Will nooks be the standard loadout in space warfare? I'm tired of this pussyfooting around.

Will nooks be the standard loadout in space warfare?
I'm tired of this pussyfooting around. Let's go get off this planet so we are allowed to NOOK each other again.

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Lasers.
    No air to scatter them = high range and high efficiency
    Able to be powered by on board near reactors
    Space is the perfect medium for lasers

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Nuclear* reactors. Obviously.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Pretty sure, based on my research, that lasers do in fact attenuate in space (inverse square law applies), and are relegated for a close to medium defense role. Plus, lasers are ablative, so damage is slow and unsuitable against armored targets, like ships.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        With collimator/ focusing that's not a concern. You can refocus a laser based on rangefinding. They have absurd range in a vacuum

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Absurd range compared to planetary warfare, or absurd range relative to space warfare, because 10000 km can be like nothing in space lol.

          Also, can the slow ablative damage be solved without hypothetical sci fi alien beams? (without using a nuke explosion; reactor = okay).

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Absurd compared to planetary.
            But with the output of a nuclear reactor, and using a short wavelength laser, you'd be able to heat up the hull of a ship pretty effectively. Sure, reflective and ablative coatings can slow it, but in a vacuum uv, x ray and gamma lasers aren't gonna be affected by anything more than beam diffraction. No atmospheric absorption.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              The problem with that is, as that anon pointed out, that attenuation means over distance, your laser becomes less of the pinpoint you want and expands out to 'minute of ISS,' and that's just the relatively 'short' range of sea level to the ISS from the last time I did napkin math on this.
              You'd need a pretty impressive ability to adjust the focus on the fly, and remember that you're having to blast several times as much energy at the 'muzzle' than the target will receive.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          The problem then becomes the size of the mirror you need to actually focus/refocus that laser, the weight of the reactor you need to power it, and the weight of the cooling set up you need to make sure that reactor doesn't melt the ship. Play some COADE.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          search for "coherence length". laser beams tend to loose coherency after a certain distance, which ruins their ability to damage materials. this applies regardless of the atmosphere present or not

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      space combat will be dominated by kinetic weapons, whether it's casaba howitzers (nooks) or rail/coil guns powered by nook reactors
      lasers/particle accelerators/beam weapons of any kind are generally garbage

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Rail guns in space make even less sense than they already do. Heat retention is way fricking worse in space.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          heat dissipation in space is extremely complicated and the problem is not limited to railguns, it applies to basically any weapon or power source
          nuclear shaped charge launched projectiles are the only weapons I can think of that would be effective at the extreme ranges of space combat that we could build with current tech

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            It's acually pretty easy as long as you have spare fuel to dump.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Able to be powered by on board near reactors
      Not even. I would imagine a 50 kw laser can easily disable a rocket propulsion/body/etc. You don't even need a large power, Tesla car battery for example is 100 kwh. That means it can operate 100kw power for 1 hour. A laser only needs to fire for 3-5 seconds. If it has a 10 second cooldown period, it means the laser can be fired 4 times (for 5 sec burst) per minute. That is just 0.27 kwh. 100 kwh battery/0.27 kwh ~= 360 hours of continuous (with 10 sec cooldown) firing 360 hours = 15 days straight.

      Thats just with a single Tesla car battery firing a 50 kw laser

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Why not both? Nuclear-pumped X-ray laser missile is where is at.
      The issue with nukes in space is that there is no air, so no shockwaves; the nuke have to directly hit the enemy. Sure, you can add fragment sleeves, but why stop at fragments? There are Casaba Howitzers which basically are Nuclear shaped charge shooting a plasma lance, or Nuclear explosively-shaped penetrator.
      But lets say you want Laser's pinpoint accuracy, range, and fast-as-light speed for your nukes, then get Nuclear-pumped X-Ray Laser warhead.
      So the warhead would have an array of single-use lasing tubes, each can be aimed at separate targets. The beauty of this is that you can pump in the power of a straight-up nuclear explosion to your lasing tubes to output laser beams much more powerful than beams from shipboard laser cannons; because of course you wouldn't want your ship's laser cannons to explode due to the sheer power input. No need to worry about capacitors, cooling system, and radiators; if you can just dump the whole nuclear energy away from the ship and direct it to the target.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Lasers.
      >No air to scatter them = high range and high efficiency
      They don't experience atmospheric scattering and absorption, but they still diverge fairly quickly. https://www.rp-photonics.com/rayleigh_length.html for a quick rundown on effective range.
      Note that current military lasers operate in the infrared spectrum, and rayleigh range is proportional to frequency. Infrared is thus rather suboptimal for range, but good luck making a militarily usable ultraviolet laser.

      >Will nooks be the standard loadout in space warfare?

      A large portion of a nuke's destructive power comes from the blast wave.
      You need a medium to propagate a blast wave.
      Nukes will be significantly less effective in vacuum.
      Unironically, fragmentation warheads would be more effective, because
      >fragments will shred spacecraft hulls
      >fragments in space will not slow down due to gravity and air resistance

      Conservation of energy is a thing.
      There is no blast wave in the conventional sense, but the mass that'd normally create that blast (the parts of the bomb not outright converted into energy) remains. That's a lot of very fast nuclei expanding spherically into space, and if a few terajoule worth of kinetic energy impact a spacecraft in the form of nuclei previously contained in a bomb, it's not going to be meaningfully different from being hit by a particle beam. Depending on the distance to the detonation, the effect can be anywhere between a completely irradiated spacecraft giving off secondary radiation and killing the crew in a matter of minutes to days, and the hull being outright vaporised and the spacecraft being turned into an - albeit brief - blast wave in space.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      combined with heat being hard to radiate away in space. Imagine the vatniks making cheap laser drones that will slowly heat a ship up past its capacity to radiate heat away, and cook everyone inside like the brazen bull. Or tradeoffs between stealth space craft (wont reflect back for detection vs highly reflective and resistant to energy based weapons

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Killing an enemy ship with a laser is a bit like trying to destroy a battleship with a blowtorch. Yes, it's possible but it's going to take forever.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Do you think spaceship will have the armor of a naval warship?
        Because no, weight is extremely important for anything that move. It's more going to be as lightly armored as aircraft.
        And travel in space is going to take forever, so you can take that time.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          The flip side is that lasers are inefficient as balls so the attacker would likely overheat before causing crippling damage on the target. This is made worse if the enemy has defenses designed to defeat lasers such as a thermally conductive hull or reflective coating. Simple aluminum will cut a laser's effectiveness to a tenth.

          Add to this is the cooling and power supply systems needed to run a powerful laser and it's simply more cost effective to use massed missile salvos and run the point defense lasers into overheat.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            At the distance needed for space travel, the target will have been vaporized long before it reach its destination.

            >more cost effective to use massed missile salvos and run the point defense lasers into overheat.
            Many parameters will make laser far more cost effective.
            Why do you think the military are already considering them on boat?
            Right now the Russian are running out of missiles, you might be betting your entire offensive on a single missile-spam to overwhelm laser defense.
            http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardefense.php#purplegreen

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              The problem is that you're not going to be hitting things at 1000s of km. It's just not possible to make machinery that precise and between thermal expansion, vibrations from the coolant pumps, and the movement of the target and the shooter you might only get 10s of km of range. Even then, you're well into arcseconds of accuracy, far more than any gun made today.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >The problem is that you're not going to be hitting things at 1000s of km. It's just not possible to make machinery that precise and between thermal expansion, vibrations from the coolant pumps, and the movement of the target and the shooter you might only get 10s of km of range. Even then, you're well into arcseconds of accuracy, far more than any gun made today.
                Anon, do you know that level of precision can already be achieved by telescope? The only reason the James Webb Telescope was so costly is because it needed to fit folded inside our primitive rockets with crazy weigh restriction.

                As for laser, as said previously THIS contraption was already capable of hitting target 300km away, despite not meeting the design goal.
                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
                Any futuristic laser in space would have none of the vibration of the above aircraft nor even of a naval-boat.

                We have yet to need a laser in space, but that level of precision is considered easily obtainable.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Anon, do you know that level of precision can already be achieved by telescope?
                Telescopes shotgun an entire section of sky.

                >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
                Fine, that means the laser has 10-30 seconds to shoot down the missiles.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Telescopes shotgun an entire section of sky.
                They also have to point at target you know? Arcsecond isn't especially incredible. It sound impossible because space is big & everything but the truth is that on much smaller distance we already need that level of precision for, say, missile.
                About the JWST and its mirrors I quote: "They can move in steps that are a fraction of a wavelength of light, or about 1/10,000th the diameter of a human hair"
                The JWST is costly as frick mostly because it's only one of a kind with billion of others challenge on top of it.

                >YAL-1
                >Fine, that means the laser has 10-30 seconds to shoot down the missiles.
                It was a example of a prototype we tried recently. It tried to fire on target in very hard condition, with limited source of energy, with lot of loss from atmospheric absorption and it was not using pulsed energy which is a technology actively developed for military use.

                By the time we get in that "space warfare future" I expect we'll make breakthrough that make today's lasers look like what the Apollo onboard computer is to a Smartphone.

                Oh and yes, feel free to use the same argument about the future magic armor being 100% laser proof.
                Frankly I would actually go with metamaterial rather than diaeletric mirror, but the threat of laser is that they can direct melting level of energy to any unprotected part of a target you can't afford to protect, so you'll only be able to face a laser if you are so close it can't point at you in time, not if it have days to target you and cut you as if it was an industrial laser.

                Basically, no matter what you'll need incredible effort just to survive Lasers Sat and it's very likely to be the most important weapons.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >They can move in steps that are a fraction of a wavelength of light, or about 1/10,000th the diameter of a human hair
                Note that you don't mention how much this translates to at 1000 km nor arcseconds. That's because these are the actuators for the focusing mirrors. They aren't aiming the telescope, they're adjusting the focus. You might ask "So what? That's still 15nm" But what does that actually mean at 1000 km?

                > It tried to fire on target in very hard condition, with limited source of energy, with lot of loss from atmospheric absorption and it was not using pulsed energy which is a technology actively developed for military use.
                You say that like a spacecraft won't be under even more onerous conditions. At least the YAL-1 could use the air for coolant.

                >By the time we get in that "space warfare future" I expect we'll make breakthrough that make today's lasers look like what the Apollo onboard computer is to a Smartphone.
                >Oh and yes, feel free to use the same argument about the future magic armor being 100% laser proof.
                So you're allowed to make up magical lasers but I'm not allowed a 99% reflective armor that works even when hot?

                Besides, we already have heat shields rated for reentry temperatures. How hot can you get your laser?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Anon, I think that you're wasting you're time, the laserschizo anon already decided that lasers are a perfect weapon that can't be countered in any way because feelings.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Yeah, but I like arguing.

                Synthetic diamonds are already cheap...

                Not that cheap. It's still a couple thousand dollars per kg.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I would see lasers more viable as counters to enemy missiles. If you at least destroy the sensor package, then you can move out of the way and not die. And if the enemy also has lasers, then the only way you can actually harm them is to throw shit at them really fast. So I think this anon

      space combat will be dominated by kinetic weapons, whether it's casaba howitzers (nooks) or rail/coil guns powered by nook reactors
      lasers/particle accelerators/beam weapons of any kind are generally garbage

      is correct in that kinetic weapons will rule.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >cover ship in mirrors
      Laserchuds seething.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I'd wager it would look more like das boot than anything else, except the torpedos would have MIRVs. lasers are a poor meme against targets that have reflective coating and dont have frickoff huge solar panels to cook. much better to have something that simply act in a pack and approach several different directions of the target to knock it out. of course things like chaff could make a come back from their atmospheric days but missiles are probably still the best bet when everything comes at a cost getting shit into orbit. railguns are okay but good luck getting the firing rate of a missile bus and also require massive amounts of power, necessitating a larger craft.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Will nooks be the standard loadout in space warfare?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime

    Can't use them in orbit so they're not really worth the mass.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >nooks xD

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I have long since lost the site with the exact calculations, but a nuke detonated in space has roughly 10% of the destructive power and one detonated in the atmosphere.

    I figure at that point, it's probably more cost effective to use conventional weapons

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Nukes are not exactly that destructive in space, sure they are still dangerous but there's probably better things to use.

      This. A nuke in an atmosphere looks so spectacular because the initial pulse of whatever rays it releases is absorbed by the air. This heats the air to obscene temperatures, which then makes the air emit enough thermal radiation to set stuff on fire in a large radius. Suddenly heating the surrounding air like that will also increase its pressure to match, resulting in a highly destructive shock wave. The initial radiation pulse's kill zone is smaller than that of the secondary effects.
      There's no air in space for said spectacle, so the nuke would produce a very brief flash of light, followed by everything in tens to hundreds of kilometers receiving a large dose of radiation. A spaceship fit for long-term travel and/or combat would probably be protected against this to some degree anyway, but it could still cause casualties in a smaller radius.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    shit in space is shielded afainst radiation unlike earth also it's not so close together as down here and everything can move
    you just need a small drone to puncture their fuel tank and maybe push them towards the sun/moon/planet

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Will nooks be the standard loadout in space warfare?

      A large portion of a nuke's destructive power comes from the blast wave.
      You need a medium to propagate a blast wave.
      Nukes will be significantly less effective in vacuum.
      Unironically, fragmentation warheads would be more effective, because
      >fragments will shred spacecraft hulls
      >fragments in space will not slow down due to gravity and air resistance

      Bomb pumped x-ray laser.
      Detonate a nuke inside a case with perforated holes filled with material that can absorb neutrons and other particles, turns that material into a super fast plasma very similar to a shaped charge.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        more kino

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Nukes aren't weapons, just the propellant charge. Imagine a few tones molten metal hitting a ship at a good fraction of light speed, it'll frick up even the heaviest armored ship.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >even though Brownlee predicted it would not work
            lmao

            But let's assume the plate survived, that could be a pretty cool setup for a scifi movie.
            >Aliens land on earth, start fricking shit up
            >it turns out the cap left the solar system and on its way, just by utter chance, in a freak accident, hit a bunch of their spaceship, which they interpreted as hostile action, because "why fricking else would you shoot a piece of metal at this speed into space?"

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yes. We will have Orion drive cannons that eject focused plasma at near light speed. Nuclear weapons already give us crazy fricking elements pushed to the absolute limits of physics, create a nuke proof container with a hole to focus it, and you got some serious hot hot gas going fast.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      What if you could artificially create a ball of gravity around a nuclear explosion and make that ball about the size of a baseball and then shoot that

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Nukes are not exactly that destructive in space, sure they are still dangerous but there's probably better things to use.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Nuke blasts aren't destructive, but the wake of radiation and plasma will frick any ship up. See

      https://i.imgur.com/qab5zJx.gif

      Yes. We will have Orion drive cannons that eject focused plasma at near light speed. Nuclear weapons already give us crazy fricking elements pushed to the absolute limits of physics, create a nuke proof container with a hole to focus it, and you got some serious hot hot gas going fast.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      [...]
      This. A nuke in an atmosphere looks so spectacular because the initial pulse of whatever rays it releases is absorbed by the air. This heats the air to obscene temperatures, which then makes the air emit enough thermal radiation to set stuff on fire in a large radius. Suddenly heating the surrounding air like that will also increase its pressure to match, resulting in a highly destructive shock wave. The initial radiation pulse's kill zone is smaller than that of the secondary effects.
      There's no air in space for said spectacle, so the nuke would produce a very brief flash of light, followed by everything in tens to hundreds of kilometers receiving a large dose of radiation. A spaceship fit for long-term travel and/or combat would probably be protected against this to some degree anyway, but it could still cause casualties in a smaller radius.

      Nukes are more destructive in space. There is no atmosphere to shield target from radiation
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W71
      There is no way you can kill MIRV at 16km range within atmosphere.

      Against target vulnerable against neutron radiation nukes have reducilous kill radiuses. 1 Mt neutron bomb would have like 1000 km kill radius against humans. And there is no easy way to shield from it. Russians tanks that have neutron protection have neutron reduction factor of 10 for crew. So it's 300km kill radius. And you are not gonna send such heavy thing as tank to space.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Will nooks be the standard loadout in space warfare?

    A large portion of a nuke's destructive power comes from the blast wave.
    You need a medium to propagate a blast wave.
    Nukes will be significantly less effective in vacuum.
    Unironically, fragmentation warheads would be more effective, because
    >fragments will shred spacecraft hulls
    >fragments in space will not slow down due to gravity and air resistance

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    There was an anime webm I saw once, that basically took the opposite idea to how space warfare is normally shown as clean and clinical, with people being blown to shit all over the ship. I dunno if anyone can post it or tell me where it's from, while we're on the subject?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You mean this? Well, any spaceship destruction would have gruesome effect to any crew inside

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I think that's it? I remember like armed marines being blown to shit as well though. Although I may be remembering wrongly.
        Still a good vid, thanks.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I think millions of steel ball bearings. just drop them in a higher orbit and wait till they descend into your targets orbit. say goodbye. you could also do the same thing with paints and cover all the radiators on the satellite.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      if you can hit a satellite with paint you can hit it with a bomb

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Will nooks be the standard loadout in space warfare?
    Nuke & explosive are very INEFFICIENT in space due to the lack of air to create shockwave.
    Nuke are also a very bad idea in Earth's Orbit, even at higher altitude. The radiation stay around and if it's low enough you get unwanted EMP effect (you don't want to have to consider wether or not it's your territories below).
    Your pic is a nooke-powered laser and highly overengineered concept to get around energy consumption of laser.

    Lasers are likely to rule supreme because it is going to be essentially impossible to armor spaceship. Every gram of armor cut into your range following cubic laws
    Spaceship are going to be choke-full of weak point easily exploitable even by laser.
    Ex: Lose a thruster on one side and you can no longer stop your ship rotation save of physically moving another thrusters around.
    And then you have the ship radiators, sensors, fuel tank (which are going to be very big)...etc

    Travel time in space is going to be significative even if you are only going for the moon, Apollo did it in 3 day but that was a very costly burn. If your "big" warship can't accelerate as fast (even with nuclear propulsion) you could take a week if not a month.
    More than enough time to focus a laser on whatever will break first.
    Don't even think about using mirror, the slightest defect will make it melt anyway

    Laser do have limitation, they'll be extremely fragile, but that's just another reason to have many. Whoever have the longest range lasers will be able to destroys the enemy without him being able to fight back.

    We may not even get any "conventional warship" in space.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Nuke & explosive are very INEFFICIENT in space due to the lack of air to create shockwave.
      Wrong. Nukes/missiles will dominate space warfare for the forseeable future long range space wars.

      Imagine a nuke missile that can cross 10,000 km+ away. Ofcourse laser defense will work great in close proximity within <100 km. But if there were counter measures for lasers onboad the missile system, then its game over for the target ship.

      The longest weaponable laser range will likely be ~500 km, maybe 1000 km at max. But for long range fights between Mars/Earth, lasers will never be a weapon of choice. Missiles are king.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You don't understand.
        First, missiles don't have to be nuke (for any target in the void) the "extra boom" is superfluous compared to the kinetic energy already imparted.
        Second, missile range is not calculated in distance but delta-velocity and you'd need extra fuel to avoid month long cruise
        Third, laser range IN SPACE is very easily going to scale beyond 10,000 kilometers.

        We are already capable of shooting down missiles 300km away despite suffering tremendous loss in the atmosphere with early prototype. That one Boeing would have already been capable of hitting satellites from its unstable platform and the YAL-1 aimed for 600km range IN ATMOSPHERE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
        The Chinese already tested their own lasers, the US likely have a few secret project in that direction.
        The only reason we don't do longer range laser is because we have no enemy coming from space, nor cheap heavy launch.
        Maybe we'll try powersat

        >The longest weaponable laser range will likely be ~500 km, maybe 1000 km at max
        What are your basis for this?
        All the math I've seen say otherwise, even with reasonable tech (60% loss in heat) only light-lag will truly limit the precision.
        The only other limitation is technical and if we are at colony-on-Mars then you can easily build big mirrors in space.

        >long range fights between Mars/Earth
        Even if I let you make a dream fight where "Martian can produce billion of armored&actively-cooled missiles but Earth isn't allowed to have enough ridiculously-small-range-laser" there's clear reasons to use as many lasers as possible.
        - ammo is basically infinite
        - range can be counted in light-second
        - intercept don't take days/weeks
        - more get exponentially better with no loss unless the enemy can reach the laser.
        Even if you sent armored missiles rotating like bola, I believe we would have the precision to hit the target and do enough damage to disable it AND deflect it (heat+ablative metal make average propulsion)

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Second, missile range is not calculated in distance but delta-velocity and you'd need extra fuel to avoid month long cruise
          Missiles will still have a maximum range from running out of fuel, and the effective range will be even shorter from the defenses the targeted ship might employ. My guess is that missile engagements won't be longer than 100km unless fusion drive missiles become a thing

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Missiles will still have a maximum range from running out of fuel
            I said the word Delta-Velocity for a reason. Missiles with chemical propulsion or nuclear-propulsion will have very different range.

            >My guess is that missile engagements won't be longer than 100km unless fusion drive missiles become a thing
            Despite arguing pro-laser, the main limitation to missile range in space will only be the ability for its target to reach a place or an orbit the missile can no longer match.
            A missile could for example launch from Earth to intercept a spaceship coming from Mars 10millions km away without it ever hoping to get out of the missile range, because it could not afford it as fuel go.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >A missile could for example launch from Earth to intercept a spaceship coming from Mars 10millions km away without it ever hoping to get out of the missile range, because it could not afford it as fuel go.
              I see two issues with this. First, missiles might not be able to reliably track something that far out. Sure, space agencies today can do so, but they're only tracking celestial objects after months or years of monitoring, and are only using conservatives maneuvering. Tracking an uncooperative spacecraft 10millions km away might prove tricky.

              Second, shooting at something so far away gives the target plenty of time to counter the attack, either through maneuvering (which a small puff can easily change the orbit by a huge margin by the time the missile arrives), or by deploying countermeasures (either from the spacecraft itself, or a supporting planet).

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >I see two issues with this. First, missiles might not be able to reliably track something that far out
                I fear you are ignorant of very basic missile guidance and detection capabilities. Even the soviet have the technologies needed to do that. I expected more from anyone from /k/.
                I suspect you also believe "stealth spaceship" is a possibility or that "space is cold".

                We can track million of millimeter-size debris in orbit.
                We can detect anything with a weak radio signal from the other side of the solar system
                We can detect essentially anything with a thruster/power source/275°K human aboard from anywhere.

                Hell, we have a website that summarize it for you.
                http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php#id--Strategic_Combat_Sensors--There_Ain't_No_Stealth_In_Space

                The only reason space agency didn't track every single asteroids already is because this is not actually considered interesting enough to spend million on.

                >(which a small puff can easily change the orbit by a huge margin by the time the missile arrives)
                I don't think you imagine how intercept work.
                The attacking missile would intercept your new orbit with even less of "a puff", you, would have to change your orbit radically so the ship is physically behind the planet when it happen.
                If your ship is between planet, it's dead.
                If the missile is fire from orbit to orbit, it will likely reach a big ship faster than it can hope to change orbit.

                >or by deploying countermeasures (either from the spacecraft itself, or a supporting planet).
                A "supporting planet" isn't going to be able to send a counter-missile that magically traverse interplanetary space. (unless you completely switch the context to a ship orbiting said planet)
                The only countermeasure that would work in-between is the ship attacking the missile itself with point defense.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Not necessarily. A missile can cut thrust and drift until the batteries run dead. The missile can then either reignite or stage it's engine for course corrections or a terminal phase.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >My guess is that missile engagements won't be longer than 100km
            What range have the ICBMs in your mind?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      A cooled dielectric mirror or shinny-ablative silver coat would be sufficient. A 1MW laser will be reduced to 20Kw laser with a silver coat, with 10gr of water boiling per second you can stop that laser. With a dielectric mirror tunned for that laser you can reduce the heating to less 200-100w.

      How do you think that lasers works? they have to use a specific media and 2 mirrors. Guess what, none of them can be changed quickly and in space any solution is easier to make because not atmosphere/dust being a problem. And tunnable lasers beside being way worse still can being countered with shinny silver.

      Worst case scenario the anti-laser weapon will use the laser beam as power source to accel and destroy the laser quicker, there's no escape.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >mirror armor
        Do YOU know how a laser work?
        You make the argument yourself that generating a laser is complicated enough and yet you say you can reflect it casually?
        You can't casually cover your entire missiles/spacecraft with that expensive cooled armor, even if you tried, forcing you to do that would be proof enough of the efficiency of the laser.
        Since you cannot possibly armor every fragile part of a missile/spaceship you are at best talking of moving hidden behind armor-plate bigger than your spaceship that you painfully put into motion.

        Again, I'm not saying kinetic energy don't have its own merit but it might be easier to user laser on all the fragile bit that would let you do so.

        >1MW
        That level of energy won't dissipate in space with plain silver coat, not without active cooling. The laser will be abrading the target pretty fast and because of the distance in space it will take days/weeks to arrive to destination.
        (assuming you didn't build the type of laser meant to shoot when they are month away)
        And we didn't go into pulsed laser yet.

        >Worst case scenario the anti-laser weapon will use the laser beam as power source to accel and destroy the laser quicker, there's no escape.
        ...if it was that easy to redirect laser in an interesting way, the attacking laser would have 99.99% efficiency and god-like focus on any part of your ship not capable of redirecting light.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          You dont have to cover nothing, just send a "ballon disk" to cover the path between the laser and the ship or whatever. And the cooling is simple, just like vapor chambers has no mechanical parts. And you're not cooling MW levels, just a few kw, because basic physics. Besides you just have to destroy the laser, just send it a reduced frontal aspect weapon and it's done, not need to risk any spaceship.

          You're completely ignoring the dielectric mirror. And btw, lasers uses 2 mirrors, so it isn't about power and cooling, is all about power density in a surface and "destruction rate" or "penetration rate" against a close hardened weapon.

          Of course, against non "laser hardened" targets, like current satellites any MW laser could destroy them from +1000km in matter of seconds or minutes. The problem is that laser are easily countered and they're bad "hidding" they capabilities like wavelenght.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >"ballon disk"
            What the hell is that supposed to be? a magical shield? Do you believe you can just put a ballon of water in front or something?
            Any military grade laser will be focused enough to melt any material without a cooling system superior to the laser itself, even if we phoned you the right wavelength to prepare for you simply cannot make MW disappear.

            >You're completely ignoring the dielectric mirror
            Those are was we use INSIDE the laser, you cannot make entire armor of it as if it was a paint-cover.
            What you said would be equivalent to claiming your spaceship is 'protected against railgun by having railgun magnet all over the hull"

            >Besides you just have to destroy the laser,
            ...which is impossible without your own lasers or a very costly spam of missiles with spaceship-grade propulsion.
            So at least you are conceding that lasers is a threat you need to spend significant portion of your energy countering.

            >The problem is that laser are easily countered and they're bad "hidding" they capabilities like wavelenght.
            Forcing you to build all your ships/missile to survive one wavelength, then revealing your laser can hit on another with a mere change of filter would be another demonstration of why laser are extremely efficient.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >What you said would be equivalent to claiming your spaceship is 'protected against railgun by having railgun magnet all over the hull"
              moronic analogy.
              Any laser grade mirror of like 50cm diameter dielectric can be used as front mirror of a missile at least 50cm diameter.

              >.which is impossible without your own lasers or a very costly spam of missiles with spaceship-grade propulsion.
              You have a lightweight missile that dont even need a heat source going against a spaceship that could have solar panels or a nuclear reactor. A clever design could use the laser to heat hydrogen using tungsten like target. The ISP would be like over 3000 and the fuel would be the coolant. The initial launch doesn't matter, could be like a sprint or rocket launched depending on the G forces limit. So thats why is moron any energy directed weapon, you're giving away high quality energy like a moron.

              >Forcing you to build all your ships/missile to survive one wavelength,
              You just send a pre-configured missile to you're target just like nowadays with anti-radiation missiles. And us easier to change a small frontal mirror than all the workings of a 1MW laser. The laser always will be in disadvantage.

              And of course, the silver bullet is always a solution good enough in fact because it's easy cool 20KW in a single frontal surface.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                That's not how it work, and the analogy remain.
                The mirror need ACTIVE cooling to have all the property of the laser's own mirror, you are talking of a missile that somehow power it's own laser, CONTINUOUSLY and on the right wavelength.
                And the "mirror" you want to power somehow have to be as large as the damn missile, including the power source and radiator system (which have to be positioned in a way it cannot be intercepted)

                >You have a lightweight missile that dont even need a heat source
                Wrong, see above. Can't have "laser mirror" without a significant power-source which you refuse to consider.

                >You just send a pre-configured missile to you're target just like nowadays with anti-radiation missiles
                Now that's a moronic analogy.
                Those missiles detect radar system through their emissions and home on their last known position.
                What you are talking about is building your armor to resist certain wavelength... and "somehow" changing the entire armor anytime the enemy laser use a wavelength you didn't see before.

                >it's easy cool 20KW in a single frontal surface
                This is not how material work, you are just repeating things you don't understand.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >This is not how material work, you are just repeating things you don't understand.
                A mirror with e = 0.02 only absorbs 20 kw, real cases can be worse at 30-50kw because oxidation that doesn't happen in space. Not my fault that you don't understand basic physics.

                >The mirror need ACTIVE cooling to have all the property of the laser's own mirror
                20kw is 10 grams of water boiling per second just go give an example. 10 grams per second looks like too much? any big rocket engine is cooling well over 10MW in a small chamber.

                >without a significant power-source
                A dielectric mirror is just an piece of "layered glass". A mirror now needs electricity? lmfao

                I can't even imagine what kind of misunderstanding you have about what i said. I just said:
                1. a simple frontal mirror with dumb cooling can degrade a laser well enough to not be destroyed even at close distances
                2. in a case of not enough and ignoring the mirror shape, you can just use a "specialized" dielectric mirror to decrease 100 times the cooling power needed in your missile, still the same design.
                3. You can design a missile that uses the power of a laser as power source at the same time that shields the missile against the laser beam, in this case the mirror is only needed when the fuel is spent. With the advantage that there's nothing more efficient that outsource the energy source.
                >Those missiles detect radar system through their emissions and home on their last known position.
                Low interception radars aren't trivial to track and detect, thats why in advanced EW if you have knowledge of your enemy you can gain far better jamming tolerance and range detection using "matched" filters that must be configured. I guess that it was a bad analogy to use with someone with null knowledge of anything. of course if money isn't a problem a design of multiple spaced dielectric mirror is possible but it's a waste of money.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >only absorbs
                This is a simplification tho, there's far more nuances using all coefficients.*

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Again, you cannot obtain a mirror that absorb so little without equivalent apparatus than the laser who first generated it, and you would have to cool it non-stop because you don't know when the laser will hit.
                And it's ridiculous to think you can easily make it big enough to hide the entire missile.

                This, as you don't understand, make your 1MW=>20KW number bullshit.
                You are also assuming you know the exact wavelength of all attacking laser and the energy isn't delivered in pulse or targeting at a weaker part of your system.

                >A dielectric mirror is just an piece of "layered glass". A mirror now needs electricity? lmfao
                Cooling mostly, you ARE going to need to deal with receive extreme amount of thermal energy.

                Also technically a diaelectric mirror is named like that because it does actually use electricity.

                >1. a simple frontal mirror with dumb cooling can degrade a laser well enough to not be destroyed even at close distances
                Based on wrong math that ignore a laser-mirror can't be easily upscaled to cover a whole vehicle/missile.

                >2. in a case of not enough and ignoring the mirror shape, you can just use a "specialized" dielectric mirror to decrease 100 times the cooling power needed in your missile, still the same design.
                You'd need that just to reach the 0.02 value you keep repeating. This is the kind of mirror you use in the damn laser.

                >3. You can design a missile that uses the power of a laser as power source at the same time that shields the missile against the laser beam
                That's as wishful belief as saying you'll use the energy of an enemy atomic bomb to power yourself.
                You've clearly heard of the concept of laser-powered spaceship but didn't understand that to actually work you need both side to be actively cooperating and working in tandem.

                >anti-radiation missile
                Stop trying to shift the topic. You used a moronic analogy that have no relevance with shielding yourself from pure directed energy.
                sensor filter =/= laser filter

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >This, as you don't understand, make your 1MW=>20KW number bullshit.
                Heating power on mirror is just the absorbed energy. I seems that you cant understand something so basic. Waste of time.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Simple silver (no oxidation) achieve 0.02 of absorptance, a dielectric mirror useful for efficient lasers cavities achieve better than 0.00001.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              An also the distance, over long distances the laser beam is useless to destroy. Like jammer is good enough.

              >beam divergence in radians: wavelenght / (pi * mirror diameter)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                As the equation say, you only need to afford a bigger mirror. The laser will get bigger yes, but the result would easily be worth the place it take. It's not like you'd need the laser on a busy orbit.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Actually, lasers are extremely inefficient. Sometimes called blast furnaces that generate coherent light as a byproduct. This would mean a laser would need massive radiators to run as well as a powerplant that's also going to need radiators. These radiators would be extremely vulnerable to missiles and even railguns and even if the laser ship can shoot down all the missiles it might still take damage from the molten remains.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        They are only inefficient as energy waste goes, it doesn't mean they can't do the job.
        In space, the range and the low level of armor you can afford on missile is enough to offset this in the favor of laser.

        A railgun is limited in range to the velocity of the projectile, a laser range is far superior.

        >even if the laser ship can shoot down all the missiles it might still take damage from the molten remains.
        There's a lot to be said about Kessler effect making space war genocidal, but FYI if a missile is melted and disabled, the sheer heat from the laser (or any subsequent explosion) would throw it way off course.
        We are talking of range beyond 1000km and even 100km away it could be enough to miss the target.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Keep in mind that at 1000 km you'd need to be accurate within fractions of an arcsecond. That's just not practical. Likewise, the missiles might explode into a show of shrapnel, possibly by design. Normally, this is just a nuisance since a ship could just evade it but with all those radiators a laser ship can't accelerate quickly without tearing them off.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Keep in mind that at 1000 km you'd need to be accurate within fractions of an arcsecond.
            Again, we already hit target ~300km away, from moving platform.
            And we are not yet using PULSE laser.

            Today's Laser technology is VERY primitive in comparison to the very early potential of laser. We might be one breakthrough away from practical use.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              And today's armor and propulsion technology is very primitive compared to what it might be in the future. What if we develop a cheap way of synthesizing diamonds? We could coat a missile in the stuff so that it refracts and disperse laser light. What's more, diamond is extremely thermally conductive so it would be extremely difficult to burn through at any given point.

              We could also see advances in rocket engines so that the missiles accelerate to 100s of km/s. In fact, without air friction most missiles would be KKV of some kind so they'd double down on speed. Explosives would be redundant unless they wanted to spray the target with shrapnel instead of a single solid blow.

              In fact, while advances in lasers are a possibility, advances in rocketry are Mandatory if you want a spacefleet of any kind. A laser ship will need rockets just to get from one point to another so there's no doubt that more money and resources will go to advanced propulsion before lasers.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Synthetic diamonds are already cheap...

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Ahh, project excalibur.
    When you let actual shizos in military they come up with this shit

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yes

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    space warefare will be kinetic weapons (extremely cost effective) or energy weapons (extremely effective).
    Chomical munition is totally overkill, especially considering how fragile space systems are

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Eh...yes and no. Nukes would be a threat but no more than KKVs and railgun grapeshot. Without atmosphere to work with nukes are more like god-tier flashbangs than half a million tons of TNT in a 5 ton package. You can still use nukes to literally melt the sensors right off a fleet but taking out the entire fleet is nearly impossible.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Silly Vatnik Nooks are for Yanks.

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >A 1 kg mass traveling at 99% of the speed of light would have a kinetic energy of 5.47×1017 joules. In explosive terms, it would be equal to 132 megatons of TNT or approximately 32 megatons more than the theoretical max yield of the tsar bomb

    Nooks are nothing once RKV’s are invented

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >the virgin "space warfare will be everyone nooking eachother!"
    >the chad "materiel in space would be too valuable to destroy even in warfare, non-destructive ways of forcing submission will be the primary mode of combat."

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      An interesting point of space combat would be that ships can't sink. Seems obvious but a ship could be blown in half and as long as a section has power and cooling it can keep fighting. This, when combine with the expense of spaceships, means that there's going to be a lot of boarding operations. You'd hit the enemy a few times to cripple them and then slip in marines

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >>the chad "materiel in space would be too valuable to destroy even in warfare, non-destructive ways of forcing submission will be the primary mode of combat."
      based

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I get one of the mechs is a panther but what's the other?

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Space warfare thread
    >No one posts kino space battles

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      This is exactly how it would go down irl.
      Combatants would be lobbing clouds of material or trying to cook each other with lasers.

      I've always figured engagements would happen at light second distances and you're either lobbing clouds of ball bearings/rods where you think they're going to be in the hopes of punching enough holes they have to tap out.
      Or clouds of abrasives/plasma to ruin all of their sensors.
      Imagine locking on to target and suddenly you can't see SHIT on any of your sensors because 20 minutes ago they sprayed 100kg of fine carborundum at you and all of your cameras and window ports look like an old headlight.

      And that's just shit we can think of today.

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    100 years from now someone will read this thread in an archive and chuckle

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Against unarmed satellites? Drone space craft that can latch on to enemy craft and deorbit them.
    In a conflict between two armed craft? bullets/lasers

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