Timeline for space-born ship-to-ship combat 150 years from now w fission/fusion tech
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
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| Aug 8, 2016 at 19:38 | comment | added | UIDAlexD | @Gianluca The 10 meter tall fighter I posited is taller than the office I work in. Surely that's enough space to stash some snacks for a pilot/battery for an AI. B-2 Bombers make 24 hour long missions around the world, and if I had to I could stay in my car for a week or so. Point is, control-system consumables don't add much to the design. As for propulsion and power, I fail to see how a fighter that's 50% by-mass fuel and drive is gonna be worse than a capital ship which is only 30% fuel and drive. | |
| Aug 8, 2016 at 19:16 | comment | added | user1092803 | Another consideration: the fighters must have a very long range because they need to engage the adversary without their support ships near, so I suppose they need to be big. In the settings of the question, you cannot have a carrier that jumps in, launch the fighter at close range, the fighters make the raid and the carrier recover them to jump out. But of course the longer the range (and the mission can require many days in this setting) the biggest the fighter. | |
| Aug 8, 2016 at 19:12 | comment | added | user1092803 | @UIDAlexD I know the point of the fighter is engage the capital ships, but the more your fighter move around, the more fuel it must carry. And the nearest the ship, the easyest to get hit by the AA guns. | |
| Aug 8, 2016 at 17:02 | comment | added | UIDAlexD | @MartinCarney Just to clear up any confusion, the 9.81 in the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation is kind of a happy accident - it's there to convert Specific Impulse to Exhaust Velocity. Losses due to gravity are calculated when you're dealing with your TWR. As a simple example let's say I have a rocket that magically always accelerates at 1 G. I could have a dV Budget of 2 billion M/S, but on earths surface 1G acceleration - 1G Gravity = 0 net acceleration, so I'd go nowhere. | |
| Aug 8, 2016 at 16:47 | comment | added | UIDAlexD | @MartinCarney Not really. The rocket equation has nothing to do with being in a gravity well, it only gives your delta-V. Gravity-losses are computed separately. | |
| Aug 8, 2016 at 16:44 | comment | added | Marsh | The "tyranny of the rocket equation" mostly has to do with getting out of the Earth's gravity well. If you're already in space, you're not fighting against 9.8 m/s/s acceleration. Yes, you have to use fuel to move your fuel, but the biggest hurdle by far is in the past. | |
| Aug 8, 2016 at 16:36 | comment | added | UIDAlexD | Point of the fighter isn't to engage other fighters, it's to engage ponderous and heavy capital ships. Also you don't have to detect something to evade it - you just have to move randomly enough that it's probably not going to hit you. The figher, being smaller and having higher TWR, can make quicker evasive movements. The capital ships can't. So, while our fighter can juke AA fire all day long, the capital is bound to get hit. | |
| Aug 8, 2016 at 16:28 | comment | added | user1092803 | But closer range means less potential to evade for both the ship and the fighter. A thousand Km, for a projectile fired at Mach 10 means a time to target of about 5 minutes (probably a lot less since the fighter is approaching the ship). And I suspect that is way easier to detect a fighter at some thousand Km than a .50 bullet traveling at Mach 10. The rocket equation stand also for the ship, but I never say that the ship will maneuver easily, but the fighter has to maneuver easily to avoid AA guns. So, given a mass for the fighter, the more fuel you add, the less weapon it have. | |
| Aug 8, 2016 at 16:14 | comment | added | UIDAlexD | Longer range means more potential to evade, and getting a weapons platform closer in means less potential to evade. A thousand KM might sound long-range to us but it's a knife-fight in space. I find it funny how you bring up the rocket equation for fighters, but not for massive capitol ships. What is it about having armor and a crew compliment that makes you exempt from the rocket equation? Finally, I addressed that already. Like I said, it won't be a death-star-trench-run. The closest a fighter will get is a few hundred KM if it doesn't want to die. | |
| Aug 8, 2016 at 15:49 | comment | added | user1092803 | As you say, carriers came to deliver firepower over long distance, but in space you can fire way longer without problems, so you don't really need a fighter to deliver your weapon at some thousand Km. Also, a fighter in space has the problem that every maneuver require fuel so there is a high risk to fall under the tyranny of the rocket equation. And as final point, you need to avoid the AA Guns, which can trivially be a small caliber railgun that fire .50 caliber munitions at mach 10, so at a few hundreds meter, your fighter is dead even before knowing it. | |
| Aug 8, 2016 at 13:49 | history | edited | UIDAlexD | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 247 characters in body
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| Aug 8, 2016 at 13:36 | history | answered | UIDAlexD | CC BY-SA 3.0 |