5 Things Movies Get Wrong About Space Combat 

You missed the falsehood that makes me crazy: If your engine quits in space, you don't start slowing down like your Chevy does when it runs out of gas. You'll maintain what ever speed you were going until you hit something or are captured by its gravity.

"The idea of fixing lasers and railguns to the front of your ship that have to be lined up by the pilot..." *Laughs in Halo MAC*

I think it is also very strange that ships that are designed for space battles are also very suitable for battles within the atmosphere where all the circumstances are way different.

I was so impressed that you mentioned Bab 5 and how they did the thrusters right. I remember when it came out how awesome it was that they made it "realistic" instead of just Star Wars redux

Most educational thing about space fights, for me, is NPC monolog in game Mass Effect 2 (i'll copy-paste it): "Gunnery Chief: This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kilotomb bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth.That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-***** in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law? Recruit: Sir! A object in motion stays in motion, sir! Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot! Recruit: Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir! Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire a husk of metal, it keeps going until it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your **** targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a **** firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip. Recruit: Sir, yes sir!"

RE: off-bore weapons... They fixed the WW1 machine gun problem by inventing an interruptor for the gun. Basically, they installed a rod connecting the engine to the MG that temporarily disconnected the trigger for the fraction of a second while the propeller would be in the way of the bullet. WW2 planes mostly mounted the guns in the wings and angled them so their fire converged at a certain point a few hundred yards ahead. In science fiction, spinal-mounted weapons have their uses. Mostly, they amount to the weapon being so big that it makes up a significant chunk of the ship. Ion cannon frigates in Homeworld, for example, are basically a weaponized particle accelerator with a ship built around it. Other times, it's due to the recoil: having off-beam weapons with any sort of recoil would cause stability issues for ships in zero gravity that atmospheric and surface vehicles don't have to worry about. I agree 100% about the engagement ranges, though. That is something that so, so few science fiction settings get right.

You didn't say the first thing I thought about: "YOU CAN'T HEAR SOUND IN SPACE, SO YOU WON'T HEAR PEWPEWPEWPEWPEW!!!"

the expanse has imo has the most realistic space combat, i'd even go one further to say that its probably the most accurate portrayal of space in general

"If scientists discovered Pandora in real life they would be astonished as to how similar it was to Earth" *CUTS TO VIETCONG GETTING SLAUGHTERED FROM THE AIR*

I like the Expanse because it tries to be realistic and still manages to be "cool". It's an excellent compromise between intelligent worldbuilding and "coolness".

"There is no stealth in space." Isaac Arthur.

It’s a common misconception that dogfights occurred in Vietnam, by that point missiles were mostly used and very few/basically no meaningful amounts of aircraft were shot down with air to air guns, the last dogfights were Korea and by that point they were already impractical

"Children of a Dead Earth" A realistic take on space combat: the game

The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell does an awesome job describing space combat. Highly recommend it

Adding the clip from the “Serenity” battle between the Alliance and the Reavers into the list of bad space battles is unfair, as that battle took place in the upper atmosphere of Mr. Universe’s Moon. The Operative: “We’ll meet them in the air.” Serenity had her Firefly drive turned off and her atmospheric scramjets active. Most tellingly, you could hear the explosions. If you notice, a few moments earlier in the movie, when Serenity attacks the Reaver ship in space near Miranda, the scramjets are off, the Firefly drive is active, the music swells and mimics explosions, but there are no actual explosion sounds. They are in a space battle. The battle at Mr. Universe’s world played out like air combat, because it was air combat.

It just occurs to me that 'The Last Starfighter' did space fighting pretty well. The gunstar seemed to have both thruster maneuvering and off bore shooting. Not bad for a obscure film.

The only reason you have a spinal mount is to have a massive gun where the recoil is inline with your main thrusters.

Titan AE. Holy shit I haven't thought about that movie since I was a kid. What an underrated and awesome sci-fi flick.

The new version of Battlestar Galactica, the opening scene is actually pretty authentic, another item I like is how the firing solutions is not to fire at your target, but to fire in an appearance arc, because gravity actually curves space.

The scene in The Expanse where the Canterbury gets destroyed sold me on the entire series immediately. Over the series the laws of physics almost become their own character, always trying to kill everyone

"It's probably going to be a lot more boring and a lot more slower." The expanse: Battles are kilometers away with torpedoes. Said torpedoes are blasted away with PDCs. Close combat with rail guns and said PDCs. Rocinante fly past a stealth ship firing with PDCs. Spinning and acceleration can take a toll on the crew. Sounds like the expanse knows how to do space combat. Do a part 2. Derby fields from the Canterbury, remember the Cant, nearly killed the shuttle crew and tore another ship in half.

About Orbital transfers, you generally don’t do it when the bodies are closest, as one is travelling faster than the other. To get to Mars you usually need to have Mars 45 degrees ahead for maximum fuel efficiency. (Ps it is also the fastest way generally without wasting tons of fuel).

In ww1, machine guns had a trigger cutoff that activated when the propeller was in front of the gun. The propellers weren't bulletproof as that would add considerable weight and it would still eventually break if it was hit enough (things can only be bullet resistant)

One of the things I hate in movies is how fast large/capital ships change direction. In Knights of Sidonia it was satisfying to see it take hours to complete a large turn and days to stop and turn around. I also thought it was cool to see what happened inside the ship when a high-G turn took place. Anybody not belted in or clamped to the ship died when they were flung across a bay, and even people secured to railings were killed by loose debris flying around.

You pull from such a wide array of film clips it’s honestly impressive

"Realistic Space Combat would be boring." Try "The Lost Fleet" series by Jack Campbell. And you hit B5 before I needed to. : )

The best "space combat " sequences were in the Babylon 5 TV series, the ships acted in a Newtonian way with thrust vectors, weapon damage lead-in to explosive decompression.

This is why Star Wars makes up technology to make space combat work

The expanse really romanticized realistic space combat with seemingly boring things like missiles, I really adore how media in general is slowly developing how we can experience more and more practical space combat

Wait, so Princess Leia force pulling herself back into her ship wasn't realistic??

Congratulations! Fantastic comment on this subject, well written, well researched. Being a Physicist and science-fiction fan for decades now I find your analysis on Ender's Game, Babylon 5 and Star Wars absolutely spot on. Keep up with the good work.

my favorite of your videos! super informative! blew my mind several times!

1:31 Allan: "Realistic space combat would be boring." The expanse: *Oh I don't think so.*

"This if Fleet Admiral Harper, we are engaging the enemy!"

Main point you did not talk about: There will be a strict budget on everything, most importantly fuel. That will limit how much thrust you can spend maneuvering the space-craft - therefore even less dog-fightings...

Larry Niven's Footfall was a good one. The Aliens just gathered rocks on the way in through the asteroid belts and dropped them on Earth. Invasion done.

10:48 Think you need to fact check that one. The issue of a pilots not shooting off their own propellers was resolved by the development of a synchronizing gear so the prop and gun trigger were timed so bullets fired between prop passes.

In 'Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country', the Klingons could have used some zero gravity training. 🙄

The Expanse does a great job of of long range warfare especially when taking out weapon platforms in space.

Great class my friend I appreciate the thought you put into delivering this content. Big Ups to you!

10:00 while i love B5 for its realistic dogfights, one should also mention Battlestar Galactica 2003. Those vipers have beautiful RCS thrusters

Shout out to KSP for teaching Allen orbital mechanics. Also RIP Flat Earth guy, it was fun while it lasted Edit: Sorry Allen, had spelled your name wrong

This is one of my favourite vids of yours I've seen. Would love to see a part two where you talk about how making your enemy ship hotter and how dissipating heat from your ship quickly is the most effective form of defence!

Nice to see Bablylon 5 getting a mention - great show, well ahead of its time. And of course, The Expanse rules! More on such subjects would be much appreciated.

If anyone is looking for a book series that does Space battles well I recommend the Lost Fleet series.

I always love it when someone shines a light on Babylon 5. I never understood why it is so underrated in the sci-fi fandom.

Thumbs up, very interesting video, and professionally explained. I will actually have to look up some physic concepts you explained. A part II would be much appreciated. Diego, from Uruguay.

This is largely on point, but just a couple things to add: 1. Lasers and particle beams will be the dominant primary armament. In an environment with virtually no cover, effective range is king. You're going to want weapons that move close to, or at the speed of light. To put it in an earth analogy, an Iowa class BB could easily destroy any modern warship from close range, but it doesn't matter how powerful those giant naval rifles are if ASMs sink it from 200km beyond the Iowa's max range. It doesn't matter how powerful of a gun or missile you have, if it or your ship can be shot down from far outside your own range. Even much weaker beam weapons will still be more effective. 2. Maneuverability will be very important in space, even if the engagement ranges are measured in tens of thousands of km. The more your ship can move and evade, the harder it will be to hit with any form of unguided weapon like a laser beam. Because waste heat will be a serious issue for sustained combat, every shot the enemy misses will greatly benefit you. You're going to want to be constantly changing vectors in combat to make it as hard as possible for enemy beam weapons to concentrate and achieve burn through on your hull. In short, you want to keep dodging to lower the enemy's effective range as much as possible.

In David Weber's Honorverse books (the later ones anyway) missile technology has advanced to the point where the missiles have multi-stage drives (normally 2 stage but bigger ships have missiles with 3 stage drives), allowing tactical officers to launch the missile (with the aid of mass drivers) use the first stage of the drive to accelerate the missile towards the target, have it's drive shut down and coast on a ballistic trajectory until it comes into range of the target and then use the second stage of the drive for final attack manoeuvres. Salvos of these missiles also include missiles fitted with Dragons Teeth and dazzlers to mislead, confuse and overwhelm the defending ships active defences. MDMs (Multi Drive Missiles) can also be fired off bore, with an attacking ship rolling to present the ventral/dorsal plain of the hull (thus remaining protected by the stressed gravity bands produced by the ship's impeller drive which is impenetrable) and fire with all of its broadside missile tubes.

Anyone wanting more of sci fi space battle tropes ruined should check out Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet book series. Relativistic Distortion, dealing with the limitations of the speed of light as the best sensor type, fractions of a second engagement times, and so many other topics related to this video are well explained in there.

Keep it going with part 2 Allen. This was a fun video and an interesting topic!

Oh, forgot to mention, this is a - great - topic and I hope I see more videos from you on it. Wonderful content!

And this is another reason why I love the Expanse.

Why no rail guns nor black hole bombs?! Also why the cat face?! At 0:05

Best battle scene: "My Swartz is Bigger Than Your Swartz!" (From Spaceballs)

Love it!! Give us more like this!!

Speaking of Stealth Technology. One of the best Sci-fi examples of space stealth tech is the Normandy SR-1, where the heat from the ship is synced into the hull and thereby avoiding enemy detection for a time, though visual scans can still see the ship but that requires an light source, which if a stealth ship has hostile intentions and you can't detect it first... chances are it's already too late.

Great video. This topic needs a part 2. Consider how Jack Campbell describes space battles in his Lost Fleet series.

Good work guys, def part 2 and part 3, actually make a series about it

great content a part two would be awesome!

Is that thumbnail maybe a screenshot from Star Wars: Empire at War Forces of corruption Specifically the REMAKE mod?

I was honestly surprised he never mentioned anything about sounds in space battles

Great video. You should definitely expand on it!

Great video I would love to hear more on this

We definitely need a part two to this. We can talk about explosions in space an the lack of sound in a vacuum.

“I learned orbital mechanics from this little game called kerbal space program” Didn’t we all? Now if you excuse me, I will go launch some green aliens to mars.

The distance aspects are one of the things that I greatly appreciate about 40k's space combat as explained in most of the novels (they still have a lot of other flaws but that aspect and the reliance on sensors, calculations, and surprise/stealth are far more realistic than most scifi movies or shows)

"[Orbital] debris is dangerous someone has to suit up, go out there, and retrieve it" -Fee Carmichael (Planetes)

Battlestar Galactica did a pretty good job of showing how dogfighting in space would look

Man i really cannot wait for THAT space battle in the expanse season 6

Very interesting and informative, thank you.

Great video, please more!

Missed a big point, space battles will be incredibly similar to submarine battles.

stares at Legend of the Galactic heroes anime, yup most accurate space combat in a scifi anime

This is one of the more accurate, well thought out vids on this topic. Thanks!

At 7:54 I just love how a clip from The World's Fastest Indian (IMHO a very underrated film from 2005 starring Anthony Hopkins) found it's way into a segment about space combat. That's awesome! Thanks for that!!

Thank you for mentioning Babylon 5. The best Sci Fi series to ever grace TV.

Love this topic. More so since you praised B5 :-)

An important part of space battles in sci fi tabletop RPG Coriolis is detection. Spacecraft about to duke it out turn off their transponders and try to go dark. Closing transponders is pretty much a universal "fite me" signal in the setting. Everyone is fighting at a range of several AU, trying to figure out where the heck everyone else is using passive sensors. If you give yourself away attacking a misidentified target the fact that you are launching missiles, sending out signals, firing point defence systems and burning rockets and stuff gives you away more easily, and opens you up for a return missile.

Thank you, thank you! Bringing real science thought to movies--especially science fiction and movies based in the future--is great!

10:50 they also had propellor and machine intervelometer type system that doesnt shoot when the propellor is infront of the machine gun. i have a war history book, and yeah it didnt make sense to me either.

If you're in a ship, and you're radically changing your direction of motion, I think banking would make a difference to the comfort of the pilot. ;-)

positionality and execution on my mark. great vid man.

What a great video!!

Just realized on the bridge ambush in season 7 was technically a war crime ,!Anakin faked surrender to kill the enemy commandeer...

i wonder how an EMP would work in space combat. Especially early on in space warfare where all systems are not shielded properly or at all. An EMP COULD play havoc on life support systems, weapons, navigation consoles and power generators/reactors disabling an enemy starship's capability to do ANYTHING in combat. While yes, your own craft COULD potentially get hit by the EMP as the blast radius from an EMP after a nuclear detonation varies from 40-400 kilometres, the risk is present, but engagements in space will typically span hundreds of thousands of kilometres anyway. Speaking about distance in space combat, an EMP launched from a missile could take minutes or hours to reach the target, by at which point the target would have moved or deployed counter measures. An EMP however unlike conventional missiles has a larger blast radius (assuming that the EMP originates from a Nuclear Detonation.) EMP's if not able to be used in offensive combat in vacuum could be used to "disable" habitats and colonies on other worlds in which the atmosphere is hostile to life, essentially choking the inhabitants to death as their life support and heating units are disabled by the EMP pulse. Alternatively they could be used as mines, scattered in the orbit of planets and detonate when an enemy ship trips off its sensors. Now this is all based on five minutes of research so im obviously not to be trusted, however, these are just some possible implementations of EMP's in space warfare and their possible value as offensive or defensive weapons. Would love it if someone could fact-check this for me, as i did only bother to research EMP's for five minutes.

I'm impressed by how great a presenter you are. You sit at the right distance, you've got the right pace, you know your topic and give it the right amount of seriousness. You're one in a mil^W in a hundred thousand I would say ;-)

This video is great. I'm writing a sci-fi novel and will take this to heart when editing the battle scenes

Battlestar Galactica and the Expanse handle space fights in a great way.

I'm very happy that Babylon 5 was mentioned.

Yes! Awesome 👌🏽 part two please 🙏🏽 now I’m motivated to learn more about orbital mechanics and rocket science in all my new spare time lol. Thanks I think what we see in so much unrealism we see in sci-fi is because it has to be somewhat familiar, relatable and comprehendable to a wide audience group in order to be successful. The Expanse can be more realistic because it’s targeted mostly to a more science sci-fi forward audience and those viewers that are not are getting “an education”. Presentations like this one help raise the sophistication level of “the “collective opening the door to new topics and story lines and as an audience we won’t be lost. We will be right there with them in understanding and appreciation. It’s called evolution. Thanks 🙏🏽 Hope I wasn’t 2 long-winded. More power to you!

A bit late reply here, but i read a scifi story, where we have entered space, and it is really good and precise. In this book we encounter a deadly enemy, that wants to destroy humans. In the battles there are no small fighters, only big warships, with several gimballed rail guns, and missiles. The writer really took his time to research obital mechanics, and how we would move when entering star system, and how projectiles would behave. At the first battle they fire a few rounds at the enemy, but before that they calculate the distance to the target, its orbital period around the planet it is near, and where it will be. They allso calculate the gravitational pull from planets, and the parent star, on those projectiles. All this just to get a firing solution. When they where ready to fire, the estimated time for impact was 90 minutes, with a velocity at .4c (0.4 times the speed of light) The projectiles even had a little guidence system, and small vectoring thrusters, just in case the target made a little change in the orbit, either by burning prograde, or retrograde. If the target does, it invalidates the fireing solution. The space battles in this book could take days, making a firering solution, then fire, and wait for hours to see if you had a hit. They never fire everything, if they miss, they will miss with everything, so it was small controlled bursts. This might sound boring, but the psykological pressure on the personal was written really good, how they was in constant alert mode for days. Even when they enter a star system, they enter a orbit, and the writer wrote how they did de-orbit burns, so they could travel further in to the star system. The captain of the ship even mentioned how funny it is, that they can travel between two stars, using warp, in a couple of days, but to get to the inner planet in a system, you could travel for months. This book was awsome, and i have been trying to remember the title, i want to read it again.

In modern-day space travel movies, I've always been amazed at how loud the sounds (ships and explosions) are in the vacuum of space where there is no air to carry soundwaves.

what you've brought up in this video is a common misconception that's been slowly injected into your brain by the lizard aliens in cahoots with the dolphins. Space, just like Earth, is completely flat because of the gread lord Xenu's decree.

thank you for doing this video. its hard for people to grasp just how different space is from terrestrial mechanics, scifi was what made me go into aerospace engineering, and to focus on the space aspect of it. one thing i would like to point out that in space combat it's not just the distance that increase, but also the time factor, attacks have to be planed out and done days in advanced. even at close ranges the difference in velocities of competing spacecraft would mean that the tracking or even movement of turrets might no be fast enough to compensate for the lead times needed. also the accuracy needed becomes a real problem as small errors in even natural perturbations in orbits need to be taken into consideration (the changes in orbits cause by the non-spherical nature of planets, or even non-consistent point massed of objects need to be considered). and KSP is fantastic and a great learning tool, hell one of my TA's even made it a required program for my courses

Great vid...BEYOND 'excellent' choices of film clips to illustrate your major points; I think I only saw 2 clips I did not recognize the sources of. @@11:18 in the vid, where you begin to talk about engagement distances for dogfights in jets/your concerns about what "TG:2" will end up portraying on-screen in this "Age of BVR"/horizon combat...then you scale up to discussing the distances space entanglements would be occurring at. As others have chimed in to give due credit to "BSG:2003" along w/"B5" over zero-G combat flight mechanics, I think this would have been an awesome opportunity for you to have described & included clips of 1984's legendary sci-fi anime, "Macross: DYRL"--which, IMHO...has itself been imitated AND 'copied' immensely by Western Hollywood, during it's incremental progression to depicting 'more accurate' space combat in film. Key the opening scenes of VF-1 fighters being sortied to meet an approach Zentraedi force assault--overlaid versus the crowded, musical concert given by song idol, Minmai in the ship's civilian quarter. They're depicted forming up via vernier thrusters...HUD/HMDs of the pilots depict enemy approach vectors at hundreds of kilometers range, then each ship "..pickles off.." swarms of advanced missiles at this BVR. Which are themselves seamlessly depicted, corkscrewing & arcing along different headings to AVOID interception as well track incoming enemy missiles/gun fire themselves! All shown reflected in the visor-view of hero Hikaru's face, against his adrenaline -breathing & anxious heartbeat: the distance gap closing between forces[..'the merge' in fighter combat..] and even the explosions of successful hits, plus those missiles which were successfully intercepted by those approaching enemy Regult pods. The final, close-quarters dramatic fighting shows plenty of momentum-reversals & coordinated vernier maneuvers, as well rapid deceleration effects upon the pilots. This was a hand-drawn cel animation...from the 1981 - 1984 period, choreographed with ALL this detail clearly in mind! An anime itself inspired by the U.S. success of Star Wars space opera, but lightyears AHEAD of what most Earth-bound air combat movies still depicted between jet aircraft, as well still a couple of years before B5 was televised.

Sound in space....enough said.

"100 kilometers faster" - *engineer laughs internally*

Excellent video! Make part 2!🇺🇸

Thanks for the reference to B5! Every time I have a discussion about space battle I point to that amazing series' fighter jets. And please more content of this kind, it was a great list!