space warfare xviii rocketpunk manifesto

SPACE WARFARE XVIII ROCKETPUNK MANIFESTO FREE

This type of environment is a loathsome cross between brutal house-to-house urban fighting and dreadnaughts in the open ocean, only at 7 km/s in free fall.

That's where ninety percent of all live fire incidents in the Conjunction universe have taken place. In a realistic setting, where's all the interesting stuff going to be? In orbit, of course. So, the goal of the attackers is to get inside the light-second range, while the defender will want to keep the attackers at least a light-second out.Īssumption#3: Most Combat Takes Place in Orbital Space But if you stay moving around, the laser's targeting system can only see where you were a second ago, due and then guess where you'll be by the time the laser actually gets there. You cannot, of course, actively dodge, because by the time you see the laser, it's cooking you. The Light-Second Limit also refers to the fact that the closest distance you can get to an attacker and still reasonably dodge a laser is a light-second, because it gives you (duh) a second's time to move. What this means is that even the largest, most sophisticated swarm of missiles and autonomous combat craft will have a control ship with real people somewhere within three hundred thousand kilometers. By 'effectively control' we mean, things like evasive maneuvers, coordinated fleet movements, synchronized fire from lasers, and the direction of flights of missiles. Basically, in the Conjunction universe, you can't effectively remote control something more than a light-second away.

This isn't a real limit, but a practical consideration that comes from the first assumption. After all, it it's just a matter of 'whoever has the most lasers/missiles wins', then why write about it? With beams and kinetics evenly matched, the choice of which one to use, under which circumstance, can be critical. Two, by making both banks of lasers and swarms of kinetics just about even, things like maneuvering, tactics, fire discipline and other stuff you can lump under 'human factors' become important. By having both swarms of Kinetic Kill Vehicles and eye-burning lasers, you get variety to spice up your setting.

This is important to the setting for two reasons: First, having only one type of weapon system dominate is kinda boring. The cost in delta-V is to high to move that much mass. Contra wise, with enough small lasers massed on a single side, there is no amount of kinetics capable of overwhelming a determined defense. While a big laser Combat Mirror would have the power to vape anything massing less than a small asteroid, the thing is impossible to aim fast enough to do the job, so there you go. In the Conjunction universe, a laser capable of destroying any and all kinetics attacks is too expensive to build, especially in terms of power. For an in depth analysis, Rick Robinson has a couple of posts that Atomic Rockets already linked to, so that's where you should start, with further discussion here. I will be referencing their work throughout.įor those of you not familiar (lucky!) with 'Purple vs Green', it refers to the debate among Hard SF fans about which type of weapon system is better: Lasers or Kinetics? The subject is passionately discussed in a variety of places. for his indispensable Atomic Rockets website. That's what this post is about.Īs always, special thanks to Rick Robinson for waxing lyrical on these topics on his Rocketpunk Manifesto blog, and Winchell Chung Jr. For their capabilities and armaments and other particulars to make even a lick of sense, we must establish what design assumptions are in place in the Conjunction setting. In order to finish filling out the Building a Space Navy chart, we will eventually have to add in some actual ships and rockets and stuff. This is sort of a digression from our Building a Space Navy series, but a necessary one.

Space warfare xviii rocketpunk manifesto