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Gravity sensors are a thing that might be worth mentioning- they're not high fidelity, but they could let your sensors recognize "Hey, that thing posing as a civilian lightweight sports yacht actually has as much mass as our opponent's stealth cruisers."

The old mark 1 eyeball wouldn't be as useful in real space combat at such great distances and light levels, so no need for a ship covered in vulnerable windows. Space combat will probably be more like submarine warfare with lots of sensor fusion and electronic warfare.

Another thing that can add so much to a setting that is often overlooked. Any sort of horror story in space could really benefit from fleshing out how its sensors work. Do you risk sending a crew member to fix it while who knows what is still out there!?

I wish there was more Sci-Fi that would use sensors like Code Geass did where the sensor is protected behind armor but opens up in order to get clean snapshots.

radar that can detect water vapor is also useful in scanning of enemy ships mid combat... as you can see if they are venting atmosphere and where

I just wanna say, including clips from Space: Above and Beyond always makes me smile. Ya'll are about the only ones I ever see showing the Wild Cards some love.

Also important are orientational and positional sensors for your own ship. One method of using this is pulsars... yes, pulsed neutron stars. Their rotation is so regular that they're more accurate than an atomic clock. These sensors are already used for spacecraft. Almost like the galaxy contains naturally occurring lighthouses!

Nebulous: Fleet command in the spot light!

One type of sensor that could also work is gravity sensors. Something along the lines of LIGO is completely impractical for use in space now, but numerous upgrades could make it workable. It would be almost impossible to block gravity waves as well, unless there is antigravity, but having technomagic like that changes the playing field substantially anyways.

Passive sensors would be the major part of any sensor suite. Active would be for short range use only (short range being within a few seconds for the reflection), after all if it takes light/lasers/radar 1 hour to bounce off the target it'll be 2 hours before you know it's there, where your passives will know its there 1 hour earlier.

A couple other things... 1.Laser Interferometry Gravity Observation pods can be used to detect unusual gravity signatures in an area, or as part of a gravity communication system. 2. Neutrino detector arrays deep inside ice moons or otherwise shielded, are to be used to find fusion, fusion, or other similarly energetic bogies.

In my novel's setting I actually have the shields (I know, I know!) double as sensors, and they're actually the ship's primary sensors via induction inference. Shields basically because my idea is that if you're doing FTL speeds, and near FTL speeds, you're going to worry about background radiation hitting your ship really hard; photons would smack into you with the force of nukes, for example. This comes with the idea of "Well, if the shields can block light, how do you see through them?" The answer is: You don't! However, if something hits them, it should induce a change in the field. This is how radios work - an EM field induces a charge in some metals, and you can use those to intentionally pick up on these EM fluctuations to see things, communicate, etc. So basically you have induction inference sensors. Depending on how strong the field is changed and how it's changed you could figure out with some clever math what might be hitting the shields, where it is, and how strong it is. You can, conversely, if you can fire something out of the shields, use that to act as RADAR and use the shields as the receiver. I'm not really sure what to call the Real Life equivalent, but I know various bits of induction inference have been used in history, most notably the Soviets apparently employing a spy device where they gave a gift to the US ambassador that they could then later point a RADAR beam at (probably just because it was a strong, coherent EM field) and you could see how the beam was modulated by some metal in this 'gift' and use that to determine what sort of soundwaves were passing through it while the RADAR was active... effectively allowing you to eavesdrop remotely. Which makes this a neat little wrap around both to hard sci-fi and "What if the shields go down" - the ship is made of metal, presumably. Metals, again, have currents induced in them via EM field fluctuations. If you can measure these currents in the hull, you can also utilize these sensors without said shields. So you can totally sit there without any sort of RADAR receiver or anything like that and just kind of... listen. With just the hull. All because EM fields induce charges in things.

One of my favourite little details of sensor use come from the anime Outlaw Star, where the ships deploy camera drones at the start of a battle to get an overview of the combat. A surprisingly down to earth detail for a series with knife wielding star fighters and multiple types of literal magic.

I was thinking about Nebulous Fleet Command when I saw this earlier, nice thumbnail choice.

One interesting thing you touched on at the end, because sensor systems take so much power, it's quite likely that bigger ships will have significantly better sensor capabilities. Another nail in the coffin of space fighters.

The Lunar War 😍😍😍

Ewar and sensors seem criminal underrated in a lot of fiction. Also always love seeing The Lunar War footage in these videos. Good to see it still active. I miss the discord channel

What about a neutrino detector to "listen" for the fusion reactor of other space craft? Neutrinos are notoriously slippery so catching enough to separate them from the background is not easy and current models of neutrino detectors are hard to fit on a ship, but space stations or satellites are not similarly limited by thrust to weight ratios.

I wish more Sci-Fi would have this type of sensors. Somebody should hire this man to make a movie.

Using nukes to find a stealth craft sounds metal as hell

God bless you for including this Spaceballs clip any time you bring up radar.

He -mentioned- showed a clip from Space: Above and Beyond!!!!! It’s very underrated, but I would recommend to anyone interested

So good to see The Lunar War being featured here!!

Have you ever done a video focusing on damage itself? Damage types, damage sensors, damage repair, damage reporting interfaces? Both yourself and an adversary? Damage in non-combat situations involving natural phenomena or malfunction or poor maintenance?

Gotta love seeing some The Lunar War footages.

Someone definitely likes Nebulous! We love to see it.

Love the Space balls references

Should be mentioned that LIDAR is pretty limited in range like lasers in general are. Especially if we are talking about something that can search a large area.

Gotta have: location, velocity, acceleration, and impulse trackers for all objects in range, spectra analysis of everything possible, and emitters/receivers for all tracking and observing sensors. Know where they are, what they are made of, how fast they move, what they spend to move, what their cross section is, what they look like. The list is probably much longer. In intel, the more you know (and can parse through) the better.

A thing to also consider is the difference between detecting an object and being able to fire at it. Just because you can see something on radar doesn't mean you can fire a missile at it.

What about autonomous or remotely controlled reconnaissance drones meant to augment a controlling vessel's sensor range? Compact drones that either system pickets or lone starships deploy in multiple shells or patterns around themselves to add strategic depth to their early detection capabilities. The Honorverse has an example of these in Manticore's Ghost Rider drones.

2:15 Starsector mentioned. Day brightened

Modern and future combat will always be about detecting first, shooting first, and killing first.

Did I miss it, or did you guys completely forget visual light sensors? Visual light spectrum scanning is massive and most likely will be exponentially increased as we move more into space, as EM can be jammed so easily over large distances.

A related topic would be how to design an intuitive interface for a space craft that would be both realistic and functional in representing the the information coming from the senesor arrays of your chosen vessel.

Nice to see *Falling Frontier* clips in this sorta thing

PESA can also be used as fire control, and track multiple targets simultaneously, as well as perform search while track. It just has to do this with staggeting its modes in time (update tracks individually for a split second each, continue search fan, repeat). The old Zaslon on the Foxhound can for example simultanously trck 4 targets, and do search while track, and its definitel a passive array.

Wow, you use the old Battlezone PC game music to lead in? I APPROVE! That was an awesome game (1 & 2)!

@5:25 In pre to early engagements passive sensing of changes in radiator output could also give advanced warning of combat systems being brought online or power surges to charge capacitors for railguns as an example too.

Very cool video. Very informative. Not just scifi, but real world.

Love the use of NEBULOUS: Fleet Command to show ship to ship combat. Great video as usual

NEBULOUS MENTIONED RAAAAH WTF IS A UNBEAMED LIFEPOD

You got me with the Nebulous Thumbnail... I am happy that you are using it for references!

Something that you may not have realised about passive verses active sensors in space, and more specifically across large distances of multiple light minutes/hours. Passive sensors gather data twice as fast as active sensors. You mentioned that Lidar and Radar both need to send signals out and wait for the reflection to come back before it's seen. But a passive visual sensor will just pick up the light of the object as soon as the light reaches the sensor, no need for a laser to go out and bounce back. In space, this could save literally hours or days of reaction time. It's also very difficult to hide in space anyway, so light reflecting off objects doesn't have much to get in the way. It must also be said that it would be pointless trying to look with our own eyes, but electronic telescopes are getting better all the time, s who knows how good they'll be by the time space travel becomes normal. As an example of tis working in literature, look up the lost fleet series by Jack Campbell.

2:14 love that starsector gets some mentioning here.

Realistically... pretty much all of this tech IRL, past our current tech level, would be largely passive. Combat spacecraft can't be "stealthed" very well; the limitations on how IR emissions can be reduced are quite severe and, short of some sort of "warp drive" that doesn't push mass backwards at a high velocity, it's practically impossible to hide a spacecraft that's maneuvering, because that mass going backwards will be very hot. So your typical combat spacecraft would tend to have sensor booms spread out widely around the hull, collecting data, which would then be very rapidly turned into actionable information by AIs. I think that things like RADAR / LIDAR would very quickly be seen as a problem, rather than a solution; passive sensors have a longer effective range and can, with the sensors spread out, give more than sufficient precision. RADAR would just show your enemies where you are and what you're doing... long before you'd see them. I think it's one of those technologies that's effectively a dead end if space combat on a large scale ever becomes a real thing. Passive sensors' only real problem is that the area of search volume is limited by the resolution of the sensors, how well they handle things like vibration from a ship under weigh, etc., but these are problems that engineers could handle and really the only limitation is computational; doing real-time analysis of a large volume of space will require a lot of resources. But in space, short of magical warp drives that don't use reaction mass, there's almost nothing to be done about spotting any ship that's producing delta-V, at anything like realistic engagement distances (again, short of magical warp drives, somewhere around a few light-seconds, tops).

Very interesting video, the description of phase arrays was particularly interesting. Also always a great selection of video materials. Some triggering sci-fi nostalgia (Whoa - Space: Above and Beyond!), and some making me want to seek out the source. For example, I think I have to look closer into Nebelous Fleet Command. :)

love the clip with the mass driver lineship and the early warning monitor from neb due to the fact that both of those ships are using reactors designed for civilian use, its actually more efficent to rip out the radar and divert the power and internal space it would use to the railgun systems, while having a secondary ship carry the power hungry early warning and long range search-and-track radar systems

Ahem. Also potentially Gravitic sensors. (Detecting mass variance) No, I'm not talking about gravitationa lwaves - Im' talking about the RL use of looking at the gravitational gradient to detect objects. Currently, we need wide arrays of detectors. If we made the sensors more sensitive, a smaller array - say, in deployed drones - would be feasible.

Glad to see all the Nebulous Space Command clips to make up for the EWar video.

you may be very proud of your book and it's promotional/bonus content, but I am very proud to be a subscriber of your channel to hear great things about your passion at Spacedock!

You can see asteroids in IR. Any object will be warmer than the background of space. In a solar system they are both heated, reflect a stars emissions and are warmer than the background.

Passive sensors are likely to be the long ranged sensor of choice. At anything more than a few light seconds, any returns you get from your your pings might well be so weak and take so long to get back that you can't tell they're your return pings. Or which ping they were. Active sensors are more likely to be used for targeting and tracking of objects close in (well, "close" in space terms anyway). That being said, I like to imagine that future sensor analysis systems will crossreference input from many sensor types across the spectrum (optical, IR, radio) to make it just that much more difficult to fool an observer with false images and decoys.

Yay another Sensors video 😃

1:32 OMG IM SO HAPPY YOU INCLUDED CLIPS FROM 3-BODY, can you do an episode on the sci-fi stuff from the second Netflix season when it comes out because the second book had much more sci-fi tech than the first.

I love how spacedock used nebulous fleet command gameplay, as it is one of (if not the most) realistic sci-fi space combat games

I love the breadth of sources you pull reference footage from. :-)

Very interesting video! Looking forward to more.

I love to see nebulous appear more often in these videos. You guys do a great job representing/explaining it and all it’s fantastic grounded features.

Really recomend playing nebulous: fleet command if you want to learn about sensors and radar. Its not 1 to 1 realism but as an introduction in a game format it's the best out there.

The lower level tech sci fi work I’ve done for a universe had a targeting ship that would travel on long voyages with a fleet of cruisers to provide their targeting computer data and sensor support. Was a cool piece of kit that really spiced up the fleet combat.

I always thought that space warfare would resemble current submarine on submarine warfare. You can move in three planes and it’s a game of cat and mouse, trying to see without being seen in the vast openness of the void

you get the like for nebulus fleet command reference

An advantage with optical sensors, namely telescopes, is that with enough distance and a powerful enough telescope, you can see into the past. This allows you to see what has happened over a long period of time, especially if you’re trying to track down an elusive target. As for AESA radars, they can also be used as a radar jammer as well as be used for cyber warfare and act as a high power microwave weapon

What about Muon shadow detectors or Gravitational field detectors? Muon detectors have been used with shipping containers and looking for voids in pyramids. I wonder if they could be used in space or if the lack of an atmosphere would preclude their creation. Although I wonder if Galactic Cosmic Ray shadows could be used similarly. Gravitational field detectors were proposed in Clancy's _The Hunt For Red October_ but I'm not sure how real they are. I think that idea, using laser reflections, was similar to the tech for gravity wave detectors, which are real.

"velocity and direction of travel" is redundant - 'velocity' is a vector value, it is both speed and direction.

Another excellent topic.

Thx for the video!

Pretty useful and sophisticated devices.

Which sensors can detect objects moving faster than light?

You can see that this episode was a favorite for the team to produce

First of all: I absolutely love all your 'what-if' vs scenario videos because you obviously put a lot of time and effort and thought into ALL your videos, and I definately respect the hell out of that. With that being said, I'd like to ask if you'd be willing to be the FIRST person to do a 'what-if' scenario featuring the FAR MORE POWERFUL Cylons from the Original Series Battlestar Galactica against the Galactic Empire. Now while I HONESTLY don't know how many Tie Fighters a Star Destroyer carries, unless I'm mistaken even an SSD (Super Star Destroyer) actually DOESN'T carry as many fighters as an ORIGINAL Series Cylon Baseship. In the final episode of the Original Series Battlestar Galactica, it's CLEARLY stated that a SINGLE Cylon Baseship had dozens of Missile Launchers, a FULL COMPLEMENT of 300 fighters, and OVER 100 Laser Turrets. And let's NOT forget the MINIMUM of four MEGA-LASERS (the EXTRA-LARGE Laser-Blasts that came from the outer-edge of the Cylon Baseship). And just going SOLELY by what's shown onscreen, a Cylon Baseship's Laser Turrets are at MINIMUM at least as powerful as the STRONGEST Turbo Lasers of ANY Star Destroyer (at least according to the Star Wars created by George Lucas).

The Millennium Falcon's dish has 2 sensor systems built-in to it! & there are other examples of ships using multiple radar/sensor systems in Star Wars!

Ah, good ol’ solid state radar arrays. They’re one of the coolest things I’ve seen in the last few decades, and remarkably similar to the “sensor arrays” in Star Trek (long/wide sets of emitters, steering the signal in other ways).

I think heat sensors would be one of the most likely as well as magnetic sensors.

For Ladar to work, you'd need to be moving significantly sub light to detect objects under a light-second away, or you'd miss your rebounce signal altogether. Otherwise awesome thinking and video! Pl keep it coming

Be interesting to cover the range of REAL Space Combat. engagements 1km, >10KM, or over 100km? How would these sensors and lasers compensate for distance lag if combat is over 1 light second away?

Great video

Interesting , Thank You . We ALL need Better Scanners and Jammers

Sad that space to ground/surface sensors weren't mentioned, because you missed out on a chance of bringing up the ISV's from Avatar! They take advantage of their orbital velocity for synthetic aperture radars, which let's you get a higher detail radar picture. With a drawback being long exposure times. So they're good for static targets like terrain and structures. But I understand if it's diving too deep into only one possible option for planetary scans

excellent use of a Mel Brooks movie there! Kudos

I would love to see you making a video about the traveller rpg universe and some of their iconic spaceships

Right off the bat, a view of vessel liftoff and presumably Mars in the background.

Pretty neat. One issue that could come up, though one I haven't seen that often, is dealing with relativitistic affects. Issue in the Lost Fleet series when ships routinely go .10c

Oooh that's a good one, sensors are often much more important to a weapon system's effectiveness than the explosive payload itself

Sonar! Thats what you need in space first and foremost!

2:15 STARSECTOR MENTIONED 🗣🗣🗣🔥🔥🔥🔥🔊🔊

what I find funny is that people ausme Billy the space miner with a combat vessel cable of camber versus the pirates. that one would fight to the death, which is unlikely. As soon as there ship has multiple hull breaches and pirates can’t fight the minor damages, they’d most likely surrender to minor combat ship and size of ship depends on how many hull breaches till the ship becomes a Coffin. humans ain’t a fan of that thing known as dying.

Space engineers mentioned, deploying HELLL YEAHH

x-ray sensors have another advantage in that they are a very compact way to pick up emissions from pulsars, which can be used as a kind of volumetric space GPS system the enemy can't knock out and is accurate to within a few kilometers

The mention of the computer systems to run the sensors reminded me of the Manticore/Haven war in the Honorverse series. Manticore had a technological edge over Haven when it came to sensor systems (among other things) but the truth was that Haven sensor systems weren't strictly less powerful than Manticorian ones. Rather, Manticore had more advanced computer systems running their sensors which could better cut out noise, more precisely identify targets, and better overcome electronic countermeasures than their Haven equivalents. While this gave the Manticorians a huge advantage earlier in the war, it was only a matter of time until the Havens could get their act together enough to focus their research and close that particular technological gap. Not that it helped them much as Manticore continued to make technological progress in other areas.

The clips from theo bouvier are amazing!

Nebulous pog

I like that Elite danger's spaceship have gravitational wave sensor that convert the oscillation of gravitational energy into sound effect so the polit could hear and understand the scale intuitively.

1:07 Gravimetric sensor: "Am I a joke to you?"

The Excalibur bomb driven radar from "Rama II"!

I think you could also develop sensors for gravity and magnetic fields. Maybe you could use spectroscopy to look out for exhaust gases.

One important thing worth a mention is natural beam diffraction. All radiation rays, even completely monophasic monofrequency LASER naturally spreads out over travel due to quantum mechanics, which lowers your positional accuracy, and weakens your return signal strenght to power output ratio, effectively limiting detection range by active EM sensors based on the rate of diffraction. This rate is hugher with high wavelength radiation, making RADAR by necessity a relatively short ranged option compared to LIDAR. I'm uncertain how much this limits effective range for a sensor application, but for example a visable light laser with power output in the gigawatt range, and a focusing mirror tens of meters in diameter diffracts enough to stop being useful as an offensive weapon over a range of thousands of kilometers.

Okay this video gets a like just for including Space above and beyond clips. That show is so much better than people give credit for, though the budget ran out and we get repeated dog fight clips in the show lol.