View Full Version : Writing a short story; info about naval rank structure and particle physics?
I like to write in my free time, and I'm taking creative writing next semester. I'm pretty excited.
My main influences are Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Starship Troopers (the book, not the awful movie), Halo, and The Lost Fleet. (http://www.amazon.com/Dauntless-Lost-Fleet-Book-1/dp/0441014186) My story combines a bunch of concepts from these sources, but incorporates a number of original ideas I've had w/r/t the primary story line.
(If you have even a passing interest in military sci-fi, you owe it to yourself to pick up The Lost Fleet. It's probably the best military SF I've ever read.)
That said, I've been working on this short story but I'm looking some information about the rank structure onboard naval ships.
Obviously there is a captain and an XO. An XO typically holds the rank of Commander or Lt. Commander, correct? Also, is it unusual for captains of smaller ships (destroyers? frigates?) to be Commanders?
This is where it gets a little fuzzy for me. In Star Trek, the senior bridge officers typically consist of tactical, operations, helm. Communications, and Ops is usually a lieutenant or a lieutenant commander (Sulu or Data), Tactical is usually a lieutenant (Worf, or Sulu again), and helm is usually an ensign (Chekov or W. Crusher). But, I know that Star Trek is by no means an accurate representation of a real-world rank structure. Among other things, there's only been one enlisted crewman seen throughout the entirety of the franchise :err:
So that brings me to BSG, which is closer to replicating a naval ship. The rank structure is more flexible. But in BSG we learn very little about the rest of the bridge crew. There's a Commander and an XO. (Galactica's ranks are differently named than real world naval ranks, the CO is a Commander and the XO is a Major. It's also bigger - Commander is the highest non-flag officer but is an O-8, not an O-6). Past that, the rest of the crewmen on the bridge are enlisted and the only one who we ever really learn about is the comm officer who is is an E-5 (and she's later promoted to an O-2).
The bridge structure is similar in The Lost Fleet. Both main characters hold the rank of Captain. One commands the fleet while the other commands the flagship, which the fleet commander operates on. (He isn't an admiral because the admiral was killed in the opening chapter and he is the most senior captain by date of rank.) The rest of the bridge officers are only ever referred to watch standers. No ranks, no names. Hell, we don't even learn about an XO.
The only reference I have is Star Trek but I know that it can't be particularly accurate. I don't want to have the bridge crew be nameless, though. I'd prefer to have more characters to work with. (One of the few nitpicks I have with The Lost Fleet is that there are only three central characters; two Captains and a civilian. The most prominent secondary characters are the captains of the other ships in the fleet. Like I said earlier there's yet to be any mention of the XO on the flagship.) So, basically, what other officers/crewmen would typically be on the bridge? Is there a weapons officer? A communications officer? Are they enlisted or are they officers? As far as shifts go, how many crewman would there be that fill the same role?
So that covers my questions about rank structure. Next up: physics.
One of the things I really like about The Lost Fleet is that it's the only sci-fi story I've ever read that really takes relativity into account. All distances are measured in light-minutes/hours/days/years, not km, because using lightspeed as a reference point is is far more useful. Also, speeds are measured relative to lightspeed. Ships typically cruise at .05-.1 light. .1 light is attack speed. Ships move at .2 light if they need to really hump it, but attacking at .2 light is rarely done since relativistic distortion makes getting a firing solution very difficult. The other problem with moving faster than .2 light is that time begins to distort. As such, ships rarely move faster than .2 light.
The fact that light has to travel is also taken into account. If a ship is 30 light minutes away, then all the information you have about that ship is 30 minutes old. You have to get real close (a few light seconds) before you can accurately target a ship. Redshift and blueshift are taken into account and let you know how fast/which direction a ship is moving, i.e. if two ships are moving away from each other, each ship sees the other one tinted red. Fleet commanders use a holographic display to see what they call the "visibility sphere." When a ship jumps into a system, the light reflected off the ship moves outward in a sphere, and until that sphere hits other ships and planets in the system, they don't know the new ships are there.
Basically, a commanders most potent weapon isn't his actual weapons - it's the intelligent use of the physics of light that wins battles.
One thing that I've been curious about is how that would apply to a weapon that travels at light speed, such a laser or a particle weapon. The four weapons that ships use in The Lost Fleet are missiles, mass drivers (both for ship-to-ship combat and, more commonly, planetary bombardment), null-fields (which break down the atomic bonds of the target and turns them into a sort of particle fog) and hell-lances. As far as I can tell, hell-lances are either particle beams or liquid lasers. (High Energy Liquid Laser? I dunno, they never say if it's a laser or something else). Given that the lance is moving at light speed (a particle beam moves at light speed, right?), the target ship couldn't possibly see the weapon until the exact moment it hit the ships shields/armor, right? Would a ship have any way to detect an incoming laser/particle beam? If a ship could, it could theoretically use point-to-point particle weapons (a defense grid) to disrupt incoming beams or pulses... but only if the ship could see the incoming beam, which I don't think is possible.
Is there anything else I'm missing about a theoretical laser/particle beam weapon?
Sorry about the huge post. I've been pondering these things for a while. :p There's actually more (ship roles, marine ranks) but these two are the most pressing.
I'm going off David Weber's Honor Harrington series here. I would highly recommend them as well; first book is free and in fact up through book 11 is free if you know where to look.
In the case of two captains on a ship (a group commander and a ship captain), usually the senior one takes on the temp. rank of Commodore. As for the bridge personnel, I'd make them be officers. You don't wanna trust your bridge crew to just anyone, so they're probably senior-grade officers. Smaller ships are fine to be commanded by Commanders, I'd think.
You'd probably have 3 shifts, maybe 4 depending on how long the day is (i.e. more than 24 hours).I'd say you need a captain, an XO, a com officer, a tac officer, a helmsman, an astrogator (can possibly be same as helms), and possibly assistants of each. At minimum.
ironically enough I am also working on (space opera) mili-skiffy right now.
You'd probably have 3 shifts, maybe 4 depending on how long the day is (i.e. more than 24 hours).I'd say you need a captain, an XO, a com officer, a tac officer, a helmsman, an astrogator (can possibly be same as helms), and possibly assistants of each. At minimum.
Yup. Junior officers for the bridge crew. That's what I want to do but I'm curious how well that reflects an actual rank structure. I'd combine the astrogator and the helm, otherwise we've got too many characters on the bridge. That keeps it to 5. My story shifts the point of view between some of the characters, and there's also a good deal of action on other ships. The number of characters could quickly get overwhelming or too difficult to maintain.
I'd also throw a chief engineer in there. We gotta have someone who tells the captain when he's pushing his ship too hard ;) He might be enlisted. I'm also pondering having a Command Master Chief Petty Officer (CMDCM) who is the senior noncom on board. I've never seen any military SF that takes this into account but I think there's a lot of opportunity there. There's an interesting leadership/group dynamics theory that this would give me access to: the concept of a designated leader, emergent leader, and implied leader.
A designated leader is the leader who has definitive/legal authority. This would be the captain. An emergent leader is someone who steps up given the opportunity. This would be the XO. (This also lets me incorporate the "reluctant hero" theme which I like a lot.) Finally, there's the implied leader, who is acknowledged to have the most experience, even if he doesn't have the highest authority. This would be the CMDCM.
Basically, it opens the door for debates between the XO and the CMDCM about what works in a textbook and what works in the field. (Spoiler: the Captain buys the farm pretty early on.) The BSG episode Fragged demonstrates this really well: Crashdown (junior officer) is the designated leader, Tyrol (senior noncom) is the implied leader, and Baltar (civilian) is the emergent leader. It was pretty textbook use of that theme, but in spite of the cliché (because of?) it's a very good episode/arc.
In The Lost Fleet, temp fleet commanders get the rank of Fleet Captain. It's equivalent to Commodore.
Given that the lance is moving at light speed (a particle beam moves at light speed, right?), the target ship couldn't possibly see the weapon until the exact moment it hit the ships shields/armor, right?
Right.
Would a ship have any way to detect an incoming laser/particle beam?
Not until it hits their sensors, no. No information can move faster than the speed of light.
If a ship could, it could theoretically use point-to-point particle weapons (a defense grid) to disrupt incoming beams or pulses... but only if the ship could see the incoming beam, which I don't think is possible.
Right. Works great against anything slower than c though. :)
Is there anything else I'm missing about a theoretical laser/particle beam weapon?
Other than waving your hands in the air and muttering something about "leading space-time distortions" as a warning effect? Not really...
One thing you may want to look into is light-cones. They're a standard way of representing 'possible outcomes' in physics when you're dealing with these things, and would make a nice solid hard sf entry into making this much like a sub battle. "Okay, we know he was *here* x minutes ago, therefore his possible locations are *blorp* this area now, and since it takes our weapons y minutes to get to those points, we can fire on these locations here here and here to generate the most probable flak/mine field for him to hit at full speed, right when he gets there."
It all comes down to probabilities and possibilities at that point, which *could*, if you were really sneaky about it, blend well with quantum mechanics computation in a battle computer. :)
Go with a senior noncom; David Weber makes good use of his nomcoms and enlisted. (Sorry to keep tooting his horn, but he's officially my favorite writer now.) It's also an excellent idea to have actual noncom presence. It also sounds fascinating to me to incorporate that leadership of 3 leaders idea. I'd say you sound like you're on a great track.
'Hopefully one of our real naval folk will step in and talk about whether or not a bridge crew is actually made up of jr. officers.
Wish I could help with the physics stuff but I'm totally clueless. All I know is writing and reading.
One thing I've always wondered about wrt to lasers being used in ship-to-ship sci-fi battles is why every ship just didn't have a mirror coating. Granted, I know ass-all about lasers and particle beams, but is there a reason that wouldn't work? Seems like a kind of simple solution to getting your ship blowed up by laser beams. :p
You need sensor ports, or you're blind. :)
Also, you need to have a coating(s) that will reflect a) all frequencies thrown at you, and b) at sufficient efficiencies as to not let the bleed energy exceed the damage/melting point of the coating.
Anonymous Coward
2009-06-23, 18:49
From the perspective of a small ship, specifically a submarine, there are not enough officers on board not to utilize junior officers, particularly at battle stations.
Having said that, the junior officers are more likely to stand watch in engineering.
Officers are department or division heads as administrative duties. Their watches are in the command structure, which means that everyone on the bridge except for the officer of the deck is usually an enlisted person. Under normal conditions, you will always have one line officer (to use my previous terminology, one in the command structure) on watch on the deck (the OOD, Officer of the Deck) and one in engineering (EOOW, Engineering Officer of the Watch).
Even in battle stations, your enlisted operators will be the ones operating equipment. The Communications Officer does not automatically assume a radio operator position, nor does the Sonar Officer man a console and set of headphones nor does the Weapons Officer man the fire control panel.
Under most conditions, the captain of a submarine is a Commander (O-5) in rank and the Executive Officer is a Lieutenant Commander (O-4). During an advancement cycle, the captain may have been advanced to Captain (O-6) and the Executive Officer to Commander (O-5), but this situation will not last long.
Feel free to ask specific questions on submarine operation. I have no experience with surface warship operation.
Other than waving your hands in the air and muttering something about "leading space-time distortions" as a warning effect? Not really...
Yeah, that's pretty much what I expected. I'm already doing enough hand waving with my FTL methods. (combination of wormholes and hyperspace... The Lost Fleet has a really good "there's more than one way to FTL" dynamic that I'm working with) I suppose I could theoretically do some song and dance about hyperspace distortions but... meh.
Balancing hard SF is tricky. You have to abstract the technology enough to get away with bending physics, but if you go too far then you end up in a Star Trek-esque technobabble situation where it starts to lose traction. Still, you have to get a little fantastical physics in, otherwise your options are too limited.
In my defense, FTL is the only way I'm really flaunting physics badly. But it's nearly impossible to write epic-scale military SF without FTL.
Wikipedia mentions that particle beams move "very near" the speed of light. What are we talking here? .9 c? .99 c? Enough where I could use it if the ships were sufficient distance apart?
If all else fails, I think I'm going to set it up where particle weapons do low damage so it's okay to let your shields soak it up. The fundamental tactic for my space battles will be: take down their shields and defense grid with particle weapons, then get close and blow them out of the stars with mass drivers/missiles/nukes. Projectile weapons at anything other than extremely close range are easy targets for weapons that move at light speed.
One thing you may want to look into is light-cones. They're a standard way of representing 'possible outcomes' in physics when you're dealing with these things, and would make a nice solid hard sf entry into making this much like a sub battle. "Okay, we know he was *here* x minutes ago, therefore his possible locations are *blorp* this area now, and since it takes our weapons y minutes to get to those points, we can fire on these locations here here and here to generate the most probable flak/mine field for him to hit at full speed, right when he gets there."
It all comes down to probabilities and possibilities at that point, which *could*, if you were really sneaky about it, blend well with quantum mechanics computation in a battle computer. :)
Good idea. This is touched upon in The Lost Fleet but not in depth. It's how they target their mass drivers.
Of course, it's easy to hit targets that aren't moving. (or, rather, are moving on a 100% predictable path like an object in orbit)
Go with a senior noncom; David Weber makes good use of his nomcoms and enlisted. (Sorry to keep tooting his horn, but he's officially my favorite writer now.) It's also an excellent idea to have actual noncom presence. It also sounds fascinating to me to incorporate that leadership of 3 leaders idea. I'd say you sound like you're on a great track.
'Hopefully one of our real naval folk will step in and talk about whether or not a bridge crew is actually made up of jr. officers.
Wish I could help with the physics stuff but I'm totally clueless. All I know is writing and reading.
Hey, no more than I'm pimping Jack Campbell in this thread :)
Where should I start with David Weber? His stuff's on the Kindle store, and I'm always down for more military SF.
One thing I've always wondered about wrt to lasers being used in ship-to-ship sci-fi battles is why every ship just didn't have a mirror coating. Granted, I know ass-all about lasers and particle beams, but is there a reason that wouldn't work? Seems like a kind of simple solution to getting your ship blowed up by laser beams. :p
You need sensor ports, or you're blind. :)
Also, you need to have a coating(s) that will reflect a) all frequencies thrown at you, and b) at sufficient efficiencies as to not let the bleed energy exceed the damage/melting point of the coating.
And shuttle docks, weapon ports, engine ports, etc...
Also, what kick said: repeated weapons fire would melt the mirrors away. They can refract light, but heat is going to get through. See the ablative armor on the USS Defiant for a relatively good implementation of this idea. Basically, the ships hull can refract phaser fire, but the more it gets hit, the less refractive the armor gets. I'm probably going to work this in as well.
This is a really good discussion, guys :) A lot of good info in here, thanks.
One trick that may work if internally consistent with your FTL system... 'warp' a projectile at a ship. Rail gun + warp port = rail gun speeds, but it appears 1m off the enemy's hull. Whammo. Warp torpedo on the 'cheap'... make a warp 'tube' from the rail gun to the exit point, and slam that puppy down it. No internal engine sustaining the effect. More like a wormhole, really.
Speaking of, wormhole + kinetic load/particle beam/laser = FTL weapon. :)
Hmm. Actually, if you can do micro-wormholes for communication, then...
Disperse a sensor net around your ship, synced to ship movement. Have it some insane distance out, like 100Mm. Little tiny autonomic sensors that use FTL communications (I'm assuming you have that) back to the ship to alert it of incoming energy weapons at light speed, or sub-light weaponry. You could have a secondary grid of defensive weapons at say 1km out that would then react to the data from the sensor net.
And this, folks, is why you want the geeks on *your* side.
USN surface ships are basically the same as AC's subs, with size and capability driving the seniority of the Captain. A Carrier or nuclear-capable Aegis cruiser will have a Captain (O-6) as the Captain, the carrier with a O-6/O-6 select as the XO, and the Cruiser with a very senior O-4, or a O-5 select as the XO. Destroyers and frigates have O-5s as Captains and O-4s as XOs, although that is in the process of changing and we will see the XOs being O-5 selects and rotating into the Captain job rather than CO/XO being two independently treated billets as they have been since time immemorial.
On a surface ship, very little happens on the bridge combat-wise, all the good stuff happens in the Combat Direction Center. The CO would normally be in CDC with the XO on the bridge. In CDC, one of the department heads (O-3/O-4) will be the Tactical Action Officer orchestrating the CDC team for the CO, there will normally be a couple JO assistants working for the TAO (really wanna-be next tour TAOs learning the ropes) and a cast of senior and junior enlisted working the various combat systems. The TAO makes recommendations to the Captain who gives them the authority to execute. Sometimes the TAO "owns" certain defensive systems and the Captain will maintain control-by-negation, letting the TAO make the initial call and if the Captain disagrees he will negate that particular order.
On the bridge the Officer-Of-the-Deck (OOD) runs the show for the XO, the JOOD (Junior-OOD, essentially OOD in training) assists and keeps a lookout, the Conning Officer (sometimes the JOOD) supervises the helm crew and keeps a lookout. Navigator is not generally required on the bridge for combat operations, they will be wherever their training has them standing watch. In combat the bridge team really drives the ship where they are told to drive and tries not to hit anything on the way there.
In non-combat operations entering and leaving port the bridge is an over crowded cluster fuck of a place with everyone petrified of hitting anything larger than a plastic cup. CO/XO/OOD/JOOD/Conning Officer/gator; a couple senior enlisted navigation specialists (the rating titles keep getting shuffled around); helm team augmented with a couple extra watch watchers; then the cast of fidgeters, nose-pickers and ass-scratchers that are supposedly learning how things are done (these are both officer and enlisted).
Tooling around not in combat or entering leaving port just take away CO/XO, the extra watch watchers and cut the fidgeters, nose-pickers and ass-scratchers down to a couple bodies.
Carriers a bastards as far as all this goes. There the Captain is almost always on the bridge keeping an eye on flight ops. CDC is sort-of run by the XO but really by the CDC Officer (a very senior O-5 that will never make O-6) who has a TAO working for them. Basically the same as small ship CDC after that. CDC will decide to fire weapons unless the Captain has overridden authority to maintain safety for a launch or landing. The bridge is always busy with extra fidgeters, nose-pickers and ass-scratchers that are supposedly learning how things are done (these are both officer and enlisted).
From the perspective of a small ship, specifically a submarine, there are not enough officers on board not to utilize junior officers, particularly at battle stations.
Starships are more like submarines than surface ships, so this is good information.
Having said that, the junior officers are more likely to stand watch in engineering.
:lol: Looks like I got it backwards. Officers in engineering, noncoms on the bridge. That's really good to know, thanks.
That's interesting. Is there a particular reason that engineering gets the junior officers?
Ergh... the Star Trek fan in me wants more officers on the bridge. Tactical and helm, specifically. I'm gonna have to think about this some more.
Officers are department or division heads as administrative duties. Their watches are in the command structure, which means that everyone on the bridge except for the officer of the deck is usually an enlisted person. Under normal conditions, you will always have one line officer (to use my previous terminology, one in the command structure) on watch on the deck (the OOD, Officer of the Deck) and one in engineering (EOOW, Engineering Officer of the Watch).
Bah, of course! I totally forgot about the OOD. Unsurprisingly, what you just said is exactly how it works on BSG. Adama, Tigh, and Gaeta were the officers in typically CIC.
Normally an O-2 or an O-3, right?
Even in battle stations, your enlisted operators will be the ones operating equipment. The Communications Officer does not automatically assume a radio operator position, nor does the Sonar Officer man a console and set of headphones nor does the Weapons Officer man the fire control panel.
So there are comm/weapons officers? What are they doing if they're not on the bridge?
Under most conditions, the captain of a submarine is a Commander (O-5) in rank and the Executive Officer is a Lieutenant Commander (O-4). During an advancement cycle, the captain may have been advanced to Captain (O-6) and the Executive Officer to Commander (O-5), but this situation will not last long.
Good to know. I'm thinking frigates and destroyers get Commanders, but cruisers and battleships get Captains.
Feel free to ask specific questions on submarine operation. I have no experience with surface warship operation.
Can you tell me anything else about the rank structure in engineering? Also, what would you estimate the officer/enlisted ratio is?
In non-combat operations entering and leaving port the bridge is an over crowded cluster fuck of a place with everyone petrified of hitting anything larger than a plastic cup. CO/XO/OOD/JOOD/Conning Officer/gator; a couple senior enlisted navigation specialists (the rating titles keep getting shuffled around); helm team augmented with a couple extra watch watchers; then the cast of fidgeters, nose-pickers and ass-scratchers that are supposedly learning how things are done (these are both officer and enlisted).:lol: I love this paragraph. :D
Anonymous Coward
2009-06-23, 20:37
:lol: Looks like I got it backwards. Officers in engineering, noncoms on the bridge. That's really good to know, thanks.
That's interesting. Is there a particular reason that engineering gets the junior officers?
Perhaps I said something a little confusing. There is usually one officer in charge of the ship (OOD) and one in charge of the engineering plant (EOOW). Responsibility for the ship takes more training and qualifications than responsibility for the engineering plant.
Normally an O-2 or an O-3, right?
Yes the OOD is normally an O-3 or a senior O-2.
So there are comm/weapons officers? What are they doing if they're not on the bridge?
The Communications officer is (well, I can't think of any exceptions) a line officer, so he will be OOD or EOOW, or sleeping, or doing administrative duties/attending training sessions or even relaxing (I don't know much about what officers do in their spare time in the ward room ... perhaps watching movies). I'm kind of fuzzy about this, but I believe on one ship I was on, the Weapons Officer came through the enlisted ranks under the Limited Duty Officer program and so was not a Line Officer (that is, he was not in the chain of command and not eligible to be OOD or EOOW). The officer who will not be a line officer will be the Supply Officer. Officers not in the line can stand specialized watches. I'll just name them since I am not creative enough to know how they might apply to a spaceship: Diving Officer (overseeing the operators who control the depth and steering) and Chief of the Watch (responsible for controlling things necessary to maintain control of the ship other than with the control surfaces - diving planes and rudder - , by which I mean he is responsible for the tanks, voids, and compartments and whether they are filled with air or water or both).
I guess that needs a little explanation, but it has been a long time so I might not be accurate. Senior enlisted members can move into the officer ranks through a number of programs. A Warrant Officer is an officer limited to a specialty, such as weapons, and is not in the chain of command. Warrant Officers have their own rank structure (WO-1 through 4). A Limited Duty Officer might have a broader field of expertise, follows the regular officer structure (O-1 through O-9, but can be advanced no further than O-5). Warrant Officers and Limited Duty Officers can apply to be Line Officers through a selection procedure. Officers in the line may have greater responsibilities and accountability, so not everyone aspires to be a Line Officer.
Good to know. I'm thinking frigates and destroyers get Commanders, but cruisers and battleships get Captains.
I can't say for certain.
Can you tell me anything else about the rank structure in engineering? Also, what would you estimate the officer/enlisted ratio is?
The command structure in engineering is that an officer and a senior enlisted work together. Usually, the officer remains in a "command room" called "Maneuvering". The senior enlisted tours the spaces and supervises the watchstanders outside Maneuvering. The senior enlisted is qualified to exchange places with the officer and generally that is done once per watch so that the officer can perform a supervisory tour of the engineering spaces.
The Maneuvering Room has three enlisted watchstanders who might correspond to watchstanders on your space ship. There is a Reactor Operator who remotely controls equipment associated with producing power (pumps, valves, control rods, etc.). There is an Electrical Operator who remotely controls the electrical generators and has switches to major electrical buses, and there is the Throttleman, who directly controls the speed of the ship. For reliability, the CONN, which is one and the same as the CIC in a BSG situation (but not on a surface ship), only gives speed orders and has no control of the reactor, electrical system, or engines. Outside of Maneuvering, there is one watchstander for each major compartment. On a submarine, there is one compartment with propulsion steam turbines, electrical generators, and emergency steering/diving hydraulics, one compartment with pumps for the steam condenser and air conditioning equipment, one compartment with pumps for the boilers and refrigeration equipment, and one compartment with the major electrical switchgear. (Obviously there is much more in these compartments, but those are major pieces of equipment). Finally, there are roving watches who can tour all engineering compartments. There is senior mechanical watchstander who operates under the senior enlisted person mentioned above (formally known as the Engineering Watch Supervisor, EWS). The senior mechanical watchstander (called the Engineroom Supervisor) is an hands-on supervisor, while the EOOW and EWS are hands-off supervisor. There is a roving electrical operator, since all electrical equipment cannot be confined to the switchgear room.
Since submarines are usually at sea under the water for no more than three months at a time there is no Medical Officer, only an enlisted corpsman. Would the situation be the same on a spaceship? There are only so many medical doctors to go around.
The big picture is that the function of the officers is to fight the ship. They study tactics. They give orders where to go and what to do. They keep the big picture in mind. As collateral duties, they are administrators of divisions and departments. They might have had to learn how to operate equipment for their qualifications but will usually not operate it again. When called on to supervisor specific equipment operation, they usually only know enough to go by written procedures. The exception would be the Engineering Officer who is expected to be an expert in the way things work (but not necessarily with hands-on experience) and to a lesser extent, officers who are the division officers for engineering fields.
Anything hands-on is done by the enlisted ranks.
Enlisted to officers is around or slightly greater than 10 to 1. My whole discussion leaves out Chief Petty Officers (E-7 through E-9) who are the senior enlisted members. E-1 through E-6 are advanced by testing. E-7 through E-9 are advanced both by testing and by a selection board. Officers are advanced by a selection board. Selection boards can get political and are based on records reviews only, not personal interviews.
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Of course, OBS is free regardless. It's Baen's way of luring in more users: providing books 1 and 2 free means you get more people buying the other titles... free crack always works
OMG I'm loving this thread. Space physics and military info in one place? Frakkin sweet.
One trick that may work if internally consistent with your FTL system... 'warp' a projectile at a ship. Rail gun + warp port = rail gun speeds, but it appears 1m off the enemy's hull. Whammo. Warp torpedo on the 'cheap'... make a warp 'tube' from the rail gun to the exit point, and slam that puppy down it. No internal engine sustaining the effect. More like a wormhole, really.
Reminds me of the seventh season DS9 episode with the transporting sniper rifle.
You'd have some serious targeting problems with jumping mass driver projectiles. With my FTL mechanisms it would be theoretically possible to get the projectile in real close, but if you're 10 light mins from the target, you don't have an accurate enough idea of where the target is (assuming you're facing a competent commander who varies his course randomly during combat). You'd have to lead the ship pretty severely and fire in a pretty wide dispersal pattern.
If you're close enough to get a firing solution, you've probably opened a hole in the enemy defense grid, and then there's really no need to warp the projectile, anyway.
Either way, my FTL method requires so much energy that it wouldn't be practical to waste it on a weapon that has a miniscule chance of hitting the target in the first place.
Eh, I may as well go into my FTL mechanisms at this point. (WARNING: long and ridiculous.)
The fundamental unit of FTL travel is a jump drive, just like BSG. The catch is twofold:
- Requires massive energy. To jump, you need to spend a considerable amount of time (an hour or two depending on the size of the ship) spinning up the drive. You need even more time if you're in a combat situation because of shields and weapons. Also, the shipboard computers need a considerable amount of time to run the jump calculations.
While it's theoretically possible to jump into a dense formation of enemy ships and blow them all to hell before they have a chance to react, c rears it's ugly head again: the further you are from the target, the harder it becomes to predict their location. (Indeed, in combat zones, competent commanders alter their course by a few degrees a few times an hour to prevent exactly that from happening.)
- Limited range. Get further out than half a light year and it becomes exponentially more difficult to plot a jump correctly. The further you try, the less accurate it gets. Additionally, the further you are from a star, the harder it is to make accurate jumps. You wouldn't want to move between stars using unassisted jumps; it's strictly for intersystem travel.
Moving a ship across a star system at .1 c takes quite a while. (http://www81.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=30+au+at+.1c) I figure that giving them the ability to jump around the solar system FTL opens up some interesting tactical scenarios, but it also supplies pitfalls for clumsy commanders. That's a recurring theme in the story: few officers fully grok the implications of lightspeed and relativity in combat. Most commanders are competent leaders and understand the theory of relativity, but a few stand out because they break the limitations of physics in creative ways. They truly think in those terms. Think Picard and the Picard Maneuver.
Which brings us to FTL option two: voidspace. Basically, if you're a certain distance from a star, and you jump using a specialized set of calculations, you enter an alternate dimension where gravity affects distance. In other words, the space between stars is compressed relative to the distance from the star. Get too close to a star and space gets expanded to the point where it'll tear the ship to pieces if you jump there. The tipping point is between the outer edge of a system's oort cloud and a few tenths of a lightyear away from the edge.
Average "speed" in voidspace, relative to the real universe, for a ship moving at .1, is 300c. Moving between two stars that are 12ly distant takes roughly 2 weeks. (http://www81.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=12+light+years+at+300c) The further away from a star your ship is, the faster you go, because of the way gravity affects distance.
So, to move to another system, you jump to the voidspace jump zone, you spin the drives up again, and you jump into voidspace and go on your physics-defying merry way.
It's pretty off the wall, I know. My rationale for voidspace is that some poor sap accidentally discovered it with bad calculations, so understanding of it is completely limited to practical uses, and the theory behind it is beyond our grasp. Gravity is one of those things we don't really understand the cause of, so I feel like the combination adds the right air of pseudoscience without crossing the suspension of disbelief line.
It's really no more ridiculous than hyperspace in Babylon 5, where JMS states that distance in hyperspace is not linear, and hyperspace was discovered when they found a hyperspace gate abandoned in space - nobody knows who built the first one. Things just move at speed of plot in hyperspace. Plus, coming up with wacky ways to FTL that sound mysterious yet plausible with a little pseudoscience is something all SF authors need to take a crack at :p
But it opens a number of doors. It gives you a get out of jail free card if you want to make crazy shit happen in hyperspace. It gives my ships a method that's not too fast but not too slow to move between stars.
Which brings us to the third and final FTL method: the assisted jump. It allows instantaneous travel between stars, but there's a catch: you have to build a jumpgate at both ends of the jump. Because the jump distance is so much longer, it requires more energy, which means a matter/antimatter reactor, which are too big/expensive/volatile to be built on ships. Jumpgates are big, powerful, dangerous, and immobile.
With jumpgates, ships can move around their own territory with ease. But if they want to venture into enemy space, they're stuck moving at "only" 300c. It also means that friendly systems can reinforce quickly. Gates rotate their recognition codes on a regular but pseudorandom basis to prevent enemy ships from jumping into a friendly jumpgate. Star systems communicate with teeny probes that get shuffled between gates very frequently.
So, yeah. This is what I think about in my free time :lol: My other two unexplained cop-outs are interial dampers and artificial gravity. Pretty standard.
Disperse a sensor net around your ship, synced to ship movement. Have it some insane distance out, like 100Mm. Little tiny autonomic sensors that use FTL communications (I'm assuming you have that) back to the ship to alert it of incoming energy weapons at light speed, or sub-light weaponry. You could have a secondary grid of defensive weapons at say 1km out that would then react to the data from the sensor net.
And this, folks, is why you want the geeks on *your* side.
As it stands, I don't give my ships the ability to communicate FTL. I thought about using tachyons and some hand waving and leaving it at that, but I think that the limitation of communicating at lightspeed adds more complexity (read: chaos) to combat.
That's still up for grabs, though, and is easy enough to change later. Tachyons are widely accepted as a pseudoscientifical way to communicate FTL.
Kick, if you haven't looked into The Lost Fleet, you should. I think you'd really like it... the implications of relativity and lightspeed in combat are incredibly fascinating.
USN surface ships are basically the same as AC's subs, with size and capability driving the seniority of the Captain. A Carrier or nuclear-capable Aegis cruiser will have a Captain (O-6) as the Captain, the carrier with a O-6/O-6 select as the XO, and the Cruiser with a very senior O-4, or a O-5 select as the XO. Destroyers and frigates have O-5s as Captains and O-4s as XOs, although that is in the process of changing and we will see the XOs being O-5 selects and rotating into the Captain job rather than CO/XO being two independently treated billets as they have been since time immemorial.
...snip...
Tooling around not in combat or entering leaving port just take away CO/XO, the extra watch watchers and cut the fidgeters, nose-pickers and ass-scratchers down to a couple bodies.
Good stuff. I can't decide if I want a bridge and a CIC/CDC, or just a CIC which serves as both. What's the reasoning behind having them separate to begin with?
The TAO sounds like exactly what I was looking for as a tactical officer, he/she'd make a good main character. Is the navigator an officer or a noncom?
No carriers in space, unfortunately. Fighters are easy pickings for point defenses which are accurate enough to shoot mass driver projectiles out of the stars. If the fighters are fast enough to avoid point defenses, then relativistic distortion would render their targeting systems useless. Vipers and X-Wings look cool but they have zero grounding once you try and mesh physics and tactics. The closest thing to fighters I have are small stealth ships which are designed to deliver marine fireteams to damaged enemy ships.
Also, I agree with 709. I award you lulz for that last paragraph and for painting a good picture of the bridge :D
This thread rocks. Also means I have to tinker with my own sci-fi 'verse, but still rocks. Thanks for all the info everyone!
Anonymous Coward
2009-06-24, 00:03
Is the navigator an officer or a noncom?
On a submarine, the navigator is a senior officer. Usually he is the most senior officer after the Executive Officer and also holds the rank of Lieutenant Commander. The Engineer Officer is also a Lieutenant Commander, but it is because of his position; that is, if he was a Lieutenant when he arrived on the boat, he would be promoted on assuming the position of Engineer Officer. Usually the Navigator has already achieved the Lieutenant Commander rank by the time he arrives.
Here's where I'm a bit fuzzy. I'm not sure if a former Engineer Officer would go to his next sea command as a Navigator or an Executive Officer. I'm thinking they might be parallel paths.
One clarification: an Engineer Officer would not be a Lieutenant already stationed on a ship promoted to a new position. Engineer Officer is an assigned position and, I believe, a candidate must complete specific training / refresher training on shipboard power systems prior to arriving at the duty station. Likewise with the Navigator. He goes to the ship specifically to be the Navigator.
The Navigator is a high responsibility position. If the ship hits bottom, no matter who is actually at fault, the Navigator, at the minimum, is responsible and will be fired. So, the CO, XO, and Navigator all read the charts and can plot a course. So, it was misleading to say that all officers are hands-off and all enlisted are hands-on. But the Navigator would still not "man the watch". A quartermaster would still do the routine plotting but it could be under the direct supervision of the Navigator. (Sometimes there is a Chief Petty Officer Quartermaster assigned to the ship who acts as Assistant Navigator, but I don't believe that is a required billet.)
hflomberg
2009-06-24, 17:43
I was an Air Force E4 - then called a Sergeant, now called a Senior Airman. Just keep officers away from me and let me do my job was the common attitude.
hell yeah, great thread :)
I once had aspirations on making a escape velocity in 3d type of game. But the idea fell through due to complete lack of coding skills. Now when I know how to code, I don't have the time. doh!
So, a couple of ideas/random thoughts I got from that:
Shiny metal hulls are good against lasers. Silver, for example, should be pretty good as it is pretty reflective and have good thermal conductivity.
Thick almost transparent materials are also good against lasers. Instead of a 2d-spot for the laser to heat, you get a volume and therefore more mass for the laser need to heat.
While shiny surfaces and the likes works when they are clean, they don't work at all of you put paint on them. So if you have shiny surfaces, then you can use paint as a sort of weapon. (Think mass driver loaded with dust)
If you want to be realistic, then your ships need a cooling-plate. Normal black-body radiation calculation -> pretty big ass cooling plates.
Here you can use the paint weapon again. Coat your opponents radiator with something less black and now he have to go at reduced power or risk overheating.
Lasers can be used as engines = no refueling (of propellant at least)
Better than lasers (as engines) are accelerated ions, i.e. ion engines. There was in fact a satellite that went around the moon a couple of years ago that used an ion engine. Pretty cool stuff :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_1
Oh well, I just wanted to ramble a bit about my great (:lol:) ideas :)
Good luck with the story! It's very nice to see that someone cares about this stuff. :D
Starships are more like submarines than surface ships, so this is good information.
:lol: Looks like I got it backwards. Officers in engineering, noncoms on the bridge. That's really good to know, thanks.
That's interesting. Is there a particular reason that engineering gets the junior officers?
That's a nuclear power thing. On non-nuc ships JOs that aren't assigned to engineering spend enough time to get a qualification in the pit, but not much more. The difference in choices made with a non-nuc and a nuc plant can be huge, and generally very little chance of the bridge causing something catastrophic on a non-nuc power plant unless they run into something.
Good stuff. I can't decide if I want a bridge and a CIC/CDC, or just a CIC which serves as both. What's the reasoning behind having them separate to begin with?
You want CDC to be dark so you can see the sensor displays better, so no windows! Captains like windows on bridges.
You can also put it deeper in the ship so blasts topside do less damage to the combat control systems. Generally if CDC blows up you just had a bis-ass explosion inside the hull/superstructure and the ship is screwed. If something takes out the bridge the ship can carry on, although not nearly as well, and it is much less likely that sever structural damage results. Some ships CDC is immediately behind the bridge so the survivability thing is less from missiles, but on those ships they worried more about torpedoes when they were built, so high away from the waterline made sense.
Is the navigator an officer or a noncom?
On a cruiser/destroyer/frigate it is a junior JO who works for the Operations O (dept head). On a carrier it is a post-command O-5, as likely to become a carrier Captain as the XO. Carrier 'Gators have to think tactically on positioning not only for the ship but for an entire battlegroup, as well as worry about those plastic cups. Smallboy 'gators worry about sand-bars, chart updates and plastic cups while going where someone else told them to go.
No carriers in space, unfortunately. Fighters are easy pickings for point defenses which are accurate enough to shoot mass driver projectiles out of the stars. If the fighters are fast enough to avoid point defenses, then relativistic distortion would render their targeting systems useless. Vipers and X-Wings look cool but they have zero grounding once you try and mesh physics and tactics. The closest thing to fighters I have are small stealth ships which are designed to deliver marine fireteams to damaged enemy ships.
I disagree unless you crank up the fake physics on the sensor and propulsion systems.
You have serious wavelength problems with targeting those mass drivers projectiles. That just ain't gonna work. Scan volumes are too big too, unless you dedicate a ridiculous amount of the ships surface to sensor arrays. So once you get to realistic scan rates fighters start to have holes they can fit into.
Mass driver projectiles are easily deflected with strong magnetic fields unless you are already at spit and knife fight ranges, which only lasts for a millisecond or two.. You can't avoid that since you need the magnetic material to accelerate it in the first place and in space there's no atmosphere to strip off a mag-sabot.
Another big problem is coming up with enough energy to move a ship's mass at relativistic speeds yet be able to dampen inertia to the point that all the little meat sacks inside don't turn to goo on the starboard bulkhead during the first port turn. If you manage all that the only combat you are really left with is intergalactic jousting matches unless you throw away the rest of physics, because the targeting issues you already acknowledge pretty much only let you fight nose-to-nose or nose-to-ass (an that fight's over before it began as the ass-guy just plain gets f___ed from his own propulsion masking).
So if you think about the HUGE energies needed just for FTL and a-grav, there ain't a lot of juice left for go-fast and damping. Making big spaceships relatively slow compared to relativity and now fighters can gain a speed advantage and use the smaller masses to reduce the energies needed for damping the pilot during maneuvering. Fighters also do something no linear weapon can do--expand the threat axis to a sphere. Now you can force the target to spread defensive resources and maybe something gets through. With your c-relative jousting the threat axis is infinitesimally narrow and the winner will always just be the jouster who owns more energy and can over-saturate the other jouster's weapons on the first pass.
Personally I think the possibility of David & Goliath battles are more interesting if David has a chance to win by other than pure dumb luck surprise. c-jousting has no tactics, it's all brute force and crossing your fingers.
That's a nuclear power thing. On non-nuc ships JOs that aren't assigned to engineering spend enough time to get a qualification in the pit, but not much more. The difference in choices made with a non-nuc and a nuc plant can be huge, and generally very little chance of the bridge causing something catastrophic on a non-nuc power plant unless they run into something.
What kind of choices are we referring to? If it's to operating the nuclear reactor, then I have to wonder because I understand that nuclear reactor operator (aboveground) is one of highest paying job that doesn't require a college education (and I then assume that it's because it's simple enough to operate, though potentially nerve-wreaking, like airport traffic controller).
Anonymous Coward
2009-06-24, 19:53
I have no civilian nuclear power plant experience, but I doubt whether it is nerve wracking. There just isn't that much going on. Civilian plants are supposed to have many more instruments for every parameter you can imagine and in the past had a greater degree of computerized control. (I'd explain more, but it doesn't seem to be relevant here.)
My assumption is that the operators are paid so well because when something does go wrong, they had better know how to handle the situation.
Otherwise, differences are that shipboard power plants can change power levels rapidly and unpredictably based on operations. Most of the time this is at very low power. Utility power plants try to operate at peak power levels as much as possible. Their demand does not fluctuate much and the fluctuations are probably handled by bringing conventionally powered generation plants on and off line. Due to the higher power operations, more adjustments probably have to be made due to things like fuel depletion and the production of fission products which might "absorb" neutrons which otherwise participate in the fission chain reaction (and then burn off, making available more neutrons than you were expecting while they were still there). But at the relatively constant power levels, these factors are more predictable than on a shipboard power plant.
That's probably too much oversimplified, probably not very accurate information, unless the spaceship is nuclear powered.
Unsubstantiated (at least to me) rumors are that before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cracked down on this type of behavior, it was common for civilian operators to play board games during routine operations. (But then, I started just after TMI and before Chernobyl and things were more relaxed in the early days.)
I guess I'm not really answering any questions here, am I?
I'm not a nuc, but I know a sub driver has a lot more to loose if they go too close to the bottom and clog the main intake compared to a carrier or cru/des ship doing the same. And throttle slams caused by tactical decisions can cause more heartburn on a sub that isn't using a lot of it's reserve capacity to feed the carriers electrical and catapult steam loads.
So a sub guy needs to have a very internalized idea of why they they don't want to do certain things so they can make tactical decisions that "the rest of the boat" can actually carry out. Carrier Skippers go to nuc school too because it would be beyond stupid to put someone in charge of something they know nothing about, but tactically they don't have to think of it much.
So I was on a five hour flight today from Chicago to San Fran. After pouring over this thread and reading The Lost Fleet for the first hour or so, I found my muse and just started writing. By the time I landed I had pounded out 3000 words. It's turning out really well (I hope) and actually writing it is causing me to make some interesting adjustments to the story, too.
I've got both a bridge and a CDC. But I can't help but feel that the bridge is redundant on a spaceship. I mean, it's just a big honking target if it's near the outer hull of the ship. Perhaps I can do some song and dance about how it recesses into the hull during combat... but maybe I should just toss it and only keep the CDC around.
Can anyone think of a good reason to have both a bridge and a CDC on a starship?
The characters I've got so far are an Admiral, Captain, XO, OOD, Astrogator, CMDCM, and a TAO. The XO is a commander, the OOD is a lieutenant, the Astrogator is a Lt. Commander, and the TAO is also a Lt. Commander. I've also got a good deal of nameless noncoms and starmen for the sake of, you know, actually running the ship.
I think their roles on the ship are probably a little wonky relative to how it works on a real ship. I'm also having a problem with what the CMDCM actually does on the ship. (How do you refer to the CMDCM typically? Petty Officer?) I'm thinking about posting the first section, if you guys are interested :)
The big picture is that the function of the officers is to fight the ship. They study tactics. They give orders where to go and what to do. They keep the big picture in mind. As collateral duties, they are administrators of divisions and departments. They might have had to learn how to operate equipment for their qualifications but will usually not operate it again. When called on to supervisor specific equipment operation, they usually only know enough to go by written procedures. The exception would be the Engineering Officer who is expected to be an expert in the way things work (but not necessarily with hands-on experience) and to a lesser extent, officers who are the division officers for engineering fields.
Anything hands-on is done by the enlisted ranks.
This is good info. It paints a clearer picture for me about what the officers do and what the enlisted crew does.
On a submarine, the navigator is a senior officer. Usually he is the most senior officer after the Executive Officer and also holds the rank of Lieutenant Commander. The Engineer Officer is also a Lieutenant Commander, but it is because of his position; that is, if he was a Lieutenant when he arrived on the boat, he would be promoted on assuming the position of Engineer Officer. Usually the Navigator has already achieved the Lieutenant Commander rank by the time he arrives.
Also good. After reading this part of your post I firmed up the roles of my main characters.
Shiny metal hulls are good against lasers. Silver, for example, should be pretty good as it is pretty reflective and have good thermal conductivity.
Interesting idea, but wouldn't silver hull plating light up the ship like a christmas tree?
My ships have shields (never explained... they're just there :p) too which absorb incoming particle fire.
If you want to be realistic, then your ships need a cooling-plate. Normal black-body radiation calculation -> pretty big ass cooling plates.
Here you can use the paint weapon again. Coat your opponents radiator with something less black and now he have to go at reduced power or risk overheating.
So, a giant water-cooling system running underneath the hull? That's interesting...
Worth noting: Galactica stores it's water close to the outer hull. I think I remember a line or two about how it's there for cooling purposes.
Lasers can be used as engines = no refueling (of propellant at least)
Better than lasers (as engines) are accelerated ions, i.e. ion engines.
The deets of my ships sublight engines are never discussed in depth, but yes, in my mind, they're ion engines.
Good luck with the story! It's very nice to see that someone cares about this stuff. :D
Thanks! :)
That's a nuclear power thing. On non-nuc ships JOs that aren't assigned to engineering spend enough time to get a qualification in the pit, but not much more.
Well my ships are powered by huge fusion reactors, so yes, if something goes wrong, big boom. I've yet to get into engineering but it sounds like I want a good deal of officers running around down there on those grounds.
You want CDC to be dark so you can see the sensor displays better, so no windows! Captains like windows on bridges.
This brings me back around to the bridge or no bridge debate. I can live with just a CDC but if there's a good rationale for having a bridge, I'd like to have one.
I disagree unless you crank up the fake physics on the sensor and propulsion systems.
Yeah. I meant to say missiles, not mass drivers. If you've got a hunk of metal flying at you at 1/4th light speed, you don't try and shoot it down, you GTFO. That's actually become an important point in the opening battle.
Another big problem is coming up with enough energy to move a ship's mass at relativistic speeds yet be able to dampen inertia to the point that all the little meat sacks inside don't turn to goo on the starboard bulkhead during the first port turn.
Yeah... my ships have magical intertial dampers as well. It's really the only way to do it if you want to have starships fighting at very high speeds.
I can see how fighters would work real well if the ships were moving much slower, but the problem with that is, space is really frakking big. If ships cant move at significant fractions of lightspeed, battles would literally take months. Even at .1 light, they take hours and sometimes days.
I know it's kind of throwing the physics of inertia out the window in order better adhere to the physics of light, but that's what interial dampers are for :lol:
c-jousting has no tactics, it's all brute force and crossing your fingers.
What ends up happening is that the ship formations are incredibly important before the battle even begins. Ships end up making strafing runs at each other. Ships rarely fight head on, because like you said, it makes targeting difficult. But if two ships are moving side by side at .1 light, then they're really not moving at all relative to each other, are they?
It's all about getting your ships in positions and moving at speeds where they can hit the target in a way that prevents the target from fighting back.
It's hard to explain succinctly. Sorry to be pimping The Lost Fleet so much, but combat in the book is entirely based on these concepts, and it works really well.
Anonymous Coward
2009-06-25, 01:11
I'm also having a problem with what the CMDCM actually does on the ship. (How do you refer to the CMDCM typically? Petty Officer?)
I'm a sub guy, so can't help much here. I was on two surface ships, but they were repair ships, so the structure was a bit different. (On a repair ship, the repair department is at least half the crew.)
You'd probably refer to the CMDCM (actually, I don't recognize that, maybe because I haven't read much science fiction) as the "Command Master Chief". He is the senior enlisted on the ship and is generally responsible for order and discipline. He might be considered to be a liaison between enlisteds and officers. It seems to me that the traditional role of the Executive Officer was order and discipline, but it seems that it has been delegated. After trying to write this, I'll have to defer to someone else. I never knew what the guy really did except that he was supposed to be powerful but I didn't like him and thought he was a bit of a hypocrite (the last one I knew). (Fraternization is not allowed, but the power that goes with rank, both officer and enlisted, often are a factor when rules are ignored.)
On a submarine, we have the Chief of the Boat. Administrative duties include things like assigning bunks and watchsection manning, scheduling training, and attending to disciplinary matters so that they didn't have to require action by the CO (i.e., non-judicial punishment). Like every other enlisted, the Chief of the Boat holds a rating (job specialty) and so during general quarters or battle stations, he would generally man a watch related to his primary training and qualifications. (Unlike the Command Master Chief, I think, who stands on the bridge with the CO and XO.) The Chief of the Boat is not necessarily a Master Chief Petty Officer (E-9). (Surface ships have no shortage of Master Chief Petty Officers, so I would expect the CMC to actually be a Master Chief Petty Officer.) On a submarine, since we have two enlisted communities (nuclear trained and non-nuclear trained, which in practical terms is generally engineering and non-engineering), there is also a senior enlisted for the nuclear trained personnel. He is also usually, but not necessarily, a Master Chief Petty Officer. His title is the Engineering Assistant, and I would expect that he would defer to the Chief of the Boat in terms of positional authority even if he were senior in rank. Both the Chief of the Boat and Engineering Assistant, from what I remember, are assigned billets, which means that someone is specifically assigned to fill those positions and are not automatically given to the senior person by rank.
Or I could be remembering this completely incorrectly. I guess I must admit that I'm getting old and my memory is failing. Either that or too much exposure to radiation has rotted my brain.
re shiny hulls and heat plates:
Yeah sure a shiny hull will be pretty easy to spot, but for defensive jobs it might be worth the extra protection.
It all depends on how powerfull the lasers are. Are they more for harassing, shooting at sensor arrays etc or are they powerful enough to act as main weapons.
Example: A ship defending something stationary. You know the ship is there so there isn't much of a point being stealthy. If that ships hull can take the energy of a 1 second laser burst before boiling away completley, the difference in time it stays alive is rather big if you go from 10% reflectivity to 90% (1.1 vs 10 seconds).
But all this might be moot since you have energy shields :) I guess it's a choice one have to make. choose what's important be it missiles or mass drivers or whatever and then adapt the tech accordingly :)
Heatplates:
The realistic thing that everybody forgets (or choose to forget ;)) is, all form of powerplants generate heat. Even assuming 99% efficiency, it's still a lot of energy to get rid of. And in space, big ass radiators are the only way (venting plasma etc is no good as you run out of plasma sooner rather than later :)).
So, you need to run at least some parts of the hull pretty hot. That could be used as a tactical element. Destroy those parts and your enemy needs to power down pretty soon. Also, it makes it impossible to be stealthy when running the engines/lasers/particle accelerators as part of the ship is glowing in the infrared or even visible spectra. And after a battle/manoeuvring the ship needs to cool down before it regains its stealth.
Aah, the possibilities of geeky scifi battles ;)
And the best part is that this is just normal physics (I'm including your relativistic stuff here). No startrek modulate the upper EM bands, use the main deflector dish to generate a tachyon pulse bla bla that makes no sense to anyone :)
billybobsky
2009-06-25, 12:07
while accurate science helps -- a good story doesn't need it.
re shiny hulls and heat plates:
Another point: a shiny hull also reflects energy back *in*... ie, it makes bleeding heat even more difficult.
Well my ships are powered by huge fusion reactors, so yes, if something goes wrong, big boom. I've yet to get into engineering but it sounds like I want a good deal of officers running around down there on those grounds.
Fusion reactors don't go boom unless they are supporting the weight of a star. Then it's the big inrush causing heavy metal fusion, not the original gaseous fusion that causes the boom. A fusion reactor in a ship would just go pffff... As the fusion looses magnetic containment the plasma looses heat exponentially fast and becomes just regular run-of-the-mill hot gas by the time it gets to containment vessel itself.
This brings me back around to the bridge or no bridge debate. I can live with just a CDC but if there's a good rationale for having a bridge, I'd like to have one.
Tradition. Humans love it. Despite whether or not it makes any sense. Also you probably need to see something for things like docking, formation flight or close proximity maneuvering for replenishment.
Yeah... my ships have magical intertial dampers as well. It's really the only way to do it if you want to have starships fighting at very high speeds.
I can see how fighters would work real well if the ships were moving much slower, but the problem with that is, space is really frakking big. If ships cant move at significant fractions of lightspeed, battles would literally take months. Even at .1 light, they take hours and sometimes days.
I know it's kind of throwing the physics of inertia out the window in order better adhere to the physics of light, but that's what interial dampers are for :lol:
What ends up happening is that the ship formations are incredibly important before the battle even begins. Ships end up making strafing runs at each other. Ships rarely fight head on, because like you said, it makes targeting difficult. But if two ships are moving side by side at .1 light, then they're really not moving at all relative to each other, are they?
It's all about getting your ships in positions and moving at speeds where they can hit the target in a way that prevents the target from fighting back.
It's hard to explain succinctly. Sorry to be pimping The Lost Fleet so much, but combat in the book is entirely based on these concepts, and it works really well.
Accurate FTL jumping with longish spool-up/cycle times and slow physical speeds pretty much solve all of that. I just for the life of me can't see how there can be enough energy on demand to do any tactical maneuvering ever. Accel/decel energies for big ships would be on the order of stellar outputs for short periods. How does anyone contain that? Let alone use it. Or dampen it? Because unless you can, there is no such thing as tactical maneuvering at relativistic speeds.
I guess there's a level of personal believability in how far someone things technology can go. Personally I think there may be a possibility of figuring out how to use higher dimensions to move from 4-space point to 4-space point, but not finding a way to harness a tactically moving power source as dense as an entire star. But it's fiction so use tech however you want, but always remember -- Its the story!
re shiny hulls and heat plates:
Yeah sure a shiny hull will be pretty easy to spot, but for defensive jobs it might be worth the extra protection.
How? My gawd think of the physical volume that needs to be scanned for differences from the background. And then layer on the energy dissipation from local stars in a cubic fashion, and the radial distance isn't only star to ship, but then ship to ship as well. A small ship fully mirrored will be visually dimmer than most of the background stars. You will have to compare long term images to discern non-system body movements, and even then you have to sort out what is comet, space-junk and crap from a ship possibility. Now add faceting to the mirror plating and wow, unless you are on a PERFECT geometry, you ship doesn't exist visually and then you have to muddle about with sloppy infrared wavelengths to do the same searches.
Don't even think about more than a couple hundred clicks for active sensor sweeps, there isn't a big enough reactor. See the sun for something that would suffice as an example of an active emitter system-wide. But you still have to do all the receiving and signal processing fast, which means you need star power plus to do the job. Not likely.
Heatplates:
The realistic thing that everybody forgets (or choose to forget ;)) is, all form of powerplants generate heat. Even assuming 99% efficiency, it's still a lot of energy to get rid of. And in space, big ass radiators are the only way (venting plasma etc is no good as you run out of plasma sooner rather than later :)).
So, you need to run at least some parts of the hull pretty hot. That could be used as a tactical element. Destroy those parts and your enemy needs to power down pretty soon. Also, it makes it impossible to be stealthy when running the engines/lasers/particle accelerators as part of the ship is glowing in the infrared or even visible spectra. And after a battle/manoeuvring the ship needs to cool down before it regains its stealth.
There is no stealth in space. Your heat plates are the proof of that. What you do have is VAST expanses vs teensy little ships. Even if the ship stands out like a sore thumb when you look directly at it, you actually have to look it's exact direction for long enough to actually see the little heat pump. Therein lies the problem of finding the bad-guy at the long distances you need to play relativistic battles. Finding anyone!
Aah, the possibilities of geeky scifi battles ;)
And the best part is that this is just normal physics (I'm including your relativistic stuff here). No startrek modulate the upper EM bands, use the main deflector dish to generate a tachyon pulse bla bla that makes no sense to anyone :)
None of this is normal physics, it's all good old fiction. Star Trek just tries to justify it with gold-played technobabble that has little if any realism behind it. Relativistic combat as described in this thread just leaves the technobabble out but has just as many gaping holes. Even my FTL and slow combat preferences are pure wild-assed fiction.
Another point: a shiny hull also reflects energy back *in*... ie, it makes bleeding heat even more difficult.
Not at all. Just don't polish the inside and the smooth side will dissipate, although not as well as something tailor made for dissipation. You can also use things like piezo-electrics to drive lasers to create a heat pump out, reducing the needs for spider web cooling lattices. That particular theory has already been applied in some terrestrial science experiments needing to get items close to absolute zero.
Not at all. Just don't polish the inside and the smooth side will dissipate, although not as well as something tailor made for dissipation.
:err: Explain how something can be polished (smoothed at an atomic level) only on *one* side. The polished layer is indeed bi-reflective, hence the whole point behind black body radiation being the most emissive. A black body absorbs *and* emits energy the most, since it reflects nearly none. A perfect black body reflects zero energy - which means it also reflects zero energy back inwards, and is therefore perfectly emissive.
Want to cook your crew in the dead of space, away from stellar input? Coat the ship with IR-reflective paint and wait.
You can also use things like piezo-electrics to drive lasers to create a heat pump out, reducing the needs for spider web cooling lattices. That particular theory has already been applied in some terrestrial science experiments needing to get items close to absolute zero.
Yes, a laser trap, used for created BECs. Not sure how well it would scale to macroscopic scales, and since this is a more or less closed system here, how would you power the laser without creating more waste heat in the overall system?
while accurate science helps -- a good story doesn't need it.
A good story deserves a good setting :)
Enki:
People find comets with binoculars. It's easy to spot satellites with the unaided eye.
Wouldn't a shiny ship atleast be easier to spot?
I don't know which ranges Kraetos had in mind, but getting, undetected, really up close before opening the gates of hell on your opponent. Is that a bad thing? :)
By normal physics, I meant stuff like the stefan boltzmanns law etc. There are so many fun things one can do with the real world even in a scifi battle setting. Sure, space battles and living on different planets/solar systems require some magic devices. But, at least to me, it's more fun if those devices are kept to a minimum.
Take the transporters in star trek. Great for the original series. No need of using the shuttles and the FX that comes with that in every episode. BUT! why don't they use it as a weapon? whaaaat? :) (except for than sniper rifle mentioned earlier in the thread, but why use a bullet at all? Why not just beam the brain an inch to the left or something?)
And Kickaha is right. Shiny surfaces keeps the heat inside. So yeah, a shiny ship would need some parts of the hull to be black for cooling.
Enki:
People find comets with binoculars. It's easy to spot satellites with the unaided eye.
Wouldn't a shiny ship atleast be easier to spot?Only if it's close enough to a light source (a sun in the case of a comet (heating up) and satellite (reflection)). Out in deep space it's friggin dark. "The corner of no and where" a great man once said. ;)
Only if it's close enough to a light source (a sun in the case of a comet (heating up) and satellite (reflection)). Out in deep space it's friggin dark. "The corner of no and where" a great man once said. ;)
But why would one fight in deep space? :)
zsummers
2009-06-25, 15:55
I read this thread and blew my geek wad.
Fantastic. Now I need to change pants.
while accurate science helps -- a good story doesn't need it.
I guess there's a level of personal believability in how far someone things technology can go.
...snip...
But it's fiction so use tech however you want, but always remember -- Its the story!
I'm glad this came up. I could simply start blatantly ignoring science in certain areas. Truly accurate science in sci-fi is never going to happen because there are three basic, unavoidable scientific pitfalls all sci-fi must deal with: FTL, gravity, and inertia. (Or, at the very least, it wont happen until/if we find a way around these problems.)
Warning: wall of text. Jump to the bottom if you want the one sentence summary.
They key here isn't that one should shoot for completely "accurate" science, unless you want to write a story about ships which crawl around our solar system and either have rotating sections (which would make for fragile, clumsy, poor warships) or can't be away from port for any extended period of time without the crew's bodies deteriorating from too much zero-g.
Some authors simply ignore science completely. I don't really like this approach, because it just makes the whole thing feel fake, for lack of a better term.
Others try and cut as close as possible to realistic. The problem is with this approach is that it can severely limit story options.
Which leaves us with the middle ground. If we rank things from 1 to 10, 1 being as close to real science as possible (hard SF), 10 being completely out there (soft SF), Star Trek is about an 8, maybe even a 9, Star Wars is roughly a 7, B5 is probably a 6, Halo, Lost Fleet, and Starship Troopers are 4s (Halo is pretty heavily inspired by Starship Troopers; also, Halo is tricky since Covenant tech is much more advanced), and Battlestar Galactica (before it went totally off the wall with the religious weirdness) brings up the rear with a 2. BSG is incredibly low on the scale since, as far as I can recall, it only covers the three basics, plus the whole artificial intelligence thing, but that's not too out there. This scale doesn't take religion into account, that's really a different aspect of the story. (Worth noting: most good epic sci-fi incorporates religion in some way.)
I'm shooting for a 4.
It's not really about accurate science, it's about believable science. Remember, even Star Trek makes an attempt to justify the crazy science going on—actually, Star Trek makes more effort than most sci-fi to justify it, sometimes to a fault. (Treknobabble, I'm looking at you.)
It's about getting the right blend of real science, pseudoscience, and straight-up fantastic (whenever I say fantastic, I mean it in the literary sense) science to set the stage. Being higher on that scale doesn't necessarily mean that it's automatically bad sci-fi; I love Star Trek. It's just a stylistic choice.
This is also why I am very curious about how a naval ship works IRL since that's a relatively easy realistic touch one can toss into the story.
That said...
If you look at the some of the recent sci-fi epics—Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, and Halo—the story begins by being as realistic as possible w/r/t real world physics and science (relative to other sci-fi, that is), so when the sci-fi gets ratcheted up, it makes for a stronger contrast as the story moves from beginning, to middle, and end.
The real challenge is making the gradual increase in fantasticness as smooth as possible. B5 did it exceptionally well (the main series, not the spinoffs), BSG and Halo were a little rockier. Some sci-fi epics don't do the increasingly fantastic technology increase at all; arguably, this is part of the distinction between normal sci-fi and epic sci-fi.
Babylon 5 is by far the best example of this that I am aware of. (I'm only on book 2 of 6 of The Lost Fleet, but even this early it's looking like it's going to be doing the gradual increase of fantastic as well) The first two seasons felt very "real," you had an easy time believing that this could be the state of humanity in 150 years. Not necessarily because of the technology, although there is a big jump in technology over the course of the series. It had more to do with the culture that JMS depicted where humans (and a lot of the aliens) were still as stupid as they are today, and over the course of the series, everyone got a little less stupid. The third and fourth seasons rolled around and the technology got more sci-fi, and Sheridan stepped into his role as the epic hero. It slowly became clear JMS was telling a story that was about the fate of the entire universe, complete with a big plot twist right before the climax.
Babylon 5 tangent ahead:
IMO this is why Crusade and Legend of the Rangers failed to gain traction. The sci-fi level was already so high, JMS backed himself into a corner and didn't have anywhere to take it without going completely off the wall. It's difficult to believe that the Omega class and Victory class destroyers were designed by the same civilization with only 20 years between the designs, even when we take Minbari and Vorlon mumbo-jumbo into account.
Crusade was also hurt by the fact that Gideon was kind of a wimpy captain (Enterprise had this problem too—Archer was a pretty flimsy captain when you get down to it) compared to Sheridan who didn't hesitate to make the tough calls, such as sending telepaths on suicide missions.
Actually, all of Crusade's characters were kind of lackluster, and the cast was maybe half the size of B5, which limited JMS's character options. The only one I liked was Matheson, but even he was kind of iffy, and we didn't learn nearly enough about him. Compare to B5 where I liked pretty much every character. When Ivanova almost dies... gets me every time.
The less said about Legend of the Rangers, the better :\
Having seen both spin-offs of my all-time favorite sci-fi story get deservedly cancelled partially because they were simply weren't believable, I'm trying to avoid that pitfall in my story which is why I started this in the first place.
I could talk about Babylon 5 until my tongue fell out :p It really is my favorite sci-fi ever. It's biggest problem is that it's almost too epic. I've put a good deal of thought into it and have decided that if you cut out the episodes that aren't essential to the main plot, you're left with 41 episodes; basically cutting it in half. But that's nearly 31 hours of storytelling :eek: If you really want to cut the fat you can get it down to fifteen episodes but at that point it's so compressed you lose a lot of the epic feel to it.
B5 can be hard for a newcomer to get into because there are a lot of dud episodes in the first and second seasons; the only good news about that is that it makes the exceptional episodes in those seasons really stand out.
I can post some lists up if anyone has ever wanted to get into B5 but felt it was just too much of a time commitment.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...
BSG did a good job but it took it a little too far with the ridiculousness at the end. The shift from the hyper-militaristic feel and "naturalistic sci-fi" to "God did it" was just too much of a leap. The first half of BSG (miniseries, seasons 1 and 2) was a totally different show than the latter half. It felt very disconnected. BSG jumped the shark after Resurrection Ship. All of the memorable episodes (33, The Hand of God, and Pegasus are my personal favorites) are before season 2.5 It's not that the final two seasons weren't enjoyable, it's just that the first two seasons were truly exceptional.
Hell, even Star Wars does something similar to this. Star Wars was one of the first sci-fi universes where everything looked worn and beaten, unlike Star Trek where the Enterprise came out of every situation spic and span. As we went from IV, to V, to VI, the force began to play a more significant role in the story. In the beginning all it did for Luke was hone his instincts when he blew up the Death Star. We get to the middle and a green midget pulls a starfighter out of a swamp and there's a ghost mentor following the hero. Finally, it culminates with a dude who could shoot lighting out of his fingers.
To succinctly sum up the above blob of 1,500 words (good lord, I need a life), believable science makes the story feel more epic, as it sets the stage as somewhere we try and adhere to the laws the universe before we throw them out the window when shit gets intense.
Fusion reactors don't go boom unless they are supporting the weight of a star. Then it's the big inrush causing heavy metal fusion, not the original gaseous fusion that causes the boom. A fusion reactor in a ship would just go pffff... As the fusion looses magnetic containment the plasma looses heat exponentially fast and becomes just regular run-of-the-mill hot gas by the time it gets to containment vessel itself.
Okay, good to know. Would there be a way to intentionally turn a reactor into a thermonuclear bomb? (i.e. self destruct/kamikaze attack)
Tradition. Humans love it. Despite whether or not it makes any sense. Also you probably need to see something for things like docking, formation flight or close proximity maneuvering for replenishment.
Neato. So now I'm thinking the bridge is closer to the outer hull and has big transparent aluminum windows all around. During combat it might recess into the hull...
Basically, non-combat operations could be conducted from there, and when it's time to fight, the bridge drops into the ship and everyone moves to CDC where there are big displays for keeping track of the battle and communicating with other ships.
Accurate FTL jumping with longish spool-up/cycle times and slow physical speeds pretty much solve all of that. I just for the life of me can't see how there can be enough energy on demand to do any tactical maneuvering ever. Accel/decel energies for big ships would be on the order of stellar outputs for short periods. How does anyone contain that? Let alone use it. Or dampen it? Because unless you can, there is no such thing as tactical maneuvering at relativistic speeds.
Well, given that I've given my ships the ability to "blink" around a star system, maybe slowing them down and adding fighters could be interesting.
I like the idea of fighters, I really do. But I always have trouble fitting them in. I mean, wouldn't they be pretty easy targets for point-to-point lasers/particle weapons? Or anti-fighter missiles?
There's also the issue of how effective they would be against a capital ship. If you give them nukes and the ability to get through enemy defenses, then they're basically too powerful. Send in the fighters, weave through the defenses, launch your nukes and GTFO.
But without nukes, they're not really going to put a dent in the hull. I suppose the goal for fighters could be to take out the defense grid to capital ships can get close and use missles/nukes.
Why wouldn't you equip your bombers with nukes?
In BSG, we've seen Galactica and Pegasus take nuke hits and survive. Hell, there was one episode where Pegasus soaked up three or four nukes, kept fighting, and got out alive. And BSG is supposed to be one of the more grounded sci-fi 'verses.
Could a very heavily armored starship survive getting hit with multiple nukes? What would you make the armor out of? Would it be something we already know about or would I have to come up with a supermetal (i.e. duranium, tritanium) for armor plating? I have no qualms with that.
I've got shields too, so they should obviously be able to soak up nukes. Between shields and a supermetal I could just say that my ships can absorb a whole bunch of nukes before they start to take fatal damage.
What do you think would be the most interesting? (You've clearly thought about this before, too :p)
This thread is a blast! :D
Personally I think there may be a possibility of figuring out how to use higher dimensions to move from 4-space point to 4-space point, but not finding a way to harness a tactically moving power source as dense as an entire star.
Woosh. Sounds cool, though. :p
But it's fiction so use tech however you want, but always remember -- Its the story!
Hear hear! :D
Even if the ship stands out like a sore thumb when you look directly at it, you actually have to look it's exact direction for long enough to actually see the little heat pump. Therein lies the problem of finding the bad-guy at the long distances you need to play relativistic battles. Finding anyone!
Yeah, distances always screw me up. Speeds, too.
For the sake of this idea, lets say that ships don't have inertial dampening. How fast could a ship accelerate—assuming the crew was strapped in nice and snug—without squishing them? I can see ships having warning signs and lights everywhere which are there to tell the crew to find a seat and hold on when acceleration becomes dangerous. How fast could a ship go? How fast could it turn? How about a fighter?
That's another thing I always worry about. Shouldn't a capital ship be able to move a lot faster than a fighter since it would have big honkin engines? IANA physicist (although I'm thinking I should take general physics before I graduate) so I don't quite understand how the relationship between thrust and mass works and how that would relate to big ships and fighters.
So, how close do you think opposing fleets would have to be to accurately target each other? Close enough where fighters could close the distance in a reasonable amount of time?
None of this is set in stone. I'm trying to get a feel for what laws of physics I should abide by and which ones I should magically circumvent. Sorry about all the questions, I hope I'm not bothering anyone or distracting them from doing real work :p
None of this is normal physics, it's all good old fiction. Star Trek just tries to justify it with gold-played technobabble that has little if any realism behind it. Relativistic combat as described in this thread just leaves the technobabble out but has just as many gaping holes. Even my FTL and slow combat preferences are pure wild-assed fiction.
Yeah. It's all about creating interesting/plausible-sounding ways to extend physics with the right amount of "trust me, we'll figure this out in the future, 'cuz, you know, it's the future" to accommodate the story.
A black body absorbs *and* emits energy the most, since it reflects nearly none.
So, would a small ship painted completely back with proper geometry make for a good stealth ship? (I'm thinking about a little dropship which can deliver marines to an enemy ship.)
I don't know which ranges Kraetos had in mind, but getting, undetected, really up close before opening the gates of hell on your opponent. Is that a bad thing? :)
Heh, I don't have distances in mind. I'm still trying to figure that out and am completely open to suggestions :)
Only if it's close enough to a light source (a sun in the case of a comet (heating up) and satellite (reflection)). Out in deep space it's friggin dark. "The corner of no and where" a great man once said. ;)
But why would one fight in deep space? :)
Yeah, that. Nobody is ever going to fight anywhere other than a star system. What would you be fighting over?
I read this thread and blew my geek wad.
Fantastic. Now I need to change pants.
Sorry 'bout that. I probably should have bought you a drink first ;)
Enki:
People find comets with binoculars. It's easy to spot satellites with the unaided eye.
Wouldn't a shiny ship atleast be easier to spot?
I don't know which ranges Kraetos had in mind, but getting, undetected, really up close before opening the gates of hell on your opponent. Is that a bad thing? :)
With comets and a binoculars you know EXACTLY WHERE to look. Nobody finds unknown comets with binoculars. New astrological bodies are almost always found by studying multiple photographs and finding the objects which moved in a previously unknown manner. Or a very few are found because they are so close their lighting and motion become obvious to casual observations, but they were to small and/or dark to be easily picked up through the regular photograph comparison route - your satellites fit this model.
kraetos has been talking about combat velocities of ~.1C. Moving 18,600 miles per second. Earth to the Moon in 12 seconds. 30 seconds apart the ships would be 2.5 times the Earth-Moon distance away from each other. Take a ship a half kilometer long and it will be close to the limits of the Hubble space telescopes resolution limits ("equivalent to standing at the U.S. Capitol and seeing the date on a quarter a mile away at the Washington monument.") Now give yourself no starting information on where to look, and take the Hubble Ultra Deep Field observation as a starting point for finding objects that small -- wait --
If astronomers made the Hubble Ultra Deep Field observation over the entire sky, how long would it take?
The whole sky contains 12.7 million times more area than the Ultra Deep Field. To observe the entire sky would take almost 1 million years of uninterrupted observing.
Even making a one million time improvement in sensor tech will still make you wait a year and you only have 30 seconds to live because you are defending a fixed point, not picking an independent axis of attack. You have to be able to scan the sky a million million times faster to do it in 30 seconds. That's a tall order.
By normal physics, I meant stuff like the stefan boltzmanns law etc. There are so many fun things one can do with the real world even in a scifi battle setting. Sure, space battles and living on different planets/solar systems require some magic devices. But, at least to me, it's more fun if those devices are kept to a minimum.
Take the transporters in star trek. Great for the original series. No need of using the shuttles and the FX that comes with that in every episode. BUT! why don't they use it as a weapon? whaaaat? :) (except for than sniper rifle mentioned earlier in the thread, but why use a bullet at all? Why not just beam the brain an inch to the left or something?)
And Kickaha is right. Shiny surfaces keeps the heat inside. So yeah, a shiny ship would need some parts of the hull to be black for cooling.
So that's why we keep putting shiny reflective surfaces on the outside of out spacecraft? So they can warm up? That's why if you wrap yourself up in a space blanket wrong way around you don't stay nearly as warm as if you wrap up the shiny side in? Skylab needed the solar reflector so the astronauts didn't cook, not so they would be cooked. The whole pont of the reflective surface is so you don't become a black body.
You are trying to apply the countermeasure against the near IR-visual light wavelength band, across all EM wavelength bands and that doesn't work. The hull reflectiveness is only tuned to specific wavelengths of laser weapons, that won't halt long wave infrared emission, only slow it down a bit because there is less surface area. Black bodies absorb all the energy thrown at it, then emit it in the long infrared. I really wouldn't want to live in that ship. It would be really hot for a really long time. And who said anything about perfect atomic reflectiveness? I can polish a butt-ugly block of aluminum and get 95% reflectivity and the back of it is still but ugly. You can get a little more exotic and get several 9's of reflectivity on good old sunglasses, mirrored only on the front I might add. The side that adheres to the glass is quite rough in comparison with the front surface. But that would make it hard to see anything so the layers are kept thin enough to do more like 60% reflectivity.
Anonymous Coward
2009-06-25, 18:46
Neato. So now I'm thinking the bridge is closer to the outer hull and has big transparent aluminum windows all around. During combat it might recess into the hull...
Basically, non-combat operations could be conducted from there, and when it's time to fight, the bridge drops into the ship and everyone moves to CDC where there are big displays for keeping track of the battle and communicating with other ships.
In my opinion, the only reason to have the bridge manned is if you need to see something.
The submarine bridge is outside the pressure hull. Admittedly, it is always manned by the Officer of the Deck and a lookout whenever it is accessible, but that is because the sensors cannot be relied to pick up on hazards in the water 100% of the time.
Otherwise, the CONN is like the CIC in BSG, just different terminology. (That is, unless there is a separate compartment for the steering controls.) Obviously I am not a BSG watcher because in my limited experience, I cannot remember the BSG CIC giving specific maneuvering or speed orders. But with the CO or XO in control, it doesn't make sense that there would be a separate station ("control" meaning "being in charge" since when using voice communications, the area of the operations compartment with steering/diving, periscopes, radar, and fire control is known as "Control").
From a structural standpoint, I'm not sure if you want the bridge dropping into the ship. If that means a telescoping access way, those are just more joints that could fail. You could have a bridge structure that fairs into the outer hull, and it might be able to hold an atmosphere under ideal conditions, but I wouldn't want to count on it being a pressure barrier.
kraetos has been talking about combat velocities of ~.1C. Moving 18,600 miles per second. Earth to the Moon in 12 seconds. 30 seconds apart the ships would be 2.5 times the Earth-Moon distance away from each other. Take a ship a half kilometer long and it will be close to the limits of the Hubble space telescopes resolution limits ("equivalent to standing at the U.S. Capitol and seeing the date on a quarter a mile away at the Washington monument.") Now give yourself no starting information on where to look, and take the Hubble Ultra Deep Field observation as a starting point for finding objects that small -- wait --
Hm, I guess that The Lost Fleet is less realistic then I originally thought. Unless the ships are truly gigantic.
Still fun to read, though :p
So it sounds like fictional supersensors of some sort are a must. A lot of sci-fi technologies are more about covering your ass because you know there's a gaping hole in logic with what you're trying to do.
So that's why we keep putting shiny reflective surfaces on the outside of out spacecraft? So they can warm up? That's why if you wrap yourself up in a space blanket wrong way around you don't stay nearly as warm as if you wrap up the shiny side in? Skylab needed the solar reflector so the astronauts didn't cook, not so they would be cooked. The whole pont of the reflective surface is so you don't become a black body.
You'll note I said "away from stellar input". ie, deep space. Not in our neck of the woods where the solar radiation outside the protection of our atmosphere is highly significant.
Hm, I guess that The Lost Fleet is less realistic then I originally thought. Unless the ships are truly gigantic.
Or makes a big splash, so to speak, when it drops out of FTL.
Unless they know you're orbiting a certain object or you transit the local star, they'll have the same amount of trouble seeing you. They'll suspect you're in a certain area, but that only narrows it down a bit. You'll have the advantage of deploying remote sensors and hiding while you wait for them to show up.
But IANASCT
You'll note I said "away from stellar input". ie, deep space. Not in our neck of the woods where the solar radiation outside the protection of our atmosphere is highly significant.
And I've been talking about shininess as a laser countermeasure. That doesn't mater where the nearest star is. I don't want to absorb all that laser energy if I can bounce 99%+ of it off into deep space.
So it sounds like fictional supersensors of some sort are a must. A lot of sci-fi technologies are more about covering your ass because you know there's a gaping hole in logic with what you're trying to do.
:D That's why the fantasy writers have it so easy! Magic does whatever!
Just write the good story and keep the focus off the tech, let the tech support things seamlessly in the background. You thought The Lost Fleet was good because you liked the story. That made you subconsciously willing to suspend disbelief and not examine things in detail. That's a story win right there.
kraetos has been talking about combat velocities of ~.1C. Moving 18,600 miles per second.
Doh!
I completely forgot to factor in the speed of the ships in the equation.
ooops :)
So that's why we keep putting shiny reflective surfaces on the outside of out spacecraft? So they can warm up? That's why if you wrap yourself up in a space blanket wrong way around you don't stay nearly as warm as if you wrap up the shiny side in? Skylab needed the solar reflector so the astronauts didn't cook, not so they would be cooked. The whole pont of the reflective surface is so you don't become a black body.
If we want to move fast, we need a big engine. That engine, presumably, generates more heat inside the ship than the absorption of solar radiation. Or not. It all depends on how hot you run the engines at the moment and how close you are to the nearest star.
Sooo, yeah.
I guess the interesting thing in a story is if a ship somehow gets damaged so that the hull reflectivity changes (or its ability to change to change its reflectivity changes). I mean, sabotaging a ship could be as simple as painting critical parts in the wrong colour :)
You are trying to apply the countermeasure against the near IR-visual light wavelength band, across all EM wavelength bands and that doesn't work. The hull reflectiveness is only tuned to specific wavelengths of laser weapons, that won't halt long wave infrared emission, only slow it down a bit because there is less surface area
I really like your idea of painting ships in specific "colours" to reflect lasers while still being able to radiate in the long wave band.
Imagine everyone having red ships because all the lasers are red. And then someone shows up with a blue laser. Instant super weapon! :) Could be a really good plot tool if someone needs the upper hand for a short while. (Of course it wouldn't be red and blue lasers (sounds too silly, like blueray vs dvd or something :P) but maybe lasers vs masers)
And I've been talking about shininess as a laser countermeasure. That doesn't mater where the nearest star is. I don't want to absorb all that laser energy if I can bounce 99%+ of it off into deep space.
Let me try this again.
Reflective = great laser defense.
Reflective = makes venting heat that much harder because it eliminates simple radiative cooling due to also reflecting internal heat back in. Which, as you recall, was the second topic in that post chain. Both were being discussed.
And I see that here you missed the point I was trying to make, so let me try that again too:
And who said anything about perfect atomic reflectiveness? I can polish a butt-ugly block of aluminum and get 95% reflectivity and the back of it is still but ugly.
The polished layer is how thick again? A few atoms. Is there a junction between that polished layer of atoms and the rest of the substrate? Yes. If you were to split that layer off of the substrate, what would the back side of it look like? *Polished*. There's no such thing as a one-way reflector without violating the laws of physics, ie, the second one. Look up "Maxwell's Demon".
You can get a little more exotic and get several 9's of reflectivity on good old sunglasses, mirrored only on the front I might add.
One-way sunglasses and mirrors are still reflective in two directions, equally. The trick is that they are only partially reflective, and one side has a hell of a lot more light hitting it than the other. 60% of sunlight being bounced back at you is blinding, 60% of the light on the inside surface is nominal. The 40% being transmitted from the outside is enough to see because of the photon density - the 40% being transmitted from the inside is swamped by the external reflexivity. Same reflection both ways.
The layer of material that is doing the reflection is extremely thin - and the backside of that thin layer is just as reflective as the front, since reflectivity is a property of the atomic arrangement. If the atoms are arranged such that they reflect one way, they will reflect on the other side as well.
You are correct that can have materials that are frequency-specific reflective, and if you could create one that was IR-transparent, but weapon-reflective, that would work - up until the point that you're around a source of IR, such as a star, nuclear blast, or heck, when your opponent realizes they can just cook you with an IR laser. Or, of course, the weapon frequency changes, and you're hosed... oh HEY - Kraetos, there's a hard sf detail for you - doppler shifted weapon blasts no longer being reflected by armor plating because it's too frequency-specific. This indicates that broad-spectrum reflectivity is needed.
Go back and read sebatlh's post before mine, the one I responded to - two topics were being discussed, I simply highlighted an interaction between them.
Edit: *lol* sebatlh, you beat me to it.
While we're talking space combat, I have to wonder about the hull breach. It seems to be a common occurrence on Star Trek that a hit ship has a breached hull and you see people running under the slowly closing gates. Maybe throw in a little smoke & fumes for visual effects.
But, really? :err:
The pressure difference between inside and outside is pretty significant, IINM, and I can't help but think that if there was a pinhole hole, it'd turn into something even more worse. Furthermore, even if it could be contained, I wonder if it can stay that for an indefinite time; seem to me it'd just keep deteriorating.
Am I mistaken in imagining that subs has it easier than spacecraft because subs is keeping the pressure out while spacecraft has to keep the pressure in, no?
A black body absorbs *and* emits energy the most, since it reflects nearly none.
So, would a small ship painted completely back with proper geometry make for a good stealth ship? (I'm thinking about a little dropship which can deliver marines to an enemy ship.)
Stealth in space works the same way as stealth in the air.
Don't emit stuff in the general direction of enemy sensors.
Don't reflect energy back from active enemy sensors (radars/laserscanners)
In space, the part of your ship facing the enemy needs to be the same temperature as the background radiaton (what is it, black body radiation of ~4 Kelvin?) *or* whatever is directly behind it not to stick out. And you should also control the intensity.
So cold as hell and paint the hull the right shade of grey.
Geometry wise I guess looking at anything stealthy today is good inspiration.
OR, jump to the far side of venus, wait until the orbit is just right (can take a while :lol:) and then just keep the sun in you back and enemy straight ahead :)
While we're talking space combat, I have to wonder about the hull breach. It seems to be a common occurrence on Star Trek that a hit ship has a breached hull and you see people running under the slowly closing gates. Maybe throw in a little smoke & fumes for visual effects.
But, really? :err:
The pressure difference between inside and outside is pretty significant, IINM, and I can't help but think that if there was a pinhole hole, it'd turn into something even more worse. Furthermore, even if it could be contained, I wonder if it can stay that for an indefinite time; seem to me it'd just keep deteriorating.
Am I mistaken in imagining that subs has it easier than spacecraft because subs is keeping the pressure out while spacecraft has to keep the pressure in, no?
Subs have it a bit easier because water doesn't leak as easily.
Otherwise the pressure difference is *much* greater when diving than atmosphere - space.
Normal pressure is about 1000hPa (14.5 psi)
On 10 meters depth, the pressure is 2000hPa
20 meters - 3000hPa
etc.
So, just looking at the forces that the hull needs to handle, diving is a lot worse.
I really need to brush up on my physics, but yes you are right, the absolute difference is likely to be higher underwater than in space. I perhaps shouldn't have used the difference, but what I was thinking of how the hull would react. If we have a hole in a sub's hull, it'd get flooded and that compartment is now equalized. The pressure upon the rest of sub would also apply compressive force which also conveniently makes it easier to contain the leak if the hull is well designed.
But in space, it's the reverse; instead of the hole getting plugged by the force outside, we have to plug something in the hole and plug it well so it doesn't get dislodged and leak any further.
Let's see if rephrasing the question would help: If spacecraft are more likely to suffer tensile force compared to sub suffering from compressive force, does it means it would be more problematic to design a hull that doesn't fail under tensile force instead of compressive force?
Edit: Maybe to help, I'm thinking of how an egg can withstand compressive force when pressed on the ends even though the shell itself is fragile. I do not know of similar behavior where the force is tensile instead of compressive.
Good point about compressive versus tensile forces and how a subs hull kind of tightens up when the pressure increases.
I don't know but I don't think it makes that much of a difference.
But I agree. Hull integrity often seems to be more of an afterthought in sci-fi. At least in star trek :\
As long as the warp engines are online, everything is ok :p
But why would one fight in deep space? :)I don't know. Trade routes? :p
Hull integrity often seems to be more of an afterthought in sci-fi. At least in star trek :\
As long as the warp engines are online, everything is ok :p
I think it comes off that way because every door is air-tight (or at least it looks like they are, and they would be if I was designing a ship), so a hole in the hull merely disallows you use of that room. Of course, if the holes are of sufficient size, you might tear apart the ship doing something that otherwise wouldn't be a problem. Interestingly, Star Trek's warp drive, at least the way I understand it, doesn't really stress anything other than the warp engines, which is why everything is ok as long as they're online.
I think it comes off that way because every door is air-tight (or at least it looks like they are, and they would be if I was designing a ship), so a hole in the hull merely disallows you use of that room. Of course, if the holes are of sufficient size, you might tear apart the ship doing something that otherwise wouldn't be a problem. Interestingly, Star Trek's warp drive, at least the way I understand it, doesn't really stress anything other than the warp engines, which is why everything is ok as long as they're online.
Now that's another thing I've been wondering. I know that in space, the shape of ship doesn't matter as much as there's much less resistance, friction and drag to account for (and they do so with deflector shields). But... if the warp engines are in the nacelles, and thus propelling from there, wouldn't they be pushing the nacelles forward, rather than the ship itself, which means the nacelles would be dragging the rest of ship... stress glamour on the thingy that holds the nacelles to the rest of ship, no?
Kraetos, my apologies for asking questions in your thread. :o Curiosity kilt the cat, I swear! ;)
Now that's another thing I've been wondering. I know that in space, the shape of ship doesn't matter as much as there's much less resistance, friction and drag to account for (and they do so with deflector shields). But... if the warp engines are in the nacelles, and thus propelling from there, wouldn't they be pushing the nacelles forward, rather than the ship itself, which means the nacelles would be dragging the rest of ship... stress glamour on the thingy that holds the nacelles to the rest of ship, no?
Kraetos, my apologies for asking questions in your thread. :o Curiosity kilt the cat, I swear! ;)
Nope - no stresses, because it's not a propulsion, as in application of force against the surrounding space and matter. It creates a warp bubble around the ship, and then moves the bubble sort of *around* space.
billybobsky
2009-06-26, 11:35
Although that theory has been shown to violate QM at the event horizon...
Although that theory has been shown to violate QM at the event horizon...
Care to elaborate? :)
Nope - no stresses, because it's not a propulsion, as in application of force against the surrounding space and matter. It creates a warp bubble around the ship, and then moves the bubble sort of *around* space.
That only goes so far. If it was true Scotty would never tell Kirk while the were trying to get to Warp 11 they could rip the ship apart, and they wouldn't have put the camera and set on tilt tables to simulate extreme vibrations and momentum shifts at extreme warp. This is merely another instance of holes in the fake physics.
Let me try this again.
Reflective = great laser defense.
Reflective = makes venting heat that much harder because it eliminates simple radiative cooling due to also reflecting internal heat back in. Which, as you recall, was the second topic in that post chain. Both were being discussed.
And I see that here you missed the point I was trying to make, so let me try that again too:
The polished layer is how thick again? A few atoms. Is there a junction between that polished layer of atoms and the rest of the substrate? Yes. If you were to split that layer off of the substrate, what would the back side of it look like? *Polished*. There's no such thing as a one-way reflector without violating the laws of physics, ie, the second one. Look up "Maxwell's Demon".
One-way sunglasses and mirrors are still reflective in two directions, equally. The trick is that they are only partially reflective, and one side has a hell of a lot more light hitting it than the other. 60% of sunlight being bounced back at you is blinding, 60% of the light on the inside surface is nominal. The 40% being transmitted from the outside is enough to see because of the photon density - the 40% being transmitted from the inside is swamped by the external reflexivity. Same reflection both ways.
The layer of material that is doing the reflection is extremely thin - and the backside of that thin layer is just as reflective as the front, since reflectivity is a property of the atomic arrangement. If the atoms are arranged such that they reflect one way, they will reflect on the other side as well.
You are correct that can have materials that are frequency-specific reflective, and if you could create one that was IR-transparent, but weapon-reflective, that would work - up until the point that you're around a source of IR, such as a star, nuclear blast, or heck, when your opponent realizes they can just cook you with an IR laser. Or, of course, the weapon frequency changes, and you're hosed... oh HEY - Kraetos, there's a hard sf detail for you - doppler shifted weapon blasts no longer being reflected by armor plating because it's too frequency-specific. This indicates that broad-spectrum reflectivity is needed.
Go back and read sebatlh's post before mine, the one I responded to - two topics were being discussed, I simply highlighted an interaction between them.
Edit: *lol* sebatlh, you beat me to it.
All right. I have now sunk to the depths. I have to quote the Wikipedia article because I cannot use my real sources, but it may have something to do with combat vehicle survivability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_mirror. Note the history of that page, I have never been anywhere near it editing-wise and the last update was in April 2008, so I haven't "cooked the books" as I have seen folks do on other forums.
Now can we just get on with it. I'm not making this shit up.
Gotta love Dramascience. Insert technobabble here: "The creation and destruction of the warp bubble requires use of the inertial dampeners as the internal spatial frame of reference disengages and reengages with the surrounding space-time fabric." "The stresses related to warp travel beyond nominal engine capacity are due to mechanical stresses within the equipment, and the ability for the equipment to maintain a homogenous warp field - exceeding those capacities will result in physical effects emanating from the warp coils into the surrounding ship structure."
Blah blah blah...
That only goes so far. If it was true Scotty would never tell Kirk while the were trying to get to Warp 11 they could rip the ship apart, and they wouldn't have put the camera and set on tilt tables to simulate extreme vibrations and momentum shifts at extreme warp. This is merely another instance of holes in the fake physics.
Not to be a flip-flop but I can see it explained as the warp bubble deteriorating and thus subjecting the ship to the usual stress of moving though space fast.
But now I know why I had that image of warp drive acting as a propellant because of those scenes, so it plays back into your point WRT holes.
Edit: What do you know, Kickaha the molasses beat me to it! :p
All right. I have now sunk to the depths. I have to quote the Wikipedia article because I cannot use my real sources, but it may have something to do with combat vehicle survivability. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_mirror. Note the history of that page, I have never been anywhere near it editing-wise and the last update was in April 2008, so I haven't "cooked the books" as I have seen folks do on other forums.
Now can we just get on with it. I'm not making this shit up.
I know you're not. And I did agree that a single mirror can reflect one frequency and pass another.
But it can not reflect a single frequency from one side, and pass it from the other. You can't make a one-way mirror for the same given frequency without some serious juggling of QM effects that aren't likely to scale to the macroscopic.
And that limitation can be easily taken advantage of in a battle situation... you'd have to guard against (reflect) pretty much any reasonable energy level weapon, and even low-frequency weapons could simply be made *big* enough. I mean, IR is pretty low power, but a nuke has a heck of a lot of it.
Here, I'll join you in the depths so you're not lonely... :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror#Unusual_types_of_mirror
"One-way mirrors work by overwhelming dim transmitted light with bright reflected light. A true one-way mirror that actually allows light to be transmitted in one direction only without requiring external energy is not possible as it violates the second law of thermodynamics: if we place a cold object on the transmitting side and a hot one on the blocked side, radiant energy would be transferred from the cold to the hot object."
billybobsky
2009-06-26, 16:21
See here first:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive#cite_note-7
There was a more full throated qm rebuttal recently but I haven't the time to re-look it up...
I know you're not. And I did agree that a single mirror can reflect one frequency and pass another.
But it can not reflect a single frequency from one side, and pass it from the other. You can't make a one-way mirror for the same given frequency without some serious juggling of QM effects that aren't likely to scale to the macroscopic.
And that limitation can be easily taken advantage of in a battle situation... you'd have to guard against (reflect) pretty much any reasonable energy level weapon, and even low-frequency weapons could simply be made *big* enough. I mean, IR is pretty low power, but a nuke has a heck of a lot of it.
Here, I'll join you in the depths so you're not lonely... :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror#Unusual_types_of_mirror
"One-way mirrors work by overwhelming dim transmitted light with bright reflected light. A true one-way mirror that actually allows light to be transmitted in one direction only without requiring external energy is not possible as it violates the second law of thermodynamics: if we place a cold object on the transmitting side and a hot one on the blocked side, radiant energy would be transferred from the cold to the hot object."
I haven't been talking about violating the second law of thermodynamics. We prevent light from going in, who cares if we prevent interior light from going out? We want to let the heat out, and it goes via far infrared, almost entirely unmolested (you only pay the price of having a minimal surface area for radiating). And these mirrors are effecive against the entire visible spectrum + near IR + near UV if you want them to be. It is just layered appropriately when deposition is done, very handy for what they are used for already. That shuts down lasers, but it does nothing for other spectrums of EM weapons. That's what we need "shields" for! :p
I may be a little sloppy with the terminology at times, I'm not a physicist. I am merely a modeling and simulation pogue trying to get the physicists and engineers play nicely in simulations. Big cross-domain simulations. And to prove to them my stuff is worthwhile we have to show that it works, which means coding a bit into too many of their domains -- which are too many for me to grok deeply. I know what works and why, but I wouldn't want to teach the physics specifics because the limitations are where I just don't have all the time to get to. (I also used to be a consumer of the tech, it was very useful when you might need to be where you aren't particularly wanted, or sending packages where they are needed.)
Brin's uplift books dealt with these issues too. Sundiver had the cooling/propulsor laser as well as the last book in the series Heaven's Reach. That one also had a peculiar flavor of very effective shield that had a nasty side effect of heating up when hit by a different sort of weapon, and the refrigerant laser was again used to save the day.
A similar thread popped up in gaming reddit and this link was offered:
Atomic Rockets (http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html)
This is pretty much the be all, end all information resource for sci-fi authors. In fact, there is more information here than any sci-fi fan could ever want.
Enjoy :D
I don't know if anyone here caught Ron Moore/Michael Taylor (Assorted Star Trek, BSG) and Peter Berg's (The Kingdom, Hancock, Dune 2010) Virtuality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(TV_series)) the other night (I didn't either...I watched it on Hulu) but the starship they were traveling in used an Orion drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion))...something I hadn't even thought of since I was a kid. It was a pretty neat implementation of the "pusher plate" too. Worth a watch on Hulu if you get a chance.
curiousuburb
2009-07-07, 14:55
Cool thread, and I'm both late to spot it and a bit fuzzy from meds to offer too much help at teh moment, but thought I'd throw in a couple of points.
Re: mirrors
Xray lasers (while impractical in atmosphere) are never fully blocked by mirrors (and only partly successful at high angles of incidence anyway)
Ditto neutron/cosmic ray weapons... don't necessarily need to kill the ship... if you can ghost the crew inside you've potentially got the UFP Coffin/RadiationSickness driftin the spaceways afterwards and maybe threat negated.
Re: particle accel
LHC@CERN is pushing Hadrons close to .9999c (or will be when it comes back online), so even 'current' tech is well over .9c with subatomic particles.
Railguns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railguns) (wikipedia salt grains req'd) notes 2008 testing at 2.5km/s... again, presumably in atmosphere and with materials challenges in durability of components
Youtube even has footage of prior tests (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y54aLcC3G74)
And these weapons are why "spacehmens" will use Really Big Magnets™
Minor bumpage for questions about navigation.
Actually, I suppose it's one big question: how does navigation work? :p What's the difference between a heading and a bearing? What other terminology should I be aware of?
How would one navigate in space? Would you navigate relative to the nearest star? Would spacefaring civilizations set arbitrary celestial points (i.e. the celestial sphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_sphere)) and then use them as reference? Would you do it relative to your ship?
Would it be situational? i.e. in battle, one navigates relative to the ships position, but elsewhere, one navigates relative to a star or the galaxy?
(sidenote: I've written six chapters so far :eek: :D This is unquestionably the longest thing I've ever written and I don't even think I'm halfway through. If anyone is maybe interested in a sample, PM me :))
Anonymous Coward
2009-07-21, 23:41
Minor bumpage for questions about navigation.
Actually, I suppose it's one big question: how does navigation work? :p What's the difference between a heading and a bearing? What other terminology should I be aware of?
How would one navigate in space? Would you navigate relative to the nearest star? Would spacefaring civilizations set arbitrary celestial points (i.e. the celestial sphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_sphere)) and then use them as reference? Would you do it relative to your ship?
Would it be situational? i.e. in battle, one navigates relative to the ships position, but elsewhere, one navigates relative to a star or the galaxy?
I should really look these things up before answering, but anyway:
I believe the heading is the absolute compass direction in which you are going.
I believe the bearing is the relative compass direction to a target.
I would guess you can come up with a system that makes sense and not be tied to terrestrial navigation since ships and submarines don't really worry about 3D. (For maneuvering, submarines make reference to a clinometer and maintain an angle to the horizontal, "degrees down bubble" or "degrees up bubble" where a zero bubble is horizontal. For weapons control, it's more point-and-shoot, and then steer to allow the weapon's sensors to acquire the target.) I'm sure a pilot will come along with some better suggestions.
I doubt if you want to change your frame of reference during battle. I'd want to keep the navigation the same and keep track of targets relative to your own heading.
curiousuburb
2009-07-22, 02:09
Astrogation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrogation) http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/thumb/d/d7/Astrogator.jpg/800px-Astrogator.jpg
Memory-Alpha distinguishes the terms as follows: :p
Bearing is a description of the direction of a space vessel in relation to another object, such as a planet, star, starbase or other object in relation to the forward direction of travel and is usually accompanied by a distance measurement. An object on a bearing of 090 mark 270 is to the starboard and below the vessel; an object bearing 300 mark 10 is located to the port side of the vessel and above the current plane of travel.
Heading is an expression of the direction a space vessel is traveling in relation to the center of the galaxy. It is composed of two numbers: an azimuth (horizontal) value and an elevation (vertical) value, separated by the designator "mark". For example, a heading of 180 mark 0 would be a course heading to the outer rim of the galaxy, but on the same elevation as the center of the galaxy.
Memory-Alpha distinguishes the terms as follows: :p
Heading is an expression of the direction a space vessel is traveling in relation to the center of the galaxy. It is composed of two numbers: an azimuth (horizontal) value and an elevation (vertical) value, separated by the designator "mark". For example, a heading of 180 mark 0 would be a course heading to the outer rim of the galaxy, but on the same elevation as the center of the galaxy.
Too bad that doesn't work! The center of the galaxy is a point and wherever you are you can always travel towards it, so there would be an infinite number of Zero bearings! All pointing in.
If that was changed to zero heading is coincident with the Galactic center's direction of travel when projected onto the mean galactic disk then you have an absolute direction vector with which to work and compare against.
Bearing and mark are really just the angular components from a 3D polar coordinate system based on the ships own origin. When you add range you have a fully specified local polar coordinate. For galactic nav you can do the same thing using the above vector as the 0,0,0 for galactic center. None of this is exotic, current weapons systems already use the an appropriately constructed Earth-centric variation of these conventions.
Too bad that doesn't work! The center of the galaxy is a point and wherever you are you can always travel towards it, so there would be an infinite number of Zero bearings! All pointing in.
But only one zero if you're referencing the galactic center against the direction the ship is traveling. Right? If you draw a straight line to the center of the galaxy from your ship, if the line is perfectly perpendicular to the ships course, then the ships azimuth is 90 degrees. If you're traveling flat on the galactic plane, then your heading is 090 mark 000.
Bumping because I have a new question about protocol: a senior officer will usually refer to a junior officer by "mister," not his rank. What if the junior officer is a woman?
Miss.
Reference: (http://books.google.ca/books?id=cxW9F2B__3wC&pg=PA129&dq=mister+senior+junior+officer+navy&ei=T8N4SvxNqejKBJCe7NAB#v=onepage&q=&f=false)
Although that implies that Mister or Miss is just for cadets, not all junior officers.
Miss.
Reference: (http://books.google.ca/books?id=cxW9F2B__3wC&pg=PA129&dq=mister+senior+junior+officer+navy&ei=T8N4SvxNqejKBJCe7NAB#v=onepage&q=&f=false)
Although that implies that Mister or Miss is just for cadets, not all junior officers.
Howsabout a female lieutenant? Lieutenant? Mr.? Miss?
But only one zero if you're referencing the galactic center against the direction the ship is traveling. Right? If you draw a straight line to the center of the galaxy from your ship, if the line is perfectly perpendicular to the ships course, then the ships azimuth is 90 degrees. If you're traveling flat on the galactic plane, then your heading is 090 mark 000.
Unless I totally misunderstand you, no. This only describes a set of relative relationships, of which there are an infinite number of identical relative relationships if we drove around a circular orbit around the galactic center.
You need some vector which is fixed in the galaxy regardless of what the ship is doing. Say a vector from Galactic Center through Betelgeuse. Now you have a "fixed" relationship. Notice it isn't static, just fixed, which means we can compute all the relative motions of everything, even though Betelgeuse is moving too. But we would always use GC-> Betelgeuse as 0 0 0 in a 3D polar coordinate system. I doubt Betelgeuse would actually be a good choice, it's just an example.
Bumping because I have a new question about protocol: a senior officer will usually refer to a junior officer by "mister," not his rank. What if the junior officer is a woman?
Whatever protocol is, what actually gets used tends to be personality dependent. Semi-formally, most tend to use the Rank; Informally first name.
F*ck-wit, imbecile and moron, amongst others, were reserved terms for moments surrounding a certain class of "learning opportunities".
Unless I totally misunderstand you, no. This only describes a set of relative relationships, of which there are an infinite number of identical relative relationships if we drove around a circular orbit around the galactic center.
I've been thinking about this and yes, I see what the problem is now. So, a space-faring civilization would probably draw a line from the galactic center through their home system and call that direction the "galactic" or "celestial" north.
Would that work? You would need more than just north, east, south and west, though, because of the z-axis. (Yay! Time to make up cool sounding sci-fi terms! Any suggestions?)
This thread is so over my head. :lol: I'm so glad I write fantasy, where you get to more or less make up all the rules, and the only things you have to worry about are things like "Is it okay for a being of infinite darkness to wear no pants?"
And is okay to find that hot?
I've been thinking about this and yes, I see what the problem is now. So, a space-faring civilization would probably draw a line from the galactic center through their home system and call that direction the "galactic" or "celestial" north.
Would that work? You would need more than just north, east, south and west, though, because of the z-axis. (Yay! Time to make up cool sounding sci-fi terms! Any suggestions?)
That would work fine. The coordinates could be X, Y, Z, but that is actually a bit overcomplicated for a radially dispersed system. The Polar coordinates I mentioned measure the angle counter-clockwise from the Home Vector "horizontally", then the distance from Galactic Center, then the angle perpendicular to the home vector angle "vertically". You can swap the last two coordinates just as easily. With that type of system there isn't any mucking about with negative values.
Here's some good advice for your writing, bro.
Sci-Fi Writer Attributes Everything Mysterious To 'Quantum Flux' (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/sci_fi_writer_attributes?utm_source=a-section)
Very helpful if you have some weird shit going on that's hard to explain.
:)
Wow, murbot, that really clarifies the earth-shattering question of whether to call a female lieutenant "Miss".
"We have to call her Miss because of you know, quantum flux..."
;) :p
That would work fine. The coordinates could be X, Y, Z, but that is actually a bit overcomplicated for a radially dispersed system. The Polar coordinates I mentioned measure the angle counter-clockwise from the Home Vector "horizontally", then the distance from Galactic Center, then the angle perpendicular to the home vector angle "vertically". You can swap the last two coordinates just as easily. With that type of system there isn't any mucking about with negative values.Unless I'm not getting what your saying exactly (entirely possible), wouldn't a third coordinate be needed to measure "vertical?"
Let's say we have GC > Sol as our home vector, then any perpendicular angle starting at GC as our vertical vector. Wouldn't we need some sort of reference as to what angle vertical starts at? I could either be 1000 parsecs above or beneath Sol and I'd still have the same coordinates wrt to the horizontal and vertical vectors if I didn't have some other coordinate telling me I was over or under our system.
Does that make sense?
Basically we need another horizontal marker intersecting the Sol/GC point at a 90 degree angle.
I doubt we could use the galactic disk as a value, since the absolute edge/center of that probably couldn't be defined (and wouldn't work anyways if we wanted our system to be a 0 data point), so what could be used? Ideally it'd be something "fixed" like the GC, but since that's impossible, would something like Earth's orbit be a decent marker? Neptune's? The Kuiper belt?
I don't know. I'm wondering.
curiousuburb
2009-08-11, 16:10
Most of those orbits aren't circular, so aphelion and perihelion might vary by a significant enough amount to make precision in-system jumps dicey.
And the Kuiper belt is a huge smudge of a torus extending millions of miles, not a single orbit, so what reference do you pick?
I knew the planetary orbits would probably be off enough to not be entirely useful, but I didn't know enough about the Kuiper belt to know it wasn't some nice, thin ring of objects ala Saturn's rings that could be reasonably averaged to a center*, so I guess that's out of the question too.
But, exactly, what do you pick?
*though, in thinking about it now, I should have at least assumed that. :(
curiousuburb
2009-08-11, 17:57
Our first extrasolar probes... Pioneer 10 and 11 had rudimentary plaques (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque) indicating who built them and where we were by representing the distance from Galactic centre and 14 known pulsars (frequency identified in binary). The mini solar system map is integrated zoom. :p
http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/IMAGES/SMALL/GPN-2000-001623.jpg (http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001623.html)
The radiating lines at left represents the positions of 14 pulsars, a cosmic source of radio energy, arranged to indicate our sun as the home star of our civilization. The "1-" symbols at the ends of the lines are binary numbers that represent the frequencies of these pulsars at the time of launch of Pioneer F relative of that to the hydrogen atom shown at the upper left with a "1" unity symbol. The hydrogen atom is thus used as a "universal clock," and the regular decrease in the frequencies of the pulsars will enable another civilization to determine the time that has elapsed since Pioneer F was launched.
One of the wiki links is 'how to read the pulsar map on the plaques' (http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/pulsarmap.html), but I'm not sure if it will help you. :p
The Golden Records we put on Voyager 1 and 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record) contained the same pulsar map plus playback instructions for audio and images (minus the naked humans that allegedly drew complaints).
NASA's Voyager Golden Record page (http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html) (quite old) has a Flash site linked which is a pretty cool set of samples from the record. Similar sites exist. (http://www.goldenrecord.org/)
http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/IMAGES/SMALL/GPN-2000-001978.jpg (http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001978.html)
Carl Sagan led the design team for both, with the pulsar map credited to Frank Drake. ;)
Click images for NASA image pages with >2k versions.
Is it strange that they didn't include the asteroid belt in there? I wonder if that was something they discussed.
Anyways, it's a shame that they dropped the shaved-apes picto. Now we're all gonna get zapped when we wave hello, because they'll take it as an aggressive gesture. :( THANK YOU religious zealots, once again, for constantly fucking up our planet. :rolleyes:
:lol:
While I'm certainly not trying to defend religious zealots, I'm not sure they're to blame for the human portraits being removed from the Golden Record. You have to remember that additional information had to be included on the record to explain how to make it work - there really might not have been room (and the record contains images of people, as well, albeit only in silhouette). The rudimentary diagram of our solar system was removed, as well.
I find the instructions fascinating - it's really interesting to think about how we have to explain things like distances and measurements to a completely different species. I get that they're both more of a ceremonial thing, but it's still cool.
Unless I'm not getting what your saying exactly (entirely possible), wouldn't a third coordinate be needed to measure "vertical?"
Let's say we have GC > Sol as our home vector, then any perpendicular angle starting at GC as our vertical vector. Wouldn't we need some sort of reference as to what angle vertical starts at? I could either be 1000 parsecs above or beneath Sol and I'd still have the same coordinates wrt to the horizontal and vertical vectors if I didn't have some other coordinate telling me I was over or under our system.
Does that make sense?
Basically we need another horizontal marker intersecting the Sol/GC point at a 90 degree angle.
I doubt we could use the galactic disk as a value, since the absolute edge/center of that probably couldn't be defined (and wouldn't work anyways if we wanted our system to be a 0 data point), so what could be used? Ideally it'd be something "fixed" like the GC, but since that's impossible, would something like Earth's orbit be a decent marker? Neptune's? The Kuiper belt?
I don't know. I'm wondering.
You aren't getting it, there already is a "vertical" handling coordinate in there, but it isn't "pure vertical".
Look at a globe. Now take a look at the Equator/Prime Meridian junction. That is located at 0º; r-3965mi; mark-0º
Now if we only count up while moving along the surface counter-clockwise (Eastwards), looking down from a vantage point over the North Pole, there are 360º all the way around the circle ending back at the same Zero point.
The radius is how far we are from the center of the Earth (as an oblate spheroid the Earth bulges at the equator and even there isn't perfectly circular so it is only an approximation).
The mark is just a way of disambiguating the second angle from the first. If we count upwards (Northward) while moving along the surface counter-clockwise, seen from a vantage point over Kansas, we can follow the Prime Meridian around, over the top back down the 180º longitude meridian, under the bottom and back up to the equator passing through the full 360º
As long as you define a single vector anywhere, you have the starting vector for both angles, horizontal and vertical, then you add the radial distance from the vector origin and have a fully disambiguated 3D Polar Coordinate system. It's just a simple 3D version of the 2D geometric unit circle.
The strict use of counter-clockwise winding is a convention that makes the math easier when comparing vectors. It also is consistent with the Right Hand Rule (related to righty-tighty for screws) for torques which can make the math easier for crossing orbits and determining how much energy is necessary to pull it off. If you number clockwise, then you would need to use everything else clockwise too and apply the left hand rule which makes me go cross eyed even though it is only a mirror image relation.
We Earthlings are stuck with the current whacked out lat/long convention as the English were the first to solve the problem of how to measure longitude at an arbitrary point on the globe and decided their own Greenwich Observatory should be 0º. No. Matter. What. The center of God's Earth. So they decided to count outwards in both directions, rather than all the way around once. They then wrote that part of the navigation book and we are stuck with it. Latitude had been figured out much earlier and the equator was already established as equidistant from the poles, so those whacky English couldn't make things any worse than what they did.
Ahhhh. Now I get it.
That makes total sense.
For some reason I was fixated on having a designated "equator," but your way is much more logical and elegant.
Question: during general quarters, where does the engineering officer stand watch? I imagine it would be either engineering or CIC.
My Dad was an electrician's mate on the Enterprise in the 70's, and he says he never once saw the chief engineering officer in engineering during general quarters, so we're assuming it's CIC.
Anonymous Coward
2009-08-28, 22:56
Question: during general quarters, where does the engineering officer stand watch? I imagine it would be either engineering or CIC.
My Dad was an electrician's mate on the Enterprise in the 70's, and he says he never once saw the chief engineering officer in engineering during general quarters, so we're assuming it's CIC.
Regarding submarine operations, I do not remember seeing the Engineering Officer in the engineering spaces during general quarters. In the officer watchstation hierarchy, the Engineering Officer of the Watch is a relatively junior watchstation. In any case, the Engineer would not assume the Engineering Officer of the Watch.
I'm not sure if the Engineer would stand watch. The Commanding Officer may wish to leave him available to go to the engineering spaces in the case of an emergency. It is possible for the Engineer to be assigned the Officer of the Deck watch if he is recognized as a particularly good boat driver. So, I guess my answer is that the Engineer may not necessarily be assigned a watchstation.
As an example, I was normally an engineering watchstander. However, on my first boat, during General quarters / battlestations, my watch was on the Conn (equivalent to the CIC) as something called a "Time-Frequency" plotter, which is related to sonar information.
From my experience, the CV/CVN engineer would either be in Main Control (he has a captain's chair there), or in Damage Control Central. Likely walking between the two as he saw fit. Main Control is essentially the reactor control room and DC Central is just what it sounds like, a small room with schematics of the ship & equipment. On a USN ship it is usually in the vicinity of Main Control rather than CIC/CDC.
On a small ship the engineer may be a TAO as well so potentially on watch there.
What would happen if a powerful charged particle beam (like a phaser) hit a depleted uranium railgun round moving at roughly .2c head on? Would it vaporize or explode? Or both?
curiousuburb
2010-02-26, 22:49
My guess is you'd have a cloud of vaporized DU particles moving towards you at .2c.
A missile or other explosive projectile might be cooked off, but a slug wouldn't explode necessarily.
You'd still face a potential impact, but shielding might stand up to teensy tiny particles where it would never handle a larger solid mass.
IIRC, ISS and Shuttle are rated for MicroMeteoroidOrbitalDebris up to about 1.2mm diameter at tens of thousands of kph.
Plenty of pitted windows from grain of dust/sand stuff at those speeds. Bigger stuff is a serious hull breach hazard.
Caveat: I have not tried this. :D
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