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[Culise]

Rather obsolete, but honestly, if we're talking space airships, I love the style of picking a word from the mid-19th century that would have been perfectly in place in something by Verne or Burroughs.

[Helgoland]

Precisely - it's the combination of 19th-century style, classical education, and willful obscurity that makes me like it.

[Sheb]

And, of course, the fight that you can't admit being wrong.

[Flying Dice]

That's sort of what I was thinking. It's cool, but it also drastically increases the chance of damaging something* and increases the time it takes to turn around a returning fighter for a second launch. Drop-launching definitely has merit, though.

Actually, an anti-ballast system might be interesting. Carry high-pressure oxygen/nitrogen tanks (which double as life support). On landing, kill your velocity and use the tanks to inflate balloons such that the aircraft has a net slight downward drift due to gravity, soft-land like that. Still the same problem with winds, though, and the added concern that they couldn't be reset after a botched landing. Maybe a different system where the volume of atmosphere in the landing envelopes is enough to lift slightly higher than standard colony/ship altitude, and float the fighter up into a hanger with downward-facing doors.

The winds aren't too bad, if I remember right. That high up, they're usually fairly predictable outside of storms. It will always be a concern of course, but since both the airship and the carried plane will be affected, it isn't quite as bad as it could be. Cross-sectional density differences would be the main problem there, I suspect; you might have to turn the carrier a specific direction relative to the wind, and land from a specific direction as well, but I believe that's done as it is anyway.

Subaerocraft or however you would call them would be fairly interesting. Dive into the thicker atmosphere, can afford to be a bit heavier since the lift force will be more efficient, harder to spot what with the ridiculous amount of clouds Venus has. Which is really probably the best justification you can have for short-range combat in a sci-fi environment; hard to get a good radar or GPS lock when half the sky's covered by sulfuric acid.

Still think individual suits would be cool for boarding, but full aircraft would probably help with intercepting, scouting, and so on.

I hate to take it away from weapons, but do you guys think the temperature gradient in the atmosphere would be able to be used with massively tall power plants? I'm almost certain it wouldn't be very practical for use in powering airships, but if we got automated mines or the like set up on the surface to get materials, and used the towers for transport upwards as well as power? If you had equal pressures inside and out, it wouldn't be too bad, after all...

On yet another note, how would defenses adapt to these weapons, on both sides? I have a feeling electronic warfare will be very important.

Might actually lead to intentionally slow aircraft--even with modern instrumentation the visual up-down orientation out the cockpit window with a view on the ground or the top of the upper layer of clouds is still important, at least mentally. Combine that with short effective detection ranges and heavy obscuring clouds and you might not want high-speed fighters so much as high-maneuverability ones. I can definitely see it resulting in a return to old-school energy fighting and circle-turning meshed with ambush tactics, where SRAAMs would be on the outer edge of effective range (if that) and MRAAMs & LRAAMs would only exist, if at all, for alpha strikes against colonies with known stationary positions.

Regarding the individual suits: what about boarding rams? Obviously suits as well, but with a spiked shuttle as the delivery vector for infantry.

[Tack]

I guess it's the same root that makes us say 'Martian' instead of 'Marsian'.

[Helgoland]

Mars, Martis - precisely!

[chaotic skies]

That's sort of what I was thinking. It's cool, but it also drastically increases the chance of damaging something* and increases the time it takes to turn around a returning fighter for a second launch. Drop-launching definitely has merit, though.

Actually, an anti-ballast system might be interesting. Carry high-pressure oxygen/nitrogen tanks (which double as life support). On landing, kill your velocity and use the tanks to inflate balloons such that the aircraft has a net slight downward drift due to gravity, soft-land like that. Still the same problem with winds, though, and the added concern that they couldn't be reset after a botched landing. Maybe a different system where the volume of atmosphere in the landing envelopes is enough to lift slightly higher than standard colony/ship altitude, and float the fighter up into a hanger with downward-facing doors.

The winds aren't too bad, if I remember right. That high up, they're usually fairly predictable outside of storms. It will always be a concern of course, but since both the airship and the carried plane will be affected, it isn't quite as bad as it could be. Cross-sectional density differences would be the main problem there, I suspect; you might have to turn the carrier a specific direction relative to the wind, and land from a specific direction as well, but I believe that's done as it is anyway.

Subaerocraft or however you would call them would be fairly interesting. Dive into the thicker atmosphere, can afford to be a bit heavier since the lift force will be more efficient, harder to spot what with the ridiculous amount of clouds Venus has. Which is really probably the best justification you can have for short-range combat in a sci-fi environment; hard to get a good radar or GPS lock when half the sky's covered by sulfuric acid.

Still think individual suits would be cool for boarding, but full aircraft would probably help with intercepting, scouting, and so on.

I hate to take it away from weapons, but do you guys think the temperature gradient in the atmosphere would be able to be used with massively tall power plants? I'm almost certain it wouldn't be very practical for use in powering airships, but if we got automated mines or the like set up on the surface to get materials, and used the towers for transport upwards as well as power? If you had equal pressures inside and out, it wouldn't be too bad, after all...

On yet another note, how would defenses adapt to these weapons, on both sides? I have a feeling electronic warfare will be very important.

Might actually lead to intentionally slow aircraft--even with modern instrumentation the visual up-down orientation out the cockpit window with a view on the ground or the top of the upper layer of clouds is still important, at least mentally. Combine that with short effective detection ranges and heavy obscuring clouds and you might not want high-speed fighters so much as high-maneuverability ones. I can definitely see it resulting in a return to old-school energy fighting and circle-turning meshed with ambush tactics, where SRAAMs would be on the outer edge of effective range (if that) and MRAAMs & LRAAMs would only exist, if at all, for alpha strikes against colonies with known stationary positions.

Regarding the individual suits: what about boarding rams? Obviously suits as well, but with a spiked shuttle as the delivery vector for infantry.

You don't even need a spike shuttle; make it in the shape of a bullet, scaled up many thousands of times and probably slightly enlongated. Fill with people, strap in and prepare for heavy Gs; you're about to be launched at a large enemy vessel. Of course, you'd need a way to exit quickly and escape if you miss, but you could always just be sure you won't miss. This also does a large amount of damage on the way in, and you could mix in some explosive rounds with the shuttles, so that if you start shooting at the shuttles you might just blow yourself up.

[Egan_BW]

If you want to ruin some Venusian's day at great expense to yourself, you could probably use a SPACEPLANE. Rather than parking on an airship, you can just land in orbit.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

What problems are currently impeding cryogenic stasis or whatever it is called when you freeze someone to thaw out later?

Asking because if it becomes a thing couldn't someone just freeze their soldiers until they are needed so when they go to war they have an army much larger than their country would normally be able to have (since you've been storing a bunch of guys instead of having them do some pointless peace time stuff and retire)?

[inteuniso]

What problems are currently impeding cryogenic stasis or whatever it is called when you freeze someone to thaw out later?

Asking because if it becomes a thing couldn't someone just freeze their soldiers until they are needed so when they go to war they have an army much larger than their country would normally be able to have (since you've been storing a bunch of guys instead of having them do some pointless peace time stuff and retire)?

We require additional graphene.

On that note, you would not believe how hard it is to convince everyone that making graphene with 2-carboxylic acid is far superior to making graphene with 1-carboxylic acid.

[chaotic skies]

I'm not sure what the difference is, please explain. Maybe?

[Flying Dice]

What problems are currently impeding cryogenic stasis or whatever it is called when you freeze someone to thaw out later?

Asking because if it becomes a thing couldn't someone just freeze their soldiers until they are needed so when they go to war they have an army much larger than their country would normally be able to have (since you've been storing a bunch of guys instead of having them do some pointless peace time stuff and retire)?

Apart from, uh, the ethical problems with freezer-pop soldiers? Gonna have a hard time getting volunteers for that, methinks. Same issue of societal detachment as with STL travel at an appreciable fraction of c: the people doing it rapidly outlive everyone and everything they knew. It's like an entire segment of the population turning into grumpy old people who don't like all this newfangled bullshit, except that they're still in their twenties or thirties.

[Rolepgeek]

That's why you send large numbers of people. Generational ships. Send their families with them.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I don't think getting volunteers would be as difficult as you think it would be.
I mean look at how easy it is for even just a loudly put together organization to collect willing young volunteers to fight and die for their cause.

I think a patriotic ad campaign would be enough to get a sizable amount of people to volunteer for it (even if it is just 1% of the people that would normally join the military that would eventually add up over time since they don't need to be paid (as much) and they don't retire or need more training once frozen)

[Rolepgeek]

I don't think getting volunteers would be as difficult as you think it would be.
I mean look at how easy it is for even just a loudly put together organization to collect willing young volunteers to fight and die for their cause.

I think a patriotic ad campaign would be enough to get a sizable amount of people to volunteer for it (even if it is just 1% of the people that would normally join the military that would eventually add up over time since they don't need to be paid (as much) and they don't retire or need more training once frozen)

I think you overestimate how willing people are to die as compared to fight. And how willing people are to make their lives literally nothing but fighting, and leave behind their family basically permanently. Besides which, you actually do have to train with new weapon systems, unless you're wanting to make them into basically conscripts. Or have to retrain with the new tech when war happens. And the timescale it would take for it to be useful, as compared to just spending that money on more tech and equipment, is pretty horrendous.