Weaponry in Space Exploration

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>>33708252
Gyrojet- or something like it- was proposed as a good choice for gun to be used in space.

Thermal energy in the barrel and carbon fouling are likely to be major problems in any space gun. Thus, your best bet is likely to be a rocket projectile.

There's also the momentum imparted to the operator from using the weapon, which rocket projectiles help mitigate.

Another option is a second "magazine" of coolant that flows through the barrel of a semi-conventional weapon and is ejected as the weapon fires to counteract momentum imparted and to help cool the barrel. Seems complicated though, rocket projectiles seem best.

followup: what would be the worst kind of planet to fight on?

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>>33709361
Frozen planets (like Hoth from Star Wars)
Desert planets or shit like Mustafar
Jungle planets cause you dont know what kind of fucking creature or disease may pray on you

>>33708485
Late response, but thanks for the detailed reply. I had no idea such a weapon existed before, these are cool as fuck.

>>33709418
Now I want a space 'nam.

>>33709418
You need a variety of conditions to exist to produce a jungle, so jungle planets would probably have more biomes. Frozen and Desert planets are possible.

Most planets will be either barren freezing/burning rocks, super high pressure acid saunas, or balls of lava.

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>>33709458
It aint me plays in the background

Soldiers pass through lush vegetation trying to find the charlie ayyyys.
>fuck this green ass bullshit man
>jungle so fucking thick i cant raise an arm without hitting two tree
>cpl brian got ate by a 10 feet jungle spider
>the ayyyys keep making plasma booby traps
>fuck man i should've went spaceforce

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>>33709484
Going on a sci fi level...i was picturing shit like Kashyyyk or Felucia which would be hell to fight in


Realistically, with what we know so far...barren wastelands is the best we'll get

>>33709558
Desert wastelands could also be cool as fuck though. Imagine mass infantry warfare with trenches and shit on something like Tatooinr

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>>33708252
>Surely a laser would be more practical than a projectile due to varying atmospheres

Wouldn't this be the opposite? What if you fight in a place with smoke/fog/dust flying around? Your laser will be spent melting air particles between you and your target instead of the actual target. Guns would still be the most common weapon, lasers need battery packs that will always be too cumbersome for humans to hold and mirror armour (which is very easy to produce) would render them useless.

Plasma also wouldn't work since the heat of the plasma would just leak into the medium it travels through (the atmosphere) so the further away from the target you are the colder the plasma would be when it reaches him, the worst part is that the hottest air will be right next to you so if the weapon would be used you'd literally start cooking yourself rather than your target.

The only hand carried weapons of the future will be firearms, some kind of flame thrower, electrical weapons, rail guns and radiation weapons (basically a weapon that either produces decaying material or holds decaying material with the only "exit point" for the radiation would be the "barrel").

>>33709592
Need a delivery system that encases the plasma and keeps it from venting it's energy until it hits its target, upon which the envelope ruptures and the energy is transferred to the point of impact.

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>>33709575
Sounds cool and interesting
But hear this
>bullshit ass planet, so fucking hot my soles are on fire
>hear i am in this bullshit ass desert filling sandbags and hescos cause some fucking lt felt like it...man fuck this
>fucking java stole something again
>motherfucking tusken raiders taking potshots again
>is that a sandworm?

>>33709629
tusken raiders are the sandnigger snipers of space
really though I think a desert planet would probably be boring because it isn't much different that warfare today

>>33709614
Would that prevent the rapid cooling though? I'm no physicist but I don't think stopping plasma from leaking into the air would affect how far it travelled

>>33709647
Depends on its geography
Fighting through tombs and ruins of an ancient alien species sounds pretty dope (like in the new Conan game) or think geonosis tier
Or imagine cleaning houses in a favela like desert city

>>33709614
>>33709592
Plasma would be like a superhot, super expensive flamethrower that would work in a vacuum. You'd have to use superconducting electromagnets to suspend and chuck streams of it, but of course magnets have very low range.

>>33708252
>What would be the best general-issue weapon to use whilst exploring space?
Some sort of polearm.

Any threat in space that can't be handled with a polearm means you're already fucked.

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>>33709705
The drinkers of blood, the Tearers of Flesh!

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>>33708485
This. Low muzzle velocity meaning you don't get chucked miles into deep space when you fire, but speeds up after leaving barrel. A bit more work on this concept and you've got the one holy instrument for conquering a galaxy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjlCVW_ouL8

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>>33709558
>>33709484
Don't forget weird hazards like
>roughly-shaped, microscopic dust like on the moon that can shred lungs and gets lodged in moving parts/equipment
>omnipresent dust like on Mars with its bad habit of clinging to everything, containing toxic compounds, and being nigh impossible to fully wash/blast off
>frozen gases that'll sublimate when any non-insulated part touches it so it generates an instant cloud of possibly explosive gas

Don't forget you'll need to stock several lubes for your weapon if it's used in vacuum and in atmosphere. Depending on the atmosphere, your lube might not work at all- might jam the weapon. In vacuum, most lubes will turn to vapor or do weird things with temperature fluctuations so you're likely stuck with graphite lubes.

Also, the space forces won't be fun either. For combat, you need to dress in a full vacuum suit. If your ship is capable of sustained acceleration, prepare to have that suit also act as a G-suit and be full of breathable perflurocarbon fluid to help equalize density between your empty body parts- ideally so your lungs, stomach, and intestines don't collapse when maneuvering.

Enjoy going to general quarters and needing to gulp down some kind of expanding gel to fill your stomach and intestines, then donning a suit and drowning in/breathing lukewarm fluid. All this so your own ship doesn't kill you, not to mention the enemy!

There's also bizarre alien biology and radiation to consider. Outright pathogens might not exist but there could easily be microorganisms your immune system doesn't know how to handle that think your eyeballs are the right temperature, pH, and salinity to live and start a family. Oh! Allergies might be insane too, depending on how native organisms present to your immune system, a couple breaths might cause a cytokine storm that'll kill you.

>>33709817
Biological warfare could either be apocalyptic or useless depending on how microorganisms respond to alien life. It could be worse than smallpox to the natives or it could be like trying to give flu to an oak tree.

>>33708252
Lasers are pure shit. Plasma has problems because it needs its own stable magnetic field to travel with the shot to make it a "projectile".
ETC guns would be best.

>>33709817
That sounds an awful lot like riding an Eva.

>>33709817
>>33709871
Basically any kind of warfare in non earth enviroment is gonna be shitty
Moving in clunky suits
Everything is able to kill you
Every equipment piece is twice as prone to malfunction
Space itself is scary enough but imagine what other scary shit a planet with actual creatures or other shady life forms could have

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everyone itt assumes that ranged combat will still dominate the battlefield, what about melee?

will mechanical complications and the ease of dying in space revive simpler methods of combat?

what about crossbows? could they be modified in a way to make them superior to a firearm given the environment and relatively low performance required to kill?

what about pikes?

>>33709592
>mirror armour (which is very easy to produce) would render them useless.
>nothowlaserswork.jpg
Mirrors that reflect visible light won't do shit against an IR or Xray laser and will cause a minimal reflection of visible spectrum energy before they overheat, warp and fail. At the energy levels of a semi-viable infantry laser weapon, say 75+ kW(and that varies wildly with the frequency/wavelength of the beam and the environment), Reflective armor that was some how specifically constructed to manage a 95% reflection of the exact wavelength the laser is using would still be absorbing 5% of that laser's energy at initial contact, and that absorption rate would only increase with exposure time. So say we're using the mentioned 75kW laser weapon and a 95% reflective target, not accounting for attenuation/diffraction, that's 3.75kW of energy being absorbed by the target, or 3.75kJ/s of energy not accounting for warping/deformation caused by the absorbed energy. Compare that to the muzzle energy of a M855A1 at ~1.8kJ. Granted that a second is a good deal of time in combat, but any "mirror armor" that absorbs even a quarter of that energy is going to be massively degraded in its performance. This assumes you have somehow hit the universal lottery in having your armor perfectly attuned to reflect your opponent's laser and have just pulled the protective wrapper off of it in a clean room seconds before shooting it with the laser. The likelihood of knowing the exact wavelength of your enemy's weapons is retardedly low, even assuming they build for only a single specific wavelength, each weapon would vary in its actual wavelength. Real world results would far more likely be less than 40% reflection rate, which is almost entirely useless.
The only thing that reliably protects against lasers is density. Burning through super dense materials takes a lot of energy, regardless of how it's imparted.

Tl;dr: Get the fuck out of here with that bullshit.

>>33709992
Good point. Things like the stasis field from The Forever War or the personal shields from Dune really interest me. I'd imagine a melee weapon would be far more reliable to use on a variety of planets too.

>>33709992
>>33710036
Wouldnt want to fight some alien creature with chain swords and shit

>>33709992
Bayonets, knives and other small melee weapons.
Only matters in some environments also what about self sealing suits and quickly usable patches
No
Longer rifles, railguns, gyrojet guns, DEWs ect. with a long bayo if like your other idea you want to use a worse weapon.

>>33710079
I'm going to stand by my concept of the heat-transferless space pepperbox.
>DA/SA Revolver
>Cylinders swap out quickly, are insulated from the handle of the gun
Each barrel is only fired from once before being ejected, giving you total heat dissapation. Consider it's a main weapon, and that caliber size can be as much of a hinderance as a benefit when recoil isn't counteracted by any other forces, something like .25 ACP would be about all that's needed, and it could easily hold 10 rounds while still being the approximate size of a modern handgun. A top rail, not fixed at the front, would provide sighting.

This would be a purely out of atmosphere gun, and any in-atmosphere engagements would likely use more typical weaponry.

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>wanting to fight on desert planets
no thank you

Also, kinda relevant to the discussion at hand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvs_f5MwT04

>>33708485
Fighting off world is a fucking logistics nightmare.

Think the sand box but a million times bigger and anything that is still a threat on another planet is a huge threat to either our species or our livelyhood.

>>33710157
I fucking love Isaac Arthur, great recommendation.

He's apparently a vet but I have no idea what he did in the military.

>>33710149
Current space suits can stop .25apc and similar, they have soft body armor to stop a micrometeorite from puncturing it.
For exoatmospheric use rocket propelled/recoilless or direct energy weapons or just having a liquid cooled gun and some extra stabilization thrusters.

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>>33709361

Planets with extremely high gravity. Any sort of frozen or desert environment, while unpleasant, can be accounted for. High gravity would suck total ass 100% no matter what.

>walking anywhere takes far much effort
>resupply would be costly, requiring specialized orbital craft
>need specialized vehicles to move around on planet
>armored vehicles probably a no-go
>VTOLs probably a no-go
>any sort of projectile weapon is going to have massively reduced range


I find it actually unlikely that we'd even fight over a planet like that unless we had improbably good interstellar transport capabilities that could deliver purpose-built combat vehicles.

>>33710024
Ceramic ablative armor with a aerogel filler would make lasers practically useless.

>>33710340
5.7 then

>>33710608
So your planing on using a pistol that might defeat today's civilian spacesuits against tomorrows military's ones?

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>>33708252

Blades so that you don't puncture your own ship and cause explosive decompression

>>33708485
>>33709750
The low muzzle velocity is a problem though - theres a large delay between trigger pull and the round exiting the barrel. It'd be like having a lock time of a second.

Its also problematic for close targets - a gyrojet was ineffective at close range because it didn't have time to speed up. If you stuck your finger in the barrel you could stop the round without hurting yourself.

Needs to have a much faster acceleration to be viable.

>>33708252
TrackingPoints for everyone. Enjoy an infinite effective range. On Mars, enjoy 3x the distance and fantastic energy retention at range mean exceptionally effective volley/arcing fire and fewer trade offs in Aerodynamics for AP.

Need coolant for any sort of sustained fire though. Cycle it through your life support, you've already got a more efficient system there than you can easily strap to your rifle.

>>33710077
But you get to be a cool desert space ninja with a knife made out of the tooth of a giant death worm. Who doesn't want that?

>>33708252
Read the short story called "The Gun Without a Bang" by Robert Sheckley

>>33710340
>Current space suits can stop .25apc and similar, they have soft body armor to stop a micrometeorite from puncturing it.

Source? Isn't it just 1 layer of the Kevlar/Nomex weave?

>>33711052
As cool as that sounds that stuff is just a spoil for exposition in my room. If i get the comfort of an ranged rifle id take that instead of going mano a mano with some monstruosity

>>33711094
>>33711094
Hit me up with a source, I am having a tough time with google

>>33711100
Cant find one on how much just what its meant to stop micrometeorites and assuming .25apc is less.

>>33710350
not to mention
>Everybody turns into manlets after a while
>Massive internal fluid imbalance at anything over 1.5g

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>>33711638

fine choice,judge

>>33711524
Micrometeroids are fast af, but most weigh less than a gram. They are literally measured in micrometers - millionths of a meter.

I heard designer compare it to sand blasting.

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>>33709361
> Heavy Grav,
> No atmosphere
> Sand world
Imagine Mars with heavy grav and no rocks.

No atmosphere means no planes. Heavy grav means rockets are shit - even Earth gravity is close to the practical limits of rocketry. Both of these mean no air support unless its orbital and therefore easy as shit to take down with ASATs. The only way to project force is with land armies.

No atmosphere means you have to be suited up all the time or in pressurized vehicles or buildings. Suits are heavy and encumbering as fuck, plus all the gear soldiers have to carry. And you're on a heavy grav planet. And you're always walking in fucking sand. Infantry movement would be a nightmare.

You have to move by vehicle and vehicles have to be tracked to deal with the sand and the gravity. Which means way more maintenance and slower. Field maintenance in suits, in heavy grav lifting already heavy shit would suck.

And if your suit is punctured, you die in a just over minute.

Only way to do it worse would be if it was high temperature like Mercury, because dealing with thermal dissipation on an airless planet is a bitch.

Here's what nobody is considering: What kind of enemy are we facing?

My bet is a giant sentient mold on a cold, damp planet, low-mass. None of this desert shit. Nothing either: large enough to be dumb and dangerous, or smart enough to be small and dangerous would evolve on a desert-planet anyway.

No hoth, no tatooine, we're talking degobah.

What do, gents?

>>33714044
I think people just assumed we'd be killing each other. That's been true on every other frontier.

And when talking about killing aliens it very much depends on what it is your killing. Given we don't know what aliens, if any, we'd encounter we just default to humans and human/animal like things because otherwise theres no real standard of comparison.

For a sentient moss specifically, probably easiest to napalm swaths of it.

>>33714253
Fair.

>>33708252

A P90

>>33714044
Why the hell would we be fighting a low-sentient MOLD in the first place?

>>33714277
Did you just question a superior officer?

>>33708252
Honestly, A laser actually would suck for use in a vacuum, Lasers can't dissipate the tremendous heat they put off in vacuum. As low-tech as it sounds probably some kind of air-powered flechette rifle would be best. Intermediate range, you could tip the ammo with explosives, and it would fire using an existing gas supply. After that a recoiless rocket launcher. Even if its a small rocket it would do better than a bullet in most environments except high-oxygen ones like ours.

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>>33714297
I'm OP. No one outranks me.

>>33714329
Guess who's on latrine duty.

[spoiler]it's you[/spoiler]

>>33714357
>literally shitposting

>>33709361
Gas planets. Ignore all other posts.

>>33714418
>what would be the worst kind of planet to fight on?
> fight on
> on

You couldn't do anything but fall and be crushed to death in a gas planet

>>33714509
Exactly.

>>33710149
I had an idea for a full auto only, caseless SMG, it uses a smooth aluminium barrel with a magazine mounted about it, when you are done you dump the barrel and mag and slap a new one in.

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>>33709540
Here, somebody who wants to put in effort can make a better one.

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>>33710880
>all these people looking for excuses to advance technology backwards

>>33714519
Its like saying the worst car to drive is one that doesn't exist.

Even putting aside that retardation, a planet that makes you suffer and die would be worse than the relatively quick death of falling into a gas planet.

>>33714548
And knifes of all things - why not a fucking axe or a (non-polearm) war hammer or something actually useful?

Frangibles have problems though - by design they have shit penetration. Whether a spacesuit would stop a proper round is one thing, but you'd expect serious decreases in lethality. Aluminum stab proof vests have stopped Glasers specifically. At that point, everyone just wears armor.

I think people would just deal with bullet holes - they don't explosively decompress like in the movies, they take a long time to actual vent any decent volume through, everyone should be wearing suits in case of depressurization anyway and you have pressure doors to seal sections.

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I like to imagine space travel could bring the SMG back into vogue.
Weight constraints make it unlikely that anything will be very heavily armored so penetration isn't as much of a problem, and a small, light, low recoil weapon would be an attractive option for combat in a vacuum or on the ground.

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>>33708252
Only one real answer

>>33709418

That's all child's play. At least they have atmospheres.

Venus
>400C daytime temp
>Sulfur rain
>Volacnism out the ass
>crushing pressure

Have fun

>>33708252

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sidearmslug.php

>>33714600

This senpai.

Puncturing the hull is a non-issue. It'd take around an hour for the air to drop to unsafe levels when draining. Easy enough to grab a food tray and a glue gun and seal the hole with a patch job. If that fails, airlock amd vent the compartment and send hull technicians out to plug the gap later.

Also, warhammers and axes wouldn't be great in a ship. Aside from the issue of swinging a weapon in a confined space, you'd likely not be able to do that in microgravity. Knifes would make sense in hand to hand combat where you can use the opponent for leverage. Axes wouldn't be amazingly useful.

>>33709361
(1/5)A supermassive moon.

High gravity is going to be your first source of issues - either you'll need to use some sort of exoskeleton to ensure that infantry deployed on the surface is able to do anything without risking serious injury just doing basic tasks like walking, or use troops that you have trained to fight in high-gravity conditions, something that may be entirely impossible on a large enough world.

Next, the gravity is going to seriously impact your ability to move wounded and damaged equipment off-world, as the fuel costs to get into orbit will increase significantly on a high-grav world. This also means that air support assets will be minimal, if used at all, as the fuel needed to keep them on station will be quickly consumed. Whilst orbital weapon platforms may help to alleviate this, changing orbital inclination is expensive, fuel-wise, so any force fighting cannot depend on the presence of orbital support assets.

All projectile weapons will have reduced range. Artillery will be far less effective, integrated support such as mortars will be nearly useless, and slug throwers like current-day rifles will also be greatly impeded in their ability to fight at range. Whilst DEW like lasers may help to alleviate this, diffusion of the laser by surface dust and intentionally created clouds of gas will easily impede their ability to strike targets as well.

This essentially ensures that drone warfare will become very common, however this creates it's own brand of issues.

Firstly, remote command and control - you have essentially two options here. Either you operate it remotely in space, in which case you're vulnerable to ASAT weaponry, something that is known to be incredibly effective and hard to defeat (space combat is *very* hard,) as well as making yourself a massive target with all the emissions you're giving off as you send control orders to the drones slaved to it.

Alternately, you could use a surface control center.

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>>33714600
>war hammer or something actually useful
Nobody's going to bring a war hammer into space.
Apart from combat it isn't useful, they have perfectly good hammers along with whatever other tools they have.
They aren't bringing dedicated melee weapons.

>>33714778
(2/5)This has it's own unique issues. Firstly, you have to deal with a minimum signal range. Without an atmosphere and magnetosphere to bounce command transmissions off of, getting signals out to units via radio will be rather difficult beyond a short range, and transmissions will make the control center a very noticable target. While laser-beamed communications to a satellite used to distribute the command signals is a possible solution, this takes us back to the issue with the space control center - it's an easy target.

A potential solution to this is to deploy the control center as a mobile unit following behind the front line, keeping pace with drone troops as they advance. While this doesn't make the control center any less of a target, it means that it can at least minimize risk of orbital strikes against it, and can ensure drone units will be able to advance at a reasonable rate.

Next is the issues presented by the surface material of a Moon-like planet.

Moon dust isn't like Earth or Mars dust. It isn't weathered, and it's really good at insulating. Now, this means to a certain degree it's incredibly useful. For the purposes of building on-world barracks or manned control points, underground construction is a fantastic option. Any radiation affecting the surface of the planet is no longer as much of an issue, and any stray signals from electronics being used in the facility will be dampened or blocked completely by the lunar material above.

However, for troops and equipment? This stuff is pure hell.

>>33714783
(3/5)Moon dust is unweathered - unlike on Earth where dust, made up of particles of dust are beat around and have their edges eroded by wind and water, particles of dust on the Moon are sharp. On equipment, this means anywhere it gets is like having powdered sandpaper dropped into it. Complex machinery will need even more maintenance than something on an Earth desert, and gear worn by troops will wear out incredibly fast. On troops, the effects are far worse. As the particles aren't weathered, breathing them in does significant damage to the respiratory tract, and the particles will end up hardening as they get moisture into them, meaning that individuals that breathe in too much will end up with essentially "Moon cement" in their lungs, and will have literally shredded their respiratory tract. This means that troops will need to go through complex decontamination just to get out of their field gear to have it serviced, something essential in such an environment.

As for those insulating properties? Heat becomes far more of a problem. Machinery that produces heat as it operates will suddenly find itself getting warmer and warmer as any dust begins to collect on it, increasing chances of thermal failure. This is worsened by the lack of atmosphere, meaning any temperature changes from exposure (or lack therof,) to solar heating could prove leathal to equipment. Additionally, because of these abrading properties, equipment worn by troops will collect tons of the lunar-type dust, making the above issues suffered by surface troops far harder to deal with.

>>33714788
(4/5)Temperature itself is a huge issue. Surface temperatures will fluctuate wildly depending on whether or not the combatant is exposed to sunlight or in shade, and such rapid temperature changes may result in additional equipment wear and tear. Maintaining life support is also energy expensive, and such systems are going to be a must in such an environment. Most casualties, to that end, will not survive their injuries, unless a compartmentalized suit system is employed. This itself is problematic, as troops that lose limbs are major drains on resources, and are a serious problem for morale, both home and among the troops fighting. Regardless, this means that troop losses will be extremely high during engagements, and few if any casualties will be fit for service if and when they recover from their injuries. The very act of moving wounded troops back to a facility for treatment will be difficult, as described in the above sections, and, given that any serious casualties will likely need to be extracted via an extremely expensive launch from the surface, survival rates will likely be very low even among those that survive their initial injuries. Additionally, high-gravity stresses mean that any injuries taken will be greatly compounded by risk of bone breakage from simple mistakes such as falling, serving to push up casualty rates even higher.

The next issue is a little more complex - the fighting of a war itself will complicate fighting the war more and more as time goes on.

>>33714794
(5/5)The fact is, every means of propelling spacecraft that we currently have (aside from ORION, which carries it's own... unique issues that I won't even *start* to get into, beyond "you're propelling your spacecraft with a goddamn nuclear shaped charge,") produces gasses and waste products. On Earth, these aren't a big deal. But on a planet without an atmosphere? You're now *creating* an atmosphere, generally of toxic and potentially corrosive gasses. As the war goes on, these will begin to accumulate more and more in the atmosphere. While some may end up collecting on the ground instead, leaving you with a Zone Rouge style contamination that you'll be stuck dealing with for decades/centuries to come, much of it will end up staying in the air and complicating life for everybody operating on the surface.

Additionally, orbital combat will result in debris getting stuck flying around in orbit. This creates two new problems. Firstly, larger debris will end up re-entering. Without a proper atmosphere to stop it, this means that you'll end up with essentially kinetic penetrators raining from the sky at random, occasionally crippling systems and killing troops. This however, isn't as serious as the second issue. That is the debris left shooting around in orbit. Over time, more and more will accumulate, and, if not intentionally avoided, this will eventually result in cascades of debris colliding and creating more debris. This is known as Kessler Syndrome, and could become a massive issue during a war. As a number of different orbits will become more obviously helpful than others, more orbital assets will be placed into them. As these are destroyed by ASAT weapons, debris from them will accumulate and eventually may result in a cascade of debris collsions that renders planetary orbit almost impossible to access, effectively keeping the planet from being controlled by *anybody.*

>>33709817
Human diaphragms aren't strong enough to breathe PFC, you'd need a pump unit to make it circulate through your lungs.
At that point, the theoric suit is so complex it's safe to say it's always a better choice to use drones for vaccum combat.
Space force would probably be more about boarding parties.

>>33710420
aerogels are a brittle silicon meringue, not something you can use as a suit layer.

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>>33714681
>>33714781
For the record, I don't think that melee weapons would be used.

But if they did somehow become standard, theres no way it gets to knives and then stops. Getting into a grapple with someone when you both have knives is stupid. Every fight is a huge risk and you can't control the engagement. If everyone's using knives the first to use anything with reach wins. Eventually some equilibrium is reached because as you say, longer weapons are a bitch in doorways.

If melee becomes standard, ship design follows. Anchor points, ferrous hulls for magnetic boots or just rotational "gravity" so that defenders can fight more effectively.

Also for reference, pic related is what I meant by warhammer. Short, relatively handy, good penetration to get through suits. More like an ice axe than a Lucerne hammer

Still say melee weapons in space as a concept are stupid though.

>>33714778
To elaborate on what was said here, assuming the projectile weapon being fired was shot by a person from about 5 feet above the surface, and is being used on a world with about double Earth gravity, this results in the round fired achieving around 80% of its maximum range if fired on Earth. This will worsen as combat operations increase the atmospheric density, of course, and only applies to weapons fired on a flat trajectory. This means, for instance, that a Glock 17 fired on a flat trajectory will end up hitting the ground about 990 feet away from the shooter.

>>33714778
I'm assuming it is at most 3G because at 4G unmodified humans can't survive long term. Even compression garments won't help past that point.

> slug throwers like current-day rifles will also be greatly impeded in their ability to fight at range

The main thing dictating effective range of firearms is energy retention at range and accuracy/precision. Not bullet drop.

If the atmospheric density is similar, most cartridges will have the same effective range. The sighting will have to be adapted (e.g. 200m is now where the 300m notch was etc) but that's all. At ultra long ranges, like Hathcock ranges, the extra distance traveled due to the arc start to affect accuracy, but for the average infantryman theres little difference.

>Artillery will be far less effective, integrated support such as mortars will be nearly useless

The US 60mm mortar can fire out to 3.5km. Larger ones even further. Even at 1/3 the range, they're still useful af. No way they're useless. Without air support, Arty becomes even more important even with the reduced range.

>>33709817
Graphite lubes don't work in space because they require water vapor. Graphite is also conductive which makes it annoying in micro gravity.

Moly lubes work in vacuums and unless your atmosphere is particularly weird (exceptionally hot or *lots* of free oxygen) work pretty much anywhere.

BN is probably best though - chemically stable, thermally stable, good thermal conductivity, good lubrication. Not the cheapest though.

>>33714938
>I'm assuming it is at most 3G because at 4G unmodified humans can't survive long term.

Humans have issue surviving past 1.5G for extended periods, as per NASA studies I used as reference here. I kicked up to 2G with my example, assuming that compression garments would be used.

>The main thing dictating effective range of firearms is energy retention at range and accuracy/precision. Not bullet drop.

We're operating in a near-vacuum here. No energy is lost to atmospheric drag. Drop and ablation/temperature shifts of the round in transit are the biggest concerns. Ablation will result in the surface of the round boiling off, and may cause the round to erratically fly off target, and fluctuations in temperature will affect how the round may behave on impact, and in turn how effectively it's energy is imparted on a target. This all translates to a significant drop in effective combat range of a given weapon - 1/5 to 1/3 of it's effective range lost.

>The US 60mm mortar can fire out to 3.5km. Larger ones even further. Even at 1/3 the range, they're still useful af.

Except, of course, that operating at about a 20% reduction in range, in an environment where your fire can be misdirected by simply being exposed to the sun, and where lasers are more than capable of being used to intercept incoming artillery before it hits, such a weapon is likely not a worthwhile addition. Especially when the guy stuck carrying it is at greater risk of lethal injury just from hauling it around. A recoiless rifle or man-portable DEW would, at that point, be a more reliable and harder to intercept weapon.

>>33714938
>>33714985
Additionally, artillery is a poor choice for use in this theater of war anyway, primarily because of ammunition requirements.

Ammunition is heavy, and it's bulky. That means transporting ammunition from space is going to require large transport craft that will require a large amount of propellant to land and take off again.

While you might reduce this issue a little bit by using caseless rounds, this creates an issue with thermal transfer - normally the cases would be used as a heat sink for some of the thermal energy released when the weapon fires. Remove that, and that thermal energy is translated directly into the weapon. Enough of this (especially in the lunar dust, which will insulate the weapon and force it to keep that heat trapped in,) will result in thermal failure of components. While radiators may help with this, those are difficult to use on a Moon-like surface as well.

Because of the reduced range of the artillery, this means it will be closer to the front lines of a given battle. Radiators or not, they will be throwing off a *lot* of thermal energy, meaning they're very easily seen from orbit, or by anything with line of sight, as they throw off a *massive* thermal signature. Given that they're now closer to the front, the bigger artillery up in orbit can more readily target and eliminate artillery as a sort of ultimate counter-battery fire.

>>33708252

>laser
>practical
>varying atmospheres

atmospheric diffusion is a laser's worst enemy, and variation of atmospheric density would heavily effect the range/power of the weapon.

Projectile weapons on the other hand are far less sensitive to atmospheric conditions (although sensitive to wind at great distances).

Mass + propulsion is hard to beat when it comes to a "works anywhere, kills everything" sort of weapon. That, and you don't have to worry about electronics, EMP, batteries, recharging, etc. etc.

Just keep your ammo fairly dry.

The biggest issue we will have is heat management. You will be unable to effectively manage a weapons heat in the vacuum of space, as after 1-2 magazines worth of bullets you are stuck with a weapon that is reaching the maximum threshold for how much heat it can manage before compromising integrity.

If we are talking about operating on planets / in atmo, however, even standard kinetic based weapons would still probably be preferable for a long time. Having weapons that operate on reliable, mechanical principals will be crucial for surviving hostile planets. I do not believe we will have railgun powered weapons because any power source you could use to operate that weapon would be better spent on

1) Running other tech, logistics, coms, life support, etc

2) Reducing susceptibility to EMP based electronic warfare

>>33714985
>We're operating in a near-vacuum here. No energy is lost to atmospheric drag

Then accuracy and precision are the main factors and those are unrelated to environmental concerns except where they physically affect the weapon. Even then their tactical effect is minor - the difference between 1MOA and 2MOA is unimportant all things considered. Gravity is irrelevant.

> Ablation will result in the surface of the round boiling off
No. Just no.

To get ablation like you're talking about you'd need to vaporize parts of the bullet. First problem with that: given the average distance in a firefight is under 500m, usually ~300m and the muzzle velocity of modern firearms, the round is in the air for about a third of a second. During this it is rotating very quickly, meaning you have to heat almost the entire bullet.

Second the temperatures are nowhere near hot enough to do this, especially not in the tiny amount of it has to it in. Even Noon on Mercury is not hot enough to sublimate Cupronickel, even if you left it sitting there. If the planet is hot enough to do it, its also hot enough to preclude fielding infantry there at all. Its hot enough to preclude landing almost anything there.

>fluctuations in temperature will affect how the round may behave on impact

This is true, as will heating the weapon itself, but not nearly to the extent you're predicting. Expansion has to be dealt with, as does creep and a bunch of mechanical factors. But it can be dealt with. Humans have and are fighting wars with weapons as inaccurate right now.

> 1/5 to 1/3 of it's effective range lost.
Even if that was true, it still mostly irrelevant to fielding firearms vs other technologies. The effective range for basically every standard infantry rifle is 500m while most combat happens at 300m.

TBC - ran out of word count

>>33715066
This assumes that weapons do not have a cartridge designed to work as a dedicated heat sink. This could be done to effectively reduce the thermal load on the components of the weapon.

Additionally, by using designs that are less complex and with fewer moving parts, one reduces the effects that a high thermal load will have on them. This can be further mitigated by using materials known to be capable to taking far higher thermal loads, such as titanium alloys, or other experimental ceramics.

>>33708252
Regular guns would work fine. There's absolutely no need to go all-out with vaporware and memes just because you're beyond the atmosphere.
>Obligatory reminder that a Nudelman autocannon was tested successfully on Salyut 3

>>33715079
If you can design a round to act as a heat sink, sure. I can see some complications with it, and ultimately it seems like the weapon is still going to absorb heat since the very nature of how guns work with the barrel is going to transfer a ton of heat to the weapon one way or another. Unless we are getting into pseudo borderline rifle sized revolver territory. I think you would see a significant drop in overall rate of fire unless we find a way to manage the overheating issue.

For better materials - that inherently drives up the cost of weapons. Just because we are in space doesn't negate the need to have minimal costs as possible. Someone posted the gyrojet earlier, which would go a long way to reducing heat in the weapon platform while, in 0 atmosphere, all of the inherent problems with the gyrojet design (drag changing trajectory) are almost nonexistent, and the cost would be not much more than conventional weapons. But building every gun out of titanium would be really expensive

>>33715066
>2017
>falling for the EMP meme

>>33714854
As a armor plate.

>>33715100
You don't think that at a point where we would have man portable, rapid fire coil guns, there would potentially be at minimum some sort of EMP based ordnance that can be detonated over an area, frying your delicious batteries???

>>33715076
>During this it is rotating very quickly, meaning you have to heat almost the entire bullet.
>Second the temperatures are nowhere near hot enough to do this, especially not in the tiny amount of it has to it in.

In atmosphere, sure. In near-vacuum, like we're discussing here, no.

The rounds will already be experiencing an extremely high thermal load from being fired from a weapon, and this will not be reduced by atmospheric exposure. After that, the exposure to direct thermal energy from any nearby stars is going to only serve to further increase that thermal load, and is likely to cause ablation of the surface of the round, or cause perturbations in flight by altering the round's characteristics as it expands and contracts unpredictably in flight. Either way, you will see trajectories impacted by thermal load.

>>33715100

>stating the current year meme
>doesn't know what the word meme means

weaponized EMP is a very real concern anon

>>33715076
>especially not in the tiny amount of it has to it in.
Not in the tiny amount of time it has to do it in

Not sure what happened there.

>Especially when the guy stuck carrying it is at greater risk of lethal injury just from hauling it around

You are by far overrating how dangerous 2x gravity is here. Even in 2G it only weighs 40kg. Easily portable when disassembled. Especially given they're fielded by teams, at a company level.

>DEW
DEW cannot provide indirect fire, can't match the power modern artillery can provide for the forseeable future, and has far more thermal problems than any artillery piece does.

Neither can a recoilless rifle for that matter. They occupy very different tactical niches.

> caseless rounds
You do realize that many tank rounds are caseless or semi-caseless? Caseless' thermal problems are in small arms not artillery. Artillery itself is valuable enough to warrant providing batteries with thermal dissipation systems even if it was an issue. Self propelled artillery makes transporting these systems even easier.

>where lasers are more than capable of being used to intercept incoming artillery before it hits.

Railguns are closer to reality than field-able artillery equivalent DEWs and cannot be intercepted like that, and C-RAMs can only do so much, only be fielded in so many places and for the forseeable future, cannot be taken everywhere there are forces that need defending.

>While radiators may help with this, those are difficult to use on a Moon-like surface as well.

You're on the ground. If necessary, you're standing on an enormous heatsink. And again, you are vastly overestimating the thermal effects on an artillery piece. Fire missions aren't machinegun fire.

>easily seen from orbit
Orbit is irrelevant - even in 2G ASATs kill everything and you can't hide in space. As "easy" as conventional artillery is to spot, they are easier. Also artillery can move far easier and far cheaper than your counter batteries can.

>>33715100
>be the current, future year
>all weapons powered by batteries and capacitors with high tech circuitry
>enemy detonates a 20th century nuclear bomb in orbit right above you, frying all your shit
>your gun no longer fires

>calling this a "meme"

>>33715137
>2011+6
>played mw2 and thinks emps are a real concern to anything other than power lines and shitty consumer electronics

Wew lad

>>33715160
>has no concept of how easy it is to harden electronics, especially when the US has multiple test sites that simulate multi megaton yield effects and have had them for over 30 years
>still thinks this is a big concern
>doesn't even bring up the actual military concern of emps, focuses on the Hollywood bullshit

The absolute state of nu/k/

>>33715134
Nope. It absolutely will not cause ablation even in a vacuum. It is simply not hot enough. Do you realize how hot it needs to get to ablate? Cupronickel MELTS at 1400K, you couldn't even get to that let alone its vaporization point. Even just LEAD which has an very low melting point, vaporizes at 2000K. A bullet fired from a gun has hotspots of a few hundred C maximum, and the majority of the bullet itself is under 100C. You aren't getting hot enough to ablate ever. Even if you left it in the sun on Mercury, at noon, for an hour before you fired it.

Thermal variations don't happen anywhere near fast enough to change anything IN FLIGHT. Thermal conduction takes time. The flame of candle is far hotter than any planet we'll be fighting on - put a bullet in it for 1/2 a second.

Browning M1911.

I'm not actually joking. Conventional chemical powered projectile weapons are wonderful because they contain fuel and oxidizer in a neat little brass cup. They work without an atmosphere, they work in weird ass chlorine atmospheres, they work under water (with special bullets, mind), they just werk anywhere in the universe. They work in 0G, they work in 5G.

Armorlux Flash Gun

>>33715251
>they work in 5G
Would it be able to cycle in 5G? I image you'd get a lot of stovepipes with an unmodified ejection.

Would heat sinks that work like mags work with laser or plasma based weaponry? When you change it out you drop it in a refrigerated dump pouch

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>>33708252
There is only one real space gun. And it's objectively beautiful.

>>33715382
Both Plasma and Laser weapons generate a LOT of heat. Even in atmosphere. And heat transfer is limited by conduction rate.

Unless those heat sink magazines were the equivalent of the chamber of the weapon, I don't think they'd draw heat fast enough to be able to keep up with firing.

Better would be to have some sort of coolant, disposable or not.

>>33714778
>>33714794
>>33714985

> Correctly says heat is a problem with weapons in space
> Suggests Energy Weapons

Dude what? Lasers are stupid inefficient heat wise. Even with Future-Magic you will still need to dump a joule into heatsinks for every joule you deliver on target. At the mo we get like 7 joules of waste heat per joule on target. Plasma will be way worse.

>>33715181
>Literally arguing EMP tech would not evolve if everything else advanced
>Literally arguing a soldier would be 100% EMP proof

I bet you are the person who thinks things are "unhackable" because they are "encrypted"

>>33715181
>thinks sensitive electronics can be reliably hardened from atmospheric EMP's other than them being deep underground

look at this pleb

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>>33714044

Mostly other humanoids in this thread. If it wasn't chances are we could just rain death from space, the sky, or armor on something that doesn't have the capacity to understand and what's happening enough to effectively hide from us. If we were interested in eradicating a species larger than a man we have the technology presently to find it and kill it whether it walks, flies, swims, or burrows. If the being is a lesser priority during a war, some kind of launcher or mmg would probably be more than enough to deal with it at the infantry level.

Something smart and small like us would be more difficult.

>>33715319

Good point, they could bring a few different gravity specific springs and slides/BCG/buffers per a weapon to compensate

>>33715150
>You are by far overrating how dangerous 2x gravity is here.
I'm really not. It's not about the weight of the item carried, it's about the bones of the person carrying it. Their entire skeleton is going to experience nearly *double* the stresses it's really used to be handling, and will be doing so for hours or days at a time. We know for missions to Mars that even at nearly half gravity, after only a few months of bone and muscle mass loss, there is an elevated chance of bone damage from simple tasks.

>DEW cannot provide indirect fire
Didn't say it needed to.

>and has far more thermal problems than any artillery piece does.

Not quite. Disposable units are far more viable and squad portable, utilizing a single-use heatsink and capacitor setup to create a single focused beam. This also means troops don't need to continue hauling it after it has been expended.

>Neither can a recoilless rifle for that matter. They occupy very different tactical niches.

I didn't argue that they don't. My argument is that the weight savings would make them far more preferable to hauling around heavy ammunition and a mortar that has limited tactical viability.

>You do realize that many tank rounds are caseless or semi-caseless?

You do realize that on Earth the atmosphere helps to dissipate the thermal energy of these rounds before they become an issue?

>Artillery itself is valuable enough to warrant providing batteries with thermal dissipation systems even if it was an issue.

Which I clearly addressed. Re-read - those are still *extremely* noticeable targets, and are impeded by the surface of a Moon-like world due to it's insulating nature.

>Railguns are closer to reality than field-able artillery equivalent DEWs

On Earth, sure. They're *far* more expensive in terms of ammunition mass, and require a *ton* of cooling, unless you want to make a disposable unit. This is unlikely due to the high cost of the materials needed to produce one of these.

TBC

>>33715150
>You're on the ground. If necessary, you're standing on an enormous heatsink.

Re-read *everything* I've written about fighting on the Lunar surface. The material the surface is made up of is an *excellent* insulator. You can't use it as a heat sink.

>Orbit is irrelevant - even in 2G ASATs kill everything and you can't hide in space.

Which I also addressed. However, orbital penetrators are cheap to make, whilst ASAT weapons are not - they require direct intervention from human operators, and need a large quantity of fuel to be capable of responding to enemy attempts to maneuver to a different orbit. Both rely on supply chains, and ASAT weapons *can* be avoided.

>>33715595
Disposable Lasers are a viable option. Using a single capacitor, the weapon can be designed to be used to the point of thermal failure, and then abandoned.

>>33710922
I'd say that's more of an issue on-planet than it is in space. Without gravity, the projectile accelerates until it runs out of fuel, becoming more powerful over distance. You don't want to fight in zero gravity at close range unless you have some pretty advanced stabilization and propulsion systems in your suit. With some basic integrated bassistic computers, you could have a gun that aims ahead of the target for you.

Astronauts trying to fistfight with current space suits would be hilarious.

>>33714418
This person is correct.

You could conceivably rig some sort of high altitude blimp because muh atmosphere, but the gravity will still fuck your shit and the lack of ground will fuck your shit and the hyperstorms will fuck your shit and the lack of oxygen will fuck your shit

>>33710157

Issac Arthur is fucking great.

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Lasers are fucking obliterated by changes in medium, what the fuck are you on about?

And we'd probably just end up with weapons like the ones developed for frogmen.

>>33708252
I haven't read the thread yet, just jumping in:

Projectiles are plenty useful in space - perhaps even more so than on Earth. In space, bullets travel in a perfectly straight line and continue to do so forever until they hit anything. This makes aiming much easier, as you just put the sights parallel to the barrel and then you only need to worry about the offset sight over bore when shooting at anything at any distance.

The main disadvantage of this is that if you're floating in space, nothing is going to keep you steady from the recoil, and any shot you take is going to send you gently flying backwards or rotating head over ass, possibly both. Similarly, heat dissipation is really bad in space, so expect your guns to overheat.

Lasers are great for all the reasons lasers are great in space - similar to bullets they basically travel forever, except that building practical laser weaponry is a huge pain simply because of the power outputs necessary and the difficulty of focusing a laser at the target distance. Lasers, just like conventional weaponry, generate an asston of heat, none of which is going to quickly leave in a vacuum.

Plasmas are probably an even worse idea because you actually need some matter to ionize, and then you need to send it over to your target.

>>33714545
underrated

>>33717421
>In space, bullets travel in a perfectly straight line and continue to do so forever until they hit anything.

Incorrect. Gravity is god, and bullets will be interacted with by gravity. Depending on the type of space combat environment you're in, this might mean bullets get pulled off-course by gravitational perturbations, or that they accidentally re-enter over the planet you fire them above.

>This makes aiming much easier, as you just put the sights parallel to the barrel and then you only need to worry about the offset sight over bore when shooting at anything at any distance.

Also incorrect. At any kind of range, bullets will get knocked off course by the tidal effects that other objects in orbit will impart upon the bullet. Close-in this isn't much of a factor, but at range, bullets will end up drifting off course. Additionally, due to the way that increases in orbital velocity affect the orbital path of a given object, this means that at range the bullet will move into a higher orbit than the individual firing it.

>The main disadvantage of this is that if you're floating in space, nothing is going to keep you steady from the recoil, and any shot you take is going to send you gently flying backwards or rotating head over ass, possibly both.

Incorrect here as well. Recoil fired whilst out in the open unprotected is noticeable, but not significant, only imparting a gentle rotation. If you were floating out there in the first place, you're likely using an RCS pack of some sort, so such recoil is easily accommodated for. That said, who the hell is going to be floating out in the open during a gunfight? You're likely going to be hunkered down behind something. In that case, the recoil will have essentially no effect at all if you just brace yourself a little bit against your cover.