Engineering a starfighter
- Thread starter Farbourne
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Aginor
Vice Admiral
I agree. In my opinion WC1 gave you the best "feel" for damage. With the MFD you had to use several times before they showed anything, the panels breaking and sparks everywhere and your guns shot off. You really felt your ship slowly breaking apart.
Back to my topic:
Realistic combat would be boring, yes. You would have huge distances, in most cases you would fly for a very long time to reach anything.
Also I completely forgot to mention: I think (and some people agree) it would not make much sense to have manned spaceships. Everything you could do in space combat can already be done better by a computer. Astro Commander already said something about that, but just let me explain why he is right in my opinion:
- Humans are slow
- Humans have poor sight (well, actually they CAN do some things well, we'll see in a moment)
- Humans become tired
- Humans don't like hot or cold environments (i.e. everything below -20°C or above 50°C )
- Humans can easily be crushed by gravity or acceleration forces ( 9G for some seconds and only in one direction, a bit more if it is only in shocks, far less else)
- Humans have to eat
- Humans breathe
So you might ask why we use human pilots in fighter planes when a computer is so good according to me.
Well, as you know flying and fighting in an airplane is a bit more difficult than in space. But most of the problems you encounter on earth (and I think ALL of those where a human is superior to a computer fall in this category) are about sensors and decisions and/or they come from the einvironment on earth.
So let's compare:
A computer's ability to judge a situation based on sight is pretty limited. A human pilot can fly over an enemy camp and decide
- whether the camp is really hostile
- whether to fight
- which weapons to use
- how he should make his approach because there are mountains etc.
just by looking around.
Of course you could write a software that does it, but even if you assume that better computers are available that's not an easy thing for a computer.
In space, things are a bit different:
- You can't see anything
- Humans are very challenged when it comes to judging speed and direction in space. That's because there is no ground, everything is moving (only relative speed is important) judging something's direction of movement by the direction it is facing is impossible etc.
- There is no ground you could fly into, you can't use it to hide, you can't use it to dodge dumb missiles that fly straight in your direction. (That's actually something a human can do better than a computer)
- The possible directions to fly are plenty.
- Which weapon to use is not a difficult decision because in space you would use missiles. Just the size of the target and the distance matter.
- You just compute your course in order to attack, just like you do CCIP computing in your bomber plane now. There is no decision involved because nothing blocks your view or flight path.
- You have plenty of time to gather information about your enemy, because it is impossible to hide in space. And your sensors gather more information than on earth over larger distances because, you know, nothing blocks your view. Deciding whether the target is hostile or friendly is not the problem.
- While on earth just sitting around in the air and waiting for some months isn't really possible because you have to spend energy just to stay where you are. That's not the case in space (in most cases).
EDIT: Speed. On earth everything moves rather slowly, because air blocks it. In space you would fight at extremely high relative speeds most of the time. That'S why I said humans are slow. Fighting while flying hundreds of kilometers per second (instead of kph or m/s) relative to your target is basically impossible for humans.
So basically most of the rules that apply to BVR air-to-air combat in high altitudes apply to space as well, they are just a bit more complex. Computers can beat human pilots there.
I think I forgot some things and maybe I have even made some mistakes. I hadn't had my coffee yet and didn't look anything up. This posting is just from the top of my head. Feel free to correct my where I am wrong, as always.
Back to my topic:
Realistic combat would be boring, yes. You would have huge distances, in most cases you would fly for a very long time to reach anything.
Also I completely forgot to mention: I think (and some people agree) it would not make much sense to have manned spaceships. Everything you could do in space combat can already be done better by a computer. Astro Commander already said something about that, but just let me explain why he is right in my opinion:
- Humans are slow
- Humans have poor sight (well, actually they CAN do some things well, we'll see in a moment)
- Humans become tired
- Humans don't like hot or cold environments (i.e. everything below -20°C or above 50°C )
- Humans can easily be crushed by gravity or acceleration forces ( 9G for some seconds and only in one direction, a bit more if it is only in shocks, far less else)
- Humans have to eat
- Humans breathe
So you might ask why we use human pilots in fighter planes when a computer is so good according to me.
Well, as you know flying and fighting in an airplane is a bit more difficult than in space. But most of the problems you encounter on earth (and I think ALL of those where a human is superior to a computer fall in this category) are about sensors and decisions and/or they come from the einvironment on earth.
So let's compare:
A computer's ability to judge a situation based on sight is pretty limited. A human pilot can fly over an enemy camp and decide
- whether the camp is really hostile
- whether to fight
- which weapons to use
- how he should make his approach because there are mountains etc.
just by looking around.
Of course you could write a software that does it, but even if you assume that better computers are available that's not an easy thing for a computer.
In space, things are a bit different:
- You can't see anything
- Humans are very challenged when it comes to judging speed and direction in space. That's because there is no ground, everything is moving (only relative speed is important) judging something's direction of movement by the direction it is facing is impossible etc.
- There is no ground you could fly into, you can't use it to hide, you can't use it to dodge dumb missiles that fly straight in your direction. (That's actually something a human can do better than a computer)
- The possible directions to fly are plenty.
- Which weapon to use is not a difficult decision because in space you would use missiles. Just the size of the target and the distance matter.
- You just compute your course in order to attack, just like you do CCIP computing in your bomber plane now. There is no decision involved because nothing blocks your view or flight path.
- You have plenty of time to gather information about your enemy, because it is impossible to hide in space. And your sensors gather more information than on earth over larger distances because, you know, nothing blocks your view. Deciding whether the target is hostile or friendly is not the problem.
- While on earth just sitting around in the air and waiting for some months isn't really possible because you have to spend energy just to stay where you are. That's not the case in space (in most cases).
EDIT: Speed. On earth everything moves rather slowly, because air blocks it. In space you would fight at extremely high relative speeds most of the time. That'S why I said humans are slow. Fighting while flying hundreds of kilometers per second (instead of kph or m/s) relative to your target is basically impossible for humans.
So basically most of the rules that apply to BVR air-to-air combat in high altitudes apply to space as well, they are just a bit more complex. Computers can beat human pilots there.
I think I forgot some things and maybe I have even made some mistakes. I hadn't had my coffee yet and didn't look anything up. This posting is just from the top of my head. Feel free to correct my where I am wrong, as always.
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Well, even with technical progress and great new stuff we won't change space or the laws of physics.
Granted, there are a few things people called impossible and really weren't.
But compared to people being dumb and thinking you can't fly super sonic speed with an airplane despite observing guns that fire bullets multiple times the speed of sound at the same time, we have reached an amount of knowledge about space and its laws, for example, that helps us to understand the physical barriers.
Some of them might fall with new technology (for example our bad energy sources that prevent us from doing stuff that needs a lot of power, like shooting lasers) but some won't.
People won't get 500 times faster in perception all off a sudden, and protons won't stop being charged positive (which is a good thing actually). And nebulae in space won't just increase their density by a factor of a billion so we can fly through cool orange mist.
Jump drives.... well, maybe they will exist. But there are BIG problems to solve before that. I just don't think we will jump through a blue effect like the one in WC.
Space carriers and fighters comparable to Wing Commander are highly unlikely and become even more unlikely with every new technology developed.
That may be sad, but the scientist in me finds it more interesting to watch what really happens.
That doesn't change fiction, though. We will have space carriers and fighters and all that cool stuff like in WC or Star Wars or Star Trek. It just won't be real, It will be fiction and I love that kind of fiction. I will play Wing Commander if it ever is produced for virtual reality systems. I don't care if it is realistic or not and I will love to play it!
Granted, there are a few things people called impossible and really weren't.
But compared to people being dumb and thinking you can't fly super sonic speed with an airplane despite observing guns that fire bullets multiple times the speed of sound at the same time, we have reached an amount of knowledge about space and its laws, for example, that helps us to understand the physical barriers.
Some of them might fall with new technology (for example our bad energy sources that prevent us from doing stuff that needs a lot of power, like shooting lasers) but some won't.
People won't get 500 times faster in perception all off a sudden, and protons won't stop being charged positive (which is a good thing actually). And nebulae in space won't just increase their density by a factor of a billion so we can fly through cool orange mist.
Jump drives.... well, maybe they will exist. But there are BIG problems to solve before that. I just don't think we will jump through a blue effect like the one in WC.
Space carriers and fighters comparable to Wing Commander are highly unlikely and become even more unlikely with every new technology developed.
That may be sad, but the scientist in me finds it more interesting to watch what really happens.
That doesn't change fiction, though. We will have space carriers and fighters and all that cool stuff like in WC or Star Wars or Star Trek. It just won't be real, It will be fiction and I love that kind of fiction. I will play Wing Commander if it ever is produced for virtual reality systems. I don't care if it is realistic or not and I will love to play it!
Sorry to pick up on this one thing, but are you not a believer that if humanity doesn't wipe itself out, it has the potential to achieve basically anything in the universe with enough time? The advent of electricty has meant that in 100 years we have gone from horse-and-cart in the fields, to youtube in your jacket pocket.
Ever heard of technical singularity? I hadn't until a couple of weeks ago, some bright spark on wikipedia opens the article with:
Wikipedia types said:
Obviously some feats are incomprehensible now, some we believe totally impossible (time travel, bending the parallel etc)...but with the progress we've made and are making with regards computer power, I think as soon as humanity colonises an empty world, the species is safe for eternity, and will keep advancing, growing and travelling.
That, or something really stupid will get us, like nuclear war...(Galactically, this would be something of a waste and a shame.)
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Well, I would really like to believe that, but the more I understand how physics work and what we already discovered the more I lose hope that there will ever be a real colony on another planet or something like that.
That has various reasons, the human biology being one of the most important ones.
And you have to see the difference between Those two things:
The first is people not even doing systematic science but mainly playing around with stuff they observe in nature and thus making huge errors in even the most basic things, not talking to each other (either because they didn't want to or simply weren't able to) until there were people who started doing the opposite. That's the reason why everything went so fast.
Gauss, Euler, Bernoulli, Newton, Leibniz and many others discovered basics they KNEW were possible and helpful, they just couldn't do what they wanted to do because they hadn't the tools. As soon as the tools were there everything went really fast.
The same with electricity: when someone finally discovered what to do and ho to do it everything went pretty fast. But a lot of it was trying without knowing what happened.
That leads to the second thing:
With systematic and structured science and engineering, and most importantly: communication between scientists and engineers it didn't take long to discover all the basic stuff, and scientists make discoveries even in areas that are of no real use yet. In the past you kept ignoring things you didn't understand when you couldn't use them for a real purpose anyway, that's not the case anymore.
So although we don't know anything and still make discoveries all the basic stuff has been discovered because we work that systematic that when we discover something new it is very likely that it is a small thing. We would have observed and studied it already otherwise.
That's the difference between the two: The development only went that fast because we started late (that has many reasons, mainly the aggressive human nature and ignorance of those who have power. Also because when someone discoverd something and he died it was basically lost), and everything is based on the basics we discovered. From now on it will go much slower. It already does. And now we hit the borders we knew existed the whole time (think about CPU sizes for example. We knew that we can't build them smaller than XXX but in former times we didn't care. But we won't be able to change that. So we have to do soemthing different)
Don't get me wrong, a lot of science is left to do and there will be cool discoveries. But when you go deep enough there are borders that can't be changed that easily.
Example: If there really was a loophole in female psychology that would allow you to make every woman want to sleep with you, it would have been discovered by now. (adult advertising keeps telling me it exists, that's how I got the idea. It doesn't). There is also no way to grow your boy-parts with some pills. It doesn't work and it is unlikely to work in 100 years either.
And about manned space fighters: Those will be possible and are already possible. They just don't make sense because there is already a better way to do everything they could do.
EDIT: No one will breed a horse that can go 1000mph. Regardless of how long you do science about it. Just as another example.
And yeah, of course everything is possible maybe. But that cannot be an excuse for someone to reject scientific knowledge because he doesn't like what he hears and tell anyone "Hey, scientists are dumb, there will totally be laser swords, I know it!!!".
So I stick with science and keep the pessimistic approach. So if another singularity happens (and we live to see it happening) I will be surprised in a positive way.
That has various reasons, the human biology being one of the most important ones.
And you have to see the difference between Those two things:
The first is people not even doing systematic science but mainly playing around with stuff they observe in nature and thus making huge errors in even the most basic things, not talking to each other (either because they didn't want to or simply weren't able to) until there were people who started doing the opposite. That's the reason why everything went so fast.
Gauss, Euler, Bernoulli, Newton, Leibniz and many others discovered basics they KNEW were possible and helpful, they just couldn't do what they wanted to do because they hadn't the tools. As soon as the tools were there everything went really fast.
The same with electricity: when someone finally discovered what to do and ho to do it everything went pretty fast. But a lot of it was trying without knowing what happened.
That leads to the second thing:
With systematic and structured science and engineering, and most importantly: communication between scientists and engineers it didn't take long to discover all the basic stuff, and scientists make discoveries even in areas that are of no real use yet. In the past you kept ignoring things you didn't understand when you couldn't use them for a real purpose anyway, that's not the case anymore.
So although we don't know anything and still make discoveries all the basic stuff has been discovered because we work that systematic that when we discover something new it is very likely that it is a small thing. We would have observed and studied it already otherwise.
That's the difference between the two: The development only went that fast because we started late (that has many reasons, mainly the aggressive human nature and ignorance of those who have power. Also because when someone discoverd something and he died it was basically lost), and everything is based on the basics we discovered. From now on it will go much slower. It already does. And now we hit the borders we knew existed the whole time (think about CPU sizes for example. We knew that we can't build them smaller than XXX but in former times we didn't care. But we won't be able to change that. So we have to do soemthing different)
Don't get me wrong, a lot of science is left to do and there will be cool discoveries. But when you go deep enough there are borders that can't be changed that easily.
Example: If there really was a loophole in female psychology that would allow you to make every woman want to sleep with you, it would have been discovered by now. (adult advertising keeps telling me it exists, that's how I got the idea. It doesn't). There is also no way to grow your boy-parts with some pills. It doesn't work and it is unlikely to work in 100 years either.
And about manned space fighters: Those will be possible and are already possible. They just don't make sense because there is already a better way to do everything they could do.
EDIT: No one will breed a horse that can go 1000mph. Regardless of how long you do science about it. Just as another example.
And yeah, of course everything is possible maybe. But that cannot be an excuse for someone to reject scientific knowledge because he doesn't like what he hears and tell anyone "Hey, scientists are dumb, there will totally be laser swords, I know it!!!".
So I stick with science and keep the pessimistic approach. So if another singularity happens (and we live to see it happening) I will be surprised in a positive way.
Bob McDob
Better Health Through Less Flavor
Are you saying that Air Traffic Controller Simulator was too stimulating for you?
Dyret
Super Carrot!
Before we continue in the current direction, I think we need to recognize that Wing Commander, and most other sci-fi franchises don't give a shit. Trying to list all the ways they bork the laws of physics is like listing all the reasons why a cow isn't a rock. While showing off our epic SCIENCE-skills on the intarwebs is good fun, I'd much rather put them to good use... let's discuss how we would build a starfighter.
That being said, there are a couple of things I'd like to comment on:
I don't know about the 'few thousand kilometers' number, but I'll take your word for it. What is important to remember here is that 'engagement ranges for 'real' starships' wouldn't be over nine billion trillion kilometers because space is big, but whatever range starship can hurt each other at. As far as I know, the only other viable option for starships (with the possible exception of particle beams, which I don't know the science behind,) are missiles and railguns, both with their own drawbacks. What I am certain of is that weaponized lasers will see use on warships, if they are ever built, as point defence, if nothing else. What will be used for long range combat? Missiles? Probably, if we can load them with efficient enough reaction mass to make them worthwhile. Railguns? Probably, if the recoil can be considered acceptable. Even if we should go the missile route, I don't see why lasers wouldn't appear as close range 'backup' weaponry. Tradition will also come into things, tradition which obviously hasn't been established yet, so... who knows. Either way, lasers are hardly unfeasible.
I do agree that people wouldn't be much good for blowing shit up in space, but I think you're making the mistake of picturing this perfect future world were the only things that matter is science and engineering and starships grow arbitrarily out of nothing with the sheer purpose of blowing stuff up. Imagine going back couple of centuries or so and telling them about our technology. They'd be shocked we have people in these crazy powerful flying machines of ours, when piloting them for a distance, or letting a robot fly them would be so much better! Hell, having a military at all is ridiculous, why don't the UN have some sort of benevolent machine overlord hooked up to orbital laser satellites, prepared to strike down anyone who would take up arms against their fellow man? The world would have been fixed forever!
Seriously though, we don't know when, why and how warships are going to emerge, the circumstances, or peoples view on... anything, what traditions govern space travel, were starship would fight, what they would fight, why they would fight, if they were even designed for it in the first place. There are really to many variables to make an educated guess. Not to mention putting robots in our planes having them decide who needs to be annihilated and who doesn't seems like a terrible idea... letting them do the same in a giant spaceship armed with earth-scorching gamma ray lasers and thermonuclear warheads is batshit insane.
Now, let's sit down and discuss how and why we would go about designing a 'realistic' starfighter instead. Now, it's a bit late for me to post any ideas, but Babylon 5's Starfury always seemed like a pretty damned reasonable design, and cool as well. Also, a sphere seems to be a popular design for realistic spacecraft? Any reason for this, because as far as I can see a sphere isn't any sort of more efficient than say a cube or a hexagon.
On original topic, though, the Hornet's giant wing mounted lasers seems like an ingenious design, in terms of heat dispersion, as opposed to the Arrows centerline cluster. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the design, but I always thought it was a cool coincidence... also Standoff trying to be realistic? As far as I know the only reason they mucked around with the mount placement was their giant Raptor making for shitty gameplay.
That being said, there are a couple of things I'd like to comment on:
I don't know about the 'few thousand kilometers' number, but I'll take your word for it. What is important to remember here is that 'engagement ranges for 'real' starships' wouldn't be over nine billion trillion kilometers because space is big, but whatever range starship can hurt each other at. As far as I know, the only other viable option for starships (with the possible exception of particle beams, which I don't know the science behind,) are missiles and railguns, both with their own drawbacks. What I am certain of is that weaponized lasers will see use on warships, if they are ever built, as point defence, if nothing else. What will be used for long range combat? Missiles? Probably, if we can load them with efficient enough reaction mass to make them worthwhile. Railguns? Probably, if the recoil can be considered acceptable. Even if we should go the missile route, I don't see why lasers wouldn't appear as close range 'backup' weaponry. Tradition will also come into things, tradition which obviously hasn't been established yet, so... who knows. Either way, lasers are hardly unfeasible.
I do agree that people wouldn't be much good for blowing shit up in space, but I think you're making the mistake of picturing this perfect future world were the only things that matter is science and engineering and starships grow arbitrarily out of nothing with the sheer purpose of blowing stuff up. Imagine going back couple of centuries or so and telling them about our technology. They'd be shocked we have people in these crazy powerful flying machines of ours, when piloting them for a distance, or letting a robot fly them would be so much better! Hell, having a military at all is ridiculous, why don't the UN have some sort of benevolent machine overlord hooked up to orbital laser satellites, prepared to strike down anyone who would take up arms against their fellow man? The world would have been fixed forever!
Seriously though, we don't know when, why and how warships are going to emerge, the circumstances, or peoples view on... anything, what traditions govern space travel, were starship would fight, what they would fight, why they would fight, if they were even designed for it in the first place. There are really to many variables to make an educated guess. Not to mention putting robots in our planes having them decide who needs to be annihilated and who doesn't seems like a terrible idea... letting them do the same in a giant spaceship armed with earth-scorching gamma ray lasers and thermonuclear warheads is batshit insane.
Now, let's sit down and discuss how and why we would go about designing a 'realistic' starfighter instead. Now, it's a bit late for me to post any ideas, but Babylon 5's Starfury always seemed like a pretty damned reasonable design, and cool as well. Also, a sphere seems to be a popular design for realistic spacecraft? Any reason for this, because as far as I can see a sphere isn't any sort of more efficient than say a cube or a hexagon.
On original topic, though, the Hornet's giant wing mounted lasers seems like an ingenious design, in terms of heat dispersion, as opposed to the Arrows centerline cluster. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the design, but I always thought it was a cool coincidence... also Standoff trying to be realistic? As far as I know the only reason they mucked around with the mount placement was their giant Raptor making for shitty gameplay.
t.c.cgi
Vice Admiral
There are a few good reasons to use a sphere, but confining concepts to a primitive shape will become prohibitive to practical design. Consider taking a basic, boxy space computer and trying to rearrange it so it fits in a sphere, versus building a hollow sphere around it, versus just wrapping it up with aluminum foil and fancy tape. Spheres may be the ideal, but form will follow function.
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Dyret raises some valid points here, so I think I will talk about that a bit. Also the shape discussion which is indeed quite interesting.
First thing about lasers: I agree, point defense would be possible. Actually it is already possible. The range is rather short though, at least at the moment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
Next topic is control and responsibility:
I agree that it isn't a good idea to let airplanes and/or spaceships fly fully automatic, especially not when they are armed. Remember HAL 9000 or the M-5 computer
The question is: When is it better to use the computer and when isn't it? And what are the problems in each case?
I will start with communication. A pilot can make decisions and act immediately. If the pilot is on another spaceship or a planet (so we have a remote controlled or half-automatic fighter like a predator drone) that can be a problem if the fighter is more than approximately 300.000 km away because then you already have more than a second of lag when receiving sensor data and reacting. And another second to tell the fighter what to do. That's because I assume that we can't send messages faster than lightspeed. A pilot in the fighter (or a robot) can react much faster, of course.
The other thing is: How complex has a robot to be to pilot a fighter in space and not do bullshit: Well, nearly all kinds of sensors work a lot better in space than here on earth, so identifying targets is much more easily done than on earth.
Also there are no civilians in space. Ok, maybe there are, then things become much more complicated.
Now if we combine those aspects I come to the following conclusion:
We need a "control ship" which is manned and stays within a few light seconds maximum range to the fighters. It is heavily armed with point defense and carries arrays of antennas to communicate as directly as possible with the fighters (so it is impossible to jam the communication). The fighters do all the fighting and you can't have pilots in them because then you can't maneuver good enough (as I mentioned the human body isn't very durable). If a fighter loses communication it carries out its last order then shuts itself off, going in an orbit around the next celestial body. So basically you have a minimum of AI (approximately as much as a roomba has) in the fighters to avoid "hacking" or the "HAL-effect". There are some additional things you could program into the software to make it even safer, maybe I'll talk about that later.
Of course the major negative aspect of this is the control ship itself. If it is destroyed all the fighters will share the fate of the droid army invading Naboo in Star Wars Ep1. So maybe we need more of them. But I believe it is still more effective than having manned fighters.
About the shape: I basically agree with t.c.cgi here.
If you want to fly in atmospheres you should have "rocket shape" and/or wings. If you don't, well, it doesn't make sense then.
What you need in all cases:
- Thrusters in every direction
AND/OR
- Weapons facing all directions
Of course you can turn your ship around to fire in the other direction, but how fast can you do that? and what if there is more than one enemy? And doesn't it suck to turn your ship 180 degrees every time you want to decelerate?
So I would recommend at least six main thrusters in order to be able to accelerate in all directions equally well.
And while spheres look much cooler they have a problem: Fitting stuff inside them is difficult because they are round. Everywhere. So I think some sort of cube or chamfered cube would make more sense then.
Of yourse that's only the case if you build your space ships in space.
A manned space ship would additionally need rotation sections (either big or fast or both) to provide gravity because otherwise humans have to spend hours doing sports each day in order to stay fit. So you can't build that small.
If you have manned fighters I guess you could do them without rotating sections, but your operating time would be much less then, which is bad because if you accelerate only the amount a human can stand it will take you a long time to get anywhere.
That's all for now, I guess I'll write more tomorrow.
First thing about lasers: I agree, point defense would be possible. Actually it is already possible. The range is rather short though, at least at the moment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
Next topic is control and responsibility:
I agree that it isn't a good idea to let airplanes and/or spaceships fly fully automatic, especially not when they are armed. Remember HAL 9000 or the M-5 computer
The question is: When is it better to use the computer and when isn't it? And what are the problems in each case?
I will start with communication. A pilot can make decisions and act immediately. If the pilot is on another spaceship or a planet (so we have a remote controlled or half-automatic fighter like a predator drone) that can be a problem if the fighter is more than approximately 300.000 km away because then you already have more than a second of lag when receiving sensor data and reacting. And another second to tell the fighter what to do. That's because I assume that we can't send messages faster than lightspeed. A pilot in the fighter (or a robot) can react much faster, of course.
The other thing is: How complex has a robot to be to pilot a fighter in space and not do bullshit: Well, nearly all kinds of sensors work a lot better in space than here on earth, so identifying targets is much more easily done than on earth.
Also there are no civilians in space. Ok, maybe there are, then things become much more complicated.
Now if we combine those aspects I come to the following conclusion:
We need a "control ship" which is manned and stays within a few light seconds maximum range to the fighters. It is heavily armed with point defense and carries arrays of antennas to communicate as directly as possible with the fighters (so it is impossible to jam the communication). The fighters do all the fighting and you can't have pilots in them because then you can't maneuver good enough (as I mentioned the human body isn't very durable). If a fighter loses communication it carries out its last order then shuts itself off, going in an orbit around the next celestial body. So basically you have a minimum of AI (approximately as much as a roomba has) in the fighters to avoid "hacking" or the "HAL-effect". There are some additional things you could program into the software to make it even safer, maybe I'll talk about that later.
Of course the major negative aspect of this is the control ship itself. If it is destroyed all the fighters will share the fate of the droid army invading Naboo in Star Wars Ep1. So maybe we need more of them. But I believe it is still more effective than having manned fighters.
About the shape: I basically agree with t.c.cgi here.
If you want to fly in atmospheres you should have "rocket shape" and/or wings. If you don't, well, it doesn't make sense then.
What you need in all cases:
- Thrusters in every direction
AND/OR
- Weapons facing all directions
Of course you can turn your ship around to fire in the other direction, but how fast can you do that? and what if there is more than one enemy? And doesn't it suck to turn your ship 180 degrees every time you want to decelerate?
So I would recommend at least six main thrusters in order to be able to accelerate in all directions equally well.
And while spheres look much cooler they have a problem: Fitting stuff inside them is difficult because they are round. Everywhere. So I think some sort of cube or chamfered cube would make more sense then.
Of yourse that's only the case if you build your space ships in space.
A manned space ship would additionally need rotation sections (either big or fast or both) to provide gravity because otherwise humans have to spend hours doing sports each day in order to stay fit. So you can't build that small.
If you have manned fighters I guess you could do them without rotating sections, but your operating time would be much less then, which is bad because if you accelerate only the amount a human can stand it will take you a long time to get anywhere.
That's all for now, I guess I'll write more tomorrow.
Blaster
Rear Admiral
This thread reminds me of an episode of sci fi science where they designed a star fighter. They started out with a sphere and added spikes with thrusters at the ends. Supposedly this made it extremely maneuverable but since it wouldn’t fly well in an atmosphere they switched to something closer to an airplane. They also filled the cockpit with liquid so the bouncy would cancel out the g forces during the turns and protect the pilot.
About the computer vs. human pilot idea, modern fighters already have computers that control most of the important functions, so I think the real question is weather a computer plus a human pilot would be better than just a computer.
About the computer vs. human pilot idea, modern fighters already have computers that control most of the important functions, so I think the real question is weather a computer plus a human pilot would be better than just a computer.
Aginor
Vice Admiral
I think that doesn't actually work, because even if you float around in a liquid your organs inside your body don't. Take the brain for example: If someone punches you in the face (you could call that "high g-force applied to your head") your brain hits first the front side of your skill bone than bounces back and hits the other side. That's what knocks you out. It would happen regardless of whether the boxer punches you in the face in the boxing ring or a dolphin does the same thing under water.
EDIT: I strongly believe that dolphins are evil or at least unfriendly.
Right, that's the direction I'm thinking too. Although that isn't completely fair towards pilots. Your eyes for example do good work here on earth, that's why an airplane still has a canopy made of glass instead one made of steel.
t.c.cgi
Vice Admiral
I believe the liquid suspension he's talking about would work to put pressure on the body and push the blood back up. It wouldn't negate G-force but it might allow the pilot to take a couple more Gs before blacking out.
Even so, liquid anything is very heavy. It would royally mess up the center of mass and any extra Gs you'd get would cost in extra stress on the craft itself.
Really G-forces is being discussed in a vacuum. At insane speeds, the limitation of the human body will only allow for tiny course corrections at high speeds. Take a moment to graph out that course correction though. In spite of that limitation you've put a considerable distance between where you're going to be in a couple seconds - a distance potentially large enough to evade even guided ordinance.
And as for mere acceleration, nevermind G-forces. It all expends fuel. We're worried about reaching the speed limit when we don't even have powerplants and propulsion that could do so without requiring a small planet of a gas tank.
Even so, liquid anything is very heavy. It would royally mess up the center of mass and any extra Gs you'd get would cost in extra stress on the craft itself.
Really G-forces is being discussed in a vacuum. At insane speeds, the limitation of the human body will only allow for tiny course corrections at high speeds. Take a moment to graph out that course correction though. In spite of that limitation you've put a considerable distance between where you're going to be in a couple seconds - a distance potentially large enough to evade even guided ordinance.
And as for mere acceleration, nevermind G-forces. It all expends fuel. We're worried about reaching the speed limit when we don't even have powerplants and propulsion that could do so without requiring a small planet of a gas tank.
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Right, I just ignored this one problem because this one isn't quite as ignoring physical facts than for example exceeding light speed, We know how we can get much more energy, we know how it works, we just don't manage to build the tools.
I don't want to kill the discussion by saying: "Hey guys, we will never have enough energy to reach even a quarter of light speed so forget about space combat."
But well... another thing that you said is also interesting:
that depends strongly on the speed, distance, mass, g-capacity and thrust of you and the rocket aimed at you.
But If I had to make a guess: The rocket wins nearly in every case.
Just a few numbers: The IRIS-T rocket has a G-Limit of 60 G. Sixty. And even in Earth's atmosphere it is able to accelerate to the speed of a high-speed rifle bullet (1 km/s). So even if you assume that you can build some technology that allows a human to endure 15G, that rocket beats that easily. NOW. Not in the future, but in the present. It uses thrust vectoring to steer so you could actually use that one in space.
And since the relative position, course, and velocity is the main factor, evading a missile in space requires a similar effort than hitting an evading space ship.
So dodging missiles in space is much harder than in the atmosphere.
The only advantage of a space ship would be if it had BIG thrusters compared to its mass. Then it could accelerate harder and evade such a missile. The problem is your pilot who can't endure those Gs you need, so if you use a human pilot you can hardly evade any missiles in space.
But well, then you don't evade! Shoot down that missile! (Point defense is a nice topic, maybe I'll come back to that tomorrow....)
Wojo
Rear Admiral
Just had a thought... if mass=gravity (yes, I've simplified that little bit of physics somewhat), then would projectiles fired at a large mass automatically fall toward it? Beats auto-aim any day... Would mean the larger (and more concentrated) the mass, the more of a target it would be?
Now suppose you spread the mass of the target out a little... maybe make the profile of the target a little sleeker, harder to hit - you would pretty much have a Hornet!
And there is my happy little justification for wings in space.
Oh, wait. Lasers. No mass. Crap.
Now suppose you spread the mass of the target out a little... maybe make the profile of the target a little sleeker, harder to hit - you would pretty much have a Hornet!
And there is my happy little justification for wings in space.
Oh, wait. Lasers. No mass. Crap.
Aginor
Vice Admiral
You are partly right.
So let's see:
Everything is subject to gravity. Even light. We know that because there is a thing called gravitational lens.
So basically you are right: If something is very heavy its gravity pulls the projectile, the missile or even a laser beam to it.
But... Even a planet isnt' big enough to have a strong effect on light. And the gravitational pull even of the biggest structures ever built by humans is negligible.
So gravitational pull of the ship itself is some of the lesser problems when thinking about space ship construction.
Anyway, I like how you think!
So let's see:
Everything is subject to gravity. Even light. We know that because there is a thing called gravitational lens.
So basically you are right: If something is very heavy its gravity pulls the projectile, the missile or even a laser beam to it.
But... Even a planet isnt' big enough to have a strong effect on light. And the gravitational pull even of the biggest structures ever built by humans is negligible.
So gravitational pull of the ship itself is some of the lesser problems when thinking about space ship construction.
Anyway, I like how you think!