build a battle-spaceship: unlimited budget, RL tech

similar to the "design a tank gladiator" and "arm a human" threads, but IIIIINNN....SPAAAAAAAACE


your task: put together a ship to fight in space for humanity. if possible, it should be able to travel, but if thats not plausible then *shrug* I guess it'll be a battlestation. if you feel like being cool, offer up what sort of fictional ship you think yours could take on, or at least what odds it would need. your ship shouldn't be something like a moon. lets say a limit of one mile long. real world tech ONLY. cost is not an issue.



scenario one: no nuclear weapons allowed

scenario two: nukes allowed

bonus challenge: design a ship/station to support human life for as long as possible with or without routine help from abroad. length restriction is two miles.

Cue someone copy pasting half the atomic rockets site.

huh?

No matter how much funding you provide, this ship/battlestation will never exceed the greatest of all space weapons:


OBS.

That is all that needs to be said.

I wish someone would post something I understand.

Pay particular attention to Project Orion

oh dear.... only half the cite is working for me... and theres still more than I could possibly look through.

You know what fuck the warp I'm half tempted to ask for the Necron Intertialess drive, and some kind of builder

WHAT?! How the hell do you make a space warship without nukes?

That cuts out the engine, the missiles, the beam cannons, the insanely durable hull BEHIND the armor, the POWER PLANT, and, most importantly of all, the FUN!

uhh... you miss the part where it only says weapons?

besides, don't like it? theres scenario 2

... uhh... what?

Try navigating from this link
http://www.projectrho.com/rocketstub.html

It depends. What makes you think I won't put nuclear reactors IN my missiles if I can't have nuclear weapons? The reactor in the ship powers the lasers and railguns which shoot missiles which shoot railguns. Wouldn't that mean that those are all nuclear weapons?

it depends on one thing only. do you want to be a rules lawyering dick?

I move an asteroid into earth orbit and arm the fuck out of it.

I think what they're trying to point out is that in RL, any reaction drive is a weapon as per the Kzinti Lesson.
Given that nukes are the only known RL energy source we can produce whose power-density is high enough for space warfare...

Inertialess drives (The necron FtL) are hideously fast and don't involve entering hyperspace I fucked up and had more than one tab open and posted my post in the wrong one. This is meant to be a response to one of your other posts in a different thread

Any "interesting" enough engine can also double as a weapon.

What scenario one is if only nuclear "weapons" are forbidden is make all spaceships in that setting point their tail ends to each other.

No humans aboard, so the ship can accelerate super fast. Primary weapons will be kinetic missiles probaly.

Oh lord, were doomed!

You've gave every SBer unlimited funds!

This can not end well.

Hmm... I hole up and play video games (and post here of course) for the rest of my life, never producing more than a software model of my "battle-spaceship" while throwing just enough money at various construction firms to "show" that I'm trying to build a serious warship.

Do we have to build a spaceship/station or could we just use our limitless funds to buy everything that I can?

Err can we use technology that is on the verge of being useful such as ion drives to back up things like the Orion engine

only if its limit is resources. for example you could make your spaceship entirely out of carbon nanotubes and spidersilk if you wanted to.

well that would essentially be saying "I don't want to participate in the thread, fuck you shipmastersane"

kinda like this guy.

thanks for the imput.

I gave them this twice before without issue.

that seems like something you should ask about first. "does it have a human crew." that said, if you think you could put together a fully automated ship, I'd like to hear about it.

could you at least pretend to go by the spirit of the rules?

ah, fair enough.

what possible advantage would a mile long asteroid with guns on it have over a mile long ship?