That's a lot of very cool information. I kinda understood about half of what you said there. But you mention cannons being of poor use in orbit. That may be true, but this fighter won't be orbiting for most of it's travel time. (Well, it will, but most of the time will be eccentric transfer orbits from one planet or moon to another) If my (somewhat shaky) grasp on orbital mechanics is correct, the whole "your own bullets hitting yourself" problem would be minimal.
In a totally realistic world, I agree my design would not be the most practical. I'll leave the uber-realistic stuff to you and Mikey-B, this is more making something cool for my own enjoyment.
I never claimed this to be utterly realistic. Think more neo-BSG (sans FTL and artificial Gravity) or Firefly than Apollo 13. While I do appreciate and value you input as to what is strictly feasible or not, I'm more willing to brush it to the corner in pursuit of something that feel cooler.
My comments may have come off as negative, but that wasn't my intention. I do like the design; I favor the capsule-module arrangement over the aircraft style for more realistic concepts. I don't mean to imply that missiles and guns shouldn't be used, but that the space environment should be somewhat understood so that the designer knows what they will do in space. I think the easiest way to think about what firing a rocket engine in space does is to not think so much about how the spacecraft will react--how it will "fly" but rather that a burn will adjust the position and altitude of the spacecraft's orbit's perigee and apogee. If you are pointing in the direction of orbital motion (prograde) and fire the engine(s), this will increase the apogee's altidude--it will mover further away from the Earth, or other body that is being orbited. The apogee will continue to move until acceleration stops, at which point the spacecraft will fly too for how ever long it takes. This creates an elliptical orbit and the perigee stays where it is. Also, the best place to do burns is at perigee or apogee to take advantage of gravity--speeding up toward perigee and slowing down toward apogee. When you reach apogee and are still pointing prograde, firing the engines again will raise the perigee. In this manner you can circularize your orbit. If you point retrograde and fire your engine at apogee, you will lower your perigee. Be careful not to lower it into the atmosphere. Once at perigee, and remaining retrograde, another burn will lower the apogee. The apogee and perigee will be 180 degrees away from each other, and of course if you burn long enough one will become the other. Knowing this, the best way to treat missiles and bullets is as if they are small spacecraft. They will have your same speed, thus your same orbit. So firing a gun imparts acceleration into the bullet. As the bullet accelerates, its apogee is moving away from the Earth and its orbit is becoming more elliptic. Gravity pulls on it so it eventually stops accelerating and moves onward towards its apogee, following its elliptic orbit, round and round the Earth until it hits something, or its orbit decays. The missile will do the same, but the missile may be able to change the eccentricity, or roundness, of its orbit.
Orbits also have two other important points, or nodes, which can be anywhere in the orbit, 180 degrees away from each other. As an orbit is seldom going to be aligned with the equator, these nodes, the ascending and descending, mark the place in the orbit where the spacecraft crosses the equator, rising above, or sinking below. Pointing the spacecraft 90 degrees to the direction of orbital travel and firing the engines changes your inclination in reference to the equator. I believe +90 at the ascending node increases inclination while -90 at the descending node decreases inclination. So if you rotate 90 degrees nose up and fire your guns, what do the bullets do? They should fly away in a higher inclined orbital plane. Using Orbiter space flight sim, I need to set up a scenario where I can jettison a spacecraft from another and see how it behaves as if it were the missile or bullet. That is the key point, that missiles and bullets will act no differently than other spacecraft in orbit.
Also, pointing the ship in random directions and firing the engine changes the orbit as well, though less predictable than the above means. In Orbiter I've gotten myself into orbits that intersect the Earth and had no means to fix the orbit (perigee under the surface), with attempts making it worse.
The strange behavior of bullets in orbit is why the Russians had a more desirable firing arc on the Almaz. And missiles could loiter on orbit for days before hitting targets. A cloud of bullets in an elliptical orbit becomes a mine field. So these weapons may have other approaches of use than what we normally would think about. If we choose to use them in the way we normally think about them, they are better used at close distances where the effects of their orbital changes will be minimized prior to impact.
However, because each orbit has a relative speed and duration, a spacecraft's position can be calculated with ease. If you are tracking a target, you know were it is going to be. If it can maneuver, and it is very far away where guns and missiles are of no use, then the target can change its orbit when it is behind the Earth and you can't see it. Only when it comes back around can you track its motion and figure out its orbit and where it's going to be along that orbit. Then you have to change your orbit to try to get close to it. And it changes it's orbit, and so on and so forth until someone can't maneuver anymore. In this scenario, guns and missiles are much use. You can launch missiles that try to play the same orbital change game, and maybe some will have a chance to get close. But bear in mind, this strategy could take days! Not hours. Not minutes, but days. So even though space combat will be performed at high speeds, (17,500 mph at the ISS altitude, and slower as you gain altitude), the distances involved--the Earth has a diameter of over 12,600 km) it will take some time to get close--if you can get close--to exchange gunfire. This is where the air combat philosophy of "see first, kill first" comes into play, and is better performed with lasers. However, the kind of laser than can burn a hole in the skin of spacecraft from distances about the diameter of the Earth without losing power through attenuation is not likely to be small anytime soon barring a scientific breakthrough in energy production. The space-bourne lasers I've found on the web were Hubble telescope big, and 3 times as massive. A microwave weapon will have the same problem. Hopefully, advances in lasers will result in a small, very powerful, less attenuating weapon.
All these weapon choices have their pros and cons, and it depends on what your fighter is designed to do and its mission profiles that determine the best weapon to use.
And if you haven't already, download and play with Orbiter Space Flight Simulator. It will give you "hands on experience" with spaceflight. A warning though, it's not all that easy. And here is a good website on orbital mechanics that has helped me. It has math for those that are spreadsheet savvy.
I actully have Orbiter (download it a year or so ago). While I'm not the best pilot, I can insert myself into orbit, execute transfer orbits, and and on occasion (read: when I don't get bored and start pounding on keys) rendevous with things.
Posts
My comments may have come off as negative, but that wasn't my intention. I do like the design; I favor the capsule-module arrangement over the aircraft style for more realistic concepts. I don't mean to imply that missiles and guns shouldn't be used, but that the space environment should be somewhat understood so that the designer knows what they will do in space. I think the easiest way to think about what firing a rocket engine in space does is to not think so much about how the spacecraft will react--how it will "fly" but rather that a burn will adjust the position and altitude of the spacecraft's orbit's perigee and apogee. If you are pointing in the direction of orbital motion (prograde) and fire the engine(s), this will increase the apogee's altidude--it will mover further away from the Earth, or other body that is being orbited. The apogee will continue to move until acceleration stops, at which point the spacecraft will fly too for how ever long it takes. This creates an elliptical orbit and the perigee stays where it is. Also, the best place to do burns is at perigee or apogee to take advantage of gravity--speeding up toward perigee and slowing down toward apogee. When you reach apogee and are still pointing prograde, firing the engines again will raise the perigee. In this manner you can circularize your orbit. If you point retrograde and fire your engine at apogee, you will lower your perigee. Be careful not to lower it into the atmosphere. Once at perigee, and remaining retrograde, another burn will lower the apogee. The apogee and perigee will be 180 degrees away from each other, and of course if you burn long enough one will become the other. Knowing this, the best way to treat missiles and bullets is as if they are small spacecraft. They will have your same speed, thus your same orbit. So firing a gun imparts acceleration into the bullet. As the bullet accelerates, its apogee is moving away from the Earth and its orbit is becoming more elliptic. Gravity pulls on it so it eventually stops accelerating and moves onward towards its apogee, following its elliptic orbit, round and round the Earth until it hits something, or its orbit decays. The missile will do the same, but the missile may be able to change the eccentricity, or roundness, of its orbit.
Orbits also have two other important points, or nodes, which can be anywhere in the orbit, 180 degrees away from each other. As an orbit is seldom going to be aligned with the equator, these nodes, the ascending and descending, mark the place in the orbit where the spacecraft crosses the equator, rising above, or sinking below. Pointing the spacecraft 90 degrees to the direction of orbital travel and firing the engines changes your inclination in reference to the equator. I believe +90 at the ascending node increases inclination while -90 at the descending node decreases inclination. So if you rotate 90 degrees nose up and fire your guns, what do the bullets do? They should fly away in a higher inclined orbital plane. Using Orbiter space flight sim, I need to set up a scenario where I can jettison a spacecraft from another and see how it behaves as if it were the missile or bullet. That is the key point, that missiles and bullets will act no differently than other spacecraft in orbit.
Also, pointing the ship in random directions and firing the engine changes the orbit as well, though less predictable than the above means. In Orbiter I've gotten myself into orbits that intersect the Earth and had no means to fix the orbit (perigee under the surface), with attempts making it worse.
The strange behavior of bullets in orbit is why the Russians had a more desirable firing arc on the Almaz. And missiles could loiter on orbit for days before hitting targets. A cloud of bullets in an elliptical orbit becomes a mine field. So these weapons may have other approaches of use than what we normally would think about. If we choose to use them in the way we normally think about them, they are better used at close distances where the effects of their orbital changes will be minimized prior to impact.
However, because each orbit has a relative speed and duration, a spacecraft's position can be calculated with ease. If you are tracking a target, you know were it is going to be. If it can maneuver, and it is very far away where guns and missiles are of no use, then the target can change its orbit when it is behind the Earth and you can't see it. Only when it comes back around can you track its motion and figure out its orbit and where it's going to be along that orbit. Then you have to change your orbit to try to get close to it. And it changes it's orbit, and so on and so forth until someone can't maneuver anymore. In this scenario, guns and missiles are much use. You can launch missiles that try to play the same orbital change game, and maybe some will have a chance to get close. But bear in mind, this strategy could take days! Not hours. Not minutes, but days. So even though space combat will be performed at high speeds, (17,500 mph at the ISS altitude, and slower as you gain altitude), the distances involved--the Earth has a diameter of over 12,600 km) it will take some time to get close--if you can get close--to exchange gunfire. This is where the air combat philosophy of "see first, kill first" comes into play, and is better performed with lasers. However, the kind of laser than can burn a hole in the skin of spacecraft from distances about the diameter of the Earth without losing power through attenuation is not likely to be small anytime soon barring a scientific breakthrough in energy production. The space-bourne lasers I've found on the web were Hubble telescope big, and 3 times as massive. A microwave weapon will have the same problem. Hopefully, advances in lasers will result in a small, very powerful, less attenuating weapon.
All these weapon choices have their pros and cons, and it depends on what your fighter is designed to do and its mission profiles that determine the best weapon to use.
And if you haven't already, download and play with Orbiter Space Flight Simulator. It will give you "hands on experience" with spaceflight. A warning though, it's not all that easy. And here is a good website on orbital mechanics that has helped me. It has math for those that are spreadsheet savvy.