The Space War Thread

[SuburbanFarmer]

You have to remember the recoil effect of launching a projectile in zero-g. Firing a rail gun from anywhere except the exact center of mass would send you spinning at an incredible speed, probably killing your crew. Likewise, the recoil shock itself would probably rip your flimsy spacecraft apart.

The only real ship-to-ship combat in the near future would involve boarding/ramming actions, similar to early sea galleys. Essentially, poke a hole in the other guy without doing the same to yourself.

The earliest weaponry would probably be lasers, once you have an efficient enough battery. And those would only be to burn through and poke a hole over time.

[SuburbanFarmer]

You could eventually develop a self-propelled rocket, that would be ejected first, the. Guide itself to target. However the calculations to hit in 3D space with gravity effects would be really complex.

[StCapps]

Asteroid Wars. Cool.

[Smitty-48]

In terms of what the warships are like, I posit based on military reality now.

That's mil sci fi, base it on real military.

So the ships are all armor, weapons and fuel and almost no crew.

The crew lives in a protected compartment at the center and it's like living on a nuclear submarine.

The crew is the size of a B-52 bomber crew, 5 - 7 crew members.

Most of what they do is defensive, there's a lot of waiting around for something to happen, stand by overwatch.

So the routine is like ICBM Missileers

the ship is highly automated, so most of the time it's just two guys sitting watch. man in the loop

DEFCON is still around. DEFCON 5 is overwatch, DEFCON 1 is shots fired.

[Montegriffo]

If we're going for as much realism as possible I can't see us any further out than the moon in 100 years.
To be honest, I can't imagine there being more than 1000 people off the planet. Most craft will be fully autonomous unmanned vehicles.
Mining, construction and defense will all be AI tech.
What are humans going to be doing? Even maintenance is going to be automated so there's no reason to put all those expensive life support systems in the spacecraft or on the colonies.

[Smitty-48]

The ship actually fights itself, a hundred years out the AI will not require the people to be pilots.

The man in the loop is making the decisions, yes or no.

The man in the loop is a military officers, the legal authority and accountability.

Robots are not subject to the law, they're not deterred by imprisonment nor execution.

The man in the loop represents the lawful civilian authority, and the Hague Convention still applies in space.

There are laws of armed conflict in effect, there are chains of command, it's not a free for all.

Cold War Space Race.

[Smitty-48]

If we're going for as much realism as possible I can't see us any further out than the moon in 100 years.

Fair point, make it 200 then. 2220, whenever we think the point of solar system colonization is in effect

Life on earth is not going to change that much, things will be basically the same, no flying cars or whatever

[Smitty-48]

There's no Martian Federation nor anything like that yet, the governments are still on earth.

The Hegemons are the USA and the Globalists

The war in space is still commanded from Washington and Brussels.

[Smitty-48]

In terms of the non warships, the civilian spaceships, those are like USS Discovery from 2001:ASO

No weapons, no armor, exploration and transport vessels for colonization.

It is still a war crime to carry arms or troops or conduct covert action from a commercial vessel in peacetime

but both sides will start doing it as the war escalates. Merchant Marines. You've just been drafted NASA

NASA and ESA are still the main drivers of colonization, the superpower space agencies,

[Smitty-48]

Most of the military contractors have expanded to become space contractors.

So Lockheed Martin and Thales are still around.

Lockheed Martin USS Discovery v. Thales Soyuz VKS Kursk