Questions tagged [space-warfare]
For questions relating to the physics and tactics surrounding combat outside all planetary atmosphere. This includes ship-to-surface, ship-to-ship, and personal combat (space walking). The tag is appropriate when asking about the consequences of tactics, technology, chemistry, and physics of weapons and defenses.
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How long would it take humans to notice a civilization on Venus?
Now I know this is a very weird and impossible question, there is clearly no civilization on Venus. But for the sake of the story I'm cooking up in my head, Venus remains habitable and develops life ...
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How can we have a three-way space race?
I want to have a setting for a thing I am doing set in a world with a three-way space race between countries X, Y, and Z. Each country has a space program roughly on par with the 1960s US and USSR. ...
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Wormhole Based Warfare [duplicate]
Let's say that, theoretically, a civilization is capable of utilizing wormholes for travelling to the stars, this wormholes, eventually get turned into a device that can be used as for travel, as a ...
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Engines capable of surviving a highly destructive space battle
Context: It is set 50 000 years from "now" in no-FTL interstellar setting. The idea is that active defences and armor of spacecrafts have obscenely advanced to the point that any projectile ...
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Effectiveness of antimatter particle accelerators in space warfare
I came up with this idea for a space-based weapon and I'm wondering how viable it actually is. The weapon is made possible using portals.
The Portals
The portals are a clarketech produced by a portal ...
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How to develop (and justify!) a nation born out of a lawless region of space? [closed]
I am here once again for I am stuck on writing this part out... Long story short, a region of space, nicknamed the NCIZ 2 (second iteration of such thing happening); or "Non-Controlled Inhabited ...
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Millitary applications of a gravity drive [closed]
Let's say gravity drives exist. This is a device that can power a spaceship by creating an artificial gravity well some distance in front of the spaceship that the spaceship perpetually falls into, ...
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What is the Distance needed for gravitational lensing for offensive lasers?
Space Navies A and B are on sufficiently distant orbits around a black hole. They are on similar orbits to each other, and neither side is risking going around the gravity well (for reasons). Lt. ...
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Interception of missiles in space combat
How to approach this problem!
Numerically. Trying to find some closed form equation to spit things out is extremely difficult, especially in the face of how well this lends itself to numeric methods. ...
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Would a ferro fluid cloud work as a "force" field for space combat?
Bit of a weird question, but lemme explain. I want to make shields that block lasers but don't block projectiles, As lasers in my world are very powerful.
I heard that military grade lasers can be ...
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Is a particle accelerator weapon feasible?
I am envisioning a weapon that operates similarly to a proton therapy machine, only with the aim of killing a person. Essentially, a beam of protons is launched towards the target. However, the proton ...
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Could a sun gun work from the surface?
The concept of a sun gun is of a parabolic reflector, placed it orbit around a planet, which focuses sunlight as a deadly beam on a specific point of the surface.
What I want to know is this: what if, ...
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Is a planet-sized magnet a good interstellar weapon?
(Same universe as Saturnian Cloud Cities and Quazar Power Plant)
In this setting, humans (Earthborn) are the first intelligent life to emerge in the Milky Way. They have now unified and became a grand ...
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What would be observable about a hypervelocity killer asteroid?
An early warning scout ship sits in deep space, making various kinds of observations and doing deep space science experiments, when suddenly a 2-kilometre-wide asteroid zooms past at about 0.9c on its ...
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Why does space warfare not lead to total anhiliation of both sides?
The title is intentionally provocative, but let me try to justify it.
Let's take a common science fiction setup of two interplanetary civilizations with a hand-waved FTL technology that are at war (...
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Tactics and formations to defend a convoy of starships [closed]
Once upon a time, there were two kingdoms at war. One of them had more starships and access to magnetic monopoles. For the purpose of this question, they could have been another exotic particle. ...
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Obliterating the Earth, *without* throwing rocks? [closed]
In this case, I don't mean "make the Earth uninhabitable", I mean "make the Earth a debris field". This has been asked before, of course, but the answers always seem be be some ...
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What would be a good reason to make a Wasp or Bee shaped armoured exoskeleton with big rear?
In a setting where there are multiple different species of aliens (alongside humans), humanity was forced to quickly adapt to aliens and invented various war machines.
Among them are several types of ...
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Field Promotion to Captain [closed]
In a future space navy universe that is heavily based on modern wet navies, would it be acceptable for a vessel XO (rank of Commander) to be field promoted to Captain from a single Fleet Admiral?
To ...
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Binary system travel time for war
To set the stage, 2 opposing groups exist in the binary Alpha Centauri system. The 2 stars have a roughly 80 year orbit that brings them as close at 11 AU together and as far as 36. A ship at a 1g ...
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Ideal materials for the outer layer of a whipple shield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield
What I'm looking for is the best possible materials for the outer layer of a whipple shield. From what I understand, the outer layer turns a hypervelocity ...
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Space-Travel friendly weapons [closed]
When creating a background antagonist, there is a civilization of aliens who are trying to expand their space empire. They are not the typical "evil empire", but rather just an empire trying ...
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When are Turreted Railgun better than Spinally-Mounted Railguns?
When and why are spinally-mounted railguns superior to turreted railguns for space combat? Is it a power issues(longer barrels could probably be mounted spinally, and the longer barrels might allow ...
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XO of a naval cruiser leads an internal investigation
In a future space navy setup, a Long Duration Mission cruiser experiences a mysterious death while in deep space. A member of the crew mysteriously dies while at their station and causes a series of ...
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XO Commanding a cruiser
My universe uses a lot of parallels to modern and World War Era navies. With that, I am trying to make a plausible space navy operating several centuries from now. The particular ship for this ...
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What atmosphere composition would make my weapon shoot orange plasma?
I am planning on painting a Warhammer 40k army that uses orange plasma for their energy based weapons, and use that exact same orange plasma for my worldbuilding, and other unrelated works of writing.
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Is it possible to effectively fight piracy in a solar-system wide human civilization?
So, humanity has invented an engine that while not capable of FTL travel, is still incredibly fast (IE cross the solar system in a matter of weeks or even days on certain ships). We make colonies and ...
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How does a military fight while trying not to be nuked?
To avoid detail in the name of getting at the underlying question, I've got a modern-adjacent military being invaded by well-equipped nomads supported by angry aliens in space who have far too many ...
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Warfare in a universe with FTL on rather fragile platforms? [closed]
How do you imagine the large picture of space warfare would shape into in a universe with the following characteristics:
There is FTL, but it's just available in very large and expensive platforms, ...
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Why would space nations find more value in empty space rather than star systems?
In most 4x games, almost every space nation fights for star systems, planets, black holes, etc. The benefits are obvious: planets to colonize or mine from, solar energy, strategic positions and so on.
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How large would space warships be? [closed]
How large would space warships be? Resources are limited to that of the inner Hills cloud & inward. The main concern is fighting within the solar system. Earth is still the only habitable planet ...
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Do aliens need to invade humans? [closed]
Everything has gravity, even the smallest things.
NASA and ESA considered using drones and rockets rotating around asteroids to to pull them away with their gravity in order to avoid apocalyptic level ...
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Plasma windows as justification for Free Electron Lasers?
There are two main types of military lasers: Free Electron Lasers (FEL lasers from now on) and Medium Lasers.
FEL lasers work by "wiggling" electrons through a line of magnets to create ...
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If stealth in space doesn't work, how might you hide?
While there have been numerous arguments about ways of actually pulling off stealth in space, what I'm interested in is the scenario in which you can't conceal your presence in the conventional sense ...
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Why are ground troops necessary in intergalactic warfare [closed]
Problem: In a space-age war (with magic), why would ground troops be used, rather than just dropping orbital marines onto problem areas?
Elaboration: So to set the stage, we’re dealing with wars ...
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What large scale strategies would an interstellar nation use to conquer another interstellar nation? [closed]
I'm working on a science fiction setting for a game. I'm trying to write a setting that focuses on man-operated war machines in sight range combat. Everything ranging from fighters to mechs to capital ...
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ETCs, macron accelerators, and plasma cannons! Viable alternatives to the same old space weapons?
The other day I wrote this post, asking about the possibility of an electricity based weapon. Sadly, no real feasible or possible weapon was available that could work in a vacuum with some actual ...
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Methods of Conducting Electricity through a Vacuum?
The title sums up most of what I'm asking, but I'll give a bit of background. Recently I've been reading mortal engines (minor spoiler alert, so skip to the next paragraph if you'd like), and in the ...
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In space is it better to use cannons instead of railguns?
A problem in space is a lot of the time heat dissipation. Another big problem is if you are set off course by the forces that the gun shooting inflicts on your spaceship.
For the same speed and ...
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Black hole minefields
A civilization has developed black hole guns and Hawking Radiation stabilizers while warring with other civilizations in their stellar neighborhood. Currently, they can create black holes up to 1000 ...
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Why wouldn't a space fleet use their lasers for a precision strike?
You are the admiral of a fleet of warships in orbit around Saturn (EDIT: the individual ships can be anywhere in the Saturnian system, including into Titan's orbit), tasked with performing a precision ...
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Orbital Bombardment of Airships
Imagine that you're the admiral of a fleet of warships in orbit around Saturn. You need to capture targets on Titan, the largest moon. (This could also be applied to, say, Venus or one of the gas ...
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How would one hack a battleship in space warfare?
Note: I might have put way too much information here; I've bolded the most important things.
Okay so here's the situation (this is the context in story; I'll bold the actual question): the Solar ...
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Would a hypervelocity laser "HEAT" round work?
Lately I've been working on a SciFi setting, primarily focusing on space combat.
Something I've been working on is an energy shield that can reliably stop hypervelocity rounds (which are common in ...
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What range will space battles generally occur at?
There are a lot of questions on this site asking how to justify space battles at different ranges (including one by me). However, I have not been able to find much information on what range a ...
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How many ships would an interstellar empire have in their navy? [closed]
So I'm writing a sci-fi space opera that takes place at a pretty realistic scale meaning even pretty small interstellar nations have millions of systems and the biggest ones have billions of systems ...
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Should Orbital Bombardment be Considered a War Crime? [closed]
One of the most common tactic in realistic interstellar war is the tried and true orbital bombardment. The victor is often the one who holds the high ground, so it make sense to take the ultimate ...
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How could one armor/defend against this hypothetical kinetic shell?
I know that this is an oddly specific question, but it was something I was wondering
In my setting, lots of space navies field a hefty amount of kinetic weapons because energy weapons are highly power ...
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Orbital Warfare Maneuvers
So lately I’ve been re-rereading (again) some of the articles on Atomic Rockets and I was metaphorically struck by the idea of orbital combat as presented on the site. To summarize, it involves using ...
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Effects of a Super High Velocity Cannon on a Planet
In the 23rd century, humans are at war with a technologically advanced alien species. Humans discovered a method of faster than light travel during early stages of this war when an alien capital ship ...
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