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 would one design an undetectable nuke to hit the Moon with?
Colonists have set up a viable, long term lunar colony on the near-side of the moon in the mid-21st century. They are quickly reaching total self-sufficiency and the earth governments who sponsored ...
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Are nuclear-propelled shotgun slugs viable?
Would a nuclear bomb surrounded by large amounts of separate shotgun-like slugs be a good anti-fleet weapon in space? If yes, how could you counter it?
(If there is a better StackExchange for this ...
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Chlorine Trifluoride as a Space Weapon?
Pretty self-explanatory. Could a spaceship use a "ClF3 Mortar" to fire copper shells at enemy vessels? At first glance, this seems like a good weapon: it can burn even in space and can set fire to ...
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Logical reason why a space navy would not utilize orbital bombardment?
Let’s say there’s a Human Space Navy, called the Terran Defense Force. They’re currently in a war with their interstellar neighbors. They’ve reached one of their enemies colonies at the very outskirts ...
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How would a lunar colony attack Earth?
I saw that there are many questions about how a lunar colony would defend itself. But in the not so near future the lunar colony might be stronger than Earth. They may have even suffered from attacks ...
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How would a lunar colony defend itself against aggression from Earth?
Assume that the with the technology level of the near future a self-sustainable colony has been established on the moon. For some reasons a conflict between this colony and some powerful nations on ...
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How much time does Earth need to repel interstellar attack?
Highly inspired by How would we fare against an interstellar RKKV Attack?
Lets repeat the setup of the original question:
In this hypothetical scenario, in the present day, astronomers detect an ...
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What are most likely to be the first space weapons?
I'm trying to write a mostly realistic space story, and kind of hit a wall when it came to weaponry, so here's the question:
What would be the first weapons to be put on a spacecraft? Due to physics ...
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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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Planetary defense in an interstellar society
Let's say that you are some sort of tyrannical dictator of an inhabited world with futuristic technology (ex. railguns, a fully automated labor force, efficient space travel.) You know that within ...
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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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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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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 would we fare against an interstellar RKKV Attack? [closed]
In this hypothetical scenario, in the present day, astronomers detect an object entering the heliosphere, at a distance of roughly 90AU, from the direction of the Proxima Centauri system. Observations ...
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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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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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Is it possible to blind a spaceship/space warship?
Stealth isn't possible in space, but what if you just shine a laser in their eyes and make a whole lot of noise somewhere else?
The situation is this: A shuttle full of pirate marines must dock to a ...
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Casaba Howitzer vs. Magnetic Shelds: Plausible Counter?
I'm trying to work through the mechanics of hard sci-fi space combat, and I came across the Casaba Howitzer.
The basic idea is a nuclear shaped charge. The blast from a nuclear bomb is partially ...
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How to efficiently transport troops from orbit
Warships in this universe travel with handwavium hyperdrive engines, but I'm trying to keep everything else plausible. How could I possibly transport troops from an orbiting warship to a planet? How ...
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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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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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Fortifications capable of withstanding atmosphere-clearing blast
On the Atomic Rockets site, there is a series of handy tables, the first of which is aptly named "The Boom Table", providing examples for a wide range of energy releases (in both Joules and TNT ...
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Harvesting automated war machines
Let`s say there is a planet on which fully automated machines capable of self replication, once belonging to several factions of highly advanced aliens, now extinct, are waging war against each other. ...
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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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What would grand strategy look like in a world with fast interstellar travel and slow interplanetary travel?
The specific situation is the tech in the Battletech universe. The Kearny-Fuchida hyperdrives are jump drives that can travel instantaneously up to thirty light years - being deposited (usually) at ...
user43053
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Relativistic Interstellar Combat
This question is heavily motivated by the details of my story, but it has a lot of free parameters to work with. I invite you to think creatively!
Setting:
You are in command of a constant ...
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Defending a planet's surface from ships in orbit
For a story I'm writing I'm planning a large-scale battle between human mercenaries on the surface who will eventually come under attack by hostile alien forces. At first, the fight will feature small ...
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Ways to detect lasers from afar
In my sci-fi universe, spaceship shields are generated by capturing plasma between two electromagnetic fields. Projectiles are evaporated by the heat of the plasma, and charged particles are deflected ...
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Would there be any place for nuclear-powered spaceships in a world where antimatter propulsion is the standard?
Nuclear fission rockets are becoming obsolete and have been superseded by the more efficient antimatter engines, which have nearly 100% efficiency and do not produce pollutants.
I'm wondering this: in ...
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Could an eruption be triggered at Yellowstone via kinetic bombardment?
While similar questions have been asked, I don't believe kinetic bombardment was brought up, with focus centred around nuclear warheads.
Considering the ability for a "rod from god" to embed into the ...
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Does the beam quality factor M2 really ruin long range laser warfare in space?
After doing a lot of reading on space warfare on Atomic Rockets, ToughSF and other websites, I was almost sold on laser dominance. Sure, a continuous wave laser could be countered by cooling the hull ...
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How would a treaty forbiding the use of automated weaponry change space combat?
Background and Goal
I'm building a science fiction setting for a game that will have a lot of space combat focused around fighters. One thing I wanted to avoid was letting the setting drift towards ...
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Preserving naval battle groups in space warfare
I want to have a somewhat realistic setting where space fleets have to close in to short distances, probably around 1000 km or less, in order to inflict damage. This will be only a few hundred years ...
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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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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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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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Using frozen light as a starship shield
Frozen/Solid light Shields
I can't find much online; but after listening to an Isaac Arthur episode where he briefly mentions frozen light, I immediately thought about the Hardlight items from the ...
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Are trireme-like spaceships (spaceships with rams) possible? [duplicate]
This is a fairly simple question, and the heading is pretty self explanatory, but I have a feeling there are a lot of implications to it that I haven't thought of. To be more specific, would it be ...
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Shooting down an enemy ship at FTL speeds
In the story I'm currently working on an alien race holds the monopoly on FTL travel. They're using a modified Alcubierre drive system, powered by Negative Mass. Humanity stumbles on a source of ...
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Are laser-stars the better missile carriers in space warfare?
Laser-stars are war-spacecraft optimized to accommodate a huge laser weapon capable of eliminating an enemy thousands of kilometers away. They will usually have enormous radiators to deal with the ...
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Optimal shape for hypervelocity kinetic projectiles from space
In my universe, coilguns/railguns are popular weapon in ship-to-ship combat. But, they also have a place in orbital bombardment, as a ship on low orbit can hit a ground target in few seconds using ...
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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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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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What could be used for orbital bombardment?
In my world Mars is fighting Earth. the problem is what would they (Mars and Earth) use for orbital bombardment. Things to know:
set in the early 2100s
both worlds are inhabited by humans
both have ...
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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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How would the US re-conquer a Moon Base?
The year is 2030. The US has set up a moon base with about 2,000 people. The base can theoretically survive indefinitely, growing its own food and 3D-printing supplies, but in practice it needs ...
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Hypervelocity projectile damage to spaceships
Next question about kinetic weapons in my universe:
We have a coilgun/railgun, it launches a projectile at 30 km/s; if it meets a compartmentalized spacecraft on its path, does the projectile go ...
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Are there existing Earthly body plans that make trapezoid or hexagonal spacecraft volume efficient?
Volume efficiency is extremely important when it comes to minimising the targettable cross-section of a warship in space. Humans make pretty efficient use of spaces that are generally square or ...
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Kinetic weapons - establishing an upper limit when dealing with grey goo
This answer to my last question suggested, rightly, that there are targets dangerous, and large scale, enough that there is neither overkill nor spillover damage when it comes to attacking a planetary ...
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How can space-mines be improved as a viable weapons in interplanetary space warefare?
Set in the distant future, two factions are engaged in bitter conflict spread across the solar system. The Earth Federation wants to deprive the rebels hiding among the moons of the gas giants of ...
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