Given realistic technology, what would interplanetary space warfare look like.
With the key assumption that interplanetary vessels are nuclear-powered and use low thrust, high efficiency ion drives that allow them to reach Mars in a month, and Jupiter in a year with 2/3 of their mass devoted to fuel.
How would different weapons be used, and which would be dominant? Would war even be economically feasible? How would technology and gravity wells dictate tactics, operations, and strategy?
Near future space warfare will consist of depressurized small vessels of no more than 10 people, probably cylinder or egg shaped so they can be spun to simulate gravity so nobody's muscles atrophy while on tour, and combat will consist of guessing the orbital path of stations and enemy ships and launching from afar either drones, missiles, or clouds of diamond-like chaff at them to shred them to pieces. Railguns are bombardment weapons or for close-quarters only, limiting their usefulness. Lasers would likely be employed for point defense or pin-point targeting. "Shields" in the contemporary scifi sense would be basically useless beyond deflecting cosmic radiation and possibly energy weapons, considering they'd almost certainly be magnetic or plasma-based in nature. Armor is far more likely because any space-dwelling civilization can be assumed capable of easily manufactured plates crafted from asteroid or lunar slag. Most naval encounters would consist of targeting radiators and fuel tanks. If the radiators are destroyed, the powerplant can't be used. Bare minimum this takes enemy ships out of the fight, and at absolute maximum they can't have power, heat, or operate their engines, meaning the crew will die if not rescued. If your enemy is traveling at a high velocity and you destroy their fuel tanks thereby ending any chance of deceleration, course correction, or even really maintaining their orbit, they're basically totally screwed with no chance of rescue. Everyone starves, freezes, or slowly suffocates to death. Beyond logistics, this is actually another reason crew compliments will be small. Everyone will carry suicide pills as part of their standard loadout.
Also, in the event of a war within the solar system, every planet/moon involved will almost immediately have their skies filled with so many diamond clouds that transit into or out of orbit will be impossible, killing their economy.
Luis Torres
Aren't interception trajectories extremely difficult with realistic ion drives because of low acceleration?
Austin Butler
I think its pointless to attempt to predict what space war would look like if your assuming fission power and ion drives, why the fuck wouldn't they have fusion? Who is conducting serious space war within the next 50 years?
The first thing to realize is the potential industrial capacity of any space based civilization, fully/mostly automated industrial bases dropped onto barren bodies and set to self replicate are the cornerstone of this. During WW2 the US increased its industrial capacity by around 50%, think about that. They had to dedicate a massive amount of industrial capacity to sustaining quality of life within itself and supplying itself and the lend lease program, they had the incredible inefficiency of any large scale human institution and they did this with early 20th century tech. Now think of and industrial base with:
>almost perfect, robotic efficiency >fully dedicated to self replication >no wages need to be paid >with future tech >access to an entire empty moon or other body to use
This concept doesn't assume any magic sci-fi shit like AGI or nanomachines, its just what we have now but a bit more advanced and with computer programs advanced enough to run a factory with minimal human input.
Even assuming the incredibly conservative rate of doubling in size once a year a single seed dropped on a single body would balloon out within a century to cover entire planetary bodies and have enough production to build millions of warships a year.
The point, is that no serious attempt to predict any space based future is complete without taking into account just how fucking much industry any faction will have. Don't think about a few dozen aircraft carrier sized warships, think of eating up entire moons and converting their entire mass into millions of kilometer+ long warships.
>Armor is far more likely because any space-dwelling civilization can be assumed capable of easily manufactured plates crafted from asteroid or lunar slag armor is very heavy dead weight that increases delta V to go any where
Because I think a conservative vision of space war and colonization (although way more optimistic than the current trajectory) is interesting.
Cameron Ramirez
What sort of year are you thinking of then? Fusion power is definitely not more than a century away, even conservatively.
Dominic Brown
You need some level of thin anti-heat armour to avoid getting roasted by a laser set to wide beam from millions of km away, although the OP stipulation of ion drives and fission reactors does limit it massively. You could armour the shit out a fusion torch ship if its just mean to go within our solar system.
