Sci-Fi Weapons: What are the possibilities?

[[Tycho?]]

The target may have turned since you saw it.

 

Bloodhound has already outlined how to combat this on the previous page.

 

Not perfect of course, but you can increase your chances, and then guess.

[bloodhound]

The target may have turned since you saw it.

read my solution... to that. its most obvious, but needs loads of resources. i.e firing multiple beams at the endpoints of subdivided intervals in a bounded domain of [math]\mathbb{R}^3[/math]

 

[edit]Damn your fast typing manouvers Tycho[/edit]

 

edit: it IS perfect, if you got accurate intel, and enough resources.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I was replying to YT.

 

Anyways, it is an intersting idea of what you suggested... although it would be a waste of laser power as it is. The current lasers that are small enough to fit on a plane have very limited firings.

[bloodhound]

well duhhhh hehe. were are talking about sci fi weapons here. once we build spaceships with propulsion powerful enough for interstellar travel, i am sure the lasers that are needed would be more than powerful.

[Sayonara]

One does assume that if you are building a battleship as a mobile gun platform, you'll make it big enough to carry the weapon systems and support that you have in mind for it.

[bloodhound]

thats the whole point sayo.. basically the stuff of stargate... flying pyramids hehe . I still wonder what kind of propulsion it will be that will let us travel the space. Nuclear reactors? dont think so.

[Tesseract]

Rods from God!An unmaned space satalite that fires tungsten rods at very high velocities!

 

 

 

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/468/

[bloodhound]

ihmmm that article has the same content as the one blike posted a while ago. loved the comments though

[Tesseract]

‘Space capabilities are integrated with and affect every link in the kill chain.'

 

Kill chain?

[Gilded]

(From the "Rods from God" article)

"According to the Space Command’s Strategic Master Plan, by 2025, the United States will have developed the capability to strike any target on Earth within minutes."

 

Sounds like the ultimate wet dream of George W. Bush, I hope he's not the president when this happens. Speaking of orbital weapons, I've been waiting quite a while for the first orbital rail gun, even a small one, as it's quite fascinating, and rather easy to build and maintain (at least compared to an entire space fortress with lasers and such ).

[bloodhound]

a possible weapon which i saw in an anime series (Infinite Ryvius) was a circular structure a bit like those particle accelerators, except the acceleration is done outside. u basicallly clamp a huge rock and then slowly build momentum and release at an appropriate point.... and u get a projectile with Massive kinetic energy.

[Sayonara]

"According to the Space Command’s Strategic Master Plan, by 2025, the United States will have developed the capability to strike any target on Earth within minutes."

If I were him I would have said "developed the capability to open fire at any target".

 

[bloodhound]

"strike" sounds like something a "god" would do hehe.

[Tesseract]

I shalt smite thou with tungsten rods!!!

[Gilded]

"'strike' sounds like something a 'god' would do hehe."

 

"Strike" sounds something like U.S. likes doing and "god" sounds like something good ol' Bush thinks he is. )

[[Tycho?]]

I was replying to YT.

 

Anyways' date=' it is an intersting idea of what you suggested... although it would be a waste of laser power as it is. The current lasers that are small enough to fit on a plane have very limited firings.[/quote']

 

Talking future here. If lasers started being used in combat, they would be researched a great deal more to improve them. Just look at how rocketry advanced in WW2. At the start, it was a thing of local rocket building clubs, something to do for fun. By the end Germany was lanching rockets over thousands of kilometers with huge bombs loaded on them. And lasers certainly have a long way to progress, there just isn't a lot of interest in them at the moment.

[[Tycho?]]

For some info on what methods of propulsion may be used, look at this

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_propulsion

 

Whenever I read science fiction, the drives are almost always fusion drives, so I always kinda think from that perspective.

[Rasori]

Honestly, you people are talking about fighting with lasers as if you're going to be firing from lightyears away. I honestly don't think that space combat will ever be ranged more than a solar system, which is, granted, quite a large range, but much smaller than what you're saying.

 

The truth is that the big ships with hundreds of lasers are going to slug it out, but they need support (ahem, projectile interception, mainly, since projectiles have the ability to do a lot more damage than lasers) and thus they need to be close enough for their support to get back and rearm.

 

I'd say extending the range more than a couple of planets will be pushing it for a long time to come, and at that range a laser shot'll be pretty accurate. And we'll almost always have a middleman who can tell us a more accurate position--as was mentioned before, this is much like a howitzer cannon, not an m-16.

[ydoaPs]

antimatter warheads

[JohnB]

If the craft involved in the combat have interstellar capabilities, then missiles using the same engine technology would be the obvious option.

 

If shields keep pace with weapons systems, we may finish up with a couple of great big magnets and two or three hundred guys with hand weapons. (E.E. Doc Smith had the idea 60 years ago.)

 

The other thing is, the weapons wouldn't be anything we can currently accept as possible. The existence of FTL ships would mean that our current "laws" would have to get a major reworking to include the principles involved. Hence, the wepons would be based on principles now considered "impossible".

 

We are in the position of a scientist in the Elizabethan Age trying to predict what future warfare would be like. As he would have accepted as axiomatic that "man can't fly" he would never consider the shape of combat with aircraft involved.

 

a possible weapon which i saw in an anime series (Infinite Ryvius) was a circular structure a bit like those particle accelerators, except the acceleration is done outside. u basicallly clamp a huge rock and then slowly build momentum and release at an appropriate point.... and u get a projectile with Massive kinetic energy.

Bloodhound, "Mass Drivers"? Using them is a crime against sentience.

 

The "Rods From God" is a development of the "Thor" idea of the 1960s. Man made meteor shower. The idea was developed in Ferry Pournelle's book "Footfall" where it was used against us. A good book where combat occurs using only known technologies.

[[Tycho?]]

Honestly' date=' you people are talking about fighting with lasers as if you're going to be firing from lightyears away. I honestly don't think that space combat will ever be ranged more than a solar system, which is, granted, quite a large range, but much smaller than what you're saying.

 

The truth is that the big ships with hundreds of lasers are going to slug it out, but they need support (ahem, projectile interception, mainly, since projectiles have the ability to do a lot more damage than lasers) and thus they need to be close enough for their support to get back and rearm.

 

I'd say extending the range more than a couple of planets will be pushing it for a long time to come, and at that range a laser shot'll be pretty accurate. And we'll almost always have a middleman who can tell us a more accurate position--as was mentioned before, this is much like a howitzer cannon, not an m-16.[/quote']

 

 

Who has been talking about fighting from light years away?

[bloodhound]

combat at light years distance wont make sense.

 

oh yeah. noone seems to have considered actualy physical combat (a bit like hand to hand) . i mean spaceships can't carry infinite amount of resources.

 

in "outlaw star" (another anime series). the ships have hand like appendages which can be used to physically damage the enemies ship is close quarteers.

 

another anime "Infinite ryvius" also had a remote controlled Robot.

[Rasori]

Tycho, no one said it outright, but when you're talking about having to adjust your aim for the speed of light (and how your data is incorrect) you're talking about a big distance. From the distance of a couple of planets, yeah, the data will be incorrect, but it will be pretty damn simple to correct at that range. You won't need hundreds of lasers to shoot in the possible areas it could be, because at that range there aren't nearly as many possibilities, especially if you know the capabilities of the ship (does it have maneuvering jets? How fast can it stop/reverse? etc). The distance from Mercury's orbit to Mars's orbit is 9.8 light minutes. Given the scale of the ships we're talking about targeting (in order to be able to hold fuel, engines, weapons, life support, computers, and crew at the least), the possibilities of its placement are pretty damn few. And I still think 9.8 light minutes is too long for fighters (missile defense and possibly capital attack) to really make for refueling/rearming.

[[Tycho?]]

Tycho, no one said it outright, but when you're talking about having to adjust your aim for the speed of light (and how your data is incorrect) you're talking about a big distance. From the distance of a couple of planets, yeah, the data will be incorrect, but it will be pretty damn simple to correct at that range. You won't need hundreds of lasers to shoot in the possible areas it could be, because at that range there aren't nearly as many possibilities, especially if you know the capabilities of the ship (does it have maneuvering jets? How fast can it stop/reverse? etc). The distance from Mercury's orbit to Mars's orbit is 9.8 light minutes. Given the scale of the ships we're talking about targeting (in order to be able to hold fuel, engines, weapons, life support, computers, and crew at the least), the possibilities of its placement are pretty damn few. And I still think 9.8 light minutes is too long for fighters (missile defense and possibly capital attack) to really make for refueling/rearming.

 

I'm sorry if I gave that impression, but I was always thinking of in-system fighting.

 

And I'm afraid I must disagree with your reasoning. 9.8 minutes (for example) is a very long amount of time for a mobile target. Even assuming you know all the capabilities of a ship, if the ship for example put on the brakes, that alone gives a very long line of possibility over 9.8 minutes, plus any other thrusters would make it 3 dimensional.... While the possibilites would be limited, I think "damn few" is vast underestimate.

[Rasori]

Think, once again, about the size of the ship we're talking about here. Lots of mass = lots of inertia = extremely hard to change speed/course in 10 minutes. If you're trying to target a smaller ship, maybe a cruiser or something, you're talking about it being hard to target. BUT- a convoy can only go as fast as its slowest ship, which will be the heavy capitals, which will be slow enough that it won't take too many lasers to hit it. Also remember the size of the ship- not only is it slow, but it's a big target. Sure, if you aim at the bridge, it won't be there in 10 minutes. But if you just aim at the SHIP, there's a pretty good chance you'll hit it.