SF Rant

[Vondy]

Where did I say otherwise?

[L. Marcus]

The problem with quantum entanglement is that once you have sent the message by entanglement, you must also send the encryption key (how the source's electrons behaved) by photons for the information to make sense. No gain in speed, alas.

[Xavier Onassiss]

While perhaps a bit tangential, I am slightly surprised that so far no one (as far as I have seen - please correct me if mistaken) has mentioned The Forever War by Joe Haldeman on regard to the 'hard SF versus space opera' divide.

 

Thoughts?

 

-Carl-

 

I'm not sure if The Forever War is a particularly strong example of either genre; hard SF or space opera. However....

 

I've always thought the most interesting thing about The Forever War is the way it blends military SF and social SF. Haldeman succeeded in creating a powerful commentary on the military, society, and the divide between them.

[Chris Goodwin]

Apparently, quantum entangling two particles creates a wormhole connecting them.  

[Old Man]

That would also help explain what happens when my kid gets his fishing line tangled up.

[L. Marcus]

Children are inherently quantum.

[Old Man]

And they also exhibit a strong sensitivity to initial conditions.

[L. Marcus]

That is a mark of chaos.

[Old Man]

My kids aren't named Mark.  You may be thinking of Markdoc.

[L. Marcus]

He always struck me a Lawful Neutral.

[Old Man]

Really?  I had him pegged for Lawful Evil.  Can someone cast Detect Alignment?

[L. Marcus]

Vaarsuvius? Or Durkon?

 

Anyway: Stealth In Space -- Never Gonna Happen!

[Xavier Onassiss]

In space, no one can hear you jump the shark....

[L. Marcus]

I read a SF short-novel when I was a kid, called The Space Shark. I don't think I could make it through the book nowadays.

[PaycheckHero]

Because lets face it. Submarines are the best existing model for life on a space ship.

They are, but if it's hard science then we're supposed to talk about logical consequences of known information, and the logical conclusion is that for the forseeable future the Air Force would have the ships.

 

0. The AF has more actual experience with space operations than any other service, so they actually are the logical service. Experience at sea in ways that look similar are simply not a substitute for actual experience in actual space. However, I've labeled this zero because it's a hard-SF like logical argument, which is the least important consideration in the world we live in (as opposed to the alternate history of hard SF where the engineers run everything by themselves). Let's look at what does actually matter:

 

1. The Air Force already has the primary oversight for military space. JFCC Space is commanded by a four-star Air Force general at Vandenberg Air Force Base. I rather suspect that it would automatically be under the Air Forces' command unless congress positively said otherwise. (A lot of the space stuff is 'joint', so likely there would be personnel from other services involved--I'm just talking about where the buck stops.) Why would congress spend the extra time, money, and trouble it would require for another service to duplicate what the AF already has?

 

2. Decisions like this are *not* made because of any chain of logic or argument, which is one reason why hard SF gets it wrong (hard SF tends to only want to be accurate on very specific things, and childish on things like politics). What actually happens in the real world when there is a major new pot of money for a major new military project is that the services get into a knife fight lobbying congress every way they know how. That suggests that unpredictable politics is more important than point #1, however in the past the AF has had the strongest lobby of any of the services and so they probably have the political high ground as well as incumbency.

 

(Side note: in my more cynical moments I think their political strength comes from eternally promising that in the future they will win all the wars without congress having to go on record committing ground troops. They've been wrong *every single time*, but it doesn't matter because the politicians are more interested in the dream of not having to explain deaths to their constituents than any amount of logic or evidence. It's worked like a charm since WW II, and there is no sign of it failing to work in spite of the perfect record of failed predictions.)

 

So again I claim that analogies with the navy are fair enough but completely irrelevant to what would actually happen. Whoever lobbies best will win, but the best lobbying track record plus incumbency is I think too strong an advantage. The only two outcomes that make sense to me are (1) AF control, and (2) a joint authority that rests disproportionately on AF technical skill and assets. I think #1 is much more likely in the near term, but #2 becomes more likely to the extent that it looks like space assets will become dominant and the other services see it as a fight for survival. (Or more accurately, their congressional supporters see it as a survival issue for the other services.)

 

Yes, those factors could change, but by the time they do they won't be the services we know anymore and so I don't think we can predict much at that point anyway. It's a very good bet that politics will never be separated from large pots of money, however, and that technical considerations will remain a very distant second.

[Vondy]

It always comes down to one simple truth: space marines rock!

[Chris Goodwin]

I think all of the branches will have spacecraft, in much the same way as they all have airplanes. They'll have different needs for them; each branch will have its specialties, just like the Air Force has airlift and logistics while the Navy has carrierborne fighters for tactical air support over its operations.

[Cancer]

The problem with space battles is that realistically, the ships would be light-minutes away.

So you're positing ship-to-ship combat at ranges of about 1AU (mean Earth-Sun distance, real close to 500 light-seconds)? Assuming ships are a few kilometers in size or smaller? You can't see your target at that range, let alone track him and distinguish him from decoys and debris, unless he's burning something very bright in your direction. And with relativistic signal propagation speeds, he's got all those minutes between when you fire and when your ordnance will arrive on the predicted trajectory to alter that trajectory and not be where you shot at.

 

(If you posit FTL communications via entanglement, you aren't going to communicate your intended course to a shooting enemy, are you?)

 

(And we'll omit the problem that FTL means time travel and all the logical problems that brings.)

 

The Earth-Moon distance is about one and a quarter light-seconds, and in the absence of gravity wells tending to focus projectiles into them, it'd be hard to hit things even at that range.

[BlueCloud2k2]

Quote buttons still broken. *sigh*

 

Conjecture at this point is useless to anyone who's not planning on writing a SciFi novel (or running a Star Hero campaign that is set in the near future).

 

PaycheckHero: I recognize your logic and can see your perspective. However, I maintain my opinion that the military Space Force be a hybrid of Navy and Airforce. I don't see JFCC wasting trained personel from either branch. Both branches have their strengths and weaknesses. Just like SOCOM uses troops from Army, Marine, SEAL, and Paratroopers, I foresee Starfleet (or whatever its called) taking the best and the brightest Officers and NCO's from each branch.

 

Cancer: That was my argument against missile use in space-to-space combat. I have a sneaking suspicion that space-combat will be ships closing to Knife-fighting range and facing off a few-hundred meters like old wet-navy combat. Plasma-lances and Rail-guns. Short range. Both ships would get corn-cobbed. But it would be who could corn-cob who faster and harder that would decide the battle.

[bigbywolfe]

Quote buttons still broken. *sigh*

Only for you friend, only for you...

[Old Man]

 

Cancer: That was my argument against missile use in space-to-space combat. I have a sneaking suspicion that space-combat will be ships closing to Knife-fighting range and facing off a few-hundred meters like old wet-navy combat. Plasma-lances and Rail-guns. Short range. Both ships would get corn-cobbed. But it would be who could corn-cob who faster and harder that would decide the battle.

 

To go off on a tangent, my vision of future hard-SF combat is somewhat similar to that of present-day submarine combat--a perpetual game of cat-and-mouse, trying to keep tabs on where the adversary's vessels are, and when the order is given, the resulting flurry of destruction is brief but intense.  (And when I say 'brief' I mean it's going to be played out by computer; I don't expect human reaction times to allow any meaningful meatbag interaction.)  I expect the primary weapon systems to be solid-state lasers.  These won't be as destructive as kinetic kill vehicles, but would be destructive enough against targets that require sensitive sensors and possibly solar arrays to function, and are near-instantaneous besides. 

[Cancer]

Cancer: That was my argument against missile use in space-to-space combat. I have a sneaking suspicion that space-combat will be ships closing to Knife-fighting range and facing off a few-hundred meters like old wet-navy combat. Plasma-lances and Rail-guns. Short range. Both ships would get corn-cobbed. But it would be who could corn-cob who faster and harder that would decide the battle.

OK, I mistook your meaning. Sorry.

 

I think I agree with Old Man here. Getting close enough for the "half pistol shot" broadside-type fighting is going to be very hard unless both sides want the combat, and I think it'll be obvious enough who should win that circumstance will be very rare. Sub-to-sub combat with slow but stealthy weapons, mines, etc., may be the better model.

 

In my copious free time, someday I'll work out a decent interface and game system for 3-D spaceship combat, first in gravity-free space and then in strong gravity regimes. It will take a while, though. I don't think anyone has any clue of how spaceship combat really is likely to work at this point, and the clumsiness of 3-d display prevents anyone from simulating it with consistent axiom sets to see what works. I am stone cold certain that WW2 fighter dogfighting isn't it, though.

[Vondy]

The main thing for hard-science fiction, aside from verisimilitude in science, is a coherent explanation of why space combat is the way it is. It could evolve several ways. You just have to assume a set of reasonable premises and grow the idea from there -- with readable exposition.

[tkdguy]

There are a few starship combat games that allow for 3-D movement. Among them are Attack Vector: Tactical and for Honor Harrington fans Saganami Island Tactical Simulator.

[Vondy]

DP9 hasn't published anything new for the Jovian Chronicles setting in a while, but I always liked their vehicle rules. I also liked the setting a lot. I'm not big on mecha, but their explanation worked, and you don't have to use them -- or even focus on space navies militaries if you don't wan to. The civilian side of the setting is pretty awesome, too.

 

I stripped out the mecha (but not the power armor) and inserted transhuman space themes and technologies -- which worked pretty seamlessly. The JC "edicts," which are curbs on scientific research and development of many key transhuman-style concepts due to disasters with them, actually added an element of tension -- as those involved with those technologies formed a dissident underground.

 

My PCs were a combination of Solar Police agents with the Edicts Enforcement Bureau and edicts violating concepts working for the bureau. It really worked out well. There were ethical questions vis-à-vis science without ethics and censorship of inquiry, and police fighting illegal tech with illegal tech, and characters working for an agency that was extorting them, and cops extorting beings who were increasingly their friends, and the blurred definition of human.

 

Anyhow, I guess I rephrase my original position -- with the right concepts and aesthetic a hardish-science game can work.