> One thing I've always thought silly was the whole > idea of carriers in > space. Air craft carriers work well because the > planes they launch travel > in a different medium than the ships: air vs. water. > Carriers in space are > like two battle groups of large ships launching a > number of small boats to > engage in combat.
I'm not so sure about that. One of the reasons carriers were effective (and still are) is because you can fight your enemy at an arms distance...you don't have to close with him. In this context a carrier essentially becomes a battle transport for smaller attack craft, that can then be used to defend the ship at an arms distance, or to launch attacks of their own. The best protection a ship can have is to NOT expose itself to enemy guns...
Also, given the distances involved, even if the two planets at war are neighbors in an astronomical sense, in most cases it is unrealistic for a one- or two-man craft to be able to travel the entire round-trip distance to the enemy world and back. First, whatever technology is assumed for traveling great distances, if it relies on known physics, it is going to be bulky (frex, reaching relativistic speeds requires, even assuming 100% conversion of fuel mass into motive energy, a mass of fuel at least several times the mass of the payload (off the top of my head I seem to remember that it would take 10x the mass of the ship to reach a speed of about 99.5% of c, assuming 100% efficiency, so you can multiply that by the reciprocal of the true efficiency), and that's just for accelerating from rest to relativistic speeds. To slow down, you have to bring that much fuel along, so the total fuel for a one way trip is that multiple of the ship's mass squared (100x in the above example), and for a round trip, unless you can count on refueling at your destination before starting back, the total fuel required at the start becomes the \fourth power\ of that multiple (10,000x in the above example), whereas a non-relativistic ship would be so slow that no one but virtual immortals would consider using one as a warship (what would be the point of launching an attack over a perceived insult in an interstellar radio message when it's possible that by the time your attack craft get there the \species\ that sent out the message may be extinct or evolved into something else), and even they would have to carry along enough consumables for the journey unless it is assumed they can be put in stasis for the duration), and if it relies on unknown physics("hyperdrive", "warp drive", etc.), it is frequently assumed to be bulky. Even if we assume that a "warp engine" can be built small enough to install in something the equivalent of an F-15 or an F-16 or even a B-52, assuming that the crew is composed of humans or beings with similar limitations puts a rather low upper limit on how long such beings could remain on duty flying it without stopping to rest. Carrying the "fighters" or "bombers" on board an "aircraft carrier" allows for a much larger engine and fuel supply than would fit on a smaller craft and allows for enough personnel that the "carrier" crew can work in shifts around the clock, and the "fighter" pilots can rest until the "carrier" gets close enough to the enemy planet or fleet that the round-trip flight time is at most a few hours, similar to the duration of a mission for such aircraft today. (Granted, one can think of some ways around some of these limitations, but some of those will introduce additional complications of their own.)
-- Ronn! :)
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