Registered: Mar 2001
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To the thinkers out there- The logistics of space weaponry

Here's a good topic I don't think we've touched upon. How would actual space weapons work?

As far as beam weapons we can create 6 megawat lasers today by using solid stage bromide as a focusing element in the firing chamber, This creates a charge hotter than the center of the sun for about five seconds before destroying the sample. If you had a loading machanism of even crew members constantly rearming the firing chamber with the compound you could have a pretty effective weapon. A large mirror on a 6way angled pivot would serve to aim the device. However an effective defense against such a weapon would be to paint your ship a highly reflective chrome- like queen Amidalas ship from Episode 1.

For smaller munitions (ie fighter craft weaponry) I think a simple heavy armor piercing round like the anti-fighter munitions of today would be quite effective.

Missles of course work just as effectivly in space as they do on earth, though you would want a concusive blast such as a nirtoglycerin base or C4 rather than a heat based blast like flashgas, napalm or thermite. Even the space shuttle today can easily shunt off thousand degree temperatures due to it's tile based hull design needed for atmospheric entry.

I wonder about energy bolt type waepons as seen on B5. What would the logistics of focusing a charge and the relasing it at the target be? What is the core of the munition? Plasma, (again a heat based weapon) would burn off very quickly in space even though this is often a popular weapon type in sci-fi.
I don't think plasma would be an effective munition in space.
A simple energy charge would be better at disableing a ship than destroying it.
Any energy bolt would have to be pretty damn powerfull to be better that a simple armor piercing round, especially as energy rouds would travel considerably slower.

Your thoughts?

Last edited by Fuzzy Modem on 11-18-2001 at 11:34 PM

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Registered: Nov 2001
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Well, for the laser part, I think it will be pretty difficult to rearm it in an acceptable timelimit considering that it has to be done (from the EA's perspective) in zero g conditions (I'm talking now about non mechanical reload, so crew reload). It would also mean that you don't have 'infinite' ammo for your beam weapons.

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Alright, lets assume you do have a loading mechanism. It woulden't be too complex. You would need a high density freeser to store your samples before they're fed into the loading chamber. These samples aren't to big, about the size of a baseball bat. You would have a limited number of shots but you could still have more than a hundred samples per freezer and any number of actual lazers, even a cluster of twenty or thirty firing from the same gunport, and any number of gunports. Powering the lazer isn't an issue it only requires a relativly small charge to lase the sample (say 10,000 wats) so you could consievably have the whole ship covered in gunports each gunport housing 20 individual lasers that fire in tandem or in rotary. The cost of the bromide itself might get prohibitivly expensive at this point however, unless you have the technology to synthesise it, or a similar compound. I still think it's feasable.

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Registered: Nov 2001
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Yes, I think the bromidesupply would be the biggest prob... Only for1 ship you would need thousands of samples, and when we look at the EA for instance, you would need to supply a cuople of hundred ships, so that would really be a problem...

About the smaller weapons now.
You're right when you say armor piercing rounds would be best, but here you have the same problem on how much ammo do you take with you, 1000 rounds, 2000 rounds ? Energy based weapons wouldn't have that problem.

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Registered: Mar 2001
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Thats true. I hadn't considered that. However suport ships or docking with a mothership could solve this problem for longer missions of prolonged combat. 1,000 rounds per gun would still be alot. Notice, say a Starfury's rate of fire. Any ship out on it's own for long periods without support expecting combat would be in sore shape however. Maybe a smaller slug fired at much highter velocity so you could carry more?

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Registered: Oct 2001
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Ok, I'm going to expand your list of weapons from the sci-fi novels I've read. I may not remember all of it, but I'll give my best:

Energy:
1. Laser- The old focused beam of light (as far as I know). Rarely describes how they fire, but it must be some form of non-ammo dependent system, since there's never a reload time that's talked about.

2. Force beams- You know the tractor beams from Star Trek? Force beams are simply tractor beams that rapidly switch between push and pull, basically ripping the target apart. This weapon is usually reserverd for tech levels where gravitic/inertialess drives are used.

Missile/projectile:
Note- The best missiles I've read about are ones from gravitic/inertialess drive tech levels. Each missile has an grav/inertialess drive that's capable of accelerating the missile to several thousand g's of thrust, with ranges of several light-seconds.
3. Bomb-pumped laser- IIRC another name is X-ray lasers. Basically a laser that has a nuke to drastically increase it's damage. Because of the nukes, they are normally used on satillites and used as warheads on missiles.

4. Nukes- Oldies but still goodies. Have to be close to the target to really hurt them.

5. Matter/Antimatter missiles- Take one teaspoon of some matter (prolly a gas), combine with one teaspoon antimatter, serve to enemy in a missile. No more bad guy.

6. Energy torpedoes- Not quite sure how they work. Fire blasts of energy far as I can tell.

Now for my thoughts on these:
1. If the fuel can be something that doesn't have to be replaced everytime you fire, it's good. Guessing the damage would be from the beam melting through the target.

2. Ammo is unlimited as long as you got enough juice from the reactors. Best plan is to hit the target with missiles from range, damage it's structure, then literally shake it apart.

3. In the books, these are very good. They tear through armor and anything behind it. On missiles, you have to have a good angle on the flight path to get a good hit with the beam. Bad aim at distance can be lowered by placeing multiple beams on one missile.

4. Everyone knows what nukes can do. You have to get pretty close to do a good bit of damage, soe CIWS systems can defeat them.

5. Very dangerous, both to enemy and shooter. If the antimatter containment system fails before launch, well, imagine one of the nukes in a carrier going off.

6. Sounds like another thing that only requires power from a reactor. Not sure of the damage they can do.

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Anything more specific? How would a tracor beam work for instance? Or how is the nucleor charge trasmitted through the beam? I'm trying to work with knowledge that I have and scientific fact.

Mater and Anti matter are scientifically plasable- but unproven as yet.

Another possible weapon would be a tacheon emmiter. These particles have been proven to exist, but only exist at speeds greater than the speed of light. This would act as a kind of infinite range sand blaster, punching billions of molecule sized holes in the target. This is getting out there as far a feasbility though, and is way beyond our capacity in the near future.

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not to be negative but i'm pretty sure we can do better than a poxy 6 mw laser - you idea of reflective armour wouldn't work the us someone armed forces the ones messing with starwars - experimented with that idea - the energy hits so hard and fast with the big lasers its not so much melting them as blasting them - the impact from that much concetrated energy is as good as being hit with a bullet - and the us airforce has ordered about 7 boeing 747s armed with about 4 laser cannons - liquid fueled i cant remember how many shots they can get off each quite afew - lasers are turret mounted - its sooooooo cool i want one

but anyway no game or tv series uses lasers since they ould be invisable - what we want is particle beams =) higher impact value than lasers more damage - and in the case of star trek they are firing nadion particles at you which there very nature is to rip atomic bonds apart so increasing the bang for the amoung of energy used to create the beam


good old kentic weapons well in space go further =) also with the whole needing to maintain a presurised compartiment potentially very useful

missiles might not be as useful as you think - without airodynamic ofrces to turn them they need reaction control thrusters which ups the weight so they need a bigger engine if they want to go fast which will increase the weight even further combined with the speed - they would vfind it very hard to turn - great for hitting lumbering slow targets though but fighters would almost certly be able to evade a missile

nukes need i say more very effective indeed but not such long range weapons in space - without the blast wave they create in an atmosphere your relying solely on the initial enrgy release so still want to hit your target those not an effect area supression weapon

best area supression weapon would be a cluster bomb type weapon

energy pulse guns - well depends on what its based - i think plasma weapon would be difficult do achieve since how do you contain teh plasma without a missile or somethign to generate the containment field hmm electrical - hmmmm i dont quite see how that could work either - hmmmm pulse weapon si the most unfeasible weapon if you ask me - beams are far easier

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quote:

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Originally posted by Coal
5. Matter/Antimatter missiles- Take one teaspoon of some matter (prolly a gas), combine with one teaspoon antimatter, serve to enemy in a missile. No more bad guy.

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Yes, and a long range with the setup you need to make a realistic AM warhead - that is, an electromagnetic field to contain the antimatter and then a proper detonation and guidance system plus enough power (most likely "batteries of the future") would be rather large...you'd need space for the warhead, space for the EM containment field generator, space for the power supply, space for the fuel, space for the guidance and tracking systems ... we're talking one big missile here. AM weapons would probably start out huge, like ship-to-ship missiles (think throwing ICBMs at one another ... ) and gradually as the tech was refined scale down to a certain minimum size (I doubt an AM-armed antifighter missile would be effective as opposed to a conventional-warhead missile, simply because of size constraints.)

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Things easily forseen within the next 50 years as possibilities..

Pinpoint laser.
Nukes in the KT range.
Charged particle beam (low usage, short range)
Neutral " " (possible, but unlikely based upon heat required, along with containment)
Flak/Shrapnel (in missile form and others).
Magnetic-accelerated mass drivers.

The most unlikely in the near future will be the particle beams..though that is mainly dependent upon how much we would be able to heat the medium itself. Nuke missiles/mines similar to those found with the G.O.D. platforms seems likely, primarily dependent upon public opinion and range. The first and last seem to be quite likely however.

Oh well..take care..

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nukes in teh Kiloton range? not be negative but the first ever nuke was over a kiloton - largest arround is in the 200 Megaton range - thats is a big bomb =) - i not sure if thats teh biggest ever made - i think the biggest ever detonated is about 70 megaton by the russians in siberia =- broke wondows 300 miles from ground zero so you can image what a weapon more than twice as powerful is going to do

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Lasers are feasible and are used by some races in sci-fi programs but are not powerful enough to do much damage. We are currently bordering on particle beam technology in theory but simply don't have the appropriate generators to produce these beams outside of a laboratory.

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quote:

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Originally posted by KillMeNow
nukes in teh Kiloton range? not be negative but the first ever nuke was over a kiloton - largest arround is in the 200 Megaton range - thats is a big bomb =) - i not sure if thats teh biggest ever made - i think the biggest ever detonated is about 70 megaton by the russians in siberia =- broke wondows 300 miles from ground zero so you can image what a weapon more than twice as powerful is going to do

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what tha hell do we need that kind of weaps anyway r we gonna blow away the first aliens we meet AND if we meet aliens dont u think the will be as advanced as us BUT firs try to think of frives that would go fast enough that we would get to the other ond of this galaxy in an houer or even gfaster so weapons forget 4 now THINK DRIVES PPL

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quote:

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Originally posted by FSF Ashrak
what tha hell do we need that kind of weaps anyway r we gonna blow away the first aliens we meet AND if we meet aliens dont u think the will be as advanced as us BUT firs try to think of frives that would go fast enough that we would get to the other ond of this galaxy in an houer or even gfaster so weapons forget 4 now THINK DRIVES PPL

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quote:

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Originally posted by FSF Ashrak
what tha hell do we need that kind of weaps anyway r we gonna blow away the first aliens we meet AND if we meet aliens dont u think the will be as advanced as us BUT firs try to think of frives that would go fast enough that we would get to the other ond of this galaxy in an houer or even gfaster so weapons forget 4 now THINK DRIVES PPL

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Quote originally from Coal:
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4. Nukes- Oldies but still goodies. Have to be close to the target to really hurt them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Don't forget that when a nuclear warhead goes off, the blast sends out a lot of EMP. Perfect for disabling smaller ships near the target.

Firing the weapon too close to a target wouldn't be a problem either if it was used as a projectile instead of a missile. Launching it with enough force without making it unstable would do the job, utilising its enertia through space to carry it to the destination, with it finally impacting the hull.

Besides, NASA has been developing an ION drive engine - taking the surrounding EM emissions and converting it to useable energy - to solve our problem of getting somewhere fast.

With the right research, that could probably be re-engineered as a focused beam-weapon.

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Last edited by Tiletron on 11-19-2001 at 07:32 PM

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ION engines are good, but dont work in atmosphere.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Tiletron
Quote originally from Coal:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Nukes- Oldies but still goodies. Have to be close to the target to really hurt them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Don't forget that when a nuclear warhead goes off, the blast sends out a lot of EMP. Perfect for disabling smaller ships near the target.

---

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