Looking for inspiration and ideas how a lunar conflict would play out to make a somewhat realistic Battlefront (old games)/Battlefield/Rising storm/Boundary like 1st/3rd person shooter with vehicles, multiplayer dynamic campaign and commander features. Anything from tactics, equipement and unique challenges on fighting on the moon.
It has to be not too far off in the future (2100s to 2200s) depicting a conflict between Earth and Mars. While I know the future will most likely be dominated by drones, robots and super boring ultra long range weaponry, I want to make it somewhat plausible while still fun and engaging to the players. I want to do it on the moon (or other planets on the solar system) especially because it's an underused setting and I did find the extra terrestial missions in infinite warfare quite cool conceptually.
I have some worldbuilding ideas but the gist of the setting is mars is getting more and more independant from earth and want better h3 mining spots. Disagreements and situation escalates in a localised conflict on the moon.
Most habitats will be underground, you will need bunker buster missiles and bombs.
There will be rocket drones that work like planes rendering infantry and generic trenches worthless.
Since the area you'll be assaulting over will mostly be flat as frick open terrain you will likely get killed by some guy will a TV missile with frag that spotted you. Even if you shoot it down it's killing you all with shrapnel anyway.
There will be mass use of micro sats that are always orbiting the moon that will spot any movement at all. They're so cheap to launch in bulk from the moon it's not even worth shooting them down outside of Lazer weaponry but again they will probably be preoccupied with trying to stop inbound missiles, instead of long term slowing down sats.
There will also be attacks from deeper space, likely ultrasonic speed bunker busters and the like.
The way I thought is each base could have a fusion generator that powers laser batteries to destroy such satellites, think the Titans in battlefield 2142 where you slowly grind down the defenses of the Titans until you can directly strike it. You could make it work the same way, damage different nodes or different part of the fusion generator thus exposing more gaps in its AA defenses for the satellites to strike
The way I thought about it is soldiers have power armor with lots of retro thrusters allowing a lot of mobility and protection against frag. Most vehicles and bases would have laser aps/micro rail guns to deal with frag and missiles
In my setting, humanity has been kinda set back a few decennies to a century because of all the shit happening on Earth (think interstellar where everyone focuses on farming instead of space exploration), there's less inovation and technological progress. And robotics would be regulated like we regulate chemical weapons or nukes today for a "cleaner" war so some weapons are "banned". Good ideas for a conflict in the 20th century but I prefer for now in the not toooooo distant future to make it more plausible and have maps with huge buildings, under complex, starbases, mines etc
I thought about it, for underground mining vebicles, like tiberium sun. The main faction would be Earth (hodge podge of miners Black person rigging equipment for war, security forces and military coming from earth in drop pods as the match advances as call ins. The big mining rigs could work as a subterreanean APC like in tiberium sun) and mars which is technologically advanced and has military equipment since it has been gearing up for this for a while and it is a suprise attack, hence why earth doesn't actually have an army
Cool will take notes. As I mentionned above, I will heavily make use of laser APS
>subterreanean APC like in tiberium sun
S-tier taste anon.
Also consider just how god-tier thermals will be on the night side of the moon. There is basically no way to hide from them when everything else is so cold, theres no atmosphere, and no other emitters besides targets. Even small shifts in temperature, like sitting in a foxhole for too long will warm up the ground enough to become visible.
Not necessarily. On the day side the surface of the moon can get up to 224 degrees Fahrenheit.
Still, I expect space wars (if they ever actually develop) to be frightfully boring and mostly drones trying to snipe each other at several % of c.
The weak defenses of space suits and poor mobility of humans on the moon means that most surface warfare will be conducted by armored vehicles, both manned and unmanned. Flying vehicles in a vacuum would be too easy to detect and shoot down with lasers for them to be viable beyond a surveillance role.
>fricking Rudy 102
>on the moon
I'd like half dose of whatever the author was having
>Also consider just how god-tier thermals will be on the night side of the moon.
>on the night side of the moon.
>Not necessarily. On the day side the surface of the moon can get up to 224 degrees Fahrenheit.
>On the day side
Anon...
anon, what exactly did you think the phases of the moon were?
because if you weren't aware, that's the progression of the Lunar day
Huh? Did I say dark side or say it was static? No, what I said was "night side", as in the side currently experiencing the dark part of a (lunar) day.
Sorry if that was unclear, but night is literally defined by its duality with day so I thought it was implied.
>inb4 why talk about the whole side then and not just the night
Because considering the whole side as a moving combat theater is useful if there's a time where NODs and night operations are mandatory, and thermals radically change your options for surface operations. Any particular site moving into that theater stays in it for about 2 weeks, and you can even have units that operate exclusively in it if they're set up to exploit it, chasing the sunset around.
Read this first. https://ia804708.us.archive.org/17/items/the-meanderings-of-a-weapon-oriented-mind-when/The-Meanderings-of-a-Weapon-Oriented-Mind-When.pdf
Fragmentation would be near-infinite ranged due to the vacuum but it's not the main factor IMO. The first thing people will thinkof is sending robot dozers to ruin your enemy's bunker. How to defeat those dozers? Probably missiles. So send anti-bunker missiles instead? If it's 2100 they probably have an APS or missile defense system too. The surface of the moon will be a WW1 with smart weapons nightmare.
So what about using your tunnel borers to dig to their base if it's not too far away? That's the sound short-range meta IMO.
>It has to be not too far off in the future (2100s to 2200s)
That is way, WAY off in the future anon. Far enough that it's likely post-Singularity unless you really work to figure out some reason computers got set way back, which means if there even is any combat at all it'll all be super strange transhuman/superhuman/ai/vi crap, smart clouds and all sorts of shit.
You're better off doing an alternative history where things got much hotter much faster in the 1950s/1960s, leading to serious lunar bases for both the US and USSR in the 70s and maybe war in the 80s or 90s. Then you can do some cool stuff, but not have computer intelligence eliminate the baseline human element entirely.
Also I don't see any real need for Mars or particularly great way to have them involved without everything getting all fricky (they have a stupendously harder logistics challenge despite having lower delta-V, so to be able to operate on the moon vs earth at all implies MAD situation).
sufficiently dense conflicts will create an orbital cloud of near-surface Kessler debris above the highest lunar peaks at a given orbit, making nearly every engagement a threat to nearly everywhere else
Mars will never actually be a threat to Earth - too much of its resources occupied by maintaining artificial homeostasis. A Venus/Earth war is more plausible, but still ridiculous. The Moon is too OP for interplanetary warfare and too close to Earth to ever have its control contested. Cislunar space in a spacefaring human future is effectively always armed to the teeth because of how quickly it can pivot to weapon manufacturing/delivery
Mars will be playing second fiddle to Luna for the rest of foreseeable human history
motherfrickers genuinely think a matrix multiplier is intelligent. embarrassing.
>it's just [autocorrect on steroids / a big matrix multiplier / cope of the day]
It displays emergent behavior and has passed the bar exam
emergence is moronic cope for people who just can't understand the processes involved, and that's pretty fricking embarrassing for the legal profession
What if I told you human brains were simply layered matrices?
>Mars will never actually be a threat to Earth - too much of its resources occupied by maintaining artificial homeostasis.
>A Venus/Earth war is more plausible, but still ridiculous.
>Venus
>A planet where you cannot feasibly mine the surface without spending so much on it that it'd be cheaper to ship it in from off world has more resources for interplanetary war than a planet that you can mine as easily as Earth and with lower launch costs.
Wut
Air support will be limited due to lack of airbreathing engines, but artillery will have essentially unlimited range.
Whichever side has more artillery at the start will probably win.
1/5th the gravity and no atmosphere. On the Moon the line between a spaceship and a CAS vehicle is so blurred as to be nonexistent. There's gonna be plenty of "air" support, it's just not going to be fast moving fixed wing jets.
The way I thought about it is every vehicles and infantry has rcs/mini thrusters (with limited amounts) allowing it to move manoeuver over obstacles, craters or to gain a better vantage point. I would also add a "hug terrain mode" to the rcs thrusters to allow vehicles and infantry to not bounce around due to low gravity (example: vehicle goes over a crater, instead of staying up in the air for a long time, the rcs thrusters will compensate and force the vehicle to stay low on the ground in order to not be an easy target)
It depends on the fuel supply really. If you're limited to what you can produce on the moon you're pretty much stuck with hydrolox rockets and cold gas thrusters which aren't nearly as efficient as a jet engine. All the ice to make fuel from is concentrated at the poles too, making it relatively easy to control the supply.
Not him, but how the frick do you protect it against ASATs when a you're stuck using rockets for propulsion and maneuvering and something the size of a MANPADS can reach escape velocity?
You're fast but you're predictable and not at all maneuverable. Cruise missiles and artillery are the better option.
>when a you're stuck using rockets for propulsion
When did I become italian?
APS, basically smaller missiles with higher DV due to low mass intercepting at a few km away from the main body.
This will be countered by bomblet style missiles and thus you end up with missile vs missiles with smaller missiles, or using side shrapnel from multiple directions that an APS cannot stop.
Thus all CAS style vehicles will be as expendable as the missiles they fire honesty, and it just reverts to missile vs missiles spam as always.
No air = no cheap hovering/flying
CAS ain't going to be close if you need it to be in orbit to be economical or not have big propellant-tank
You could orbit very low but it's going to be very dangerous for a very small windows to shoot.
It would be easier to build mecha who can jump and shoot from a far away position
>No air = no cheap hovering/flying
>CAS ain't going to be close if you need it to be in orbit to be economical or not have big propellant-tank
I'm not sure that's true? The fuel expenditure necessary to fight the moon's meager gravity, as long as you're sourcing it locally, is actually quite modest.
Sourced locally only mean it's cheap to refuel, but how much do you need in store to stay hovering for the duration of a battle while carrying weapons?
Plus if you want to play space-gunship you can't use the most efficient parabolic trajectory that get you high up.
You could land from time to time but that make you a sitting duck assuming you find a nice landing zone. Having the means to land anywhere would basically make you a mecha like
>Sourced locally only mean it's cheap to refuel, but how much do you need in store to stay hovering for the duration of a battle while carrying weapons?
Depends on the kind of weapon and how far from base you're going. By the time we can get there I'd imagine a laser would serve pretty damn well as a primary weapon given that everything is going to be relatively thin skinned, and any kind of penetration causes immense problems.
The only things that will need to be thin skinned is what need to FLY in an airless moon with pure thrust.
Any support fire such flier with short loitering time could provide could be replaced by and vision from satellites.
Everything ground based would be able to afford more armor thanks to low gravity (assuming local construction and better logistic than carrying stuff using more rocket)
how would mortars and artillery work on the moon?
>Uncle Cliff hasn't been "alright" since the Lunar War
What do you guys think Cliff saw? Why does he get a check from the government for being crazy?
Gorgotrons, duh
You can literally just shoot a small mortar for 2000km distance on the Moon
so artillery is GOD on the Moon
Read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Not Starship Troopers. Trust me.
>While I know the future will most likely be dominated by drones, robots and super boring ultra long range weaponry
Set it mostly underground. Subterranean warfare seems to be the big thing for the future.
Tunnel good? Dig? Dig hole? Dig hole good.
Could also give both teams tunneling equipment and even allow them to intercept each others tunnel ala 17th century sieges lmao kino pitch black tunnel fighting
Dig hole? Dig hole???
Subterranean warfare would literally just be fusion nuking each others tunnels closed.
I don't see it happening personally. The borers would be expensive and detected by literally any ground monitoring device, and in 100 years they can probably map the entire tunnel with just a few bombs or thumpers a couple KM above as a vibration source.
the temperature of lunar crust should make for an absurdly effective resonator of seismic waves
First things first, do you even know how life in space would realistically be like?
Bump
Next time just contribute to the thread by saying something relevant or responding to another poster. If you have nothing more to say then there's no reason for you to keep the thread up.
Nobody is fighting in such low gravity. Not until it’s time to storm habitats you don’t want to blow up. So, it’ll be a war of missiles and lasers. Like, a Brilliant Pebble network vs interceptors and cruise missiles.
>Not until it’s time to storm habitats you don’t want to blow up
This seems likely if OP's scenario is low intensity conflict over the capture of mining infrastructure. Getting shit to the moon is expensive after all.
Missiles don't work on the moon. There's no air for them to push against.
? They have a thruster, no need to dump energy so just add a vector nozzle and/or maneuver thrusters.
Honestly anon if you got the physics right and came up with technical/plot reasons why we still need to use meatbag infantry you could have a pretty rad game.
Low gravity, temperature and terrain extremes (especially the permanently shadowed regions), and lack of atmosphere could all be really compelling environmental factors in a big team battle shooter.
You can hit enemies from far away if the terrain isn't blocking you but due to the low gravity heavy armor is no big deal so guys can take a lot of punishment, but recoil is a problem. Suits can handle a 400C temperature fluctuation, but they have performance issues at the extremes.
In keeping with your scenario, you could make more of warband type of troops than big professional armies.
>especially the permanently shadowed regions
The moon doesn't have those, and low temperature isn't a problem in a vacuum, since there's no thermal convection from air. Radiation is the biggest concern and it's a nonissue with modern space suits.
the permanently shadowed regions
>The moon doesn't have those
Not him but
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanently_shadowed_crater
>As of 2019, there are 324 known permanently shadowed regions on the Moon
Shackleton crater for example is one of them. Its 4.2km deep and 21km across and is likely to be one of the key places to mine water ice.
Anon you got dubs but everything in your post was wrong. As
mentioned PSRs are real and are a pain in the ass, but also the lack of convection by atmospheric contact is a huge problem, particularly if you want to shoot a gun.
Op here, the way I thought to mitigate barrel overheating would be barrels contained in a liquid sleeve (think ww1 mgs) in order to absorb more heat. If there is too much heat, the gun automatically discards the barrel and you insert a new barrel
To be fair, guns are going to be even less desirable than they are here on Earth. Fragmentation is even better than it already is, and errant projectiles are a really serious problem to everyone's infrastructure.
Rampantly firing shit like CIWS into the sky is a great way to convince literally every nation back on Earth with a satellite to sanction you back into the stone age.
ah yes but a single CIWS plus observation network could deny surface movement across like 20% of the lunar surface
I think you'd far rather be firing off shells or missiles with shaped charges or some other kind of directed blast cone to limit collateral. It's also worth keeping in mind that the same low gravity that enables you to shoot that far, also means it's very easy to maneuver out of the path of an incoming projectile which isn't capable of course correcting.
Look up Shattered Horizon. Game was way ahead of its time.
This. Bored Finns made a masterpiece in 2009.
The 3d minimap was a genius touch.
Grenades are effective in 5 to 20 metres, so I presume that on the moon their lethal radius would be 30 to 120 metres
however fragment dispersion would cut down actual lethality significantly, unless we're talking special Moon grenades designed with more shrapnel
>explosive goes off next to you
>it doesn’t kill you but the explosion makes you go faster than escape velocity
Now what?
activate personal rescue beacon
hope somebody has a rescue ship
otherwise, picrel
just like anyone swept overboard IRL anon
What celestial body, because the rapid accelerating to the moons escape velocity would turn you into paste from the g-force, even if the pressure from the explosion didn't kill you directly.
The way I see it everyone has power armor so they have some resistance to frag
>If anyone has numbers on just how fast the fragments go from a hand grenade of 40mm, I can work out just what the new radii are.
>so I presume that on the moon their lethal radius would be 30 to 120 metres
Nominal initial fragment velocity for a 30mm autocannon is 1250m/s and about double that for a hand grenade
The fragments would stay lethal out for dozens of kilometers. Effective radius includes the chance to hit the target, and thats basically impossible to calculate without models of the grenades, how many fragments, and some requirement for what you consider effective.
>tl;dr there is no safe radius for fragmentation grenades on the moon. Not even with a launcher.
>>tl;dr there is no safe radius for fragmentation grenades on the moon. Not even with a launcher.
The danger goes to near nil at distance simply because the fragment density becomes so low. Also if you're on the moon surface the fragment has to follow a ballistic (sub)orbital trajectory and with the relatively low escape velocity it means that those fragments will basically only hit line of sight and you're not going to be hit by a high angle projectile because they're just escaping the moon.
>Also if you're on the moon surface the fragment has to follow a ballistic (sub)orbital trajectory and with the relatively low escape velocity it means that those fragments will basically only hit line of sight and you're not going to be hit by a high angle projectile because they're just escaping the moon
This is all wrong.
>The fragments would stay lethal out for dozens of kilometers
You, uh, do know there IS gravity on the moon right?
The moon's horizon at 2m height is 2km.
The moon's escape velocity is 2,380 m/s.
Composition B velocity of detonation: 8,050 m/s
Yes. But there is essentially no drag which means things stay fast. Getting launched at "just" 1 km/s at a 45 degree angle at 0.16g and no drag means its still going fast when it hits the ground and it's covered a huge distance in the meantime.
Plot the trajectory yourself if you want.
>>tl;dr there is no safe radius for fragmentation grenades on the moon. Not even with a launcher.
Sure there is, assuming a flat area, a grenade exploding at ground level, and a 2m tall shrapnel non-enjoyer, the safe distance is that same as the horizon, which is to say about 2636m, at which point all straight lines between the viewer and grenade will pass though thousands of meters of moon.
It doesn't have to go in a straight line to kill you, bud.
And the low but still present gravity, lack of air resistance, and close horizon on the moon mean you can easily do OTH kills with ballistic trajectories.
Yes, but the odds drop off quite hard compared to below the horizon.
The odds drop off well before that just because your fragment density plummets. But with any significant deployment of fragmentation weapons be in hand grenades to artillery, you are going to hit a lot of things you didn't intend to.
If it got to UkRu-war tier consumption, you'd basically never put any unarmored infrastructure outside.
You already cant put anything unarmored outside between micrometeros and 14 days of raw and uncut UV.
>micrometeros and 14 days of raw and uncut UV.
Fundamentally different timescales. We can and have operated things on the moon for months or years.
I was assuming you just use the same 50 (earth) year lifespan for lunar infrastructure as you do for terrestrial stuff, I guess if your only building for a 2 year mission it might not be cost effective to armor.
What kind of vehicles would be used in such conflicts?
Here you go:
>Cancel the most disruptive technologies
AI must be a thing, but you cannot guarantee their alignment (human-safe), so they are idea-giver always subject to approval.
And AI who can decide to become a pacifist is NOT interesting.
AIs need big computer, no Terminator-robot if the brain is an easily jammed remote.
>Avoiding total destruction
Kessler effect
Space is FRAGILE, you don't want to annihilate 200 years of building nuclear-powered space-dock because a dumbass couldn't keep himself from testing his gun.
Every faction will either respect space or be considered Pariah who cannot be allowed to LIVE.
>Restricting combat zone
Once every factions accept to not shoot on ANY ships or the LUNAR space elevator, you can only fight in place where it won't destroy everyone's hope and dream.
The surface of the moon is a free range because most ballistic bullet fired from its surface will either not escape gravity or be on a trajectory that cannot remain in orbit.
You don't want hole in your space habitat. This is enough to justify boarding ship with swords & tasers.
>Restricting weapons
Laser are less interesting once the Moon curvature deny their range, and protecting against direct energy is easier.
Ballistic weapon are more interesting artillery/mortar become long range & more precise with no air/wind
UCAV drones: no air to fly in = no cheap hovering killer swarm
UCGV drones: make the terrain very hard/complex/fragile
Auto-aim: necessary, but subject to human-clearance
>Moon
Helium3 is a BAD meme, typical "space-oil".
You don't need it because if you can access the moon industrially, you'll be here for raw ores resources.
Obtaining spaceship propellant (like water) is more critical than just producing energy.
The Moon is a PERFECT place to catapult ore/spaceship without needing propellant or fight atmosphere.
>Independent Mars
Bad meme again, Mars is less interesting than the Moon or moving rotating colonies near asteroids.
>so they are idea-giver always subject to approval.
Though if an AI grossly exceeds human intellect (as any AI that can kinda mimic it may do within a few months as long as the usual rate of improvement for computer systems is followed) it should be pretty simple for it to get us to approve the idea of "let's just set the AI free". Whether or not we humans understand that that's the idea it just pitched, well, that's a different question.
I'm not going to fall into your lies you GPTuring's Basilisk!
One possible plot line about advanced AI in my world building is that everyone agrees that they may spiral out of control and limits its power (just like we don't build 200 megaton nukes). Mars government is like a space china, authoritarian and governs most aspects of society. But in the shadows, mars is ran by a cabal of ultra mega rich people that emigrated from earth, pulling the strings politically. They take advice from a prohibited general AI they built because they want to further mars' goals but they underestimate the true capabilities of the AI which also has a hidden agenda on its own.
>Kessler effect
Space is FRAGILE, you don't want to annihilate 200 years of building nuclear-powered space-dock because a dumbass couldn't keep himself from testing his gun.
Every faction will either respect space or be considered Pariah who cannot be allowed to LIVE
I agree. The factions loosely agree on a set of rules and big no noes (just like we don't see the use of chemical weapons and nukes in modern conflicts)
>restricting combat zone
Yes I totally agree, just like the point above. Just like russia doesn't shoot down any american transports of weapons to ukraine and vice versa. I could make it a proxy war of PMCs totally not financed and supplied by earth and mars just like russia did with ukraine
>weapons
I think fusion powered lasers make a lot of sense as point defence/APS especially since theres no atmosphere. They would be the answer against shrapnels, debris orbiting at high velocities and ballistic weaponry
>helium3
I want to make it as if it is the most valuable ressource in the solar system and there are few places where we can mine it easily. I want to make the moon as if it were the far west/ukraine. And as far as I know, the Moon is quite poor for raw ressources and helium 3 is the most valuable and interesting ressource to cheaply power fusion reactors. I agree about being a cheap place to catapult ressources back to earth.
Your setting is rather cheesy even if I'm never against mocking the superrich manipulated by their own AI,
Any AI "with agenda" should be out because that's the most story breaking technology you can imagine.
You don't need the "agenda", myself I would rather say they are internally fighting over what the AI prioritize, trying to put "points" into project Y-12a instead of F-6tD...
Mars really is a meme (typical "new frontier must be another far west"), it is really NOT actually interesting, TV only use so they can make movie in Deserts. It is not easier to make habitable as you have to fight the weather and gravity.
Just having base won't automatically make Mars self-sufficient/growing, every tech they use will be years late over what Earth develop, it will not have the manpower to even grow even if you played the "robot army" card, the resources on Mars are only useful locally, not for export, and harder to extract than on the Moon or what Near Earth asteroids will give you.
An Elysium space-colony of the rich is more credible, for the low internet latency alone
>And as far as I know, the Moon is quite poor for raw ressources and helium 3 is the most valuable and interesting ressource to cheaply power fusion reactors.
No, no, the Moon is ripe with resources, easier to access than if it was underwater and high gravity.
While helium3 require processing millions of tons of regolith anyway, making it less economical than producing helium3 by other means.
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1
Plus you need fusion when you need concentrated energy, in space, solar energy become incredibly more efficient.
(to be continued...)
>I need a clear opponent to earth and yes there would be different colonies in the solar system but I want to focus mainly on the moon for the time being
Now that's constructive, we can work on better.
The error is thinking the opponent need to be "another planet".
It's less credible because it imply another super-power just spontaneously emigrate, go independent and become another "America in space".
But America was actually as habitable as the land they left, that's why it could grow extremely fast and then profited from not being ravaged by a world war while China was in a civil war and missed out despite being the super-civilization in ancient time.
Mars isn't habitable, even if you could convince millions to live in dome, they'll be too busy trying to stay alive before they can develop new things.
So you want an opponent?
You don't need to physically separate them, in fact to keep them EQUAL you could use the "rules" of access to space to imply the only reason they accepted to not shoot each others (too often) is by enforcing a LEGAL split of resources (illegal means being used to get the advantage)
Without going political your cabal of superrich could appear out of the US or China easily. The US is a plutocracy, China is already policing everything using computers, so an AI/Cabal/Cabal using AI/AICabal rulings each would not be a stretch. While India have a Caste system.
btw
>Also, a space elevator makes a lot of sense for the moon
And before that, you can actually make magnetic ramp launching ship from the surface without needing them to be aerodynamic.
I don't see why you couldn't even land that way, all you need is to synch the landing pad and have a good catcher mechanism.
(to be continued)
In these graphs, the geo sync and resonant orbits are the least useful imo.
Might as well just do all industry in LEO or lunar orbit.
Lower orbits are going to remain very busy, that alone would justify keeping them free.
You also want to avoid atmospheric friction, no matter how weak.
Plus, if you ever want an orbital ring (far more feasible than Earth space elevator) you could plan ahead.
That said, Lagrange L1 + Lunar elevator
using magnetic accelerators to send cargo, would be my opinion of peak space age efficiency.
Thanks,
Though I must say your post is rather.... soft SF, unrealistic.
Unless I misinterpreted your "AI agenda" seem to derive from a bad interpretation of "space highways" which are only valuable in that they use nearly no propellant... ...at the cost of traveling SLOWER, like taking several decades instead of a few year doing a conventional burn.
But maybe you are knowingly reusing the name to then push a soft SF "Faster than Light" jump point.
...and I would recommend not doing that. Make shit up a name for your "Jump Point" but don't misuse a real concept.
Also "alien" is another of those disruptive things that will frick up your setting, though you seem to make them only a background that don't interact with mankind, which is better than usual.
>poor Earth
A poor Earth cannot provide what Mars colony need and a Mars colony is not going to be self-sufficient in mere decades, or centuries.
Plus if you can replicate biosphere at will, then any big enough asteroids have the resources. Even the gas can be obtained with chemical transformation.
The idea of Mars as a "backup planet" is also a bad tropes, the resource would be better used protecting Earth.
(to be continued)
(me)
>Mars Terraforming
Far beyond unrealistic, bullshit-level. As usual no one look up NASA's maths.
The atmosphere for example, ignore all the bullshit plan you've heard, they lied to you. Even best case you can only increase the pressure by 5% with local ice. Just try to imagine if you were asked to carry Earth Atmosphere around, sound silly isn't it?
In short:
Terraforming the MOON would be easier (because it's smaller). Mars is NOT "closer" to habitable, it only look superficially more like a planet.
>laws = stiffling progress
You should not take PrepHole as a source of information.
Progress require stability and laws to prevent an oligarchy where the money is wasted by space-Russia.
Didn't you say yourself Mars is "authoritarian and governs most aspects of society"
?
You need EXTRA LAWS to prevent a dumbass from dooming everyone by accident.
>Mars has a lower gravity
Meaning that without genetic engineering your colonist are either sick or become a weak race.
>less atmosphere
Meaning airplane are harder and you still can't use a magnetic launch system.
>is closer to the asteroid belt
Irrelevant because of how orbital navigation work, you'll have less launch windows and the propellant cost will not change significantly.
>I want a resource for different factions in the solar system to fight over
Estate
Don't try to replicate Earth when space travel by default give you near infinite resources.
However, there's only so much "most efficient" terrain/asteroid to own for a magnetic launch station or a space elevator.
You can attack your enemy simply because HIS industry produce 10% more than yours and if you don't you'll lose the economic race.
>Helium3 / Moon
Then you use it as a soft SF, unobtainium magic resources.
Because it's not "easily accessible" and if you start processing regolith on the scale required, extracting H3 from Jupiter atmosphere would be more cost-efficient by some account I've read.
Again, it would actually be easier to produce more Helium3. It require extra step but extra step far easier to do.
>moon battle
You remind me I should have posted that scene from AD ASTRA in this post instead of
The movie is not realistic FYI, it's mostly a thriller movie who spend 90% of its budget in 2 scenes.
>Even best case you can only increase the pressure by 5% with local ice.
This isn't right. Pressure would double (i.e. increase by 100%) from just the CO2 deposits under the South Pole if we could melt them during the Northern Summer.
I think what you've done is taken the value for what you could potentially achieve through mobilizing accessible CO2 and other greenhouse gas reserves i.e. about 5% (about 2% of that from CO2) of Earth's atmospheric pressure and conflated the two.
It doesn't really change your point about the inability to terraform with accessible reserves, but still, should be pointed out.
>This isn't right. Pressure would double
Double from something that's less than 1% of Earth will only give you almost 2%
I got my number from NASA analysis which said you could only reach up to 4% of Earth with the ice cap.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/goddard/2018/mars-terraforming
Quote:
>However, vaporizing the ice caps would only contribute enough CO2 to double the Martian pressure to 1.2 percent of Earth’s, according to the new analysis.
>Even CO2 trapped in water-ice molecule structures, should such “clathrates” exist on Mars, would likely contribute less than 5 percent of the required pressure, according to the team.
Fiction author likely over interpret this:
>Carbon-bearing minerals buried deep in the Martian crust might hold enough CO2 to reach the required pressure, but the extent of these deep deposits is unknown, not evidenced by orbital data, and recovering them with current technology is extremely energy intensive, requiring temperatures above 300 degrees Celsius (over 572 degrees Fahrenheit). Shallow carbon-bearing minerals are not sufficiently abundant to contribute significantly to greenhouse warming, and also require the same intense processing.
Thinking that if you heat the planet enough, it will grow an atmosphere.
We are talking about more than heating, melting the entire planet, if you could do that, you'd likely have enough logistic to cover the entire moon with a green dome or build billion of space colonies.
How would you increase atmospheric pressure?
Crashing several quadrillion tons worth of asteroids/comet unto its surface.
I answered so I could give him the link from NASA where I got my numbers.
Also making sure we know that "double the pressure" on Mars is still very low.
True I could have recognized that
did reword my point more accurately. Probably some posturing instinct from PrepHole...
I wasn't so much wrong as lazily conflating "every sources of CO2" as "muh mars ice".
Mars is worthless anyway since the gravity is too low to survive longterm but too high to spin up habs for artificial gravity.
Venus is unironically the much better choice.
>nearly the same gravity
>PLENTY of atmosphere
>even more sunlight than earth
>lots of carbon dioxide
>a weak magnetic field, better than mars at least
Plus just logistically it seems way more plausible to REMOVE atmosphere than to add it. Venusian cloud cities, while fantastical, are way more plausible than mars colonies.
Of course there's still the issue of there being no real REASON to colonize Venus in the first place, rendering it's prize of "most plausible colony in the solar system" somewhat pointless.
If room temp superconductors become real, we can put centrifugal habitats anywhere.
>Mars is worthless anyway since the gravity is too low to survive longterm
>Source, your ass.
There is no meaningful data on long term effects of low gravity. We have only have two data points (1g and micro-g) and no way to fit a curve to them that would be better than guessing.
Except with Venus you are effectively floating in a sea of sulfuric acid.
I think there's way less sulfuric acid in the upper atmosphere where pressure and temperatures are more reasonable
>Way less
>Less
Think for a second anon.
Not an expert but there is a difference between 1 ppm and 1000 ppm
>Venusian cloud cities, while fantastical, are way more plausible than mars colonies.
Lol. Venusian "colonization" is like sailing a cruise ship to a sandbank and claiming you've made a colony. If its not recycled or extracted from the atmosphere, you've imported it or its constituent parts from off-planet because trying to mine the surface is a fools errand.
Mars has
> All the mineral wealth of a virgin planet that had a hydrological cycle right there and accessible with fairly traditional mining
> More water on it total than Venus has despite being much smaller
> Has that water concentrated in convenient mineable concentrations.
> Doesn't require living in perpetual winds that make Hurricane Patricia look like a pussy. And no floating along with the wind doesn't mean windshear isn't a serious issue.
Venus would be cool to visit, and maybe even establishing a permanent human presence, but its not a place for building a civilization.
Venus is far worse than Mars.
>high gravity
>can't even build on the surface, let alone obtain resources
>atmosphere get in the way of everything
You are worse than Martian fanboy who think superficial resemblance is enough.
>logistically it seems way more plausible to REMOVE atmosphere than to add i
That's just incredibly wrong.
We can actually imagine nudging thousand of asteroids so they eventually reach Mars
Can you imagine sucking atmosphere and accelerating it out beyond orbital velocity?
Even if 1G remain a strict criteria you'd be better exploiting Mars from the comfort of orbital colony using robots, than you'd be exploiting Venus.
Not him but kurzgesagt has a cool simplified video on how you could terraform Venus. The fastest way possible seems to be cooling it down with mirrors reflecting sunlight and eventually the CO2 will freeze, significantly lowering temperature and pressure. Here's the vid
>Can you imagine sucking atmosphere and accelerating it out beyond orbital velocity?
In theory, detonating nukes in the upper atmosphere to blow it off is possible.
I guess you could cool it off with mirrors, harvest the solid CO2 and ship it to Mars to warm it up. Win/win
>In theory, detonating nukes in the upper atmosphere to blow it off is possible.
You do realize that if the nukes aren't strong enough the matter you sent of will just go back down with gravity?
Or that it will be wasteful because you can't focus everything in one direction?
>harvest the solid CO2 and ship it to Mars to warm it up
...basically carrying an entire planet atmosphere.
I don't mind if you are just imagining if the idea is technically possible but hope you guys realize such engineering would be so difficult/wasteful that we probably will not need planet by the time it is possible.
Why did you write a whole post to agree with him? You said the wrong thing in the first post.
Busy is not a problem. You sit either low LEO, at the edge of the atmosphere, or almost into MEO f you really need to, just outside of the inside van allen belt if you really can't afford to maintain the orbit.
The point is so anything "lost" will eventually land back onto earth, it's easier to reach, and there are still some protection from the magnetosphere, and you're dodging the radiation belts for as little per trip as possible.
>LEO
If you want gigantic space dock, you don't want them to require regular burn to stabilize the orbit.
>busy
There's more to this, just like air corridor, you'll want orbit where a ship can wait for the next windows to do a transfer to a higher orbit and match a station's orbital parameter.
If everything is on the lowest orbit you lose the ability to wait as everything will move as fast as you, in fact you might be forced to increase your own orbit to let your target catch up to you.
(yes I played Orbiter before KSP was a thing, I still forgot the exact terminology)
You can also consider what the big station does and need. If it build/dock with space-only spaceship, those would rather start their travel on higher orbit and use lower orbit for slingshot.
Also, if you are on a higher orbit, you get more time to fix a problem before it impact other orbit.
>you're dodging the radiation belts for as little per trip as possible.
Out of all the silly space trope, these radiations belts can realistically be cleared as we become capable of launching a nuclear reactor and a very long tether up there.
The belt are ionized particles trapped in Earth magnetic sphere, meaning they can be cleared with magnet.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130613193849/http://radbelts.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/RadNews.html
Those particles get refilled by the sun anon
>Those particles get refilled by the sun anon
Those particles would be cleared faster than they accumulate, silly anon.
Cool idea about shooting cargo from magnetic accelerators but don't you think shooting out several tons of cargo at high speed might be a problem for loose cargo? Or accidentely reaching earth and act as mini asteroids? Just a thought. Space elevators + big cargo ships seems safer
Yeah I know about the sci-fi setting sounds wacky but I wanted something different from all the other sci-fi games/movies/tv and this idea hasn't been explored. Yes I am aware those space highway don't work the way I intend to portray them but we don't really understand gravity either and this phenomenon so I'm trying to invent something that makes sense but not totally real (I aim around 90% realistic stuff in my game and the other 10% would fall in the make sense/plausible but we don't have a real way of explaining/doesn't exist yet. For comparison, I think the expense would fall more in the 60% realostic stuff. I mean, no robots, AI, lasers, spinning Ceres?? 300 years in the future? Makes no sense). In any case, it's very secondary, just exploring ideas
>poor Earth
In my setting, Earth isn't all poor just like you have rich and poor neighborhoods in cities. The way I try to portray it is helium 3 and space mining is where the money is at in my universe. You could either go in the super saturated competitive market that is mining on the moon (akin to big oil of today) or set up your business on Mars for asteroid mining where it is cheaper and more accessible due to its position to the asteroid belt. See it as the gold rush that happened in western USA and Canada in the 19th century. Mars attracts all kinds of ambitious entrepreneurs from Earth
>don't you think shooting out several tons of cargo at high speed might be a problem for loose cargo?
If you are not capable of double-checking cargo, or aim precisely, you can't design spaceship in the first place.
It take incredible precision to hit anything and you can be certains specialist will not even allow launch if it can get too close of something important in a certain timeframe
Stuff might only be "in the way" for a millisecond every month.
>Or accidentely reaching earth and act as mini asteroids?
Again, the math will be extremely predictable.
You might actually plan on the cargo reentering Earth atmosphere on his own, saving a lot of money.
As a certain book about Mistress on the Moon will tell you, magnetic launcher should be very regulated.
(picture is from "Mirai no Futatsu no Kao" and it's a must read)
https://manga4life.com/manga/The-Two-Faces-Of-Tomorrow
>Just a thought. Space elevators + big cargo ships seems safer
Don't be silly...
A lunar space elevator would naturally possess its own magnetic launcher to launch spaceship without using propellant.
>this idea hasn't been explored
err....
All you did is change the name for a common trope, and say "it's alien" while no one could reasonably prove it.
The problem is that saying "alien" mean reader will expect alien existence to actually matter in the plot.
Originality for the sake of originality isn't a good idea.
>I aim around 90% realistic
IMHO some of your ideas lower it to 10% as far I'm concerned, I guess most people would call that 50% until you bring up FTL & alien
>space far west
If you care for "originality" you shouldn't try to copypaste the literal America history in space, like 90% of all fiction already do.
Especially since realistically it don't make sense.
There's already plenty of near-Earth asteroids that will provide enough ores for all of mankind for decades and the Moon is literally a bigger asteroid.
Mars really isn't interesting if you do the math.
Hey man thanks for the input, really cool ideas so far!
>Your setting is rather cheesy
Yeah I agree it's not the most imaginative thing but I didn't lay out the whole world building here. might do it later. Basically if my game ever finds success, it will open up new factions (example: Mars AI focus army making use of more bots, transhumans and lasers. think Brotherhood of Nod from command and conquer) and plot points.
The true agenda of the AI would be exploring gravitational anomalies beyond Pluto and it needs a convenient distraction, i.e a big interplanetary war in order to investigate it and thus having access to a lot of resources and manpower from Mars as it is given a ''blank check'' on everything. These gravitational anomalies would be space ''super highways'' (look it up, I'm not making things up, it actually does exist) that allows for extremely fast space travel between planets in the solar system but also, between star systems. If I were to expand it further, these ''gravitational highways'' are made by extra-dimensional ''beings'' travelling in the universe and while they don't actually exist in our reality, they leave a gravitational trail as only gravity is theorized to be able to travel between (look it up it's true) and they kinda work like wormholes. It's my idea of sci-fi without using cheap short cuts as alien technology, portals, gateways or whatnot. But this whole sci-fi part is just an idea, I'm focusing on a realistic depiction of a future conflict on the Moon
>Just having base won't automatically make Mars self-sufficient/growing, every tech they use will be years late over what Earth develop
The way I try to set up my version of the future is that Earth has slowed down on progress quite a lot because it had to deal with climate change, famines, ocean acidification, overpopulation and conflicts so like for 50 to 100 years, people were more focused on trying to survive and less about space exploration
to be continued..
part 2
Plus, Earth has lots of gay regulations about robots ethics, AI and all stupid laws stifling progress and advancement and Mars acting like a 17th century Netherlands being a beacon of progress and tolerance in a time of religions persecutions and intolerance in Europe during the 30 year war. Basically, Mars is very open about robotics and AI (but general AI is still taboo). Big city like magnetic structures are built between Earth and Mars Lagrange point to act as magnetic deflectors to protect Mars from harmful cosmic rays. For water, Mars imports big ass ice comets and puts them safely in high orbit to mine it. Of course, Mars is undergoing big terraforming projects to make it more habitable and has quite a lot of water actually.
> the resources on Mars are only useful locally, not for export, and harder to extract than on the Moon or what Near Earth asteroids will give you
Mars has a lower gravity, less atmosphere and is closer to the asteroid belt and outer solar system making it more attractive for space mining and exporting resources to Earth or other places in the solar system
>No, no, the Moon is ripe with resources
Ok didn't know about it but I think you're getting my point? I want a resource for different factions in the solar system to fight over just like we do for oil and rare earths here. You can have access to everything you want in the asteroid belt and beyond, but helium 3 is only found easily accessible on the Moon
>Only what hit the ground or is conveyed through material can be heard and only if it is conveyed to your ears through your boots.
You will lose a LOT of sound.
Ok cool that's the aesthetic I was looking for, muffled sounds in vacuum
to be continued
part 3
>I know very little trivia about it, but Moon IS apparently rather magnetic, so maybe you use magnetic field to create bubble of dust that frick up sensors...
I've been thinking a sort ''geyser'' (like a drilling bot or deployable machine) spouting moon dust everywhere acting as a physical barrier (like a smokescreen) and electro magnetic barrier (spoofing and jamming electronics nearby
>Give up any hope of long distance stealth
Ok cool concepts, but I was less thinking about stealth but more like cover (like on earth: smokescreens, trenches, sandbags etc...). I've been thinking about the Commander being able to ''deploy'' bunkers or fixed cover anywhere on the map with low flying drones
Thanks again man, open to other ideas!
>meaningful progress terraforming mars
>2100-2200s
look buddy unless we unearth prothean relics or something that aint happening. while programs certainly could have started in the timeframe you've given they wouldn't have made mars any sort of habitable for complex life at all.
I never said there would be a breathable atmosphere and water everywhere. It will look something akin to the expanse
Yeah I thought about that. Earth isn't as united as it seams and the military is quite underfunded because of all the shit it has to deal with like I mentionned here
Plus, the Moon is mostly exploited by private companies and because of the decade long martian growing nationalism and tensions slowly escalating, they started having a small military presence on the Moon. Mars on the other hand has been prepraring for this "special military operation" for quite a while having equipment and tactics adapted to it, dividing various factions in earth's government and financing 5th columnist and sneaking in military equipment and troops via the helium 3/minerals cargo ships. They wanted a quick takeover of more favorable mining sites without too much bloodbath, thinking earth would be too weak, slow and divided to react accordingly
>something akin to the expanse
okay then, that works.
>mars has been preparing for ages while earth was divided and hoping for peace and earth nations don't have much (governmental) presence on the moon
also works. good job, you have successfully passed the 70 IQ barrier.
Forgot to add a small detail, people on Mars would be able to build above surface and walk around more freely because as I mentionned here
the big ass magnet acting as the artificial magnetic field of mars. For redundancy, there are 2
You don't need a magnet or radiation shield, you dullard. Just invent a giga-costly Star Trek solution while you're at it.
Just live in a canyon and store water in the roof.
It's that simple. You will have the added cancer risk of maybe a pack a week smoker.
Jesus, low IQ amateurs.
He messed up both the concept and the execution. The magnet has to be at the sun-mars L1, its for protecting the atmosphere to allow it to thicken over decades not for protecting the colonists, and even if you did try to use it for that, it wouldn't make enough of a difference.
>The true agenda of the AI would be exploring gravitational anomalies beyond Pluto and it needs a convenient distraction, i.e a big interplanetary war in order to investigate it and thus having access to a lot of resources and manpower from Mars as it is given a ''blank check'' on everything. These gravitational anomalies would be space ''super highways'' (look it up, I'm not making things up, it actually does exist) that allows for extremely fast space travel between planets in the solar system but also, between star systems. If I were to expand it further, these ''gravitational highways'' are made by extra-dimensional ''beings'' travelling in the universe and while they don't actually exist in our reality, they leave a gravitational trail as only gravity is theorized to be able to travel between (look it up it's true) and they kinda work like wormholes. It's my idea of sci-fi without using cheap short cuts as alien technology, portals, gateways or whatnot. But this whole sci-fi part is just an idea, I'm focusing on a realistic depiction of a future conflict on the Moon
homie you high as frick lmao
This is a very robust skeleton. But I just want to note, if you don't already know it, that these space highways won't give you faster-than-causality (FTL) travel.
The whole concept is an abortion if you have Earth united, for some midwitted reason. Just have China, Russia, etc. still existing, or invent some new state like "The Pacific Technocomplex", the "Mediterranean Syndic Combinate", etc.
If they are not united, their space navies will keep each other in check, giving Mars ample strategic maneuvering room to land an appropriate number of soldiers.
I seriously don't get all your United Earth trannies. It only makes sense in a tenth of the settings it's in.
i clearly stated that the setting works if earth is still divided, i just thought that it wasn't initially.
Oops I forgot to mention that gravity is the only known force that could theoretically travel between dimensions. Yeah I know if but I think it's a different take on FTL travel. Plus, it could explain the gravitational anomalies in the Kuiper belt (the leading theorys now is Planet X)
Well, for a start it wasn't even a major held theory the for the Kuiper belt in the first place.
But anyway, even if it were true, all that means is "gravity" can interact with some background particles/energy/forces that other forces can't otherwise interact with.
Often people think of "other dimensions" as literally other places, but the reality is, all it ever meant was types of matter/forces/energy that cannot react with the matter/forces we interact with using normal methods.
Multiverse is the most moronic shit to be created from that shit, honestly.
Oh I didn't know it meant that way I thought it was a cool concept
Also, a space elevator makes a lot of sense for the moon. No atmosphere to deal with simplifies things a lot. Ores are extracted and processed on the moon, sent via space elevator in low orbit and then big ass cargo ship make the return trip to earth/mars
>mars
I need a clear opponent to earth and yes there would be different colonies in the solar system but I want to focus mainly on the moon for the time being
A few questions about lunar environment
>is there any way the sound can be transmited on the moon?
Like if theres a big explosion near you, will you hear it via sound waves transmited by the lunar surface to you suit? What about shooting guns? Hitting objets?
>how does lunar dust interact?
Like if there's a bif explosion, will there be plumes of dust and rocks that will stay for a while in the air? I imagine no by watching some footage of Apollo looking the way dust behaves with the rovers
>how would you create cover/concealment?
There's little cover and you can't use smoke or explosions to mask your attack. How would you do it?
And forgot to add, what would melee combat look like?
Does a grappling hook makes sense in lunar environment?
"Dumb" bots like infinite warfare/bo3?
Last
I won't lie to you any further, everything you want you'll find on that website:
Seriously, it WILL cover everything you could ever discuss here and it is made specifically to improve storymaking, even the unrealistic ones.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php
>A few questions about lunar environment
>is there any way the sound can be transmited on the moon?
Only what hit the ground or is conveyed through material can be heard and only if it is conveyed to your ears through your boots.
You will lose a LOT of sound.
Many SF go around it by pretending your helmet recreate sounds artificially from what its sensor guess is happening.
>What about shooting guns?
The sound of the gun mechanism will have to travel through your gun, your suit, the boots, the ground.
>Hitting objets?
The sound of a bullet hitting the ground will have to travel through the ground, your boots, your suit, up to your ears.
>how does lunar dust interact?
I know very little trivia about it, but Moon IS apparently rather magnetic, so maybe you use magnetic field to create bubble of dust that frick up sensors...
>how would you create cover/concealment?
Give up any hope of long distance stealth, it really is impossible in space, any human/technological being will generate signal that cannot possibly be missed even by cheap sensors. DO NOT BET ON STEALTH.
I would rather go with disguise swarms of decoys or purposefully overwhelming the enemy sensors.
ex:
The enemy visor look for all IR signature => you have 20 drones meant to point (inoffensive laser) at anything that look artificial. Instead of seeing an human-shape, every sensors see dozen of blur and try to deduce which one move the most like an human.
Meanwhile your combat suit have stupid looking giant shoulder pad because it is actually a cooling system that redirect your heat to look like a standard drone.
Do this with enough wavelength and eventually you'll go back to using visible light.
>children of a dead earth
>lasers
You know the powerplants required for those are jus as ridiculously unrealistic as Star Trek/Wars, right?
>You know the powerplants required for those are jus as ridiculously unrealistic as Star Trek/Wars, right?
You do know we are already using laser right now and armoring a spaceship is jus as ridiculously unrealistic as Star Trek/Wars, right?
Laser are a very realistic choice for space weapons, enough that -sorry- you would look like an idiot for saying that on PrepHole
ChoDE do take liberty with the maths (especially railgun), but any spaceship with nuclear propulsion will be able to at least charge supercondensator, meanwhile the rocket equation will make you happy if you have more than tinfoil armor, let alone be able to protect the many fragile bit that will stick out of your spaceship.
ChoDE is limited in that realistically, AI would deduce by brute force the optimal design and space missiles can be far more creative than on Earth, imagine what is basically a Bola rotating fast while making the distance vary, so that (with observation/processing lag) it become extremely hard to aim a (cheap) counter shell.
Depending on the math we may not even have conventional "warship", it could be all laser satellites & missiles swarm.
>Supercondensator
German or French?
Supercapacitor in English anon
Is it too late to pretend I'm fighting a French autocorrect or something?
And Chode is into fantasy armor and engines.
The developer himself said he cheated a bit so all weapons type would get some use
Lasers in chode are inferior to missiles until you get into fantasy powerplants.
Didn't read your post.
Blades only in the habitats because of old traditions. As the conflict escalates, people ditch traditions.
>mars is getting more and more independant from earth and want better h3 mining spots. Disagreements and situation escalates in a localised conflict on the moon.
Embarrassing. I hope you are a child.
Come up with something better big boi
Space guns need to generate as little heat as possible, since vacuum (or near vacuum) has minimal thermal dissipation. This ironically means that laser weapons are not an actual feasible method of destruction, unless you had not serious "thermal clips" technology. I'd guess most space guns would shoot kinetic projectiles launched magnetically, and you would still need to change components mid battle.
using electromagnetism to accelerate shit generates a lot of heat too. Outside of the obvious just use missiles I think projectile weapons will still use combustion and will just have to figure out how to deal with the heat, probably focusing heavily on low fire rate high accuracy/stopping power solutions.
Space weapons will be gyrojets
This, but unironically. It's probably going to be a two stage gyrojet, with the first one being a mechanical launcher.
>mid firefight
>your suit receives a tiny tear from shrapnel
>instant depressurisation leading to your lungs collapsing and your chest cavity exploding
>your suit receives a tiny tear from shrapnel
>instant depressurisation leading to your lungs collapsing and your chest cavity exploding
Even current non-combat-oriented EVA suits would take a relatively long time (tens of minutes) to decompress from a "tiny tear" and depressurization won't make your chest cavity explode.
Well in this setting, everyone would have heavy power armor with micro rcs thrusters everywhere and with multiple redundancy systems to seal tears and other minor damage
Anon, have you ever heard of the idea of a compartmentalised pressure suit.
The idea being that your face wouldn't immediately depressurised because your suit got fricked.
I think also in elite dangerous they use compression instead of pressure, the only actual pressure vessel is the helmet, the skin is otherwise compressed and held close by a material instead of air, meaning that you don't need to lug all that unnecessary air around. Any gaps caused by bullets hitting would be effectively the same as earth, only with harder to seal wounds of course.
All body hair was also genetically removed at that point s discomfort wasn't an issue.
Taking this further, you could theoretically even remove the nose and ears via surgery, and thus compress the face pretty easily, if have to use a faceformed plate mask, therefore the only part of the body with an atmosphere are the eyes and nosehole/mouth, with the rest of the face compressed hard to 1atmoaphere like here on earth.
In this scenario breathing would be similar to being underwater with a breath mask.
The only worry then about decompression would be avoiding being shot in the same areas that would kill you naturally anyway. Maybe have two tubes in case that reach around the side of the face to a small extra bottle on your nape for emergencies in case the main that goes down your front neck to the small of your back gets cut off.
Could do a cyberpunk and just surgically disconnect the lungs entirely from the mouth to a neck apparatus.
also earth is going to have such a massive advantage in a conflict taking place on the moon it's not funny. if it was between multiple factions that had territory on the moon then sure, but if it's a earth/mars split mars will not be able to put boots on the moon in anything more then a surgical strike capacity and even that's stretching it, unless you want the earth navy to be either very incompetent, very underfunded, or make some political treaty thing for it to happen.
Earth always has an advantage no matter what. It's literally Earth. It's got all the industry, countless scientists because of its population size a breathable atmosphere and readily farmable land. Even if Mars or the moon was literally a 2nd Earth, it still would be disadvantaged by the lack of heavy industry and population.
Yes I agree but think about it in another way. Earth is an overpopulated shithole all on UBI where lots of places are inhospitable due to wet bulb effects, plastic ridden oceans, lots of natural ressources depleted, constant water wars and high technology gimped by "muh ethics"
While mars may not have the population and heavy industries of Earth, it benefits of having a much more united and commited society, more relaxed robotics/AI laws, higher automation, higher education/rich people, everyone in the society contributes (no UBI leachers as on earth), always will have an advantage of space exploration due to lower gravity, less atmosphere and closer proximity to the asteroid belt and outer solar system. See it this way, they min maxed their whole society on space exploration/mining, robotics and terraforming. They don't waste their energy in making non essential things, a much more utilitarian society (think of it as space china)
China's advantages stem from its large population, which generates more scientists/engineers and a large labor force that can exploit the countries resources.
Mars is more like space Australia in your scenario. Lots of resources, lots of space controlled by one government, highly developed tech sector. But a very limited population, thanks to a lack of the specific critical resources for sustaining life.
I would imagine that battles will take place under the lunar surface, CQB style because they would want all the bases hidden from orbital bombardments.
Such a base would feature a bunch of pop up turrets, mazes of bunkers and vertical launchers.
To walk on the surface of the moon would be a suicide as there is no cover whatsoever and whoever holds space superiority would snipe you.
"Realistically", the space navies would be king and you mostly wanna focus on that, but if you look at the Pacific War, there are always stories to be enjoyed by the invading boots on the islands.
Maybe write a Kill Zone style invasion where the defenders were taken by surprise, so capturing and activating the moon defense batteries or whatever become to main point of the battle.
>mars is getting more and more independant from earth
Oh, yawn. You have already outed yourself as 110 IQ and not worthy of my imagination.
Mars will always be independent. It literally makes no sense for Earth to have an interest in it. It has no resources. It's not a colonial sugar plantation. Literally why and what the frick. Maybe in 2700 after it has been the industrial hub of the solar system for 400 years (due to it having an atmosphere) -- maybe then. But not near future ("mid future" to you maybe) Mars.
Come up with a MOTHERFRICKING new idea why there's a conflict, to save your LIVES.
Here's an idea: Mars are human purists, whereas Earth breeding new and stranger transhumans is becoming concerning. So they try to save the species, with kinetic means.
They could also have allies on Earth.
As said, I will not help with the Moon scenario. At least you did not call it "Luna". I will help when you have rectified the setting.
ONE OUNCE OF CREATIVITY. JUST ONE.
Mars is a home of an outlawed cult. Now Earth govs want to raid her to take her sons to trial for "wrongs".
> Their crime
Daring to stick to the old ways. War ensues
> Think if the Kings of Europe tried to punish all the puritan/religious colonies in the Americas
Or if you feel the American Revolution-esque war is too dull, you can go for the War of the Vendee-Moses-Taiwan-Finland type tale
> Earth is in turmoil because of revolution
> people are in exodus to Mars over politics, culture, and religion
> A generation later, Earth is ruled by a Josef Stalin-Mao Zedong like tyrant
> Tyrant wants to take over Mars out of ideological hatred for the people that fled to Mars and their children: Martians
> Martians, or generation born on Mars, doesn't know what suffering their grandparents went through on Earth, so there's a gen gap
> But they now must fight a huge invasion by Earth's Grand Armada (Spanish Armada in Space)
> The small but determined force of young Martian heroes are called "The Sons of Mars" or "Children of Mars", something corny like that
ensue
>epic space opera
>land battles on Mars, Moons (Mars has a couple moons), and Earth
> raids (rescue, sabotage, gather secret plots and plans)
> duels (light sabers, laser pistols, hand to hand)
> traps (bombs, mines, ambush, lure, bait)
I like what you are going for. If one wants to be consequential the entire fiction could be stylized in the manner of the 1600s, with people wearing fancy pieces and some of the elements of the prose.
Reminds me of the Terra Ignota series, which is set like 500? years in the future after globohomosexual has won, but is written like a novel by Voltaire or by some other satirical 1700s writers, including some prose (but not orthography, obviously).
So you get mad when people call new York New York anon
>Come up with a MOTHERFRICKING new idea, he spergs
>like transhumanism
>Mars are human purists, whereas Earth breeding new and stranger transhumans is becoming concerning. So they try to save the species, with kinetic means.
the other way around seems more likely to me
I predict Mars will have booming genetic modification research and will use it in practice because there is no concern about GMOs escaping into nature and hybridizing
It makes sense to modify humans in a way to survive outside the domes with only oxygen masks, to have radiation resistance, no health issues living in 0.4G and things like that.
>survive outside the domes without oxygen masks
what kind of 'survive' are you talking about here? if you mean 'can be exposed for a few dozen seconds or minutes without dying' then yeah, sure, but if you modified someone to be able to go for a nice relaxing walk up olympus mons they probably wouldn't be very human any more, in the sense that'd probably suffer in earth-like conditions.
of course this depends on the tech level of the setting but given that you've said 2100s-2200s i'm going off that
Turn the Moon into a Death Star
Martians must hide in dens from the Sun ray
Legitimately a good idea for every basically every offworld colony.
>Low upmass
>Reusable equipment used to make ut can make 5 or 500 shelters
>Protects from radiation
>Protects from meteorites
>Durable against accidents and intentional damage
>Low upmass
Whats upmass?
Not much, whats up with you?
any conflict on the Moon will be fought by robots, humans and their puny and fragile habitats
robots will be of two types - those that can fight onl during the day, and those that can fight during the night. Nuclear and solar. Some robots will depend on their nuclear mothership robots that transmit energy in microwaves to smaller platforms.
Didn't finish my idea. So in these floating research/scientist bases, they do crazy genetic manipulation in order to build the Human of tomorrow. So Venus is genetic engineering and Mars is more like a fusion of man and machine. Think of venus being adeptus custodes and mars as adeptus mechanicus, sort of
>I was sure the big ass magnet was for the atmosphere AND solar radiation? Like mention in this article
Different anon but
is right.
The magnet won't protect the population, it's to prevent atmosphere loss, and if you were capable of CARRYING A PLANET WORTH OF ATMOSPHERE, you wouldn't care about losing such a negligible amount.
(you would probably not care about colonizing Mars either, the only unique resources it have is its 0.3G gravity)
The article you post is "technically" correct in that the magnet will technically also reduce what harm the colonist, but it's not a 100% and have no impact at all on the non-ionized radiation which will be the most harmful
Keep in mind that Mars is overused as hell in fiction because it's cheaper to play space-far-west than build mock-up and 3D representation for an O'neil space colony.
Oniel cylinders are moronic imo.
You want all that air segmented off. Large volumes of air is not really valuable at all outside of aesthetics and reducing building mass.
Elite dangerous was pretty good for that in that they skipped the whole "center has to have air" in parts of it. But realistically even in pic rel such large volumes of gas present such a large atmosphere loss risk there would be barriers in place to stop them. Even they had to magic a barrier to maintain atmosphere in their docking ports for no reason instead of leaving it vacuum.
They also grow high waste plants like corn in 1g in fields for basically no reason when flying drone hydroponic machines with higher density food in 0.05g makes far more sense.
I don't disagree but you gave yourself several reasons to prefer a large open interior.
There's very valuable reasons to prefer a big open space.
- construction cost / economy of scales
- reducing complexity as you have less walls to worry about
- improving flexibility as you have more solutions to move stuff around using cranes built in the 0G portion of the habitat.
- more room to expand
- it also let you install more equipment in a place you can work in without spacesuit
- "aesthetic" is pretty fricking important when it is everything you own. I would look forward the 0G space hotel at the center of the colony
Also you don't need to worry too much about air hole according to many smart person because you wouldn't lose that much, unless you nuke the colony but that's something else
>Elite Dangerous
Is very cheesy on so many aspect your point lose in value.
Elite is cheesy but it was the only example I could find that didn't look moronic.
Its use of material pressure suits as apposed to air pressure is rather unused in a lot of scifi despite it fixing a lot of the issues they have with spacesuits (In scifi).
Back to the point
Large open vacuum areas make sense, but large air filled areas don't really. We're talking about things like O'niel cylinders. Effectively moronic.
>Economies of scale
Ok so just economy of scale long corridors with airtight doors. You don't need a 1km tall air space and manufacturing 500 l40mxw10mxh5m boxes is just generally going to be cheaper, sorry.
That small reduction in wall mass is solved by having way less air weight to lug around.
>Weight holding cranes
>Needed
>In space
Lol lmao, maybe a 0G crane, but you can do that in the manufacturing habitat manufactured in a specialised room you built that's w50xl50xh10
>Less complexity
>Giant wall that requires millions of tons of cylindrical metal to hold all the weight and pressure of the millions of tons of air
>Can't afford walls every 50 meters
>Get hit by meteorite, it compromises your entire habitat
>Everything dies
Lmao
Aesthetic isn't a reason sorry anon, you can do most of that aesthetic stuff with a see-through roof instead of 2km tall tube of useless air.
Probably going to be circular tubes over boxes but I get your point
Regions of parkland or open space need not be more than a couple of stories tall, since humans can't fly up there anyway. Put a fake sky ceiling or open glass up there and it'll look basically the same.
The classic 2km tall atmosphere o'niel is not really viable I agree.
>cranes
Not him, but there's a reason we use robotic arms in space. You want positive control of the mass. You might be able to move 10 tons by yourself in 0g, but stopping it once it's up to speed is another thing.
Yeah that's what I meant by 0g cranes anon. This homie thought we were building skyscrapers in 1g for some reason.
>Elite is cheesy but it was the only example I could find that didn't look moronic.
Point, I guess Standford Torus wouldn't suit your airlock addiction.
>Large open vacuum areas make sense, but large air filled areas don't really. We're talking about things like O'niel cylinders.
>Effectively moronic.
Let's stay polite for once, O'Neill type colony are obviously endgame design you create after you are used to building in space.
The defining factor will be your production capability. If you produce everything on Earth the size limit is what you can launch and assemble in space.
If you are producing the parts in space, you really aren't limited by size.
>You don't need a 1km tall air space and manufacturing 500 l40mxw10mxh5m boxes
You just don't plan far ahead enough.
Your block type colony cannot be expended easily. You could add more block horizontally, or smaller box vertically, but these would require to stop the colony rotation and you'll be limited by standardized airlocks connection.
>air weight
>air pressure
Effectively negligible compared to the weight of your extra walls&ceiling.
>Weight holding cranes
>Needed
>In space
Did you forget your colony will be spinning?
Not counting how all is attached to the central spire.
>complexity
- one wall to check with less opening in, near everything can be checked from the inside
versus
- more equal walls to check, with hundred of airlocks, need to go more frequently in space to check between the blocks.
You effectively tripled the mass & potential points of failures.
I really don't exclude the "mass produced modular box", it WILL come first and does allow to sacrifice a block in case of problem.
But as habitat goes, O'neil colony is what you will do if you can, for maximum flexibility on top of comfort.
>crane
As "him", that's something easily solved with more cables on smart-winch.
I don't diss robotic arms, but cable strength scale more easily. That's why we made suspended bridges.
Block style colony can be expanded far more easily. If you want gravity it is very likely only a small portion of the space, and it's unlikely to be near 1g. 3d 0G habitats are just more movement efficient.
At endgame you might as well build magic castles in space, it's not really an argument.
Air weight is significant at the o'niel scales were talking about. Short walls and ceilings are not really comparible.
Arguing about being limited by standardisation when you want to build an o'niel cylinder is a bit of a stretch don't you think? Considering the support you'd need for the build basically being the objects I describe.
Plants grown in fields let alone 1g is highly innefficient honestly. If you want to know what space growth looks like you look at scandanavian fruit production. Long corridors, lamps. Individually potted, automatic hydeoponics, harvested by robots on wheels/flying drones, dependant on gravity.
Do you think your cylinder needs to permanently rotate or something? The amount of energy/counterweight it would take to spin up your design in the first place is rather absurd.
Even on your o'niel, things will be built in 0g and moved into place with wheels, or otherwise installed in 0g. The idea of skyscraping using conventional methods in the space age is silly.
Tripping the points of failure is fine if every failure is not outright catastrophic for the entire dome like an o'niel. The risks are just not the same, so more failures are arguably more acceptable.
Damaged sections are easily replaced, and mass venting atmosphere is not even a major worry with sectioned ships.
If you wanted 1g, you will probably have individual pods with counter pods spinning on a tandem along a truss. There is very little likelyhood or reason for a huge 1g space with such large vulnerabilities like an o'niel outside of fantasy and old sci-fi.
>a bit of a stretch don't you think?
Standardization into small block do not necessarily translate into efficiency, it's the difference between having 100km2 of surface to work on, and strictly delimited 100m2 block with only a standardized number of access points.
Your standardization is like Mao's Great leap, forcing everyone to produce on a small scale because you believe conformity/uniformity is strength.
>At endgame you might as well build magic castles in space, it's not really an argument.
>[...]
>Do you think your cylinder needs to permanently rotate or something?
Look who is changing the rules.
If technological level, gravity need, and context isn't relevant anymore, then why are you still a meatbag? Upload yourself in the Matrix already.
Your arguments could be seen as an attempt to cop-out.
Form will follow function.
Space-mining site can be soulless cubes you pay people to get in.
Space-habitat will aim for maximum efficiency (with comfort as a feature) and O'neill colonies people pay to get in are much better candidate for 1G.
>Air weight is significant at the o'niel scales were talking about
Bullshit, you clearly didn't check the math.
Air is light to begin with, in the center of the colony where it may not rotate along the rest the only pressure it exert is trying to expand and we sure don't live in high pressure.
They expected it to work with steel and have pastoral landscape with soils on top, and that was the "3 island" type with windows.
https://space.nss.org/the-colonization-of-space-gerard-k-o-neill-physics-today-1974/
>ctrl+F
>psi
>Tripping the points of failure is fine
We can be here forever trying to imagine biased catastrophe scenario while assuming the other side is incompetent.
Assuming perfect competence, tripling point of failure mean tripling the checks, it's just less efficient. You are also making it harder to access/fix the problems.
Void separation =/= all problems can be confined
Small space = high pressure explosion
(me)
Last bits
>Even on your o'niel, things will be built in 0g and moved into place with wheels, or otherwise installed in 0g.
Why do you think I insist over having unrestricted pressurized access to the 0G center?
>The idea of skyscraping using conventional methods in the space age is silly.
You are the one thinking backward old man, we are starting from the sky and scrapping the ground.
Using tensile strength instead of compression you reduce the mass, and you don't need to make the wall airtight like you insist.
O'neil design is just the logical conclusion of increasing colony habitable space and removing unnecessary walls.
>O'niel cylinders
>Efficient
Honestly this entire post is bait.
Circular designs using steel are viable sure but o'niels with huge open spaces for "giant mirrors to let in the light" through giant mono glass structures to light up an innefficient city that looks like a generic earth one is a dumb idea that would never get off the ground (quite literally) and you know it.
Not him but O'neils are efficient compared to planets by several hundred times. I can see you're just fricking about, but I'll prove it for you anyway for the hell of it.
-Take an arbitrary, hypothetical O'neil ring that's 2000km in diameter and 300km wide (this is a silly cheese wheel shape just because I like Halo btw).
-Internal area is 1.885 million km^2.
-We'll make it strong by giving it 100 metric tons per square meter of internal area.
-So the total mass is 1.9*10^17kg
The largest known asteroid in our solar system, Ceres, has a mass of 8.958*10^20kg. We're gonna turn this one asteroid into more cheese wheels.
-8.958*10^20/1.9*10^17 = 4714 rings
-4714*1.885 mil km^2 = 8.886 billion km^2
This is 60x the land area of Earth, created from an object 1/13 the size and 0.00015th the mass of Earth. O'niels are the most efficient choice of habitat if you want to have simulated gravity.
Pipe dream
So you're just gonna build thousands of cheese wheels out of Ceres' water content. k
But no the other hand, no existent material could survive the stresses of rotating a 2000 km ring to create 1g artgrav, so I guess it doesn't matter even if you build them out of water. Scifimagic is involved regardless.
Naturally the mass-ring conversion process wouldn't be 100% efficient as it is on paper. However, the water content is kind of needed, for drinking, for O2 and H2 production, etc.
>existent material could survive the stresses of rotating a 2000 km ring
I wasn't calculating that, but I don't agree with you. My cheese wheel shape is not ideal for structural integrity, yet there's ways to strengthen it. Ideally you'd want smaller, cylindrical shapes. Large diameter cylinders disks can be strengthened with spokes. The structural mass of the spokes can decrease along the length because most of the material in the spoke is at lower gravity. You get savings if you use tapered tethers as spokes. However, it's still less efficient to strengthen large o'neil's with spokes than it is to save spoke mass in favor of making smaller cylinders.
material could survive the stresses of rotating a 2000 km ring
>I wasn't calculating that, but I don't agree with you
Calculate it or shut the frick up. Word of warning, you will lose some respect for your favorite science fantasy franchise. Halos are moronic.
For a 2000km diameter ring spinning a 1 rotation every 33mins for effectively 1g you could use steel.
Tangential velocity would be a b***h in some circumstances though.
>gaslight
>nitpick
>intentional typo
I guess you like looking like an idiot.
O'neill colonies are just the logical conclusion of rotating space colony design, you can fill it with buildings of/at any height as you wish and the mirrors are optional and you know it.
Trees are useless plants for o'niels imo.
Not him but continuing to counter your counter to my points earlier.
I will point out your earlier comments of "weight of walls" were off completely, considering all the weight will be lifted by any central strut and counterweight.
Sky scrapers are bacially a useless addition, any large concentration of mass will be neat the center of a O'niel where there is less gravity. Effectively a smaller tube within the larger tube.
Any worries about "weight" of supporting material is a waste of time since it will just be supported from the central section. You will never see the 0G section of an o'niel empty.
Your giant open spaces won't happen Hernando. All artists representation of o'niels are all done by morons. Every atmosphere within an o'niel will at it's very highest be 20m by 500m by 500m in recreational areas There will never a need to have a huge atmosphere you can fly in, you will forever be pressed between two steel plates forever.
Have a plug-in cities, that's what you'll be fighting for/in.
>o'niel
You are such a child.
It's obvious you are trying to exclude any scenario where mankind would build for mass living space in 1G and come to the logical conclusion of leaving the center pressurized and accessible, making it easier to rearrange the interior without needing heavier vacuum-rated walls & ceiling, airlocks or being constrained by blocks size.
It doesn't matter if latter you decide to build ground-scrappers building suspended from the central section, it only get easier since you've made access & construction easier, you could even move entire building like that.
Even if you decided to live in space-Kwoloon city it will be easier to do it without needing every walls built up to code.
>Hernando
Why the spanish name anon?
>All artists representation of o'niels are all done by morons
But only child morons like you use them as strawmen to pretend more practical variation don't count.
>There will never a need to
>because I say so
Your argumentation in a nutshell, yet any context were mankind have the means and needs to build 1G space habitat would come to the logical conclusion of building the pressurized area as large as possible to save money down the line.
>you will forever be pressed between two steel plates forever.
Thanks, if I get to live forever I'll make sure to build a comfy space-can full of air and fly in it pressed between the steel plates of my aircraft, laughing at your appeal to nihilism.
Your image related is relevant to o'niels, only really 0g since the concept is about 3d accessibility, which you don't get in an o'niel
The very idea of using generic cranes at all is so dumb honestly you have to have got it from that image.
>Child
Lmao, you're posts this far have been nuh uhhhhhh you expect me to engage with you with any sort of class good luck
There is nothing easy about rearranging a 1g interior. Again if you're referring to your pic related, that'll be what 0g might theoretically look like not something mirroring here.
>Worrying about walls built up to code
>Wants suspended skyscrapers that totally don't have to be up code or anything
You don't need the entire interior to be 100% leak proof you just need it leak enough proof. This is not as hard and in your theroeticals worrying about "checking the walls" is not really as huge a deal, consider you will have robots doing that job anyway.
>Wants to be able to fly around when space is right there and VR will be better than anything thanks to weightlessness. You will be a chinksect in a box or a worker doing maintenance.
Honestly at this point you have to realise you're going to be limited, that silly pipedreams are dumb, and utilitarian design will become the vast majority of all space habitats, also noone will trust you to fly in a delicate system like an O'niel either they'll just tell you to stop being moronic and go planetside.
You can create hypothetical open cylinders maybe while they're being built and before spin up, but otherwise they're just not gonna happen. Were talking grounded humanity here where o'niels get worn out.
So what about the tactical advantage of breaking an enemy soldier's visor while in the vacuum of space?
Not them but I can take a stab at explaining
> Big city like magnetic structures are built between Earth and Mars Lagrange point to act as magnetic deflectors to protect Mars from harmful cosmic rays.
>I think instead of a big structure, it could be instead a swarm of smaller magnets working together thus having more redundancy, easier to build and easier for maintenance
1) Its in the Sun-Mars L1 Lagrange point - there are no points of stability between Earth and Mars
3) Its there because the L1 point is by definition always between the Sun and Mars.
2) Its there because L1 requires basically no station keeping unlike pretty much any other place between the two objects
4) Its there because you can make a larger "shadow" for the same strength by being closer to the source.
Essentially it can't be anywhere else and at most, the closest thing you can get to quantity replacing strength is a mesh of nodes at L1, but they're still located directly next to each other and work in concert.
You're not giving Mars a magnetic field, you're putting in the wake of one to protect it from the Sun. This means that you have limited protection from SEPs, but won't do anything against the GCRs coming from basically everywhere else and they make up the bulk of the radiation risk on Mars (SEPs cause big spikes in rate but lose out on the average because of their sporadic nature)
Now, the Linear No Threshold model of radiation exposure is basically bullshit, and all our safety standards are based on it, and then are very conservative on top of that. So you likely have a lot of wiggle room anyway, but you're nowhere near Earth level exposures.
Could the magnetic structure protect only a small area from cosmic radiation? Instead of protecting the whole planet, maybe just small regions at the time?
What about running a superconductor from the North Pole to the South Pole, as if connecting two terminals of a battery, then pump an absolutely enormous amount of power into it (from either space based solar or fusion) and use resistive heating to re-melt the entire core
Control over the moon is nuclear weapons 2.0 since it lets you bombard the earth's surface at will with no hope of retaliation and easily intercept and destroy anything in orbit. It's also the natural center point for large scale asteroid mining, which is effectively the only reason to go to space in the first place.
The most direct comparison should e Antarctica, lots of countries have bases full of scientists that are even open to the public during certain times, and then more remote military radar/missile installations, all staffed by small groups of rotating seasonal staff.
Plus dust storms(the moon is entirely covered in electrostatically charged clouds of hyper fine dust) kicked up by any major activity emulating whiteouts, and many areas with perpetual darkness at the poles.
Then add in massive industrial zones centered around artificially made impact craters turned into open pit mines with TITANIC scale machinery that dwarfs even earth mining equipment because of the lower gravity.
Things should be mostly peaceful, and the only possible cause for violence should be either the rare policing action if someone goes nuts up there or political espionage/sabotage. A hot war on the moon would be like a nuclear war, and the only possible way a country could get away with it would be if they planned on going all the way and taking 100% control of space by threatening mass orbital bombardment of earth.
In that case it would be about lunar forces fighting to stop the orbital interception capability of the offending party by capturing/destroying their launch and/or sensor platforms, which are presumably scattered across the lunar surface much like nuclear silos.
Most of the war will actually take place before this though, as decades are spend smuggling weapons, digging secret bunkers and launch tubes, and positioning sleeper agents for a coordinated first strike.
Oh, also lunar orbits and artillery will be wonky as frick because the mass anomalies are so extreme. Hitting a target at distance will be basically IMPOSSIBLE for a human and requires a high resolution database of orbital scans.
And the moon rings quite violently, so you'd be able to hear/feel explosions from surprisingly far away, maybe even on the other side of it if it's powerful enough.
A couple moonquake level impacts will probably disturb the moon dust and produce enough other debris to cloud out significant parts of the surface for at least a little while, so contrary to what some other anons have said stealth might play a significant part in ground assaults, and also give a reason for ground assault to happen in the first place, being able to avoid detection and interception.
>A couple moonquake level impacts will probably disturb the moon dust and produce enough other debris to cloud out significant parts of the surface for at least a little while
Huh, I was under the impression it wouldn't stay up for very long because there's no atmosphere. I thought it would dissipate quite fast by analyzing the dust behavior of the Apollo moon buggy
The dust is charged, it isn't resting on itself in a pile, it's more like a fluid or quicksand, it's slippery and springy not hard. The apollo mission specifically picked a more solid area so the lander wouldn't slide into a mile deep sinkhole or carve out a giant shaft with it's rockets and get buried.
Let's say there's a big explosion, how would the dust and debris react? Will it fall to the ground fast or stay up for a while?
Neither, it would SPLASH like water and form big moving waves and ripples that travel for hundreds of miles, bouncing off or flowing over obstacles. And this would happen all over the place, not just the blast zone since a big enough explosion can ring the moon like a bell. Think of it like being able to cause massive earthquakes/mudslides/tsunamis/etc... at will with bombs.
The more solid portions will be mostly unaffected, aside from possibly being buried, but all the dusty areas will rearrange themselves significantly. And given that lunar dust is THE construction material of choice on the moon, basically all the concrete processing facilities will be buried like egyptian pyramids while any underground bunkers now have hundreds of feet of dust blocking all their exits.
Ohhhh sounds really cool like big sandstorms right? I'll take note of this thanks my guy
Sort of, it doesn't linger in the air though as there's no diffusion, as I said it's more like water or mud. But the end result is very similar, worse even since moon dust is like statically charged glue so everyone is going to get the pompey treatment and be turned into living statues unless they've got specially designed dust proof vehicles equipped to dig/swim their way out of quicksand. Probably since it's the moon your bets bet would be to jump over the waves or try to outrun then. But then again since it's the moon the waves will be VERY tall and VERY fast. Like a mile high wall of sand flying at you at supersonic speed.
That sounds so cool as sort of an environmental hazard in the map, will make the players more cautious in using heavy weapons. Do you have any videos or article to better illustrate what you are saying?
>with TITANIC scale machinery
Comically doesn't work in a realistic setting because of the square cube law and heat development. Your equipment will melt.
>skyscrapers melt because they're too big
This is you.
>its a 9/11 conspiratard
No, you moron. The Moon has no atmosphere. Do you understand how cooling shit works? Usually via convection.
You see those giant white panels. Those are the radiators of the ISS. They dissipate away the heat. It's called radiative cooling and it's pathetic.
Is the ISS a titanic industrial equipment?
Only line of sight radio without sats in the sky. This makes peaks strategic points even for communications.
>tfw no muv luv lunar war vn
Anons, were moving away from the topic.
Discussion has demonstrated a need for armor on the surface to survive the frag environment but obviously there's no air.
How do you power a tank without it? Electric light tanks? Huge compressed air tanks? Laser distributed power?
Considering OP's setting, micro fusion engines? Nuclear batteries?
Not him but would a nuclear battery work for a heavy vehicle? I thought they were low power but super long lifespan?
Don't forget the horrifying lunar dust problems.
The fine lunar dust gets kicked up very violently from retro thrusters slowing a ship down for landing, or even just a higher speed impact. It may seem harmless but it is huge concern for future lunar development. That dust gets everywhere, is razor sharp, highly abrasive and conductive enough to short electrical gear it gets into, plus the lack of air means once it kicks ups it stays up and traveling for a very long time. To add to the list it easily gets tracked into living areas where is messes with people lungs. It so fine that it is hard to even see, if you see the dust then you're likely already taking damage before the visible parts even get to you.
An aggressive retro thruster flyby would make a big plume that would terrorized the whole surface. This is why proposed colonized lunar landing zone designs have lots of requirements to keep the dust under control, a huge problem that is still being worked on. Many designs have a very large pad area that is solid surrounded by slopped walls to deflect the gas up and away from the ground. Often with a hill or something big between it and the based for more protection.
Landing at any uncontrolled site would be consider very irresponsible and make things complicated for everyone on the moon. I don't even want to think of how much dust an explosion going off is going to make. All this talk of artillery is bordering on mutually assured destruction of anything on the surface as the cost for dust protection would cripple any operation as everything is basically sand blasted constantly.
So I would expect very strict rules of war which would push the war into underground bunker fighting as there are just too many things that can go wrong on the surface. Mars has a similar dust problem, but the atmosphere and gravity dampens it so it will calm down after awhile provided the Mars weather doesn't make it worse.
>using guns on the moon
>not using hand held claymore
The pdf this is from is a very interesting read. NASA and the US military were fully expecting moon battles with the USSR
>The base would be defended against Soviet overland attack by manually fired weapons:
>Unguided Davy Crockett rockets with low-yield nuclear warheads
>Conventional Claymore mines modified to puncture pressure suits
When did America lose its balls?
that all sounds unbelievably based