From: pksuk@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Peter K. Suk)
Subject: Re: WASTE HEAT
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 92 21:39:07 EST

In article <Byz56r.F1u@bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au> 
scooper@kepler.physics.uq.oz.au ( Steven Cooper ) writes:

>In article <1992Dec4.031334.9916@newstand.syr.edu>
>pksuk@mothra.syr.EDU (Peter K. Suk) writes:
>
>>>This is quite an important point. The technology for the spacecraft
>>>will need to be soooo awesome and therefore so far in the future than
>>>the widgets inside the spacecraft will seem quite magical...[deleted]
>>
>>Way ahead of you.  I've been doing a whole lot of thinking about this stuff.
>>Awhile back, I started thinking about what _really_ advanced space combat
>>would be like...[deleted]
>>
>>The best paradigm I had seen was from, dare I say it, Star Trek: The
>>Next Generation.  Granted, this show flies in the face of established
>>physics like that was going out of fashion, but the *general* paradigm
>>of combat seems to work...[deleted]
>>(I'm not talking about combat as portrayed in the special effects.
>>Rather combat as implied by the story and the technical manuals.)
>
>I haven't read any of the above but I've never been impressed by the screen
>interpretation ( what little I've seen ). It all seems to happen far too 
>slowly.  I can't see there being any time to even scratch yourself, let 
>alone bark orders.

I'm NOT supporting the screen interpretation.  The speeds and distances are
more suited to the final battle in Antony & Cleopatra than sci-fi combat.

And Steve, you're forgetting to take some of that incredible 'magical'
seeming technology into account.  The crew would only have to _think_
about their commands, and they wouldn't be the ones flying the ship,
or firing the weapons.  They'd be making strategy.  In fact, in a lot
of cases, the ship will take action, THEN inform the crew, who might
change their strategy accordingly.  (For more, see below.)

[deleted]
>>Given technology able to make torchships and ships capable of 100's
>>of G's, what kind of space combat do you get?  It's _very_ funky, yet
>>none of it violates physical law.
[deleted]
>>
>>I'd like to hear about people's ideas for:
>>
>>	o  Human pilots in stealth and 100+ G ships
>
>Pilots in G suits can stand 10G ish ( corrections anybody? ). I think the 
>acceleration involved during an ejection is something like 20G ( again? )
[deleted]
>
>Immersing the pilot in a neutral density fluid would obviously
>greatly increase the maximum sustainable acceleration. 
[deleted]
>In all of this I'm assuming that the pilot's brain is somehow directly 
>interfaced to the computer(s) running the ship ( if not the show ).
[deleted]
>Another possibility is that people will be more robust than we are
>now because of genetic manipulation. I can't see us being too robust
>though. Genetics won't change our basic red squishy composition. If
>you assume 100G spaceship technology then you really ought to assume
>biotechnology advanced enough to design and build an organism to
>order. Whether the society would permit it is another question.

Remember, we're dealing with muy funky stuff here.  Assume
"nanotechnology" of the highest order.  Remove the crewperson's brain.
Replace all of the glial cells with nanomachinery which is MUCH
stiffer, and which duplicates their function.  Reinforce the cell
membranes of the neurons in some way.  Connect him/her to a computer
which generates a vitual reality of a body, command center, etc.  
Now, if you wanted to, you have a scene just like Star Trek. You could
even have everyone fall out of their chairs!  :)

Would society allow it?  Any society that could contemplate destruction
on the scales we'd see in a war with THIS technology, SURE.  And who's
to say that we couldn't reverse the process?

>>	o  Strategies involving 100+ G manuvering
>
>I think the game would be played so fast that the computers would
>fight the battles. Just how smart will computers be?  [deleted] What if the
>missile/robot/whatever becomes very smart as well as quick? It sounds
>to me like the person would just go along for the ride ( and die when
>his battle computer makes a mistake ).

Yes, if the computer made a mistake, Crewman Toonces would be toast in
very short order.  But a human crew would not operate the spacecraft.
Instead, the crew would be there to troubleshoot.  If your enemy has
come up with a new weapon or strategy, the crew's job (if they survived
long enough) would be to reformulate she ship's strategy and pull its
ass out of the fire.  They wouldn't be like the spaceship crew we're 
used to reading about.  Instead, they'd be like programmers, theorists,
and consultants.

>>	o  How to defend a civilization against such weapons
>
>The simple answer is to have 100G spacecraft yourself...

Actually, you just _move_ the whole darn thing.  Seriously.  The only
civlizations that can survive this kind of thing are Macro-Lifes.

>civilization would quickly run out of intact hardware. This would strongly 
>affect the strategy to be employed. A similar situation would probably arise 
>today if we were so ill advised as to have an all out war ( with whom? ). How 
>long do you think all that expensive machinery would last?
>
>I think a more interesting strategic situation arises if you limit spacecraft 
>to small accelerations so that everyone takes forever to get anywhere. The
>strategy of battle would then become more like a naval engagement. Lots of
>careful manouvres and forward planning.  

You'd have just as much of this in my paradigm, especially to preserve 
stealth.  In fact, this would look a lot like _Hunt for Red October_.
The ships are capable of some impresive destruction and zooming around,
but doing this will make you a sitting duck (& a dead duck) in short
order.  And it would still take a long time to get anywhere.  But the
brief bouts of action are a whole lot flashier.  

[stuff about a different paradigm with slower ships deleted]

> Slowly accelerating vessels would be such wonderful sitting targets
>( especially those huge incandescent radiators ) that the winner might
>even be the first to get a shot in if the weapons are nasty enough.
>Would this not need some very clever chesslike tactics? Chess is much
>more cerebral than a bullfight.  

Remember the game Archon?  It was like chess, except when the pieces met
you had to fight them like a video game.  Just as much cerebral stimulation
as "beep-beep zip-BANG!"  :)  Basically, both paradigms are complex and 
involve a lot of strategy.  I just like thinking about mine because the
stuff involved is so much beyond the level we're accustomed to dealing with.

>>>I agree that stealth would be useful ( and possible ) on some
>>>occasions but what about the sentinels? 
[deleted]
>>
>>Of course, an alert civilization will have ships out on patrol.  
>>[deleted]  The situation will be very much like the
>>recent contest between US and Soviet snuclear submarines.
>
>I still disagree about stealth in a widely patrolled system being of much use.
>I'm only talking about fast ships with big radiators here.  
[deleted]
>If you want to coast in quietly, looking like a 3K rock from all sides, 
>you will still have problems. If you want low albedo then your craft will 
>heat up. 

Yes, but Steve, who guards the guardians?  /B)  If someone's going to
attack a system, she/he's not going to leave the sentinels alone.  And by
the same arguments you've just put forth, how do you protect your sentinels?

>I think it is safe to assume that any technology capable of making
>even the wimpy spacecraft I've been championing would allow a detector
>to fully characterise every photon above a certain energy that passes
>through it's aperture ( to within the limits of quantum mechanics ).
>There would also be long periods available to gather lots of photons
>and so get good statistics. Add to this some *awesome* computer power
>for data analysis and I think that stealth would become rather
>difficult.

Of course, and you've just shown how difficult detection could be.

>You could probably hang around at 100 AU past the 
>last patrolled region and remain undetected.  

You could go right up TO the patrolled region, if it was big enough and
had few enough sentinels in it.  

>but if you tried to enter a patrolled system, you'd be spotted.

Maybe.  (See below.)

[stuff about detectors]

>and the motion of the blip. This is compared with an inventory in the
>computer's memory of every celestial body likely to cause confusion
>and an inventory of every body in the solar system above a certain
>size and it's orbit.

AND every ship in-system?  Would there be ANY civilian ships?  Who
would keep the database updated?  And how?  And wouldn't transmitting
the information reveal locations?  (Not necessarily, I know, but look
at the tertiary implications.)

Well, think about whatever paradigm you want.  I like this one.

	--Peter Kwangjun Suk