First of all, we should clarify a concept and correct a misunderstanding misled by movie animation. The basic knowledge is that any object in space makes a circular or elliptical maneuver along a central world. Even if the rocket rises vertically, it is actually an elliptical orbit with a large focal length. Two cases show that, firstly, when the engine ignition maneuver is not in orbit, the ship will move along the current orbit, and the ship orientation has no effect on the maneuver. Secondly, once the spacecraft is ignited, its orbit will change immediately according to Kepler's law. When these two situations are clear, let's talk about the mobile mode. We will analyze this one by one through scenario analysis. Suppose a spacecraft with infinite instantaneous acceleration potential energy orbits the equatorial plane of the earth in low earth orbit and ignites in the tangent plane perpendicular to the orbital plane without considering the gravity of the moon. If it is ignited instantly in the positive direction, the ignition point will become perigee and the orbit will become elliptical orbit. If the ignition is reversed, it will become apogee and elliptical orbit. If it is ignited up and down, its instantaneous speed in the vertical direction of the orbit will change from 0 to running speed, then its orbit will become an escape orbit with an angle of 45 degrees from the original orbit, and finally it will break away from the gravity of the earth and enter an orbit around the sun with a height similar to that of the earth's orbit, but the orbit angle is very small. If you don't want to enter the orbit around the sun, you need to decelerate immediately after the orbit change.
Well, this is the law of space navigation. What I want to say above is meaningless to warships. The reason is that the above maneuver requires more than hundreds of g of acceleration, which is not enough for the human body. With the current laws of physics, it is impossible for human beings to develop an engine with such performance. The plane was born because man discovered the law of lift. At present, the research direction of mankind is high specific impulse engine, not high instantaneous thrust engine. Under the current knowledge of physics, the only way to have this possibility is to realize it by distorting space. Therefore, according to the current laws of physics, space warships actually run in a fixed orbit and can only maneuver slowly and slightly in a short period of time, and the rising intersection point of the two warships' orbits becomes the intersection point. By clarifying the above concepts, we can understand what the space war is like under the laws of physics at present, that is, in the naval battle 2000 years ago, both sides basically slid along the track, aimed their weapons at the enemy to attack, and finally pursued or did not maneuver at the ascending intersection and fled in the opposite direction.
Then there is the mode of locking the enemy. There is no fog of war in space. Humans can see Venus with naked eyes on the earth, and even find that they can clearly see the ravines on Mars and the distant Uranus Neptune through large astronomical telescopes. In this case, a sudden attack is obviously unrealistic. Sneak attack is impossible unless all bands, including spectral bands, have real stealth technology. So what will the war be like? The answer is nowhere to hide, no maneuver to avoid.
What's the difference with the Earth Warship? Because there is no need to waste a lot of structural parts to overcome their own gravity, space warships even Tito has nothing to do, so the defense will be greatly improved. The most deadly killer of ocean-going warships is the attack on buoyancy reserves, such as torpedoes. During World War II, ship-borne torpedoes can pour thousands of tons of seawater instantly, even aerial torpedoes can cause hundreds of thousands of tons of accumulated water, and the buoyancy reserve of the strongest and largest battleship "Yamato" is only 1 10,000 tons. Therefore, pumping water on ocean-going warships is very important. A space warship is more like a tank. The way to destroy it is either to make it lose its combat effectiveness and abandon the ship by itself, or to destroy the whole warship in an instant or kill the crew. Therefore, compared with air and sea battles, it is actually too fast, and the protection idea of warships is more like tanks.
Finally, the weapon system, the lethality of laser weapons obtained by crystal refraction comes from laser combustion, which is very effective for compact components, but for space warships bombarded by cosmic rays at any time. The animation in the movie is not a laser weapon, but a particle beam weapon with special properties, such as Megaray, which can cut everything off in Gundam. In Star Trek, phase guns and cracking guns emit subatomic weapons through Lorentz force or Ampere force, with a subatomic atom overhead, which will release a lot of energy after being hit. In this sense, it is even an atomic weapon. What is the cleanest weapon in space? The answer is heavy iron. I believe everyone knows the story that a screw destroyed a satellite. When the angle between the two warships is large, the initial velocity of the orbital velocity difference can be obtained even if the iron weight does not accelerate. What if the orbit angle is small and the speed difference is low? At present, the only thing known in physics that can release a lot of energy is plasma, and rail guns can also emit the same plasma, which is the closest phase in physics at present.
Well, the three most important aspects of maneuver, protection and firepower have been made clear, so what will the warship look like? I think it will be cigar-shaped, medium-sized and large acceleration orbit position. According to the different battle orbits, we can choose iron weight or plasma. We can even describe the two orbits as anti-air combat and same air combat. . The rear engine of warship is mainly used for maneuvering orbit change in daily navigation. It can use the dual mode of non-working medium engine and physical energy to obtain the maximum sailing distance. A large number of large thrust engines driven by physical energy are arranged on the top, bottom, left and right of the cigar, which slightly changes the track direction in the battle. The cigar-shaped front projection is small, which can minimize the probability of being hit. Cigar-shaped cylinder layout facilitates the installation of large gyroscopes around the hull to obtain the best directivity.
Fighting illusion, a warship A in orbit around the sun at the height of the earth found a warship B that cut into the solar system at high speed through a large radio detection system, and the warship B gradually decelerated into the gravitational slingshot orbit around the sun, or continued to decelerate to any orbit around the sun that would not cause escape. . At this time, it may last for several months, and both sides begin to enter the visual observation stage to evaluate the combat effectiveness. The weak will try to escape, and it is impossible to be caught up under the condition of considerable mobility. If it is judged that the strength is equal, the two sides will lock each other's bows in the direction of the enemy and continue to reach the artillery range after several months. After a long exchange of fire, the inferior side will immediately speed up the maneuver to try to get rid of the battle, and the superior side will continue to attack until the ascending point maneuvers into the same orbital plane and pursues.
From the above description, we can basically see that it is very difficult to carry out wars for several years under the limitation of human life span of 100 years, but even in the state of greatly improving mechanical power, due to the limitation of Kepler's law, it will not have a great impact on the overall design.