Realistic Space Pirates in Hard SF

[GTOM]

Ore is not jewelry, it is used to build and sustain our society and our economy.

We are pretty fine without ores mined from space at this time. A mining company shelters pirates attacks the profit of an another mining company.

About outrunning, just because fuel is cheap, that doesn't mean a truck can just outrun a chase car, even when the truck can cover bigger distance. And at least square-cube law also effects spaceships, also bigger fuel tank while give you more delta-V decrease acceleration (with given thrusting power of the engine).

Ok, so we already agreed it is soft, sorry for our misunderstanding about the definition of soft and hard.

The "hardness" of a story has little effect on how the story is received. As long as there are no glaring plot holes or absurd science (or more importantly, that you don't try for hard science and get it wrong) then it will be received based on how good the plot, character development, and overall story is.

Point accepted, my final question is, am i violating laws of physics, or only reasonable engineering, and unlikely political economical situation?

 

[Travis_King]

We are pretty fine without ores mined from space at this time. A mining company shelters pirates attacks the profit of an another mining company.

I work in mining. If we have to support a space based society economically, we will definitely need new resource sources.

About outrunning, just because fuel is cheap, that doesn't mean a truck can just outrun a chase car, even when the truck can cover bigger distance. And at least square-cube law also effects spaceships, also bigger fuel tank while give you more delta-V decrease acceleration (with given thrusting power of the engine).

It's not about speed. It's about time to accelerate and then decelerate.

Ok, so we already agreed it is soft, sorry for our misunderstanding about the definition of soft and hard.

No worries, I just see so many people worried about their story being hard or soft, when that's really not the biggest concern they should have.

Point accepted, my final question is, am i violating laws of physics, or only reasonable engineering, and unlikely political economical situation?

That depends on how you work out the various situations.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

We are pretty fine without ores mined from space at this time.

Obviously but we're not talking about now IRL are we? We're talking about a proposed fictional world, one in which space travel is supposedly so profitable that the system is littered with mines and other commercial disputes transferring materials everywhere. In such a setting the space based economy is going to be significant (ignoring the impracticality of the technology and how it would probably have a far greater impact on Earth negating the need for most space based activities), if you start cutting into it you have a big affect here.

A mining company shelters pirates attacks the profit of an another mining company.

So we've gone from regular pirates to state sponsored terrorism to commercial combat??

About outrunning, just because fuel is cheap, that doesn't mean a truck can just outrun a chase car, even when the truck can cover bigger distance. And at least square-cube law also effects spaceships, also bigger fuel tank while give you more delta-V decrease acceleration (with given thrusting power of the engine).

That works both ways. The fast ship is going to have a much more limited range (in terms of how long it can sprint for before it runs out of fuel). Given the distances involved I'd rather be the slow craft with the huge fuel reserves.

Point accepted, my final question is, am i violating laws of physics, or only reasonable engineering, and unlikely political economical situation?

No, definitely yes, definitely yes.

 

[GTOM]

Given the distances involved I'd rather be the slow craft with the huge fuel reserves.

On the other hand, no stealth has its limits, just because you see a light civilan ship takes a course roughly intersects yours, you don't know its going to attack or ransom, that its mass come from short-range missiles and additional fuel.
An advantage of employing pirates, if based on emitted energy and acceleration they can have a good hint about the class of the ship, if they launch a more serious warship, the other side can employ countermeasures fast.

So we've gone from regular pirates to state sponsored terrorism to commercial combat??

Yes.
How do you define regular pirate?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Drake

No, definitely yes, definitely yes.

Ok, the point is suspension of disbelief. For example Lucy would have a hard time suspending of my disbelief with an urban legend, while Trance could do that, so while i try to focus on characters and other stuff, i need to have a basic setup that can do that, even if someone googled some facts about space.

 

[vemvare]

I don't agree with the notion that there is little middle ground between an outpost needing constant supply shipments or they all die and colonies being so self sufficient they never need anything.

Recycling waste into oxygen, clean water and food in a larger outpost or colony should be trivial. Most colonies will probably have a very significant in-situ resource utilization capability, which gives the bulk building materials needed for maintaining or even expanding the colony.

What they do need is materials that are necessary but cannot be found in a concentrated form near the colony. Depending on where the colony is located that could be rare Earth elements, copper, zinc, lead, cobalt, nickel, nitrogen, helium, iodine, indium, selenium...

I don't think that the tech needed to make space travel "easy" would negate the need for space travel to any greater extent. Even if we crack the fusion riddle with a bang and achieve orders of magnitude cheaper energy (a minimum for that kind of space travel) Earth does have a limited amount of mineral resources and mining them will have an inevitable impact on the environment. Space, on the other hand, is full of cold dead rocks that belongs to no one.

On the visibility issue I have to agree with the "no stealth in space" crowd. Piracy makes little sense in a STL-universe, unless it is überpowered (and sensors somewhat nerfed) like in the Revelation Space books.

 

[GTOM]

A little bit return to the throw away or self destruct the cargo.

Ok one does that, others see, they are so willing to throw away kilotons of valuables that they gathered, we hire lots of ships to strip them from wealth, then they can start raiding colonies.
Arming or escorting cargo vessels is common practice, but they can't send a destroyer everywhere. Because the kinetics based combat, fast agile ships are quite able to defeat bigger ones.
(Destroyers are optimized against lighter ships with strong laser point range defence, while battlecruisers are optimized against heavy ships with super coilgun fire a large guided missile)

 

[Travis_King]

How do the little, fast pirate ships actually haul the freighter-load of cargo? Suspending my disbelief (not in the physics, but the practicality and feasibility), sure they can get to the ship quickly, but what happens when they try to get away with the goods? And where do they put it (the cargo)?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Ok one does that, others see, they are so willing to throw away kilotons of valuables that they gathered, we hire lots of ships to strip them from wealth, then they can start raiding colonies.

That's not good reasoning, it's not like they're throwing away valuables on a whim. They're doing it with the idea in mind that if they give you anything you'll demand more and thus they lose out in the long run. Have you ever heard the expression "we don't negotiate with terrorists?" It's not because the people who say it have an abundant supply of citizens and infrastructure so they don't mind when terrorists take them hostage or blow it up, it's because if you do negotiate it encourages others to commit these acts because they've seen it's profitable.

Second point: who do you have in mind raiding these colonies? More pirates? So in this scenario pirate groups are militarily powerful enough to invade established colonies? If you have that in your setting fine but it really does change the politics because now you've introduced viable warlordism. In reality I can't see how that's going to be long lived. Colonies are presumably set up either by large commercial entities or large political entities, thus they're going to have some backing. Even if we accept for a moment that either of those will just accept piracy as an irritant I can't see why they would let their outposts be destroyed. It would be like if a bunch of terrorist today seized control of US oil rigs, killed everyone and took the oil and the US just shrugged it off. In reality being a group that engages in such activity is a sure fire way to get hunted down swiftly.

Arming or escorting cargo vessels is common practice, but they can't send a destroyer everywhere.

They don't have to, just with cargo vessels. Or you could even just arm the cargo vessels. Seems like you're trying to have a contrivance where pirates get to have cheap and easy space travel allowing them to regularly steal from cargo craft but the people who own the craft can't afford protection, even though their cargo is presumably valuable.

Because the kinetics based combat, fast agile ships are quite able to defeat bigger ones.

Why? For that matter how do you foresee this combat actually progressing? A craft really doesn't have to be that manoeuvrable to dodge an incoming projectile, given the speeds involved in interplanetary travel they could just shift their course by a small degree and end up kilometres away from a projected course. A larger ship could have a larger reactor and more point defences. At that point any combat becomes one of attrition.

(Destroyers are optimized against lighter ships with strong laser point range defence, while battlecruisers are optimized against heavy ships with super coilgun fire a large guided missile)

How did you come to these conclusions about battlecruisers, destroyers, light/heavy ships etc etc. Seems like you're just making it up to fit what you want.

I don't really know what your question is any more to be honest. It started with a specific question, you didn't get an answer that fit so now you're just sticking with your setting being soft SF and throwing out any justification you like. That's fine but what's the point now? What are you trying to resolve if you're just going to assume that it all works how you want it?

 

[GTOM]

How do the little, fast pirate ships actually haul the freighter-load of cargo?

It a rare thing to actually loot the ship, because limited delta-V, otherwise yes they can't take all, just the most valuable part.

For that matter how do you foresee this combat actually progressing?

The short range attack missiles needs to launched close enough. A big cargo vessel is so slow, that even if it can disable a missile from hundreds of kms away, with the high closing speed, and an arcmin of shrapnel/kinetic penetrator scatter (a rifle can have accuracy beyond an arcmin) a shrapnel can still hit, armor is barely efficient, it is enough to take out the exterior defence systems.
Agility has its role.

Well i wanted some revise, yours is clearly negative, i accept that, however i try my best to respond, of course beyond a point it is becoming pointless, but until that i try to figure out, what can be justified, and what should i really change, it is a struggle between being not so soft and being epic.

How did you come to these conclusions about battlecruisers, destroyers, light/heavy ships

Destroyers were originally torpedo boat destoyers meant to counter light agile ships that could overwhelm the battleship because it has wasted too much energy on a single small target.

I thought about translating the first section to rate its hardness level, and ability to suspend disbelief, maybe it could shed light on the details.
I could only repeat that the political situation is very far from today, it is not like the US Navy pursuits some sea terrorists, it is like 16th century, rival powers fight each other, warships are regularly destroyed by enemy fleets and asteroid defences, everyone plays dirty, everything is fine until one doesn't turn against those who harbors them, the only difference between pirates and others, that the others recognized as mining corporations on a corrupt Earth. But war and piracy is at best a second rate problem for Earth, with the overpopulation, corruption, pollution, riots etc.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The short range attack missiles needs to launched close enough. A big cargo vessel is so slow, that even if it can disable a missile from hundreds of kms away, with the high closing speed, and an arcmin of shrapnel/kinetic penetrator scatter (a rifle can have accuracy beyond an arcmin) a shrapnel can still hit, armor is barely efficient, it is enough to take out the exterior defence systems.
Agility has its role.

Did you read my previous post regarding a kilometre wide screen of shrapnel and how it would be incredibly wildly spread even at a tight scatter over a relatively short distance in space? I don't think you can rely on shrapnel, especially as the point defences are going to blast bits in all directions.

As for getting in really close what is to stop the cargo craft from firing back, perhaps with the same laser weaponry they use for point defence? If the answer is that the pirate craft stay out of effective range (i.e. the beam is so diffuse it doesn't do enough damage) then the whole short range attack thing falls apart.

Destroyers were originally torpedo boat destoyers meant to counter light agile ships that could overwhelm the battleship because it has wasted too much energy on a single small target.

Those are boats. How is that relevant to space?

 

[GTOM]

I read it. My calculations are : 500 km an arcmin of spread : 150m roughly.
Now with a 50m target and a buckshot like spread its quite possible to hit.
When i said the laser disables the missile it doesn't mean that it blows up, the laser does to same as today, heats the structure until it shatters, or electronics melt.

Launch range can be thousands or ten thousands of kilometers against a slow target.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I read it. My calculations are : 500 km an arcmin of spread : 150m roughly.
Now with a 50m target and a buckshot like spread its quite possible to hit.

A decent rifle could get about an arcminute but we're talking about an explosion. You're moving the goal posts by suggesting that now this is a deliberate firing. Aside from that how long do you envision it taking a spacecraft to nudge it's course so it is 150m away? I very much doubt it would be slower than a missile crossing 500km!

When i said the laser disables the missile it doesn't mean that it blows up, the laser does to same as today, heats the structure until it shatters, or electronics melt.

If it's carrying explosives then it very well could blow up. Aside from any significant damage is going to cause the missile to start spiralling out of control and thus go off course.

Launch range can be thousands or ten thousands of kilometers against a slow target.

I think it might be useful to get rid of the notions of "slow" and "fast" and talk in terms that mean something in this context. Any spacecraft is going to be fast considering it's traveling across the solar system in what we've discussed is a reasonable time (weeks/months). What you should really work out is acceleration, how fast can a cargo craft accelerate? How fast is a typical craft moving when crossing the system?

My point being I think it's unclear as to why the pirates get all the advantage here, able to sit back and fire away but the cargo craft have absolutely no chance. When in actual fact given the difficulty of combat in this context it's not going to go down like that.

 

[GTOM]

I very much doubt it would be slower than a missile crossing 500km!

If the ships charge each other, closing speed will be about 100 km/s. 500km is also not the lowest range limit of laser point defence makes the missile shatter.

The missile doesn't need to have explosives, it kills with kinetic energy like a bullet, if it had enough laser damage, it fragments without big explosion like a shotgun slug.
About propulsion i imagined nuclear thermo, as far as i know, its a high thrust low specific impulse drive, twice as efficient as chem fuel.

Well the attack rocket might also use bomb pulsed lasers or coilguns to attack the point range defence, expend all the bombs before getting really close.Are there any good short terms for low and high acceleration?

When in actual fact given the difficulty of combat in this context it's not going to go down like that.

Arming cargo vessels is a good way to deter the majority of pirates (who don't escort regular frigates), but reward is high for taking out theese things, well they could win or fail, in the later case, no reward no need to compensate the family, no naval officer takes the blame.
I don't said the higher acceleration ship is going to win, i just said i consider that both firepower and acceleration counts, bigger ships don't bound to win.

About protection, there are hundreds of scattered colonies, dozens of ships traveling at once, you can't just send them in convoys, just because fuel is abundant, that doesn't mean that all the arms is dirt cheap as well.

Well, i looked up the proper term, privateering, the border line between it and piracy was pretty thin in many times. Privateers don't have to follow exact orders, they have their free will, (they can't hurt the interests of those who harbors them) human life is cheap.
Cargo vessels unmanned, that means nothing, they care more about not losing the ore, than spare people's lives.
Of course there are different parties, one will say they don't negotiate with terrorists, hoping that the reward for attacking their ships isn't enough if they don't pay ransom, slowly this begins to work, eventually they will also blockade the pirate heaven Ceres, as the protection of a certain other party is lifted...
After that the pirate character has to end his trade.

 

[Khatti]

I doubt that piracy is going to be part of life in the Asteroid Belt, but crime will undoubtedly have a place there. Smuggling will most likely be going just as strong in the 23rd Century as it is in the 21st. Another other possibility is viking-style raids on settlements. One question to ask yourself is: "What is there to steal? Another is: What do you do with it once you've stolen it?

I'm interested in doing a much more space-opera fantasy than GTOM is talking about, and even there I run into problems. I have no doubt that organized crime will be a fact of life in the far future, but what it will look like?

 

[GTOM]

In that setting, they arent really organized crime, well no more than the megacorporations fight over the belt, and prize and shelter them.
(You can think about Sir Henry Morgan and Francis Drake.)
Well it could be a great challenge for organized crime in any places, how to counter more and more advanced surveillance, big brother? Smuggling is a good idea for example.

 

[Khatti]

You know I've been thinking about it: while the stories we think of when we hear about Caribbean piracy involve the huge heists, ships full of gold and silver from South America, as you got closer to the Revolutionary War piracy became more and more modest. Calico Jack Rackam, the more-or-less captain of the vessel that Anne Bonny and Mary Read raided on, plundered no more than fishing boats for the personal property of the fishermen. Many pirate raids involved stealing nothing more then clothes and supplies to keep the pirate ship going.

The main thing of value in the Asteroid Belt would be metals (and I assume minerals; I really need to learn more about the composition of asteroids), no one moves to the Belt for the climate. But again, once you steal the metals and minerals, how do you fence them?

One thing I would think about stealing in the belt is mining equipment. I assume that much of it would be free floating and robotic. There would always be a market in the Belt for mining equipment sold at a discount. Another thing there would be a market for is women and girl-children. I'm not convinced that we will become so gender-free that there will be just as many women in mining settlements as there are men. Call me sexist if you wish, but I see women as being more urban-oriented, and the Belt is not the neighborhood for the Cosmo Girl.

 

[GTOM]

Rare materials (like gold in old days) will be valuable to many people. I also don't expect too much female miners, well i haven't thought about slave trading and my captain won't be involved in such things (he will be involved in drug smuggling, but they kill another gang for selling it to children, and for hurting their business) but it is also not a bad idea.

 

[Khatti]

Don't forget about claim-jumping. That could be a more common crime in the Belt than piracy. One the other hand, displaced miners would provide a supply of pirates. Have to be away from the computer for the rest of the day. Will answer tonight if there's a reply.

 

[GTOM]

Sending battleships and fighters to a valuable place is a very strong and frequently used claim. :p

 

[Khatti]

Point taken. Have you given any thought to what law & order look like in your Asteroid Belt? Just what is their relationship with Earth?

 

[GTOM]

International laws don't apply, especially not the ones prohibit privateering and prize captains for taking out enemy vessels.
Local governors enforce laws most times, that follows the directives of the major power that helds the colony.

They trade with Earth. Warships that don't belong to planetary government are prohibited from entering orbital space (roughly 1 million km from planet) cargo ships can (if they armed, they conceal the weapons) in order to trade, sell ores the Earth, ship biogenic material and other such things to the belt.
Earth's corrupt government barely cares about violating basic human rights in the belt (i think the one killed by my assassin character can be also involved in selling girls to the belt.)

 

[Lord Anoobis]

Piracy formed a major part of the plot in Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant. The development of gravity shielding and lensing making space travel cheap and easy, piracy soon followed. It makes for interesting reading, particularly how he deals with the matter of combat in space, among other things. Bear in mind that it was written during the eighties, so while it's set in the future, soviet Russia features strongly. So it might seem a bit anachronistic to some.

 

[Simon Bridge]

Piracy is stealing ships - fr the ships themselves or for the cargo.
As long as the cargo or the ships is valuable, there will likely be an arms race between the crooks and those who want to stop them.
Difficulties mean that more creative approaches need to be made - and, in a pinch, you can always steal the ship from the inside.
The details depend on the culture. Where do the pirates come from and where do they get their ships? They are pirates - they stole them: their ships look exactly like legitimate ships. Until they get close. If there is customs and smuggling then pretending to be law enforcement is another approach. Once close the main difficulty is getting aboard so: start with someone aboard, get very sneaky, or give the crew a reason to cooperate.

You also may want to take a look at how big the solar system is and then work out how dense the enforcers have to be to have a chance of intercepting pirates in the act. Just because the pirates got seen and tracked does not mean they get caught - examine the somali pirate actvities ... it's not like nobody knows where the ships went.

 

[GTOM]

Good ideas. :)

I only thinking about one boarding action against an uncooperative ship, when they want to capture a VIP alive, slicing up the ship with the lasers is too risky. At first yes, the ship can spin all around, and it is a spin ship anyway... at that point the pirates receive a military grade fast ship, so while it is a stunt, they can synchronize the movement, cut an entryway on the central part with the defence laser, than use grappling hooks to attach themselves... they can seal the holes on the hull, with some kind of material that soldifies quickly, although everyone aboard can be expected to have a space activity suit.
Closed airtight doors and lifts and guards are further obstacles... probably they need to drag a heavy laser driller or something like that.

 

[Khatti]

Is there some reason why your ships wouldn't have a stationary hatch in the nose of the ship? That seems like a good design if you're a freighter. Though going in through the nose of a ship that's hostile to you would have some problems.

 

[GTOM]

Is there some reason why your ships wouldn't have a stationary hatch in the nose of the ship? That seems like a good design if you're a freighter. Though going in through the nose of a ship that's hostile to you would have some problems.

If a rotating and a standing part is attached, the ship regularly has to expend fuel, otherwise one part will take the speed of the other. If the ship has all around propulsion, coming from any direction can be dangerous, that is where superior acceleration, lasers to melt the way inside comes handy.

 

[dragoneyes001]

take David Webers Honor Harrington series for example the space involved is thousands of light years in most directions involving hundreds of star systems with wormholes and FTL travel space pirates would have no shortage of ambush spots to use.

laying in wait on yellow routes makes heat signatures unreliable. the vast size involved makes scopes nearly useless because your looking for a needle in a haystack bigger than the barn. local defenses would be able to use pretty cheap ways of detecting ships but as the distances between the local groups expands so does the number of easy ambush places increase.

 

[GTOM]

(Maybe this could be moved to writing subsection)
I wondered about a situation, where they want to capture a ship with a VIP on it.
The guards and VIP move into the reactor block, so they can't use the shipborne lasers against them. But they can still fire guns out of the reactor block.

Could it be realistic to fill the reactor block with hydrogen from the ship's tank, and say : now if you fire, you all die, fist to fist combat in power armor?
(They did a similar thing in Legend of Galactic Heroes with a Zephyr stuff.)

 

[Khatti]

Could it be realistic to fill the reactor block with hydrogen from the ship's tank, and say : now if you fire, you all die, fist to fist combat in power armor?

If the armor gives off a spark during the fist-fight you're no better off than if you had a firefight. Unless the space-equivalent of Her Royal Majesty's Navy is about to sail over the horizon the smart thing to do if you're a space pirate is wait them out. VIP and guards are going to have to come out at some point, they're going to run out of air or water or food. Not terribly razzle-dazzle, but tried-and-true.

 

[GTOM]

If the armor gives off a spark during the fist-fight you're no better off than if you had a firefight. Unless the space-equivalent of Her Royal Majesty's Navy is about to sail over the horizon the smart thing to do if you're a space pirate is wait them out. VIP and guards are going to have to come out at some point, they're going to run out of air or water or food. Not terribly razzle-dazzle, but tried-and-true.

Thanks. Well, if the guards are fanatic enough, and believe they will be killed anyway maybe they try to charge even if they know there will be laser turret support.
(Giving exact coordinates inside ship isn't that trival, they can jam radio and take out optic cables.)