 field has a nice feature that it can't
be damaged by the nuke drones--the nuke drones could
literally fly right through the field before detonating after
reaching the other side. (The only risk is of a direct impact
between the nuke drone and the compact central ship itself.)
As weapons, I'm not very enthusiastic about nuke tipped
missiles. Even a small nuke is somewhat big and heavy,
and that much mass is plenty to kill a plausible warship
just by directly ramming it. (Not at relativistic speeds--just
at unremarkable interplanetary travel speeds.) A physical
projectile warhead of a small chemical explosive charge
to spread "shrapnel" would have a better chance of killing
the target than a nuke and would be more flexible in
operational use.
> Maybe some
> will be Von neumann machines to convert nearby asteroids into more
> warships.
Highly dubious. The whole "Von Neumann machine" concept
is rather questionable in the first place, but let's just assume
that it works and it works better than more specialized
industrial techniques (the latter is the dubious assumption).
If that's the case, it doesn't make sense that there are
asteroids lying around which aren't already being exploited
by Von Neumann machines. The initial investment on a
Von Neumann machine is rather small and the return on
the investment is very high. In a short time after they're
developed every significant rock in the solar system is
going to be processed into developed resources.
> There will have to be a support sructure but this can also be
> split into many smaller ships: long-range carriers for 3-5 space
> fighters.
Perhaps, perhaps not.
> Small, expendable robotic ammo/fuel/consumables freighters
> that launch into the battlefield to rearm and refuel the fighters, then
> return to planetary/cometary/asteroid bases.
I'm skeptical about the idea of having these "freighters" return
to base. The return trips are expensive and given interplanetary
travel times they'd take forever. There's going to be a lot of
expense tied up in the reusable bus vehicles simply cruising
in interplanetary space for weeks or months at a time.
Instead, I like the idea of simple one way supplies. The best
sort is the nuke drone, because it doesn't even need to be
picked up by the target. Simply detonate vaguely to the
correct side of the target, and it provides the desire thrust!
For other supplies like food, water, or ammunition, then
some sort of rendezvous maneuvering is required. This may
be quite a problem, because speedy supplies delivered by
powerful mass launchers imply a high delta-v deceleration
requirement. I can think of a number of solutions to this
problem, but they may involve larger "freighters".
Isaac Kuo
IsaacKuo
> One obvious consideration would be: a space warship has to bear much
> resemblance to a civil spaceship. Space warships can and will use all
> technologies that are available and useful.
Yes, but they may use those technologies in very different ways.
For example, I expect that most interplanetary civilian transport
could rely upon beamed power at the destination, with little
capability to maneuver mid-journey. This may eliminate an expensive
and heavy power reactor from civilian spacecraft--which spend
almost all of the time idle during the cruise phases.
For military spacecraft, the inability to perform significant maneuvers
in mid-journey as well as a dependence upon beamed power at
the destination may be deal-killers. The potential savings of
eliminating an expensive/heavy power reactor may also be moot
because the military warships require lots of power for weapons
systems regardless.
So, for example, you could have civilian transport dominated by
pulse laser powered PPPP, while military warships are mostly
driven by Orion style rockets. In this case, things work both
ways--civilian transports may be prohibited from using the military
style rockets for security reasons.
Isaac Kuo
jonathan
<chorned...@hushmail.com> wrote in message
news:1157465097....@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
> What would military spaceships be like?
>
> One obvious consideration would be: a space warship has to bear much
> resemblance to a civil spaceship. Space warships can and will use all
> technologies that are available and useful.
Why imagine, when such things are already reality.
Air Force Space Command
http://www.afspc.af.mil/
The 14th Air Force
http://www.vandenberg.af.mil/~associates/14af/index.html
Jordan
Wayne Throop wrote:
> :: Automation and very small crews, as distinct from any carried troops.
> :: Military sci-fi with huge military space vessel crews seem stuck in
> :: some world war two paradigm.
>
> : Depends on how big the spaceship is. A very big space warship might
> : have a crew that was "very large" compared to modern surface-naval
> : warships, while still being heavily automated.
>
> Seems to me "might" and "depends on how big" render this pretty lame as
> a justification for large crews into an indefinitely advanced future.
We are talking about hypothetical space warships which are armed and
protected by hypothetical technologies and intended for unknown
hypothetical military purposes. Seems to me that "might" is about all
we can say unless we get a lot more specific about the scenario.
And of _course_ it "depends on how big" the spaceship is! A space
warship the size of, say, the USS Discovery (Shuttle Orbiter) could not
possibly require more than a few personnel unless it was some sort of
boarding boat chock-full of Space Marines; a space warship the size of,
say, the USS Nimitz would almost certainly require more than a few
personnel unless whatever mode of combat it engaged in was an
all-or-nothing affair: miss or instant destruction, with no "damaged"
results possible.
By "crew" I don't mean merely organic beings; I mean sapients, whether
they are meat people or aintellects. Even on a ship manned solely by
aintellects, you would want more than one if the ship was very large,
because the myriad of necessary tasks would be such that it is unlikely
that a single coherent personality would be master of _all_ the skills
and able to manage all the chores simultaneously. A diversity of
sapients would be more efficient in this regard.
> :: Even modern submarines, probably the closest equivalent, have only
> :: crews of a hundred or so. Space warcraft even of the largest size
> :: may see that reduced to a few dozen sapients at most. Of course,
> :: there may be hundreds of robots.
>
> : If the robots be sapient, then they are also "crew."
>
> Indeed, but what if they aren't sapient. Hey, they "might" not be.
> Of more interest, do you have any *reason* to suppose they would be?
_Someone_ on the ship had better be sapient ...
> Ultimately, a single sapient would suffice.
As a minimum crew, maybe (depending on the technology and the ship
size), but you would want a larger crew for normal operations.
> After all, there's a single
> sapient in your body (more or less), yet endless maintenance self-repair,
> damage control, and defense drones.
Yes, but your body doesn't do detail work very well. Your body has
only a single sapient rather than a crew because your body happens to
be not much bigger than the minimum size needed to generate one given a
mammalian brain structure. Your brain consumes something like 25% of
all your energy; you literally don't have enough power for a second
sapient to ride onboard. You are inherently a one-man vehicle.
> If there's some reason spaceships
> shouldn't trend in that general direction over long timeframes (eg,
> the multiple hundreds of years involved in the typical Weberverse),
> I'm unaware of it.
The reason might be that the ships get larger and larger. A
tremendously automated ship, which regenerated damage and did routine
tasks with no sapient intervention, might well have a crew of tens of
thousands if it were very large and had to do a lot of different tasks
requiring sapient intervention.
After all, modern naval warships are _very_ automated compared to the
ships of (say) 200 years ago. A ship of the line of the Napoleonic
Wars displaced around 1000-2500 tons and carried a crew of around 800
men. That is roughly 1 man per 2 tons. By contrast, a modern
Nimitz-class carrier displaces around 100 thousand tons and carries a
crew of around 5700 men. That is, roughly 1 man per 17.5 tons.
Note two things. The Nimitz-class ship carries much fewer men per ton
of displacement -- in fact 8-9 times fewer men -- but because it is
around 50 times larger than the sailing battleship, it carries around 7
times as many men in absolute numerical terms.
This is directly due to technological advances. The supercarrier both
needs to be larger than the ship of the line (because a mere 2000-ton
warship could not base 100 jet warplanes) and _can_ be this huge
because of technological progress (a wooden hull massing 100 thousand
tons would have trouble maintaining its structural integrity, let alone
maneuvering in battle.
_Any_ crew requirement for any era can be measured in terms of "men per
ton" for a given type of ship (this comparison isn't perfect because in
many ways a supercarrier is different operationally than a c. 1800 ship
of the line, but it is also a good one because both fill the same
strategic role -- i.e. they are the supreme "capital ships" of their
respective eras). The required "men per ton" goes down with automation
(but never to zero because at least _some_ sapients must be aboard
anything self-directed and expected to behave with tactical
complexity), but the raw tonnage also tends to go up over time because
at higher technologies bigger combatant vehicles are possible.
> Plus, of course, the typical Weberverse involves huge crews of hundreds
> or thousands of unaugmented or only mildly augmented mk I hooman beans.
> This seems quite unlikely. Especially unlikely is the Honorverse, where
> after hundreds of years of huge crews, designers hit themselves on their
> foreheads and say "D'OH! we could have been using automation all this time",
> and crews get reduced drastically. One could argue that nobody bothered
> doing this because nobody was in this kind of protracted war for hundreds
> of years, and of course there's no AI in the Honorverse to allow the
> ship to think for itself, or multitask battle repairs,
> but it's a pretty small figleaf.
That's the key: the Honorverse does not seem to have much in the way
of artificial intelligence, and this in turn means that a large ship
must carry a lot of human beings onboard to maintain and fight her.
However, you seem not to have noticed just _how_ large the Honorverse
ships are -- their "men per ton" requirements are far, far lower than
those of even the Nimitz-class carrier in my example. They carry very
large crews because they are _very_ large vessels!
> The generalization of that problem, is to transplant a current (or
> relatively recent past) "we're making progress" mindset into a future
> where hundreds of thousands of years of stasis have occured, without
> much apparent reason why this progress hadn't already happened.
I would assume that David Weber has his reasons for the slow
technological development in the Honorverse; so far he hasn't gone much
into them.
> Vaguely similar notion of single-sapient-per-large-complex-system,
> see also "Major Operation" by White. Possibly see also "Mayflies"
> by O'Donnell, possibly "Reckoning Infinity by Stith, and
> maybe possibly even "Rendesvous with Rama" by Clarke.
>
> Or... juxtaposing oddities, "Path of the Fury" (and/or "In Fury Born")
> by Weber. Here we have the single-sapient scheme starship as a
> recent development juxtaposed with crew-of-thousands-battleship scheme.
> But... why it was a *recent* development is... moderately obscure. Again,
> "progress happens" mindset projected into the far future, yields strong
> suspension-of-disbelief requirement. Well... you also have a surviving,
> non-material Greek Fury name of "Tisiphone" to not-disbelieve also,
> though that one is amenable to various simple or simple-ish workarounds,
> compared to the "d'oh, we can automate everything" recent headslap after
> a thousand years.
Well, as I said, it depends on your technological assumptions. This
includes your technological assumptions about the _nature_ of your
ships -- I can plausibly imagine starflight operations in which truly
gigantic warships can be crewed by one sapient with the whole rest of
the ship run like the "body" in your example; and I can with equal
plausibility imagine ones in which truly gigantic warships require
crews far larger than any manning any real-world warship.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Stephen Horgan
Jordan wrote:
> Stephen Horgan wrote:
> > chorned...@hushmail.com wrote:
> > > What would military spaceships be like?
> > >
> > > One obvious consideration would be: a space warship has to bear much
> > > resemblance to a civil spaceship. Space warships can and will use all
> > > technologies that are available and useful.
> > >
> > Automation and very small crews, as distinct from any carried troops.
> > Military sci-fi with huge military space vessel crews seem stuck in
> > some world war two paradigm.
>
> Depends on how big the spaceship is. A very big space warship might
> have a crew that was "very large" compared to modern surface-naval
> warships, while still being heavily automated.
>
> > Even modern submarines, probably the
> > closest equivalent, have only crews of a hundred or so. Space warcraft
> > even of the largest size may see that reduced to a few dozen sapients
> > at most. Of course, there may be hundreds of robots.
>
> If the robots be sapient, then they are also "crew."
>
When I mentioned robots there was no implication that they were
humanoid. Most would be small maintenance machines. Sapience there
would be an unnecessary additional function.
> > There would also
> > be extensive use of computers and advanced displays and little in the
> > way of verbal orders, at least on the bridge.
>
> Depends what you mean by "verbal orders." If you are restricting the
> term to mean "the production of speech using the natural human
> apparatus," then yes; if you expand it to include orders thought by one
> sapience to another through the ship's datanet, then no.
>
I meant verbal orders as in military SF that has captains barking at
helmsmen and gunnery officers. The use of datanets and VR would
completely change the command process, while still preserving the
centrality of human decision-making.
> > > Plus - there would not be any space wars unless space wars generate
> > > return from investment for the winners. And this means civil space
> > > travel has to generate retun from investment.
> > >
> > It means that there has to be something in space worth defending and
> > attacking, which is not quite the same thing. War is not always a
> > commercial proposition.
>
> I think it's a fairly safe bet that there is "something in space worth
> defending and attacking," at least in a far-future context where
> Mankind has had time to expand through the Universe, or at least Solar
> System. Earth is, after all, only one planet among many.
>
It's a pretty safe bet after mankind has expanded through one Solar
System.
David Johnston
wrote:
>Ultimately, a single sapient would suffice. After all, there's a single
>sapient in your body (more or less), yet endless maintenance self-repair,
>damage control, and defense drones.
Of course those "drones", being mindless, turn on our bodies on a
regular basis causing things like autoimmune diseases, cancer and
schizophrenia.
If there's some reason spaceships
>shouldn't trend in that general direction over long timeframes (eg,
>the multiple hundreds of years involved in the typical Weberverse),
>I'm unaware of it.
>
>Plus, of course, the typical Weberverse involves huge crews of hundreds
>or thousands of unaugmented or only mildly augmented mk I hooman beans.
>This seems quite unlikely. Especially unlikely is the Honorverse, where
>after hundreds of years of huge crews, designers hit themselves on their
>foreheads and say "D'OH! we could have been using automation all this time",
>and crews get reduced drastically.
When did that happen?
>Or... juxtaposing oddities, "Path of the Fury" (and/or "In Fury Born")
>by Weber. Here we have the single-spaient scheme starship as a
>recent development juxtaposed with crew-of-thousands-battleship scheme.
>But... why it was a *recent* development is... moderately obscure.
The direct mind to machine interface technology was a new
technological development. So was the weaponry and drive improvements
that let them build that small.
Wayne Throop
:: endless maintenance self-repair, damage control, and defense drones.
: "Jordan" <JSBass...@yahoo.com>
: Yes, but your body doesn't do detail work very well.
Many of the fiddly details are done very well indeed.
: Well, as I said, it depends on your technological assumptions. This
: includes your technological assumptions about the _nature_ of your
: ships -- I can plausibly imagine starflight operations in which truly
: gigantic warships can be crewed by one sapient with the whole rest of
: the ship run like the "body" in your example; and I can with equal
: plausibility imagine ones in which truly gigantic warships require
: crews far larger than any manning any real-world warship.
True enough. But a sufficiently long time futurewards, and one begins
to wonder why we're not talking Skylark Valerion or similar. Well, not
that much massive capability or whatnot, but the general notion of very
few controllers for very very large tonnage. Of course on the other hand,
the SV setting starts to have the opposite problem; the technological
underpinnings for automation are swept well under the rug. But I digress.
Hm. Consider also Banks' Culture setting.
Anyways. Yes, I can see it going either way.
But many of the cases where it goes the big-crew way
still seem technologically anomalous to me.
Not inevitably so, but often so.
Wayne Throop
:: hundreds or thousands of unaugmented or only mildly augmented mk I
:: hooman beans. This seems quite unlikely. Especially unlikely is the
:: Honorverse, where after hundreds of years of huge crews, designers
:: hit themselves on their foreheads and say "D'OH! we could have been
:: using automation all this time", and crews get reduced drastically.
: David Johnston <rgo...@block.net>
: When did that happen?
Good question; I don't remember exactly. But it's mentioned several
times in the most recent couple of books, that the new generation of
podnaughts, and battlecruisers, require a fraction of the former crew.
:: Or... juxtaposing oddities, "Path of the Fury" (and/or "In Fury
:: Born") by Weber. Here we have the single-spaient scheme starship as
:: a recent development juxtaposed with crew-of-thousands-battleship
:: scheme. But... why it was a *recent* development is... moderately
:: obscure.
: The direct mind to machine interface technology was a new
: technological development. So was the weaponry and drive improvements
: that let them build that small.
True. Well... cyber-synth wasn't all that new iirc, but the ability
to "impress" and come up with a more stable AI was news. Still, it's
strange that these improvements occured after hundreds of years of stasis.
Seems strange to me, anyways.
Taki Kogoma
allegedly declared to rec.arts.sf.written...
>:: Plus, of course, the typical Weberverse involves huge crews of
>:: hundreds or thousands of unaugmented or only mildly augmented mk I
>:: hooman beans. This seems quite unlikely. Especially unlikely is the
>:: Honorverse, where after hundreds of years of huge crews, designers
>:: hit themselves on their foreheads and say "D'OH! we could have been
>:: using automation all this time", and crews get reduced drastically.
>
>: David Johnston <rgo...@block.net>
>: When did that happen?
>
>Good question; I don't remember exactly. But it's mentioned several
>times in the most recent couple of books, that the new generation of
>podnaughts, and battlecruisers, require a fraction of the former crew.
ISTR it's part of the "Hemphill Revolution" that Honor rants at Hamish
about before she gets captured in HH7. Something about advances in
automation and AI capability, along with the severe personnel crunch
forcing such a 'gamble' on the RMN.
It seems in the Honorverse, creating a MilSpec AI is an elusive beast.
--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk (Known to some as Taki Kogoma) quirk @ swcp.com
Just an article detector on the Information Supercollider.
David Johnston
wrote:
>:: Plus, of course, the typical Weberverse involves huge crews of
>:: hundreds or thousands of unaugmented or only mildly augmented mk I
>:: hooman beans. This seems quite unlikely. Especially unlikely is the
>:: Honorverse, where after hundreds of years of huge crews, designers
>:: hit themselves on their foreheads and say "D'OH! we could have been
>:: using automation all this time", and crews get reduced drastically.
>
>: David Johnston <rgo...@block.net>
>: When did that happen?
>
>Good question; I don't remember exactly. But it's mentioned several
>times in the most recent couple of books, that the new generation of
>podnaughts, and battlecruisers, require a fraction of the former crew.
Maybe as long as they had plenty of skilled crew to burn they just
didn't see that degree of automation as a good idea.
>
>:: Or... juxtaposing oddities, "Path of the Fury" (and/or "In Fury
>:: Born") by Weber. Here we have the single-spaient scheme starship as
>:: a recent development juxtaposed with crew-of-thousands-battleship
>:: scheme. But... why it was a *recent* development is... moderately
>:: obscure.
>
>: The direct mind to machine interface technology was a new
>: technological development. So was the weaponry and drive improvements
>: that let them build that small.
>
>True. Well... cyber-synth wasn't all that new iirc, but the ability
>to "impress" and come up with a more stable AI was news. Still, it's
>strange that these improvements occured after hundreds of years of stasis.
>Seems strange to me, anyways.
>
We don't get to see what occured during those hundred of years. We
only see the status quo at the time of the novel.
David Johnston
<grosberg...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>chorned...@hushmail.com wrote:
>> What would military spaceships be like?
>>
>> One obvious consideration would be: a space warship has to bear much
>> resemblance to a civil spaceship. Space warships can and will use all
>> technologies that are available and useful.
>
>why? are warplanes similar to civilian aircraft? Most civilian
>transportation is achieved using huge, relatively slow jet airplanes
>carrying up to 500 passengers. Jet fighters, on the contrary, are small
>fast affairs with one or two crewmembers.
>
>In war you don't want all your firepower concentrated in one big easy
>to hit target:
Unless of course you have a defensive technology that gets better the
bigger your ship is ala Star Trek.
Wayne Throop
: Maybe as long as they had plenty of skilled crew to burn they just
: didn't see that degree of automation as a good idea.
And of course, nobody over the previous thousand years ever had a
shortage of crew. But sigh, yes I understand your points. Or think
I do. They simply seem like lame figleaves to me, and tend to raise
more questions than they answer.
: We don't get to see what occured during those hundred of years. We
: only see the status quo at the time of the novel.
Yep. There could have been a butlerian jihad, or a war against the
sauron supermen gave automation a bad rep, or the turmoil that led to
the establishment of an empire with a herditary irishcritter on the
throne (feh) could have justified it. And enough asyouknowbob to make
this clear in context is prohibitive. And Weber is already somewhat
asyouknowbob heavy. But if you look up "lame figleaf" in the dictionary,
these are the kinds of examples you'll find. Or should, if there were
a just and loving God.
"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," The Walrus said,
That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
and shed a bitter tear.
--- Lewis Carroll
David Johnston
wrote:
>: David Johnston <rgo...@block.net>
>: Maybe as long as they had plenty of skilled crew to burn they just
>: didn't see that degree of automation as a good idea.
>
>And of course, nobody over the previous thousand years ever had a
>shortage of crew.
Once the shortage of crew was over, why would they necessarily
continue to design their ships for a lack of crew? Is it established
that the highly automated ships actually perform better on a one to
one basis than the ones with a little more crew?
But sigh, yes I understand your points. Or think
>I do. They simply seem like lame figleaves to me, and tend to raise
>more questions than they answer.
>
>: We don't get to see what occured during those hundred of years. We
>: only see the status quo at the time of the novel.
>
>Yep. There could have been a butlerian jihad, or a war against the
>sauron supermen gave automation a bad rep, or the turmoil that led to
>the establishment of an empire with a herditary irishcritter on the
>throne (feh) could have justified it.
Or technology could have developed in such a way that big ships were
better than little ships
Brion K. Lienhart
> :: Plus, of course, the typical Weberverse involves huge crews of
> :: hundreds or thousands of unaugmented or only mildly augmented mk I
> :: hooman beans. This seems quite unlikely. Especially unlikely is the
> :: Honorverse, where after hundreds of years of huge crews, designers
> :: hit themselves on their foreheads and say "D'OH! we could have been
> :: using automation all this time", and crews get reduced drastically.
>
> : David Johnston <rgo...@block.net>
> : When did that happen?
>
> Good question; I don't remember exactly. But it's mentioned several
> times in the most recent couple of books, that the new generation of
> podnaughts, and battlecruisers, require a fraction of the former crew.
It wasn't something that came out of nowhere. It's been mentioned at
various times throughout the whole series. It was never implemented,
because A) the old way worked, and 2) It was traditional.
They had all these ships around that were working fine, and a personnel
shortage wasn't exactly a problem for the RMN. It's only with the war
dragging on and *lots* of new construction that personnel became a
problem and the traditionalists were over-ruled.
Wayne Throop
: Once the shortage of crew was over, why would they necessarily
: continue to design their ships for a lack of crew?
Because it's less expensive, once they got over the traditionalism
mentioned elsethread. Even if you have a larger capital investment,
which I doubt, it would just about have to be cheaper for somebody
running many tens of SD-sized leviathans for many decades.
: Or technology could have developed in such a way that big ships were
: better than little ships
Yes, but again, the issue is, big ships like Dahak, or possibly Skylark
Valerion, or big ships like... hm, what's a good example... well
whatever; Path of the Fury dreadnaughts.
Thing is, it *feels* like the author's thumb on the scales; I want
a crew of thousands, and so I'll edit my background to suit, no matter
what convolutions I need to do to do it. Much of a piece with "I want
huge battles across solar systems to occur in hours, so I'm going to
plonk a magic spacedrive down in this background".
I might be less ... uncomfortable? disappointed? whatever, with it
if were a bit less obvious. It's one thing to insert however many props
you need to get first space lords and a bureaucratic admiralty and
teenaged midshipmen and thin red line of heroes when the guns begin
to shoot, and indeed just about everything but the rum and buggery,
and quite a different thing to suppose you've got a magic spacedrive and
leave the rest alone, or suppose you need large crews because of the
buttlerian jihad and leave the rest alone. By "leave alone" I guess
I mean "work out with a bit more natural feel to it", or something.
Ah well.
David Johnston
wrote:
>: David Johnston <rgo...@block.net>
>: Once the shortage of crew was over, why would they necessarily
>: continue to design their ships for a lack of crew?
>
>Because it's less expensive, once they got over the traditionalism
>mentioned elsethread.
Is it always less expensive to automate?
Wayne Throop
: Is it always less expensive to automate?
No. But can you think of a reason it would be in terms of the scenario
involved here? One that would hold up over hundreds of years of research,
and mutliple brushfire conflicts? Especially since, other than repair,
it would seem most of the crew are george jetson puttonpushers (ie,
"fire one"! "Yes sir, one fired"! and other WWII-isms). Awrightawright
I'm exagerating, but still, moving missiles into launch tubes (or pods
onto launch rails), launching them, all of which will require power
machinery and can't be done by hand at all... well... I don't see how it
could be more expensive to do it with microcontrollers controlling hte
same servos, and have the few crew do things like free jams etc, etc).
It's possible, but it doesn't seem plausible to me.
Not to mention I don't see how a computer mounted on the
superdupernaught(P) is really going to improve your missile targeting,
especially now how human hints is going to, given the scenarios
as described. But maybe that's just me. You know, the "ooh, ooh,
having real-time access to punch buttons for relay to missiles makes us
unstoppable" and "oh, but we've got the power of as SUPERDUPERNAUGHT's
tactical computers instead of just what'll fit into a greyhound-bus-sized
missile" bits (or were the missiles bigger than that? they had to be
large enough to support 500 megaton "old style nukes"). They don't ring
true ay-tall. Oops, I said I wouldn't mention that... nevermind!
This doesn't mean large-ish crews are Right Out or anything. But the
organization and structure I see doesn't seem to make all that much sense
as the end product of a long technological development. Being only an
egg, I'm willing to be instructed, but I don't yet see it.
FWIW, I was recently watching a documentary about upcoming artillery
pieces, which are extensively automated, and capable of nifty things
like multiple-shells-simultaneous-impact and the such because of it.
David Johnston
wrote:
>: David Johnston <rgo...@block.net>
>: Is it always less expensive to automate?
>
>No. But can you think of a reason it would be in terms of the scenario
>involved here? One that would hold up over hundreds of years of research,
>and mutliple brushfire conflicts? Especially since, other than repair,
>it would seem most of the crew are george jetson puttonpushers (ie,
>"fire one"! "Yes sir, one fired"! and other WWII-isms).
Really? I assumed almost all of the crew were repair guys (and of
course troops)
Wayne Throop
: Really? I assumed almost all of the crew were repair guys (and of
: course troops)
Well, there were "tac officers" who seemed to be pushing buttons (or
typing commands) to tell missiles to do various quite specific things,
and there seemed to be a "do this" "aye aye maam" protocol for purt-near
everything, and people seemed to be necessarily johnny-on-the-spot to
get blowed up good with the point defense clusters and fusion plants
rather than being deployed to repair them. Further, the extensive
drills and training seemed designed to enable teams of people to operate
the weapons in a coordinated way, and not nearly so much to "repair"
them. So.... well, it was certainly my impression that you pretty much
*couldn't* operate the ship without substantial crew; a "skeleton crew"
was still a quite large (1/4? 1/10? something thereabouts?) fraction of
the fully-crewed-for-three-shifts crew, just in order to fly at all.
( As you can see, I'm not getting any books out and flipping
to specific passages, but relating my impressions.
I know it's not direct, if I'm off please correct, and all that.
Just note that my neck is fragile. )
Phillip Thorne
>> I imagine future space war will use flocks of small ships,
>> each controlling a host of even smaller drones.
On Wed, 6 Sep 2006, Matthias Warkus <War...@students.uni-marburg.de>
wrote:
>No, it won't. We've been over this many times. Fighters in space don't
>make sense because the attainble speed of craft grows with the amount
>of reaction mass they can carry, there is no means of converting
>momentum from one direction to another, [...]
Small numbers of highly-maneuverable fighters using rockets and real
physics are a syntax error.
However, since "maneuverable" means "trading momentum," you can posit
a huge number (a cloud) of automated fighters (drones), which trade
momentum (bounce) by laser or mass beam. The cloud would tend to
disperse over time (since, unfortunately, tractor beams don't exist),
unless some elements were able to restore (compactify) their positions
using something with more inertia, e.g. a planet.
They'd have to small and lightweight for the lasers to have much
effect, and/or maneuvering would be very slow. We think of combat as
proceeding on human scales (time and space), but... umm... somebody
advance a good reason for an alternative, please.
This makes for a cool scene in asymmetric warfare -- single warship is
engulfed by cloud of mini defenders. If two such clouds attempted to
fight, it would be... hmmm.
(Aircraft are practical for the same reason wet-navy ships don't carry
huge radiator panels: they've got a whole planet of densely-packed
atoms to play off.)
/- Phillip Thorne ----------- The Non-Sequitur Express --------------------\
| org underbase ta thorne www.underbase.org It's the boundary |
| net comcast ta pethorne site, newsletter, blog conditions that |
\------------------------------------------------------- get you ----------/
jonathan
"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
news:50n0g2piihm6ap2ac...@4ax.com...
Wouldn't space warfare be a bit like submarine warfare, where hiding
is everything? Or like naval warfare in general, just with an
extra dimension thrown in to complicate things.
Like 3-d chess, more complicated, but still the same animal.
Stephen Horgan
If there is anything like the technology that we understand today then
it is very hard to hide in space. The background is only a few degrees
above absolute zero whereas even powered down spacecraft are much
hotter, and therefore easy to detect. A spacecraft with its drive
operating would be visible right across a star system. That fact alone
changes the nature of space warfare quite drastically.
Russell Wallace
> Further, the extensive
> drills and training seemed designed to enable teams of people to operate
> the weapons in a coordinated way, and not nearly so much to "repair"
> them.
In the Harrington series? It was explicitly stated at one point (when
commenting on the deplorable state of the bad guys' education system,
IIRC) that any idiot can press a button to activate a machine - it's
maintenance and repair that require a lot of skilled people.
As to whether it's realistic to assume automation capable of doing
maintenance jobs hasn't been invented in a future setting... my opinion
is that it's unrealistic, not because we will certainly have it by then,
but because if we don't we won't be in space at all - i.e. the lack of
such is precisely what's stopping us getting into space right now. But
that's theory, not proven fact; I can suspend disbelief in unautomated
spaceships for fiction purposes.
--
"Always look on the bright side of life."
To reply by email, replace no.spam with my last name.
serg271
Wouldn't it be possible to put kind of shield-refrigirator on the nose,
radiator on the tail, and pump heat from nose to tail ? In this case,
if the direction to the enemy is known, the ship can turn nose to enemy
and decrease it's visibility, at least at long distance. Torch
direction during the acc/deceleration don't have to be on the nose-tail
axis.
Nyrath the nearly wise
> Automation and very small crews, as distinct from any carried troops.
> Military sci-fi with huge military space vessel crews seem stuck in
> closest equivalent, have only crews of a hundred or so. Space warcraft
> even of the largest size may see that reduced to a few dozen sapients
> at most. Of course, there may be hundreds of robots.
From "Reflex" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (the deleted first chapter
of The Mote in God's Eye, collected in There Will Be War I)
In principle Defiant was a better ship than she'd been when she left New
Chicago. The engineers had automated all routine spacekeeping tasks, and no
United Republic spacer needed to do a job that a robot could perform. Like all
of New Chicago's ships, and like few of the Imperial Navy's, Defiant was as
automated as a merchantman.
Colvin wondered. Merchantmen do not fight battles. A merchant captain need not
worry about random holes punched through his hull. He can ignore the risk that
any given piece of equipment will be smashed at any instant. He will never
have only minutes to keep his ship fighting or see her destroyed in an instant
of blinding heat.
No robot could cope with the complexity of decisions damage control could
generate, and if there were such a robot it might easily be the first item
destroyed in battle. Colvin had been a merchant captain and had seen no reason
to object to the Republic's naval policies, but now that he had experience in
warship command, he understood why the Imperials automated as little as
possible and kept the crew in working routine tasks: washing down corridors
and changing air filters, scrubbing pots and inspecting the hull. Imperial
crews might grumble about the work, but they were never idle. After six
months, Defiant was a better ship, but...
John Schilling
><chorned...@hushmail.com> wrote in message
>news:1157465097....@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
>> What would military spaceships be like?
>> One obvious consideration would be: a space warship has to bear much
>> resemblance to a civil spaceship. Space warships can and will use all
>> technologies that are available and useful.
>Why imagine, when such things are already reality.
>Air Force Space Command
>http://www.afspc.af.mil/
>The 14th Air Force
>http://www.vandenberg.af.mil/~associates/14af/index.html
Neither the Air Force Space Command nor the 15th Air Force have anything
remotely resembling a space warship. The idea that they might hire some
people to officially contemplate what sort of space warships they might
someday wish to acquire, is itself rather controversial. Actual space
warships, here and now, no. Not even close.
The Air Force Space Command does things like operate GPS satellites.
I don't think those are what anyone here thinks of as "space warships".
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
Nyrath the nearly wise
> Stephen Horgan wrote:
>> If there is anything like the technology that we understand today then
>> it is very hard to hide in space.
>
> radiator on the tail, and pump heat from nose to tail ? In this case,
> if the direction to the enemy is known, the ship can turn nose to enemy
> and decrease it's visibility, at least at long distance.
No, this would not work very well.
This has been hashed over before.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.science/browse_frm/thread/32131f6b0b15b863/b9b22d236738682c
( tiny URL version http://tinyurl.com/g6ptf )
and
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html
Dr. John Schilling specifically had this to say on the topic:
Besides, redirecting the emissions merely relocates the problem. The energy's
got to go somewhere, and for a fairly modest investment in picket ships or
sensor drones, the enemy can pretty much block you from safely radiating to
any significant portion of the sky.
And if you try to focus the emissions into some very narrow cone you know to
be safe, you run into the problem that the radiator area for a given power is
inversely proportional to the fraction of the sky illuminated. With
proportionate increase in both the heat leakage through the back surfaces, and
the signature to active or semi-active (reflected sunlight) sensors.
Plus, there's the problem of how you know what a safe direction to radiate is
in the first place. You seem to be simultaneously arguing for stealthy
spaceships and complete knowledge of the position of enemy sensor platforms.
If stealth works, you can't expect to know where the enemy has all of his
sensors, so you can't know what is a safe direction to radiate. Which means
you can't expect to achieve practical stealth using that mechanism in the
first place.
Sixty degrees has been suggested here as a reasonably "narrow" cone to hide
one's emissions in. As a sixty-degree cone is roughly one-tenth of a full
sphere, a couple dozen pickets or drones are enough to cover the full sky so
that there is no safe direction to radiate even if you know where they all
are. The possiblility of hidden sensor platforms, and especially hidden,
moving sensor platforms, is just icing on the cake.
Note, in particular, that a moving sensor platform doesn't have to be within
your emission cone at any specific time to detect you, it just has to pass
through that cone at some time during the course of the pre-battle
maneuvering. Which rather substantially increases the probability of detection
even for very narrow emission cones.
Nyrath the nearly wise
> What would military spaceships be like?
That's my cue to shamelessly plug my website,
specifically the section on
classifying military spacecraft.
Nyrath the nearly wise
> Wouldn't space warfare be a bit like submarine warfare, where hiding
> is everything?
That turns out not to be the case. It was popularized
by the boardgame STAR CRUISER by GDW who described
space combat as "hide and go seek with bazookas",
but in reality it is more or less impossible
to hide a military spacecraft in space.
serg271
Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:
> http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html
>
I remeber your site now. Have seen it couple of years ago and unjustly
fogot about it ; )
However one options seems missing:
completly automated warship/missile, powered down, cooled to absolute
zero and shot from an accelerator to the target. Reactor is powered on
just before the taget is in range. Could be combined with
prepositioning from the tactical section of your site - powered down
weapon paltforms deployed near the target during peace time. Another
semi-stealth platform - first stage with huge powerful reactor,
possibly manned, deliver small automated second stage do desied
trajectory, cool it to absolute zero and detach.
Ken Burnside
Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:
And this is my place to shamelessly plug two resources.
The first is SFCONSIM-L on Yahoo Groups, which is probably the absolute
best place I've found on the Internet for examining space travel, space
combat, and the physics and engineering assumptions that define both of
them.
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/sfconsim-l/ is its home page.
Winchell and I are both regular participants there, and there's a crowd
referred to as the Physics Mafia who will cheerfully work out ugly
maths for you. Now, most of them will work out the physics for you to
show why the proposed idea has unintended consequences, but that's an
important part of writing SF as well.
The second resource is a game I've written, called Attack Vector:
Tactical
http://www.adastragames.com/products/adastra/av.html
There is a thumbnail discussion of several issues which define military
spaceships in the introduction of the game, which is available for
free.
http://www.adastragames.com/downloads/AVT_Tutorial.pdf
I also publish a semi-annual magazine of science fiction, taking place
in the Ten Worlds setting (which the game takes place in). The first
issue is available at:
http://www.adastragames.com/products/adastra/nexus1.html
Obviously, if I get more material for it, I can publish more frequently
- and I pay at 1 to 3 cents per word. You'll never get rich writing
for me, but you will get exposure, and you'll get to work in a universe
where fundemental science stuff can be handled FOR YOU by people who
WILL do the math for you to make things work.
Ken Burnside
> Yep. There could have been a butlerian jihad, or a war against the
> sauron supermen gave automation a bad rep, or the turmoil that led to
> the establishment of an empire with a herditary irishcritter on the
> throne (feh) could have justified it. And enough asyouknowbob to make
> this clear in context is prohibitive. And Weber is already somewhat
> asyouknowbob heavy. But if you look up "lame figleaf" in the dictionary,
> these are the kinds of examples you'll find. Or should, if there were
> a just and loving God.
>
> "If seven maids with seven mops
> Swept it for half a year,
> Do you suppose," The Walrus said,
> That they could get it clear?"
> "I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
> and shed a bitter tear.
>
> --- Lewis Carroll
I do licensed products based on Weber's settings, so I really can't
answer this here - but we've fixed a few of David's Honorverse math
errors.
For my own settings, I assume the automation is as worthy of mentioning
(in the context of the story) as, say, cell phones are in contemporary
fiction. It's only worth mentioning when it STOPS working. However,
for the purposes of Dramatis Verite, if you mention something at all in
a work of fiction, it, by definition, needs to be Something Important,
because the unimportant stuff doesn't get mentioned at all.
I am very specifically vague about how computer tech works in the Ten
Worlds for the simple fact that nothing ages faster than assumptions
about computer science.
Ten Worlds doesn't have sapient AI for two reasons.
1) The impact on any world with sapient AI is going to be MASSIVE,
particularly if it can be copied easily (let alone if doing so means
you can copy human personalities easily or store them on a computer
network.)
2) People read fiction to read about people, not computer programs. I
cannot picture a future where AIs happen where meat people would be out
and about in places that would make good stories.
Ken Burnside
If you cool it enough to be stealthy, it's unlikey to work again when
thawed out. It's also highly unlikely that you can cool any
potentially useful onboard power source to something that'd work.
IsaacKuo
Phillip Thorne wrote:
> Small numbers of highly-maneuverable fighters using rockets and real
> physics are a syntax error.
> However, since "maneuverable" means "trading momentum," you can posit
> a huge number (a cloud) of automated fighters (drones), which trade
> momentum (bounce) by laser or mass beam. The cloud would tend to
> disperse over time (since, unfortunately, tractor beams don't exist),
> unless some elements were able to restore (compactify) their positions
> using something with more inertia, e.g. a planet.
> They'd have to small and lightweight for the lasers to have much
> effect, and/or maneuvering would be very slow. We think of combat as
> proceeding on human scales (time and space), but... umm... somebody
> advance a good reason for an alternative, please.
Unless you have some pretty amazing technology for gossamer laser
sails which are also rigid enough to serve as focusing mirrors, I don't
think there's a way to make light propelled fighters plausible. The
available thrust is incredibly low and the amount of power required
is incredibly high. The efficiency compared to lower Isp rockets
(including laser powered rockets) is outrageously low unless the
desired delta-v's are in the high relativistic range. But this extreme
low efficiency might be acceptable if the payload is extremely
small (thus, a gossamer laser sail).
If gossamer laser sails could also act as laser focussing mirrors,
then it's possible to relay a powerful laser from "home base"
across very great distances. A pair of laser mirrors close to
each other allows for the relayed beam to continue in the direction
of the original beam.
Still...such gossamer laser sails have no need to trade momentum
amongst themselves--the "home base" laser essentially provides
all the momentum involved.
Trading momentum by mass beam is perhaps more plausible
in terms of efficiency, power, and delta-v. Still, it won't take
many "trades" before the swarm has dispersed far beyond
beam range. The only direction of thrust available is "outward",
so as soon as the first thrusts are made the cloud is dispersing
itself.
Isaac Kuo
IsaacKuo
Ken Burnside wrote:
> serg271 wrote:
> > However one options seems missing:
> > completly automated warship/missile, powered down, cooled to absolute
> > zero and shot from an accelerator to the target. Reactor is powered on
> > just before the taget is in range. Could be combined with
> > prepositioning from the tactical section of your site - powered down
> > weapon paltforms deployed near the target during peace time. Another
> > semi-stealth platform - first stage with huge powerful reactor,
> > possibly manned, deliver small automated second stage do desied
> > trajectory, cool it to absolute zero and detach.
> If you cool it enough to be stealthy, it's unlikey to work again when
> thawed out. It's also highly unlikely that you can cool any
> potentially useful onboard power source to something that'd work.
Those are just technical details. For computer equipment, such
low temperatures could actually be quite beneficial, and a chemical
"fuel cell" could provide adequate energy for passive sensors and
terminal course adjustments (via electric thermal rocket or stealthy
mass launcher).
IMHO, the real problem is that unless you're in deep interstellar
space, there's unavoidable heating from sunlight. You can try to
minimize the amount of absorbed energy with a mirrored surface,
but then the edges of that surface will be visible to radar.
Isaac Kuo
serg271
Ken Burnside wrote:
> serg271 wrote:
> > Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:
> >
> > > http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html
> > >
> > I remeber your site now. Have seen it couple of years ago and unjustly
> > fogot about it ; )
> > However one options seems missing:
> > completly automated warship/missile, powered down, cooled to absolute
> > zero and shot from an accelerator to the target. Reactor is powered on
> > just before the taget is in range. Could be combined with
> > prepositioning from the tactical section of your site - powered down
> > weapon paltforms deployed near the target during peace time. Another
> > semi-stealth platform - first stage with huge powerful reactor,
> > possibly manned, deliver small automated second stage do desied
> > trajectory, cool it to absolute zero and detach.
>
> If you cool it enough to be stealthy, it's unlikey to work again when thawed out.
How solar cells works in modern spacecrafts ? Arn't they near the
absolute zero ?
I don't think the cold would damage electonics too.
>It's also highly unlikely that you can cool any
> potentially useful onboard power source to something that'd work.
You can illuminate drone with big laser from mothership to initiate
start-up sequence. Or just have chemical source wich ignited by solar
cells and prouduce enough energy/heat to start main reactor (or chain
of progressivly more powerful sources)
Richard R. Hershberger
Wayne Throop wrote:
> I might be less ... uncomfortable? disappointed? whatever, with it
> if were a bit less obvious. It's one thing to insert however many props
> you need to get first space lords and a bureaucratic admiralty and
> teenaged midshipmen and thin red line of heroes when the guns begin
> to shoot, and indeed just about everything but the rum and buggery,
> and quite a different thing to suppose you've got a magic spacedrive and
> leave the rest alone, or suppose you need large crews because of the
> buttlerian jihad and leave the rest alone. By "leave alone" I guess
> I mean "work out with a bit more natural feel to it", or something.
For whatever it is worth, you have identified why I don't read those
books. I enjoy Patrick O'Brien and I grew up on C.S. Forester. I see
no point in recycling the material, but IN SPAAAAACE! feh.
Richard R. Hershberger
IsaacKuo
Ken Burnside wrote:
> Ten Worlds doesn't have sapient AI for two reasons.
> 1) The impact on any world with sapient AI is going to be MASSIVE,
> particularly if it can be copied easily (let alone if doing so means
> you can copy human personalities easily or store them on a computer
> network.)
> 2) People read fiction to read about people, not computer programs. I
> cannot picture a future where AIs happen where meat people would be out
> and about in places that would make good stories.
You can't picture such a future? Why not? Everyone else seems to.
Personally, I think it's not a stretch to assume that copying human
personalities into computer simulation form might prove to be
undoable far into the future. And also, I don't think it's a stretch
to assume that sapient AI development could be such that those
AIs are entirely subservient to human masters. Under those
assumptions, meat people would plausibly be out and about in
places that would make good stories.
Isaac Kuo
serg271
That is a real problem. One thing which could possibly help is
"matreshka" shielding - concenrtic shells, detached one after another
as they are heated. Of cause the fragments of shell would create kind
of trail in space, announcing the presence of hostile nearby. May be
they can unfurl into small solar sails and glide away...
chorned...@hushmail.com
Jordan wrote:
> Stephen Horgan wrote:
> > chorned...@hushmail.com wrote:
> > > What would military spaceships be like?
> > >
> > > Plus - there would not be any space wars unless space wars generate
> > > return from investment for the winners. And this means civil space
> > > travel has to generate retun from investment.
> > >
> > It means that there has to be something in space worth defending and
> > attacking, which is not quite the same thing. War is not always a
> > commercial proposition.
>
> I think it's a fairly safe bet that there is "something in space worth
> defending and attacking," at least in a far-future context where
> Mankind has had time to expand through the Universe, or at least Solar
> System. Earth is, after all, only one planet among many.
>
Are planets with no human defenders significantly cheaper to expand to
than the well-defended ones?
Or is it the case that it is the planets already expanded into that are
worth attacking, because it is the humans and their works that are
worth attacking?
Ken Burnside
Imagine the economic chaos caused when every job that doesn't requre an
engineering degree of some sort can be done by AIs more cheaply than by
human beings - by AIs that won't show up late for work, will work hard,
and don't need to be "paid".
That's just a first order implication. Search for Marshall Brain on
the web for some interesting reading on this as well.
Any society with sapient AIs has the potential to be REALLY strange by
our standards - strange enough that a lot of the more common
storytelling forms and tropes are going to be as laughable as steam
powered horses pulling stage coaches are now.
David Johnston
<russell...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Wayne Throop wrote:
>> Further, the extensive
>> drills and training seemed designed to enable teams of people to operate
>> the weapons in a coordinated way, and not nearly so much to "repair"
>> them.
>
>In the Harrington series? It was explicitly stated at one point (when
>commenting on the deplorable state of the bad guys' education system,
>IIRC) that any idiot can press a button to activate a machine - it's
>maintenance and repair that require a lot of skilled people.
>
>As to whether it's realistic to assume automation capable of doing
>maintenance jobs hasn't been invented in a future setting... my opinion
>is that it's unrealistic, not because we will certainly have it by then,
>but because if we don't we won't be in space at all - i.e. the lack of
>such is precisely what's stopping us getting into space right now.
But it isn't. What's stopping us from getting into space is the lack
of an inexpensive propulsion system. No matter how much automation we
get, we still won't get into space (much) until we get those lift
costs down.
Jordan
Stephen Horgan wrote:
> Jordan wrote:
>
> > Depends on how big the spaceship is. A very big space warship might
> > have a crew that was "very large" compared to modern surface-naval
> > warships, while still being heavily automated.
> >
> True enough.
Well, that's my main point. I _do_ expect man-per-ton crew
requirements to go down and keep going down, as technology advances.
But at the same time, absolute tonnage will probably continue to
increase, and the historical wet-naval precedents (comparisons of
triremes, carracks, men-of-war, ships-of-the-line, ironclad
battleships, and modern attack carriers) show a trend for the absolute
size to increase so rapidly that the absolute crew size also increases
despite automation.
> > > Even modern submarines, probably the
> > > closest equivalent, have only crews of a hundred or so. Space warcraft
> > > even of the largest size may see that reduced to a few dozen sapients
> > > at most. Of course, there may be hundreds of robots.
> >
> > If the robots be sapient, then they are also "crew."
> >
> When I mentioned robots there was no implication that they were
> humanoid. Most would be small maintenance machines. Sapience there
> would be an unnecessary additional function.
For small repair bots, yes. But you might want to have each swarm of
repair bots be commanded by a sapient, and certainly have the intellect
in charge of maintenance in general be sapient. Otherwise, patterns of
deterioration or infiltration might go unnoticed. Such is certainly
the case in _our_ bodies, which are limited to a sole sapient pilot by
the energy demands of our hungry brains.
> > Depends what you mean by "verbal orders." If you are restricting the
> > term to mean "the production of speech using the natural human
> > apparatus," then yes; if you expand it to include orders thought by one
> > sapience to another through the ship's datanet, then no.
> >
> I meant verbal orders as in military SF that has captains barking at
> helmsmen and gunnery officers. The use of datanets and VR would
> completely change the command process, while still preserving the
> centrality of human decision-making.
Well see, I do think that captains would have to in some way issue
course and fire doctrine orders. I don't think that, past a certain
technological point, it will be done with the organic voice boxes of
those captains, and I do think that there will be a lot left up to the
discretion of the helm and fire control officers involved.
It might involve, for instance, the Command Aintellect passing a fire
control priority table to the Chief Weapons Aintellect, which then
breaks it up into targetting tasks and hands it over to the other
Weapons Aintellects, each one in command of a battery, for instance.
With all this happening in a space of time more conveniently measurable
in microseconds than seconds.
> > I think it's a fairly safe bet that there is "something in space worth
> > defending and attacking," at least in a far-future context where
> > Mankind has had time to expand through the Universe, or at least Solar
> > System. Earth is, after all, only one planet among many.
> >
> It's a pretty safe bet after mankind has expanded through one Solar
> System.
Yes.
SIncerely Yours,
Jordan
IsaacKuo
Ken Burnside wrote:
> IsaacKuo wrote:
> > Ken Burnside wrote:
> > > Ten Worlds doesn't have sapient AI for two reasons.
> > > 1) The impact on any world with sapient AI is going to be MASSIVE,
> > > particularly if it can be copied easily (let alone if doing so means
> > > you can copy human personalities easily or store them on a computer
> > > network.)
> > > 2) People read fiction to read about people, not computer programs. I
> > > cannot picture a future where AIs happen where meat people would be out
> > > and about in places that would make good stories.
> > You can't picture such a future? Why not? Everyone else seems to.
> > Personally, I think it's not a stretch to assume that copying human
> > personalities into computer simulation form might prove to be
> > undoable far into the future. And also, I don't think it's a stretch
> > to assume that sapient AI development could be such that those
> > AIs are entirely subservient to human masters. Under those
> > assumptions, meat people would plausibly be out and about in
> > places that would make good stories.
> Imagine the economic chaos caused when every job that doesn't requre an
> engineering degree of some sort can be done by AIs more cheaply than by
> human beings - by AIs that won't show up late for work, will work hard,
> and don't need to be "paid".
I can do that. To me, it's just an extension of a continuous
economic effect we've had since the Industrial revolution.
With automation and economies of scale, we've gotten
progressively more and more "work" done per human.
The "real jobs" which remain to humans have become
progressively more and more sophisticated, requiring
specialized extensive education. There are also "fake jobs"
remaining to humans who are simply fortunate enough to
have inherited or been elected to wealth/power.
Replace "AI" with "machine", and you see that the principle
is exactly the same.
Even after the "real jobs" have entirely dried up because
the AIs are smarter than any human could ever be, the
"fake jobs" remain. Unless the AIs take over, of course--but
under the above assumptions the AIs remain subservient
to human masters (just like today's machines are subservient).
> That's just a first order implication. Search for Marshall Brain on
> the web for some interesting reading on this as well.
> Any society with sapient AIs has the potential to be REALLY strange by
> our standards - strange enough that a lot of the more common
> storytelling forms and tropes are going to be as laughable as steam
> powered horses pulling stage coaches are now.
It doesn't have to be so strange, though. Given the assumption
that human mind "uploads" are too difficult and AI's are programmed
to be subservient to their human masters, it need not be
too different from today.
Isaac Kuo
David Johnston
>
>Even after the "real jobs" have entirely dried up because
>the AIs are smarter than any human could ever be, the
>"fake jobs" remain.
Oh yeah, that's what I want to read about. People who don't matter.
I've got my own life to be inconsequential in.
IsaacKuo
These "fake jobs" are hardly inconsequential--they include politicians,
CEOs, and venture capitalists. It's not necessary to actually
"produce" anything to matter.
Under the assumptions that human mind uploading is too
difficult to accomplish and that AIs are subservient to their
human masters, flesh and blood humans will still be making
important decisions even if logically they aren't the most
qualified to do so.
Isaac Kuo
il...@rcn.com
> you need to get first space lords and a bureaucratic admiralty and
> teenaged midshipmen and thin red line of heroes when the guns begin
> to shoot, and indeed just about everything but the rum and buggery,
Come on! Of all the hacks writing "Horatio Hornblower in space"
SOMEBODY must have included rum and buggery and Harry Flashman!
In fact, if some one had, I would actually read it... :)
IsaacKuo
Jordan wrote:
> Well, that's my main point. I _do_ expect man-per-ton crew
> requirements to go down and keep going down, as technology advances.
> But at the same time, absolute tonnage will probably continue to
> increase, and the historical wet-naval precedents (comparisons of
> triremes, carracks, men-of-war, ships-of-the-line, ironclad
> battleships, and modern attack carriers) show a trend for the absolute
> size to increase so rapidly that the absolute crew size also increases
> despite automation.
I'm not so sure that this trend is surviving the age of automation.
The modern supercarrier is indeed very big, but hardly anyone
has them anymore. Ever since WWII, the trend seems to be
that ships of any particular class keeps on getting bigger,
up until the point that they get too big and get replaced by the
next smaller class.
Battleship development essentially halted after WWII, while
cruisers and destroyers got bigger and bigger. As battleships
disappeared, more and more navies had cruisers for capital
ships. Now, cruisers are going away, leaving destroyers as
the new capital ships.
With carriers, jets forced carriers to get bigger or go away
entirely. For more and more navies, that meant for the carriers
to go away entirely. Sure, there are a few notable VTOL
carriers, but they're essentially cruisers with a deck through
the middle...umm...
So while any particular ship class keeps getting bigger and
bigger, it seems the size of the actual capital ships has
stagnated and perhaps even declined.
Hmm...given current trends, perhaps the term "Star Destroyer"
turns out not to be so strange after all...
Isaac Kuo
Jack Tingle
My objection to sapient AI's being subservient to human masters is the
same as my objection to sapient NI's being subservient to human
masters. Chattel slavery is morally wrong. That kind of spoils the
sensawunda for me.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
David Johnston
wrote:
>: David Johnston <rgo...@block.net>
>: Really? I assumed almost all of the crew were repair guys (and of
>: course troops)
>
>Well, there were "tac officers" who seemed to be pushing buttons (or
>typing commands) to tell missiles to do various quite specific things,
Yes, but that's only one bridge position (and one job that is NOT
dispensable on a heavily automated ship is computer programmer. In
fact you want lots and lots of computer programmers, more than we were
shown). There was never any hint that there were missile loaders
physically loading the missiles that I could see or flak gunners in
cupolas blazing away. Although the crew took heavy casualities that
was because most of the ship had vast chunks of it blown away to prove
that Honor was the galaxy's greatest captain.
aceh...@gmail.com
IsaacKuo wrote:
> Ken Burnside wrote:
> > If you cool it enough to be stealthy, it's unlikey to work again when
> > thawed out. It's also highly unlikely that you can cool any
> > potentially useful onboard power source to something that'd work.
>
> Those are just technical details. For computer equipment, such
> low temperatures could actually be quite beneficial, and a chemical
> "fuel cell" could provide adequate energy for passive sensors and
> terminal course adjustments (via electric thermal rocket or stealthy
> mass launcher).
Yes, but they're pretty *massive* technical details. The chemical
"fuel cell" likely would not work. Chemical reactions are rate-driven
in proportion to temperature, meaning if you've cooled the missile that
much, your chemical battery (fuel cell, etc - any chemical power
supply) will generate very little power until it has a chance to warm
up.
> IMHO, the real problem is that unless you're in deep interstellar
> space, there's unavoidable heating from sunlight.
That's a bit overstated. Inside the orbit of Jupiter, that's true.
> You can try to
> minimize the amount of absorbed energy with a mirrored surface,
> but then the edges of that surface will be visible to radar.
Or paint it white. If the object is spherical, it will have the most
efficient radiating surface (nothing to reflect into) and no edges to
resolve on radar.
-Matt Picio
aceh...@gmail.com
>
> How solar cells works in modern spacecrafts ? Arn't they near the
> absolute zero ?
If the spacecraft is at the distance of Earth's orbit from the sun,
then the side of the solar panel facing the sun is 280K (about 7
celsius). Solar panels won't work effectively past the asteroid belt,
but that's due more to a lack of sunlight than the temperature.
> I don't think the cold would damage electonics too.
It depends on how the components react to the temperature. What's most
damaging to electronics is repeated exposure to colder and warmer
temperatures. The expansion and contraction of the components (most of
which have the added complexity of dissimilar metals and ceramics with
different coefficients of expansion). This is one of the primary wear
factors in personal computers, especially those which are repeatedly
power-cycled throughout the day.
> You can illuminate drone with big laser from mothership to initiate
> start-up sequence.
Sure, but since the drone is probably between you and the target,
you've just announced your presence to the target and negated the
advantage of stealth.
> Or just have chemical source wich ignited by solar
> cells and prouduce enough energy/heat to start main reactor (or chain
> of progressivly more powerful sources)
The only issue with this is that it will take time for each of those
sources to start. Also, the more systems involved in this hypothetical
missile, the greater the chance that one of them will fail.
-Matt Picio
IsaacKuo
> > > If you cool it enough to be stealthy, it's unlikey to work again when
> > > thawed out. It's also highly unlikely that you can cool any
> > > potentially useful onboard power source to something that'd work.
> > Those are just technical details. For computer equipment, such
> > low temperatures could actually be quite beneficial, and a chemical
> > "fuel cell" could provide adequate energy for passive sensors and
> > terminal course adjustments (via electric thermal rocket or stealthy
> > mass launcher).
> Yes, but they're pretty *massive* technical details. The chemical
> "fuel cell" likely would not work. Chemical reactions are rate-driven
> in proportion to temperature, meaning if you've cooled the missile that
> much, your chemical battery (fuel cell, etc - any chemical power
> supply) will generate very little power until it has a chance to warm
> up.
So you warm it up starting some days before reaching the target,
where terminal guidance is necessary. This only means warming
up the power cell, which may be insulated from the rest of the
missile with layers of vacuum "thermos bottle" insulation.
> > IMHO, the real problem is that unless you're in deep interstellar
> > space, there's unavoidable heating from sunlight.
> That's a bit overstated. Inside the orbit of Jupiter, that's true.
> > You can try to
> > minimize the amount of absorbed energy with a mirrored surface,
> > but then the edges of that surface will be visible to radar.
> Or paint it white. If the object is spherical, it will have the most
> efficient radiating surface (nothing to reflect into) and no edges to
> resolve on radar.
If you paint it white, then it will reflect sunlight in all directions,
which makes you very visible regardless of your temperature.
Also, you will be an excellent radar reflector.
The idea behind the mirrored surface is to deflect sunlight in
a narrow conical beam--the same angular size as the image
of the Sun. This hopefully minimizes the chance of detection
by an enemy sensor probe. This also works against active
radar or ladar detection systems to an extent, since the flat
surface will reflect the beam in a different direction than the
emitter unless the emitter hits it nearly "straight on".
Unfortunately, diffraction at the edges of any flat surface
means that there's inevitably some extra "spread" to the
beam. At visible wavelengths, you can get relatively little
diffraction. At radar wavelengths, you can't.
Isaac Kuo
Wayne Throop
: There was never any hint that there were missile loaders
: physically loading the missiles that I could see or flak gunners in
: cupolas blazing away.
What were the people doing in training for gun (point defense) positions?
What are all the people who get blowed up along with "grazer mounts"
doing there? Why aren't they hanging back, and then going in to repair
after the machinery gets blowed up? They didn't seem to be training
to repair them quickly, they seemed to be training to aim and shoot.
In... hm... was it Shadow of Saganami, or am I conflating it with
something in one of the Moon "military spacegal" series?
In any event, it seemed like more than "bridge positions";
there seemed to me to be such stations all throughout the ship,
with crew micromanaging guns, tuneing fusion plants while running,
and so on and on.
And further. The sequences describing training for battle, or eg fitting
Andermani crews into Honor's fleet, did not seem to be training hard
to repair things quickly. They seemed to describe training hard to get
people to push buttons at the right times so that actions are coordinated.
And they spent weeks at it. If it were automated... why do that that way?
And the tremendous advantage of Manticoran training wasn't in getting things
repaired quickly, it was it effectiveness in operating things already in
good working order in battle, and seemed to apply to the crew as a whole,
not just tac officers and command staff.
I could of course be misunderstanding.
"Where the hell have you been, soldier?"
"Training, sir!"
"What kind of training, son?"
"Army training, sir!
--- Stripes
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
IsaacKuo
I'd conversely argue that designing sapient AI's without building
in some inate sense of ultimate purpose is morally wrong.
Humans suffer because we ask "Why?" and "What's the point?"
and we ultimately don't have a definitive unassailable answer.
Oh, we can make something up with some religious mumbo
jumbo and perhaps even convince ourselves that it's true. But
obviously the answer is neither truly definitive nor truly
unassailable, or no one would ever lose faith.
In the case of humans, there's no one to blame for this state
of affairs. But if we were to design sapient AI's from scratch?
Surely we'd be responsible for their inherent nature, in that
case. Wouldn't it be cruel for us to inflict the same ultimate
uncertainty of purpose that we suffer from ourselves?
Isaac Kuo
Erik Max Francis
> chorned...@hushmail.com wrote:
>> What would military spaceships be like?
>
> That's my cue to shamelessly plug my website,
> specifically the section on
> classifying military spacecraft.
>
> http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3t.html#shipgrid
I still think it makes the most sense to have a fourth dimension, which
is ship size. This would make the distinction between, say, a small
mine and a huge weapons platform. You could even do it along the third
physical dimension, turning the triangle into a sort of tetrahedron.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
Love, the itch, and a cough cannot be hid.
-- Thomas Fuller, M.D.
serg271
aceh...@gmail.com wrote:
> > You can illuminate drone with big laser from mothership to initiate
> > start-up sequence.
>
> Sure, but since the drone is probably between you and the target,
> you've just announced your presence to the target and negated the
> advantage of stealth.
>
The ploy is to take stealthy drone near the target. After that
announcing the presence of the mothership change nothing - drone will
power it's torch/weapon anyway, and the drone in the weapon range is
more important than the presence of mothership far away.
jonathan
"John Schilling" <schi...@spock.usc.edu> wrote in message
news:1qn0g2hln89h6fmtk...@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 7 Sep 2006 00:17:47 -0400, "jonathan" <Wr...@Instead.com> wrote:
>
>
> ><chorned...@hushmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:1157465097....@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
> >> What would military spaceships be like?
>
> >> resemblance to a civil spaceship. Space warships can and will use all
> >> technologies that are available and useful.
>
> >Why imagine, when such things are already reality.
>
> >Air Force Space Command
> >http://www.afspc.af.mil/
>
> >The 14th Air Force
> >http://www.vandenberg.af.mil/~associates/14af/index.html
>
>
> Neither the Air Force Space Command nor the 15th Air Force have anything
> remotely resembling a space warship. The idea that they might hire some
> people to officially contemplate what sort of space warships they might
> someday wish to acquire, is itself rather controversial. Actual space
> warships, here and now, no. Not even close.
But they are forming strategies for space warfare. Which
would define what capabilities are needed.
For example. The following doctrine lays out official US space strategy
that is similar to naval warfare. In terms of protecting friendly lines of
communications (LOC) in space while denying it to the enemy.
The Joint Doctrine for Space Operations
Scope
This publication provides guidelines for planning and conducting joint space
operations. It provides space doctrine fundamentals for all warfighters
- air, land, sea, space, and special operations forces;
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The United States must be able to protect its space assets (and when
practical and appropriate, those of its allies) and deny the use of space
assets by its adversaries. Commanders must anticipate hostile actions
that attempt to deny friendly forces access to or use of space capabilities.
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp3_14.pdf#search=%22Joint%20Doctrine%20for%20Space%20Operations%22
But the following paper suggests defensive abilities may be more important
than offensive.
Space Power
An Ill-Suited Space Strategy
A proper understanding of offensive and defensive strategies reveals that
one may use the latter to ensure access to celestial LOCs. Defensive
strategies, therefore, that harden space systems against electromagnetic
damage, provide self-defense against offensive attack, or incorporate
redundant system capabilities are all suitable methods of protecting
celestial LOCs while achieving a significant level of command in space.
Since defensive strategy is just as important as offensive strategy in
any overall war plan, any space strategy that focuses too intently on
the application of force or the role of offensive weapon systems is myopic.
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj06/fal06/klein.html
>
> The Air Force Space Command does things like operate GPS satellites.
> I don't think those are what anyone here thinks of as "space warships".
Certainly our icbm's qualify, which is their responsibility. And since
naval-like warfare seems to be the future for space. A space 'crusier'
shouldn't be that far off. But they seem to focus on space forces
that can be easily dispersed for defensive purposes. While
being able to be concentrated for offensive uses. As in naval warfare.
This would suggest to me small and numerous space warships.
Perhaps automated or fancy satellites so to speak.
Not so much large ships with the big guns.
Anyways, it's fun to think about. And it looks as though only
the US is serious about it and moving quickly to militarize
space.
s
>
>
> --
> *John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
> *Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
> *Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
> *White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
> *schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
> *661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
George W Harris
wrote:
:Yes, but that's only one bridge position (and one job that is NOT
:dispensable on a heavily automated ship is computer programmer. In
:fact you want lots and lots of computer programmers, more than we were
:shown).
If you need a computer programmer, you're sunk. I
wouldn't want to have any program running vital functions
on *any* ship, commercial or military, that hasn't been
tested thoroughly before we ever leave port.
--
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV!
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
George W Harris
:I'd conversely argue that designing sapient AI's without building
:in some inate sense of ultimate purpose is morally wrong.
DOOLITLE: What is your one purpose in life?
BOMB #20: To explode, of course.
"Dark Star"
--
Real men don't need macho posturing to bolster their egos.
George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'.
IsaacKuo
> :I'd conversely argue that designing sapient AI's without building
> :in some inate sense of ultimate purpose is morally wrong.
> DOOLITLE: What is your one purpose in life?
> BOMB #20: To explode, of course.
> "Dark Star"
Perfect example! Better to make a thousand happy bomb-bots
than a single irate Skynet.
Isaac Kuo
Russell Wallace
> But it isn't. What's stopping us from getting into space is the lack
> of an inexpensive propulsion system. No matter how much automation we
> get, we still won't get into space (much) until we get those lift
> costs down.
That's what I disagree with.
The reason launch is expensive is because we do so little of it; flight
rate is the key to getting costs down.
The reason we do so little of it is there's so little we can usefully do
in space.
The reason there's so little we can usefully do is we can't live there.
The reason we can't live there is it takes thousands of man-years of
labor to support a person in space for one year.
And the reason for that disparity is that all the complexity of life
support systems etc has to be handled by human labor - human life on
Earth is possible because the trillions of tasks that have to be
performed to support a human brain are almost entirely automated, but
those systems aren't enough in space.
So complex automation is the key to everything in space - including
lower launch costs.
--
"Always look on the bright side of life."
To reply by email, replace no.spam with my last name.
aceh...@gmail.com
> > "fuel cell" likely would not work. Chemical reactions are rate-driven
> > in proportion to temperature, meaning if you've cooled the missile that
> > much, your chemical battery (fuel cell, etc - any chemical power
> > supply) will generate very little power until it has a chance to warm
> > up.
>
> So you warm it up starting some days before reaching the target,
> where terminal guidance is necessary. This only means warming
> up the power cell, which may be insulated from the rest of the
> missile with layers of vacuum "thermos bottle" insulation.
If you warm it up some days before, then it will have time to radiate
through the layers of your insulating bottle to the skin of the
missile. Also, if it's that well insulated, the internal temperature
is going to get pretty high, maybe high enough to prevent it from
functioning. So far, heat has proved to be the biggest problem in
space.
> > Or paint it white. If the object is spherical, it will have the most
> > efficient radiating surface (nothing to reflect into) and no edges to
> > resolve on radar.
>
> If you paint it white, then it will reflect sunlight in all directions,
> which makes you very visible regardless of your temperature.
No, it will scatter sunlight in *some* directions - in a cone back
towards the star.
> Also, you will be an excellent radar reflector.
How do you figure that? Color has no bearing on that, only the surface
material does. Fiberglass radomes on aircraft can be painted white,
yet be transparent to radar. Even if the surface is totally
radar-opaque, you won't get a good return off a perfect sphere, since
only a very small surface area reflects directly back to the emitter -
a sphere has the smallest radar cross-section of any geometry. With
modern aircraft, the largest areas of radar return are those with flat
surfaces, like the intakes.
Chances are, he's not radiating, anyway - it makes him a perfect
beacon, and since the generator powering the radar is likely no more
than 30% efficient, and the radar itself is only 54-65% efficient,
you'll need about 6x as much input power as you'll radiate. That's a
lot of energy converted to heat and needing to be radiated away. He
wants to be stealthy, too.
> The idea behind the mirrored surface is to deflect sunlight in
> a narrow conical beam--the same angular size as the image
> of the Sun. This hopefully minimizes the chance of detection
> by an enemy sensor probe. This also works against active
> radar or ladar detection systems to an extent, since the flat
> surface will reflect the beam in a different direction than the
> emitter unless the emitter hits it nearly "straight on".
Works great in theory, but not so great in practice. Your military
ship has probably been in space a number of years. Solar wind and
microscopic particles are going to pit that surface, increasing its
reflectivity (this is true for the sphere, also). Also, you're
assuming only one detecting probe. If he has more than 4, he's
probably covering enough of an area to see you from a direction you're
*not* trying to hide against.
Also, you can't deflect sunlight in that narrow of a conical beam for
more than a handful of km. The reflected sunlight expands after the
focal point to form another cone that gets larger the further away the
detecting ship is. If you want to control that reflection with an
adaptive surface to accomodate variable distance, you'll need a huge
focal diameter - probably much bigger than the missile itself, unless
you're positing gravitic focussing, which takes us solidly into space
opera.
> Unfortunately, diffraction at the edges of any flat surface
> means that there's inevitably some extra "spread" to the
> beam. At visible wavelengths, you can get relatively little
> diffraction. At radar wavelengths, you can't.
That extra spread is significant, as above.
-Matt Picio
aceh...@gmail.com
> > you've just announced your presence to the target and negated the
> > advantage of stealth.
> >
> The ploy is to take stealthy drone near the target. After that
> announcing the presence of the mothership change nothing - drone will
> power it's torch/weapon anyway, and the drone in the weapon range is
> more important than the presence of mothership far away.
Applying current naval dicta to future space combat is risky, since the
environments are so dissimilar, but here goes:
One of the primary maxims of missile warfare in the USN is "shoot the
archers, not the arrows". If you have drones out there gunning for
him, then he likely has drones out there gunning for you. If you
announce your presence to him, his ship is going to update your
location to all of his drones. Just because he sees a missile close in
doesn't mean it's a bigger threat than your ship.
Also, the drone can't power its systems immediately - it takes time,
even if only a few seconds. That time provides a defender an
opportunity to destroy it. It's likely that the defending ship has
larger weapons than the drone, so it's likewise probable that it has
greater range than the drone. Meaning that the ship's lasers have an
opportunity to destroy the drone while it's still powering up.
-Matt Picio
Nyrath the nearly wise
> Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:
>> http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3t.html#shipgrid
>
> I still think it makes the most sense to have a fourth dimension, which
> is ship size. This would make the distinction between, say, a small
> mine and a huge weapons platform. You could even do it along the third
> physical dimension, turning the triangle into a sort of tetrahedron.
Agreed the diagram needs a fourth dimension.
To make it a tetrahedron, though, the "size" dimension
would somehow have to be at the expense of the offense,
defense, and movement. This is because at each point
of the current grid the sum of the three components
is 100.
If the size component was independent, the graph
becomes a triangular prism, which is also useful
(but difficult to display on a flat piece
of paper)
Nyrath the nearly wise
> And this is my place to shamelessly plug two resources.
>
> The first is SFCONSIM-L on Yahoo Groups, which is probably the absolute
> best place I've found on the Internet for examining space travel, space
> combat, and the physics and engineering assumptions that define both of
> them.
>
> http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/sfconsim-l/ is its home page.
>
> Winchell and I are both regular participants there, and there's a crowd
> referred to as the Physics Mafia who will cheerfully work out ugly
> maths for you. Now, most of them will work out the physics for you to
> show why the proposed idea has unintended consequences, but that's an
> important part of writing SF as well.
>
> The second resource is a game I've written, called Attack Vector:
> Tactical
>
> http://www.adastragames.com/products/adastra/av.html
Seconded. SFCONSIM-L is where the action is.
The focus is on space combat simulations,
but all the information would be valuable
to an SF author as well. And the Physics
Mafia keeps you honest.
And anybody who wants to get a hands on
feel for Newtonian space conflict in
three dimension would be well advised to
obtain a copy of the Attack Vector
game and try playing a few scenarios.
Once you get the hang of playing,
keep a turn-by-turn record of each
game to instantly generate a detailed
battle suitable for use in your next novel.
Erik Max Francis
Yes, I was suggesting that the "size" of each layer would be different,
even though they figures would still add up to 100%. In other words, it
would effectively be 100% of a smaller total number, reflecting the fact
that the ships are smaller along that fourth (third physical) dimension.
Envisioning it as a prism would be fine, too, as long as it was clear
which way was smaller or bigger.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
I do this for the love of music / Not for the glitter and gold
-- India Arie
IsaacKuo
aceh...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > Yes, but they're pretty *massive* technical details. The chemical
> > > "fuel cell" likely would not work. Chemical reactions are rate-driven
> > > in proportion to temperature, meaning if you've cooled the missile that
> > > much, your chemical battery (fuel cell, etc - any chemical power
> > > supply) will generate very little power until it has a chance to warm
> > > up.
> > So you warm it up starting some days before reaching the target,
> > where terminal guidance is necessary. This only means warming
> > up the power cell, which may be insulated from the rest of the
> > missile with layers of vacuum "thermos bottle" insulation.
> If you warm it up some days before, then it will have time to radiate
> through the layers of your insulating bottle to the skin of the
> missile. Also, if it's that well insulated, the internal temperature
> is going to get pretty high, maybe high enough to prevent it from
> functioning. So far, heat has proved to be the biggest problem in
> space.
You're objections are self-contradictory. The reason for starting to
warm it up so early is because a cold battery doesn't provide much
power. It's going to take you a while to really get it going. So it
takes you a few days of very low power to slowly ramp it up to a
temperature where the battery is warm enough to seriously juice
up. During this time, the temperature differential is low, so there's
not going to be significant heat loss.
> > > Or paint it white. If the object is spherical, it will have the most
> > > efficient radiating surface (nothing to reflect into) and no edges to
> > > resolve on radar.
> > If you paint it white, then it will reflect sunlight in all directions,
> > which makes you very visible regardless of your temperature.
> No, it will scatter sunlight in *some* directions - in a cone back
> towards the star.
No, it will scatter sunlight in ALL directions, except for directly
opposite the star. Notice how the Moon is visible except when
it's between us and the Sun?
> > Also, you will be an excellent radar reflector.
> How do you figure that? Color has no bearing on that, only the surface
> material does. Fiberglass radomes on aircraft can be painted white,
> yet be transparent to radar.
Transparent, but hardly invisible. The problem is not a matter of
transparent vs opaque, it's a matter of reflectivity. Radar absorbing
materials are only moderately good at reducing radar reflections.
> Even if the surface is totally
> radar-opaque, you won't get a good return off a perfect sphere, since
> only a very small surface area reflects directly back to the emitter -
> a sphere has the smallest radar cross-section of any geometry.
Wrong on both counts. The smallest radar cross section you can
get is with some sort of flat surface angled so it presents NO surface
area reflecting directly back at the emitter. The effectiveness of
this
is limited by diffraction limits, but for high resolution short
wavelengths
it can be extremely effective.
> With
> modern aircraft, the largest areas of radar return are those with flat
> surfaces, like the intakes.
The areas of largest radar return are those with 90 degree inside
corners (like at the root of the rudder/tailplane or the fuselage/wing
interface). These tend to act as beam reflectors sending beams
disproportionately back toward the radar emitter.
Depending on the design of the intakes, they can be extremely
good reflectors because they tend to act somewhat like box
reflectors--the metal turbine blades reflecting radar back out
the intake.
> Chances are, he's not radiating, anyway - it makes him a perfect
> beacon, and since the generator powering the radar is likely no more
> than 30% efficient, and the radar itself is only 54-65% efficient,
> you'll need about 6x as much input power as you'll radiate. That's a
> lot of energy converted to heat and needing to be radiated away. He
> wants to be stealthy, too.
No, he doesn't. He's probably a very powerful surface or orbital
installation, and everyone knows where this radar base is
anyway so there's no point in trying to be stealthy about it.
As for mobile spacecraft--as noted, it's really hard to be stealthy
in space. Really, really, really hard. So why not use active
radar? It's quite useful, and a warship probably already has
a powerful reactor for propulsion and/or weapons. 99% of the
time, the warship isn't using that reactor for weapons or propulsion.
During this time, it can either be dead weight or it can be
utilized to scan for potential incoming and small enemy drones.
> > The idea behind the mirrored surface is to deflect sunlight in
> > a narrow conical beam--the same angular size as the image
> > of the Sun. This hopefully minimizes the chance of detection
> > by an enemy sensor probe. This also works against active
> > radar or ladar detection systems to an extent, since the flat
> > surface will reflect the beam in a different direction than the
> > emitter unless the emitter hits it nearly "straight on".
> Works great in theory, but not so great in practice. Your military
> ship has probably been in space a number of years. Solar wind and
> microscopic particles are going to pit that surface, increasing its
> reflectivity (this is true for the sphere, also). Also, you're
> assuming only one detecting probe. If he has more than 4, he's
> probably covering enough of an area to see you from a direction you're
> *not* trying to hide against.
No, I'm assuming many probes all around the solar system.
The mirror surface will be detectable if there's a probe within
a 1/2 degree wide cone (if the "stealth" missile is vaguely
around Earth orbit--narrower if further away).
> Also, you can't deflect sunlight in that narrow of a conical beam for
> more than a handful of km. The reflected sunlight expands after the
> focal point to form another cone that gets larger the further away the
> detecting ship is.
No, it doesn't. For all practical purposes, the cone stays the
exact same angular diameter out to forever--centered essentially
at the stealth missile's position.
Of course, the physical size of the circle it illuminates gets bigger
and bigger. However, the total fraction of the light sphere which
it hits remains the same forever. For a half degree wide cone,
that fraction is 1/210,000 of it. That means that a detector probe
in some random location has about a 1/210,000 chance of
seeing the "stealth" missile. If you wanted to virtually guarantee
a detection at all times, then you'd need 200,000 probes.
OTOH, you don't actually need to guarantee a detection at
all times. You're doing well enough if you just happen to
detect the "stealth" missile after a few weeks by luck.
If the "stealth" missile designers are being irrationally
helpful, they could sweep the mirror angle to scan the sky.
Eventually, one of your probes will get hit. Naturally, the
"stealth" missile designers aren't going to be so helpful.
They'll be setting the mirror angle to stay at one angle or
to sweep slowly to counteract motion as much as possible.
But the "stealth" missile itself is moving, introducing an
inherent amount of sweep--and your probes are also moving
due to orbital mechanics.
As a result of all these complications, the true chance of
detection will be much greater than 1/210,000. I haven't
worked out the exact chances; they depend on a lot more
assumptions.
> > Unfortunately, diffraction at the edges of any flat surface
> > means that there's inevitably some extra "spread" to the
> > beam. At visible wavelengths, you can get relatively little
> > diffraction. At radar wavelengths, you can't.
> That extra spread is significant, as above.
For visible wavelengths, and for a plausibly sized interplanetary
missile, the extra diffraction spread is insignificant. The size
of the cone is essentially determined by the angular size of
the Sun's image.
Isaac Kuo
IsaacKuo
Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:
> > And this is my place to shamelessly plug two resources.
> > The first is SFCONSIM-L on Yahoo Groups, which is probably the absolute
> > best place I've found on the Internet for examining space travel, space
> > combat, and the physics and engineering assumptions that define both of
> > them.
> > http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/sfconsim-l/ is its home page.
> Seconded. SFCONSIM-L is where the action is.
> The focus is on space combat simulations,
> but all the information would be valuable
> to an SF author as well. And the Physics
> Mafia keeps you honest.
I wonder how the ideas on SFCONSIM-L compare to here on
rec.arts.sf.science. We've got what I think is an interesting
variety of perspectives and a lot of interesting novel concepts.
(Okay, so I'm a bit biased, being a source for a lot of them.)
> And anybody who wants to get a hands on
> feel for Newtonian space conflict in
> three dimension would be well advised to
> obtain a copy of the Attack Vector
> game and try playing a few scenarios.
> Once you get the hang of playing,
> keep a turn-by-turn record of each
> game to instantly generate a detailed
> battle suitable for use in your next novel.
It's long been a dream of mine to come up with what I'd
consider a satisfactory "realistic" space combat pen/paper
game. Even if one ignores orbital mechanics--which given
realistic space combat scales and settings is rather
questionable--handling 3D motion in a symmetric and
Machian way is challenging. Symmetric means that
all axes of movement are treated equally. Machian means
that you can shift the frame of reference without affecting
the situation (i.e. you can accelerate all units by 10km/s
in the "north" direction without changing anything).
Hexes plus altitude aren't symmetric. I favor rhombic
dodecahedron tiling, which is symmetric and has hex map
cross sections in 4 different planes. (Hex plus altitude
only has hex map cross section in one plane.) This is
what I used for "Classical Fleet Actions in 3 Space",
although that system had no pretense of using realistic
weaponry or ship designs. Physically, rhombic dodecahedron
tiling can be thought of as the red cubes in a cubical grid
colored like a Chess board.
Handling 3D facing symmetrically is nightmarish. Fortunately,
at realistic space combat scales facing can probably be
ignored entirely. But for the unabashedly unrealistic
"Electric Death", I used cubical motion and facing as it's
the simplest and most intuitive symmetrical 3d facing system.
The angular resolution may be poor, but anyone can understand
how it works.
Hmm...I may try and come up with something new based
on the movement system of "Classical Fleet Actions", but
with realistic scale, ship designs, and weaponry.
Isaac Kuo
IsaacKuo
aceh...@gmail.com wrote:
> > The ploy is to take stealthy drone near the target. After that
> > announcing the presence of the mothership change nothing - drone will
> > power it's torch/weapon anyway, and the drone in the weapon range is
> > more important than the presence of mothership far away.
> Applying current naval dicta to future space combat is risky, since the
> environments are so dissimilar, but here goes:
> One of the primary maxims of missile warfare in the USN is "shoot the
> archers, not the arrows". If you have drones out there gunning for
> him, then he likely has drones out there gunning for you. If you
> announce your presence to him, his ship is going to update your
> location to all of his drones. Just because he sees a missile close in
> doesn't mean it's a bigger threat than your ship.
I think you're misunderstanding the USN philosophy. The idea
is to shoot at the "archers" before they have a chance to fire
their "arrows", if possible. Any "arrows" heading toward
USN forces are definitely fired upon, in addition to the "archers".
> Also, the drone can't power its systems immediately - it takes time,
> even if only a few seconds. That time provides a defender an
> opportunity to destroy it. It's likely that the defending ship has
> larger weapons than the drone, so it's likewise probable that it has
> greater range than the drone. Meaning that the ship's lasers have an
> opportunity to destroy the drone while it's still powering up.
Presumably the drones have enough firepower to take down the
defender, or they wouldn't have been sent in the first place. For
surprise to be such an important factor, I'd guess that the drones
are using something which can expend its ammunition in a very
short time--like maybe a bunch of missiles or a nuke powered
array of EFPs. By the time lasers could punch through the (passive)
defenses it could be too late.
I favor the idea of simply ramming the target, with a proximity
warhead just before intercept to spread fragments and increase
the chance of hitting. However, there's something to be said
for fragmenting into a whole bunch of guided missiles from
further away. These guided missiles could be dumb spinning
"slugs" with a transparent base and a sideways pointing nozzle.
A terminal guidance drone could follow the missiles so it's a
comfortable distance from the target when it "warms up". This
drone uses on board sensors to track the target and fires a
pulse laser at the guided missiles to perform terminal course
adjustments--each laser pulse causes a thrust out the sideways
pointing nozzle.
The advantage of a stream of cheap missiles rather than a
proximity warhead is that it could counter my favored last
ditch CIWS defense--using point blank range nukes to vaporize
lots of incoming fragments at once. Given the limitations of
a chemical explosive fragmentation warhead, it's plausible that
a small number of nukes detonated at point blank range could
eliminate all fragments no matter how many there are. In
contrast, a series of small cheap missiles could be spaced
apart far enough to require one nuke per incoming.
Isaac Kuo
Wayne Throop
:: archers, not the arrows".
: "IsaacKuo" <mec...@yahoo.com>
: I think you're misunderstanding the USN philosophy. The idea is to
: shoot at the "archers" before they have a chance to fire their
: "arrows", if possible. Any "arrows" heading toward USN forces are
: definitely fired upon, in addition to the "archers".
That seems to make the saying pretty empty. If we note the
subcases, you're saying "shoot the archers not the arrows" means
"shoot the archers if there are no arrows, but if there are arrows,
shoot them". Um... well. This doesn't seem like profound adice.
I suppose "shoot the archers not the arrows" could mean
"devote fraction F of your shots to the arrows, and 1-F of your
shots to the archers", for some suitable value of F, or somesuch.
But... ah well.
rmrobinson
IsaacKuo wrote:
> I favor the idea of simply ramming the target, with a proximity
> warhead just before intercept to spread fragments and increase
> the chance of hitting.
Kinetic fragmentation missiles are my weapon of choice. The beauty is
that the entire mass of the missile bus and equipment is put to work in
the destructive fragment cloud.
> However, there's something to be said
> for fragmenting into a whole bunch of guided missiles from
> further away. These guided missiles could be dumb spinning
> "slugs" with a transparent base and a sideways pointing nozzle.
> A terminal guidance drone could follow the missiles so it's a
> comfortable distance from the target when it "warms up". This
> drone uses on board sensors to track the target and fires a
> pulse laser at the guided missiles to perform terminal course
> adjustments--each laser pulse causes a thrust out the sideways
> pointing nozzle.
I suspect that simple chemfuel target seekers would be cheaper for
these terminal submunis. And if the drone's laser is close enough to
nudge the submunis during terminal phase, the target ship's defensive
lasers are close enough to zap the drone, disabling all the target
seekers.
> The advantage of a stream of cheap missiles rather than a
> proximity warhead is that it could counter my favored last
> ditch CIWS defense--using point blank range nukes to vaporize
> lots of incoming fragments at once.
Ouch! Two complications:
1) Only vaporizing the fragments outright will help - molten ones will
smack you just as hard as solid ones. And vaporizing junk outright is
a lot of work, requiring a pretty high-yield warhead. (Also, remember
that while the you're usually interested in the fragment cloud's
two-dimensional cross section, the cloud is 3-dimensional - fragments
at the back of the oncoming cloud may be hundreds of meters behind the
ones at the front of the cloud.
2) Close-in nukes are going to bathe your ship in neutrons, killing the
crew unless they're behind *really* heavy shielding. Neutron flux in
space is really, really ugly - with no atmosphere to absorb them, the
little buggers just keep going. A 1-megaton bomb will kill unshielded
humans at about 300 km.
But the guided submuni is still useful, because it helps get past
another all-too-effective defensive measure against big, long-range
missiles: the Kirklin mine. A Kirklin mine is a small fragmentation
missile, slung into the path of an approaching long-range missile by a
chemfuel booster or a coilgun. It doesn't need to go very fast relative
to the ship it is defending - the closing speed of the incoming missile
provides the kinetic punch.
In other words a judo weapon - it uses the missile's own speed against
it.
-- Rick
Jordan
IsaacKuo wrote:
> Jordan wrote:
>
> > Well, that's my main point. I _do_ expect man-per-ton crew
> > requirements to go down and keep going down, as technology advances.
> > But at the same time, absolute tonnage will probably continue to
> > increase, and the historical wet-naval precedents (comparisons of
> > triremes, carracks, men-of-war, ships-of-the-line, ironclad
> > battleships, and modern attack carriers) show a trend for the absolute
> > size to increase so rapidly that the absolute crew size also increases
> > despite automation.
>
> I'm not so sure that this trend is surviving the age of automation.
> The modern supercarrier is indeed very big, but hardly anyone
> has them anymore.
This is because there is now only one serious naval power: the United
States of America. Something similiar happened in the Classical world
during the 1st century BCE and 1st century CE; as Rome found herself
with no naval rivals, the size of the average warship dropped because
they were now needed primarily for anti-piracy patrols rather than
fleet battles.
> Ever since WWII, the trend seems to be
> that ships of any particular class keeps on getting bigger,
> up until the point that they get too big and get replaced by the
> next smaller class.
>
> Battleship development essentially halted after WWII, while
> cruisers and destroyers got bigger and bigger. As battleships
> disappeared, more and more navies had cruisers for capital
> ships. Now, cruisers are going away, leaving destroyers as
> the new capital ships.
Actually, what happened is that in WWII the "1st rate capital ship"
role shifted to the aircraft carrier, and during the Cold War the
aircraft carrier got very large indeed. The biggest battleships ever
built were around 72,000 + tons (the Japanese _Yamato_ class) while the
biggest carriers ever built are around 100,000+ tons.
> With carriers, jets forced carriers to get bigger or go away
> entirely. For more and more navies, that meant for the carriers
> to go away entirely.
Translation: "For more and more navies, it was impossible to even aim
at control of any contested waters, should a real navy contest them."
Any navy with large carriers has an immense advantage over any navy
which doesn't. They aren't an optional ship type: they are the
essence of modern power at sea.
> Sure, there are a few notable VTOL
> carriers, but they're essentially cruisers with a deck through
> the middle...umm...
In other words, they are a type of "carrier." The invention of VTOL
military aircraft makes a type of "light carrier" possible again.
Essentially, most large modern cruisers are also "escort carriers,"
because they carry a few helicopters capable of anti-shipping and
anti-submarine operations.
> So while any particular ship class keeps getting bigger and
> bigger, it seems the size of the actual capital ships has
> stagnated and perhaps even declined.
Unless you, rather oddly, deprive carriers of the status of "capital
ships." Though in fact the largest cruisers are now larger than some
dreadnought and all pre-dreadnought battleships.
> Hmm...given current trends, perhaps the term "Star Destroyer"
> turns out not to be so strange after all...
It's a functional designation, originating in the anti-militarism of
the Late Old Republic. The Republic basically had to re-invent large
warship fleets for the Clone Wars.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
chorned...@hushmail.com
Jordan wrote:
> Wayne Throop wrote:
> > :: Automation and very small crews, as distinct from any carried troops.
> > :: Military sci-fi with huge military space vessel crews seem stuck in
> > :: some world war two paradigm.
> >
> > : Depends on how big the spaceship is. A very big space warship might
> > : have a crew that was "very large" compared to modern surface-naval
> > : warships, while still being heavily automated.
> >
> > Seems to me "might" and "depends on how big" render this pretty lame as
> > a justification for large crews into an indefinitely advanced future.
>
> We are talking about hypothetical space warships which are armed and
> protected by hypothetical technologies and intended for unknown
> hypothetical military purposes. Seems to me that "might" is about all
> we can say unless we get a lot more specific about the scenario.
>
> And of _course_ it "depends on how big" the spaceship is! A space
> warship the size of, say, the USS Discovery (Shuttle Orbiter) could not
> possibly require more than a few personnel unless it was some sort of
> boarding boat chock-full of Space Marines;
A possibility.
> a space warship the size of,
> say, the USS Nimitz would almost certainly require more than a few
> personnel unless whatever mode of combat it engaged in was an
> all-or-nothing affair: miss or instant destruction, with no "damaged"
> results possible.
>
> By "crew" I don't mean merely organic beings; I mean sapients, whether
> they are meat people or aintellects. Even on a ship manned solely by
> aintellects, you would want more than one if the ship was very large,
> because the myriad of necessary tasks would be such that it is unlikely
> that a single coherent personality would be master of _all_ the skills
> and able to manage all the chores simultaneously. A diversity of
> sapients would be more efficient in this regard.
>
> > :: Even modern submarines, probably the closest equivalent, have only
> > :: crews of a hundred or so. Space warcraft even of the largest size
> > :: may see that reduced to a few dozen sapients at most. Of course,
> > :: there may be hundreds of robots.
> >
> > : If the robots be sapient, then they are also "crew."
> >
> > Indeed, but what if they aren't sapient. Hey, they "might" not be.
> > Of more interest, do you have any *reason* to suppose they would be?
>
> _Someone_ on the ship had better be sapient ...
>
> > Ultimately, a single sapient would suffice.
>
> As a minimum crew, maybe (depending on the technology and the ship
> size), but you would want a larger crew for normal operations.
>
> > After all, there's a single
> > sapient in your body (more or less), yet endless maintenance self-repair,
> > damage control, and defense drones.
>
> Yes, but your body doesn't do detail work very well. Your body has
> only a single sapient rather than a crew because your body happens to
> be not much bigger than the minimum size needed to generate one given a
> mammalian brain structure. Your brain consumes something like 25% of
> all your energy; you literally don't have enough power for a second
> sapient to ride onboard. You are inherently a one-man vehicle.
>
> > If there's some reason spaceships
> > shouldn't trend in that general direction over long timeframes (eg,
> > the multiple hundreds of years involved in the typical Weberverse),
> > I'm unaware of it.
>
> The reason might be that the ships get larger and larger. A
> tremendously automated ship, which regenerated damage and did routine
> tasks with no sapient intervention, might well have a crew of tens of
> thousands if it were very large and had to do a lot of different tasks
> requiring sapient intervention.
>
Another pretty obvious reason might be that price of labour goes down
as human breeding catches up with expanding resources...
> After all, modern naval warships are _very_ automated compared to the
> ships of (say) 200 years ago. A ship of the line of the Napoleonic
> Wars displaced around 1000-2500 tons and carried a crew of around 800
> men. That is roughly 1 man per 2 tons. By contrast, a modern
> Nimitz-class carrier displaces around 100 thousand tons and carries a
> crew of around 5700 men. That is, roughly 1 man per 17.5 tons.
>
> Note two things. The Nimitz-class ship carries much fewer men per ton
> of displacement -- in fact 8-9 times fewer men -- but because it is
> around 50 times larger than the sailing battleship, it carries around 7
> times as many men in absolute numerical terms.
>
> This is directly due to technological advances. The supercarrier both
> needs to be larger than the ship of the line (because a mere 2000-ton
> warship could not base 100 jet warplanes) and _can_ be this huge
> because of technological progress (a wooden hull massing 100 thousand
> tons would have trouble maintaining its structural integrity, let alone
> maneuvering in battle.
>
A supercarrier CAN displace 100 thousand tons because it is not made of
wood. But for precisely the same reason, a civilian or military oil
tanker can also displace 100 thousand tons. Or 500 thousand tons.
A civilian oil tanker displacing 100 thousand tons does not need a crew
of around 5700 men. But it also cannot fulfil any function except
carrying its load from port to port. A 100 thousand ton tanker is
pretty useless for attack or defence precisely because it carries so
few sapients.
It is perfectly possible to build 50 steel warships of 2000 tons each
with 114 crew members each. However, such a fleet cannot match a single
supercarrier because the supercarrier employs two key technologies that
do not scale down well. Namely deck runway and nuclear power reactor. A
mere 2000 ton warship not only could not base 100 jet warplanes, it
also could not base 2.
> _Any_ crew requirement for any era can be measured in terms of "men per
> ton" for a given type of ship (this comparison isn't perfect because in
> many ways a supercarrier is different operationally than a c. 1800 ship
> of the line, but it is also a good one because both fill the same
> strategic role -- i.e. they are the supreme "capital ships" of their
> respective eras). The required "men per ton" goes down with automation
> (but never to zero because at least _some_ sapients must be aboard
> anything self-directed and expected to behave with tactical
> complexity), but the raw tonnage also tends to go up over time because
> at higher technologies bigger combatant vehicles are possible.
>
> > Plus, of course, the typical Weberverse involves huge crews of hundreds
> > or thousands of unaugmented or only mildly augmented mk I hooman beans.
> > This seems quite unlikely. Especially unlikely is the Honorverse, where
> > after hundreds of years of huge crews, designers hit themselves on their
> > foreheads and say "D'OH! we could have been using automation all this time",
> > and crews get reduced drastically. One could argue that nobody bothered
> > doing this because nobody was in this kind of protracted war for hundreds
> > of years, and of course there's no AI in the Honorverse to allow the
> > ship to think for itself, or multitask battle repairs,
> > but it's a pretty small figleaf.
>
> That's the key: the Honorverse does not seem to have much in the way
> of artificial intelligence, and this in turn means that a large ship
> must carry a lot of human beings onboard to maintain and fight her.
> However, you seem not to have noticed just _how_ large the Honorverse
> ships are -- their "men per ton" requirements are far, far lower than
> those of even the Nimitz-class carrier in my example. They carry very
> large crews because they are _very_ large vessels!
>
> > The generalization of that problem, is to transplant a current (or
> > relatively recent past) "we're making progress" mindset into a future
> > where hundreds of thousands of years of stasis have occured, without
> > much apparent reason why this progress hadn't already happened.
>
> I would assume that David Weber has his reasons for the slow
> technological development in the Honorverse; so far he hasn't gone much
> into them.
>
> > Vaguely similar notion of single-sapient-per-large-complex-system,
> > see also "Major Operation" by White. Possibly see also "Mayflies"
> > by O'Donnell, possibly "Reckoning Infinity by Stith, and
> > maybe possibly even "Rendesvous with Rama" by Clarke.
> >
> > Or... juxtaposing oddities, "Path of the Fury" (and/or "In Fury Born")
> > by Weber. Here we have the single-sapient scheme starship as a
> > recent development juxtaposed with crew-of-thousands-battleship scheme.
> > But... why it was a *recent* development is... moderately obscure. Again,
> > "progress happens" mindset projected into the far future, yields strong
> > suspension-of-disbelief requirement. Well... you also have a surviving,
> > non-material Greek Fury name of "Tisiphone" to not-disbelieve also,
> > though that one is amenable to various simple or simple-ish workarounds,
> > compared to the "d'oh, we can automate everything" recent headslap after
> > a thousand years.
>
> Well, as I said, it depends on your technological assumptions. This
> includes your technological assumptions about the _nature_ of your
> ships -- I can plausibly imagine starflight operations in which truly
> gigantic warships can be crewed by one sapient with the whole rest of
> the ship run like the "body" in your example; and I can with equal
> plausibility imagine ones in which truly gigantic warships require
> crews far larger than any manning any real-world warship.
>
> Sincerely Yours,
> Jordan
IsaacKuo
Wayne Throop wrote:
> :: One of the primary maxims of missile warfare in the USN is "shoot the
> :: archers, not the arrows".
> : "IsaacKuo" <mec...@yahoo.com>
> : I think you're misunderstanding the USN philosophy. The idea is to
> : shoot at the "archers" before they have a chance to fire their
> : "arrows", if possible. Any "arrows" heading toward USN forces are
> : definitely fired upon, in addition to the "archers".
> That seems to make the saying pretty empty.
No, it's a perfectly good philosophy which explains their obsession
with a long range defensive CAP. It was the justification for
the massive expense in F14 jets and their Phoenix armament.
The wisdom of this strategy was confirmed by the conflict
over the Falkland Islands--the British navy lacked sufficient
air power for a comprehensive CAP and as a result some
Argentinian jets made it through to attack their ships.
Essentially, it's a saying which dictates strategy, not a
tactical rule of thumb. The USN tactical rule of thumb is
to have two missiles in the air at any given time headed
toward any incoming--one on its way and one just impacting
or just launching, roughly speaking. Sure, this means that
you expend maybe twice as many missiles as the enemy,
but the deadly penalty for failing to intercept makes the
extra expense worthwhile.
Isaac Kuo
IsaacKuo
rmrobinson wrote:
> IsaacKuo wrote:
> > I favor the idea of simply ramming the target, with a proximity
> > warhead just before intercept to spread fragments and increase
> > the chance of hitting.
> Kinetic fragmentation missiles are my weapon of choice. The beauty is
> that the entire mass of the missile bus and equipment is put to work in
> the destructive fragment cloud.
> > However, there's something to be said
> > for fragmenting into a whole bunch of guided missiles from
> > further away. These guided missiles could be dumb spinning
> > "slugs" with a transparent base and a sideways pointing nozzle.
> > A terminal guidance drone could follow the missiles so it's a
> > comfortable distance from the target when it "warms up". This
> > drone uses on board sensors to track the target and fires a
> > pulse laser at the guided missiles to perform terminal course
> > adjustments--each laser pulse causes a thrust out the sideways
> > pointing nozzle.
> I suspect that simple chemfuel target seekers would be cheaper for
> these terminal submunis. And if the drone's laser is close enough to
> nudge the submunis during terminal phase, the target ship's defensive
> lasers are close enough to zap the drone, disabling all the target
> seekers.
I halfway agree. I can see it going either way as to whether
a "dumb" terminal submunition or a "smart" self propelled
submunition is better. As you note, the "dumb" submunitions
are vulnerable to the guiding unit being knocked out.
I'll note that "smart" submunitions may be more vulnerable
than "dumb" munitions to being neutralized themselves.
Their sensors may be very vulnerable and/or more easily
fooled. "Dumb" terminal submunitions can more effectively
use sacrificial laser shielding.
Generally, I tend to favor external guidance because of the
technical challenges of implementing a self guidance sensor
even without considering vulnerability to enemy defenses.
It's a matter of rapidly dealing with the difference in return
signals, resolution, and field of view at the critical last
moments before intercept. The angular width of the necessary
field of view goes up as 1/r. The brightness of the return
goes up as 1/r^2 (1/r^4 if using an active sensor). Just
at the critical time, the missile's sensor must go from
discriminating the slightest of movements of a dim dot within
a tiny field of view to a blinding bright dot zipping off sideways
out of that field of view. Modern missiles have a challenging
time doing this with a closing velocity on the order of 1km/s;
we're having a lot of difficulties acheiving successful terminal
guidance at the closing rates for a ballistic missile interception.
Given our current difficulties with ballistic missile interception
terminal guidance, I wouldn't be surprised if external terminal
guidance proves to be superior for closing rates on the order
of 10-100km/s. With external terminal guidance, the tracking
sensor is a comfortable distance away from the target at
all times so it doesn't suffer the 1/r and 1/r^2 "blow-up"
effects.
> > The advantage of a stream of cheap missiles rather than a
> > proximity warhead is that it could counter my favored last
> > ditch CIWS defense--using point blank range nukes to vaporize
> > lots of incoming fragments at once.
> Ouch! Two complications:
> 1) Only vaporizing the fragments outright will help - molten ones will
> smack you just as hard as solid ones. And vaporizing junk outright is
> a lot of work, requiring a pretty high-yield warhead.
Yes, but I tend to favor Orion style propulsion for warships, where
there are a ton of very short range high yield warheads around.
In a last ditch situation, it's preferable to lose a fraction of your
fuel supply than lose the entire ship.
> (Also, remember
> that while the you're usually interested in the fragment cloud's
> two-dimensional cross section, the cloud is 3-dimensional - fragments
> at the back of the oncoming cloud may be hundreds of meters behind the
> ones at the front of the cloud.
Yes, it's that third dimension which I'm concerned about. I figure
that a terminal fragmentation warhead is going to detonate far
away enough to spread the fragments maybe 10x the diameter
of the target. This puts maybe 1% of the fragments onto the
target--under plausible assumptions, still enough to at least cripple
the target. So, if the target is 10m in diameter (pointing it's narrow
rear toward the target), the nearest fragments will be maybe
100m closer than the furthest fragments.
Assuming each nuke has a "vaporization radius" of 20m, then it
would take a string of maybe 10 nukes to defend against those
fragments. This assumes that the closing speed is so high
that the defensive nukes can't get significantly closer to the
warhead detonation point (the distance from the warhead
detonation point varies linearly with the closing speed).
> 2) Close-in nukes are going to bathe your ship in neutrons, killing the
> crew unless they're behind *really* heavy shielding. Neutron flux in
> space is really, really ugly - with no atmosphere to absorb them, the
> little buggers just keep going. A 1-megaton bomb will kill unshielded
> humans at about 300 km.
I tend to assume space warships with human occupants
will have very heavy radiation shielding for the humans. For
long term space patrols, hard cosmic radiation may be a
significant health concern (depending on advances in medical
science and/or how much the regime cares about the health
of its soldiers). If you want to shield against that, you can't
go halfway about it--if you do, then you actually increase
the radiation exposure due to secondaries/tertiaries.
Also, I tend to favor Orion style drives using (lithium deuteride)
fission-fusion-fission pulse units. These generate lots of
fast neutrons, so the ship's shadow shield already has to
contend with that. (I say shadow shield rather than pusher
plate because I favor magsail and M2P2 sails over physical
pusher plates.)
> But the guided submuni is still useful, because it helps get past
> another all-too-effective defensive measure against big, long-range
> missiles: the Kirklin mine. A Kirklin mine is a small fragmentation
> missile, slung into the path of an approaching long-range missile by a
> chemfuel booster or a coilgun. It doesn't need to go very fast relative
> to the ship it is defending - the closing speed of the incoming missile
> provides the kinetic punch.
Long ago, I came up with the basic principle that excessive
closing velocity is detrimental because it allows the defender
to use your missile's own kinetic energy against it. I've
never heard of this term "Kirklin mine"--to me it simply
sounds like a fancy name for a defensive anti-missile missile.
It sounds to me like this "mine" might not have any mid-course
guidance correction, but IMHO some sort of correction even
if it's just a one shot sideways puff can greatly increase its
potential effective range.
At one time, I favored a shaped "claymore mine" fragmentation
warhead for short range defensive projectiles. These projectiles
would be unguided and fired by some sort of "rifle".
The sideways pointed shaped warhead would thus sweep out
a helical "kill zone". At the appropriate time, it would fire its
warhead, blasting out fragments sideways toward the target,
effectively doing the equivalent of one sideways thrust course
adjustment.
Since then, I've come to favor the "dumb slug" with sideways
pointing thruster, along with possibly a normal fragmentation
warhead. This has better range and is more flexible than the
"claymore mine" warhead. The "claymore mine" always has
the equivalent of one sideways pulse maneuver of exactly
one particular strength. It also has virtually no capability of
being used in "direct hit" mode (the effective range of directly
hitting with a low velocity unguided slug being laughably low).
In contrast, the "dumb slug" with sideways thruster can perform
multiple thrusts of variable strength, flexibly trading off between
course adjustment thrusts and terminal impact mass. The
fragmentation warhead can be detonated at any time to
optimize fragment density vs kill zone diameter.
Note that some amount of range is important for a defensive
missile. The incoming will be converted into fragments either
by the defensive missile's impact or by it detonating itself
before intercept (the defensive missile, if tipped with a nuke,
could vaporize the incoming entirely). Those fragments are
still dangerous to the target. If using an unguided "mine",
the intercept might occur only ~1km from the ship--there's
a good chance of the ship being crippled. If you can use a
few course corrections to improve that effective range to
10km (10 seconds of 1km/s flight), then you've reduced the
chance of being hit a hundred-fold.
> In other words a judo weapon - it uses the missile's own speed against
> it.
My general theory is that under many plausible circumstances,
the advantage such low speed "defensive" missiles has over
high speed "offensive" missiles is so great that there will be
no high speed "offensive" missiles whatsoever. What's the
point in fielding an expensive high speed missile if it's just going
to get knocked out by a cheaper low speed missile? If this is
the case, then the opposing sides could end up closing to
comparatively short ranges before exchanging missile fire.
However, even in those circumstances I can see an advantage
to a mixed load medium speed offensive missiles and low speed
defensive missiles as opposed to a pure load of low speed
missiles. As you lower the velocity of the offensive missiles,
at some point the kinetic energy advantage to the defenders
is lost--I think it's unrealistic to assume a 100% perfect interception
mass fraction (i.e. each kg of incoming is perfectly intercepted
by 1kg of defensive missile/projectile).
Isaac Kuo
Jens Egon Nyborg
> On 8 Sep 2006 10:24:33 -0700, "IsaacKuo" <mec...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>>Even after the "real jobs" have entirely dried up because
>>the AIs are smarter than any human could ever be, the
>>"fake jobs" remain.
>
>
> Oh yeah, that's what I want to read about. People who don't matter.
> I've got my own life to be inconsequential in.
You mean like Kings and Queens and whatnot?
IsaacKuo
Jordan wrote:
> IsaacKuo wrote:
> > I'm not so sure that this trend is surviving the age of automation.
> > The modern supercarrier is indeed very big, but hardly anyone
> > has them anymore.
> This is because there is now only one serious naval power: the United
> States of America. Something similiar happened in the Classical world
> during the 1st century BCE and 1st century CE; as Rome found herself
> with no naval rivals, the size of the average warship dropped because
> they were now needed primarily for anti-piracy patrols rather than
> fleet battles.
Well then, there you go. A historically valid reason for the size
of warships to go down.
> > Ever since WWII, the trend seems to be
> > that ships of any particular class keeps on getting bigger,
> > up until the point that they get too big and get replaced by the
> > next smaller class.
> > Battleship development essentially halted after WWII, while
> > cruisers and destroyers got bigger and bigger. As battleships
> > disappeared, more and more navies had cruisers for capital
> > ships. Now, cruisers are going away, leaving destroyers as
> > the new capital ships.
> Actually, what happened is that in WWII the "1st rate capital ship"
> role shifted to the aircraft carrier, and during the Cold War the
> aircraft carrier got very large indeed. The biggest battleships ever
> built were around 72,000 + tons (the Japanese _Yamato_ class) while the
> biggest carriers ever built are around 100,000+ tons.
> > With carriers, jets forced carriers to get bigger or go away
> > entirely. For more and more navies, that meant for the carriers
> > to go away entirely.
> Translation: "For more and more navies, it was impossible to even aim
> at control of any contested waters, should a real navy contest them."
Not at all. The Soviets were certainly aiming for at least defending
her waters from the threat of the only "real navy" around. The threat
of Soviet missile cruisers was deemed serious enough to use as the
primary justification for the only "real navy"'s luxurious budgets.
Other navies followed the basic Soviet strategy of basing their
surface forces around missile cruisers because that was the best
they could afford and it seemed perfectly sensible. These navies
were either Soviet allies who would naturally mirror the strategy
of their superpower ally, or they were Soviet enemies who could
at least hope to counter the Soviets with equivalent hardware.
And rationally speaking, the basic Soviet cold war strategy
SOUNDS a lot more sensible than the basic USN cold war
strategy to counter it. The basic Soviet idea was to have lots
of heavy long range anti-ship missiles to outright attack the
enemy ships. The basic USN cold war strategy was to absorb
the expected massive attack with defenses and then to mop up
the Soviet fleet after it had expended its heavy offensive armament.
> Any navy with large carriers has an immense advantage over any navy
> which doesn't. They aren't an optional ship type: they are the
> essence of modern power at sea.
That has proven to be the case, at least so far, but it hasn't stopped
navies lacking this ship type from fighting each other in naval wars.
Note that the only carrier battle fought since WWII was won by
a nuclear submarine.
> > So while any particular ship class keeps getting bigger and
> > bigger, it seems the size of the actual capital ships has
> > stagnated and perhaps even declined.
> Unless you, rather oddly, deprive carriers of the status of "capital
> ships."
I must admit that I was never more than half serious about this.
Still, the Soviets were fully serious about trying to defend her
waters without heavy carriers, and the US Navy took the Soviet
threat very seriously. I tend to think of the Soviet strategy as
a failed gambit, much like the ill fated concept of Battlecruisers.
Nevertheless, Battlecruisers were capital ships, IMO.
Of course, nuclear submariners like to think of themselves as
the owners of the sea...
Isaac Kuo
Ken Burnside
IsaacKuo wrote:
> Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:
> > Ken Burnside wrote:
> > > And this is my place to shamelessly plug two resources.
>
> > > The first is SFCONSIM-L on Yahoo Groups, which is probably the absolute
> > > best place I've found on the Internet for examining space travel, space
> > > combat, and the physics and engineering assumptions that define both of
> > > them.
>
> > > http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/sfconsim-l/ is its home page.
>
> > Seconded. SFCONSIM-L is where the action is.
> > The focus is on space combat simulations,
> > but all the information would be valuable
> > to an SF author as well. And the Physics
> > Mafia keeps you honest.
>
> I wonder how the ideas on SFCONSIM-L compare to here on
> rec.arts.sf.science. We've got what I think is an interesting
> variety of perspectives and a lot of interesting novel concepts.
> (Okay, so I'm a bit biased, being a source for a lot of them.)
Isaac, imagine a mailing list that has about 40 people like you on it,
discussing this subject with backgrounds ranging from game and sim
design to research physicists, novelists and astronomers, most of them
willing to show their math at every step of the way, including economic
models, human factors and more.
> > And anybody who wants to get a hands on
> > feel for Newtonian space conflict in
> > three dimension would be well advised to
> > obtain a copy of the Attack Vector
> > game and try playing a few scenarios.
>
> > Once you get the hang of playing,
> > keep a turn-by-turn record of each
> > game to instantly generate a detailed
> > battle suitable for use in your next novel.
>
> It's long been a dream of mine to come up with what I'd
> consider a satisfactory "realistic" space combat pen/paper
> game. Even if one ignores orbital mechanics--which given
> realistic space combat scales and settings is rather
> questionable--handling 3D motion in a symmetric and
> Machian way is challenging. Symmetric means that
> all axes of movement are treated equally. Machian means
> that you can shift the frame of reference without affecting
> the situation (i.e. you can accelerate all units by 10km/s
> in the "north" direction without changing anything).
Machian is trivially easy. Assign velocity to the map to change the
reference frame.
3-D movement isn't quite "trivially easy", but I've got a solution that
does, in fact, WORK.
I've also got rules for short period orbital mechanics (basically,
combat at under the Van Allen Belts, down to "Oops, who put that
atmosphere down there?")
For combat scale (versus transit scale) thrusts, the atomic unit of
thrust is 125 milligees. Ships have impluasible fusion drives that can
(for short periods of time) apply thrusts ranging from 1/8th of a G
(sluggish) to about 4 Gs (limited by the crew on the ship for sustained
burns.) This is done to make it a fun, and enjoyable, game - while we
don't have enough data to rule out the combat mode fusion torch
outright, it's damned implausible engineering.
For getting between planets, thrusts are in the range of 5-8 milligees
- this is what freighters use. This means a freighter "engaging" a
warship is more akin to a goat with four broken legs facing a puma.
There are other models for space combat, you have a number of input
variables (including having to keep things consistent). Some (many) of
them result in ships with lasers in the 400 to 200 nm wavelength range
with 5-8 meter aperture sizes and bone jarring 4 milligee thrusts. At
which point, maneuver ceases to matter at all, stealth (for a number of
reasons, most dealing with A) movement and B) onboard power generation)
ceasing to exist, and it becomes a case of "Shine laser on enemy, fry
his sensors off, fling onboard seekers at him when you think he can't
kill them."
Another one (favored by Rick) is torch missiles - which also get rid of
maneuver as a tactical element, at least in a gameable manner. (If
it's possible to build a missile with ~1/4 the total onboard delta v of
the target, you can assume the target's orientation will change to put
the missile due sternward. Subtract target's thrust from missile's
thrust, see of the missile can overtake. If it can't...don't launch
it. If it can, the target can only evade by shooting it down.) This
is making assumptions about detection and targetability that are common
in games, but not necessarily accurate or appropriate for novels.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that AV:T's combat model isn't the
only one - but it is the only one I've found that is A) plausible, B)
consistent and C) makes for an enjoyable game to play, and D) has the
places where it's implausible carefully marked out.
> Hexes plus altitude aren't symmetric. I favor rhombic
> dodecahedron tiling, which is symmetric and has hex map
> cross sections in 4 different planes. (Hex plus altitude
> only has hex map cross section in one plane.) This is
> what I used for "Classical Fleet Actions in 3 Space",
> although that system had no pretense of using realistic
> weaponry or ship designs. Physically, rhombic dodecahedron
> tiling can be thought of as the red cubes in a cubical grid
> colored like a Chess board.
I will concede that there are asymmetries/rounding errors in the
solution I've got - we have some very specific rules to paper over them
as part of the game, and every time you try to make a rule that papers
over them, you've made the game unpleasant to play.
I'm familiar with rhombic dodecahedron tiling, or, at least, I think I
am. When we explored it, we ran into the problem that it just wasn't
intuitive for most players, and sighting angles were truly unpleasant
to calculate.
(Which isn't dissing it - it's a clever solution. It's just that I've
got one that I'm decently certain is better, and more intuitive to
use.)
What I've got is some carefully hidden spherical trig in a color coded
play aid called the AVID, and rules of thumb that use the geometry of
the hex map nicely. In essence, I can do 3-D bearing shooting and
range lookups with simple arithmetic on the part of the player, and
even that, I've turned into a color coded Pythagorean table.
> Handling 3D facing symmetrically is nightmarish. Fortunately,
> at realistic space combat scales facing can probably be
> ignored entirely. But for the unabashedly unrealistic
> "Electric Death", I used cubical motion and facing as it's
> the simplest and most intuitive symmetrical 3d facing system.
> The angular resolution may be poor, but anyone can understand
> how it works.
>
> Hmm...I may try and come up with something new based
> on the movement system of "Classical Fleet Actions", but
> with realistic scale, ship designs, and weaponry.
Before you begin, I recommend you look at AV:T - the tutorial (covering
most of what you need to play) is here:
I ask this
http://www.adastragames.com/downloads/AVT_Tutorial.pdf
Warning - PLAY that tutorial, don't just read it. Break out a hex map,
fold up the box miniatures and tilt blocks that are available on the
web site and DO it. There's a lot of effort put into making that
tutorial an easy glide path for going through the rules.
Now, as to features (and this is me bragging...)
1) Workable, playable, 3-D vector movement with 30 degree facing
increments in 3-D.
2) Dirt simple bearing and firing arc rules. ("If the target is 4x as
far away as it is above me, it's visible through the 0 degree band. If
it's 4x as high as it is out, it's through the 90 degree "window". If
it's farther out than up, 30 degrees, if farther up than out, 60
degrees." (With all this being color coded...) It's using the fact
that the bands are 30 degrees wide, and the tangent of 15 degrees is
0.256, treated as 0.25.
3) An immediately understandable and intuitive method of showing 3-D
orientation and altitude on the hex map by use of box miniatures, tilt
blocks and stacking tiles. Situational awareness is much greater in
AV:T than it would be of a computer game of the same subject.
4) Accurate vector movement, including tracking displacement as a
function of constant thrust over time. Game scale is 20 km/hex and
altitude level, one turn is 128 seconds (and one segment is 16
seconds), with one G being 9.765625 m/sec/sec, and a thrust of 0.5
being 125 milligees. One unit of delta v (one hex per turn of velocity
change) is 0.15625 m/sec. Total delta v actually uses the rocket
equation, burning fuel reduces the mass of your ship - enough fuel
usage means your ship's maximum thrust rating has increased.
5) Accurate tracking of the thermodynamics issues of power generation
(you generate heat by generating power; you store heat in heat sinks,
you extend radiators when out of combat to radiate it. Heat sinks can
be lithium (expensive, but best thermal storage per unit mass), sodium
(the baseline) or water (cheap, but bulky - has the advantage that you
can vaporize it without electroplating your sensors, and dump heat
overboard in the middle of the fight.). Power is generated by
reactors, stored in batteries, and used by weapons.
6) Weapons that take power in, use known and derivable conversion
efficiencies and generate both damage out and waste heat in the weapon
(which is used to determine when you can fire it again.) One energy
point in is 1 GJ. One damage point out is 50 MJ delivered to a spot
size of ~8 cm in diameter. (Reducing the spot size can give you better
armor penetration effects.) If you play GURPS, one AV:T armor rating
is approximately equal to one cDR for their weapon/vehicle design
systems. Lasers range from 2400 nm (at 20% efficiency with megajoule
inputs) down to about 400 nm. Because of the high input energies, the
lasers are more "Fire sustained burst, then turn off to cool off."
rather than "constant beam" - this is both a fudge to make game play
more interesting, and somewhat plausible given the high energy inputs.
7) A damage allocation model that bases the probabilities for a system
getting hit on the percentage of total volume in the ship it takes up,
with facing mattering on what gets hit - the amount of damage a system
absorbs is variable, which is a generally better solution for getting
the wierd variability in combat effects than what usually happens.
8) A seeking weapon solution that manages to find the sweet spot
between evadability of weapons (they have limited ability to do lateral
thrust) and point defense capability, meaning you can evade incoming
seekers while engaging some of the rest and have interesting maneuver
decisions to make.
9) Tracking of cruise endurance as part of ship construction. You can
win the battle and lose later due to losing your cargo with the food
needed to get you home. Or the fuel. Or the double-talk pure
handwavium jump drives...
10) Science behind the rules notes where I show the math behind the
rules - explaining why they are the way they are.
A full on review of the game is at:
http://www.wargamer.com/reviews/attack_vector/Default.asp
(Click through the ad to get to the review).
Now, all that said - there are people who don't want what AV:T brings
to the table. The game is covering a complex subject, and while it
does so with as much elegance as I can pack into the game, there are
people who just want to go zoom and swoosh and blow things up and not
worry about all this fiddly vector crap, and to whom thermodynamics is
just one of those technical details that gets engineered away because
it's inconvenient.
I suspect that you (Isaac) would find it enjoyable, and you'd grumble
about how the model of space combat it makes doesn't quite match what
you've painstakingly put together. But I think you'd find it
enlightening, and would help fill holes in your understanding...and if
you can find a physics error I can fix without compromising its
entertainment value as a game, I'll fix it. (Lord knows, I've done it
before.)
So, come on in, the water's fine.
Jordan
chorned...@hushmail.com wrote:
> Jordan wrote:
> > We are talking about hypothetical space warships which are armed and
> > protected by hypothetical technologies and intended for unknown
> > hypothetical military purposes. Seems to me that "might" is about all
> > we can say unless we get a lot more specific about the scenario.
> >
> > And of _course_ it "depends on how big" the spaceship is! A space
> > warship the size of, say, the USS Discovery (Shuttle Orbiter) could not
> > possibly require more than a few personnel unless it was some sort of
> > boarding boat chock-full of Space Marines;
>
> A possibility.
Yes. Though you could argue that the hypothetical Marine shuttle would
actually be carrying the Marines as passengers rather than crew, and
that they thus shouldn't be counted as "crew." It's a possible but
debatable point.
> > This is directly due to technological advances. The supercarrier both
> > needs to be larger than the ship of the line (because a mere 2000-ton
> > warship could not base 100 jet warplanes) and _can_ be this huge
> > because of technological progress (a wooden hull massing 100 thousand
> > tons would have trouble maintaining its structural integrity, let alone
> > maneuvering in battle).
> >
> A supercarrier CAN displace 100 thousand tons because it is not made of
> wood. But for precisely the same reason, a civilian or military oil
> tanker can also displace 100 thousand tons. Or 500 thousand tons.
>
> A civilian oil tanker displacing 100 thousand tons does not need a crew
> of around 5700 men. But it also cannot fulfil any function except
> carrying its load from port to port. A 100 thousand ton tanker is
> pretty useless for attack or defence precisely because it carries so
> few sapients.
Exactly. In fact, tankers are routinely endangered by small bands of
armed pirates, because despite their vast bulk, they are very lightly
crewed.
> It is perfectly possible to build 50 steel warships of 2000 tons each
> with 114 crew members each. However, such a fleet cannot match a single
> supercarrier because the supercarrier employs two key technologies that
> do not scale down well. Namely deck runway and nuclear power reactor. A
> mere 2000 ton warship not only could not base 100 jet warplanes, it
> also could not base 2.
Right. All it could carry would be helicopters or jump-jets.
There may be space-based weapons systems that have similar minimum
sizes or economies of scale. Very large particle accelerators are one
obvious possibility (the "spinal mounts" beloved of the _Traveller_
RPG, cribbed from _Space Cruiser Yamato_).
- Jordan
IsaacKuo
Ken Burnside wrote:
> IsaacKuo wrote:
> > I wonder how the ideas on SFCONSIM-L compare to here on
> > rec.arts.sf.science. We've got what I think is an interesting
> > variety of perspectives and a lot of interesting novel concepts.
> > (Okay, so I'm a bit biased, being a source for a lot of them.)
> Isaac, imagine a mailing list that has about 40 people like you on it,
> discussing this subject with backgrounds ranging from game and sim
> design to research physicists, novelists and astronomers, most of them
> willing to show their math at every step of the way, including economic
> models, human factors and more.
Well, that also describes rec.arts.sf.science pretty well. I've
been browsing the SFCONSIM-L archives to get more of an
idea of the specific ideas. For example, on rec.arts.sf.science
there's a sizeable "laser mafia" who have more or less concluded
that lasers could plausibly be the dominant long range weapon
systems so as to make all other weapons almost moot. (I'm
a member, although it doesn't stop me from pondering non-laser
dominated situations.)
> > It's long been a dream of mine to come up with what I'd
> > consider a satisfactory "realistic" space combat pen/paper
> > game. Even if one ignores orbital mechanics--which given
> > realistic space combat scales and settings is rather
> > questionable--handling 3D motion in a symmetric and
> > Machian way is challenging. Symmetric means that
> > all axes of movement are treated equally. Machian means
> > that you can shift the frame of reference without affecting
> > the situation (i.e. you can accelerate all units by 10km/s
> > in the "north" direction without changing anything).
> Machian is trivially easy. Assign velocity to the map to change the
> reference frame.
That isn't Machian. To be Machian, the situation must be
invariant regardless of reference frame. In other words,
the relative positions of the units must always be the same
regardless of what the map's velocity is.
Unfortunately, it's mathematically proveable that you can't
be Machian while also having an "impulse" movement system
(one where fractional velocities are simulated by moving
varying amounts per time delta). This implies that you can
only use whole number velocities, which may be a problem
because the time resolution is insufficient. With low time
resolution and large movements per impulse, two units can
"pass by each other" unrealistically avoiding any opportunity
to fire upon each other at close range.
Fortunately, the nature of laser weaponry is such that
plausibly there is a large "point blank" range below
diffraction limits where the amount of damage done to
a target is roughly constant. I think I'll be able to safely
work around the problem that way.
> 3-D movement isn't quite "trivially easy", but I've got a solution that
> does, in fact, WORK.
> I've also got rules for short period orbital mechanics (basically,
> combat at under the Van Allen Belts, down to "Oops, who put that
> atmosphere down there?")
Sounds interesting, although I guess we're assuming some
radically different time/space scales. With laser point blank
ranges on the order of thousands of kilometers, planetoids
large enough to exert significant gravitational acceleration
should fit comfortably within a map.
> For combat scale (versus transit scale) thrusts, the atomic unit of
> thrust is 125 milligees. Ships have impluasible fusion drives that can
> (for short periods of time) apply thrusts ranging from 1/8th of a G
> (sluggish) to about 4 Gs (limited by the crew on the ship for sustained
> burns.) This is done to make it a fun, and enjoyable, game - while we
> don't have enough data to rule out the combat mode fusion torch
> outright, it's damned implausible engineering.
I don't like "traditional" rocket drives because they imply scary
power/mass ratios and scary amounts of waste heat. I tend
to prefer Orion style propulsion because it plausibly combines
high thrust with high Isp. The necessary power/mass ratios
already exist today, and the drives are self-cooling.
But Orion style drives lead to their own interesting limitations.
I like mag-orion using a large magsail, but this sail is highly
vulnerable to enemy fire. It may be a practical necessity to
lower one's sail before entering weapons range, so that
tactical maneuvering consists mainly of very long range
jockeying for favorable combat passes. You can "pin" an
enemy to a set course by presenting a continuous series of
threatening warships making battle passes.
I also like M2P2 because it can have a very large sail that's
largely invulnerable to battle damage and which is easy to
remotely "supply" (mass drivers from "home base" launch
bomb-bots to intercept the target and perform an orbital
insertion maneuver without expending any on-board fuel).
However, M2P2 isn't plausibly going to be able to handle
high thrust levels.
There's the traditional pusher plate, of course, but this
doesn't scale down as well as magsail.
I was once a fan of ablative Orion because the propellant
could double as truly massive shielding. However, I'm not
so enthusiastic about it because of inefficiency compared
to more traditional Orion style drives, as well as other
annoying difficulties.
> Another one (favored by Rick) is torch missiles - which also get rid of
> maneuver as a tactical element, at least in a gameable manner. (If
> it's possible to build a missile with ~1/4 the total onboard delta v of
> the target, you can assume the target's orientation will change to put
> the missile due sternward. Subtract target's thrust from missile's
> thrust, see of the missile can overtake. If it can't...don't launch
> it. If it can, the target can only evade by shooting it down.) This
> is making assumptions about detection and targetability that are common
> in games, but not necessarily accurate or appropriate for novels.
I tend to regard missiles as interesting maneuver units in
their own right. Apply the above philosophy to SFB plasma
or drones, and you lose alot. You'd lose even more if,
as in real life, the missiles could freely maneuver alongside
the "real" ships without artificial restrictions on endurance
or heading.
> Which is a roundabout way of saying that AV:T's combat model isn't the
> only one - but it is the only one I've found that is A) plausible, B)
> consistent and C) makes for an enjoyable game to play, and D) has the
> places where it's implausible carefully marked out.
Yes, I can see that. For me, it's all unfortunately very
abstract and theoretical. I haven't had a board gaming
crowd for years, so all of my designs since "Space Carrier"
have been purely theoretical. Space Carrier was my
last game to actually get playtested--once.
> > Hexes plus altitude aren't symmetric. I favor rhombic
> > dodecahedron tiling, which is symmetric and has hex map
> > cross sections in 4 different planes. (Hex plus altitude
> > only has hex map cross section in one plane.) This is
> > what I used for "Classical Fleet Actions in 3 Space",
> > although that system had no pretense of using realistic
> > weaponry or ship designs. Physically, rhombic dodecahedron
> > tiling can be thought of as the red cubes in a cubical grid
> > colored like a Chess board.
> I will concede that there are asymmetries/rounding errors in the
> solution I've got - we have some very specific rules to paper over them
> as part of the game, and every time you try to make a rule that papers
> over them, you've made the game unpleasant to play.
> I'm familiar with rhombic dodecahedron tiling, or, at least, I think I
> am. When we explored it, we ran into the problem that it just wasn't
> intuitive for most players, and sighting angles were truly unpleasant
> to calculate.
> (Which isn't dissing it - it's a clever solution. It's just that I've
> got one that I'm decently certain is better, and more intuitive to
> use.)
For my new concept, I think I will implement some sort of facing
system--or at least I'm investigating the possibilities right now.
It'll be based on a cubical facing system, although I'm debating
whether to make it face-facing (6 headings and a total of 24
attitudes), edge-facing (only front-back distinction, but with facings
corresponding 1-1 with thrust directions), or vertex-facing (only
front-back distinction, but very easy to calculate octant firing
arcs).
> What I've got is some carefully hidden spherical trig in a color coded
> play aid called the AVID, and rules of thumb that use the geometry of
> the hex map nicely. In essence, I can do 3-D bearing shooting and
> range lookups with simple arithmetic on the part of the player, and
> even that, I've turned into a color coded Pythagorean table.
Firing arc calculation can be very simple with a cubical grid.
For a cubical system, it's a matter of determining which dimension
the distance is greatest in. For an octant system, it's simply
a matter of determining +/- in each dimension.
> > Handling 3D facing symmetrically is nightmarish. Fortunately,
> > at realistic space combat scales facing can probably be
> > ignored entirely. But for the unabashedly unrealistic
> > "Electric Death", I used cubical motion and facing as it's
> > the simplest and most intuitive symmetrical 3d facing system.
> > The angular resolution may be poor, but anyone can understand
> > how it works.
> > Hmm...I may try and come up with something new based
> > on the movement system of "Classical Fleet Actions", but
> > with realistic scale, ship designs, and weaponry.
> Before you begin, I recommend you look at AV:T - the tutorial (covering
> most of what you need to play) is here:
> I ask this
> http://www.adastragames.com/downloads/AVT_Tutorial.pdf
> Warning - PLAY that tutorial, don't just read it. Break out a hex map,
> fold up the box miniatures and tilt blocks that are available on the
> web site and DO it. There's a lot of effort put into making that
> tutorial an easy glide path for going through the rules.
Thanks! I'll give it a try.
> I suspect that you (Isaac) would find it enjoyable, and you'd grumble
> about how the model of space combat it makes doesn't quite match what
> you've painstakingly put together.
I'm not really of one mind about what "realistic space combat"
would be like. After all, it's like asking what "realistic naval
combat" would be like--throughout history, varying technology
and economics and war experience has led to wide variations,
all of which are by definition "realistic".
Instead, I have a wide collection of ideas of possibilities, and
a lot of favored pet concepts which are often contradictory to
each other.
> But I think you'd find it
> enlightening, and would help fill holes in your understanding...and if
> you can find a physics error I can fix without compromising its
> entertainment value as a game, I'll fix it. (Lord knows, I've done it
> before.)
> So, come on in, the water's fine.
Isaac Kuo
Ken Burnside
> > > rec.arts.sf.science. We've got what I think is an interesting
> > > variety of perspectives and a lot of interesting novel concepts.
> > > (Okay, so I'm a bit biased, being a source for a lot of them.)
>
> > Isaac, imagine a mailing list that has about 40 people like you on it,
> > discussing this subject with backgrounds ranging from game and sim
> > design to research physicists, novelists and astronomers, most of them
> > willing to show their math at every step of the way, including economic
> > models, human factors and more.
>
> Well, that also describes rec.arts.sf.science pretty well. I've
> been browsing the SFCONSIM-L archives to get more of an
> idea of the specific ideas. For example, on rec.arts.sf.science
> there's a sizeable "laser mafia" who have more or less concluded
> that lasers could plausibly be the dominant long range weapon
> systems so as to make all other weapons almost moot. (I'm
> a member, although it doesn't stop me from pondering non-laser
> dominated situations.)
Missiles versus Beams is a long running "Green/Purple" debate on
SFCONSIM-L.
The short form is that lasers (appreciably) never miss, and can be used
to fry the sensors of incoming missiles at a point where geometry makes
the evasion parameter simple. Lasers don't run out of ammunition,
provided you can keep powering them, and by reducing wavelengths (below
300 nm is highly unlikely for something that'll survive weapon grade
internal energy densities...) and aperture sizes appropriately
(anything over about 6-7 meters looks like it'll be too fragile to use
an impulsive drive), you can set beam ranges to unbelievably long
ranges.
Since you can detect the missile coming in (it's under thrust) and you
can reasonably predict exactly where it will be (if it's going to hit,
it's fixed relative to the sky and decreasing range), this makes beam
counterfire trivial.
The counterargument is that you're assuming perfect performance on your
beam; generating power generates heat, which must be disposed of or
stored under combat conditions. Firing the beam will generate heat in
the system itself, which may make continuous beam fire unlikely.
The other counterargument is basically relative cost - is it possible
to dump enough money into the missiles to overwhelm the beams by sheer
numbers? You can also reasonably armor the front of a missile to make
it more survivable, etc.
My goal is to lure the rec.arts.sf.written crowd to SFCONSIM-L, and
create the Uber Pool of Geekdom there. <cue Vader-voice> "Join us, and
we shall rule the galaxy together! </Vader voice>. Not saying our
group is better or worse, but it tends to have these discussions FAR
more frequently than this newsgroup does, and has a stunningly high
signal to noise ratio.
> > > It's long been a dream of mine to come up with what I'd
> > > consider a satisfactory "realistic" space combat pen/paper
> > > game. Even if one ignores orbital mechanics--which given
> > > realistic space combat scales and settings is rather
> > > questionable--handling 3D motion in a symmetric and
> > > Machian way is challenging. Symmetric means that
> > > all axes of movement are treated equally. Machian means
> > > that you can shift the frame of reference without affecting
> > > the situation (i.e. you can accelerate all units by 10km/s
> > > in the "north" direction without changing anything).
>
> > Machian is trivially easy. Assign velocity to the map to change the
> > reference frame.
>
> That isn't Machian. To be Machian, the situation must be
> invariant regardless of reference frame. In other words,
> the relative positions of the units must always be the same
> regardless of what the map's velocity is.
That is not quite the same as what you described earlier, and I'm not
entirely sure that's valid when you've got 10 ships on different
vectors relative to a reference frame under thrust in different
directions. Or I'm greatly misinterpreting what you mean.
> Unfortunately, it's mathematically proveable that you can't
> be Machian while also having an "impulse" movement system
> (one where fractional velocities are simulated by moving
> varying amounts per time delta). This implies that you can
> only use whole number velocities, which may be a problem
> because the time resolution is insufficient. With low time
> resolution and large movements per impulse, two units can
> "pass by each other" unrealistically avoiding any opportunity
> to fire upon each other at close range.
I use segmented movement in Attack Vector to get around the second
problem, and use "assign velocity to the map" to solve the first. It
may not be the most elegant solution, but it A) works, and B) people
play it and want me to come out with more products in support of it. :)
> Fortunately, the nature of laser weaponry is such that
> plausibly there is a large "point blank" range below
> diffraction limits where the amount of damage done to
> a target is roughly constant. I think I'll be able to safely
> work around the problem that way.
Yep. We do that with AV:T - the variability is "how long can you keep
the spot centered on the same part of the hull of the target. Our
laser tables follow the rules of optics - they're unobtainium, not
handwavium. We can't build 'em, but the laws of physics say they'd
look something like what I've got. I also assume there's "real world"
factors under the rug (vibration of the ship, distortions of the focal
array, target motion, someone dropping a wrench...) and use that to
justify a bit of variability in the energy deposition.
> > 3-D movement isn't quite "trivially easy", but I've got a solution that
> > does, in fact, WORK.
>
> > I've also got rules for short period orbital mechanics (basically,
> > combat at under the Van Allen Belts, down to "Oops, who put that
> > atmosphere down there?")
>
> Sounds interesting, although I guess we're assuming some
> radically different time/space scales. With laser point blank
> ranges on the order of thousands of kilometers, planetoids
> large enough to exert significant gravitational acceleration
> should fit comfortably within a map.
Actually, see above about laser wavelengths. There are a number of
interesting engineering problems with making weaponizable lasers that
will work reliably in a vacuum with interesting focal arrays - this is
where having an X-ray and UV astronomer come in handy. (The physics
driven practical lower boundary for most reflective focal arrays is
~300 nm, maybe 200, but not much lower than that - and that's the
primary determinant of laser range. While you can use a Free Electron
Laser to generate wavelengths of arbitrary frequency, you still need to
focus them on the target - the shorter the wavelength, the more exotic
the materials you need. The more exotic the materials you need, the
less overall benefit you get from that variability. Likewise, the
higher the energy you put into the laser, the likelier it is that
you'll cook off your reflectant agent, and have to correct for thermal
expansion and contraction of components, including attendant effects
like vibration, bifractional coeffections and cracking.
You can quite plausibly restrict laser wavelengths down to ~600 nm
pretty easily, and ~1200 (+/- 200 nm) has a wide confluence of
available high efficiency lasant sources and materials to make robust
focal arrays out of.
600 nm lasers, at 3 meter apertures, have a "point blank" range out to
about 380-400 km, and a maximum "effective" range of about 800-840 km.
(This is irrespective of energy input and damage unit outputs, and is
just a function of diffraction limits and optics.) It will plausibly
have "kill sensors" range to about a 10fold increase of that.
> > For combat scale (versus transit scale) thrusts, the atomic unit of
> > thrust is 125 milligees. Ships have impluasible fusion drives that can
> > (for short periods of time) apply thrusts ranging from 1/8th of a G
> > (sluggish) to about 4 Gs (limited by the crew on the ship for sustained
> > burns.) This is done to make it a fun, and enjoyable, game - while we
> > don't have enough data to rule out the combat mode fusion torch
> > outright, it's damned implausible engineering.
>
> I don't like "traditional" rocket drives because they imply scary
> power/mass ratios and scary amounts of waste heat. I tend
> to prefer Orion style propulsion because it plausibly combines
> high thrust with high Isp. The necessary power/mass ratios
> already exist today, and the drives are self-cooling.
Yep - I'm using an implausible fusion torch which is a nebulously
defined "fusion bang bang". Again, can't build one, but I can give you
its energy density, ISp and thermal dissipative capacities and show you
where the math is (including where we simply said "OK, we'll deal..."
> But Orion style drives lead to their own interesting limitations.
>
> I like mag-orion using a large magsail, but this sail is highly
> vulnerable to enemy fire. It may be a practical necessity to
> lower one's sail before entering weapons range, so that
> tactical maneuvering consists mainly of very long range
> jockeying for favorable combat passes. You can "pin" an
> enemy to a set course by presenting a continuous series of
> threatening warships making battle passes.
"highly vulnerable" in that "if it gets cut, the electrical discharge
may well destroy the ship".
And it's surprisingly easy to make a projectile that'll throw iron
filings into such a beast, causing it to quench, lose superconductivity
and, well, discharge all that stored current.
I liked magsails, a lot, until I looked at travel times (longer than a
Hohmann orbit from Earth to Mars because the thrust isn't high enough
to do anything but a "rocker spiral" orbital transfer. Very hard to
make an interesting setting using them as your primary drive (I used
them as well.)
I also used to use orion bang bang in conjunction with magsails as part
of the setting, and eventually gave up - I couldn't make the economics
work out for the kind of setting I'd enjoy playing in.
> I also like M2P2 because it can have a very large sail that's
> largely invulnerable to battle damage and which is easy to
> remotely "supply" (mass drivers from "home base" launch
> bomb-bots to intercept the target and perform an orbital
> insertion maneuver without expending any on-board fuel).
> However, M2P2 isn't plausibly going to be able to handle
> high thrust levels.
Uh, yeah. If by "high thrust levels" you mean "more than single digit
milligees"
> There's the traditional pusher plate, of course, but this
> doesn't scale down as well as magsail.
>
> I was once a fan of ablative Orion because the propellant
> could double as truly massive shielding. However, I'm not
> so enthusiastic about it because of inefficiency compared
> to more traditional Orion style drives, as well as other
> annoying difficulties.
Looks like you're roughly where I was at about 4 years ago.
> > Another one (favored by Rick) is torch missiles - which also get rid of
> > maneuver as a tactical element, at least in a gameable manner. (If
> > it's possible to build a missile with ~1/4 the total onboard delta v of
> > the target, you can assume the target's orientation will change to put
> > the missile due sternward. Subtract target's thrust from missile's
> > thrust, see of the missile can overtake. If it can't...don't launch
> > it. If it can, the target can only evade by shooting it down.) This
> > is making assumptions about detection and targetability that are common
> > in games, but not necessarily accurate or appropriate for novels.
>
> I tend to regard missiles as interesting maneuver units in
> their own right. Apply the above philosophy to SFB plasma
> or drones, and you lose alot. You'd lose even more if,
> as in real life, the missiles could freely maneuver alongside
> the "real" ships without artificial restrictions on endurance
> or heading.
Unlike SFB plasma or drones, ships in a vector environment can be
mathematically solved - set your FoR (Frame of Reference) to "target is
immobile point" and solve for that. This does not make seekers
uninteresting to use or fly - trust me on this; AV:T seekers give a
nail biting experience. They are also the most complex part of the
game to explain, and require absolute fluidity with the AVID and vector
consolidation, and a lot of comfort with reference frame shifts. (The
seeking proceedure does about four FoR shifts to derive a "ducks eye
view of a shotgun blast" that's handed to the target to deal with.
Once you get how it works, it's amazing. Getting there can feel a lot
like you're doing way too much arithmetic for no real game play
benefit, and it's one of the major things we want to automate with a
Palm/Java/Windows CE solution.)
> > Which is a roundabout way of saying that AV:T's combat model isn't the
> > only one - but it is the only one I've found that is A) plausible, B)
> > consistent and C) makes for an enjoyable game to play, and D) has the
> > places where it's implausible carefully marked out.
>
> Yes, I can see that. For me, it's all unfortunately very
> abstract and theoretical. I haven't had a board gaming
> crowd for years, so all of my designs since "Space Carrier"
> have been purely theoretical. Space Carrier was my
> last game to actually get playtested--once.
Where do you live? We've got registered users across the country and
world, looking for opponents.
You're getting close to With Hostile Intent by Ninja Magic with that.
Todd's a friend, and a good fellow - his biases are towards less
physics fidelity than mine, and he comes from a different gaming
tradition than I did.
> > What I've got is some carefully hidden spherical trig in a color coded
> > play aid called the AVID, and rules of thumb that use the geometry of
> > the hex map nicely. In essence, I can do 3-D bearing shooting and
> > range lookups with simple arithmetic on the part of the player, and
> > even that, I've turned into a color coded Pythagorean table.
>
> Firing arc calculation can be very simple with a cubical grid.
> For a cubical system, it's a matter of determining which dimension
> the distance is greatest in. For an octant system, it's simply
> a matter of determining +/- in each dimension.
Take a look at the AVID, which gives finer resolution than that, for
about the same overall workload to the player.
> > > Handling 3D facing symmetrically is nightmarish. Fortunately,
> > > at realistic space combat scales facing can probably be
> > > ignored entirely. But for the unabashedly unrealistic
> > > "Electric Death", I used cubical motion and facing as it's
> > > the simplest and most intuitive symmetrical 3d facing system.
> > > The angular resolution may be poor, but anyone can understand
> > > how it works.
>
> > > Hmm...I may try and come up with something new based
> > > on the movement system of "Classical Fleet Actions", but
> > > with realistic scale, ship designs, and weaponry.
>
> > Before you begin, I recommend you look at AV:T - the tutorial (covering
> > most of what you need to play) is here:
>
> > I ask this
>
> > http://www.adastragames.com/downloads/AVT_Tutorial.pdf
>
> > Warning - PLAY that tutorial, don't just read it. Break out a hex map,
> > fold up the box miniatures and tilt blocks that are available on the
> > web site and DO it. There's a lot of effort put into making that
> > tutorial an easy glide path for going through the rules.
>
> Thanks! I'll give it a try.
Enjoy!
> > I suspect that you (Isaac) would find it enjoyable, and you'd grumble
> > about how the model of space combat it makes doesn't quite match what
> > you've painstakingly put together.
>
> I'm not really of one mind about what "realistic space combat"
> would be like. After all, it's like asking what "realistic naval
> combat" would be like--throughout history, varying technology
> and economics and war experience has led to wide variations,
> all of which are by definition "realistic".
>
> Instead, I have a wide collection of ideas of possibilities, and
> a lot of favored pet concepts which are often contradictory to
> each other.
Yep. As did I, before putting them into a game, having them math
checked, beaten on, and refined by SFCONSIM-L.