Arguments against small vehicle warfare
From SSNTWiki
It was often speculated space combat would take place between drone sized vehicles. The argument includes the destructive power of nuclear weapons, and practical problem of installing sophisticated command systems, e.g. crews.
Two counterarguments can be provided against it
[edit] Argument from power availability
It’s difficult to conceive how the theoretical “small vehicles” can be powered. Each type of energy conversion process requires a minimum amount of machinery to operate. The higher the energy density, the more machinery will be required. This means the proposed “small vehicles” have either a small supply of energy, due to the low energy density of fuel, or are constraint, size wise, buy the technology that supply them with power.
Low energy availability means that while theoretically the small vehicles can potentially carry very destructive payloads, they cannot effectively deliver it to a maneuvering target – or a stationary one in a reasonable amount of time.
This produces a rather paradoxical conclusion: A larger vessel can be MORE maneuverable then a smaller one because it could house more efficient engine and use more energy-dense fuel.
[edit] Argument from acceleration limit
It’s often argued a sophisticated command system could be damaged by acceleration. However a smaller, less sophisticated system may suffer similarly, only to a less degree. FR4, a commonly used circuit board material, have Flexural Strength of 57,000Psi or 4000atm, or 400 million Pascal
http://www.glastic.com/datasheets/9FR4_ds.htm
This seemed to be a lot, however when one exams the definition of Flexural strength:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexural_strength
For a 20X20cm circuit board, 2mm thick, it’d only take about 1000 Newton to break it.
The density is 1.91 kg/L; the weight of the circuit above is approximately 153 grams. Under approximately 7000m/s.s the circuit board would break. That is a very optimistic estimate, as the circuit laid onto the material would probably break under smaller acceleration.
That’s approximately 700g. While it’s about 70 times better then a person, it’d still break if the vessel needs to accelerate at more then 10km/s.s. Which is a very small value as far as speculative space combat is concerned. (Still takes about 49 minutes to reach 0.1c at 10km/s)
Therefore some form of gravity control will be required for these situations regardless what is on board of the vehicle during combat, as star trek had aptly pointed out years ago. As for how ... Bose Condensate comes to mind:
