Wormholes are not forbidden by either general relatativly or special relativity. The issues around wormholes are primarly keeping them a) stable and b) open. From E=mc^ , the positive means that space time is warped in a positive(+) manner. A wormhole would require space to have negative energy and curvature. This requiries what scientists call 'exotic matter' material with negative matter, energy and exerts a graviatinal push as opposed to pull...dark matter perhaps?. However at this point, the mystery around dark matter not-withstanding, there is no experimental evidence for such exotic material as yet. As with FTL travel in the relatasvistic unviverse, so long as your wormhole does not violate causality in any inertial frame, you could go from here to there in a hurry. Also im not precisely sure how wormhole navigation would actually work, if you have the science and means to create a macroscopic scale stable wormhole, what about the exit?. I have no idea what means would be used to create an exit well...where you want it to be. Nature is not obliged to give us an easy exit at the nearest, star system that happens to have an un-inhabited oxygen water world around it. Just as likely to end up in Intergalactic space, or inside a void, or even better yet at galactic center  :LOL:. Im really not sure how a suitable exit would be managed. Imo, if a shortcut to the stars exists, this is most likely candidate, tho actually creating one would be in some ways even more daunting than good old regular near light speed travel.

Heres a short article I think you will like

http://hanson.gmu.edu/wormholewar.html

Going back to fiction, one of the better universes for non-ftl warfare empire and communication comes from  Timeline of the CoDominium and the Empire of Man, Jerry Pournelle. The highly regarded 'The Mote in Gods Eye' is set in this timeline. The technology relies on only 2 peices of handwavium. One, the Alderson Drive and the Langston Energy Shield. The ALderson Drive was invented in co-dominion times by what they call 'The revisionist Alderson, implying he revises Einsteins GR and SR in such a way that make travel to the stars feasible. The Alderson drive wasnt mean to be a trek-type babble, the authors did consult with a real physicist to help them develop the most plausbile drive possible for the series of novels. Their FTL travel most resemebles a wormhole rather than say a trek type warp drive. You activate your drive, you vanish, you reappear in distant star system. This solves the distance problem and gives man the stars but it only applies to travel between stars. Not within them. Once there travel(and warfare) is by conventional Ion Fusion whatever drive your ship posseses. Thus it can still take months or even years to travel from one side of the co-dominion (later empire of man) to the other. Interestingly the other piece (and really only one) of handwavium they came up with was the Langston energy shield. This was plot device but it had a very real purpose behind it. Since the technology in the rest of this future history tho advanced, is wholly built around real physics, the authors invented this field to help overcome the very limitations in space battle weve been discussing on this thread. Without the langston field, the battles raged by the Co-dominion Navy (Later Imperial Navy of the Empire of Man) would not be possible, at least not the way there written. Also it follows the communcation is only as fast as special message 'packet ships' can move via alderson points from star to star. Again this is a literay device as much as a realistic protrayall. Its real purpose is to insure Earth (later Sparta) from of goverment and line of communication resemeble the British empire in the 1800's or the Roman Empire, where rule is decentralized and communication with the central government, not impossible by any means, just distant.

I would just like to say that the only way to accuratly predict the future of space combat is to build yourself a time machine that can travel into the future and back. No computer simulations or scientific theories, no matter how well researched and thought out, can say with 100% accuracy, what the future holds. It may turn out that the laws of physics as we know them are true and that we're pretty much stuck in our little solar system. Similarly, it may turn out that those same laws of physics are completely wrong and FTL is possible. Science is contantly changing, and it is impossible to prove that something is impossible. The wikipedia article on science says

"Despite the existence of well-tested theories, science cannot claim absolute knowledge of nature or the behavior of the subject or of the field of study due to epistemological problems that are unavoidable and preclude the discovery or establishment of absolute truth. Unlike a mathematical proof, a scientific theory is empirical, and is always open to falsification, if new evidence is presented. Even the most basic and fundamental theories may turn out to be imperfect if new observations are inconsistent with them."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science

That being said, I think it would be cool if space combat were like Star Wars. I'm not saying that it will be like Star Wars, just that it would be neat if it were.

Thanks for answering my question, John Falkenberg. So this means, that unless there is a form, of natural FTL out their, or we find a really powerful energy sources, that can force up wormholes, then we will see no-FTL space warfare, right?

Also what about shield, do you think they can work, or are they useless.

If by FTl warfare you mean > Ships travel to destination then slow down to manageable speeds, say 1-3g constant acceleration or less, thats actually how Sins combat is modeled, as well as the example I mentioned above works. Your FTL drive gets you there, then you use conventional engines to fight with, this would be by necessity (imagine trying to dogfight in the atmosphere at say, mach 12 and you see what I mean). If you mean superluminal combat in 'normal' space then no..thats off. Additionally if your ship(s) enter our hypothetical wormhole, to get where they need to be, this of course, does not imply you will exit it at anything like a high speed, much less superluminal. Ill confess I dont know for sure, but I would imagine your exit velocity would be much the same as your exit one. However if by whatever mechanism you get accelerated due to tidal forces or what not to a very high speed, you sure wouldnt want that, if your ship gets dumped dumped out at some insane % of c the 1st micro-meteoroid you came across would destroy your ship in instant, amoung other hazards, but I digress. One thing I could forsee wormholes being very useful for(again hypotheically speaking) is send some kind of weapons, ie autonomus AI controlled weapons systems, open a wormhole near your target and send them thro. This would get around the 'We see you comeing from the energy sigs your drives give off' problem, reduce warning times for a defender greatly. Again needless to say, this would require you being to not only open a hole on your end, but to be able to precisely controll where it opens as well. Which to my untrained mind seems even more difficult than creating the opening in the 1st place hehe. But if possible controllable wormholes would be the unltimate space weapon, just open one near target and send thro preferably automatic weapons systems to engage intially, then follow up with manned units later on.

As for shields, deflector screens or whatnot, handwavium. Only 2, well maybe 3 known types of fields exist in nature. Magnetic fields, electrical fields and Gravitional fields. Even then it should be noted force fields even tho a valid concept in physics, do not really 'exist'. There actually absractions to make the math easier. Now as a defence against certain types of enery weapons for example, charged particle beams, a magnetic field would effect such a beam, kicker is, were talking about the magnetic field of a fairly good sized plant, hard to cram something like that onto a ship. Even then, if that were possible, your enemy would just switch to neutral particle beams. Laser Beams can be bent and even deflected by large gravitational masses, this is quite true enough, but again were talking masses of planetary or stellar size, again not very portable. lastly kinetic weapons ie bullets, again could in princple be 'deflected' by a strong enough EM field, but EM fields would propigate omni-directionally, frying the source of the EM field along with whatever your trying to defend against. Star Treks magical 'Shields' have zero grounding in any branch of the sciences. Shielding would have to follow materials science and its not impossible that certain types of materials could be developed for SOME kinds of offensive space weapons, it would be imo, nearly impossbile to create a material that would provide a defence for all threats likely to be employed against you. In space offence has an innate advantage that may be well near impossible to counter in anything than limited ways. Its worth noting as an aside, that Sins Does not use energy shields in any way, its all materials based.

 :HOT: 

So I was reading all the information presented to me in the forums, and first i would like to thank those who helped shake me from alot of misconceptions I had before.

But I would like to submit a question.

Due to the massive limitations/obstacles presented by our current understanding of physics. And not just physics, you also have to take into account human endurance, recources, basicly everything we take for granted in our atmosphere.

Would it be easier, possible to build an "Ark" style ship?  

Find a planetoid (non molten core of course). Mine it almost hollow, and build a "biodome" inside. Strap propulsion needed and your good to go.

Of course I say that not fully understanding everything involved. But it does answer a few problems facing long distance space travel and potential combat.

Since your large enough you could have enough gravity to prevent human bodies from going to shit since a weightless enviorment wrecks havock on the human condition.

You have several million metric tons acting as a heat sink and help disapate heat.

You can carry your recources with you, hydroponic farms, manufacturing, livestock, ect.

Since you are so large and potentaily several kilometers below the surface, you wouldn't need shields against missles, ships, small meteroids, ect.

Propulsion, as much (as well as little) I understand about it, you would only need to set the object in something of a Hyperbolic orbit  and ride it out of the solar system not unlike a comet does. (possible?) We do know enough to perdict an acurate course to get from point A to B and set an orbit around a star. 

Combat, Well you are a flying fortress. missles, ships, whatever probably wouldn't do you much good. And your not exactly so much as a ship than you are a guided celestial body. Unless you can make a weapon that can shatter a planet. (scary thought) 

I'm thinking VW bug vs a fully loaded Freight Train. You can't swerve, you can't stop quickly and your much bigger so whoever is in front of you needs to move or become a crater. 

So can it be done?  

 

I feel my inner nerd awaken. The nerd is the hot light in the darkness. All else is unfullfilled void.

This is a special place.

We must not allow this place be soiled by the Non.

Non must go. Now.

 

Okay lets take this dead serious. Space warfare. Tough cookie.

Lets pick up a scenario, two neighbouring planets at war. We pick a random setup, lets say world Earth located in the Sol system VS some random world at Alpa Centauri.

Allowed are all forms of technology, but only REAL technology, nothing imaginary.

To flesh out the scenario a bit more we assume Centauri is invading the Sol system with the goal of claiming the planet - intact - well, more or less. Certainly more is ideal but colleteral damage in war is nothing unusual.

Maybe because they picked up their transmissions (really old transmissions) or because that golden plate we sent into space fell on the head of somebody really important.

Who cares? Lets assume the role of the invader.

Obviously the first problem we run into is the trip to Sol itself. The distance is 4.37 light years. Clearly a short range engagement in galactic scale. We naturally want to get there as fast as possible.

Einstein proposed there is nothing faster than light. Well... not exactly... thats greatly simplified.

What he really said is: the faster you go the slower time resolves for you. The slower you go the faster time resolves.

If somebody has any doubts regarding this i recomend reading up on GPS sattelite time syncronization correction formulas. There are also experiments with nuclear clocks and jetplanes. That is a fact ladies and gentelmen.

What he talked about is "slow light images" and the general perception somebody has rocketing into the night sky - because the night sky is an image of the past (light takes time to travel, so its a really old image), and technically you catch up on it the faster you go. Its not that easy, its not only affecting the perception, it seems also affect physics in a more general way (wich explains the clock experiment or correction formulas for sattelite time sync). Personally i belive its somehow linked to gravitation per se, but thats pure speculation.

What do i want to show with this load of physics garbage?

Well, for the most part that there is no galactic tempo limit. There have been experiments transporting information at above light speed with the use of quantuum effects - maybe a little garbled, but it worked.

Whilst a great deal of people are searching for a key to the stars (hyperdrive, FTL, wormeholes, spacefolding), it becomes slowly clear that nobody locked the door in the first place.

So, considering time runs faster the faster you move we want to move as fast as possible.

So, what is the most powerful propulsion?

That would be... a fusion blast.

Imagine a big (really big) fusion bomb loaden mothership. Ironically the drive is also its most powerful weapon. Not a big surprise. The world ain't ready for such a vehicle. Imagine how the Russions would freak out if the Americans build such a thing. Or vice versa, also applies. Or a madman at its controls. Not good.

Moral aspects aside, the next problem we run into is acceleration.

Basically there is not much stopping us (there is and it becomes really dangerous at certain speeds, but from a viewpoint of pure acceleration there is not much holding us back, only the need for thick armor and a redundant design for particles ramming the ship at approximately lightspeed). The idea is to blast us to speed with a few nukes, savely shielded from radiation in our ship.

Of course the human body can only withstand a certain degree of acceleration. Remember - no dampening forcefields.

So we have to accelerate in tolerable parameters. This means slow acceleration, slow breaking. Remember at a point there will be no gravitational pull from stellar bodies, so the only thing really interesting are the forces during breaking and acceleration.

That are the basics. Of course the trip will still take some millenia (assumed, we'd only know for sure through experiments and people are a little itchy about orbital nukes for some reason).

No cryogenics. We have no working cryogenics. So the ship has to be a home for some generations to come. It has to be able to sustain multiple generations, it needs kinda self-regenerating systems and because those systems can fail or are not entirely perfect loads of supplies. Remember as i mentioned it has to be big? Make it epic.

 

And since we expect an advanced civilization we want to take over we finally come to the Space warfare part.

The smartest thing to do would be to sneak into the system collecting some data about our opponent first. Its kinda hard to be stealthy if you use fusion bombs for decelleration *g*

On the other hand we have two advantages on our side:

1) with all the stellar anomalities to watch it could be interpreted as some natura occurence, mabe a comet or be overlooked alltogether

2) "aliens are attacking us" is not really considered a sane response and everyone will look for another explaination to appear sane, even if there is not really one

For that reason it would not be totally futile to appear as a big piece of rock and at least attempt to make "natural" movement only until it is too late. Probably being as less visible by taking advantage of a nearby planet or the moon between us and them.

The idea to launch a quick all out barrage of fusion missiles at all major population centres (mexico city for an example), capitals and so on is intriguing, but would almost certainly trigger a retaliatory strike of some sort.

Another possiblity would be to launch a shuttle to take samples and develop some sort of biological weapon, minimizing enviromental damage in a quick hush-hush night op. A stealth design for the shuttel would not hurt at this point. Of course in the case of detection we risk also a retaliatory strike.

In this case we have to face the possibility to be confronted with a hostile response, so we need to be prepared for that.

The most obvious weapon being ultilized are thermonuclear weapons, so point defence is mandatory.

I am not a big fan of energy weapons because energy can be deflectet and for the fact that those weapons are indeed a bit unwieldy and take up too much space. Magnetic (for an example) accelerated high speed explosive rounds littering the area with debris seem so much easier and better.

Energy weaponery could be used for actually sieging the planet, maybe with a set of mirrors to focus Sol's own light concentrated to the surface. Its true energy weapons take an enormous ammount of power, but seeing a huge power source is present already it would be a shame to let it go to waste.

However, the best strategy would be to avoid confrontation with our mothership as much as possible. We could launch guided missiles from behind the moon, but honestly - some sort of missile loaded attack craft would be so much better and also allow to break through defences (no computer replaces an aware pilot when it comes to adapting to the unexpected) and strike targets at the surface with more precision. The could also act as interceptors for threats lauched vs the mothership, like missiles and opposing attack crafts. A missile can't strafe crucial targets. An attack fighter can. And it allows attacking from a safe distance.

For pretty much the same reason some kind of large scale orbit to surface transport vehicle would be interesting - for boarding opponent craft, orbital installations and of course to land ground troops.

Surely - a nuke will eliminate any of those vehicles, but i rather trade fighters and/or transports for nukes than seeing the mothership go *boom*. Those will at least stand a chance to avoid a missile or spread in the case of large scale area attacks.

And if thats not working we threaten to blast the moon out of orbit ^^

"Can we really do that, Commander?"

"No, but they don't know this."

Inner nerds deserve a proper edcuation in science.  Don't wake up your inner nerd just to have it spout nonsense.

No.

The proportions here are prohibitively impractical.  I can think of about twenty reasons why this wouldn't work, but the simplest and most unsolvable one is your mass.  I don't know about you, but pushing a planetoid worth of matter doesn't sound like something I would want to undertake as a science-fair project.  The hyperbolic orbit plan requires first putting the planetoid into hyperbolic orbit.  I think you underestimate how much energy that would require.

If you could move it, where would you want to send it?  Short trips (Sol to Alpha Centauri?) would be on the scale of tens of thousands of years.  That's assuming it's moving really freaking fast.

Furthermore, I fail to see the problem which this is supposed to be a solution to.  Are we trying to colonize other star systems, or are we just bored?

-Dr. B

I doubt that with our current technoligy and science we can do more as send some ducttaped Nasa created fragile ships into space with ackward cumberstone lasers that needs huge powersupplies too fire just one or 2 rounds before depleded, on ships that disintergrate on impact with a small astroid..

But realisticly seen, for now i have no idear why we even would bring a war"space"schip too space.. Unless we want too shoot some other nation ships out of orbit, in wich case we would use a Missle launched from earth itself..

In case we would run into a other "intelligent" alien race, 2 things can happen,
Scenario One, both races are mutuallly interrested in maintaining peace for "insert any intelligent peacefull idear"
Scenario Two, Both are scared as hell, but realise both never dreamed of too even encounter a other race in space, so both are doubtfully prepared even too fight each other at all (unarmed exploration ships).. thus Scenario One comes again in place..

Then i doubtfully believe that even SO that human race has colonized other planets, our technoligy has developed by then to a point, we anno 2008 cant even imagine what kind science and technology is the available at hand..
Also i am a firm believer that when the Human race finally comes to the era that we can colonize planets, we finnaly start too see peace in the Human race, as by then we hopefully developed enough too relalize we need each other if we want too survive in a hostile enviroment as the galaxy itself, thus no need fighting each other hopefully..

So, imho Spacewarfare wil only be there if we encounter a hostile race, wich i find very undoubtfull, and if so, i doubtfully both are prepared even too rage war, further more, i doubt due the size of the galaxy, there is hardly a need for raging a war, due the distances..

IF there will be spacewars, it will be at a time so far in the future, it would be the same as neantherthalers predicting how we would rage war nowerdays.. Impossible to predict whats possible then...

Most realistic need for Weapons in space is for Scientifical need, like protecting earth against meteor and astroid impacts, and current studies showed that atm we dont even have any weapons available for that..
Nukes showed too have hardly no impact on tractory nor we can build any laser powerfull enough even too blow a dend into a astroid or meteor.
Still in those cases i think we need too think of large missle/laser batteries in space with huge heatradiators and massive solarpanels for power and heat dispersion. a'la ISS spacestation but now with weaponry..

Hypotheoretical bout fighters in space :

If there would be anything like fighters, it would be Remote Controlled Drones, like we use nowerdays Predator Scout planes in wartheatres like Iraq.. But then adapted too ofc spacecombat..
its allready a well known fact that in case of fighterplanes, the limit is the Human factor in designing better preforming fighterjets, the JSF fighter is allready speculated to be one of the last manned fighterjets developed..
Taking this in consideration, its not hard too predict that in the future IF the would be something resembling a fighterjet in space, it would be for sure a unmanned drone, remoted controlled AI or AI controlled internally, but for sure, NOT human controlled by anymeans, not even at the remote controls, since space combat will undoubtfully will be too complex too handle for a human..
At most, a human gives the orders too the AI, mission Data fightroute etc, from there the AI autonomicly preforms the task of controlling the drone flight and weapon systems.

 

 

Argh, a deadly blow. No wait... its ultimateley totally pointless because in fact it lacks any argumentative point. The Non must go. Now.

Other proportions are unfortunately completely out of the question. There is no known form of working cryogenics and no known form of FTL drive, so an ark ship is currently the only way to go. The problem wich it is solving is that the flight can not be accomplished in a mere lifetime.

Of course this needs incredibly ammounts of energy for propulsion (if we want a fast trip). Fortunately the knowledge of quantuum physics offers these energies. Mass is not really the factor here. Ion drives work by small acceleration fo a long time as an example. Since nothing is stopping the acceleration process its just a question of time.

Also, as you are probably unaware of, colonizing new worlds is a neccesarity and not just a fancy hobby if the humans plan on outlasting the lifespan of their sun. Its a neccesarity of survival.

What would space battle be like in my opinion? It would be more like riflemen tactic than fast manouvring, kind of like Legend of Galactic Heroes anime.

First reason is fuel economy : manouvring a lot mean spending your fuel reserve quickly. Unlike in atmosphere, we can't use air in space to turn or slow down, so every course or speed change require thrust, and you can't store an unlimited amount of it. The second reason is how much acceleration you can get with the engine you have : unless you have something that can make you accelerate quickly without much fuel expenditure, forget about dodging or flying wildly. Now that it is cleared, there is also the issue of mass. If you have a limit on fuel and thrust, there should also be a practical limit on mass of ships. Large and heavily armored ships would not be practical if you can't get the reactive mass to move them around in a timely maner. Most of the current space travel technology is based on drifting on your own inertia, unless we can get enormously more efficient engines we are unlikely to stop relying on gravity whells and balistic trajectories to move around in space. so this leave little in the means of armor or huge stock of ammunitions.

Weapons.

Now, if ships can't carry lots of armor or stockpile enormous amount of ammos (like missiles), simplier weapons like bullets might do the job nicely. Missiles may still have some uses but just like ships, while they can take much bigger acceleration, don't carry much fuel so they would not be comming at meteoritic speed or make wild manouvring. They would not need much in payload tough, ships would not be heavily armoured. As for lasers, it's true that they may become more potent and be the weapon of choice in space (accuracy, effective range and lack of recoil), but it's not because they can reach far and fast that they would always hit. It all come down to how accurate sensors and tracking system will be, the longer the range, the less margin of error you can tolerate (nothing is perfect in Real Life tm). However energy expenditure might make kinetic weapons more viable than energy ones.

Now the issue of fighters...

They would just be battle riders at best, smaller vessels carrying weapons and little else and not much more manouvrable than their carriers. Using them would just spare the more valuable carrier from being exposed to enemy weapons.

What would be worth fighting for.

Since living space might be an issue in the near future, colonies might be of strategic value, especially if travelling between planets takes a while and carrying cargo around is limited.

Well, i'm not sure how much understandable what i just wrote is, i'm not very good at explaining things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Space warfare will most likly consist of large heavily armored FTL space craft, that carries multiple smaller, nimble, lightly armored spacecraft, with missiles and Kinetic weapons. These lightly armored craft, are not fighters. They have multiple crewmembers, extended fuel supplies, and will be as large, if not larger than the avererage 747. The only real reason for the larger ship is the faster than light drive. Because, since we are assuming such technology is possible, it would have to be very large and require lots of energy. Thats where the larger ship comes into play. It shuttles around the "smaller" craft. And when trouble arrises, it just lets the faster craft go out and take care of the actual combat.

 

Now some may say, "Hold on a second! What if the enemy attacks before the larger ship canj depoly the small craft?"

Well here is the thing. Thanks to the incredible vastness of space and the large levels of energy used in space travel, detections of incoming enemies will happen from a much further distance. Pretty much , if we are at earth and we had the level of tech I am speaking of, we could easily detect an incoming craft, past pluto. So much for suprise.

 

But still some may say " But couldn't you just put all those weapons on the heavily armored craft, thus elminating the need for the smaller space craft?"

Once again, wrong.  Who do you think will win in a knife fight? a small nimble man, or a fat slow man?

These smaller craft would easily be able to do the same as the larger craft, for less money too, since these smaller craft won't have super awsome armor like the larger craft. And the larger craft is BIG

Think SDF-1 big.

But like i said, the BIG ship won't really do any fighting. Oh sure it has a few weapons on it, for self-defense. But the smaller craft will be albe to do so much more damage. So most of the combat willl be done by small, lightly armored ships

and if you don't know what SDF-1 is , google it