Space Robot Combat 101

This is a repost of a repost of a series I wrote in 2015 to answer the question: What does it feel like to pilot a giant robot in space? What are the physical sensations? Minor edits where applicable.

Preface

I wrote these posts in 2015, and my life was very different then. I was really into Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) and its 80s Sequel, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. I wanted to know more about the physical experience of combat piloting in space - what sensations might be analogous, etc - so I did some research. This is what I came up with.

Part 1

Thoughts on the experience of piloting a mobile suit, from someone who’s bad at science

Watching UC Gundam mainline was a great experience, and I super feel for the characters and such. After watching it, though, I kinda wonder – what’s the piloting experience like? More importantly, how would piloting a mobile suit in space fuck up the pilot?

I don’t have an answer for any of those, actually. Here’s some thoughts.

Q1: What’s the pilot experience like?

Problem is, this isn’t a quantifiable question, and there’s no IRL mobile suit pilot out there, so I can’t well look up an interview or anything. I can, however, look at the known quantities – the mass, the max acceleration, etc – and from there work out something like:

Q a) What is the force exerted on a mobile suit in an evasive maneuver?

Force = mass * acceleration, or for the purpose of explaining to me really basic physics, Force = mass [in kilograms] * acceleration [in meters per second ^ 2]. We have these numbers, albeit in metric tonnes and in G, so this was doable.

The force exerted on a mobile suit in a dash at max acceleration is:

MS-06S: 382,442 N
RX-78-2: 395,951 N
MSZ-006: 507,990 N

For reference, a human punch can be like 2000 N reasonably, and a survivable car crash can be 90,000 N.

Force experienced in a dash in any direction at max acceleration – this is something we could reasonably quantify. However, this is force exerted on the entire mobile suit – what is it that the pilot experiences?

Older bro and I have been playing Kerbal Space Program, and he had a question – do we experience acceleration, or do we experience changes in acceleration/jerk? Asking dad (the engineer), he says we experience changes in acceleration. THAT is what’s palpable to us. so like…. what do these numbers mean for physical sensation?

Edit: The force exerted on the pilot is the same acceleration, we can assume, but the mass of the pilot themselves rather than the mass of the mobile suit. so to clarify, the force on the hypothetical 84kg pilot themselves is:

MS-06S: acceleration of 0.69G, 568 N
RX-78-2: acceleration of 0.93 G, 766 N
MSZ-006: acceleration of 1.81 G, 1491 N

So those atrocious and potentially liquifying numbers above aren’t necessarily the ones we’re working with RE: pilot experience, though the physics equation (Force = mass in kg * meters/second^2) is the same.

–

Source: engineer student brother

Q2: How does the experience of piloting in space physically affect the pilot?

This is less science and more pilot shit conversation I had with my dad, because I don’t have any concept of how to quantify this, BUT anyway.

So in fighter pilots in-atmosphere, you can no longer bother with your sense of balance, inner ear shit and the like. At some point you focus entirely on what the instruments on your panel display – and when you get good at it, you try to situate yourself in the air and navigate based on shit like changes in velocity – “flying by the seat of your pants”. Doing this fucks up your sense of balance for a while – for some, permanently. (EDIT this is a bad thing I later found out, because spatial disorientation is very real. Acceleration also feels like you’re climbing in altitude, which is a very bad mistake to make when you’re nosediving. Generally speaking, flying by feel isn’t a great practice because what you feel can betray what’s actually going on.)

And to combine this with the known experience in space… There’s a video (ETA: added link) out there of some astronaut or another talking about something and he drops a pen, and then looks at the air in front of him and above him, trying to figure out where it went. Spending time in space fucks with your senses in many, many physiological and psychological ways.

These two sort of unrelated discussions lead me to believe that for a pilot who regularly pilots in space, their sense of balance and the like is ttttttotally fucked. Obviously, some people are better at adjusting than others (Kamille Bidan is a capable hand-to-hand fighter on Earth AND, to an extent, in 0G circumstances, whereas Judau Ashta almost jumps over the railing to the floor of the Argama’s hangar while on Earth and had to be told that this was stupid and that gravity is real)

Related bits:

“The inner ear is designed to detect motion, or rather, acceleration. Thus, when the chair began to turn, I sensed it. However, once the turn rate was constant, the fluid in my inner ear returned to equilibrium, and without the benefit of visual cues, I could not tell the difference between turning and sitting still. So when the chair stopped turning, I sensed that as a turn in the opposite direction.”

Source: article on spatial disorientation http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/the-disorient-express-474780/?device=android&page=2

Imagining an ace pilot walking and then tripping and eating shit because he totally has no sense of balance is… sort of hilarious. But also thinking of like, nigh constant sense of unbalance and such is terrifying.

Source: 80s USMC engineer dad

anyway thanks for reading my google-tier research paper

EDIT NOTES: ADDED on 2nd Dec 2015 after I realised that the force exerted on the pilots would be dependent on the mass of the pilots themselves. Also added relevant link. Thanks dad.

Part 2

More on Space Mobile Suit Combat

If you’re not tired of reading my thoughts, here’s more thoughts.

Here’s the thing about space combat. The inner ear senses acceleration , right? And gravity can be simulated through acceleration , in space. This said, the constant shifting of acceleration to deceleration to acceleration mid-battle (as you move to a position and camp and move to another and dodge shit, etc) would probably feel a lot like being on a roller coaster, but with walls.

“When bodies are acted upon by non-gravitational forces, as in a centrifuge, a rotating space station, or within a space ship with rockets firing, a sensation of weight is produced, as the contact forces from the moving structure act to overcome the body’s inertia. In such cases, a sensation of weight, in the sense of a state of stress can occur, even if the gravitational field was zero. In such cases, g-forces are felt, and bodies are not weightless.“ ( source )

Folk have described the crest of a roller coaster as a moment where there is perceived weightlessness – with this in mind, the only real world application i can attach to space combat piloting would be like .. a rollercoaster. with no rails or safeguards, that you are in control of. The feeling of “weight” would come from acceleration, but the rate at which you accelerate is always shifting, so the perceived weight of, say, your arm would always be different depending on what all you’re doing in your MS. Basically, the feeling of weight would be an on-and-off thing, and the degree to which you feel weight depends on both how far you’re pushing your MS and the MS’ capabilities itself.

For example, the force felt by a 70kg pilot doing an evasive dash at max acceleration would be:

MS-06S: 473 N

RX-78-2: 638 N

RX-178: 1030 N

MSZ-006: 1242 N

The force of gravity, for this pilot, would be 686 N, so potentially he could feel anywhere between “totally weightless in space” to “this is kind of like being punched”, depending on the suit.

( This post was operating with the pilot being 84kg because my dad told me that 84kg is the average weight of an adult human, but 1) I don’t think that’s true, and 2) Char Aznable, who is tall and moderately beefy, is only like 70 something kg, and Kamille is like 60kg, so for the purposes of this discussion I changed my John Doe default pilot to 70kg.)

There it is. I think a lot of this is weirdly worded and kind of odd in general, I did learn python to make an easy force calculator for this, and I Will be pushed in a locker for it. Thanks <3