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[Fniff]

Let's say the shooter can choose how long it remains open. What would the maximum it could be open before something awful like all the air being sucked out of the atmosphere happens?

Basically forever.

The first thing is figuring out where the portal would be. The Sun has no true "surface", but you can put it in the photosphere because that is the outermost layer. A google search tells me that the density there is roughly 10^-9 kg/m³ compared with Earth's atmospheric density of 10^-3 kg/m³, so the atmosphere would eventually get sucked out. However, the atmosphere is really big and it would take a long time for it to leave (someone else can find an exact number for this).

The radiation shouldn't be much of an issue either. The 1m portal will emit roughly 5 x 10⁶ W (using a 1m diameter hole and a solar radiation at the Sun's surface of 6.29 x 10⁷ W/m²). Compare this with an average car's 9 x 10⁵ watts or the average wind turbine (2.5 x 10⁷ watts) and you'll see that it really isn't much energy. Sure, enough to melt anyone within several meters, but not planet-ending.

The ionizing radiation shouldn't be an issue, either, since the the atmosphere is very very effective at absorbing that.

This is all sounding surprisingly practical. Thank you, this should make my scifi thing a little more interesting.

[Dirst]

Given that portals exist, there must be some way to create and maintain a wormhole.  That requires a lot of energy.  Maybe even a lot and a half.

I can think of three ways this can work.

1. There is some device at the Sun that gets called and opens a portal from its location to the gun.  This station would have plenty of energy available to it, but the problem is that the portal appears at least several minutes after you pull the trigger (lightspeed communications and all).  Note that current estimates of the energy required to open a wormhole are orders of magnitude beyond what the Sun can produce, but we can hope for some advances if this is being considered for use as a weapon.

2. The portal is always open, just really tiny, and gets wider when you pull the trigger.

3. There had been some quantum leap in our understanding of spacetime manipulation, and the Sun base sends the portal a few minutes into its past to sync with when the trigger is pulled.  Of course, if you can do that there are far more interesting applications.

By why a portal to the Sun?  If the energy requirements aren't too onerous (say, a vehicle-mounted weapon), launch a pair of entangled wormholes right at your target to mangle their innards.  Since a wormhole is basically gravity waves whipped into a water spout, it might be possible to do sufficient damage with amplified gravity waves that aren't quite up to breaking the spacetime manifold.

[Parsely]

Yeah, that was something I tried to work my head around. I also tried to think about what would happen if the atmosphere control system- oh, wait, sorry, you don't care about what is and what isn't realistic.

There's a very strong possibility that you would drain all the atmosphere before you fight to avoid the risk of fire. However, I must say that there are so many ways to threaten a fragile space ship and its occupants with death from the outside that there is little reason to board it.

Boarding happened in the age of sail when you wanted what was on board, or it was easier than trying to sink your enemy. It's easy to make up excuses for not wanting to blow up a ship, but in space it's also super easy to get "sunk" and in most cases the risk of being killed should typically outweigh your desire for that VIP or the navigational data or whatever. Not to mention it's almost impossible to board a ship that doesn't want to be boarded, since you can't damage their powerplant for the risk of destroying the entire ship, so when you try to dock using your vessel or smaller vessels, they can just burn at 10 gs to stop you from matching their speed.

Real space battles are usually explosive , laser plasma, firearm free cause chances of depressurising the space boat.

When it comes to firearms, depressurization is not a huge risk. Bullets make very tiny holes, and holes need to be very big before you risk an instantaneous decompression. Imagine putting a dozen 9mm holes in the underside of a tanker. It WILL eventually fill the compromised compartment with water, but it will take ages, and that's only one compartment.

Bullet holes can easily be patched before enough air escapes that people start losing consciousness, unless this was an extended gun battle. Not to mention this is only a significant risk if you are near the skin of the ship. If you're fighting closer to it's spine, there's so much to travel through that a bullet likely won't reach the part of the hull that divides you from space. And if you're the invaders, typically you won't give a shit if the hull is busted since you should be wearing EVA suits.

Not to mention there are firearms that can throw projectiles that will punch through a human's flesh without damaging the wall behind him.

[Amperzand]

Exactly.  Aside from that entirely, the exterior hull of a combat spacecraft should be, presumably, well-armored. Given that your average boarding crew does not carry heavy antimateriel weapons, they shouldn't even have the capability to actually penetrate the outer hull, rendering the question of decompression irrelevant.

Edit: Of course, that ignores the question of whether the entire inside of a ship would actually be pressurized, which I'd say is up for debate, but the exterior walls of pressure vessels should, in general, be pretty durable.

[MonkeyHead]

An atmosphere in a combat ship could be a liability.

[Amperzand]

Exactly. Unnecessary weight, greatly increased risk of fire, etc etc.

[Jimmy]

If all you're looking to do is destroy the enemy's vessel, a rather tidy way to do so would be through a grey goo weapon. Engineer nanobots programmed to activate or deactivate based on an encoded transmission. Fire the nanobots at an enemy vessel, then turn them on. Nanobots don't care about the enemy's hull armor. They'll just consume it to reproduce. Once your grey goo has digested the enemy's vessel, send the signal to turn the nanobots off and harvest the leftovers. You might want to double up on your safety and include an automatic shut-off after a period of time elapses too, so that any nanobots that get missed by your off signal don't continue to consume the rest of the galaxy.

[Amperzand]

I would say that widespread high-end nanotechnology is one of those things that makes a lot of other things difficult to justify.

[GiglameshDespair]

If all you're looking to do is destroy the enemy's vessel, a rather tidy way to do so would be through a grey goo weapon. Engineer nanobots programmed to activate or deactivate based on an encoded transmission. Fire the nanobots at an enemy vessel, then turn them on. Nanobots don't care about the enemy's hull armor. They'll just consume it to reproduce. Once your grey goo has digested the enemy's vessel, send the signal to turn the nanobots off and harvest the leftovers. You might want to double up on your safety and include an automatic shut-off after a period of time elapses too, so that any nanobots that get missed by your off signal don't continue to consume the rest of the galaxy.

However, there's no reason why they could not counter it with their own defensive nanobots.
Nanomachines are limited by energy. All that converting mass requires an energy source. Would they be able to carry enough power to convert a spaceship? Possibly.
Due to their small size, there's also no real way to protect nanomachines against solar radiation. Since they would have to work in function with each other, this would mess with them, and they'd also be vulnerable to intentional jamming.

You'd have to also hit the enemy spaceship with your goo jar, and that's easier said than done.

[Catmeat]

I have to be far from realistic because when ur in space battles are one sided the agressor usually comes super prepared for defences and blows you up, space is to large for space battles to matter and thats not without saying you could weave the fabric to the ships use.
Alsoyour very likely to be peaceful, cause who gets off their planet if the are super waring race

[Amperzand]

I have to be far from realistic because when ur in space battles are one sided the agressor usually comes super prepared for defences and blows you up, space is to large for space battles to matter and thats not without saying you could weave the fabric to the ships use.
Alsoyour very likely to be peaceful, cause who gets off their planet if the are super waring race

Some of what you say makes sense. Most of it does not.

[Parsely]

Exactly.  Aside from that entirely, the exterior hull of a combat spacecraft should be, presumably, well-armored. Given that your average boarding crew does not carry heavy antimateriel weapons, they shouldn't even have the capability to actually penetrate the outer hull, rendering the question of decompression irrelevant.

Edit: Of course, that ignores the question of whether the entire inside of a ship would actually be pressurized, which I'd say is up for debate, but the exterior walls of pressure vessels should, in general, be pretty durable.

In most cases armoring your vessel is not worth it. A projectile moving fast enough to hit a space ship in the first place is already going to be highly destructive just because of the speed necessary to not miss so armor becomes useless. It's a lot like hoping body armor will save you from a bullet traveling at 1000m/s. Ablative armor can have some value against lasers, but lasers are so accurate that they can easily strike the unarmored portions of your ship, like your radiators (no you cannot armor your radiators) or your own lasers.

[Jimmy]

I can certainly see reasons that future interstellar civilizations would go to war, from things such as territory or resources to simple religious or philosophical differences.

For example, if we as humans ever progress to the point where we begin colonizing other planets, we will likely never find one so suitable for our biology as Earth. In these situations we have two options: to attempt to modify our environment to suit our bodies, or to modify our bodies to suit our environment. It is likely far more efficient and practical to use our own technology to alter ourselves so that we can live more comfortably on the planet we find ourselves upon.

Thus, we start to see humans with genetic modifications emerging into distinct species. Short, densely muscled, thick boned people from high-G worlds, slender, hollow boned flight capable people from low-G worlds, amphibious humans from semi-aquatic planets, toxic methane-breathers, cybernetically enhanced humans, and more. We force ourselves to evolve into the form most suitable for survival in our new home. There's plenty of room for conflict amongst these new cultures and peoples.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Alsoyour very likely to be peaceful, cause who gets off their planet if the are super waring race

The USSR, the US and China are the only three countries to develop spaceflight on their own. Tell me that none of them are warlike.

[Amperzand]

Exactly.  Aside from that entirely, the exterior hull of a combat spacecraft should be, presumably, well-armored. Given that your average boarding crew does not carry heavy antimateriel weapons, they shouldn't even have the capability to actually penetrate the outer hull, rendering the question of decompression irrelevant.

Edit: Of course, that ignores the question of whether the entire inside of a ship would actually be pressurized, which I'd say is up for debate, but the exterior walls of pressure vessels should, in general, be pretty durable.

In most cases armoring your vessel is not worth it. A projectile moving fast enough to hit a space ship in the first place is already going to be highly destructive just because of the speed necessary to not miss so armor becomes useless. It's a lot like hoping body armor will save you from a bullet traveling at 1000m/s. Ablative armor can have some value against lasers, but lasers are so accurate that they can easily strike the unarmored portions of your ship, like your radiators (no you cannot armor your radiators) or your own lasers.

I was thinking more the way our spacesuits are designed to handle micrometeoroids. Armor won't do shit against railgun slugs or whatever, but it's certainly useful for gravel and chunks of shrapnel.