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This seems somewhat relevant to this discussion. Wouldn't making the chaff ferromagnetic make it easier to remove? Or would that cause it's own issues.
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Sep 10, 2014 16:11
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Kurieg posted:This seems somewhat relevant to this discussion. Wouldn't that also make it easier for the target to remove it?
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Sep 10, 2014 16:21
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Pvt.Scott posted:Space is so vast that unless you have a good idea of where to be looking for trouble, I doubt two warships would even spot one another most of the time. This guy here VVV amanasleep posted:I think the question of missiles vs. spacecraft is kind of a red herring. The question will be whether anti-missile detection and interdiction can beat them before they reach their target (even if the target is area denial). Any moving spacecraft will know this tactic and plot a cone in front of them that delimits the edge of the volume of space they cannot avoid passing through to avoid chaff. Theoretically they could have their own short range interceptor missiles already launched and coasting along their trajectory looking for enemy missiles, ready to prevent them from entering that cone. Additionally, anti-missile lasers could also defend that space, depending on the limits of laser range vs. the speed of the space craft. With sufficient range and detection, spacecraft would be able to interdict and destroy enemy missiles before they could deploy their payloads. Is right. I already mentioned remote telemetry; with the distances involved tracking all the objects that might be relevant to your ship will be a task beyond the sensors package you could reasonably include on one ship. Better to have automated sensor platforms that can see things for you. It's not much of a leap to suggest that ships might deploy their own robot spacecraft on a cruise for defense or sensing. You'd have to collect them before making a course correction or leave them behind, though, which would complicate evasive maneuvers. Sufficient range and detection is the keyword in your last sentence, since these are all theoretical capabilities it's impossible to know how offense and defense would stack up against each other. Revdomezehis posted:I think the real problem with this as a future weapon is just that it would be the space equivalent of a WMD. Works amazing, but after you use it in an area, no one, including your own forces, could travel through it unless you found some way to clean it all up. And since we're talking about actual chaff, finding every piece of it, or even just 95% of it would be a monumental task, not to mention actually cleaning it all up. Not necessarily! I've actually simplified things a little in how I talked about the chaff weapon. The chaff cloud itself will probably be moving at a substantial clip relative to the target's trajectory. Slowing your missile down to "sit" in the target's path would be impractical and probably impossible, and there's no real reason to do so. You're still very much hitting your target with the cloud of chaff, sort of like a shrapnel burst from your average AA missile, except everything is operating under Newton's laws. The distinction is that while you may technically be hitting the target with your chaff, your target hitting the chaff is what kills it. To give a crude analogy, it's like a bird hitting a plane. The bird may have hit the plane, but the plane's energy is vastly more important in the interaction. Besides, relativity tells us that this is a distinction without a difference. So, the upshot is that the chaff cloud isn't going to stay at the target coordinates. In the absence of a nearby gravity well it will keep going on the missile's trajectory and end up god knows where, perhaps to circle the sun forever or disperse or perhaps to ruin somebody's day 3000 years in the future. A few months or years after firing I doubt there's a supercomputer on earth that could hope to predict the particles' position. So, that sounds worse, maybe, but it definitely won't just hang around at the target coordinates. If it's not fired in deep interplanetary space then it will be captured by the nearest gravity well in a more predictable way. Hope it's not Earth. Maybe there would be a treaty regarding the use of such weapons in firing solutions that would leave the payload near Earth's orbit, and use in Earth orbit would definitely be banned. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Sep 10, 2014 |
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Sep 10, 2014 16:26
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omg 
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Sep 10, 2014 16:31
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Nice post/avatar combo.
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Sep 10, 2014 16:43
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Arglebargle III posted:This guy here VVV Hm, I wonder if making the chaff out of bioplastics that have a slow but definite disintegration rate in the presence of cosmic rays would solve the long term debris problem...
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Sep 10, 2014 16:48
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amanasleep posted:Hm, I wonder if making the chaff out of bioplastics that have a slow but definite disintegration rate in the presence of cosmic rays would solve the long term debris problem... If you turn 10kg of space bioplastic projectiles into 10kg of fertilizer, you've still got 10kg of space poo poo moving at relativistic speeds.
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Sep 10, 2014 16:56
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Yeah, without an ecosystem to actually consume the waste, all you're doing is making the chaff even harder to detect.
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Sep 10, 2014 17:03
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Someone in the aliens thread suggested using a plastic net that would contract to a much smaller size after impact, either using material with such a property or using some kind of active system to do it. The intact part, that is, the part that impacted the target would be destroyed. The target's debris is its own issue, however, since it has the same mass, trajectory, and velocity, but no longer has the ability to maneuver or slow down. Hopefully it was pointed somewhere safe when you shot it.
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Sep 10, 2014 17:09
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With all this space defence talk, it seems we're wandering into XCOM:Interceptor territory.
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Sep 10, 2014 17:10
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You guys sure are going very deep into a game where you shoot aliens with guys who cut their limbs off to replace them with robot limbs
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Sep 10, 2014 17:12
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I enjoy spacewar wankery as much as anybody but if you seriously think humanity will survive long enough to get to that point if we're still doing stuff like having wars then just lol
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Sep 10, 2014 17:14
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my dad posted:If you turn 10kg of space bioplastic projectiles into 10kg of fertilizer, you've still got 10kg of space poo poo moving at relativistic speeds. Good point, but I was thinking that there were some processes that would result in plastics biodegrading to a form that sublimates in space environments.
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Sep 10, 2014 17:30
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Just use lumps of CO ice.
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Sep 10, 2014 17:32
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goatface posted:Just use lumps of CO ice. Or water ice, if you're fighting near Earth. But yeah, that seems like the best solution.
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Sep 10, 2014 17:40
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I found something some guy wrote on the internet that seems like it might be relevant to the discussion: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php
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Sep 10, 2014 17:52
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An interesting short article in case anyone is still wondering why chaff would cause so much damage. http://www.wired.com/2009/03/shuttledata/ ^-- not at anywhere near relativistic speeds
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Sep 10, 2014 17:55
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If anyone wants to play 'space-in-space' combat and aren't turned off by boardgames, Attack Vector: Tactical is something to consider. Its hard sci-fi in a near future setting. By all accounts it's also really boring since you can play for 3 hours with 1 ship a player and end up with a draw when your relative velocities diverge so much that you leave engagement range.
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Sep 10, 2014 18:26
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Z the IVth posted:If anyone wants to play 'space-in-space' combat and aren't turned off by boardgames, Attack Vector: Tactical is something to consider. I remember playing a demo of it years ago one PenguiCon. It's boring as hell, but from a design perspective it's pretty interesting because they put in a lot of effort to at least attempt to make it playable, considering. If I remember correctly, they either already had or were planning on releasing a variant version using the setting from the Honor Harrington books.
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Sep 10, 2014 20:06
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Chard posted:I enjoy spacewar wankery as much as anybody but if you seriously think humanity will survive long enough to get to that point if we're still doing stuff like having wars then just lol We won't even get out of this decade, so I doubt there's much point to this TFR-lite stuff.
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Sep 10, 2014 22:15
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Humanity will be fine, like it always has been. Just because you're alive right now doesn't make it any more important than other points in history.
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Sep 10, 2014 23:08
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it's more important to ME. Since it's the only one I'm living in. Space Debris is the true legacy of spacewar.
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Sep 11, 2014 00:53
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Z the IVth posted:If anyone wants to play 'space-in-space' combat and aren't turned off by boardgames, Attack Vector: Tactical is something to consider. Combat simulations are inherently boring because real life combat involves a lot of sitting around and waiting. Naval combat simulations even moreso.
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Sep 11, 2014 04:27
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Veloxyll posted:it's more important to ME. Existentialism, the final frontier.
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Sep 11, 2014 04:43
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Arglebargle III posted:Combat simulations are inherently boring because real life combat involves a lot of sitting around and waiting. Naval combat simulations even moreso. This man speaks the truth. And there's nothing like playing a combat simulator that can take several hours just for you to die near the end of the mission, just so you can do it all over again.
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Sep 11, 2014 04:56
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Roar posted:You guys sure are going very deep into a game where you shoot aliens with guys who cut their limbs off to replace them with robot limbs you mean punch aliens.
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Sep 11, 2014 05:22
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This is exactly why I'm so adamant about the fact that science makes stuff not cool, at least from a cinematic sense. Blast a dude three feet away with a shotgun? He's not gonna fly back six feet over a railing for a sweet rear end kill. He will fall down where he is or maybe stumble a short distance away. Dogfighting in space is cool. Troopers shooting red laser beams is awesome. Cutting up an alien with a sword that is also a chainsaw because you're in a melee because it looks cool, not because it is in any way practical, is fuckin' rad as hell. Being on watch for 3 months before taking sporadic fire from an enemy force and returning fire at them without ever really seeing them is realistic as hell, but not very cool.
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Sep 11, 2014 05:36
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Pvt.Scott posted:This is exactly why I'm so adamant about the fact that science makes stuff not cool, at least from a cinematic sense. Blast a dude three feet away with a shotgun? He's not gonna fly back six feet over a railing for a sweet rear end kill. He will fall down where he is or maybe stumble a short distance away. Dogfighting in space is cool. Troopers shooting red laser beams is awesome. Cutting up an alien with a sword that is also a chainsaw because you're in a melee because it looks cool, not because it is in any way practical, is fuckin' rad as hell. Being on watch for 3 months before On the other hand, if you shoot the same dude with a bullet that is also a rocket, you could send him flying backwards. Ditto if it explodes. Space ship dogfighting depends on how effective defensive technologies get. For instance, if you get a deflector shield that can just shove chaff debris out of the way...and/or long range point defense to eliminate equally long ranged ordinance, then space battles become who can throw more gigawatts into the other dude faster.
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Sep 11, 2014 05:46
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Bullets that are rockets, like everything else that sounds cool, are actually loving terrible bullets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet E: one problem with rocket bullets is they start out slow, making them less lethal at shorter ranges. Shooting a guy right next to you with one would not likely kill him. Pvt.Scott fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Sep 11, 2014 |
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Sep 11, 2014 05:49
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And this is why Warhammer 40k combat takes place over ranges of approximately 100m or less.
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Sep 11, 2014 05:53
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To apply this to X-Com, I think the reason the aliens stick to mostly ground combat with a little bit of atmospheric dogfighting is that they've signed space treaties that limit the amount of combat they're allowed to do from space. Too many space wars have left planets shattered from orbital bombardments, with their orbits clogged with a thick cloud of debris.
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Sep 11, 2014 06:19
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To indulge a little, my favorite space-fantasy tech is the shields from this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God%27s_Eye. Basically they're spheres of pure absorption fields that turn anything that hits them into stored heat, which slowly radiates into the void. This means that as ships take fire they go from utter blackness up through the rainbow until they go pure white and release all that energy like a bomb. It's a great book, go read it. Hardly less realistic than some of the ideas being posted in here. Chard fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Sep 11, 2014 |
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Sep 11, 2014 06:38
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ponzicar posted:To apply this to X-Com, I think the reason the aliens stick to mostly ground combat with a little bit of atmospheric dogfighting is that they've signed space treaties that limit the amount of combat they're allowed to do from space. Too many space wars have left planets shattered from orbital bombardments, with their orbits clogged with a thick cloud of debris. I'd explain why that is probably not the case and how the game all but explains the ground stuff, but that mostly gets into spoiler/sequel speculation territory.
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Sep 11, 2014 07:04
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Aren't people underestimating the sheer size of space when it comes to chaff? The odds of a chaff weapon randomly hitting anything else than its intended target seem miniscule, unless you're deliberately saturating a planet's orbit with flying crap.
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Sep 11, 2014 10:30
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AnoHito posted:I'd explain why that is probably not the case and how the game all but explains the ground stuff, but that mostly gets into spoiler/sequel speculation territory. I think Shen or Bradford already mentioned that the aliens must have some ulterior motive, since their technology means that they could just glass any city they want from orbit and there's jack poo poo we could do about it. (Paraphrasing).
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Sep 11, 2014 17:59
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StoryTime posted:Aren't people underestimating the sheer size of space when it comes to chaff? The odds of a chaff weapon randomly hitting anything else than its intended target seem miniscule, unless you're deliberately saturating a planet's orbit with flying crap. If you miss with a kinetic weapon in space, it WILL gently caress up someone's day somewhere down the line. Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. The principle also applies to energy weapons as well, although they tend to be much safer (in terms of collateral damage) to just saturate an area with. Although on a more serious note, most space traffic currently launches into roughly the same orbital plane, meaning anything put in that plane has a good chance of encountering something else.
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Sep 11, 2014 21:11
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Veloxyll posted:Space ship dogfighting depends on how effective defensive technologies get. For instance, if you get a deflector shield that can just shove chaff debris out of the way...and/or long range point defense to eliminate equally long ranged ordinance, then space battles become who can throw more gigawatts into the other dude faster. At the kind of speeds necessary to make interstellar dogfighting feasible, a deflector shield isn't a defensive technology so much as a pre-requisite for even getting to the drat battle in the first place. Even travel within a solar system (e.g., Earth to Saturn) requires you to be traveling at something like 1/100th of light-speed to make the trip in any remotely reasonable time. And at that speed, even microscopic fragments of random asteroids/debris/whatever are hitting your hull with a hell of a lot of force, even though they don't have quite the intentional hatred of someone shooting directly at you.
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Sep 12, 2014 02:36
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Dareon posted:Although on a more serious note, most space traffic currently launches into roughly the same orbital plane, meaning anything put in that plane has a good chance of encountering something else. This is not true. Aside from geo satellites, which are roughly aligned with the earth's equatorial plane, leo, meo and heo satellites orbit in a wide variety of planes. Leo objects in their totality are most accurately pictured as a shell, not a ring.
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Sep 12, 2014 03:36
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Despite this, all the objects we've put in orbit are covered in spaceman poo.
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Sep 12, 2014 04:26
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Prison Warden posted:I think Shen or Bradford already mentioned that the aliens must have some ulterior motive, since their technology means that they could just glass any city they want from orbit and there's jack poo poo we could do about it. (Paraphrasing). they note this even because of the destruction they cause during a Terror Mission. If they wanted to they could just do that constantly instead of abductions and stuff.
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Sep 12, 2014 05:27
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