OUT TO THE BATH TUB FIELD TESTING
It's been one year since the last time we talked about Space Warfare here on Hard Sci-Fi.
Let's recap what happened of the course of the previous two posts:
PART 1 - MOST SHIPS IN SCIENCE FICTION MAKE NO SENSE
PART 2 - WHY COMMON COUNTER ARGUMENTS MAKE EVEN LESS SENSE, EVEN IN-UNIVERSE
In Part 2, I left the post on a cliffhanger about disruptive camouflages - highlight to a more sci-fi approach to Dazzle camouflage.
Amongst other types of camouflage, I had also included chemicals that disguise the ship as another object like a comet, and reflective panels that can be tweaked in order the flash light-rays into or away from the enemy (also known as mirrors).
This time, I'm willing to test some of those approaches, in a simple observation test, simulated in a 3D modeling software.
So, meet our test ships:
NSC 042 - SCITALIS
This design is inspired by the myriad of accurate and cool-looking spaceships created by MarkPoe
The Nuclear-Powered Support Cruiser 's role is to ensure the security of high-value targets by supporting the escort effort with massive suppressive firepower, hence why it has a ridge along it's hull, from where 75x 80mm Fast-Pace Artillery guns (FPA), and 6x 300kg Kinetic-Kill Disperser weapons (KKD) - per side.
So basically each broadside holds 75x machine guns and 6x shotguns.
Why this ship carries relatively small machine guns and a couple of shotguns are because of two reasons.
1. The sharp acute holes of the bullets are meant to be very hard to find and repair compared to the amount of damage to O2, electronics and heatsink systems on the enemy - firing along a path line grants more potential hits and suppressive fire.
2. Shotguns are crude in space, and mainly if the enemy is accompanied - granting sector clearance nearby because of the nearly invisible but deadly pellets (and there is 300kg of them per shot), such weapons can also intercept HTK vehicles and drones inbound, making very large projectiles or missiles not so useful from certain angles.
The name Scitalis, refers to the medieval beast that sports beautiful shiny marks - pretty straight forward.
The four plates are shielding the fuel tanks against debris and projectiles, the two skirts are sections of parabolic surfaces, so incoming kinetic projectiles are ricocheted away from the ship's hull, the internal reflection angles were carefully chosen so any shots fired against them wouldn't redirect the bullets to sensible parts of the beaming and engines.
The standard combat instance for this ship would then be facing the enemy at 3/4, with minimal exposition of sensible parts and maximum weapon coverage (like the top-right window view).
I should note that despite having a backwards facing thruster, this ship has 5 separated thrust components, so maneuvering this thing is actually possible within a relatively large radius, except this design makes it kind of awkward to set in motion.
For scale, I would put it's deck at 175m long (about the size of a König), making the total length about 320m.
A PRACTICAL APPROACH IN SPACE WARFARE SCENARIOS AND CAMOUFLAGE EFFECTIVENESS
As a proof of concept, we will experiment visibility on a variety of distances, lighting conditions, and camouflage designs.
The images will be taken with the ship at it's standard combat stance, 3/4 and facing the enemy.
These are:
DISTANCE (600mm telescope, same res image)
10 km
50 km
100 km
200 km
LIGHTING
Full Disk (source is behind the observer)
Three-Quarter (source angle is head-on to target)
Perpendicular (source angle is above or below the ship length)
Waning (target is between source and observer)
CAMOUFLAGES at 55% albedo
Standard White Paint Coat (0% reflection)
Standard Dazzle Camouflage (0% reflection)
Reflective Dazzle Camouflage (90% reflection)
Mirrored Hull (99% reflection)
Disco-ball Hull (99% reflection)
RESULTS
Take a look at the visual results of the tests.
Now, before anyone start to rant about how mirrored hulls would work nicely in space - let's comprehend how these camouflages are supposed to work.
First of all, you wouldn't want to cover your ship in actual metal-glass mirrors, they are too heavy and present a huge heat-mass to deal with later on - a light relatively cheaper material like Mylar would work the best for a reflective cloak around your ship.
Except it wouldn't work very well if the enemy has access to lots of cool instruments, which they would certainly have, as Mylar has a very specific signature in infrared between 5000-15000nm - and like a lot of other alternatives, as we have discussed earlier, THERE IS NO WAY TO BE INVISIBLE IN SPACE, at least not completely.
Although covering yourself in aluminum foil would make the ship pretty hard to see with the naked eye - the best alternative to not being shot down very often is to use disruptive camouflage.
This would mean emitting counter-wavelengths to cancel out radar, reflective panels to look as bright as you possibly can and blind enemy instruments and operators, aaaaand being confusing as possible too.
The point of disruptive camouflage is to break down the size and heading of your ship, of course, any enemy that has fought with you at least a couple of times, will know that the massive paraboloid skirts always point backwards
But, our ship is best armed when positioned rather broadside to the enemy. So, what if our ship from afar, and to instruments always looked broadside to the enemy? Plus, without an indicator of direction?
Here is what I think would attend these requirements as a camouflage design:
Here is what this is supposed to look like in space through a telescope:
what SCITALIS is supposed to look broadside to the viewer
Minimal reflection from the skirts and shields hints no heading at all except for veterans (btw the ship is facing the left side).
You may have noticed that on the scheme the top and bottom of the skirts are also painted instead of being mirrored all the way up, that's in case the ship finds itself with it's top or belly pointed at the viewer, in which case the image formed would be identical to the one we just saw.
Does it work in practice though?
Having the orange heat-sinks extended doesn't help much in this, plus the material on the fuel tanks has to be of low reflectivity to not flag the rear side of the ship - a more adequate approach to this problem is not just one layer of reflective finishing - but a gradient of different reflectivities to compensate for hull shape and area, and so properly disperse a near uniform bloom.
Ok, what about the infrared signature?
I'm glad you would ask that, and it's where it enters the black paint - its objective is to build up heat and uniform the SCITALIS heat signature in infrared too.
Of course, the paint wouldn't do all the work alone, some heat-sinks and periferic generators for this specific purpose may be used for that matter.
Now, a combat analysis may and will heavily point out which end is which simply by analyzing the firing procedures from the ship, as all the weapons are concentrated in the ship's deck.But, because it needs you to fire a lead of salvos first, they are already in disadvantage.
That's where my favorite maneuver enters - the death rotating toothpick.
Getting your ship to rotate and "randomly" thrust in erratic or rosette paths may difficult getting shot (that's why ships should be able to maneuver in similar efficiency in any direction) - BUT, spin too fast and you will slap the enemy's bullets, too slow and you're an easy target. I'm not sure at which speed would be ideal the ship to spin without messing artificial gravity inside too much and still be useful, plus if the structure would be strong enough to take the stress.
How about geometry?
Let's make a heatmap of where a shot is more likely to land onto our ship, I'm using the surface angle to mark where the shot would meet the thinnest part of the hull IF it were of uniform thickness.
Now if the enemy is straight ahead:
Or directly above the deck:
Choosing a couple of these critical angles like above-broadside as reference for armor reinforcement would do well in making such ships able to tank more hits.
Notice also that, despite having large surface area exposed to fire - a good percentage of it isn't worth shooting at all because of armor slope.
And now, assuming our shipmakers did armor the vessel correctly, there is another reason to why ships shouldn't fight face-to-face in space - SHRAPNEL SCATTERING
This humble simulation pictures the enemy firing a 500 projectile salvo (at 520m/s) from 1,5km away... Friction coefficient of the SCITALIS hull has been set to 0,25 as in range of coated steel. Some projectiles will also be deleted on contact to simulate penetration.
Some shots miss the ship entirely, but the ones that don't penetrate it, ricochet and bring shrapnel with them.
The problem is that as soon as the salvo finishes passing by the target, the cloud of ricocheted rounds and shrapnel is already 2~3km in radius from the target.
If the ship was moving towards a valuable target or group of allied ships, you've now created a massive cloud of bullets and metal shards moving towards them.
A better rendered model of the ship
In this gif the ship rotates once every 3,25 seconds or 18 rpm, which imparts over 66 G of force on anyone over the extremes of the ship, and between 10 to 20 G within 50 meters from the center of mass of the ship, needless to say, such evasive maneuvers end up not being healthy for a Human crew, which is limited to safe spins of 2 rpm, a fully automated vessel would be needed if this maneuver is to be used.
I hope you've learned something from this thought exercise, and thanks for your appreciation.
- M.O. Valent, 27/06/2021
- M.O. Valent, edited 09/09/2022
- M.O. Valent, edited 15/09/2022
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