Does this show have the most realistic space combat we saw to

It probably is.

Before The Expanse, it probably would have been Babylon 5.

seeing realistic flight in space sci fi makes me diamonds.

>>15270607
No.
Because space combat doesn't exist aside from theory, so there's nothing to compare it to, other than theory which is mostly pissing in the wind and depending on the current theories and the math that supports them some piss manages to actually hit a target other than the pants of the pisser.

>>15271120

You said literally nothing other than trying to sound smart.

>>15272828
>>15272831

I only hope we'll get a large scale fight between Earth and Mars at some point.

>>15272828
>>15272831
*Pew pew*
Reminds me of independence war.

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>>15272899
They would probably end up blowing their budget if they do.

>>15271120
this.

there is no realistic standard because it hasn't happened yet and anything else is basically theorycrafting in a void absent economic and technological developments, military doctrine, or strategic objectives, or indeed any sort of context.

/thread

>>15272414
see >>15277124

if predicting the future of warfare in general and in space in particular was so easy that nerds on the internet like us could read atomic rockets and stand in judgement, you'd be hearing from your country's department of defense before too long, job offers and all.

>>15277129
Ladies and gentlemen, the most boring people on 4chan

>>15277160
*interesting

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7GqqDCe4Yrs

Best space combat advisory

>>15277160
Well we're not the ones who claimed that it was realistic in the first place. I'm all for entertaining or interesting space combat, but don't try to tell me that speculation reaching into complete fantasy can be judged as realistic or not.
Now if you were to say logical or grounded rather than realistic, there'd be something to actually discuss.

>>15270607
I mean, nobody knows what the space battle metagame is going to be like, whether it's LOGH long range laser fights with low-profile ships and tiny attack vessels, Banner of the Stars with shit tons of guided mines, even closer to Gundam with close range proving to be far more effective because it's hard to hit things far away because lasers diffuse and projectiles get shot down. Personally I don't think photon weapons will ever be practical, because the moment laser weapons are able to deliver enough power to damage even a slightly armoured target, they will produce enough impulse to push the attacker into a different orbit. Not to mention mirrors shooting the laser back in your face. But equivalently we're entering an age where missiles can be shot down with accurate computers. I'm betting space battles will become the same as battles in the sea at the moment, except with room for dodging ballistic attacks. The main powerhouse of the sea has been the aircraft carrier since the second world war, and I can't see that changing even without an atmosphere, though since large landing decks aren't needed anymore I'm looking at you, Nahel Argama, we might see a combination of long range artillery cruiser/aircraft carrier. We're likely to see a surge in tiny unmanned attack vessels alla Fafner, though without a potent enough ranged weapon I think they'll be relegated to high-gee anti-aircraft manoeuvres. If cooling ever becomes a significant problem in space, then we might have variable-geometry technology emerging to increase heat radiation in particular situations, but I doubt we'll be getting an SDF-1 any time soon. And the battlefield will certainly revolve around nuclear warheads unless someone signs a treaty, probably being shot by rail/coil guns so they can't be shot down easily. Everything runs on plutonium reactors, breeder reactors, or thorium reactors. Fusion power will be practical in 20 years time. Let Meme War 1 commence.

>>15271120
/thread

>>15279003
>If cooling ever becomes a significant problem in space
It's been a problem since Sputnik.

Also, mirroring at that energy level basically doesn't work. Even assuming your mirror armour is at peak effectiveness at exactly the right wavelength, slightly less than perfect reflection (i.e. all actual situations) causes heat damage to the mirror, which makes it less effective, which speeds up the heating damage, etc. Unless we find some way to engineer around that part of physics, you'd be better off just getting some proper armour, a good heat transfer system, and some big fuckoff heatsinks/radiators.

The expanse is weird in that they have a problem with everything having too much acceleration, to the point where perfectly ordinary ships can kill the crew.

You'd think they'd just install smaller engines, run closer to full power, and use the extra space and weight for goodies.

>>15279087
>perfectly ordinary ships
I thought the Rocinante was a warship. That's why the seats had an auto recline function and pumped drugs directly into the user.

>>15279091

The lifepod from the beginning could as well, and it also had the drugs, IIRC

>>15279097
Lifepod? Do you mean the shuttle they were in before being rescued by the Donnager?

>>15279099

ah, yeah, for some reason I thought it was a lifepod. Anyway, it's never implied to be remarkable in any way aside from the fact that it worked at all considering how old and shitty it was.

>>15279003
I would say LoGH actually has relatively short range laser fights, seeing you can see from ship to ship with the naked eye, and the ships are designed (not visually) with muskets in mind

>>15279184
The ships are pretty big, it's longer range than any naval engagements on Earth by a long shot(heh), but in space there isn't a curvature of the planet to worry about.

>>15279087
Presumably, they have ways of generating thrust so cheaply that saving time is their greatest consideration. Also it lets the story progress over a more relatable scale of days vs weeks/months that our current interplanetary travel capabilities should take.
>>15279097
Even the shuttle they used to transport the OPA detainee on earth back to space had it and it used it to kill himself by avoiding the injection.

How good Battlestar is compared to The Expanse ?

>>15272828
>>15272831

This is just dumb. Space combat without BVR.
There is no earth curavature on space.
No gravity, also no air friction.

There is no reason to go into close combat unless you have a Minovisk Particles generator.

Space Battleship Yamato is more realistic.

>>15279054
Releasing dust could be more effective than mirrors.

>>15272831
>>15272828
Oh shit. Where can I watch this.

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>>15279715
They had to get close in order to avoid the enemy rail gun, and they used deception to get close.

>>15279714
If you like fighter combat, BSG has that. So far, The Expanse has only shown larger craft, the Rocinante being a frigate? gunship and Donnager being a battleship.

>>15279714
BSG is more carrier on carrier what with the inherent nature of Battlestars and Basestars being space carriers with different elements of guided missile warship thrown in for good measure.

It also has the whole religious angle that might peeve off anyone watching for the war porn.

>>15279091
everything in the expanse flies like the Rocinante.

Except the Navuu and Eros.

>>15279883
the writer's strike caused them to change the entire story.

>>15279715

They are running interference and tying up close-defense systems to make way for a boarding action. They used deception to get close and then sprung the trap.

Destroying their target from extreme distance would have been counter productive, because they need what is on the station intact. Also because the system is on the brink of war, and they are a third party. So using something like a long range nuke would attract all kinds of wrong attention.

>>15279742

Its on Syfy. The first season has been out for a while, and I think that's on Amazon prime. Second season is airing now.

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How does the stealth of the Protogen ships work?

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>>15283758
It seems somewhat limited as the moment the engine is going they're easily detected.

>>15270607
>Woman in low gravity beating a machine that generates all it's torque on its joints on an arm wrestle
>Realistic

>>15272828
>>15272831
Oh shit, is S2 out already?

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>>15284073
The season is half done now anon.

>>15270607
Well, at least it is one of the most realistic on the tv-show (BTW in books the whole thing was depicted much better). However, it still carry quite a lot of handwavium along.

Stealth ships. Nah. Ain`t no stealth in space. As long as you burn, everyone interested knows that you burn, everyone knows what tragectory and what acceleration you have achieved. That means, even IF you manage somehow to conserve the heat of your vessel inside (and you won`t be able to do that, because the fucking thing will simply melt), everyone will still be able to tell where you are, even without seing you. And to change the trajectory, you need to do what? Burn! Go to the beginning.

Stupid firing range. Since you got constant feed on target`s coordinates (no stealth, no horizont, no cover), you can as well begin to spray target from a hundred of kilometers, or even two, depending on the weapon of choice. But for TV-reasons, warships tend to shoot each other at pistol ranges.

Sound in space. Yes, you can (in theory) hear your own ship - vibration is the same sound. But how the fuck you hear the ships on fly-by, star-wars style?!

Absurdly efficient thrusters. With shown efficiency, the thrusters have to be damn torch-drives, and them claimed to be tuned nuclear thrusters. Well, that`s the author`s intention, so let`s leave this as it is.

Still Expance is best thing on TV nowdays. Second season, however is a complete mess (first one was more or less close to the book, but second one... Well, better read first.)

>>15285285
There have been stealth technologies developed for space craft, they are just directional. Project Rho has a bit of a problem of working too much in the abstract while situational complexities tend to make a lot of the rules they assert moot. You can even solve the engine problem by making the burn when something is in between you and the target. No one is ever going to have sensor drones everywhere they want, looking in every direction at all time. And if they did, they would be the first target in any conflict, like how radar stations get knocked out to make stealth aircraft work better.

>>15279003
If there's some sort of treaty that bans long range ballistic weapons on the basis that a missed round might impact something important somewhere in the future, I can see it being centered around close range hull breaching.

>>15285285
>Stealth ships. Nah. Ain`t no stealth in space.

Of course there is. You problem is that you are defining "Stealth" as "completely invisible", when that has literally never been its definition in warfare.

Anything that makes your ship harder to detect is Stealth. If the ship is immune to radar, that means that your ship won't be detected by the default long range detection system, and the enemy has to luck out on spotting you with optical scanners which can't track everything. You may notice that the "Stealth Ships" get detected literally every time in advance of the opening shots of the battle. The 6 Stealth Ships that took out the Donager were detected more than a day before the attack began. What made them Stealth, however, was that no one saw them coming before that. Their stealth abilities were such that while you saw the attack coming before it happened, it still took a long time for interested parties to figure out where the damn things were coming from.

> But for TV-reasons, warships tend to shoot each other at pistol ranges.

Correct. In the books the show is based on, engagement range is more realistic. But what can you do, that not the most interesting thing to watch onscreen.

>>15285361
>>>You can even solve the engine problem by making the burn when something is in between you and the target.

Main thruster`s plume is like several kilometers long and rod knows how wide (that depends on exhaust speed). All that heated hydrogen (or whatever you hse as a reaction mass) is perfectly visible. Unless you burn behind the planet and then coast all the way. Which is REALLY stupid thing to do. Probably, stupidest thing ever.

>>No one is ever going to have sensor drones everywhere they want, looking in every direction at all time.

You don`t need drones everywhere. 3-5 observation stations around the solar system winn cover all of it, no blind spaces. And even with light speed data transfer lag, if your "stealth" ship is coasting all the way (no way to hide the burn), you can receive data with a few days lag, shoot at calculated coordinates and still hit the target.

>> And if they did, they would be the first target in any conflict, like how radar stations get knocked out to make stealth aircraft work better.

Yep, and as such first targets, they would be protected, so no stupid stealth-ships wannabes would be used.

>>15279715
>This is just dumb. Space combat without BVR.
do you not know what CIWS is

>>15289254
>Which is REALLY stupid thing to do. Probably, stupidest thing ever.

Explain your reasoning here

>Yep, and as such first targets, they would be protected, so no stupid stealth-ships wannabes would be used.

>keeping a significant chunk of your forces out in the middle of fucknowheresville guarding hundreds of IR space telescopes from military attack

that's pretty retarded desu

>>15286090
>>Of course there is. You problem is that you are defining "Stealth" as "completely invisible", when that has literally never been its definition in warfare.

No I`m not. Even if you want it that much.

>>Anything that makes your ship harder to detect is Stealth. If the ship is immune to radar, that means that your ship won't be detected by the default long range detection system, and the enemy has to luck out on spotting you with optical scanners which can't track everything.

You simply don`t understand the emptiness of space. There is no atmosphere. No blur in the distance. There is no "long range detection systems" as something ultra special, like sonars on subs, or radars on the naval ships. There are simple telescopes. That allow us nowdays to see in details a nearly perfect black and cold boulder 7 km wide, at the orbit of jupiter. There is one there, you can check. And you simply can`t make ship "more stealthy", because the difference (what IR telescopes see) between background and even the temperature of freezing water is damned 271 degree Celsium. And you want your ship a bit warmer. At least +20 degrees. And you got few radiators, that are cooling your reactor, glowing bright orange at 2200 degrees Celsium. Because if there are non - you are not running the reactor and your ship is not a threat to anyone. And yes, they are large. REALLY large. Like approximately equal to the surface area of your ship.

>>15289304

Continued ->


>>Their stealth abilities were such that while you saw the attack coming before it happened, it still took a long time for interested parties to figure out where the damn things were coming from.

Which makes them unrealistic and stupid. The author just couldn`t get over the misconception "space is dark". And somehow thought that away from observer, the ships would "fade into darkness", like it happens during terrestrial nights. The problem is, space isn`t cold. Space isn`t dark. Space is fucking HUGE and EMPTY. And the "empty" part, also means, that solar light goes all the way from the sun, to the other solar systems. And any object, visible at 6-days travel range, will be just as sun-lit and visible at 206 days range.

>>15289273
>>Explain your reasoning here

1, just one observer see you coasting and welcome, railgun round, sent to you from several light minutes. And you won`t even know, that you have being spotted. And I don`t even want to go on all that debate about "lets cool one side of our ship, made from pure handvavium to -271 degree, and radiate the heat by laser to the sector no one looks at". That won`t work due to the physics, but whatever, be my guest.

>>keeping a significant chunk of your forces out in the middle of fucknowheresville guarding hundreds of IR space telescopes from military attack

You don`t need a fleet there. You need simple, probably even automated defense post. You see every ship in the system. You generaly know where they head, immediately after correction burn. If something is on dangerouse trajectory - shoot it down. In peacetime - shoot it down after warning.

On the second thought, if you are speaking about space war in a given solar system, that means humanity is quite widespread. And most likely, you allready have fortified observation points. Asteroid stations, planetary moons, planets. If you have, you definitely have some equipment to check the traffic in the system. Here wo go again, no stealth in space without magic. Period.

Go play Children of the Dead Earth. It shows what orbital navigation is, how humanity can be widespread, and why there is no stealth too.

At the very least, the show never really mentions anything that could be interpreted as thermal tracking, everything is done with the assumption that an object can be pinged either by radio or light.

Why this is the case is anyone's guess, I'd reckon maybe it's just not easy to slap a weapons grade IR sensor and whatever cooling systems it needs onto a spaceship without compromising something along the way.

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>>15289376
In books those stealth ships, while still unrealistic, were a bit less stupid. At least, "heat locked inside" was clearly shown, when "decloaking" stealth ship emits heat several times the normal amount. Still unrealistic, but at least some attempt to sound plausible.

>>I'd reckon maybe it's just not easy to slap a weapons grade IR sensor and whatever cooling systems it needs onto a spaceship without compromising something along the way.

Yuo won`t need accurate precision sensors for the detection purpose. All you need from the "traffic control" stations - just to send signal "something is heading on the trajectory woth following parameters..." And than those, who really need this info, prepare precision optics, to find, what it is. That is, if we got the unlikely chance, that initial burn wasn`t observed. Otherwise, we can easy enough calculate what class of vessel, or even what actual ship is beginning it`s cruise.
In book, commander of Donager sent the data on enemy`s exhaust parameters (don`t remember how it is done in TV), which is completely realistic - all drives in the system are long being registered, and by emission, you can deduce which ship it is. Or, if it is unregistered - who is the manufacturer.

>>15289307
> The author just couldn`t get over the misconception "space is dark". And somehow thought that away from observer, the ships would "fade into darkness",

Now you are just flat out making shit up so you can rant and rail against an imaginary enemy to make yourself seem smart.

In the books, the very first guy who invented the fancy fusion drive that everyone uses to hop around the solar system killed himself doing it, and if you know where to look you can aim your telescope and watch his ship still burning out into the night, well outside the solar system and still accelerating. History's most gamechanging viking funeral.

But the key words there are 'if you know where to look'. Space is big. There is a lot of shit in space. If you don't get a radar ping back from something, you are relying on optical sensors like telescopes, and telescopes can only cover a very small range of sky in any detail. You don't just magically know that a ship exists if you are not looking for it in the right place, in the same way that a dude with a knife can sneak up on you. If he doesn't make a sound, you don't detect him unless you LOOK AT HIM. Which you have no reason to do because you don't hear him coming, so you are relying on blind luck.

Obviously this analogy isn't perfect, because a ship can and would have multiple telescopes. But they still can only cover a limited range of sky between them. You can't even just automatically assume that anything hot in space is a threat, because in the expanse there are hundreds of thousands of civilian starships to distract you.

No one is saying you can't spot a ship with telescope. You can. But having a telescope alone doesn't give you a 100% chance of knowing the location of any given starship at any given moment, and anything that lowers that chance further is A) tactically significant and B) Stealth.

>>15289376
>Why this is the case is anyone's guess

Because radio/light ping is cheap and easy, and previously was always effective. Earth and Mars were in a race to figure out halfway decent stealth systems in space, but neither side had actually managed it yet. Protogen beat them both to the punch.

Earth and Mars could solve the problem by building ships that have different detection methods to get around the stealth, but what matter for the purposes of the story is that right now they are relying mostly on radar and lidar.

>>15279742
Syfy, Space if you're Canadian.

It's also up for streaming from a few places, including google play.

Or you could read the books.

>>15283758
Something to do with long-range detection. The drives themselves factor into it somehow, and they're stolen from Mars.

>>15279715
You see some BVR fighting when the Donager gets destroyed. It's kinda boring and wasn't very effective. For the most part, missiles tend to get shot down by extensive point defense and within a certain range they're simply not effective.

However, at the closing rate of these ships the BVR phase of battle doesn't last long.

>>15283758
My guess is alien bluish grey goo bullshit. Possibly eating up most of the heat from the drive.

>>15291718
No, the blue alien bullshit is a science test they were conducting and became infected by.

The ship in particular worked fine before the infection got out of hand, and ships like it in general have been used by Mars for a while now.

>>15285285
ship drives are fusion rockets with magnetic coil acceleration of the plasma.

maneuver thrusters are steam. water has like a 17,000 to 1 expansion ration when going from liquid to gas.

problem with long range combat. is that you can see that you have been shot at and have time to react. either maneuver or accelerating out of the way, or shooting down what was shot at you.

Play CHoDE

>>15291925
So, putting technobabble aside, you describe VASIMR thruster. No, magnetic plasma acceleration won`t give such thrust. And plausible fusion engines, won`t give required efficiency. However, since that engine is mostly plot device - I don`t care much.

To expand water to gas, you need quite a lot of heat. Resistojets are significantly easier.

Speaking of heat and realism... I just forgot to mention radiators. Or, rather, their absense.

>>15291925
As for long range combat - that`s the idea. Dodge the incoming fire, try to land your shots. Who landed enough short first - won.

>>15291955
Why i must play your favourite "realistic" space combat simulator that was also explicitly based entirely on abstracted assumption on how something actually works in the future of space combat? And why i must believe this simulation as the exact picture on how space combat works in the future?

>>15291984
or whom ever ran out of propellant first, and has to withdraw or surrender.

>>15292186
That`s one of solutions. Run out of propellant, you are a sitting duck. That means, enemy will hit you first. Or just spares taxpayer`s `money, letting you drift into emptyness, waiting, what will end first - your life support reserves, water or your food.

>>15292083
Maybe because those are not "abstract", but based ones assumptions? Read their blog first. Everything in that game is physics-based.

Yeah, I know about bugged 600 km/s railguns :)

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>>15270672
some of that B% shit still gets my dick hard

>>15279184
I was under the impression the range of LOGH ships' weapons was 8 lightseconds.

>>15291823
To be fair that goo was able to shield a space rock from radar.

Of course who'd want to slather their ships in proto after finding out what it does? Superscience ain't nothing to fuck with.

>>15292752
>>15270672
except basically every major race beside the human and the narn was cheating the physic .

>>15291626
weren't they stolen from Luna's shipyards?

>>15272910
CQB IS STILL THE BEST EPISODE