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Astryl
Feb 1, 2005

"15,000 hours of Diablo II isn't that much, dweeb."

Realistically, when do you think the first viable space "cruiser", "destroyer", etc would be viable and/or be made?

Like EVE or Star Wars/Trek on a smaller scale due to the constraints of Earth's resources.

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Fame Douglas
Nov 20, 2013

by Fluffdaddy
Never, because physics.

Astryl
Feb 1, 2005

"15,000 hours of Diablo II isn't that much, dweeb."

Fame Douglas posted:

Never, because physics.

please do not ruin my hype for space

bird.
Jun 20, 2010

imo the iss counts as a cruiser because i would say it technically cruising and i bet any of the astronauts in there could drive it by another space vehicle and pick up hot dates w/ it

Astryl
Feb 1, 2005

"15,000 hours of Diablo II isn't that much, dweeb."

bird. posted:

imo the iss counts as a cruiser because i would say it technically cruising and i bet any of the astronauts in there could drive it by another space vehicle and pick up hot dates w/ it

you're brave if you'd date an astronaut

Kazinsal
Dec 13, 2011



As soon as humanity collectively stops being afraid of nuclear power and we can start building nuclear thermal rockets. Until then, we're stuck piddling around a sphere a hundred million kilometers in diameter except for whenever we throw a probe towards the outer planets.

HugeGrossBurrito
Mar 20, 2018

Fame Douglas posted:

Never, because physics.
gently caress off nerd

Astryl
Feb 1, 2005

"15,000 hours of Diablo II isn't that much, dweeb."

Kazinsal posted:

As soon as humanity collectively stops being afraid of nuclear power and we can start building nuclear thermal rockets. Until then, we're stuck piddling around a sphere a hundred million kilometers in diameter except for whenever we throw a probe towards the outer planets.

but nuclear power is scary, the ?????? told me that

Flavius Aetass
Mar 30, 2011
once there's war in space you're going to want to be in the smallest and fastest thing possible. there's a reason made-up energy shields factor so heavily into sci-fi wars.

Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005


Do Not Fear Jazz posted:

you're brave if you'd date an astronaut
what are they gonna do, put on a diaper and drive 1200 miles to confront me if I break up with them?

Astryl
Feb 1, 2005

"15,000 hours of Diablo II isn't that much, dweeb."

Shrecknet posted:

what are they gonna do, put on a diaper and drive 1200 miles to confront me if I break up with them?

yes, actually

Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005



o fucc

appropriatemetaphor
Jan 26, 2006

future ships will probably just be boring rear end drones shooting around space just calculating things

Delta-Wye
Sep 29, 2005

Fame Douglas posted:

Never, because physics.

i disagree. as soon as we start to construct vehicles in space out of space foraged materials, they can suddenly become large, almost unbounded. the most sensible result is some sort of borg-cube like assortment of manufactured and captured habitats. current status quo makes it feel like the most likely outcome is some sort of drifter hellscape like titan ae rather than star trek fully automated space communism, but who knows.

Tamba
Apr 5, 2010

Fame Douglas posted:

Never, because physics.

Correct, read this if you want more details
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewarintro.php

Elukka
Feb 18, 2011

For All Mankind
There certainly aren't any physics reasons you can't build a big spaceship. They were going to build an entire fleet of the things during the Cold War, because of general Cold War insanity.

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2714/1

quote:

In late 1959, Captain Mixon laid out the evidence for General Thomas Power, the commander in chief of SAC, and obviously convinced him. On January 21, 1961, General Power signed a SAC requirement for a “Strategic Earth Orbital Base” (SEOB) based on the Orion propulsion system and roughly following the space force deployment concept. The SEOB would be “capable of accurate weapon delivery” to “include the capability to attack other aerospace vehicles or bodies of the solar system occupied by an enemy.” The SEOB would also be able to orbit “extremely heavy useful payloads” on the order of 5,000 tons.

These are the ship roles they were planning:

quote:

STATIONED IN SPACE

Command/Control
Strategic Weapon Delivery ("Bomber")
Surveillance-reconnaissance
Space Defense
Orbit Logistics
Lunar Base Support
Space Rescue and Recovery
Satellite Support
R&D Laboratory

STATIONED ON THE SURFACE

Emergency Command/Control
Space Interceptor
Damage Assessment
Space Rescue and Recovery
Satellite Support



Some extremely pro classified concept art:



It might actually have been cool and good because there's no military reason to build a giant space fleet in the foreseeable future, so it would funnel military funds into something militarily pointless while opening up the way to the solar system. There were also civilian applications for Orion, of course. They wanted to fly to Mars and Jupiter and such.

Cannon_Fodder
Jul 17, 2007

"Hey, where did Steve go?"
Design by Kamoc
Is there a size limitation to something like a nuclear thermal rocket? Or even a nuclear reactor?

Honky Dong Country
Feb 11, 2015

If there's ever space combat I think it's gonna look a lot like the Expanse. Whole buncha missiles and miniguns and boarding. Except the ships are still gonna look like the ISS or something I bet.

Astryl
Feb 1, 2005

"15,000 hours of Diablo II isn't that much, dweeb."

Honky Dong Country posted:

If there's ever space combat I think it's gonna look a lot like the Expanse. Whole buncha missiles and miniguns and boarding. Except the ships are still gonna look like the ISS or something I bet.

I really want them to not look like the iss what can I do to change this

Honky Dong Country
Feb 11, 2015

Do Not Fear Jazz posted:

I really want them to not look like the iss what can I do to change this

I only think that because there's no reason at all to build sleek looking stuff since aerodynamics don't matter. It'd be more cost effective to just build ugly rear end poo poo than go to the trouble of building everything in a pleasing sleek hull.

Plus then you can do poo poo like decouple parts that have been boarded :yarr:

Pope Hilarius II
Nov 10, 2008

Honky Dong Country posted:

If there's ever space combat I think it's gonna look a lot like the Expanse. Whole buncha missiles and miniguns and boarding. Except the ships are still gonna look like the ISS or something I bet.

I would imagine space combat would mainly consist of a whole bunch of floating around and waiting and then a few tense seconds of battle during which everything gets destroyed ridiculously fast.

Not so sure a military ship would look like ISS though since it would probably also need some type of armour and isolation to survive smaller skirmishes. A bigger ship is also less likely to be set adrift when impacted, so while the other guy here who said fighters will need to be small and fast, that'd be offset by their ridiculous vulnerability.

Ventral EggSac
Dec 3, 2019

Pope Hilarius II posted:

I would imagine space combat would mainly consist of a whole bunch of floating around and waiting and then a few tense seconds of battle during which everything gets destroyed ridiculously fast.


This is firmly in the sci-fi realm, but I remember a book that featured a space-combat scene where they made small jumps with the ship and their pursuers would jump mines ahead of them into the spots they thought they would be, which was terrifying to me.

Biohazard
Apr 17, 2002

Pope Hilarius II posted:

Not so sure a military ship would look like ISS though since it would probably also need some type of armour and isolation to survive smaller skirmishes.....

Which is why it wouldn't really make sense to have military ships in space, at least not the way we think of them. The reality is that the better method in space would just be to stay really far away from everyone else, as getting anything like armor into space is just to "expensive" (in terms of energy cost). You'd need a pretty massive leap forward in getting stuff off of earth in order to have armored ships. Or I guess you could do space mining, but the logistics of that seem pretty far off. Even then you have the problem of adding mass, which means you just need that much more energy to move stuff. Space is a real bitch.

Zippy the Bummer
Dec 14, 2008

Silent Majority
The Don
LORD COMMANDER OF THE UKRAINIAN ARMED FORCES
I always thought John Harris's illustrations of military space ships looked like a reasonable compromise between "ugly and practical" and "cool".

EasilyConfused
Nov 21, 2009


one strong toad

Pope Hilarius II posted:

I would imagine space combat would mainly consist of a whole bunch of floating around and waiting and then a few tense seconds of battle during which everything gets destroyed ridiculously fast.

So like all military combat, except now we're all floating.

Sounds about right.

Elukka
Feb 18, 2011

For All Mankind
A space warship (or a large civilian ship for that matter) probably wouldn't look a lot like the ISS because if you have something that's worth calling a space warship it kinda implies there are things in space to fight wars over which implies we probably don't need it to be launched in tiny self-contained modules on small rockets. It's an extreme level of modularity that's not necessarily the best choice for most things.

Adustust
May 7, 2004
With 3d printing tech coming along pretty well, ship printers could probably be put in space in a relatively soon timeframe I would guess. I think the hard part is still getting a concerted effort to have any type of permanent space scaffolding set up, with zero g mining required. Who knows how long that's going to take to get off the ground. After that, most of the military ship sizes would probably be fighter sized, since that's all you need to take out satellites, missiles, and other fighters.

I think maybe a cruiser would be needed once we became interplanetary, since you would need something to threaten other populations and would need the firepower and ability to hit ground targets with force.

Weka
May 5, 2019

That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.
Pretty much the only thing in space worth shooting is other people's satellites. There's also the potential for bombardment of the surface of earth from orbit. So early military spacecraft will probably be some sort of "space plane" that can gently caress with opponents satellites and a bunch of satellites capable of launching kinetic penetrators, conventional explosives or nukes. So nothing new.

Cobra Commander
Jan 18, 2011



What if we shoot lasers from our battlecruiser and miss the enemy? Where do the lasers go? They've gotta hit something, right?

Conspiratiorist
Nov 12, 2015

17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth sixth some day

Cobra Commander posted:

What if we shoot lasers from our battlecruiser and miss the enemy? Where do the lasers go? They've gotta hit something, right?

Absent perfect optics they'll diffuse into harmlessness after several dozen kilometers. With hypothetical sci-fi perfect optics you'd still be diffraction limited due to quantum effects, so the same would happen but take longer.

Optical weapons don't really miss, though.

Bloody
Mar 3, 2013

Delta-Wye posted:

i disagree. as soon as we start to construct vehicles in space out of space foraged materials, they can suddenly become large, almost unbounded. the most sensible result is some sort of borg-cube like assortment of manufactured and captured habitats. current status quo makes it feel like the most likely outcome is some sort of drifter hellscape like titan ae rather than star trek fully automated space communism, but who knows.



Yeah so like they said - never

Elukka
Feb 18, 2011

For All Mankind

Conspiratiorist posted:

Absent perfect optics they'll diffuse into harmlessness after several dozen kilometers. With hypothetical sci-fi perfect optics you'd still be diffraction limited due to quantum effects, so the same would happen but take longer.

Optical weapons don't really miss, though.
Your spot size at a given distance mostly depends on the size of your focusing optic and the wavelength of your light. Increase the optic's size, or drop your wavelength, and you'll have the same size spot at a longer distance. Doesn't really need anything scifi. Either way you're right that eventually the beam will be harmless regardless.

Here's a mirror for a laser intended to shoot down Soviet nuclear missiles, and Reagan talking in front of a mockup of the full satellite.




This was part of the Star Wars program and is the kind of very stupid thing that could start a nuclear war.

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Conspiratiorist
Nov 12, 2015

17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth sixth some day
Oh, I was referring to thermal lensing effects degrading beam quality, and preemptively countering the hypothetical "but what if futuretech materials science??" because even a perfectly focused stream of photons will diffuse.

RE Star Wars, funny thing about lasers is that for all the fanfare they've had for decades they'd probably be pretty bad at intercepting space missiles once the tech is accounted for, since you can just armor them up.

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