Meditations on Space Combat

[Dr Strangelove]

Regarding the heat problem, suppose you could build a heat shield on the outside which would efficiently reflect the radiant heat in a direction away from the enemy?

Regarding a future interstellar war I think we'd have to assume that the participants would have to have technology that we currently think is impossible.

Some day in the future it's possible that nation states and / or their corporations might exploit resources in space, other planets or moons. There could be colonial wars using technology similar to what we have now.

[Kirnwaffen]

I would think that, barring some amazing sinking technology, the key to concealment in space would be the use of decoys to create a substantial infrared anomaly such that detecting the actual combat vessels would be extremely difficult.

[Sandman]

You suggest that a ship could easily cool an entire face to ~3K? Including things like radar or passive sensors?

It wouldn't be easy. The stealth ship would have a specialised ambient face (or plate) that was covered in heatsinks, and would point that towards the enemy. Possibly a disc-shaped ship, with one side black and cold, the other white and hot. Active sensors could be mounted on autonomous drones and kept some distance from the main ship.

[Unimatrix11]

Strangelove: Thats basically what i said, with the refinement of not having the ´mirror´ closed to a complete sphere and thus allowing the heat to escape. I dont think UV to IR conversion is that hard to do. You just need the right molecules, that absorb UV and then emmit IR. I´d be surprised if that wasnt possible even today.

Snoopy: I think you didnt quite get the point of what i said. You probably know what a dyson-sphere is. Like that in miniature - around the ship. Inside the sphere it would be hot (and heating up more and more), while on the outside, it could be a black body.

Do mirrors reflect all EM-rays, or just the visible spectrum ?

On another note, i was wondering: It is obvious, that in space, combat would be silent (outside the ´ships´) for lack of medium to transport the sound. But what about laser-fire ? I´d assume, that without air being ´stimulated´, that would be invisible as well. I also think, that nukes in space are pretty pointless - or so some guys on the infinity (an indi-project for some sort of Elite-game)-forum say.

[onodera]

Do mirrors reflect all EM-rays, or just the visible spectrum ?

If they did, they would cool down to 0K and destroy themselves.

On another note, i was wondering: It is obvious, that in space, combat would be silent (outside the �ships�) for lack of medium to transport the sound. But what about laser-fire ? I�d assume, that without air being �stimulated�, that would be invisible as well. I also think, that nukes in space are pretty pointless - or so some guys on the infinity (an indi-project for some sort of Elite-game)-forum say.

Lasers are invisible in the air as well. It's the particles in the air, like dust, that disperse the ray and make it visible.
Nukes are still useful. It's just you have to use it like any other missile, not like something you can drop somewhere in the vicinity of the target and expect it to work. You won't get a blastwave in either case, but thermal radiation from the nuke will still be effective.

[Unimatrix11]

About the mirrors: Please note, that i didnt claim they did - i actually thought they didnt - just wanted to be asured.

So, space-combat is actually quite FX-hostile. It´s a curiosity, that sci-fi has become a mainly action-orientated plot. Space Combat would probably be a) over quicker than the average commercial, and b) boring as much as you can get bored in such a little amount of time, since there would be nothing to hear and hardly anything to see, except the looser implode maybe. Now, what would be a fitting analogy ? Oh yeah, right, sex with me...

[Patroklos]

For those of you going the unmanned route, I think you have to take into account the time it would take for these things to travel and the fact that communication will essentially become ineffective after a certain distance (especially at interstellar distances).

Seeing as your weapon wouldn't arrive on target for perhaps years, it very well may be nessecary to have a human/advanced AI present to evaluate the target upon arrival. several years is a long time for the tactical (or even political) situation to change radically.

[Kuciwalker]

It wouldn't be easy. The stealth ship would have a specialised ambient face (or plate) that was covered in heatsinks, and would point that towards the enemy. Possibly a disc-shaped ship, with one side black and cold, the other white and hot. Active sensors could be mounted on autonomous drones and kept some distance from the main ship.

Uh, you need way more than heatsinks. You'd need a massive amount of active cooling. And that assumes that your drive exhaust stays neatly behind the ship, and you can remain pointing at the enemy during the whole approach.

[Kuciwalker]

For those of you going the unmanned route, I think you have to take into account the time it would take for these things to travel and the fact that communication will essentially become ineffective after a certain distance (especially at interstellar distances).

Seeing as your weapon wouldn't arrive on target for perhaps years, it very well may be nessecary to have a human/advanced AI present to evaluate the target upon arrival. several years is a long time for the tactical (or even political) situation to change radically.

I think you underestimate the speed you can get with something launched from a railgun, and overestimate the difficulty of updating target information en route.