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I admit to skimming this, but there are a couple of things I see wrong with this. 1. You can see a spaceship from the next solar system for sure. But it woul

by j_baker 15y ago

I admit to skimming this, but there are a couple of things I see wrong with this. 1. You can see a spaceship from the next solar system for sure. But it would take years for you to see it. 2. I doubt the future of combat will involve humans. I envision giant fleets of spaceships that are too big for humans to control. Thus, I forsee space combat as being driven by complex algorithms.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
I imagine that the individual ships themselves will also be very small. In fact, if a fleet is big enough, the communications gap becomes a problem - space battles may end up looking like a fight between two ant colonies, with small independent ships working together as a swarm, without any central guidance.
- j_baker 15y ago
  You never know. I'm sure you could have a more "distributed leadership". I'm sure this could be accomplished with a clever enough application of paxos.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    I agree with the author in that it's unlikely we'll get a Star Trek scenario where a single ship can continue taking hits without much consequence. In all likelihood the first hit a spacecraft takes will destroy it. In that environment you really want as many small ships as possible - large capital ships really work against you. Any centralized command system would also be trivially easy to destroy by concentrating fire on the command ship. A swarm of distributed ships seems much more viable in this system.
    - j_baker 15y ago
      Right, but with Paxos, you could elect a new leader as soon as the old one is destroyed.
Avshalom 15y ago
As to 1: It would take years for the light to get there, it would also take several MORE years for the ship to actually get there. The important take away is distance can't be used to hide, there is no "Oh they won't notice us we're still outside the orbit of Pluto."
- talmand 15y ago
  How can that be? Space is big, we cannot even properly comprehend how big it is. I'm talking just in our immediate vicinity. If I took, say, three of the world's largest ships, put them together to form one ship and then placed it in a random spot somewhere within the orbit of Pluto; how long would it take you to find it? Keep in mind I'm not talking within the orbital plane, I'm saying within the sphere of the solar system. Unless someone is watching 100% of the sky for even the slightest miniscule changes, I imagine you could get mighty close (granted, close is Pluto) without being detected. Isn't most of the information we have about newly discovered far away objects is how they interacted with other known far away objects? But, of course, there's the given that if we've advanced far enough to engage in space combat then we've likely created technology to help in detection.
  - sp332 15y ago
    Well yes, there are quite a few telescopes that constantly scan the sky for tiny changes. And it's not just the size of the ship, but the burning fuel from its engines as it navigates near our solar system.
    - talmand 15y ago
      Good replies, but I'll combine my thoughts here. Ships CAN be bright, we have the tech now to make them dark. True, burning fuel is a big problem. Especially if they were traveling rather fast towards us and they flipped over to reverse thrust to slow down. But what if you don't burn fuel as a means of propulsion? I'm going with the assumption if that if someone wished to do something bad, say invading a neighboring solar system, they would take precautions in being detected.

by j_baker 15y ago

pavel_lishin 15y ago

I imagine that the individual ships themselves will also be very small. In fact, if a fleet is big enough, the communications gap becomes a problem - space battles may end up looking like a fight between two ant colonies, with small independent ships working together as a swarm, without any central guidance.

j_baker 15y ago
You never know. I'm sure you could have a more "distributed leadership". I'm sure this could be accomplished with a clever enough application of paxos.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  I agree with the author in that it's unlikely we'll get a Star Trek scenario where a single ship can continue taking hits without much consequence. In all likelihood the first hit a spacecraft takes will destroy it. In that environment you really want as many small ships as possible - large capital ships really work against you. Any centralized command system would also be trivially easy to destroy by concentrating fire on the command ship. A swarm of distributed ships seems much more viable in this system.
  - j_baker 15y ago
    Right, but with Paxos, you could elect a new leader as soon as the old one is destroyed.

Avshalom 15y ago

As to 1: It would take years for the light to get there, it would also take several MORE years for the ship to actually get there. The important take away is distance can't be used to hide, there is no "Oh they won't notice us we're still outside the orbit of Pluto."

talmand 15y ago
How can that be? Space is big, we cannot even properly comprehend how big it is. I'm talking just in our immediate vicinity. If I took, say, three of the world's largest ships, put them together to form one ship and then placed it in a random spot somewhere within the orbit of Pluto; how long would it take you to find it? Keep in mind I'm not talking within the orbital plane, I'm saying within the sphere of the solar system. Unless someone is watching 100% of the sky for even the slightest miniscule changes, I imagine you could get mighty close (granted, close is Pluto) without being detected. Isn't most of the information we have about newly discovered far away objects is how they interacted with other known far away objects? But, of course, there's the given that if we've advanced far enough to engage in space combat then we've likely created technology to help in detection.
- sp332 15y ago
  Well yes, there are quite a few telescopes that constantly scan the sky for tiny changes. And it's not just the size of the ship, but the burning fuel from its engines as it navigates near our solar system.
  - talmand 15y ago
    Good replies, but I'll combine my thoughts here. Ships CAN be bright, we have the tech now to make them dark. True, burning fuel is a big problem. Especially if they were traveling rather fast towards us and they flipped over to reverse thrust to slow down. But what if you don't burn fuel as a means of propulsion? I'm going with the assumption if that if someone wished to do something bad, say invading a neighboring solar system, they would take precautions in being detected.