well, I understand what you mean and I agree entirely, but I think you missed my point. All I was saying was that without the capability of visiting other solar systems to colonize viable worlds, space warfare is a bit futile, as we'll probably never face other civilizations, let alone hostile ones. And perhaps one of the reason we never had any space visitors (although I'm just speculating) is because they can't find us too. Or if they did find us, they can't reach us. Our galaxy is a pretty huge place, and I doubt a lot of people wants to make a trip that could last for 1000 years.

My point is, space warfare is possible, like you said. But, will we ever have to do space warfare? The sad truth is that humanity is stuck in this solar system, unless we find one amazing breakthrough physics that would let us do FTL. And seriously, there aren't any martians who want to invade us

Btw, sorry for the grammar mistakes and such, english isn't my first language.

To me, it would be misiles, and artillery guns (like what shoots naval fleets eh).
No stealth, no "ludicrous speed - light velocity is for loosers - jump from planet A to planet B", no E.T., no robots, well maybe drones.

PS : mankind would be dumb to export the war in space, don't you think ?

This would be great in the game !

I think that space war is not only possible but a necessary part of our expansion as a race. Lets face it, even today we're discovering more and more planets within a habitable orbit of their stars. Each on of these could easily support life, not including many other planets with variants of life caused by rare circumstance like for example Europa. Even undiscovered gas giants could alter the chances of a planet fitting in a habitable zone.

Out of how many of these planets that develop life will there be sentient species. You can almost bet that a first contact between them and use will be violent due to extreme cultural differences. We may not even be able to comprehend to minds of these creatures birthed from stars far from our own.

While resources may be abundant in our galaxy, there will always be a desire to take what others have already sown, whether the one to blame is human or alien remains to be scene.

Many times in history political power has overrode logic and practicality. While we may never fight against alien species will almost certainly still have conflict amongst us.

Now you may be wondering how such a conflict could come to exist when it is such a waste of resources. Well conflict is and has always been a waste of resources yet our very society seems based on it. Wars will be fought no matter how horrible they are. It's simply human nature. Society is a fragile thing built upon greed and fear. Those in power will want to keep their power. This was as true as it was thousands of years ago and is still valid today.

A likely scenario for conflict in today will be Mars. Even if it can't be successfully terraformed, it is rich in resources and space. With such long voyages between the planet and our Earth, the colonist will be expected to be as self-sustaining as possible. Naturally when a human is far from the society that birthed them and no longer relies on it, they will seek independence from the nations that funded them. That why I see a conflict brewing on the planet within a hundred years of colonization. War can indeed exist without future technological magic.

Finally I'd like to point out that war could exist in star systems other than our own because the lack of FTL doesn't largely limit our options for colonization. There are many other alternatives such as ramjets for theoretical FTL in-system. Personally I believe colonization will be a expensive endeavor that only a United Earth could accomplish.

Oh and I haven't stressed it enough already, humanity is a pretty dumb species. There's no limit with a race gifted with creativity but blinded by passion and sheer stupidity! What a welcome sight!

Does any one have an ideal what we could make on a planet, that we could not build in outer space? I mean, that it take a lot of energy, to get things off world, and therefore, any thing we get take off the planet needs to more important, or cost more the the energy we used to get it off the planet.

Well gravity would make agriculture and society in general cheaper, so that in the future planets could be used mostly for space.

NO NO NO, didnt u see that one simpsons where Bart and Lisa where at military school, the commander said that in the future wars will be fought by tiny robots in space or on top of a very tall mountian, and its our job to build and maintain those robots

Space combat ala Star Wars is impossible. No fighters. Ever. You would need hundreds of reverse thrusters on every side of the ship, and then massive fuel storage, and then you need the big generators for lasers or large missile packs for nukes and such, making it all so big and bulky you may as well build a large capital ship. Space combat will be waged in massive artillery duels with gigantic ships, if in deep space. Even then, you need the life support systems like farms, so most space combat will occur in a planetary gravity well, with cruiser size vessels carrying instant ship killers like nukes or possibly high power lasers.

I haven't read the whole topic, so excuse me if this has already been said.

The space fighters off the future could have multiple functions. One strikecraft could act as a fighter, bomber, shuttle, and atmospheric reentry craft. You can't land your big ship on the planet so your going to have to either capture orbital elevators or land the soldiers manually. In fact it could launch soldiers like bombs, and then extract them once the objective is complete. While this is all happening, the vessel would be fending off atmospheric defending craft and bombing targets of opportunity. Fighters will be much larger in the future, trying to maintain a balance between power and speed. Their crews a may number up to a dozen and carry twice that many ground commandos.

While drones will be useful in future wars, organic thinking soldiers will still be needed to direct them in ever changing territories. One could say that a human being would command a squad of drones in guerrilla warfare with the locals who will be most likely well dug in.

Capital like I mentioned in a earlier post will act more like carriers for supplies, warriors, strikecraft, and missiles. You don't want to risk your main method of transport in direct combat. If it is destroyed you could be stranded lightyears from home. They will act as snipers on the battlefield, using strikecraft to swarm and disable defenders while the big ships blow up things from afar.

Yes Space fighters of the future could have multiple functions. The the small clouds of debris from all there vaporized wreckage floating near the ship that launched them could act as a form of 'chaff' (ironically) helping somewhat reduce the effectivness of any follow up laser hits. (Though the small debris clouds and frozen corpses they leave will do nothing whatsoever to mitigate Nukes or Say X-Ray lasers) Or alternately they could act as decoys for the several minutes it would take to track and destroy every single one launched. But, I think you would have a hard convinceing anyone to get into the cockpit knowing there just decoys that will be destroyed long before they could bring anything remotely resemebling useful firepower to the battle, if your going to that..send unmanned decoys configured to resemble something dangerous. If they fall for it..hey it might even be effective in some limited way. Any commander that detected a wall of incoming pop cans would just throw an enhanced raditiom bomb in there general direction, enough hard radiation to fry anything in the vicinity, no more space fighters. The Only possible way small fighters would ever be employed if there was a virtual certainty they could not be countered in any way shape or form, and even then its doubtful they would have the endurance to do much of anything useful. Sure you could say 'take this 1-megaton bomb in your slow, short range, extremely vulnerable space fighter' and go drop it on X', but if you want that done...send a missle ffs. Cheaper, can carry way more of them per unit space, higher yields, greater standoff range, (i mean really, a missle dont need to be return back to mothership after its mission is complete now does it . Likewise if you need to defend you atmospheric ground assault shuttles from airborne threats....your doing something wrong. Space is the ultimate high ground, any force that controls it could(and should) be able to reduce any local air defences long before commiting vulernable orbit to ground to craft. If they cant even accomplish that, they should abort there mission. The real way to handle atmospheric fighters(if any) is have some small RPV to send in *after* your warships have pounded anything remotely threatening looking, to assess any possible threats(ie do they have anything to intercept with). IOW, again..dont send people and dont send in equipment you cant afford to lose.

The type of vehicle you envision is more properly termed an "assault Shuttle' as opposed to a 'figher' per se. Those sort of craft would be very useful and probably employed rather extensively as captureing ships and or installations would possibly be considered more desireable than outright destuction. Mission priorites would (again possibly) be of the order of) capture if possible, destroy if not. Anyho , secureing planets is a little OT anyhow,     

John Falkenberg what does RPV mean? I have seen UAV(unmanned aerial vehicle) but not RPV.

Also food is a low cost item, but cost a lot to get into outer space. Therefore the only planets that would make it cheap to get food, to outer space would be the planets with orbital elevators. Does this mean that we would not need an assault shuttle then?

Other then food, which on some level I would think that the capital ship could produces its self, is there any thing else that we could get from a planet that we could not build in outer space.

Also is there any reason, with the size of the ship, to not allow for an orbital elevator, to be a part of the ship design?

I've read a lot of this thread and found it all immensely interesting.
So, I'd like to ask a question.   

I want to know why people say that stealth is not possible in space. I know that some people have said something about thermodynamics, but i'm wondering whether it really needs to be that complicated.

In deep space (aka outside any forces of gravity produced by stars), wouldn't the cold vaccum across the ship help bleed off heat without the total reliance on conductive "fins"? So, if it was spread out over the entire surface of the ship, wouldn't that help reduce the visibility?

Sorry if that is actually really wrong, but i'm curious to what people have to say.

Radiation bombs could be impractical in the future. Lets say you have a swarm of what Falkenberg termed assault shuttles moving toward a heavily populated planet with an atmosphere. Sure you could kill them with radiation, but the collateral would be too great. That much radiation would tear a chunk out of the atmosphere that could take centuries to repair on its own. The issuing blasts would kill of much of your population if they were not shielded in some way. Even if they were, former areas of habitation could be seriously contaminated. Then again you would try to attack the shuttles from afar were they would have a much easier time dodging your attack. You could also try to aim at a capital ship launching smaller craft, however by the time you reach them, they might have launched and moved on to the attack. In the end such attacks might be useful for attacking stationary targets, but against a mobile foe, proves ineffective.

All our discussions depend on what type of war is being fought. One of attrition or territory. If your fighting over land, you might not want to use such damaging weapons on the goal. However if your trying to deny your enemy an outpost, such as a large station in a uninhabitable region of your empire, you could do whatever it took to dislodge them.

Space defensive will still be instrumental in fighting invaders. Using modern terminologies might be a little outdated in a future when we can travel faster than light. If your enemy digs deep enough and is heavily prepared, removing them from a planet might mean destroying it. War in the future will be like surgery. You want to remove a malignant part while still saving the rest of the body. Heavy handed tactics like many of those suggested in other posts will be impractical and dangerous.

I can't remember where I saw it, but what about using guided metorites as seige weapons?

Its no diffrent than throwing stones really, but you could throw a few stones ranging from the size of houses to the size of Texas if you wanted.

Yes but that would result in a massive loss of life and destruction of most of the planets infrastructure. Seriously we can't treat our compare warfare in the future with games, because these won't be pixels your killing. That kind of brutality could get you removed from the hypothetical chain of command. You've got to be precise in your attacks to reduce the unnecessary loss of life. Removing the government but still leaving the people will be the goal.

Sorry, but it still won't help...since the amount heat that is being released out would still be the same, no matter how where the radiator is...

Oh, and about using vacuum to help cool ship off...read here at the annotation section...you'll understand better why it won't work...

Is there air in a vacuum?
What do you think bleeds off heat: how does a fan work?



Or you could just have all your regular thrusters pivot.

Quietly_Confident, please look at the following Stealth doesn't work link.

If you still have questions, post here again an we will try to answer them.

For those of who play, Attack Vector Tactical, I have a question. The more I read the more it sounds like Coilguns, Katysha Launchers and Missiles are all one an the same system.Coilgun shells can have self guidance systems add, missiles can have an kintic kill (i.e. coilgun shell) payload, and the Katysha sounds just like an missile. Is there any real difference between the three.

Also does any one have points or ideals, for Realistic Space Warships designs? Is there a reason to have more then one type of warship? How will it work, and what is it armed with?

To guy have any ideal why a ship should not use or use lasers, coil guns and missiles together.

Uh no. The Atmosphere, the Oceans, and regular rains would clean it all up in a few months.

Sorry guys, but I am not dead, and I have returned once more to fight the Pseudo Science in this forum.

Its good to be back

So wanderer17, do you have any ideals why a ship, should not use lasers, coil guns, katyusha and missiles together?

Read the Honor Harrington series by David Weber and you will know what real space combat will be like.

They will in order to have redundancy and to meet a large number of threats.

First off reread what ad-hominem constitutes. Insulting you when I already made my point is indeed allowed and is not an ad-hominem fallacy.

You are not mature and are just as insulting when you do not prove your point or concede. Since you refuse both, that makes you the troll not me. I have my assertions backed by the weight of science.

You do not make an assertion and not back it up in a debate. Its bad form, dishonest, and makes you a troll.

For the last time, address the issues, do not go off on a tangent, and show mathematical models to prove your point.

Failure to do so is trolling.