Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/02/26/why-do-most-spaceships-in-sci-fi-have-their-guns-on-backwards.html
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In case anyone is interested in some of the finest hard sci-fi space battles, I can recommend The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell (aka John G. Hemry).
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Is this a fair generalization? Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and the Expanse all have 720 degree weaponry on craft and stations. Also, you’d be unlikely to notice the network of attitudinal thrusters on monster ships like the one in the picture. As an example, see pic below showing the thrusters on a Space Shuttle.
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The argument works both ways, I believe. That ship in his second example which is trying to catch up while the first ship “maintains range” is going to be burning and firing in the same direction. Aft-facing guns wouldn’t do them any good just then. But it’s still a fair point he makes.
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If you have a reaction drive, approaching the enemy tail-first isn’t bad, because the main drive is a big weapon, especially if the exhaust is radioactive as hell. (If it’s an Orion drive, then it’s already built to take nuclear blasts.)
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It always seems to me that actual combat between non-orbiting space ships (ftl or otherwise) would mostly involve laying lots of nuclear mines and hoping that the enemy gets close enough to one. Even guided missiles seem unlikely to ever be able to close the kinds of distances involved with any kind of accuracy. If anything guns would be used for setting off/destroying mines at a sufficient distance?
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Load the guns with bags of gravel. When they get close enough, set off a small charge to expand it into a cloud. If the closing velocity is km/s, that’ll leave a mark.
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In the Expanse series, combat is mostely carried out with missiles and point-defense weaponry, although rail guns are also used. Orientation for the missile tubes hardly matters, because the missiles have their own onboard guidance system. Once they exit the ships’ hulls, they’re independent spacecraft. The point defense guns give the ships full 720 coverage, and the railguns seem to have 720 coverage, although I can’t remember the books talking about that much. The Rocinante had a railgun retrofitted to it, and that gun is fixed because they wanted as much as possible to conceal it inside the ship’s hull.
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Because space opera battles are always wet navy or air force in space analogs…
In books I get tired of the manually piloted dog fighting at fractional light speed tropes that make no sense (including barrel rolls, which make no sense in space). Somehow I mind the space dogfights less in moves, where the action is sometimes enough to make me less pedantic.
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David Weber in the Honorverse series has put a lot of thought into space combat, as did C. J. Cherryh in her various publications. Most space combat would probably take place at high speed - decelerating a spaceship relative to the target loses the advantage of a shorter defensive reaction time to a fast moving object, whether it be a maneuverable missile or a bag of rocks moving at a high velocity. Lots of forward shielding would be required to protect a spaceship under normal movement - why turn 180 except to approach a disabled enemy for boarding?
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Elite Dangerous solves this with space friction giving your ship a top speed
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Approves.
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While I appreciate the actual physics they are trying to put out here, I feel like a lot of these are covered in the Star Control video game series from the 90’s.
The Umgah ships were slow with decent maneuvering, but had a short range radiation beam that would destroy just about anything and a zippy back up drive that would pull you out of danger in an instant.
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You’d have to set off a nuke pretty close to the target to do a lot of physical damage though since most of the destructive power of a nuclear bomb comes from the shock waves of the explosion and there’s no matter to carry those shock waves through the vacuum of space.
The odds of a ship just happening to fly that close to a mine are virtually nil considering how big space is. Even in terrestrial warfare they don’t put minefields in the middle of the ocean.
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Came here to bring up The Expanse, thanks!
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This guy’s videos are hilarious.
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100% this. If it was already the case in early sci-fi flavored serials, George Lucas cemented it with Star Wars. Directors want to show dogfights in space, it’s cinematically dramatic and keeps the action intelligible to the average viewer, where usually “I’m going to shoot you” = “I’m facing you”
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Think something closer to a depth charge. You are dropping things where you suspect the enemy is going to be.
If we’re going to use a bad naval analogy, it seems to me like a battle between subs with infinite water and bad radar, moving incredibly fast but not very maneuverably.
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