Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIII

[oudeis]

Does anyone know the properties of meteoritic iron? Could you even make a blade the size of a gladius or would it be too much prone to breaking and bending in such a large weapon made for actual combat?

Somebody here once pointed out that while the iron in metallic meteorites was of very high purity, it would still need to be alloyed with carbon to obtain the necessary hardness to get and keep a working (cutting) edge. Since (as someone else here once pointed out), Roman gladii were essentially case-hardened cast iron, I'd surmise you should be able to make one from a meteorite with little extra trouble. Carburizing the blade with vegetable or animal charcoal could also serve as a symbolic or actually magical union of the celestial and the terrestrial spheres.

[warty goblin]

While railguns are a cool idea in fiction, they are probably really impractical for actual space battles. In space you could see enemy ships from huge distances and if you shot a railgun from that far away it will be several seconds at the very least until the projectile gets to the target. And then you have the target moving at incredible speeds as well and even small nudges in course corrections will lead to the projectile going wide by a considerable distance.

At the same time, missiles have the ability to make course asjustments while they are on their way to the target and so completely avoid this problem.

But then again, a missile in space travelling a long distance should be a relatively easy target for automated missile defense railguns. So you could somewhat reasonably argue that nobody bothers with shoting missiles from extreme distances because they always get shot down anyway. Getting close enough to literally slug it out with short range railguns could be made into a somewhat plausible scenario. The optimal engagement distance would be close enough to land hits but still far enough to make evasive maneuvers. Whoever has the longer "effective range" would be at a massive advantage. Once one ship loses engines and can no longer make evasive maneuvers the fight would be over as every shot would hit it every single time.

It seems to me that the sensible thing to do is to shoot your missiles out of a railgun. Or a light gas gun, ram cannon, or other high-velocity delivery method.

[Vinyadan]

If you are on a spaceship and shoot a bullet or railgun projectile in the direction you are travelling to, do you get slower? What about missiles?

There exists a dagger made of meteoric iron, which was in Tutankamon's tomb. Unfortunately, I can't find how long it is.

[warty goblin]

If you are on a spaceship and shoot a bullet or railgun projectile in the direction you are travelling to, do you get slower? What about missiles?

You do. The relevant math is conservation of momentum. Assuming nobody's shooting or traveling a substantial fraction of the speed of light, momentum is mv, where m is mass, and v is velocity. Note that v is a vectored quantity, so direction matters.

So you're cruising along in your spaceship, which has an engine at the back, and a big cannon sticking out the front. Suddenly you see a hostile Martian Nazi on your scope, so you aim yourself at said bug-eyed bogey and fire. Up until you squeezed the trigger, your ship and the bullet sitting in the chamber of your space-cannon weren't moving relative to each other, so the total momentum of the ship-bullet system can be taken to be zero. Then you fire, the bullet with mass m_b leaves the ship at velocity v_b. The ship has mass m_s.

Since the total momentum of the ship-bullet system was zero before you fired, it must be zero after you fired because momentum is a conserved quantity. So m_b v_b = m_s v_s. Solve for v_s, and get

v_s = v_b m_b / m_s.

In words, you'll be moving backwards at a velocity equal to the velocity of your bullet, scaled by the ratio of masses between bullet and ship. If you are moving directly towards the Martian Nazi, your new velocity towards said bug-eyed bogey is now reduced by this amount. If you're moving at an arbitrary velocity v₀, your final velocity is v₀ + v_s, which ends up involving cosines, but is still pretty simple math.

Relativity complicates this in ways I don't understand.

edit: Assuming you actually kick the missile out of the door with some velocity, then this still holds true. If you simply release the holding clamps and let it rip, it won't impact your velocity at all. Generally however, I'd think that velocity lost to shooting is among the least of one's worries, since it should generally be fairly easy to get back in any ship with good enough engines for tactical maneuvering in the first place. Short version, you'll need to fire your engines to get back to your original speed/heading, but this shouldn't be that big of a problem.

Long version: The useful conserved quantity for dealing with the effects on your velocity of firing is kinetic energy, given by m v². You fired your shot, which changed your velocity by v_b m_b / m_s. So you've altered your kinetic energy by m_s ( v_s m_b / m_s) ² = m_b² / m_s v_s², which is also the additional amount of energy you need to get back to your original course/heading* Since you want to shoot fast, and that term is squared, bullet velocity is going to dominate this. So for a high velocity, this could in fact be a substantial amount of energy - but it's less than you used to shoot the bullet in the first place! That required a full m_b v_b² units of energy. So your total energy expenditure is (energy cost of firing bullet + energy cost of resuming course) = m_b v_b² (1 + m_b/m_s), and for a heavy ship 1/m_s is going to be very close to zero. In other words, most of your energy problems comes from shooting something freakishly fast in the first place.


*it's actually slightly less than this, since you aren't carrying the bullet around anymore. But that's probably not a lot of mass, so shouldn't make a substantial difference, and there's no chance I'm gonna try to type that up right in forum code.

[Strigon]

While railguns are a cool idea in fiction, they are probably really impractical for actual space battles. In space you could see enemy ships from huge distances and if you shot a railgun from that far away it will be several seconds at the very least until the projectile gets to the target. And then you have the target moving at incredible speeds as well and even small nudges in course corrections will lead to the projectile going wide by a considerable distance.

Really, the relative velocities don't matter at all, since most shots would likely be lined up by the computer. Neither does the huge distance, on its own; it only matters when you take into account the speed of the rounds.
Small course corrections wouldn't necessarily be enough, either; if you adjust by, say, 5 m/s and it takes 3 seconds to impact, that's only 15 meters of movement. Well within practical amounts when you're shooting at a cruiser-sized target with a number of weapons. Especially if the rounds are as destructive as those you mentioned.
Of course, the larger the course corrections, and the longer the time to impact, the more these things matter.

And, here's a question about missiles in space I've never seen addressed: chaff.
On a planet, chaff naturally disperses and falls to the ground. In space, however, with an appropriate deployment mechanism, it would stick around far longer; theoretically, it could be held in place magnetically, assuming no extreme maneuvering, and it would be virtually guaranteed to intercept at least one missile before being blown away - depending on the density of the chaff and the payload of the missile, possibly far more.
Or am I missing something?

Edit:

It seems to me that the sensible thing to do is to shoot your missiles out of a railgun. Or a light gas gun, ram cannon, or other high-velocity delivery method.

Of course, the issue is that the faster you go, the harder serious course corrections are. At that point, you don't have a missile so much as you do a semi-guided shell. It could work, of course, but it's not the solution to all space-warfare problems.

[warty goblin]

Of course, the issue is that the faster you go, the harder serious course corrections are. At that point, you don't have a missile so much as you do a semi-guided shell. It could work, of course, but it's not the solution to all space-warfare problems.

If I'm distance d from a target, it takes me d/c seconds to detect them, where c is the speed of light. My uncertainty in their position when I pull the trigger (ignoring measurement error for the moment) is vd/c, where v is their velocity. Since I'm unlikely to be shooting at something a long way away as measured by lightspeed, I suspect there's going to be basically zilch in terms of positional uncertainty in my target due to their movement.

The dominant factor in making me miss is then going to be uncertainty in where the target will be when my shot gets to it, which is determined by t = d/v_b. The locations the enemy can be at by the time my shot reaches them are basically determined by their maximum acceleration and t. I can't control their acceleration, so my best bet is to make t as small as possible. Further, the possible target volume will vary roughly as the cube of t for a given acceleration rate in the enemy ship. Shooting a slower projectile in the hopes of outmaneuvering my enemy is in other words not a good bet, if nothing else because a slower shot is a lot easier to shoot down.

[Brother Oni]

And, here's a question about missiles in space I've never seen addressed: chaff.
On a planet, chaff naturally disperses and falls to the ground. In space, however, with an appropriate deployment mechanism, it would stick around far longer; theoretically, it could be held in place magnetically, assuming no extreme maneuvering, and it would be virtually guaranteed to intercept at least one missile before being blown away - depending on the density of the chaff and the payload of the missile, possibly far more.
Or am I missing something?

It depends on the type of ECM as they're specific to the guidance system of the missile bearing down on them.

Chaff is intended to defeat radar guided homing systems. Chaff is essentially thin metallic strips of metal of a particular length and this length is critical to defeat a particular radar wavelength - the problem is, different radar systems use different wavelengths so as I understand it, chaff that works for one radar type, might not work too well against another.
Missiles can be remotely guided by the source however, either by following a laser beam or radio commands, which chaff won't block.

Chaff also doesn't work against IR missiles ('heat seekers'), which require flares to defeat and in a real world setting, stealth is basically impossible in space.

Most sci-fi settings I know of also have sufficiently advanced technology for decent image recognition guidance systems - chaff's not going to stop something that essentially uses a digital version of the MK1 Eyeball, unless it's dense enough to effectively block sight and the missile is stupid enough to blow up when it loses sight of the target (impact fuses rather than proximity fuses would be one simple way around this).

[theasl]

Not quite real world, but...

Spoiler: video

Show

Would that sort of stealth (basically, keeping all emissions in an internal heat sink) even be feasible for a real-world self-propelled object, though? I'm guessing it wouldn't.

[Strigon]

It depends on the type of ECM as they're specific to the guidance system of the missile bearing down on them.

Chaff is intended to defeat radar guided homing systems. Chaff is essentially thin metallic strips of metal of a particular length and this length is critical to defeat a particular radar wavelength - the problem is, different radar systems use different wavelengths so as I understand it, chaff that works for one radar type, might not work too well against another.
Missiles can be remotely guided by the source however, either by following a laser beam or radio commands, which chaff won't block.

Chaff also doesn't work against IR missiles ('heat seekers'), which require flares to defeat and in a real world setting, stealth is basically impossible in space.

Most sci-fi settings I know of also have sufficiently advanced technology for decent image recognition guidance systems - chaff's not going to stop something that essentially uses a digital version of the MK1 Eyeball, unless it's dense enough to effectively block sight and the missile is stupid enough to blow up when it loses sight of the target (impact fuses rather than proximity fuses would be one simple way around this).

Huh. You know, I knew that. I really did.
I was taught by F-117 Nighthawk.

Why, then, I thought chaff worked by being a cloud of shrapnel that physically intercepted the missile, making it blow up, I couldn't tell you.

How would that system work in space, then? A field of ball-bearing sized iron pellets dispersed around the spacecraft, hopefully detonating any missiles that approach.

[Carl]

Okay space stuff. geek out.

The big issue you run into is that with orbital velocities being what they are impact velocities are going to be so high that without magical tech in either materials or propulsion you've got so much energy comic at you just from simple impact physics that your ship is going to be reduced to a debris field. And thats assuming basics. If all the gloves come off and anything goes your likely to be dealing with Casaba Howitzer. Nuclear driven plasma lances that throw massive amounts of plasma at huge velocities producing incredible penetrating power over huge area's, (relative to the likely size of any target). Something built even like a middle of last century battleships would just flash vaporise under that kind of energy. They're basically nuclear detonation driven plasma lances in sci-fi parlance.

That said don;t buy everything Atomic Rockets tells you. Stealth in space vs modern tech is far from impossible. If you ever took a photo out in an open space with an old camera phone from somwhere where you could see miles behind whatever you took the picture of you'll have seen how at extreme range pixelation from bad resolution can completely remove details from the image. The thermal signature of a ship should certainly be detectable at enormous ranges to modern sensor tech, but i've yet to hear a proposal that achieves anything like a sensible sounding resolution, not to mention how a sufficiently energetic background can hide things. A planet puts out more than enough energy to be detected at interstellar distances, doesn't mean we can check every star in the sky for planets, the star obscures it. That's a petty extreme example of course but it's another issue and bad resolution would just compound it. There are other issues with most proposals but thats just for starters.

As far as dodging goes. The maximum dodge vs an unguided round is equal to 0.5*A*T^2 where A is the acceleration and T is the time. So for 3 seconds of flight and a 7 g dodge your talking being able to sidestep 315 meters. ofc if your rate of Fire is high enough you can scatter rounds across the possibble path and if they can explode to create shrapnel you can expand that further effectively letting you deduct your 1 kill zone radius from the dodge radius.

[Telwar]

Of course, the issue is that the faster you go, the harder serious course corrections are. At that point, you don't have a missile so much as you do a semi-guided shell. It could work, of course, but it's not the solution to all space-warfare problems.

Semi-guided shells thrown from something railgun-like with the ability for mid-course corrections and standoff warheads are basically what I've come up with if you want to shoot at something that's more than a few light-seconds away and probably knows you're there. A radar-absorbent coating would help significantly against interception (and you can have them fired with sabots if you're worried about the coating ablating in the initial acceleration), though they'd likely show up on IR at least a little bit, and you can seed the volleys with specialized sensor and decoy shells; in particular, a shell that simply sent out a very energetic radar pulse to help the actual warheads with their final attack corrections if you want to minimize emissions (assuming, of course, we don't have tiny ansibles on each shell for coordination).

And I mean volleys, lots of them, because we're having to fire into t, or as I think of it, the cone of uncertainty. Granted, if it's using a reaction drive, you'll probably get an idea which way it's going regardless. But even if we're working bomb-pumped lasers, that's still a relatively slender beam against what might be a fairly small target, so you'll want a lot of them. And if you think you might be able to get some of your shells close, you could have some that shot small penetrators at relativistic velocities that just ram and do ridiculous impact damage. That's probably not as flexible as a bomb-pumped laser, but some defenses may work better against those, and frankly, someone's going to want to fire a gun using another gun anyway.

Of course, there are tradeoffs. Depending on how good you are at shoving stuff into tubes, you may not be able to carry many of these missile-sized "shells," certainly not enough for many volleys unless you're using large, large ships, and depending on their sizes, they may be easier to locate and intercept. Probably the best response to try to intercept these is to launch sandshot (buncha buncha bitty ball bearings if you have money to burn, sand if you don't) down the projected course of launches to try and take out as many as you can, which in turn leads to try to hide the launch and/or building in more maneuverability at the expense of payload, and so on and so forth. Failing that, taking a cue from Safeguard, nuclear-armed CIWS turrets, flinging out a hail of mininukes to try to get as many of the hypothetical projectiles before they reach attack ranges.

[LudicSavant]

Still hoping for an answer to my question if anyone knows.

[Pauly]

Well before looking at the design of the weapon, we should look at the design of the space warship.

First issue is where it is constructed. I will assume ISS style construction, with components prefabricated on planet then boosted into space. This assumes zero atmospheric capability. This allows you to design a spaceship with no need for wings or other aerodynamic considerations.

In order to reduce target size the most efficient design is the needle, similar to a submarine. You will have your firepower and armor if present forward and aft.

Probably you would have an open box design, like the lander from Space 1999. there is no need to create a skin or large volumes of open space inside the ship. You probably need separation between crew areas and weapon areas and engines.

With such a design you could create a very effective nose cap to prevent direct fire projectiles (rail guns/lasers/bullets). Which leads to missiles using a blast radius to get into the softer target areas as being more of a threat, even if their attack time is slower and they are easier to counteract than a direct fire weapon.

Which leads to a WW2 naval kind of dynamic, where guns shooting at armor is the most common event but tis rarely eventuated in an immediately decisive outcome. Torpedoes, however, at close range where the most dangerous element

[Telwar]

Why, then, I thought chaff worked by being a cloud of shrapnel that physically intercepted the missile, making it blow up, I couldn't tell you.

If I remember my late-eighties/early-nineties technothrillers correctly, usually they mention the radar-guided missile runs into the chaff and explodes, and fail to mention the missile's proximity fuse went off. I can easily see how one might get that impression.

How would that system work in space, then? A field of ball-bearing sized iron pellets dispersed around the spacecraft, hopefully detonating any missiles that approach.

One of my favorite milSF authors, Ian Douglas (aka Keith Laumer) has these used in his recent space naval combat series to intercept missiles fired from other fighters*. One of the viewpoint characters gets his nickname from an inspired use of them, actually.



* - Which are useful because there is FTL travel but not communication, and FTL doesn't work in the inner system. The first notice of a fleet coming out of warp is the visible signature of the ships coming, and the fighters are typically screaming in right behind it at ridiculous accelerations to say "Hi!" with missiles and pew-pew guns and inflect maximum carnage in the surprise round, as it were. The capital ships come out a few minutes later and theoretically mop up. Of course, this rarely happens exactly as planned, and the fighters tend to get eaten up pretty bad.

[Pauly]

Still hoping for an answer to my question if anyone knows.

Some you tube videos that may help
Scholagladiatoria
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AGf7n7iUF_k
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B85tEumvz3w

Lindybeige
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O-y6oirEsZA
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UGv_UdgHeCQ

[theasl]

If it (probably) works for intercepting projectiles, could overwhelming the physical defenses of a whole spaceship with a giant cloud of space debris work as a weapon? Like flak vs planes or hedgehogs vs subs.

[LudicSavant]

Some you tube videos that may help
Scholagladiatoria
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AGf7n7iUF_k
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B85tEumvz3w

Lindybeige
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O-y6oirEsZA
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UGv_UdgHeCQ

Thanks. I had already seen 3 of those, but hadn't seen scholagladiatoria's second video on the subject. What about two-handed or multi-headed flails, though? And especially, are there any good demonstrations of use? Practical demonstrations or techniques is what I'm really hoping for here (such as with the Araki Ryu school demonstrations).

[Carl]

Semi-guided shells thrown from something railgun-like with the ability for mid-course corrections and standoff warheads are basically what I've come up with if you want to shoot at something that's more than a few light-seconds away and probably knows you're there. A radar-absorbent coating would help significantly against interception (and you can have them fired with sabots if you're worried about the coating ablating in the initial acceleration), though they'd likely show up on IR at least a little bit, and you can seed the volleys with specialized sensor and decoy shells; in particular, a shell that simply sent out a very energetic radar pulse to help the actual warheads with their final attack corrections if you want to minimize emissions (assuming, of course, we don't have tiny ansibles on each shell for coordination).

And I mean volleys, lots of them, because we're having to fire into t, or as I think of it, the cone of uncertainty. Granted, if it's using a reaction drive, you'll probably get an idea which way it's going regardless. But even if we're working bomb-pumped lasers, that's still a relatively slender beam against what might be a fairly small target, so you'll want a lot of them. And if you think you might be able to get some of your shells close, you could have some that shot small penetrators at relativistic velocities that just ram and do ridiculous impact damage. That's probably not as flexible as a bomb-pumped laser, but some defenses may work better against those, and frankly, someone's going to want to fire a gun using another gun anyway.

Of course, there are tradeoffs. Depending on how good you are at shoving stuff into tubes, you may not be able to carry many of these missile-sized "shells," certainly not enough for many volleys unless you're using large, large ships, and depending on their sizes, they may be easier to locate and intercept. Probably the best response to try to intercept these is to launch sandshot (buncha buncha bitty ball bearings if you have money to burn, sand if you don't) down the projected course of launches to try and take out as many as you can, which in turn leads to try to hide the launch and/or building in more maneuverability at the expense of payload, and so on and so forth. Failing that, taking a cue from Safeguard, nuclear-armed CIWS turrets, flinging out a hail of mininukes to try to get as many of the hypothetical projectiles before they reach attack ranges.

As my littile equation, (i think my post s bottom of last page), shows you don't need light second distances. If your firing at 50km a second launch velocities, (high but theoretically possibble for railgun launched stuff), anything over a few hundred km away is going to be hard to hit without guidance.

Of course one intresting concept that maybe might work for serious on target bang is firing railgun slugs that are basically an impact driven gun type fission device. messy but about as brute force simple as it gets.

[Vinyadan]

Thank you warty goblin for the very throughout answer! I am not a math person, but you were very clear.

About ball bearings in space, the question is how the explosion is triggered. Assuming a missile at 30.000 km/h, anything it hits, it will cause enough resistance to kill an hypothetical man launched at the same speed. However, (rl civilian) space rockets are extremely sturdy. A satellite was e.g. once hit by a Pleiad, travelling between 11 and 70 km/s. The satellite (Olympus 1) did not explode, instead it was knocked out of its orbit. So I am quite sure that ball bearings wouldn't do much, since they don't have much weight, and I think such a defense would have been considered by the missile maker. To put things into perspective, there are bombs meant to dive into mountains to explode in the underlying tunnel and make it collapse. Now, if you were to shoot ball bearings at high speed around the ship to intercept the missile, that would work a lot better, and it's not too different fron today's anti missile defense systems on many ships.

One scientist once explained that one speckle of paint lost in space, when hitting the cockpit of a Space Shuttle, is the same hit as if a grenade had exploded against it. I guess they are pretty solid.

[Carl]

Thank you warty goblin for the very throughout answer! I am not a math person, but you were very clear.

About ball bearings in space, the question is how the explosion is triggered. Assuming a missile at 30.000 km/h, anything it hits, it will cause enough resistance to kill an hypothetical man launched at the same speed. However, (rl civilian) space rockets are extremely sturdy. A satellite was e.g. once hit by a Pleiad, travelling between 11 and 70 km/s. The satellite (Olympus 1) did not explode, instead it was knocked out of its orbit. So I am quite sure that ball bearings wouldn't do much, since they don't have much weight, and I think such a defense would have been considered by the missile maker. To put things into perspective, there are bombs meant to dive into mountains to explode in the underlying tunnel and make it collapse. Now, if you were to shoot ball bearings at high speed around the ship to intercept the missile, that would work a lot better, and it's not too different fron today's anti missile defense systems on many ships.

One scientist once explained that one speckle of paint lost in space, when hitting the cockpit of a Space Shuttle, is the same hit as if a grenade had exploded against it. I guess they are pretty solid.

A 100 gram ball bearing at 70km/s hits with the force of 54kg's of TNT, thats enough to obliterate most things. That meteorite that knocked out Olympus was probably a glancing blow from somthing much lighter, (also depending on orbital mechanics it may have been hit from an angle that took it's own orbital velocity of the impact instead of adding it, or being neutral). Bear in mind anything bigger than a marble will make it to the ground intact. We don;t get many that do, that should give you an idea of how small the one that clipped the satellite must have been.

Also as a p.s ball bearing being denser would have greater bang, they would shed less energy disintegrating than meteorite.

As an example of the kind of damage a colony would suffer, a 112 gram pebble meteorite moving at expected impact speeds, (they seem to be assuming low, which make sense given certain other paramatars), would be sufficient to punch a hole over 3 feet in diameter in a colony. Note that said colony has a double hull with 6 feet of soil packed between the two layers and the hole size is the innermost one.

[Strigon]

If I remember my late-eighties/early-nineties technothrillers correctly, usually they mention the radar-guided missile runs into the chaff and explodes, and fail to mention the missile's proximity fuse went off. I can easily see how one might get that impression.



One of my favorite milSF authors, Ian Douglas (aka Keith Laumer) has these used in his recent space naval combat series to intercept missiles fired from other fighters*. One of the viewpoint characters gets his nickname from an inspired use of them, actually.



* - Which are useful because there is FTL travel but not communication, and FTL doesn't work in the inner system. The first notice of a fleet coming out of warp is the visible signature of the ships coming, and the fighters are typically screaming in right behind it at ridiculous accelerations to say "Hi!" with missiles and pew-pew guns and inflect maximum carnage in the surprise round, as it were. The capital ships come out a few minutes later and theoretically mop up. Of course, this rarely happens exactly as planned, and the fighters tend to get eaten up pretty bad.

And here I was thinking I was clever for coming up with it for my own sci-fi book :P

About ball bearings in space, the question is how the explosion is triggered. Assuming a missile at 30.000 km/h, anything it hits, it will cause enough resistance to kill an hypothetical man launched at the same speed. However, (rl civilian) space rockets are extremely sturdy. A satellite was e.g. once hit by a Pleiad, travelling between 11 and 70 km/s. The satellite (Olympus 1) did not explode, instead it was knocked out of its orbit. So I am quite sure that ball bearings wouldn't do much, since they don't have much weight, and I think such a defense would have been considered by the missile maker. To put things into perspective, there are bombs meant to dive into mountains to explode in the underlying tunnel and make it collapse. Now, if you were to shoot ball bearings at high speed around the ship to intercept the missile, that would work a lot better, and it's not too different fron today's anti missile defense systems on many ships.

One scientist once explained that one speckle of paint lost in space, when hitting the cockpit of a Space Shuttle, is the same hit as if a grenade had exploded against it. I guess they are pretty solid.

Of course, unless we're talking about an ICBM, commercial rockets and military missiles have almost nothing in common. It's like comparing a moose to a rabbit; just because a moose can shrug something off, that doesn't imply the rabbit can.
Besides, even if it survives one, there's a whole cloud of them, in theory. It should be torn apart, yes?

A 100 gram ball bearing at 70km/s hits with the force of 54kg's of TNT, thats enough to obliterate most things. That meteorite that knocked out Olympus was probably a glancing blow from somthing much lighter, (also depending on orbital mechanics it may have been hit from an angle that took it's own orbital velocity of the impact instead of adding it, or being neutral). Bear in mind anything bigger than a marble will make it to the ground intact. We don;t get many that do, that should give you an idea of how small the one that clipped the satellite must have been.

Also as a p.s ball bearing being denser would have greater bang, they would shed less energy disintegrating than meteorite.

As an example of the kind of damage a colony would suffer, a 112 gram pebble meteorite moving at expected impact speeds, (they seem to be assuming low, which make sense given certain other paramatars), would be sufficient to punch a hole over 3 feet in diameter in a colony. Note that said colony has a double hull with 6 feet of soil packed between the two layers and the hole size is the innermost one.

Since your answer is the one that is most convenient to work off of, I'm accepting it as canon!

[Martin Greywolf]

Thanks. I had already seen 3 of those, but hadn't seen scholagladiatoria's second video on the subject. What about two-handed or multi-headed flails, though? And especially, are there any good demonstrations of use? Practical demonstrations or techniques is what I'm really hoping for here (such as with the Araki Ryu school demonstrations).

I have used flails, and had them used against me. The latter is not fun, let me tell you.

For the recent Schola video, only thing Matt says that is wrong is that you shouldn't get multi-headed flails - you can, but you have to reduce the size of the balls accordingly. if that's practical, well, kinda. It splits the impact force into several areas, making each impact weaker, but on the other hand, if you thought the normal flail is a pain in the ass to parry...

Two handed flails, often called bohemian flails - because Czechs spanked several Crusades with them - are by far the most common type. They are designed to be cheap, quick to make (take agricultural tool, slap some iron on its business end, optionally replace leather hinge with iron), and are a really, really terrible weapon when used individually. Thing is, even two handed versions are bad at defense, especially when compared to halberds or spears - the Hussites compensated for this with using them from war wagons or from behind shieldmen.

The advantage - they are extremely difficult to parry, even in one on one situation, you basically need to rush the guy holding it to stop him from being able to swing it, or use your shield at odd angles. On a battlefield where the flailman has friends... yeah, can't rush him, you'll get overwhelmed. Can't place your shield at odd angles, you'll get stabbed in the face. What would be effective is archery fire, but again, Hussites didn't expose their flailmen to that, using either pavaises, war wagons or other fortifications to hide behind.

Caveat into Asian chain weapons: pretty much all of them are not historically used as weapons and the few that were (and they were usually a niche weapons at best - Okinawan MAs are a good example of where they thrived to bypass the local laws) don't have original methods left. Some of them may work, some may not, it depends on what the approach of each individual dojo to their techniques is.

Now, for actual techniques, we have a few. Not a lot, though, because of two factors. First one is that flails are just maces that wanted to be more metal. They are blunt and have a stick, so any sort of system that has that will work with these - Fiore and his dagger/bastoncello techniques are a good example. To use these, you need to hold the chain alongside your shaft, stopping the head from moving, or maybe grabbing end of shaft with one hand and chain next to the ball with the other.

The two handed version can use a lot of material for the staff, and we have a considerable amount of techniques for that - remember, spear and poleaxe use staff techniques, we have more of those than pure staff. There are specialized flail techniques in De Arte Athletica.

The more important factor for not seeing a lot of techniques is that, well, it's not a nimble weapon - there's not that much skill to it apart from the basics of distance, timing and throwing a proper blow, and it was more of an emergency weapon to boot - if you had the money and the time, you usually got yourself a poleaxe or a halberd. Even the aforementioned De Arte Athletica has it as more of a curiosity weapon that was probably used for judicial duels for the most part, the same book also shows you sickle and scythe (agricultural scythe without modification to blade direction) techniques.

Only other manuscripts that show you flail directly (that I know of) are Michael Hundt (one technique on how to defeat flail ambush with a rapier), Jakub Sutor von Baden (a single technique) and Hans Talhoffer (two pages with very few words in the Königsegg manuscript). Most of the time, people using them would either fall back on their halberd/staff/spear technique, or hammer away.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

While railguns are a cool idea in fiction, they are probably really impractical for actual space battles. In space you could see enemy ships from huge distances and if you shot a railgun from that far away it will be several seconds at the very least until the projectile gets to the target. And then you have the target moving at incredible speeds as well and even small nudges in course corrections will lead to the projectile going wide by a considerable distance.

A "small" nudge will require a large amount of propellant to vector you across (and as Carl pointed out, you're not moving that far, and even those numbers may be optimistic depending on the mass of your vessel), which may lead to you having to disengage simply through having lost the ability to maneuver.

But most vessels would probably have multiple weapon types - energy for engagement at light-second ranges, torpedoes and missiles for medium range, large projectiles/railguns for close range and small rapid fire projectiles for point defence.

A 100 gram ball bearing at 70km/s hits with the force of 54kg's of TNT, thats enough to obliterate most things.

Assuming you can fire the thing without turning it into thin smear of metal on the surface of whatever tried to fire it because your projectile couldn't handle the acceleration and broke up, and that you can provide the kinds of power required to accelerate it to that speed in the first place (it's the equivalent of Mach 240 or there abouts). And even if it hits a vessel, it's probably going straight through the outer hull, all the inner decks and out the other side without stopping, so you're reliant on hitting a vital system that doesn't have a backup.

Anyway, going back to the original question,

if a vessel's got chance to prepare, all the crew would be in pressure suits - at the very least, the crew's uniform should probably include a pressure garment around their torsos and a full face mask that also covers the ears with an internal short duration air supply and an external air feed hose as a just in case measure, at duty stations, likely deep within the core of the vessel, and pretty much everywhere on board will be depressurised and sealed with bulkheads - the only potential exception would be medical, and even that might be depressurised.

Any spalling or fragmentation probably wouldn't break out of the compartment they're in, could well pierce pressure suits (they're not likely to be as bulky as the suits we're used to seeing, as they would be designed for wearing while on ship and thus wouldn't normally need the layers of coolant, radiation shielding and micro-meteor impact absorbtion - there'd also be those bulkier suits for external work), but chances are the crew aren't in the outer hull anyway.

Hollow points may not make it through the armour - if they do they'll maybe breach one compartment before running out of useful energy. The damge would like render those compartments inaccesible this side of returning to a dock or a support vessel that can repair them (through and throughs could likely just be patched by damage control teams, or the vessel may have a self-sealing system that automatically does it), but probably wouldn't critically damage the vessel itself.

[Kiero]

If you have time to prepare, and all your crew can don vacuum suits, surely the best thing to do if you're expecting hull breaches is to vent all your atmosphere? No oxygen means no combustion/fires/explosions.

[Pauly]

If you have time to prepare, and all your crew can don vacuum suits, surely the best thing to do if you're expecting hull breaches is to vent all your atmosphere? No oxygen means no combustion/fires/explosions.

How would you re-supply the atmosphere if you wented it into space?

Short version is that air is a valuable and finite resource.

[Kiero]

How would you re-supply the atmosphere if you wented it into space?

Short version is that air is a valuable and finite resource.

Depends how far from a station/planet you're operating. If you're close enough to go and resupply after the fight, then it may not be an issue.

[Strigon]

If you have time to prepare, and all your crew can don vacuum suits, surely the best thing to do if you're expecting hull breaches is to vent all your atmosphere? No oxygen means no combustion/fires/explosions.

Ah, yes; the FTL contingency. Brilliant!

How would you re-supply the atmosphere if you wented it into space?

Short version is that air is a valuable and finite resource.

If we're going with sufficiently advanced technology, you could theoretically have a dense, solid, nitrogen rich compound, and another similarly dense, solid, oxygen rich compound. When you need air, you make each of them undergo a chemical reaction that liberates them into N2 and O2. You could have a massive store in a relatively small space.

Depends how far from a station/planet you're operating. If you're close enough to go and resupply after the fight, then it may not be an issue.

In the material being referenced, pretty much all combat would be in close orbit around a planet.
Which also makes light-second distances less likely to occur.

[Galloglaich]

So here's something I've been looking into a bit and I'm curious if anyone here has any insight.

I've been wondering about flails. This originally came up since I was attempting to rebalance the 5e weapons (which contain a number of pointless or trap options, of which flails are one). And I realized I had no real idea how someone actually fought with a flail effectively... so I started looking for demonstrations, and it turns out there's some controversy over whether medieval flails existed at all (one side claims that they seem to have been real but rare, while the other is more skeptical). I did however find references to other cultures using flail-like weapons, like the Japanese Chigiriki. I found a couple of demonstrations as well, which were interesting (it's certainly used differently than medieval flails are often portrayed in fiction).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeCrBDlWixM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt__otLtfZ0

As far as European flails, I didn't have much luck (other than finding out about the sort modified from farming equipment that resembles a two section staff).

So my question is: What're the views on the historicity of flails in various cultures? How were they used? Any good demonstrations? What niches did they fill, including advantages and disadvantages?

Sorry I missed this.


The short answer is,

1) Yes Flails were used and they were actually militarily significant.



2) The actual type of flail in wide use historically in Europe was a two-handed infantry flail. This was that 'two -section staff' type thing you are talking about, which is an adaptation of the threshing flail used by peasants to thresh grain. They basically remade it with a chain to connect the two sections instead of a rope or leather thong, they used heavier wood, and they reinforced the business end with heavy iron bands and spikes.

This is a pretty accurate replica of a Czech Hussite war-flail from circa 1420



This is a piece of a surviving antique



This is a peasants threshing flail, an agricultural tool.



3) This type of infantry flail was in wide use around Europe but became especially famous in the hands of the Czech Hussite heretics, for whom it was one of their characteristic weapons in their successful 1420 -1430 uprising and counter-Crusade. Their other weapons were the handgun, early field artrillery or mini-howitzer, war-wagon, awl-pike, and crossbow. We know that these weapons were widely adopted in Germany, Poland, and by polities in other neighboring regions after their encounters with the Czechs.



4) Smaller single handed flails used by cavalry, and two-handed infantry flails with longer chains also existed and appeared all over Europe but were much rarer.



The Czech style flail was part of a family of weapons which include the Scottish shiltron (a kind of proto-pike), the Flemish godendag (a two-handed mace / spear), and the Swiss Halberd which proved highly effective against armored cavalry from circa 1300-1420. Later on the pike, awl-pike, bill, poll-axe / poll-hammer, glaive, partisan and a variety of other polearms also fitted into this niche.

Hope that helps,

G

[Galloglaich]

The two handed version can use a lot of material for the staff, and we have a considerable amount of techniques for that - remember, spear and poleaxe use staff techniques, we have more of those than pure staff. There are specialized flail techniques in De Arte Athletica.

The more important factor for not seeing a lot of techniques is that, well, it's not a nimble weapon - there's not that much skill to it apart from the basics of distance, timing and throwing a proper blow, and it was more of an emergency weapon to boot - if you had the money and the time, you usually got yourself a poleaxe or a halberd. Even the aforementioned De Arte Athletica has it as more of a curiosity weapon that was probably used for judicial duels for the most part, the same book also shows you sickle and scythe (agricultural scythe without modification to blade direction) techniques.

Only other manuscripts that show you flail directly (that I know of) are Michael Hundt (one technique on how to defeat flail ambush with a rapier), Jakub Sutor von Baden (a single technique) and Hans Talhoffer (two pages with very few words in the Königsegg manuscript). Most of the time, people using them would either fall back on their halberd/staff/spear technique, or hammer away.

Sorry, you beat me to it. I think you are forgetting the big one here, Paulus Hector Mair (source of the colored image in my previous post), but maybe that is because he was aggregating from other sources.

I don't think this was an ideal weapon for a one-on-one fight, but I'm not sure if it's as ineffective as you suggest here. However, the purpose of the flail as I'm sure you know from playing with sparring or re-enactment, is really the impact of it. The impact of a flail seems to be more than any hammer or mace. It's really the ultimate bludgeon weapon, and when you add spikes it's devastating.

If it's strongly made enough (and that is a big if, I have made them myself and it's hard to make a flail that won't fall apart after a few hits) the repeated impact of these things is one of the few things that will really defeat even good armor. And the Czechs in particular used peasants to wield them (including sometimes women) who were experts at threshing and could whip it 120 times per minute allegedly.


At any rate, as Martin said, I think they were typically used behind a wall of pavises and were especially helpful in 'discouraging' attempts to breach an infantry line (or a war-wagon line) as they could negate the protective effect of the armor. They were impressive enough in battle that I can tell you I've seen records from several cities and princely armies where they scrambled to buy hundreds of these things within a few weeks of their initial encounters with Hussite raids.

G

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Depends how far from a station/planet you're operating. If you're close enough to go and resupply after the fight, then it may not be an issue.

If you're damaged, atmospheric entry is a really bad idea - Columbia shows that. Assuming your craft is aerodynamic enough to be able to do it in the first place. And shuttling back and forth from the planet probably wouldn't bring enough air up in each trip and would take an extraordinary amount of fuel.

While armouring the whole ship to withstand direct hits might be impossible, the inter-war "all or nothing" principle may be able to be applied, and vital structures like air tanks could potentially be small enough to be both difficult to hit and sufficiently armoured to avoid damage, and they and the air feeds could have enough redundancy to allow the crew to operate until they can either repair damage or reach support. Plus there's always the chance of using things like oxygen candles, lifeboats and other ships craft, emergency tanks and so on.