/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.9662840]

>watching movie
>space battle scene
>suddenly tons of lasers everywhere blowing shit up
>only it is in space
>there's no oxygen in space
>lasers can't burn anything if there's no oxygen to make ignition and laser beams don't carry their own oxygen

Fite me.

[Anonymous No.9662867]

there's oxygen in the ships

now go away

[Anonymous No.9662888]

>>9662840
So you believe a powerful laser has no impact on anything that's on its way.
Interesting theory, my brainlet friend.

[Anonymous No.9662964]

>>9662867
Outside the ship where the laser hits?

>>9662888
Did you not read the OP?

[Anonymous No.9662969]

>>9662840
Lasers are just photons, don't need oxygen once they are going.

[Anonymous No.9662973]

>>9662840
And the ships break into roiling multi-colored fireballs, right?.
In the absence of a resisting atmosphere, an explosion doesn't behave like that. A ship hit by a nuke (in actual contact) would just be a flash of light and then fade into nothingness within a second.

What a laser would do to a ship depends on what it hit -- and whether it could boil away the ablative armor. However, one of the Laws of Anime is that ALL hits are on vital parts. The slightest fault sets off a cascading sequence of impressive blasts.

You've discovered the Unreality of Hollywood.
However, I concede F/X has advanced since Flash Gordon. The spaceships hummed like electric razors and shot sparks from the jets. The sparks then fell out of the bottom of the image. Any smoke went "up" and sometime you could even see the wires.

Oh, yeah. Energy weapons are invisible in vacuum. No lines of searing light. And, considering the efficiency of lasers, the attacker would probably roast in his own waste heat before inflicting appreciable damage on the Enemy.

[Anonymous No.9662977]

[Anonymous No.9662987]

>>9662969
Umm...sweetie. We are talking about things burning. Not photons.

[Anonymous No.9662998]

>>9662973
>and whether it could boil away

This guy gets it.

>And, considering the efficiency of lasers, the attacker would probably roast in his own waste heat before inflicting appreciable damage on the Enemy.

I think laser tech would be encapsulated similar to a bullet shell. The laser fires 1 time and destroys itself due to waste heat and is ejected while a new laser is loaded.

[Anonymous No.9663008]

>>9662840
sxi fi long moved to some other shit than straight up lasers, you are much more likely to see plasma and railguns, together with _elementary particle_beams.

[Anonymous No.9663076]

>>9662987
Then it's not a laser nigger

[Anonymous No.9663131]

>>9662998
Absolutely.
"Primary beams were ships' main armament; they were produced by overloading a normal ray-projector to the point of blowout, creating a beam against which nothing can stand." They were one-shot disposable units, fired, ejected, and replaced.

----- "Gray Lensman". Boskonian engineers came up with the idea, but they all died with Helmuth's fortress. Thereafter, the Patrol only used them when in a position to immediately wipe out all enemy forces in a position to transmit the "secret" to their home bases.

Expensive, but the Galactic Patrol had the taxpayers of a billion worlds behind them.

[Anonymous No.9663139]

>>9662840
>complaining about fire in space
>not complaining about the fact that the lasers are visible while traveling through a vacuum.

[Anonymous No.9663356]

>>9662977
isa cruisers have to be the most badass spacecraft in any fiction

[Anonymous No.9663395]

>>9662977
what's their engines?

[Anonymous No.9663532]

>>9662840
they're not lasers kid

[Anonymous No.9663590]

>>9663395
Nuclear fusion/plasma drive for main propulsion, and air breathing ion thrusters for atmospheric operations.

[Anonymous No.9663669]

>>9662840
You know what I want in a space battle? Extreme distances between ships. Combat consisting largely of guided missiles aimed at an area you think an enemy ship will be, a ship currently light-years away.

[Anonymous No.9663719]

>>9662840
A powerful and energetic enough laser blast can go off like a bomb when it hits something. A more realistic continuous series of pulses would drill through the hull producing supersonic jets of whatever the hull was made from. This could ignite stored conventional explosives or stored fuel and oxidizer. It is quite possible that a spaceship may carry missiles and drones. For such munitions, large accelerations are desirable, for this rather exotic and unstable fuels and oxidizers are desirable. Agressive oxidizers like chlorine trifluoride have been seriously considered for such purposes. Gelatinized nitroglycerine has actually been used in missiles on earth that need high accelerations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)

[Anonymous No.9663723]

>>9663395
Magic. They aren't using any radiators

[Anonymous No.9663752]

>>9663723
you don't actually need radiators
There is no magic in "radiators" that allows them to radiate, everything radiates constantly

[Anonymous No.9663758]

Le Chatelier's Principle OP

[Anonymous No.9663797]

Nothing cringier than some fag commenting on how unrealistic something in scifi is.

Nobody is claiming it's realistic, it's simply eye candy.

Nobody wants to be your friend, you are not having an original thoughts or observations about whatever movie you're watching; it's just that people who aren't completely engulfed in autism know better.

[Anonymous No.9663924]

>>9663723
>implying 24th century humans couldn't figure out how to use regenerative cooling like we already do today
Holy shit get a load of this absolute retard.

[Anonymous No.9663950]

>watching a movie
>space scene
>space is cold
>temperature is a function of a medium
>but space is a vaccuum without a medium, and therefore can't have a temperature

[Anonymous No.9663955]

>>9663924
are you're an idiot

[Anonymous No.9663957]

>>9663752
Radiators would be dedicated parts where the heat from active cooling would be diverted to. Do you expect passive heat conduction through the hull, walls and floors to be the only way of removing heat?

[Anonymous No.9663958]

>>9663950
the radiation in space can have a temperature

[Anonymous No.9663963]

>>9663955
>hurr why don't rockets have massive radiators sticking out of them???
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=regenerative+cooling

I don't care what you read on your autistic armchair space fantasy ""engineering"" websites. In real life you dump heat into the reaction mass.

[Anonymous No.9664067]

>>9662840
I invented a laser for space Its a different kind of laser it uses radiation.
I call it a radiator

[Anonymous No.9664089]

>>9662840
this is what an explosion in space looks like

[Anonymous No.9664098]

>space anything
>big ships behave like early steam/late windsail vessels
>small ships behave like early biplanes
>being thrown outside in the vacuum instantly turns you into an icicle

[Anonymous No.9664099]

>>9662840
Not that you shouldn't intuitively understand that space battles are generally there to look neat rather than be accurate, but...

Lasers still melt things in space. If whatever magic fuel these ships are using is highly flammable, it'll burn, without oxygen, if the heat is sufficient to free said. Further, these ships are basically big bubbles of oxygen waiting to be popped. So, if your laser tears through a hull with piping you might get explosive decompression coupled with fuel and thus get an explosion... Albeit, still wouldn't look like these.

Ships like the Enterprise seem to have explosive materials running through every panel on the ship, especially the control panels, for some reason. They do actually mention having plasma running in pipes, but for such a civilized and cautious civilization, they sure don't live up to union safety standards.

>>9663669
So... They fire a missile, and then three generations later, we find out of it hit?

[Anonymous No.9664113]

>>9663963
are you an idiot srsly? Go look up what regenerative cooling is and why it wouldnt apply to anything other than chemical rockets with vast amounts of cryogenic fuels

[Anonymous No.9664125]

>>9662840
>Autists don`t understand suspension of disbelief
Tip: This isn`t how space fights would happen, either

[Anonymous No.9664142]

>>9664113
Either you're expelling reaction mass fast enough that you can use regenerative cooling, or your propulsion system is efficient enough to rely on passive radiation. Or are you one of those idiots that thinks everything is a heat engine? Protip: fusion reactors can bypass the carnot efficiency limit by using direct energy conversion of their ionized plasmas.

[Anonymous No.9664157]

>>9663950
>What is radiative equilibrium

[Anonymous No.9664159]

>>9664142
lol? Are you clueless? ion engines don't need much coolin because they are high efficiency and VERY LOW ENERGY
100 watts of heat is easily spread out & radiated away

Anything fusion is going to need super conductors, which means it has to stay cold, while its also exhausting megawatts of heat.

[Anonymous No.9664161]

>>9664159
>Anything fusion is going to need super conductors, which means it has to stay cold, while its also exhausting megawatts of heat.

[Anonymous No.9664168]

>>9664159
You have to be 18 to post here.

[Anonymous No.9664174]

>>9664161
>>9664168
brainlets

[Anonymous No.9664180]

>>9662973

>when you realize there's people in doctorate programs who take space opera theatrics seriously

99% of humanity is borderline retard when it comes to the reality and scale of space travel.

[Anonymous No.9664244]

>>9662840
>You need combustion for things to get hot and melt apart

[Anonymous No.9664420]

>>9663752
they need dedicated radiators to prevent the ship from turning into slag and they need to be quite big. Even the space shuttle needed radiators to dissipate the waste heat created by the humans inside

[Anonymous No.9664429]

>>9664157
What is a vaccuum, nigger.

[Anonymous No.9664485]

>>9663950
Vacuum is a great insulator and there is no radiation shielding from the sun. So space is hot for practical purposes.

[Anonymous No.9664489]

>>9663950
>>9664429
Jeeze...

Objects in the void will eventually come to the equilibrium temperature of the cosmic microwave background, which is 2.7 Kelvin (2.7 degrees above absolute zero). The comment that the void itself has no temperature comes from the fact that temperature is usually defined with the random motions of matter, and if there is no matter, there is no temperature. But most equate the cosmic background with the 'void' having an effective temperature of 2.7 Kelvin, even if there is no matter.

Heat travels through a vacuum by infrared radiation, and does so really, really well in a vacuum. If it didn't - that sun wouldn't work for us.

Granted, as a result, in space (or simply high orbit), anywhere in the inner solar system, you're baking on one side and freezing on the other, and sci-fi rarely depicts this.

[Anonymous No.9664498]

>>9662840
Why do faggots think space is empty? If that was true stars and planets couldn't exist and supernovas wouldn't expel it's elements.

[Anonymous No.9664501]

>>9664485
Vacuum is a great insulator but these stupid space battles always seem to take place in the middle of nowhere, no the local sun isn't a factor. Ruzic shields (multiple layers of crinkled aluminum foil)
>https://patents.google.com/patent/US3355050
reduce heat loss as much as you like. Darth Vader's own body heat could keep the Death Star comfortably warm even between galaxies.

People, machinery, and (especially) high energy beam weapons all release waste heat, so the usual problem is getting rid of it. A 1 meter diameter "exhaust port" is insufficient!

[Anonymous No.9664508]

>>9664489
Heat transfer by radiation varies as the 4th power of the temperature.
The shuttle sucked heat out of the cabin (air conditioning) and pumped it into radiators (along with the energy used to run the system) so it could be expelled at a higher temperature with reasonably sized radiators.

As you say, the CMB is very low and so is the intensity of starlight. Spacecraft pick up almost nothing from anywhere except the Sun (and the Earth, in LEO) so it's mostly internally generated heat that's the problem anywhere beyond, say, Mars.

[Anonymous No.9664510]

>>9664498
It's still pretty empty. I mean you could draw lines as thick as the Earth, starting at the Earth, at random vectors every second for years, and the chance of hitting anything other than the sun or moon (or immediate orbit) would be still infinitesimal.

These days, sci-fis actually tend to toss in a lot more than you'd ever see, unless you were in a nebula (when they are suddenly blinded - which is similarly bullshit, as nebulas aren't actually that dense either, until you get to bits so hot you wouldn't wanna be in.)

The older sci-fis tend to do this bit where there's so few stars it looks like a city night sky in space, which wouldn't be the case nearly anywhere in the galaxy, outside of an atmosphere or other bright interference, but that was mostly a budget thing.

[Anonymous No.9664727]

>>9664420
No, you use dedicated radiators to simply the system and to maintain constant temperature. Not a necessity unless you have stuff like humans who need to be kept at 20 degrees

[Anonymous No.9664805]

>>9664727
Or you know anything that generates significant amounts of waste heat, like weapons. Fusion drives are gonna make waste heat too. Pic related. Those aren't solar panels, who knew that a 1-2 MW fusion drive would make significant amounts of waste heat! (Ans: pretty much anyone who paid attention in thermodynamics and heat transfer)
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2017_Phase_I_Phase_II/Fusion_Enabled_Pluto_Orbiter_and_Lander

[Anonymous No.9664867]

>MUH RADIATORS!!!111!!11
I bet you fags aren't even actual engineers. You want to minimize the mass of the spacecraft, not show off your elitist and arguably incorrect ideas about space flight.

[Anonymous No.9664871]

>>9664805
everything radiates
you don't need "radiators"

[Anonymous No.9664872]

>>9662840
>complaining about fire in space
>not complaining about the fact that lasers make ZIP ZAP sounds in vaccuum

[Anonymous No.9664880]

>>9662840
Ok, wht not talking about the fact that spaceships fly like airplanes in vacuum? Or the fact that when a spaceship engine fails it suddenly falls off? Or even the fact that engines are always on to push the spacecraft and it stops when engines off kek

[Anonymous No.9664885]

>>9664871
Of course. Just not fast enough to prevent a spacecraft from melting when significant amounts of waste heat are produced.

[Anonymous No.9664886]

>>9662840
Repeat to yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax."

[Anonymous No.9664896]

>>9664885
as long as the heat is distributed throughout the ship/outer hull, you don't need any radiators

[Anonymous No.9664902]

>>9664896
Would you agree that the efficiency of radiation is impacted by the ratio of surface are to mass, or volume? The old cube/square thing.

[Anonymous No.9664903]

>>9664872
Repeat to yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax."

[Anonymous No.9664909]

>>9664885
>>9664902
Holy shit, kys already you fucking popsci fag.

[Anonymous No.9664941]

>>9664896
And that is a radiator, however, the depicted ship probably doesn't have enough surface area to dissipate all the produced waste heat just from it's surface area alone. Now give me some specs so we can calculate this out

[Anonymous No.9664958]

>>9664896
You know zero about thermodynamics and heat transfer -- and it shows.

I'll just make up some numbers.
Your super-duper beam weapon puts out 1e20 watts and is 99.999% efficient. (Fat chance!) That leaves 1e15 watts inside your own ship.
Your ship is a cube, 100 meters in all dimensions. Surface 60000 square meters. All painted dead black; emissivity 1.000
Heat lost by radiation is 5.67e-8 * 60000 * T^4

Skin temperature is 23,284 Kelvin. That's 41,451 Farenheit! Fortunately, your ship is plated with Adamantium, which can withstand that temperature.
But that's the coolest point in the ship. Everything inside (including you) is hotter.
This is a job for Refrigeration!! And radiators which can withstand even higher temperatures.

Now that you know the equations, plug in your own assumptions.

1e15 watts is about 4 Tsar Bombas per second. To produce 1e20 watts, your mass/energy converter is swallowing about a tonne of matter/second.

[Anonymous No.9664960]

>>9662964
Yes. To be honest it would probably look like a hull melting followed by an explosion as the gas expands and...
Oh.

[Anonymous No.9664962]

>>9664958
Refrigeration takes power and is subject to thermodynamic constraints

[Anonymous No.9664970]

>>9664958
Holy fuck you are an insufferable retard.
>hurr if I put a death star laser on a tiny ship then it would overheat XXDDD

[Anonymous No.9664975]

>>9664962
I never said otherwise.
You have to radiate off the energy which is cooking you AND the power it takes to run the refrigerator. (And the waste heat from the power plant which runs the refrigerator.)
No refrigerator can be more efficient than a Carnot Cycle, so you have to work harder and harder as the radiator temperature goes up.
But you don't have any choice.
Cool anything that can't stand overheating or die!

Of course, you can get by without refrigeration if you have superconducting cables to bleed the heat to the hull and a surface area the size of North America.

[Anonymous No.9664976]

>>9664970
The Death Star would overheat.
Blowing up an Earth-sized planet takes roughly the total output of the Sun for a week!
Shut up and calculate.

[Anonymous No.9664981]

>>9664975
>>9664976
You're making up arbitrary numbers so that it doesn't work. Even if you were using a directed energy weapon, it would only need to be in the megawatt range. kys

[Anonymous No.9665000]

>>9664981
Why would it only need to be in the megawatt range?

[Anonymous No.9665005]

>>9662840
>fantasy movies have fantastic elements in them
Imagine my shock.
Also
>lasers can't burn anything
Maybe...they can... you know... melt it.

[Anonymous No.9665029]

>>9664981
I said you could make your own numbers now that you know the equations.
Go right ahead. Show us. If you can't, stop bitching.

Just don't make your weapons an unrealistic 99.999% efficient (I did so to make a point) and consider beam spread and reflective paint in considering the effects on the target. Maybe even jinking by the target if you're fighting at a few light-seconds range.
(That's another thing about the OP's sample picture. The ships in these battles usually just lumber by in slow motion. Of course, it wouldn't be nearly as dramatic if the fleets interpenetrated and separated in seconds.)

[Anonymous No.9665176]

>>9662840
Huh, I thought you'd go for the
>Can't hear sound in space
That's one of the dumbest complaints I've ever heard, like anyone would enjoy sitting through a completely silent space battle

[Anonymous No.9665278]

>>9664099

Well, there would need to be some kind of FTL tech in such a situation, so maybe days instead of generations, the point being is that I'm sick of just warping instantly anywhere like in Starwars and Star trek.

[Anonymous No.9665284]

(Space hot/cold debate)

Space is, effectively, cold, but spaceships don't irradiate heat very well, thus, any heat they do produce, or take from the sun, piles up.

Now, in deep space, if the ship does break down, yes, it'll freeze. Not instantly, but when they board a derelict ship in sci-fi, and everything's frozen over, that's accurate(ish). But if it's running, all the internal bits have to be cooled.

Ya'll might recall the panic NASA went through when the ISS's air conditioner broke:
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/533d4k/space-is-freezing-why-does-the-space-station-need-an-air-conditioner

For exposed objects without internal heat sources, however, it is instant freeze. This is why the sun facing side of Mercury is ~800F, while the dark side is -290F (or roughly the same temperature as Jupiter's light side).

[Anonymous No.9665312]

>>9665278
Well, FTL is basically magic, so it's just personal preference at that point. Could be instant, or could just be slightly faster and thus take years or decades to get anywhere.

Does take centuries to cross the galaxy in Star Trek at least (well, after TOS, though there's some attempts at retcon regarding natural warp corridors that's supposed to explain this discrepancy). Star Wars hyperspace takes a few weeks, but given what it's supposed to be, really should be instant (save that there's an acceleration to light speed involved before they enter hyperspace, but well, magic).

On the other hand, in both those series, they end up fighting way too close to each other. Especially true in Star Wars, though they might not have a choice, since they apparently rely primarily on non-computer controlled lasers (or "turbo lasers" - which are apparently slower than real lasers, since you have to lead them from under a mile away), and aim everything, save torpedos, like WWII era battleships did, despite having full-AI walking around everywhere.

In both cases though - that's all about the drama. Fighting from too far off and letting missiles do all the work does not make for much of a show.

[Anonymous No.9665324]

>>9665176
Space may be silent, but there's still background music. "2001" is more impressive than the pocketa-pocketa-poketa pwew-pwew of later films

>>9665278
Didn't they have some sort of technobabble in the last Star Wars movie, so they could blow up worlds halfway across the Galaxy and see the fireworks in "real time"? Light transmitted through hyperspace or something like that.

[Anonymous No.9665339]

>>9665312
"Fighting from too far off and letting missiles do all the work does not make for much of a show."

Not always. In the "Macross" anime it was mostly missiles, thousands of them weaving and jinking across the screen and leaving interlacing trails of exhaust. The tracks ended (realistically) in briefly expanding flashes of light as a ship goes up in a fusion explosion.

It's impressive as hell. But if you know where to look and slo-mo through the climactic battle scene, amidst all the confusion you can see that one of the missiles is a can of Coke. Some bored animator.

[Anonymous No.9665354]

>>9665324
>Didn't they have some sort of technobabble in the last Star Wars movie, so they could blow up worlds halfway across the Galaxy and see the fireworks in "real time"? Light transmitted through hyperspace or something like that.
I suppose it isn't too far fetched to magic up a beam that travels through hyperspace and comes out where you need it to, but it should still be a long damn while before you see the explosion from where you fired it from.

Not that hyperspace ramming didn't make the entire franchise absolutely pointless anyways. Not only makes the Death Star a sitting duck that any hyperspace capable ship could take out, but, as the same is true for any given planet, no reason to build it to begin with.

Meh, Star Wars is more space opera than sci-fi. Star Trek often gets it wrong, but Star Wars clearly isn't even trying - even when it comes to consistency within the storyline. Of course, that last bit is bad practice, even if you are using pure magic, as the cognitive dissonance kinda sticks in the back of the viewer's mind. I suppose, these days, we have so much of said dissonance already that it doesn't matter, which maybe why the newer ones are even worse about this than the original trilogy.

[Anonymous No.9665358]

>>9665339
>Macross
>missiles is a can of Coke
Don't punch me in the nostalgia like that!

[Anonymous No.9665410]

To add onto the long-range missile idea, that could be just for combat at the longest distances that combat can happen. I imaging warfare would change if ships are closer to one another, long range Canon shots at ships you can barely see in the distance. Up-close ship to ship combat are when things would get crazy.

[Anonymous No.9665420]

How about ramming? Like the Mediteranian ships of yore.

[Anonymous No.9665433]

The last jedi is poop, and the force awakens is seriously flawed, and not just in comparison to the originals.

[Anonymous No.9665439]

>>9665420
Works great if you are using expendable missiles or bullets, not so great if the ships have people in them. Too expensive. The ship would get shredded after a single ram. The impact speeds could be well over the speed of sound the ships are made from. That will destroy both ships.

[Anonymous No.9665472]

>>9665339

[Anonymous No.9665499]

>>9665410
Don't you have that backwards?
You'd never hit anything with an artillery shell at even half a light-second -- not to mention that the shell would take 4 or 5 hours to arrive and the target would surely be somewhere else by then. Rockets, at least, can be guided and home in on a target.

Close up is where you don't need guidance. Rocks and garbage would go through any ship which plowed into them at 10 km/sec. (No rocket could carry WW2 battleship armor plate and the laws of physics don't seem to hold out much hope for force shields.)

>>9665420
You don't ram at a couple of km/sec. Unless you're a kamikaze. Both ships would simply explode, their KE turning into the thermal-motion of individual molecules.

[Anonymous No.9665502]

>>9665472
They forgot the exterior paint job.

[Anonymous No.9665504]

>>9665499
>(No rocket could carry WW2 battleship armor plate and the laws of physics don't seem to hold out much hope for force shields.)

I imagine any combat ships would be assembled in space and not have to launch from the surface. Wouldn't that allow armor on spacecraft? No having to get through an atmosphere or anything.

[Anonymous No.9665531]

>>9665504
Still have to haul all that mass around.
1930's and '40s spacecraft had thick plating as a "meteor defense". Actual spacecraft just take their chances since every ounce counts and the sky isn't full of junk.

The opening paragraph of "Spacehounds of IPC"
A narrow football of steel, the Interplanetary Vessel _Arcturus_ stood upright in her berth in the dock like an egg in its cup. A hundred feet across and a hundred and seventy feet deep was that gigantic bowl, its walls supported by the structural steel and concrete of the dock and lined with hard-packed bumper-layers of hemp and fibre. High into the air extended the upper half of the ship of space--a sullen gray expanse of fifty-inch hardened steel armor, curving smoothly upward to a needle prow. Countless hundred of fine vertical scratches marred every inch of her surface, and here and there the stubborn metal was grooved and scored to a depth of inches--each scratch and score the record of an attempt of some wandering cosmic body to argue the right-of-way with the stupendous mass of that man-made cruiser of the void.

>>9665339
I found the scene in Macross. My memory's going. It was Budweiser.

[Anonymous No.9665886]

>watching movie
>"the space air is entering the ship"
>space whale
>space storm

[Anonymous No.9665951]

>>9665433
Still better than the prequels, though at least those didn't break the whole franchise the way TLJ did.
>Midichlorians
FUCK!

>>9665531
Most of that holds true for ships designed to travel in-solar system. But when it comes to ships capable of interstellar travel, assuming the universe isn't FTL, you're talking about such levels of power that a lot of that becomes irrelevant. Kugelblitze powered starships, for instance, can have pretty much any level of armor you want and have disgusting power output - the ship itself acting as a catastrophic weapon at any time.

Star Trek's magitech makes any material armor defense that isn't magi-charged in some way almost meaningless. This might actually be the case, should kugelblitze or similar power source be in use (as would be required for interstellar travel in non-FTL land). Star Trek's solution being to project some very odd magi-shield, but barring something along those lines, that technological leap might look much like that which happened when armored knights went defunct. Armor does nothing, so aim for speed, or more likely, just not being seen.

>inb4 "stealth is impossible in space" article that no one realizes is satire is linked.

If you have FTL, then it's another story - but who knows what your power requirements are for said magitech, they just seem to be particularly high in Star Trek. I think they are high in Star Wars as well, if you read the tech manuals, but the special brand of power the hyperdrive uses can't be redirected to anything else. In Macross, since we brought it up, the fold engine uses the same power source of near anything else, but we don't really get numbers.

[Anonymous No.9665963]

>>9662973
>Energy weapons are invisible in vacuum.
There's still shit for lasers to scatter off of in space... just significantly less shit.

[Scientist !!ThFjnJh4EkH No.9665989]

>>9665354
If you have FTL, then you should use FTL missiles, barring other magic tech.

[Anonymous No.9666013]

mfw you are all idiots, as humans have never penetrated the earth's dome that surrounds the earth (which is a flat, round disk).

[Anonymous No.9666019]

>>9665989
Depends on how big your FTL drive is, how much area it can transport, and how resource heavy they are to produce.

Star Trek has em - not sure why Star Wars doesn't, though maybe it'd require a human pilot, just like everything else they fly seems to, for some damned reason.

Macross doesn't have em cuz fold drives are huge and extremely temperamental (and in Robotech, add the fact that the fuel is apparently the most precious limited resource in the universe).

[Anonymous No.9666040]

>>9666019
>not sure why Star Wars doesn't
Star Wars doesn't because, in that universe, objects in hyperspace don't exist in euclidean space. However, masses in euclidean space cause warps in hyperspace, that can unexpectedly kick you out of hyperspace, and any unexpected exit from hyperspace tends to result in the ship disintegrating somewhere beyond the object that caused it to exit.

You could program a missle to enter hyperspace, jump out near its target, and then use standard drive to reach the target, but you can only jump so close to any target with any real mass, so, at that point... Midas well just use a Y-Wing, which does the same thing and fires a bunch of missiles.

[Anonymous No.9666058]

>>9666040
So, yeah, add "accuracy" to the list of reasons you might not have FTL missiles, should your FTL be unpredictable, or unable to be used in gravity wells.

TLJ kinda kills all that though. I mean, I've read that entering hyperspace entails a sudden acceleration to light speed, thus you could ram ships like that (barring Interdictors) - but if you could make missiles that can hyperspace some distance from their targets, and then do that, well... You would probably never see any other weapon used in space, save the non-lethal variety.

But again, it's drama, not science. That's was a trump card we've never seen before, will never see again, and will never have an explanation as to why.

[Anonymous No.9666080]

How the hell could your eyes see photons that aren't reflecting off anything anyway?

[Anonymous No.9666107]

>>9666080
You can, provided the emitter is pointed right at you (though interestingly it seems the eye is so sensitive you can pick up individual ones, if they hit right). But as others have pointed out, you see them in an atmosphere due to diffusion (though, even then, you can use wavelengths that leave them practically invisible to the eye), so you shouldn't normally see them in space, barring particulates (which I suppose you would get in an extended space battle). The other excuse being, they aren't lasers - they're particle beams or "phasers" or "turbo lasers", the first of which could emit light depending on what combinations of particles we're talking about - but who knows what the heck those last two are.

[Anonymous No.9666423]

>>9663669

Not light years. But certainly extreme ranges.

With lasers and rapidly accelerating AI controlled missiles winning would be determined by who could sight who first. In open space that would be at vast distances.

But at a guess I would say open space battles would be exceedingly rare, they would far more likely take place very close to planetary bodies or smaller. Then the battles might close to the 1000's of kms.

The thing that made all movie space battles crap to me is how they are all re-skinned aerial world war two dogfights, utter bullshit.

[Anonymous No.9666509]

>>9666423
Without something that makes ships CHEAP like rapidly produced fully automated shipyards, noone is going to be risking billion dollar ships in fights

It'll be the same as in any war nowadays, if you are on the weaker side you hide your ships in ports/behind land defenses