Warfare in Space

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

   I think that in the future, the direction of this blog will be less oriented towards provision of primary sources, and more to the discussion of relevant topics in futurism, alternate realities (to yours), and alternate histories.

   That's not to say that I will stop sharing my research with you, but in this format I can share more possibilities with you at once, freed from the restrictions of a primary source.

   Therefore, today I want to discuss how warfare will change when the primary arena of combat changes to be outer space.  There are a variety of different options, which all depend on how the societies in question have advanced their technologies.

   The spacecraft that you are used to are incredibly simple.  They are unable to withstand the wide variety of attacks that your militaries have come up with, and certainly would not be able to stand up to more advanced weaponry.  Let's not dress it up: space warfare in your time stream is a neglected area of research.

   Really, I find that kind of refreshing.  Wars in space are nasty things, and it is good that so far your society has managed to keep space a peaceful zone of international collaboration and economic competition.  However, I do not believe that even your contemporaries expect that situation to continue forever, especially as more private interests enter the space arena.  This article should provide you with some idea of what space combat will and won't look like, given a few assumptions.

   Just so that we're all being realistic: space warfare is not going to look like STAR WARS.  The action depicted in STAR WARS, probably your most memorable imagining of space combat, is also woefully ignorant of what space is actually like.  No matter what assumptions are made, I can't find a time stream wherein space combat resembles World War II-era naval air combat.  In no small part because there isn't any air resistance in space, so the long, banking turns you see in such films are wholly unnecessary.
  
  There are, however, a few different frameworks for space combat.  Each has a prerequisite technology associated with it, so I'll go through one by one, in a series of posts.

   Framework One: Assuming Current Technology, or Slight Improvements Thereupon

   Current space technology is incredibly limited.  We could engineer weapons and machinery that would work in Low Earth Orbit, but the combat would not look like what you would imagine.  For one, everyone seems to think about manned warfare vehicles in a space combat context.Image via Wikipedia

   In reality, modern space warfare is going to look more like the tiny missile on the right than it will like the huge plane that launched it.

   Given current limitations, manned combat vehicles would be too risky to operate, and would not offer the maneuverability of computer-guided or remote controlled vehicles.

   The reason is one of inertia and mass.  The huge jet over there has a lot of mass dedicated to holding its pilot.  Computers have a lot lower mass than pilots, and that reduces the overall inertia of your warfighting spacecraft.  Inertia describes how much the resistance the vehicle puts up when you try to move it or slow it down; it's different from weight, so it still applies in low gravity.
 
   The mass matters for two reasons.  First, something has to put the craft into orbit.  Currently, there's a very expensive cost-per-kilogram to put something into orbit, so the less mass it is, the better off you are.  The second reason, though, is more interesting.  The ratio between the fuel carried and the overall mass of the space vehicle is a determining factor of how effective the vehicle will be in a combat situation.  In space, every movement is based on Newton's third law, under this framework.  For every action, there is an equal reaction of opposite direction.  That means our spacecraft needs to expend fuel every time it moves, shoots, or turns.  Aircraft need to use fuel to go forward, stay aloft, and change direction.  If they want to slow down, they can just use less fuel.  If they run out of fuel, they can return to base and be turned around within a matter of hours.
  
   Not so in space.  An object in space won't stop fast enough if it just stops firing its engines; there's no air to slow it down.  Even in LEO, it will continue along its original path on the time scale that is relevant to a combat engagement.  It will need to expend fuel in order to slow down.  The spacecraft's weaponry, unless it is itself a missile, will also slow it down, and it will need to use its engines to overcome that.  Worst of all, it won't be able to just land and refuel itself.  The belligerents in our modern space war would have to launch automated tankers, which would themselves be targets and require defensive systems.
  
   So the picture of a modern technology space war is this: automated missile-like vehicles, sent to space for long-term residence there.  They could be either entirely computer-controlled, or controlled by technicians on the ground.  These spacecraft would either need to be expendable or would need some system of in-orbit refueling, which would mean the launch of large, automated fuel tankers.  The primary target of these orbital weapons would either be targets on the surface of the Earth (which could be attacked by far less costly means), satellites, and/or other space combat vehicles and tankers.  Right now (for you) the most practical of these targets are satellites, but since your satellite market is dominated by the US and Russia, which are averse to war with one another, I don't believe you'll be seeing actual anti-satellite operations any time soon.  Furthermore, even if one of these countries did see fit to destroy satellites en masse, the debris created from combat would create many hazards for their own satellites, making LEO combat far less practical than one would desire.

   At any rate, that is the current state of the technology for your time stream.  In the next post I'll discuss the combat situation if a critical technology, a device that manipulates the inertia of a space vehicle, is invented.


  Always,


   John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople