Is Science Fiction Losing Its Charm Due to Unrealistic Space Travel?

[Ryan_m_b]

I would still like the read or write about different kind of battles and characters... now i don't see much options to do that without every kind if purely fictional hyperspace based device.

I would recommend the Dread[/PLAIN] Empire Fall trilogy. It's not very well known and it's a bit soft-SF but it has some of the best and most realistic descriptions of space tactics I know of e.g.

• What kind of evasive manoeuvres ships should do to avoid getting hit whilst staying close enough to offer each other covering fire but not too close so as to take each other out if they are hit (as they use antimatter for propulsion ships go out with a bang when critically struck)
• How to fight over light hours of space
• How to use gravity wells and planets to your advantage
• Techniques for managing the crew under high-g

On top of that there it covers how to lead a resistance in a very centralised (all comms monitored, everyone on a biometric database) and totalitarian regime.

EDIT: Now that I think of it DEF does have a somewhat convincing use for a fighter-type craft. Basically when they are fighting over long distances (light minutes-hours) they send out small one man ships called pinnaces along with a swarm of missiles. The job of the pinnace pilot is to give last minute tactical orders to the missiles depending on the situation at the time.

 

[PrepperMike]

read Ian Douglas.

 

[GTOM]

In other threads, we had a consensus, that fighters and corvettes are "brown water navy", operating on orbit, and big shafts of moons and asteroids.

Otherwise, I 've also thought about beam empowered fighters and small missile control ships.

I see that trilogy ruled out AIs.

 

[PrepperMike]

Ian uses AIs for high speed stuff that human reaction times can't handle, but other stuff he feels is best done by humans. His biggest argument against AI is do you want control of high powered weapons with an AI or a human?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Ian uses AIs for high speed stuff that human reaction times can't handle, but other stuff he feels is best done by humans. His biggest argument against AI is do you want control of high powered weapons with an AI or a human?

That's a meaningless question unless you provide a detailed description of the characteristics and capabilities of the proposed AI.

 

[SHISHKABOB]

a good way to force action sequences or whatever is to make up magical- er I mean fictional chemicals or elements that have some oddly specific behaviors. For example, in the anime series Legend of the Galactic Heroes, there was some funky gas stuff that exploded very violently if lasers or guns were shot through it. Sort of like the laser vs. shields thing in the Dune universe. This forced armies to duke it out in fancy armor, crossbows and giant battleaxes. The rest of the show was about giant space battles where the ships lined up like 18th century European line infantry and space politics.

But they got to add in some really cool face to face melee combat scenes because of some magical gas that they made up.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

a good way to force action sequences or whatever is to make up magical- er I mean fictional chemicals or elements that have some oddly specific behaviors.

That's the cool thing about speculative fiction. You propose some sort of technobabble and explore the societal and practical ramifications. For instance, if this gas explodes violently then can it not also be harvested as a powerful fuel? Simply store it in gas canisters and spray little bits at a time into a laser lit engine. Or store it at very high concentration and then light a laser inside the canister as a bomb.

 

[GTOM]

Yes I watched Legend of Galactic Heroes, i don't know if they used the Zephyr (I think) for propulsion purposes as well.
(Otherwise I disliked that series, Yang always knew what the enemy is planning, they launch a small attack, Send there our whole navy! Yeah why not, next time, they launch a very big attack, and of course it is only a decoy...)

Basically, in deep space, where arent civilans and neutral parties, AIs can't do much wrong...
In case of orbital patrol, human decision is needed, and i doubt that remote control is always enough, there can be spys for example, that can hack the system to create an international scandal or something like that.
Also you have more options to rescue pilots.



I had the idea, that aliens can deploy self-replicating nanobots to Earth, to infect computers, turn our own robots and infrastructure against us...
They want everything to be ready, by the time they arrive.

However, if their plan A fails, they can launch a relativistic torpedo against Earth...
Is it possible to counter, without hyperspace senses or thing like that?
(It is so magical, one could even bring the Force to the image)

Although... if humans can learn the whereabouts of the alien homeworld, they can also threat them with R-torpedos.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

However, if their plan A fails, they can launch a relativistic torpedo against Earth...Is it possible to counter, without hyperspace senses or thing like that?
(It is so magical, one could even bring the Force to the image)

Although... if humans can learn the whereabouts of the alien homeworld, they can also threat them with R-torpedos.

Without magic technobabble like a forcefield not really. The most you could do is fill your system with highly sophisticated gravity sensors to sense the RKV as it comes. You might not have much time at all because if it is traveling at 0.9c (which btw is roughly the velocity an object needs to reach for its kinetic energy to reach half its rest mass) and you detect it at one light day out this means it is only two light hours away. If you do have time you could try to divert its path with powerful lasers or try to through mass in the way to deflect it but I doubt you could really do any of that.

Charles Stross dealt with this issue in his novel Iron Sunrise. In it various factions have STL-deterrents hidden in their Oort cloud operating under a dead-man switch. If they don't receive a signal every X hours they launch towards a target planet (trying to find a tiny ship, possibly stealthed from across a system would be next to impossible). This largely stopped factions invading each other for fear of severe retaliation years later.

 

[GTOM]

If a RKV hits a one kilogram mass before the planet, what would happen to it?
The energy of the collision could turn it into a dissolving plasma cloud or dont?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

If a RKV hits a one kilogram mass before the planet, what would happen to it?
The energy of the collision could turn it into a dissolving plasma cloud or dont?

At around 0.87c the kinetic energy of an object exceeds half it's rest mass. So a one kilogram RKV traveling at 0.87c relative to the planet will have the kinetic energy of e=0.5*c² = 4.5 petajoules = ~10 megatonnes of TNT (~600 Hiroshima bombs). At that speed it would get through the atmosphere in less than a millisecond and cause massive devastation to the area it hit (akin to a nuclear explosion plus an earthquake). Some quick googling tells me that the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs released ~0.5 Yottajoules of energy which would be the equivalent of a 5 kilotonne RKV traveling at 0.87 which works out to be roughly the mass of 50m x 10m x 10m of ice.

This is something that a lot of SF authors forget in their haste to write about relativistic ships the size of super-carriers and cities. The very ships you have littered in your setting as though they were sprinkles on a cake could all be converted to weapons thousands of times more powerful than the meteorite that caused the K-T mass extinction! (this is also known as http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/prelimnotes.php#johnslaw)

 

[GTOM]

I can see, but if you try to put a brick in the way of the RKV well before it hits the planet?
Would that mean, that only the brick disintegrates in the collision, or the RKV also?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I can see, but if you try to put a brick in the way of the RKV well before it hits the planet?
Would that mean, that only the brick disintegrates in the collision, or the RKV also?

Whatever you put in front of an object traveling that fast would just be disintegrated, like a wet tissue paper thrown in front of an artillery shell. It may slow the RKV down a negligible amount but what you really hope or is to divert its course ever so slightly so that it misses its target. More likely though is that it may cause the RKV to break up but even if it did it wouldn't change the amount of energy that is about to hit: whether it hits the planet in 1 piece or 1 million pieces the same horrendous amount of energy is about to be released.

 

[SHISHKABOB]

my problem with relativistic weapons is how the heck do you aim them properly

 

[Ryan_m_b]

my problem with relativistic weapons is how the heck do you aim them properly

What do you mean? Why would it be a problem to just aim, accelerate it up to a high fraction of C and watch the fire works? If long distance is a problem add some form of sensor and some thrusters to tweak the course. Even a small fraction of a degree course change could have big consequences after light hours-years

 

[SHISHKABOB]

What do you mean? Why would it be a problem to just aim, accelerate it up to a high fraction of C and watch the fire works? If long distance is a problem add some form of sensor and some thrusters to tweak the course. Even a small fraction of a degree course change could have big consequences after light hours-years

this may be a misunderstanding on my part, but wouldn't it take a looot of energy to change the course of something moving extremely fast?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

this may be a misunderstanding on my part, but wouldn't it take a looot of energy to change the course of something moving extremely fast?

Kind of, by engaging in any kind of thrust you change the velocity. Simplistically think of two objects on a grid: A and B with the top being North, bottom South etc.

A is traveling north at a speed of 1 square per second. B is traveling north at a speed of 10 squares per second. Both of them apply thrust so that they are moving west at 1 square per second. For A this means that for every square it travels north it travels 1 west (creating a 45 degree angle if this grid were a graph). For B it travels 1 square west for every 10 north.

However you only have to nudge a tiny bit to be very off course over long distances. Let's posit B (a RKV now) traveling at 150,000,000 mps (~0.5c) and at some point it thrusts to one side (let's say port) so that it is traveling 1 metre to port for every 150,000,000 metres it travels forward. Over the course of a light hour (two hours of travel) it is now 3.6 km off course to port. Over a light year it would be 62,000 km off course!

And that is only supposing it sticks to the measly thrust that generates 1mps to port!

 

[SHISHKABOB]

right, I see now. Usually I imagine relativistic weapons as big chunks of stuff that don't have thrusters on them, but I guess it isn't unreasonable to put things like that on something like that.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

right, I see now. Usually I imagine relativistic weapons as big chunks of stuff that don't have thrusters on them, but I guess it isn't unreasonable to put things like that on something like that.

Without propulsion how do you get them up to relativistic speeds ? For me an RKV is just a spaceship on autopilot; the only difference between a relativistic spaceship and a weapon is how it plans to end its journey.

 

[SHISHKABOB]

well, perhaps you have some kind of accelerator like a railgun, but I can see how making it basically a spaceship makes more sense. Well, a lot more sense :P

 

[GTOM]

Although I am wondering.
Isnt it possible, that with this speed, collision with gas particles and micrometeors, electromagnetic induction from solar wind and magnetic field, will ruin its sensor arrays inside the Solar System?
Than it can still miss the Earth.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Although I am wondering.
Isnt it possible, that with this speed, collision with gas particles and micrometeors, electromagnetic induction from solar wind and magnetic field, will ruin its sensor arrays inside the Solar System?
Than it can still miss the Earth.

Doubtful, space is incredibly empty, but even if it did all it would take is an accelerometer to sense course changes and an internal map built up from before it went blind would ensure it hit.

 

[GTOM]

I see.

What is your opinion about space fighter carriers?
I know that small ships and big ships moving through the same void... but i had the thought, that theoretically, we could convert our ships to huge airships, but it would be too expensive.

Maybe, for someone, it would be too expensive to fit an interplanetary cruiser with special lower specific impulse-high trust drives and super cooling mechanisms that can grant a fighter superior acceleration on a bigger scale than a not so special interplanetary ship.

I know you can't just dodge lasers and other beam weapons... but it isn't that easy to hit small flies, not even for a computer.

 

[rolerbe]

I like the whoooshing sounds they make. My favorite part!

 

[Ryan_m_b]

What is your opinion about space fighter carriers?
I know that small ships and big ships moving through the same void... but i had the thought, that theoretically, we could convert our ships to huge airships, but it would be too expensive.

Huh? You mean turn aircraft carriers into blips? Firstly that would be one huge balloon and secondly a couple of bullets in that balloon and you're going to have a bad day.

Regarding the fighter/carrier idea it really depends on the technology you have available. Put it this way if you had something like a VASIMR or fusion drive you are going to need to carry a honking great power plant (probably nuclear) to run it. Plus all the fuel, expendables etc means that for anything that you want to be able to operate for more than a few minutes it's going to have to be big. So that's a large amount of specific impulse but low thrust.

Conversely a "fighter" is so small that all it could fit is some sort of chemical drive which massively reduces it's specific impulse but might increase it's thrust. Problem is in what scenario is that helpful? It's hard to know without having a hypothetical military scenario on the table and a list of technologies.

 

[GTOM]

"You mean turn aircraft carriers into blips? Firstly that would be one huge moon and secondly a couple of bullets in that balloon and you're going to have a bad day."

Turn regular ships into airships with many rotors. They wouldn't sink if they hit their belly, subs with torpedos don't threat them, they could cross the ocean faster...
At least I think, its theoretically isn't impossible, but that would be too expensive...

So it might be possible to have similar analogy with space fighters and carriers.


Historically, they started to build torpedo boats against dreadnoughts.
They doing research, to decrease a TeraWatt lasers cooldown time to some hours...
So a dreadnought with a giant cannon won't be effective against a fighter swarm, they can get close to deliver a fatal blow with particle cannons. /Of course after the shot there is hours long cooldown and recharge time/
Well destroyers was meant to counter subs and torpedo boats.
But space fighters don't simply sink, and they could be used for flanking operations together with frigates, that can take out the destroyers with their cannons. Of course that requires careful planning with fleet operations.

Well I don't say this combo is superior to dreadnought and destroyers combo... but in war, you can't choose every time, what is the best thing, you use what you got.

Otherwise i don't argue, that space fighters are primarly meant to be brown water navy, fighting in giant shafts of asteroid mines and moonbases could be their special mission.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Turn regular ships into airships with many rotors. They wouldn't sink if they hit their belly, subs with torpedos don't threat them, they could cross the ocean faster...
At least I think, its theoretically isn't impossible, but that would be too expensive...

The amount of power and rotors would be gargantuan and it would still be fragile. Also, what's the point? Aircraft carriers exist to grant a mobile refuelling base for aircraft so as to extend their operational range and response time. There would be little advantage to having a flying aircraft carrier

Historically, they started to build torpedo boats against dreadnoughts.
They doing research, to decrease a TeraWatt lasers cooldown time to some hours...
So a dreadnought with a giant cannon won't be effective against a fighter swarm, they can get close to deliver a fatal blow with particle cannons. /Of course after the shot there is hours long cooldown and recharge time/
Well destroyers was meant to counter subs and torpedo boats.
But space fighters don't simply sink, and they could be used for flanking operations together with frigates, that can take out the destroyers with their cannons. Of course that requires careful planning with fleet operations.

Well I don't say this combo is superior to dreadnought and destroyers combo... but in war, you can't choose every time, what is the best thing, you use what you got.

Otherwise i don't argue, that space fighters are primarly meant to be brown water navy, fighting in giant shafts of asteroid mines and moonbases could be their special mission.

I'll refer to my previous point about needing to know a military scenario and technology to have a proper exploration of the issue but I can't think of any reason why someone would fly down an "asteroid shaft" anymore than an aircraft on Earth would try to fly into a cave.

 

[GTOM]

"I can't think of any reason why someone would fly down an "asteroid shaft" anymore than an aircraft on Earth would try to fly into a cave."

Well, maybe i played too much with this :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(video_game )

Asteroid mines can be the valuable things you want to capture. Maybe the whole war is about the resources of asteroids and moons. /Stroming a planet isn't such a good idea.../
The shafts can be so giant /as you don't need to reinforce them in low or zero gravity/ that small ships can manuever in them.

"The amount of power and rotors would be gargantuan and it would still be fragile. Also, what's the point? Aircraft carriers exist to grant a mobile refuelling base for aircraft so as to extend their operational range and response time."

That is my point for space fighter carriers, if the fighter squadrons can take out enemy capital ships with the focus fire of their cannons, no need to convert an entire huge interplanetary ship to a fast nimbe battle platform.
Of course that supposes that long-range missiles arent the best choices, due to enemy defences, but lasers don't always hit from a big range.

It is maybe a bit paradox. My main point against long-range missiles, that one can launch several interceptor missiles, mines against one, and they have to enter into point blank range of defences. Fighters can protect themselves from missile weapons with their lasers and agility to dodge shrapnels, and they can fire from 100.000 km. From that range one tenth arcsecond of error in targeting (limited sensor accuracy, light lag, random acceleration, tiny errors in tracking device) mean a 50m miss.

Of course that is purely speculative. I just wondered is it so lame to justify carriers with theese reasons? Like you said, it is lame to justify fighters with targeting role.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

(Just so you know when you want to quite someone just press the quote button in the bottom right)

Asteroid mines can be the valuable things you want to capture. Maybe the whole war is about the resources of asteroids and moons. /Stroming a planet isn't such a good idea.../
The shafts can be so giant /as you don't need to reinforce them in low or zero gravity/ that small ships can manuever in them.

Assuming you did want to capture an asteroid a crawling bot or person in a suit would be better. The amount of fuel you would have to use to change course, direction etc would be prohibitive and unless it's anchored to something the slightest nudge and it could go spinning away.

It is maybe a bit paradox. My main point against long-range missiles, that one can launch several interceptor missiles, mines against one, and they have to enter into point blank range of defences. Fighters can protect themselves from missile weapons with their lasers and agility to dodge shrapnels, and they can fire from 100.000 km. From that range one tenth arcsecond of error in targeting (limited sensor accuracy, light lag, random acceleration, tiny errors in tracking device) mean a 50m miss.

Advantages of a missile is what you can cram inside (rather than a cockpit, air, controls etc just have countermeasures and explosives), they could achieve much higher g-forces, it is less of an issue when they get hit etc.

Also I don't agree with your advantages of a fighter for "firing 100,000km away" what exactly are they firing and why couldn't a long range missile also be equipped with a weapon?

 

[GTOM]

Assuming you did want to capture an asteroid a crawling bot or person in a suit would be better.

Well of course men are also required to capture and hold that mine, but the ships can help them, like a helicopter, or river boat can support ground troops IMHO.

Advantages of a missile is what you can cram inside (rather than a cockpit, air, controls etc just have countermeasures and explosives), they could achieve much higher g-forces, it is less of an issue when they get hit etc.
Also I don't agree with your advantages of a fighter for "firing 100,000km away" what exactly are they firing and why couldn't a long range missile also be equipped with a weapon?

Well, i can't really argue, that in deep space, drone level intelligence and remote control is enough, but i prefer to call that platform an unmanned, remote controlled fighter, I think this platform is more intelligent to be called simply missile.
It can be preferable to make it reusable, in more difficult situations (like the one i mentioned in the first paragraph, and orbital platform where civilans neutral parties and valuable infrastructure can be involved) it should be manned. In deep space it can be launched remote controlled, you could fill the cockpit not with oxigen, but an additional fuel tank, or coolant, heat sink, or something like that. Of course that requires sophisticated engineering.
It could fire a relativistic particle beam for example, short range, high punch. (Long charge and cooldown time.)

 

[GTOM]

Well, maybe any more suggestions what can be a good book?
I saw another thread, but that was about movies.

 

[GTOM]

Well someone recommended Ian Douglas, is it a "hard" sci?
At first blink it seemed to project near-past wars to space.

 

[Travis_King]

I particularly like the way Asimov creates these great ideas that seem perfect, and then works throughout his novels proving himself wrong. He creates a set of laws which seem to be the perfect answer to keeping robots in check, then systematically cuts them down with loopholes. Genius.

As to the original topic, yea. I really enjoyed the new Battlestar Galactica, but I cringed whenver I saw one of them doing their crazy little flip-spin-turns.

Though, admittedly, with a powerful enough propulsion system which doesn't devour fuel, you could conceivably pull something like these maneuvers, assuming your relative velocity to the stuff around you doesn't change (that is, if your ship and the ship you are fighting are in the same ballpark as far as velocity goes. If you could counteract the acelleration forces on the body and have directional jets with enough specific impulse to stop you quickly, I don't see why rapid changes of direction and speed would not be possible. I don't think they'd be economical though.

If you want a writer who's got this bit sorted out, read The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. This is hands down the best space-fleet combat I've read. It takes the spaceship combat action from an angle of how it might actually be like. I highly recommend it. [Edit: FYI, if you can't read a book without in-depth character development, then this may not be the book/series for you. I enjoyed the military planning, execution, and battle descriptions, more so than the development of the, admittedly, somewhat 2D characters]

 

[Ryan_m_b]

If you want a writer who's got this bit sorted out, read The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. This is hands down the best space-fleet combat I've read. It takes the spaceship combat action from an angle of how it might actually be like. I highly recommend it.

I'm a fan of the lost fleet series but I disagree with this; the combat is far better thought out than soft science fiction however it still relies on soft-SF handwavium like inertial negation, impossibly powerful propulsion, force fields and a lot of the explanations for limitations don't really stack up like ships not being able to engage at closing speeds of more than 0.2c because relativistic distortion will mess with the sensors.

IMO the Dread Empire Fall trilogy dealt with it better, it still involves some handwavium (copious amounts of antimatter) but the ships can only accelerate at the limit that their occupants can safely handle and the tactics of formations in 3d are very clever. For example; ships conventionally remain close to maximise their close-in defence against missiles but because of this they are in danger of catastrophe once one ship gets hit and it's antimatter is released. To combat this various patterns are formed that maximise defence but allow the ships to move around erratically.

In fact those two series are very interesting in how similar yet how different they are.

 

[Travis_King]

I forgot about the forcefields...
Dread Empire Fall, huh? I'll have to take a look. I really enjoyed the "naval" formations in the LF series, I thought Campbell did a great job of painting the picture in 3D and allowing you to visualize from/to where the attacks were coming and going.

There's got to be some handwaving haha, in real life I imagine it would pretty much just be both ships blowing each other up once they found their location and trajectory. I suppose some evasive maneuvers could be used, but really I think it would be pretty anticlimactic.