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Space battleship yamato has a cool example of this, the dimensional submarine. It works by moving along a fourth spatial dimension into a parallel plane, and even has a periscope for seeing into 3d space.

I literally joined the navy to be on a sub because it was the closest I'd ever be to being on a spaceship. I don't know if I feel seen or attacked lol. Something weird people don't think about is how loud the inside of a sub is, there are fans, alerts, smelly dudes talking, and high pressure piping everywhere. When machines are perpetually keeping you alive/also trying to kill you the loudest noise you hear is quiet, which I think any submariner will relate to because nothing will wake you up as fast as the silence of fans and ventilation getting secured for a fire. When I experienced this I always wanted to chuckle a little remembering a line Tali said in Mass Effect about how she was having trouble sleeping aboard the Normandy because the ship was too quiet and if things were that quiet in the migrant fleet something was wrong. Pretty sure the expanse says something similar about beltalowda. I think the depths of the similarities of the machines and people between the two environments can be explored in media a lot more than it has.

“Balance of Terror” Star Trek first series- not only is the tactics sub inspired - the entire story is (The Enemy Below 1957). It is one of the best in the TOS and one of the ones that holds up. Also first time we see Romulans and cloaking devices.

As a former US Navy submariner (SSBN) & huge sci-fi nerd this was quite enjoyable to watch. I think another parallel between space ships & submarines is the environment around the ship is the biggest enemy. Hull breaches in both sci-fi and at sea (especially when submerged) are huge dangers and battling such casualties is a source of extreme tension & drama. I always enjoyed in Star Trek, the Expanse, and other shows when damage control was highlighted. Another one is that submarines & space ships both create their own atmospheres; not just creating oxygen but cleaning out the toxic remnants of our respiration. On nuclear submarines the backup diesel engines, and their associated limitations, remind me of starships that have their FTL capabilities reduced as well. Such as when a Star Trek vessel is down to impulse power. In fiction, the complexity and danger of the environment and the systems that keep the ship & crew safe can be utilized to increase tension and danger, even more-so in the heat of battle. Books and shows that see ships as these preciously balanced feats of engineering that could see a cascade of catastrophes if something is damaged have always been at the peak of hard sci-fi.

Reminds me of that ridiculous scene in the Wing Commander movie where everybody gets quiet to try and not get spotted as if forgetting that there's no sound in space.

I have always loved this similarity. Most battles in sci-fi would probably be fought purely over sensor displays. Visual contact is rarely necessary, unless it's for the benefit of the audience.

Always had the thought that if warships in space needed to be crewed they’d enlist active submarine sailors as they have the most similar training to what a space crew would need.

In 'Space Battleship Yamato 2199' there is a space submarine, the UX-01. This ship can submerge into subspace where sensors don't function and the crew must use a periscope to see what's outside of subspace.

One thing that I wish more scifi ships incorporated from submarines is the idea of putting the bridge (or as it's more accurately called in Submarines the *Command Center* ) deep inside the ship's hull. How often do we see starships with big exposed bridges that would realistically be the first target, but for some reason are almost never attacked? Hell most of them have panorama windows, shoot them down you idiots! Lol

The ToS Episode 'Balance of Terror' was also inspired by submarine warfare. The cloaking device is practically analogous to the Bird of Prey surfacing and diving.

The greatest Trek episode ever “Balance of Terror” is basically a submarine battle in space.

"I don't have a transition, so anyway..." is my favorite transition.

Cat and Mouse was a fantastic episode of The Clone Wars, and it really used that idea of a stealth ship to great effect. The space battle over Christophsis is a great example of a Separatist fleet actually being effective in that show, not just falling apart due to some stupid commander. Admiral Trench having experience fighting cloaked vessels, and eventually realizing what he's up against even before it's revealed, is a great twist. Using his own arrogance against him is the perfect ending. I even love that look on his face right before the explosion, not angry or panicked at all, just accepting defeat because he recognizes the mistake he made. You could probably make the case that the other ships in the blockade should've made it harder on Anakin to take on the flagship alone, but I guess Trench's orders to not break formation were followed to the letter, and if they're simply droids commanding the smaller frigates, that makes enough sense to me.

It goes back even further. The ToS episode Balance Of Terror is a straight up retelling of The Enemy Below. The Enterprise acting as the destroyer hunting the invisible and dangerous U-Boat.

A movie on submarines I can absolutely recommend is "Das Boot", a German blockbuster about a German Submarine during WWII. Even thought it's a quite old movie, it's a great movie.

There's also the "space submarines" (literally called that) in the Space Battleship Yamato universe. They "dive" into a dimension adjacent to normal space which has some fluid characteristics and basically do all the fun things submarines did in WW2...

After reading the Vorpal Blade by John Ringo, in which the US Navy actually converts a Nuclear sub into a starship, I told my father (who had been an Electrician's Mate in the Navy) that if I was to do a stint in the military, I'd love to do my time in a sub as it would be the closest I'd likely get to serving on a starship. My father looked at me, and said to be careful who I said that to.

I'm not surprised that sub warfare is similar to starship warfare. A lot of spaceships in science fiction are similar in size to navy ships. Like the Yamato and White Base are both similar in size and I think those 2 are similar in size to the Star Trek TOS Enterprise.

Star Trek (et al) even calls its guided munitions "torpedoes", a nod so obvious that it's easy to miss. A torpedo isn't limited to submarines, but it's a weapon that only works underwater, named after a fish. It's in the same territory.

The stuff about active and passive sensors reminds me of the Bobiverse series. The spacecraft in that have active and passive sudar systems that mimic sonar pretty closely. Their main sci-fi element is that unlike radar, which is limited by the speed of light, and sonar, which is limited by the speed of sound, sudar is instantaneous, giving an exact location for any mass large enough in its detection range, with no delay whatsoever. But the active/passive systems do work just like sonar. The instant you throw out a ping, you get an exact location on all mass in the area. But your opponent also knows precisely where you are.

Balance Of Terror is hands down one of the best episodes of Star Trek.

I'm surprised you didn't bring up Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (AKA Starblazers) as there is literally a submarine warfare episode of a ship that travels through a pocket dimension like sub, hell the Yamato has even gone underwater in another episode.

I liked it in the clone wars you pointed out that Anakin is using the same tactic in Red October as a way to get rid of your enemy baiting the missiles, I hope it that does not become an overused cliche in the future. If it is used it as a overused cliche it's going to get old very soon. 😀

Space Battlship Yamato had a ship that hid in a paralel dimension. Even had a periscope that could reenter real space.

Great video. I'd maybe give a nod to DS9's 'For the Uniform' - nothing particularly sub-like going on in the actual starship manoeuvres, but having the computer fried requiring everyone to do everything manually, and say it out loud as they're doing it, I felt really gave an old school sub feel to the bridge scenes.

I feel like one that was missed is the nx-01 enterprise, that entire series and wspecially the 3rd season feels very submariney

I remember watching another video a few years ago talking about how submarine films were used as an inspiration for the sound design of Star Trek TOS

I remember an online article years ago that discussed the three types of naval warfare: aerial, surface and submarine. Of the three, submarine warfare was believed to be the closest equivalent to ships fighting in space

Space battleship Yamato actually had a submarine like vessel. You should break it down, along with the other space battleship Yamato ships

Funny thing is a part of this similarity also exist in real life as astronauts train underwater for actual spacewalks

How can you not even mention Balance of Terror? Totally based on The Enemy Below, a submarine/surface ship war film. The Enterprise plays the cruiser and the Bird of Prey is the U-Boat.

I do love when writters remember these connections and use them. The SNW episode was great in how to write this into a story much like Wrath of Kahn

A very informative video. Another instance of submarine inspired warfare is in the DS9-episode "The Search, Part I". In that one, the Defiant not only cloaks but also shuts down most of its systems (in essence silent running) to avoid two Jem'Hadar warships using antiproton beams (in essence sonar) to scan for her.

You forgot the balance of terror with Kirk and the enterprise playing a game of deadly hide and seek with a romulan bird of prey with the romulan captain using debrey to fool Kirk and the enterprise using it phasers like depth charges to try damage it quarry although the bird of prey did become visible to attack

I built a Sci-Fi setting for a story and game I wrote years ago, where all space travel was done in a way that was like submarines. The only way to reliably move fast, especially at FTL speeds, is to warp gravity around the ship. The only way to keep that from ripping a ship apart is to encase the entire ship in a bubble and move the bubble. But because that bubble bends all light and radiation around it, nobody outside can see it and nobody inside the bubble can see out. So you have to move, 'surface', look around, then move again. The only way to fight in space is to get your ships close enough for their bubbles to touch and merged, or to hit their bubble with any of a variety of gravity weapons that can pierce into the bubble, or disrupt their engines and pop it.

Taking crews from submarines would be best option for getting experienced manpower into ships. If you had to fill the rosters of 10 ships it would be the most practical along with NASA/military airmen.

Regarding the "lure the torpedo into the attacker" scene from Hunt for Red October: In the original novel they don't do that, and I kind of wish they'd kept the original version for the movie because it's frankly a lot more badass. They _ram_ the attacking Alfa.

I love the Space Engineers music. My favorite space building game.

The best example of this are the battles in 'Wraith of Khan' 🥰

Another great episode. Just binge listened the sojourn. Brilliant work!

I really like the way Starsector incorporated submarine elements into it's gameplay. It's normally a fairly conventional is highly nuanced 2D real-time fleet combat game, but there are 'phase ships', which can make themselves incorporeal by dipping into a subdimension. Doing this they can move through enemy fire, underneath enemies and just in general move with near complete freedom. While submerged or 'in phase' they also experience time dilation, making the world around the ship move slower (or when viewed from outside, move way faster once submerged). While perhaps counter-intuitive at first, it lends them a really fun and dangerous ambusher feel, where phase ships slip between combat lines and deliver precision strikes at exposed targets or peel off supporting ships. The downside to this powerful phase diving ability is a lack of shields, which are otherwise vital for longevity and survivability in direct combat, as well as the ship building flux (essentially heat) while in phase, meaning they can't hide forever and if they stay under for too long they will be too stressed to fight once they surface. The time-dilation effect is very powerful, but also a double-edged sword because they run out of performance time much faster than other, more conventional ships. In-lore phase ships are exotic technology, not alien but might as well be to the layman. A stay aboard a phase ship is a miserable experience, exposure to the coils that facilitate the effect has adverse effects on the mental state of the crew. As such Phase ships are primarily used by either the Tri Tachyon Corporation, which invented the tech and thus knows it best, or pirates, when they can get their hands on one, since the ships hit-and-run burst-damage playstyle and mental-stressing lore fit them well.

I love the cheekiness of Yamato's "Sub-Space Submarines"

Three of my favorite submarine movies are Crimson Tide, U-571 and Down Periscope.

Such a great video! I've long noticed the similarities between submarine tactics and Starship tactics. The classic fight scene in the Mutara Nebula in ST:WOK is just the most obvious but as you so ably showed in this excellent video, SciFi is replete with so many examples. Well done - Such an excellent video!!

Now you have me wanting to kitbash a Typhoon with thrusters and turrets.

I wish writers would draw inspiration from eras of naval warfare besides the 20th or the age of sail. One I think is greatly under appreciated is the age of ironclads, which ran from the 1850s to the 1890s. In that, armor technology had outpaced gun technology so much that practically every large fighting ship had to be fitted with a ram bow since that would be the only way it could harm a similarly large enemy ship. Another would be naval warfare in the age of antiquity. That revolved around boarding the enemy ships and engaging them in melee combat, while ranged weapons such as bows and flamethrowers were used to soften the enemy before boarding.

I really liked the way The Expanse handled combat in space. They really thought about how it likely would play out realistically.

The anime Starship Operators has an episode dedicated to fighting a 'space submarine'. Its essentially an extremely stealthy ship that can get close and deliver a devastating strike. Most of the episode deals with coming up with a way to negate it stealth.

When I talk about how a submarine operates; makes it's own oxygen, cleans out the CO2, scrubs CO and hydrogen from the air, uses electrostatic precipitators to remove dust and solids from the atmosphere, makes potable water, feedwater for the propulsion system and distilled water for oxygen production, along with the myriad of other unique procedures and processes that constitute an operational nuclear-powered submarine they're amazed. And that's without the classified bits that I'm prohibited from talking about. A modern nuclear submarine really is the sci-fi fantasy ship of most people's imagination.

Space: Above and Beyond had an episode call Mutiny where a cargo ship his being hunted by alien ship in a very submarine like engagement.

OHHH We're gonna talk about the Gorn episode for sure!

Although it has been a few years since I have seen it, I seem to remember that the Wing Commander movie also has some sub influences. And of course, if you want to go to books, John Ringo's Looking Glass series, where they actually converted an Ohio-class sub into a space ship.

Maritime history combined with stellar travel and tactics! He-yeah!!!

I've always said that the hunt for red October is my second most favorite star trek movie

Having sleek stealth ships just chilling out in enemy territory for first strike capability is just neat.

Lots of studies done by NASA in the 60's on US Navy submarine crews to study what extended spaceflight might be like.

The rather obscure 1999 film "Wing Commander" is so unapologetically "Submarines in Space". As a kid I thought it was kind of cool, but I can't actually remember if it's a good film or not.

I mean, there wasn't much "looking out the window" in The Expanse either!

Surprised to see that thumbnail is Star Trek and not that one BSG prequel with literal "submarine is space!"

Ringo's Into the Looking Glass quartet, with the ASS Vorpal Blade as perfect example.

Yes, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that "Cat and Mouse" takes straight from "Hunt for the Red October"

Didn't know you guys liked Hunt for Red October. I love that movie.

You forgot the one TOS Episode that is about sub hunting. The Balance of Terror. The USS Enterprise (destroyer) hunts a new class of Romulan ship equipped with a cloaking (submarine) device.

I actually want to point out the reason behind submarine warfare and space combat being similar is how efficient the sensors are. Modern passive sonar can detect things underwater very far away and with computer analysis, result in very precise resolution. This is very similar to radar and IR sensor in space when there is no atmosphere to scatter the electromagnetic wave. In short the ships both underwater and in space will require a lot of passive sensor masking, or in simple term stealth technology just to stay alive.

Star Wars loves their pew pew dogfighting and Star Trek loves their submarine cat and mouse.

7:08 “above” is such a relative term in space though…as unlike a sub…you can just rotate along your x-axis and roll over to bring guns to bear rather than manoeuvring to get into a different position

No mention of "Balance of Terror", the Stsr Trek:TOS episode that introduced the Romulans, whose cloaked ships acted in a submarine like manner. The episode was supposedly inspired by "The Enemy Below", a classic movie, pitting a U-Boat against an American destroyer escort.

One thing that seems to be sorely lacking is taking advantage of three dimensions. There's no reason for spaceships to be fighting in more or less the same plane. On Earth, submarines are subject to gravity, which is why they don't move directly vertically, at least not intentionally, and gravity also leads to thermal gradients that affect sensors. Even in The Wrath of Khan, Kirk was still thinking two dimensionally because the Enterprise moved back up into the plane where Reliant was moving instead of shooting at the bottom from below. We did see a tiny bit of this in All Good Things when Riker comes out of warp in Dreadnaught Enterprise above the Klingon ship and shoots through the upper hull. I suspect part of the problem is these days a lack of experience on the part of animators makes the scenes difficult to animate but sticking to the same plane is more familiar.

The Colonial Marines Technical Manual has a rather interesting section covering space combat in the setting - its just a high level overview, presented as a lecture to some USCMC officers by a USASF officer, but there are some great quotes and some very strong similarities to submarine combat. "If you're gonna win, you have to have the drop on the bad guys. Forget any illusions you have from watching teevee; starships do not sidle up alongside and beat the stuffing out of each other at a thousand metres! No. Space battles are short, sharp, brutal fights, with the decision going to the ship who spots the enemy first and gets his best shot in. Good captains should have an assassin mentality - prepared to sneak up to the enemy and stab him in the back before he can react. Almost 90% of space battles are settled this way - without even an exchange of fire. The key phrase here is 'emission control'. A starship captain can't always use radar and lidar, broadcasting electromagnetic emissions which are gonna light him up like a beacon for everyone to see. The good captains, the ones who survive at least one battle stay invisible. They control their infrared and EM emissions to become an invisible 'blackbody' in space; they limit their relative motion against the starfield so as to prevent visual detection; they plan their attack pass to fall on the enemy from a sensor blind spot such as a systems star; and they disguise the launch flare of their ASAT launches. When they light up their radars it will be to obtain a firing solution for their weapons, and by that point it will hopefully be too late for their enemy. Stealth is everything, and in a battle in which both sides are trying to find each other in a vast, vast sky, the victor will be the smartest, most alert and best trained. This is, in essence, the Zen of space combat..."

Submarine space battles are the best. Pity you rarely see them these days.

The book "Yesterday's Children" (1972) by author David Gerrold (TOS: Trouble with Tribbles) is one of my favourite military scifi books. It deals with the psychological distress of submarine seek & destroy warfare as reimagined in outerspace. Reads very much like a Star Trek script, I always thought of it as an off-canon take on the early Federation - Romulan wars.

Pike: Mr. Spock, give me 1 ping only. Spock: Sir, this is highly illogical... Pike: Spock, 1 ping only. If you haven't seen Hunt for Red October, see it. Now.

On the size issue, I think that has more to do with how its probably easier to increase the size of a starship to be comfortable when you don't have worry about space crushing you due to positive pressure. For a starship the bigger issues would be having enough resources and ability to produce power for a larger ship specially if you have some sort of Star trek integrity fields or inertial dampener. I could also see space being saved by using gravity to store things on the roof so you don't need as much space for storage of supplies. Honestly I've only seen them aim for it being claustrophobically small when they are trying to be stealthy or something.

hey did you know? any spaceship with a cloaking device and/or subdimensional phase shifting tech is basically a space submarine! very stealthy and hard to hit!

In the stellaris mod "gigastrucular engineering", the katzen, a unique mid game crisis specifically balanced around gigasturctures absurdity, have a literal soace submarine, which can "dive" into sub space to bypass FTL inhibitors and bastions, and super long range torpedoes to take out enemy's without the risk of being counterattacked. Theres also the blokats, which have there super ships shielding warped through several sub space dimensions, thus causing only a tiny fraction of the ships shields to be exposed at any one time, unable to be penetrated by any weapon you can bring to bear, even a supermassive black hole gun. You beat it by utilising a sub space super nuke to blast the shield though all sub space dimensions simultaneously, then Amove several system craft against the blokats super ship for a rapid flawless victory.

Great video I can see the similarities between space battles and fiction and real world naval battles underwater. 👍

In the movie "Wing Commander" there is a "depth charges" moment when the Tigerclaw hides in a crater and bad guys start dropping bombs. It even has Jürgen Prochnow say "They are nuking every crater. Methodical bastards."

It's so funny. I was reading into submarines because of my passion for sci fi shows. I always wanted to create my own spaceship and I always see myself looking back at submarines. Whats so funny about that? I mean, this video came out pretty much at the exact moment, I was sure, my next build in space engineers would be a submarine build.

Space Engineers Music in the background is a nice touch.

I absolutely adore The Hunt for Red October! I cannot recommend it strongly enough to those that haven't seen it.

you forgot "Balance of Terror" from star Trek TOS. That entire battle between the enterprise and the romulan bird of prey was pretty much a cat mouse game between a destroyer and a submarine... with both depending on stealth, on passive sensors, on hiding. Though my fav was a hyper "realistic" space combat style in a comic called "Albedo". It followed pure Newtonian physics for space combat, which would be SOOO boring to watch on tv, as an engagement between 2 ships could last... hours or even days. Engagement ranges might be as far as several light minutes apart. Ships at that range would open up with... essentially huge missiles. these would burn towards the target either expending 90% of their fuel or 40% of their fuel depending on profile. If ammo was limited, they could be set to expend 40% of their fuel on the aceleration, use up to 20% on the attack run, then spend the remaining 40% to decelerate and come to a stop, so they could be recovered. These had no warheads on them usually, as well, nukes are pretty useless in space as there is no air to create a shockwave... so they just used pure kinetic impact. Combat would pay out like this. both ships would fire their missiles. then... the crews would kill time, go have dinner, go to sleep, what ever, cuz it would often take up to 6 hours... for the missiles to make it half way there. At the half way point, some missile would slam into each other, those that missed would continue on to the enemy ship. At this point both ships would assess the "initial impacts" here they would decide if they wanted to launch more missile to intercept the incoming... OR more missiles at the enemy ship. either way, the next intercepts might happen 2 hours later... If either ship launched more missiles, if not... 4-5 hours later the ships begin their evasive maneuvers, point defense guns try and shoot down incoming missiles, which is a lot harder then it would seem, again, no warheads so many had fairly heavy "noses" to inflect is much damage on inpact. even if they are shot down, fragments could still rip through a ship. now its damage control and evaluation phase... repair your ship tend to the injured that can actually be helped... and... try and figure out if the enemy ship has been crippled, killed, or is still a threat. and decide if you need to launch more missiles again. the reality of combat like this is... there was always a chance both ships would be wiped out.

Love this kind of ship battle it adds just a whole new level to ship combat.

Back when I thought I was going to create a space opera, I did do some limited reading about what subs are like because I could see the similarities. If it makes sense, some of what I was considering was that at least one sort of sensors used exactly the same sort of display as a sonar does. If you're interested, I called it tachion radar. The idea is that tachions are spontanious created, travel for a while and then decay. They can only be detected when they interact with a high-energy plasma, and even then only subtly. A percentage of them can be absorbed by something large or dense enough. So, what you see is shadows in the tachion field. Any shadow you see you know the direction of, but because if something is close, but not dense it can look like something far away but very dense, you have to figure out if you're looking at a planet many light-days away or a ship a few light minutes. And the best computer only got you to this point, so you need a thinking person to make a guess of what it is (which will then give you a guess as to its distance), ask the computer to track it and then change its identification if it does something unusual. I thought it was clever.

The reason that the inside of spaceships is more, well, spacious is because firstly, you don't have crushing pressure to deal with. You have atmospheric pressure versus the pseudo vacuum of space. That's a big difference. 3 ft of water is more pressure than atmospheric. The other reason is because a lot of the things on board a starship get more efficient the bigger they get. KZfaqr Isaac Arthur, SFIA is his channel, goes into detail in regards to scale. So while the bigger your vessel the more absolute material you require, the more efficiently you can put it to work because you have so much goddamn internal volume to work with. It's basically the construction equivalent of buying in bulk.

Seeing all these comments giving more examples makes me hope for a Part 2. 😊

The original series Star Trek episode Balance of Terror is probably the best example of a submarine inspired battle in space. The cloaking device didn't make the Romulan ship completely impossible to detect but close enough as to make it very hard to find and track. Just like a real sub, it gave away its position when it fired or tried to move too quickly. There was literally a point where the battle turned into a waiting game just like in real life submarine battles during WWI and WWII in which a sub had to remain still and quiet in order to go undetected and the first captain to make a move set off the fighting again.

Funnily enough I just got a model kit of a submarine spaceship... yes it's called a submarine spaceship, no i have no idea where the marine part of space is. its base don the I400 subs from WW2 and even has a little plane to go with it.

Star Trek Fleet Command really short changed everyone's upper arms.

Not sure if somebody else mentioned this, but there was an episode from the original Star Trek series that borrowed heavily from a 1958 movie called, "Run Silent, Run Deep". The movie is about a WW2 US Navy submarine, and there is a climactic battle with a Japanese sub near the end of the movie. Many of the plot elements of this sub vs sub battle show up in the plot of a battle between the Enterprise and a Romulan star ship in the Star Trek episode.

There is a ship in the Alpha phase game "Star Citizen" that is meant to be a stealth recon/scout ship that is very sub inspired. The Terrapin is even described as "coming up for air" when it has to retract some of it's armor plating to vent heat that get's trapped when it's in stealth mode. Whenever I think of subs and space ships, my mind goes to two of my favorite things to watch when I was young, The Flight of the Navigator movie, and the SeaQuest DSV tv show. But, the Terrapin from Star Citizen is my new favorite sci-fi ship because I feel like it could actually be both a space ship and a sub with no problem in a single mission.

incredible stuff

"They don't come up cramped for whatever reason." Well, in space you can't really run out of space. Also if you're capable to build any large space vessel, spending a bit more steel would be nothing right next to it (plus you get some extra air).

Glen Cook's novel Passage at Arms is literally a submarine analog in space. The parallels between it and other war fiction like Das Boot are uncanny.

He’ll yes! I always thought “The Hunt for Red October” would be great Star Trek, with the Enterprise-A taking on the Dallas roll.

I recall Wing Commander having a literal silent running to avoid space depth charges scene.

The most obvious example is the TOS episode Balance of Terror. It is a WW2 submarine movie in space with all of the usual tropes and plot points present and correct. Multiple scenes are lifted straight from those old submarine movies.

It should be noted that, unlike a spacecraft that MUST carry ALL of the consumables that it'll require for the duration of its cruise from the moment it departs port, nuclear-powered submarines can extract fresh water (via evaporation or reverse osmosis) and oxygen (via electrolysis) from the sea. That is a massive advantage that spacecraft cannot easily match. Yeah, atmospheric scooping, sure, but that's not "easy mode."

IN WHICH SPACEDOCK DESCENDS DEEP INTO NAVAL GAZING.

This "submarine style" of space combat was always my preferred approach, and was opne of the specific reason why i gravitated towards the "Star Trek" school of writing space battles, rather than the "Star Wars" approach of high-adrenaline fighter combat. Watching and re-watching the Battle of the Mutara Nebula in ST:TWOK is a treasured, childhood geek memory. That, alas, is precisely why I was so angry to hear JJ Abrams pooh-pooh this approach to writing space battles in the DVD features for the reboots, despite being one of the new films' defenders: he was literally throwing out what I liked the most.