Why aircraft carriers won't make sense in space

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Excellent article. Thanks for the heads-up.

One of my favorite science-fiction short stories was by Larry Niven, and was written back in the '70s. Sorry I don't remember the name.

In the story one guy is being chased by an enemy, both in ships that use a collection field of some sort to gather loose hydrogen from space, which is then fed into a sort of ramjet. The guy being chased realizes that if he can drop a large enough mass he might collapse the other guy's field, possibly even wrecking his ship. So he figures out a way to do this, and drops a part of his ship behind him. He starts watching his rear with a digital telescope. Six months later he sees a flash of light billions of miles behind that tells him it worked.

Now that was original, and probably realistic.

It was called The Warriors.

Originally Posted by August

This is the type of carrier role better analogous to what would be required in a space carrier.
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If you have never watched Space: Above and Beyond you should check it out.