🚀 go-pugleaf

From howard@netcom.com (Howard Berkey)

This is an interesting topic for many reasons.  To limit the scope a
little, how about trying to make some assumptions:

1.  There must be something to fight over

As Douglas Adams said, Space is a big place.  Really big.  Therefore,
the chance of an encounter in deep space should be relatively
small.  Most fights would probably take place either in orbit or near
a station or asteroid in orbit.  Another reason for this is that it's
relatively hard for large masses to leave orbit, and thus any defender
would be unlikely to spend large amounts of energy leaving the valuble
object they are defending (planet, station, asteroid) but would rather
let the attacker come to them.  They would also benefit from hiding in
a planet's electromagnetic/gravity/heat fields and thus defeat several
kinds of passive detection.

2.  Orbital velocities are large

And this means that ships would likely be closing on each other very
rapidly.  An obvious consequence of this is that kinetic weapons would
be very effective.  For example, a large number of ball bearings laid
out in your opponent's path would have roughly the same effect on his
ship as a claymore mine on an infantry squad.  It also meand that once
ships were commited to combat, disengagement would be difficult.
Another ramification is that it would be as easy for a frigate to kill
a battleship as another frigate, since all that really matters is
scoring a 'hit'.  Large ships would actually be at a disadvantage,
since the delta-vee required to move them would be larger.  For this
reason, I think ships would tend to be smaller.

3. Most seeker weapons would be nuclear

For obvious reasons, if a seeker weapon was to be used a large
warhead is a must due to the distances involved.  Large direct-fire weapons
would be impractical since they could be defeated by altering
velocities.  High-volume fire would be effective in a manner similar
to the ball-bearing minefield described above, so weapons similar to
Phalanx cannons in an offensive mode would be far more effective than
big guns.  This is another factor which favors small ship design.  And
a small ship could carry externally large numbers of nuclear guided
missiles.  Or submunitions.


Comments?

-Howard



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Howard Berkey						   howard@netcom.com
		"I AM the Lizard Queen" - Lisa Simpson
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