[Diaspora] The Physics of Space Battles

[Declan Feeney]

An interesting little article here by aerospace engineering Ph.D.
candidate  Joseph Shoer on "The Physics of Space Battles".

http://gizmodo.com/5426453/the-physics-of-space-battles

Of particular interest I found the section about Space combat near to large
bodies:

"Another is that combat in orbit would be very different from combat in
"deep space," which is what you probably think of as how space combat should
be – where a spacecraft thrusts one way, and then keeps going that way
forever. No, around a planet, the tactical advantage in a battle would be
determined by orbit dynamics: which ship is in a lower (and faster) orbit
than which; who has a circular orbit and who has gone for an ellipse;
relative rendezvous trajectories that look like winding spirals rather than
straight lines."

The whole thing is an interesting read.

Its also worth reading the comments. I can now see ships carrying large
tanks of water solely for the purpose of venting heat into space.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phreeow.net/pipermail/diaspora_phreeow.net/attachments/20091221/27700e1c/attachment.html>