27
votes
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
Space ships are like aircraft. They are very good at projecting power, but they are less good at things like gathering intelligence or holding indoor positions. A spaceship or aircraft can knock ...
- 55.9k
16
votes
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
You can bombard as much as you want, but until you are not able to set your boots on the ground and hold them there, you will not be controlling a piece of land.
Look at the most recent wars, like ...
- 276k
13
votes
Accepted
Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
TL;DR: Decide whether any part of your system needs actual FTL (and wormholes do not require this by themselves, if the mouths get moved at sublight speeds). If you do need FTL, handwave a preferred ...
- 72.4k
11
votes
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
I don't know if this should be a comment rather than an answer, because what I really wanted to say is "your question needs more details or clarity". Why is that? Because I see you start for ...
- 8,564
9
votes
Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
I would vote no.
Weather or not you are in the well of a black hole dosnt really matter. The gravitational well of a black hole is almost identical to that of any other celestial body outside the ...
- 1,717
8
votes
How would you get a ship out of a gravity well?
Obviously, bringing something that big down to Earth is just asking for trouble. It was built in space and operates in space... subjecting it to gravity and turbulence and weather and an atmosphere ...
- 72.4k
7
votes
Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
The universe may have an in-built mechanism for causality protection, preventing wormholes specifically from forming time machines.
Wormholes as we understand them don't always form time machines. ...
- 6,405
6
votes
Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
You could just say that time travel doesn't happen. No, really - this isn't a cop-put. Sometimes nature is just like that.
Suppose you are looking at the Andromeda nebula. If you have good sight and ...
- 7,068
5
votes
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
Why do we have armies and navies now?
Even without a space force, there are at least 2 powers on Earth that could strike any army or navy deployed anywhere on the globe and several others that could ...
- 734
5
votes
Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
No Loops
The easiest way to ensure that there isn't any time travel is to make sure that there are no loops in the wormhole network. They need to form a tree-like graph with only one path from any ...
- 1,308
4
votes
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
The navy is redundant/obsolete
In your scenario, there's no need for a navy. The point of boots on the ground is to handle the interpersonal stuff (which will definitely include skirmish-level ...
- 20.3k
4
votes
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
This always bothered me in star trek and star wars. You have ships attacking planets. Planets that effectively have unlimited power, unlimited shield, and virtually unlimited weapons.
If you had a ...
- 6,474
4
votes
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
Submarines are hard to find and hard to destroy
In addition to the need for infantry mentioned above. Do not underestimate the ability of water to keep things from being seen and absorb and dissipate ...
- 259
3
votes
Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
Time travel is not a consequence of no-preferred-frame
I am familiar with the problem you're worried about: it plays an important role in the novel Exultant by Stephen Baxter. But I think it's a ...
- 13.8k
3
votes
How would you get a ship out of a gravity well?
Well, first of all, they wouldn't. Bringing something this ludicrously big (90,000 tons) down to the surface on anything atmospheric just wouldn't be done with the hard-scifi level you describe, just ...
- 21.1k
3
votes
How would you get a ship out of a gravity well?
The most likely answer, as has been pointed out in the comments, is that nobody would try to land such a large ship in the first place. Not with any expectation of launching it again. Or surviving the ...
- 5,194
3
votes
Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
Yes. If you're resourceful.
Nuclear pulse propulsion is the way to go - however it is possible to use the 'Medusa' method instead of intensively using pusher plates and springs.
This is when you eject ...
- 21k
3
votes
Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
No... except, maybe
Propulsion is what you get when reaction mass expands in a controlled fashion inside a suitable chamber, thereby pushing your ship along. The keyword here is "mass."
The ...
- 117k
3
votes
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
When writing fiction I often try to look at reality, and it is a bonus if it is related to something actively happening now.
There is a weapon that can completely obliterate the enemy. There are also ...
- 291
2
votes
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
What are your war aims?
Do you just want to kill the entire population of a planet? Then you don't need ground forces. Also, you're a monster. (Hypothetical you. If you're writing a story with ...
- 1,935
2
votes
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
Join the Spacy! See the World!
Welcome the United Spacey! We look back on a long history of shipping, transport, and warfare, going back almost as far as the Army! We were the big stick of Roosevelt! ...
- 15.9k
2
votes
Can a spaceship "hitchhike" on an explosion to escape a gravity well?
To escape a gravity well one needs to supply to the escaping object enough energy to reach infinite distance from the well with velocity 0.
In principle any sufficiently big explosion can satisfy this ...
- 276k
1
vote
Avoiding time travel or causality stuff
I'm going to re-post a modified version of an answer I made to a similar,previously asked question:
The simplest solution is to assume that the 'laws of physics' including those pertaining to the ...
- 15.5k
1
vote
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
You need more space assets to do what you want than you think
Planets are big on a scale we don't really grasp. And orbital shells are mathematically required to be even bigger.
Sure, if you only ...
- 259
1
vote
Necessity of army and navy in a space warfare setting
The question fails to consider that the enemy also has a vote.
Assuming a "Star Wars" type setting, a planetary system has the energy and resources to build a comparable fleet of spacecraft -...
- 97.6k
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