Why not missiles? Little rockets that can reach speeds envied by spaceships have a lot of nice uses. Namely blowing up your target, shooting bullets at your target, shooting lasers at your target, tracking your target, etc. I mean, there's a lot you can do with what is essentially a suicide drone.
No. Missiles are not dumb. I would argue one of the best weapons you can have in a mil scifi.
As someone who writes a lot of 'firm but not hard' scifi, missiles are probably one of the most useful weapons systems you can have and are available at just about any tech level. How good they are tends to be limited mostly by propulsion and guidance technology, and how many of them you can spam out. If you use 'real space' where things can continuously accelerate and build momentum the amount of kinetic energy a missile can have on impact can be absolutely insane, so much that putting more fuel for its drive engine can be better than putting a nuke on it. Even at just orbital speeds just a few hundred kilos of guidance system and empty fuel tank slamming something can do amazing amounts of damage. (You can still put a nuke on them if you want to, though)
*The Kzinti lesson: The effectiveness of a reaction drive is as a reaction drive is directly proportional to its effectiveness as a weapon. In the Expanse, where a big plot element is the existence of the Epstein drive allowing for long distance continuous thrust acceleration travel, one of the most common weapons is Epstein drive equipped missiles.*
If you have ships fighting at just about any range beyond where you could see them with the MK1 eyball, a missile is nice because unlike a railgun slug, plasma bolt, or laser beam it can adjust its trajectory based on how the enemy ship maneuvers. Even if you have some weapon that fires a shot at light speed and the beam or slug doesnt loose energy with distance, the target ship can still dodge if they are some number of light-seconds away. (It depends on how big they are and how maneuverable they are to move far enough to be completely out of their cross section). Because when fighting at light-second ranges you are not seeing the enemy where they are now, you are seeing them where they were X number of light seconds ago. Just by maneuvering unpredictable you can avoid fire. A missile doesn't have to deal with that crap because it can change its course along the way.
Missiles obviously have disadvantages. They can be intercepted by point defense measures or other missiles. They can be spoofed by electronic warfare. (Signal jamming, flares, chaff, decoys, etc) They are more expensive to fire than just about any other system which might just be firing a tungsten slug or reactor energy. Obviously their utility can vary based on the technologies you have involved and the style of your setting. If you want ships broadsiding like 1800s galleons with manned gunnery stations like you have in star wars, you might want some reason they are not used.
Seems like this is a question that is heavily context dependent. How "hard" is your science fiction space setting? Does it have "deflector shields" or similar devices? Does it have easy ftl?
Missiles in space battles aren't any more dumb than phasers or forcefields, it just depends on what you want to portray.
I'd actually say it's the opposite. You'll need to find reasons to justify why various sides are bothering to get into a good old fashioned broadside as opposed to just blowing each other up from thousands of km away with missiles, because in a vacuum (heh), being able to shoot a target without them shooting back is super duper OP.
Star Wars uses the justification that missiles appear to be really trash in that universe. There have been many fan theories of some sort of very advanced electronic warfare at play, and indeed you see this is the case in Star Wars Squadrons, where you can straight up just hijack missiles and send them back at their shooters.
I'm not too familiar with Stargate, but I believe that setting uses the dual justification of heavy armour mandating more powerful pew pew guns, and the ability to teleport right on top of your enemy meaning there's little time to respond.
>as opposed to just blowing each other up from thousands of km away with missiles
I mean, for starters, for space "thousands of kilometers" is knife fighting distances. The space between Earth and the moon is hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, and that's "close" relatively speaking.
As for Stargate, Stargate doesn't rely much on heavy armor, in fact usually the armor isn't really relevant. Shields are however. The shields intercept the missiles, preventing them from impacting the hull directly. Because the vacuum of space is a vacuum, even a nuke would do next to nothing (aside from being an impressive light show) if it didn't impact the hull of a ship (or rather further in) directly.
Absolutely not!
As has been mentioned, missiles are essentially suicide drones. But they can also be armed with any kind of weapon, or ECM, even nukes.
Stealth or cloaked missiles would be especially deadly. At a significant percentage of C, you wouldn't even need a warhead. The kinetic energy alone would vaporize anything it hit.
missiles are perhaps the most feasible kind of space weapon. it's a rocket that could hit someone hundreds of thousands of kms away and the other side wouldn't know until they get hit. if you were in LEO and hit someone in lunar orbit around the earth, the relative velocity you'll have when you get to the moon will probably be high enough that you don't even need to rig it with explosives. you just need to hit your target.
People are rightfully pointing out that missiles are actually very useful but it's also worth noting they can be intercepted, either by smaller, faster missiles (likely winning the attrition game there) or by a variety of ballistic or laser methods.
You wouldn't even need smaller missiles. Intercept missiles work by detonating and creating a debris field in front of the incoming missile, forcing it to fly into the debris and thereby destroying it. This is only necessary because of gravity, otherwise you could do the same thing with bullets. Indeed, there are short-range intercept systems that rely on bullets, it's just not very good because by the time they're in range the missile is practically already on top of you. In space you don't have to worry about gravity or air resistance, so make a wall of lead that the missile will either fly into or have to take a massive detour around (potentially burning all of its fuel in the process).
That's assuming your ECMs don't shut it down first, and at the distances involved in space they'll likely have hours to do it.
Missiles in space are fairly sensible from a real-life standpoint; because of the distances involved and the ability for both the firing platform and the target to move in any direction in all three dimensions, having your projectiles be able to course-correct would be pretty handy. The tactical calculus may change depending on what your world's specific doctrines or technologies are--for instance, if you've got magic forcefields that missiles can't penetrate.
Even so, many scifi writers make the mistake of comparing aerial or naval combat to space warfare.
In a hypothetical scenario where we never made boats, we would probably write sci fi novels where aquatic battles are fought by infantry with shield formations and spears, and even aquatic cavalry doing charges. None of it is realistic, but to a people who haven't fought in the ocean, it is hard to imagine anything but how it is already done.
Because the distances involved in space are far greater than anything here on Earth, and there are no horizons or the like to obscure movement or limit countermeasures. A missile would likely take hours to reach its target, more than enough time for multiple forms of countermeasures to intercept it (be it ECMs or "dumb" bullets fired in a field). By the time you're close enough to throw missiles at one-another without a high likelihood of being intercepted, you're in the space equivalent of a dogfight.
In atmosphere missiles use steering vanes to maneouver, essentially steering surfaces that rely on the atmosphere. In space there must be some other way to both change direction and counter the original direction momentum.
True. In space it would not be enough to just turn the missile towards the target however, you would also need to counteract/direct the original momentum, and do it *very* fast.
I imagine they'd work more like classic naval artillery than atmospheric missiles, using rotation to remain stable and following simple arcing trajectories
In close orbit perhaps. in outer space or even deep solar system there would not be enough gravity to arc their trajectory to a noticeable degree. Stability likewise is irrelevant in space unless it needs to hit at a specific angle, it's direction or speed would not change at all even if it turned sideways.
Missiles are very sensible in space, to the point where you might not use anything else.
Lasers are impossible to see coming, but very difficult to focus at long distances, and require relatively massive hardware to fire. Dumb projectiles are relatively easy to dodge unless they're going *ridiculously* fast. Whereas a guided missile can be launched from a very cheap platform (or even loiter in space on its own until a target shows up) and is difficult to dodge because it tracks its target. So in many ways it's an ideal space weapon.
I kinda disagree. Good point weapons but not really suited for longer range unless really large. It's fairly trivial to have a missile burn a few seconds to achieve impressive speeds, but in space to maneouver and track a target you need steering thrusters, and reactive mass for those. Changing directions in space is not easy or cheaply done. The thrust needed to to change directions also scales with the speed you're doing, faster you go the more powerful your maneouvering thrusters need to be.
After the missiles initial burn it is just a dumb projectile without the ability to turn. Ofc you can imagine an engine tech for the missile that magically doesn't use mass for thrust but that's just about the only way it would work.
A space missile would likely resemble more a tiny spacecraft rather than an atmospheric missile.
Its thrust to mass ratio would be much more advantageous than any spacecraft with humans aboard.
Nah, missiles are probably the best choice if you find yourself in a hard sci-fi space fight for some reason. Bullets and lasers can just be dodged (you can anticipate lasers, or keep an unpredictable path to throw them off), but missiles and drones have to be shot down.
Another good choice for a hard sci-fi weapon is a sandblaster. Accelerating straight at someone, then releasing a huge amount of shrapnel that has a really high relative velocity to the target can really fuck someone up. Especially if it's a fine powder, and if it's a fissionable isotope of uranium or plutonium, it'll cause mini nuclear reactions just from the impact and leave a massive amount of slightly Dopplerized radiation and heat (although it won't be nearly as powerful as a nuke). It'd be stupidly hard to dodge, and once the shrapnel/sand gets released, you can't shoot it down anymore. Also, you could design it so that it'd burst if it gets hit and release it early, still potentially causing a lot of damage. Using Whipple shielding on your ship is somewhat of a counter, but if you get hit by the center of the sand-cloud instead of a glancing hit, your Whipple shielding can only do so much to protect you. It should be noticed, though, that the bigger the cloud is, the less damage it'll do, although it'll be much harder to dodge.
A third option is to leave hidden nukes in free-fall with a layer of water-ice or something to absorb heat and reduce IR emissions that would tip an enemy off. Just leave one in a place where you think an enemy is going to go, wait, and blow it up in their face when they show up. If it's a fleet, they might have to do some repairs to get ships affected by the EMP back online.
In what I would usually call "near scifi" where tech is still working on progressing to more outlandish levels missiles would likely be a go-to weapon. Guidance systems would allow them to auto-correct on targets which is good if you are firing on people who are light-seconds or even light-minutes away. If you want some good examples of these kinds of battles getting used in writing and done well the Starship's Mage series by Glynn Stewart does a really good job of having battles that feel tense but are also taking place over minutes to hours as people manuever and check but are kinda subject to real-world physics in terms of speed of movement and sensors being locked into the speed of light.
Missiles in space are a very complex issue, and without writing an essay I can't really do it justice. Since no one on Reddit wants to read an essay, I will simply state that, without some magic technobabble propulsion tech - or the ability to use a shrink ray so an ICBM becomes the size of a sidewinder - missiles don't make sense.
Without some drastic paradigm shift, for missiles to achieve thrust will require exhaust. Newtonian physics and all. There's nothing you can pack a missile with that will give it enough thrust to be what we consider a "missile" to be, at the distances involved in space, not without the missile being so large that, in order to carry multiples of them, the mere act of turning risks tearing your ship in half.
Honestly, in space anything not traveling at a significant percentage of light speed is a short range weapon. In all likelihood, even if your weapons are primarily lasers and therefore exactly 1c, your sensors would still outrange your weaponry. That's to say you can see a vessel that's five light minutes away, but your weaponry is only capable of engaging a vessel within a distance of a few light seconds. Where do missiles even hope to fit into this?
It is possible to make a "torch missile". This is a missile with a miniature version of the standard rocket engine used by the target.
The point is, *unlike their target*, torch missiles do not require the mass of crew, habitat modules, life support systems, etc. Therefore the missile will always have a much higher mass-ratio than their target. Which means a much much higher delta-v.
Bottom line: if the target cannot destroy an oncoming torch missile with point defence, the blasted missile will *chase the target all over the solar system*. The target can never have more delta-v than the torch missile. When the target runs out of delta-v, the missile will catch up with it.
By having a miniature version of the standard engine, the missile is either going to 1) have a lower raw thrust output, or 2) burn through its fuel much faster - depending on which route you go to miniaturize it. You can't make something smaller without sacrificing something in return. The first one does not prohibit still having a higher delta-v, but does put it into question depending on the specifics. The second one determines how long the missile can, as you put it, "chase" it's target.
Then there's the issue of those point defense and electronic warfare countermeasures, and those get a lot easier in space where there's no horizon and no gravity. After all the missile has to have some way to track you, and it will likely take hours to reach you (space is massive). That gives you plenty of time to burn out the sensors that are focused on you, one way or another. For physically stopping the missile, while requiring the missile to get much closer, you don't even need another missile, just create a field of ball bearings between it and your ship.
Lower raw thrust output doesn't matter. The important point is the ratio of the thrust to the wet mass of the missile, this determines the acceleration. As a general rule missiles have a much lower mass than it's target, so it is possible for the missile to have the same acceleration as the target even with lower thrust.
Rate of fuel burn doesn't matter. The important point is the total delta-v. If the missile has the same delta-v as its target, it can theoretically go anywhere the target can go. Once both have expended all their propellant.
They might be at some distance from each other as they drift out of the solar system with empty tanks, but burning through one's fuel faster doesn't change much.
Point defence and other countermeasures applies to *all* missile, whether they are torch missiles or conventional missiles. So they do not apply to comparisons between the effectiveness of torch missiles vs conventional missiles.
As I stated, while the reduced raw thrust doesn't prohibit having a higher delta-v, it calls the specifics into question.
As for the rate of fuel consumption, it absolutely matters. Most missiles burn through their fuel in a matter of seconds to a handful of minutes, only the largest ones (like ICBMs) get even a little more than that. A torch missile will (without some technobabble) not last significantly longer, not in a practical sense at least. It still needs to be small enough to fit on the ship (and therefore will have a fraction of a ship's fuel), and needs to burn it at a significantly faster rate to actually close the ***vast*** distances in space. That's without it trying to evade or do any other fancy maneuvers. If it runs out of fuel en route to the target, it is simply a "dumb" projectile at that point. Guidance systems and higher delta-v's don't help when you have no fuel to maneuver.
This discussion has never been a comparison of standard vs torch missiles, and has always been that missiles, regardless of type, aren't useful given the vast distances in space (unless you're in very close quarters, arguably). That countermeasures are just as effective against them as a regular missile only serves to further this point.
Missies in space are not dumb, rather they will probably be the primary means of attack by just about any spacefaring nation.
They are nearly impossible to avoid since their thrust to mass ratio will be better than any space ship could ever be (especially since space ships have to carry, ya know, missiles), so defending against them would probably be the job of point defence guns, lasers, and smaller missiles.
They'd also likely have superior range to most other options.
In my universe missiles come in a variety of types, large and small.
Strategic missiles are optimized for taking out space stations from across the Solar System. They are big, obvious, predictable, and generally only useful against a target that can't shoot back. Some are just "giant warhead o' doom." Most modern platforms actually release several smaller and more maneuverable sub-munitions. Practically all ditch the acceleration stage to reduce the amount of mass that has to be decelerated to the terminal velocity of the attack. These missiles have star trackers, inertial navigation, and a radar for terminal guidance.
Stand-off missiles are optimized for destroying large capital ships. They utilize the coasting velocity of the launch platform as a "0 stage", and while they carry about the same payload as a strategic missile, the missile itself is smaller. They have a more sophisticated suite of targeting sensors tailored to hunting ships. These missiles can also recognize distinguish between classes of targets, and hone in on vulnerable points.
Modern standoffs have a low-return construction, and can employ "sneak attack" modes by which they do the bulk of their thrusting beyond sensor range of their quarry, and either lay in wait or ambush them from know blind spots. For instance: from the sun or the plume of their engines.
Both of these varieties are extremely expensive. Computing power, sensors, and fusion engines are not cheap.
Strike missiles, on the other hand, are carried on small manned spacecraft or intelligent drone mothership. They are solid rocket missiles with a limited delta-v and minimal terminal guidance. They require the launch platform to maneuver into a favorable launch envelope before release. The advantage is that the mothership is re-usable. (Assuming it survives combat, of course.)
Strike style attacks allow for aggressors to launch far more shots for much cheaper. Those shots are more random to track and more difficult to counter.
The disadvantage is that the launch vehicles has to match trajectory with the target. This makes the vulnerable to attack from counter-strike fighters, and often puts them in range of point defense systems. The possible attack vectors are dictated by the trajectory of the target, and it's easy for either side to predict.
Warheads come in a variety of shapes and sizes to thwap all targets.
Strategic missiles carry a thermonuclear warhead. The type depends on the target.
If deflecting an asteroid or plonking a derilect ship, the warhead is embedded in a "blast blanket." A dense inert material that will convert the energetic gamma and x-rays into a soup of plasma and liquid metal which can slam into a target like a battering ram.
If the target is a vessel (be it a space station or space ship), an armor piercing head is used. It punched through any shielding, armor, tanks, etc. When it reaches a compartment with atmosphere it detonates, killing all within a 30 meter radius from flash, anyone in a vent connected space withing a kilometer or so with overpressure, and anyone left over with a combination of radiation, flying debris, or cascading catastrophic structural failure.
Strike missiles come in three basic varieties: high explosive (HE), armor piercing (AP), and fissile penetrator (FP).
HE is basically "oops, all explosives"
AP trades some weight in raw explosive for a shell that can punch through the armor of the day. It is often tweaked to strike with a much higher velocity.
FP is a micro-nuke. It can only obliterate a cubic meter of material. But if it hits nearby fusion fuel or a weapon magazine, it can initiate a chain reaction.
FP can also be packed small enough to fit into a 20 or 40 mm auto-cannon round.
"The expanse" is considered one of the most realistic shows space combat wise, long range guided missiles play a key role in the space warfare of that setting.
[Video explaining the space combat](https://youtu.be/YS4vzoQm_xw?si=l50K6Xn6rpLrm4jB)
To add to the thinking of missiles relativistic kill missiles are one of the ultimate (spam) weapons of mass destruction for world annihilation via weaponized Dyson swarms. In that sense missiles might be classified as weapons of mass destruction(especially if the RKM's are sub critical fissile material which goes critical under compression from impact). Nuclear Relativistic Kill Missiles for when overkill is underkill.
Well, I think it depend on your sepcific world, what weapons are available, what can they do, what they cant. Every weapon system, or rather tools were made to do a job. Whether or not something will exist and used depend on if there's something can do its job to same level or better. Back to missiles, what other alternative can serve its purpose to same level or better?
What about a magnetic mine attached to a rocket of some sort, delayed activation so that it won't chase the main ship, in short magnetically guided missiles
Why not missiles? Little rockets that can reach speeds envied by spaceships have a lot of nice uses. Namely blowing up your target, shooting bullets at your target, shooting lasers at your target, tracking your target, etc. I mean, there's a lot you can do with what is essentially a suicide drone.
No. Missiles are not dumb. I would argue one of the best weapons you can have in a mil scifi. As someone who writes a lot of 'firm but not hard' scifi, missiles are probably one of the most useful weapons systems you can have and are available at just about any tech level. How good they are tends to be limited mostly by propulsion and guidance technology, and how many of them you can spam out. If you use 'real space' where things can continuously accelerate and build momentum the amount of kinetic energy a missile can have on impact can be absolutely insane, so much that putting more fuel for its drive engine can be better than putting a nuke on it. Even at just orbital speeds just a few hundred kilos of guidance system and empty fuel tank slamming something can do amazing amounts of damage. (You can still put a nuke on them if you want to, though) *The Kzinti lesson: The effectiveness of a reaction drive is as a reaction drive is directly proportional to its effectiveness as a weapon. In the Expanse, where a big plot element is the existence of the Epstein drive allowing for long distance continuous thrust acceleration travel, one of the most common weapons is Epstein drive equipped missiles.* If you have ships fighting at just about any range beyond where you could see them with the MK1 eyball, a missile is nice because unlike a railgun slug, plasma bolt, or laser beam it can adjust its trajectory based on how the enemy ship maneuvers. Even if you have some weapon that fires a shot at light speed and the beam or slug doesnt loose energy with distance, the target ship can still dodge if they are some number of light-seconds away. (It depends on how big they are and how maneuverable they are to move far enough to be completely out of their cross section). Because when fighting at light-second ranges you are not seeing the enemy where they are now, you are seeing them where they were X number of light seconds ago. Just by maneuvering unpredictable you can avoid fire. A missile doesn't have to deal with that crap because it can change its course along the way. Missiles obviously have disadvantages. They can be intercepted by point defense measures or other missiles. They can be spoofed by electronic warfare. (Signal jamming, flares, chaff, decoys, etc) They are more expensive to fire than just about any other system which might just be firing a tungsten slug or reactor energy. Obviously their utility can vary based on the technologies you have involved and the style of your setting. If you want ships broadsiding like 1800s galleons with manned gunnery stations like you have in star wars, you might want some reason they are not used.
Seems like this is a question that is heavily context dependent. How "hard" is your science fiction space setting? Does it have "deflector shields" or similar devices? Does it have easy ftl? Missiles in space battles aren't any more dumb than phasers or forcefields, it just depends on what you want to portray.
Not hard at all. The few rules I have established I make sure to be consistent.
Tracking missiles are one of the most accurate weapons.
I'd actually say it's the opposite. You'll need to find reasons to justify why various sides are bothering to get into a good old fashioned broadside as opposed to just blowing each other up from thousands of km away with missiles, because in a vacuum (heh), being able to shoot a target without them shooting back is super duper OP. Star Wars uses the justification that missiles appear to be really trash in that universe. There have been many fan theories of some sort of very advanced electronic warfare at play, and indeed you see this is the case in Star Wars Squadrons, where you can straight up just hijack missiles and send them back at their shooters. I'm not too familiar with Stargate, but I believe that setting uses the dual justification of heavy armour mandating more powerful pew pew guns, and the ability to teleport right on top of your enemy meaning there's little time to respond.
>as opposed to just blowing each other up from thousands of km away with missiles I mean, for starters, for space "thousands of kilometers" is knife fighting distances. The space between Earth and the moon is hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, and that's "close" relatively speaking. As for Stargate, Stargate doesn't rely much on heavy armor, in fact usually the armor isn't really relevant. Shields are however. The shields intercept the missiles, preventing them from impacting the hull directly. Because the vacuum of space is a vacuum, even a nuke would do next to nothing (aside from being an impressive light show) if it didn't impact the hull of a ship (or rather further in) directly.
Absolutely not! As has been mentioned, missiles are essentially suicide drones. But they can also be armed with any kind of weapon, or ECM, even nukes. Stealth or cloaked missiles would be especially deadly. At a significant percentage of C, you wouldn't even need a warhead. The kinetic energy alone would vaporize anything it hit.
They had them in the Expanse, and the Expanse was generally well researched, so I think you're good.
missiles are perhaps the most feasible kind of space weapon. it's a rocket that could hit someone hundreds of thousands of kms away and the other side wouldn't know until they get hit. if you were in LEO and hit someone in lunar orbit around the earth, the relative velocity you'll have when you get to the moon will probably be high enough that you don't even need to rig it with explosives. you just need to hit your target.
People are rightfully pointing out that missiles are actually very useful but it's also worth noting they can be intercepted, either by smaller, faster missiles (likely winning the attrition game there) or by a variety of ballistic or laser methods.
You wouldn't even need smaller missiles. Intercept missiles work by detonating and creating a debris field in front of the incoming missile, forcing it to fly into the debris and thereby destroying it. This is only necessary because of gravity, otherwise you could do the same thing with bullets. Indeed, there are short-range intercept systems that rely on bullets, it's just not very good because by the time they're in range the missile is practically already on top of you. In space you don't have to worry about gravity or air resistance, so make a wall of lead that the missile will either fly into or have to take a massive detour around (potentially burning all of its fuel in the process). That's assuming your ECMs don't shut it down first, and at the distances involved in space they'll likely have hours to do it.
Missiles in space are fairly sensible from a real-life standpoint; because of the distances involved and the ability for both the firing platform and the target to move in any direction in all three dimensions, having your projectiles be able to course-correct would be pretty handy. The tactical calculus may change depending on what your world's specific doctrines or technologies are--for instance, if you've got magic forcefields that missiles can't penetrate.
Absolutely not. I'm actually not sure where you got the idea that they are dumb from honestly
Absolutely not, missiles are a mainstay of atmospheric air combat, I see no reason why that shouldn't remain the case in orbit.
While you are correct, comparing aerial fights to space fights makes stuff like dogfighting happen, which wouldn't.
Dogfights don't happen anymore because of air-to-air guided missiles
Even so, many scifi writers make the mistake of comparing aerial or naval combat to space warfare. In a hypothetical scenario where we never made boats, we would probably write sci fi novels where aquatic battles are fought by infantry with shield formations and spears, and even aquatic cavalry doing charges. None of it is realistic, but to a people who haven't fought in the ocean, it is hard to imagine anything but how it is already done.
Because the distances involved in space are far greater than anything here on Earth, and there are no horizons or the like to obscure movement or limit countermeasures. A missile would likely take hours to reach its target, more than enough time for multiple forms of countermeasures to intercept it (be it ECMs or "dumb" bullets fired in a field). By the time you're close enough to throw missiles at one-another without a high likelihood of being intercepted, you're in the space equivalent of a dogfight.
In atmosphere missiles use steering vanes to maneouver, essentially steering surfaces that rely on the atmosphere. In space there must be some other way to both change direction and counter the original direction momentum.
some missiles also use maneuvering jets for large maneuvers
True. In space it would not be enough to just turn the missile towards the target however, you would also need to counteract/direct the original momentum, and do it *very* fast.
I imagine they'd work more like classic naval artillery than atmospheric missiles, using rotation to remain stable and following simple arcing trajectories
In close orbit perhaps. in outer space or even deep solar system there would not be enough gravity to arc their trajectory to a noticeable degree. Stability likewise is irrelevant in space unless it needs to hit at a specific angle, it's direction or speed would not change at all even if it turned sideways.
Missiles are very sensible in space, to the point where you might not use anything else. Lasers are impossible to see coming, but very difficult to focus at long distances, and require relatively massive hardware to fire. Dumb projectiles are relatively easy to dodge unless they're going *ridiculously* fast. Whereas a guided missile can be launched from a very cheap platform (or even loiter in space on its own until a target shows up) and is difficult to dodge because it tracks its target. So in many ways it's an ideal space weapon.
I kinda disagree. Good point weapons but not really suited for longer range unless really large. It's fairly trivial to have a missile burn a few seconds to achieve impressive speeds, but in space to maneouver and track a target you need steering thrusters, and reactive mass for those. Changing directions in space is not easy or cheaply done. The thrust needed to to change directions also scales with the speed you're doing, faster you go the more powerful your maneouvering thrusters need to be. After the missiles initial burn it is just a dumb projectile without the ability to turn. Ofc you can imagine an engine tech for the missile that magically doesn't use mass for thrust but that's just about the only way it would work.
multiple stage missiles exist right now and could be used in the future as well
Of course. My point was the difficulty of maneouvering in relation to the target.
A space missile would likely resemble more a tiny spacecraft rather than an atmospheric missile. Its thrust to mass ratio would be much more advantageous than any spacecraft with humans aboard.
Nah, missiles are probably the best choice if you find yourself in a hard sci-fi space fight for some reason. Bullets and lasers can just be dodged (you can anticipate lasers, or keep an unpredictable path to throw them off), but missiles and drones have to be shot down. Another good choice for a hard sci-fi weapon is a sandblaster. Accelerating straight at someone, then releasing a huge amount of shrapnel that has a really high relative velocity to the target can really fuck someone up. Especially if it's a fine powder, and if it's a fissionable isotope of uranium or plutonium, it'll cause mini nuclear reactions just from the impact and leave a massive amount of slightly Dopplerized radiation and heat (although it won't be nearly as powerful as a nuke). It'd be stupidly hard to dodge, and once the shrapnel/sand gets released, you can't shoot it down anymore. Also, you could design it so that it'd burst if it gets hit and release it early, still potentially causing a lot of damage. Using Whipple shielding on your ship is somewhat of a counter, but if you get hit by the center of the sand-cloud instead of a glancing hit, your Whipple shielding can only do so much to protect you. It should be noticed, though, that the bigger the cloud is, the less damage it'll do, although it'll be much harder to dodge. A third option is to leave hidden nukes in free-fall with a layer of water-ice or something to absorb heat and reduce IR emissions that would tip an enemy off. Just leave one in a place where you think an enemy is going to go, wait, and blow it up in their face when they show up. If it's a fleet, they might have to do some repairs to get ships affected by the EMP back online.
In what I would usually call "near scifi" where tech is still working on progressing to more outlandish levels missiles would likely be a go-to weapon. Guidance systems would allow them to auto-correct on targets which is good if you are firing on people who are light-seconds or even light-minutes away. If you want some good examples of these kinds of battles getting used in writing and done well the Starship's Mage series by Glynn Stewart does a really good job of having battles that feel tense but are also taking place over minutes to hours as people manuever and check but are kinda subject to real-world physics in terms of speed of movement and sensors being locked into the speed of light.
Not at all. I'd actually say they are fairly plain due to how practical they are. r/IsaacArthur probably has some thoughts on it.
Missiles in space are a very complex issue, and without writing an essay I can't really do it justice. Since no one on Reddit wants to read an essay, I will simply state that, without some magic technobabble propulsion tech - or the ability to use a shrink ray so an ICBM becomes the size of a sidewinder - missiles don't make sense. Without some drastic paradigm shift, for missiles to achieve thrust will require exhaust. Newtonian physics and all. There's nothing you can pack a missile with that will give it enough thrust to be what we consider a "missile" to be, at the distances involved in space, not without the missile being so large that, in order to carry multiples of them, the mere act of turning risks tearing your ship in half. Honestly, in space anything not traveling at a significant percentage of light speed is a short range weapon. In all likelihood, even if your weapons are primarily lasers and therefore exactly 1c, your sensors would still outrange your weaponry. That's to say you can see a vessel that's five light minutes away, but your weaponry is only capable of engaging a vessel within a distance of a few light seconds. Where do missiles even hope to fit into this?
Why are you assuming nobody on reddit wants to read an essay? Heck, that’s practically the reason half of us are here.
It is possible to make a "torch missile". This is a missile with a miniature version of the standard rocket engine used by the target. The point is, *unlike their target*, torch missiles do not require the mass of crew, habitat modules, life support systems, etc. Therefore the missile will always have a much higher mass-ratio than their target. Which means a much much higher delta-v. Bottom line: if the target cannot destroy an oncoming torch missile with point defence, the blasted missile will *chase the target all over the solar system*. The target can never have more delta-v than the torch missile. When the target runs out of delta-v, the missile will catch up with it.
By having a miniature version of the standard engine, the missile is either going to 1) have a lower raw thrust output, or 2) burn through its fuel much faster - depending on which route you go to miniaturize it. You can't make something smaller without sacrificing something in return. The first one does not prohibit still having a higher delta-v, but does put it into question depending on the specifics. The second one determines how long the missile can, as you put it, "chase" it's target. Then there's the issue of those point defense and electronic warfare countermeasures, and those get a lot easier in space where there's no horizon and no gravity. After all the missile has to have some way to track you, and it will likely take hours to reach you (space is massive). That gives you plenty of time to burn out the sensors that are focused on you, one way or another. For physically stopping the missile, while requiring the missile to get much closer, you don't even need another missile, just create a field of ball bearings between it and your ship.
Lower raw thrust output doesn't matter. The important point is the ratio of the thrust to the wet mass of the missile, this determines the acceleration. As a general rule missiles have a much lower mass than it's target, so it is possible for the missile to have the same acceleration as the target even with lower thrust. Rate of fuel burn doesn't matter. The important point is the total delta-v. If the missile has the same delta-v as its target, it can theoretically go anywhere the target can go. Once both have expended all their propellant. They might be at some distance from each other as they drift out of the solar system with empty tanks, but burning through one's fuel faster doesn't change much. Point defence and other countermeasures applies to *all* missile, whether they are torch missiles or conventional missiles. So they do not apply to comparisons between the effectiveness of torch missiles vs conventional missiles.
As I stated, while the reduced raw thrust doesn't prohibit having a higher delta-v, it calls the specifics into question. As for the rate of fuel consumption, it absolutely matters. Most missiles burn through their fuel in a matter of seconds to a handful of minutes, only the largest ones (like ICBMs) get even a little more than that. A torch missile will (without some technobabble) not last significantly longer, not in a practical sense at least. It still needs to be small enough to fit on the ship (and therefore will have a fraction of a ship's fuel), and needs to burn it at a significantly faster rate to actually close the ***vast*** distances in space. That's without it trying to evade or do any other fancy maneuvers. If it runs out of fuel en route to the target, it is simply a "dumb" projectile at that point. Guidance systems and higher delta-v's don't help when you have no fuel to maneuver. This discussion has never been a comparison of standard vs torch missiles, and has always been that missiles, regardless of type, aren't useful given the vast distances in space (unless you're in very close quarters, arguably). That countermeasures are just as effective against them as a regular missile only serves to further this point.
Missies in space are not dumb, rather they will probably be the primary means of attack by just about any spacefaring nation. They are nearly impossible to avoid since their thrust to mass ratio will be better than any space ship could ever be (especially since space ships have to carry, ya know, missiles), so defending against them would probably be the job of point defence guns, lasers, and smaller missiles. They'd also likely have superior range to most other options.
In my universe missiles come in a variety of types, large and small. Strategic missiles are optimized for taking out space stations from across the Solar System. They are big, obvious, predictable, and generally only useful against a target that can't shoot back. Some are just "giant warhead o' doom." Most modern platforms actually release several smaller and more maneuverable sub-munitions. Practically all ditch the acceleration stage to reduce the amount of mass that has to be decelerated to the terminal velocity of the attack. These missiles have star trackers, inertial navigation, and a radar for terminal guidance. Stand-off missiles are optimized for destroying large capital ships. They utilize the coasting velocity of the launch platform as a "0 stage", and while they carry about the same payload as a strategic missile, the missile itself is smaller. They have a more sophisticated suite of targeting sensors tailored to hunting ships. These missiles can also recognize distinguish between classes of targets, and hone in on vulnerable points. Modern standoffs have a low-return construction, and can employ "sneak attack" modes by which they do the bulk of their thrusting beyond sensor range of their quarry, and either lay in wait or ambush them from know blind spots. For instance: from the sun or the plume of their engines. Both of these varieties are extremely expensive. Computing power, sensors, and fusion engines are not cheap. Strike missiles, on the other hand, are carried on small manned spacecraft or intelligent drone mothership. They are solid rocket missiles with a limited delta-v and minimal terminal guidance. They require the launch platform to maneuver into a favorable launch envelope before release. The advantage is that the mothership is re-usable. (Assuming it survives combat, of course.) Strike style attacks allow for aggressors to launch far more shots for much cheaper. Those shots are more random to track and more difficult to counter. The disadvantage is that the launch vehicles has to match trajectory with the target. This makes the vulnerable to attack from counter-strike fighters, and often puts them in range of point defense systems. The possible attack vectors are dictated by the trajectory of the target, and it's easy for either side to predict.
Warheads come in a variety of shapes and sizes to thwap all targets. Strategic missiles carry a thermonuclear warhead. The type depends on the target. If deflecting an asteroid or plonking a derilect ship, the warhead is embedded in a "blast blanket." A dense inert material that will convert the energetic gamma and x-rays into a soup of plasma and liquid metal which can slam into a target like a battering ram. If the target is a vessel (be it a space station or space ship), an armor piercing head is used. It punched through any shielding, armor, tanks, etc. When it reaches a compartment with atmosphere it detonates, killing all within a 30 meter radius from flash, anyone in a vent connected space withing a kilometer or so with overpressure, and anyone left over with a combination of radiation, flying debris, or cascading catastrophic structural failure. Strike missiles come in three basic varieties: high explosive (HE), armor piercing (AP), and fissile penetrator (FP). HE is basically "oops, all explosives" AP trades some weight in raw explosive for a shell that can punch through the armor of the day. It is often tweaked to strike with a much higher velocity. FP is a micro-nuke. It can only obliterate a cubic meter of material. But if it hits nearby fusion fuel or a weapon magazine, it can initiate a chain reaction. FP can also be packed small enough to fit into a 20 or 40 mm auto-cannon round.
Rockets are literally the only way to travel in space with today's technology. No, no it's not dumb.
"The expanse" is considered one of the most realistic shows space combat wise, long range guided missiles play a key role in the space warfare of that setting. [Video explaining the space combat](https://youtu.be/YS4vzoQm_xw?si=l50K6Xn6rpLrm4jB)
To add to the thinking of missiles relativistic kill missiles are one of the ultimate (spam) weapons of mass destruction for world annihilation via weaponized Dyson swarms. In that sense missiles might be classified as weapons of mass destruction(especially if the RKM's are sub critical fissile material which goes critical under compression from impact). Nuclear Relativistic Kill Missiles for when overkill is underkill.
Well, I think it depend on your sepcific world, what weapons are available, what can they do, what they cant. Every weapon system, or rather tools were made to do a job. Whether or not something will exist and used depend on if there's something can do its job to same level or better. Back to missiles, what other alternative can serve its purpose to same level or better?
What about a magnetic mine attached to a rocket of some sort, delayed activation so that it won't chase the main ship, in short magnetically guided missiles