Apart from using high-grade modern steel, is there any way to improve on swords in a modern or near-future setting?

In the end, this still comes down to a really sharp beatstick made of really high-grade steel.

Mono-molecular blade edges being easy to make.

Would close combat weapons like swords and low-energy ranged weapons like crossbows be fitting for a sci-fi game centering on space ships and stations?

I'm trying to avoid pew pew laser and plasma weapons.

I figure space travelers would look for weapons that can incapacitate an enemy without taking out vital ship components on a missed shot.

Ceramics rarely have the required ductility combined with a sufficient hardness.

if we extracted or compiled a long obsidian blade and embedded it into a steel blade or haft then it would be able to cut through just about anything.

Assuming we one day leave Earth, Tungsten Carbide blades because we won't have to just mine the very limited amount of tungsten we have natively.

It'd be able to cut through anything less hard than itself.

A 1060 san mai pattern 1803 British Infantry sabre is the best sword that can be constructed today for dueling or skirmishing purposes.

Anything else is sci-fi.

>Ceramics rarely have the required ductility combined with a sufficient hardness.
That would be why an advancement in ceramics making a 1 for 1 comparison possible, would need to be a thing.

Generally speaking you'd still be using guns, as that's what intruders are likely to be using.

Wouldn't these be over twice as heavy as a steel blade?

You can utilize anri armor explosives for melle:
HEAT shanks
Power fists/axes
Displacent/reactive shields.

Not sure about swords though coz that would depend heavily on their indended use. Idk why would you use anything longer than sax in close combat agains unarmored riflemen.

Not in space.

Really user.

I'm talking about the approach to weaponry among the general spacefaring community.

You'll always have 'gutsy' outliers, but wouldn't it make sense for people to try and avoid weapons that cause too much damage to components?

>Let's also assume that bonding a titanium cutting edge to a steel or other core doesn't improve effectiveness enough to warrant the convoluted construction.
Why?
Crafting a sword with a blade hard enough to hold an edge while the core remains flexible to absorb blows is the hallmark of a master swordsmith. You're disqualifying a very real and important aspect of what makes a sword a good sword.

Ofcourse you did ask about modern or near future. Pic related, it's the Sword of Goujian, a 2500 year old sword that has chemical differentiation between the composition of the core and edge of the blade.

You want to win more than you want to avoid minor damage to interior's.

That doesn't magically make them practical. Inertia still exists, even in zero-G environments.

Glaser rounds are a type of ammunition which (tends toward) tungsten or lead pellets suspended in a frangible resin bullet. The idea is that they still impart lethal force to a human, but disintegrate on contact with steel or anything substantially harder than a human.

Despite the 'chemical differentiation' between the edge and the core, that sword is solid bronze.

Bonding titanium and steel into a functional sword is vastly more complicated and error-prone than this.

monomolecular edges is another of those science fantasy things.
A metal sword blade isn't even made of molecules for a start and really if you actually had an edge that fine it would be immediately dulled significantly when put into its scabard after sharpening. Even razor sharp is pointless on a metal sword for the same reasons, the egde won't remain that sharp for a useful amount of time in a fight.

ucresearch.tumblr.com/post/150126220932/why-scientists-are-rooting-for-mushrooms-mushrooms

MUSHROOM

SWORDS

I'm saying guns and other high-velocity weapons won't cause minor damage. They'll completely destroy vital components or vent the ship.

This is based on the assumption that it isn't economically viable to manufacture a space ship that can handle a shootout on the inside.

If your ship can't handle things like shotguns and handguns, it also won't handle micro meteors and other space hazards.

Don't worry about realism OP. No matter what you came up with for swords, it could likely be applied to guns more efficiently.

Not to mention that the knife is the superior melee weapon aesthetically.

Why would you even want titanium on your blade?
It's not some real-life adamantium, it has the properties of high grade steel, just at a lighter weight.

Swords would be impractical in the tight confines of a spaceship.

If your arms or skeletal structure are augmented would that matter?

Also, for industrial purposes, the ability to mass produce tungsten carbide due to it no longer being a scarce or easier to make, would be a boon.

yes, and very brittle as well.
though votg issues couls be solved by bonding a tungsten carbide edge to a steel or titanium blade.
Same basic idea the vikings used with steel edges on wrought iron axes.

>it also won't handle micro meteors and other space hazards.
Not necessarily. A ship can have external shielding, but not internal one. It may be protected from micro-meteorites, but causing damage to internal systems could still be devastating. Like firing guns in a fucking submarine. It IS a bit of stretch though.

They do actually have small arms on submarines.

It probably won't, no. That's why you would scan for and evade these.

I'm just not terribly impressed with fictional space ships that apparently have armor all over the shop, as if weight and economy aren't a factor.

Besides, why would the same sci-fi materials that make ships able to withstand a full-on gunfight not be used in personal protective equipment?

As an absolute desperation measure. And there are (for good reasons) strict laws against their use outside of situation where the existence of the submarine itself isn't already threatened.
But yeah, they don't use swords either. I suppose also because the limited space would not make them particularly useful.

I think he is taking about having a shoot out on the bridge, that would be bad since you'd probably destroy something important.

retard blown the fuck out again lol

It wouldn't matter if you could guide the blade using the Force either, but I'm trying to make the sword make sense for a run-of-the-mill spacer.

Nanobonding.

Nanites in the core of the weapon bleed out of it if the weapon cracks, dulls or chips while being programmed to colonize the damaged areas and quickly patch them until the owner of the weapon can take it to a specialist to fully repair or replace it.

you can't advance a material like ceramics, it has chemical adherences because it is still micro-silicon layers and silicon is a giant ionic lattice with planes. It won't ever be ductile like steel is.

i dunno. the ISS handles micro meteorites just fine but i wouldn't trust it with a gun.

>mycellium can be made into solid material with different properties as needed
So, Terraria was right in this regard.

If you end up with a shoot out on the bridge you've probably already lost by that point.

You can't reliably scan everything and if boarding is a legitimate threat you'd want to armor the important bits. Hull venting isn't a big issue as the pressure isn't high enough to actually be a serious short term threat.

depends on the sword. thrusting or short swords would be fine.

Depends on the gun, a shotgun firing pellets probably wouldn't do much to whipple plating.

>why would the same sci-fi materials that make ships able to withstand a full-on gunfight not be used in personal protective equipment?
for the same reasons that a humvee can be more heabily armoured than the soldiers driving it. Human body can only carry so much armour.

Oh and I will add that a space boarding is an incredibly unlikely scenario. It's more akin to a fighter jet trying to board another fighter jet and that if they do manage to dock, having access to the outside of you spacecraft is basically gives them complete control over it.

Make it a glass-ceramic for chemical malleability.

We now IRL have glass-based ceramics that bounce like rubber and bend at 90 degree angles without being damaged.

For what purpose?
A tungsten-edged blade is not gonna cut full plate, much less any more modern armor.
A shaving edge of 1060 carbon steel is all you need to keep a couple dozen vertebrates in close succesion.

Are you suggesting sir, that there would be some sort of space-cutless in question?

You don't even need a shaving edge, as that's a pain to maintain.

>to KILL a couple dozen vertebrates
Autocorrect, you fucking hippie.

Well, CAD could assist in custom tailoring a sword to a specific purpose. Input a person's biometrics, then putz around on the computer to get the exact right dimensions, balance, weight, etc for a sword for that exact person.

The future shall belong to the barmace.

>You can't reliably scan everything
You don't need to scan everything. You just need to find a balance between safety and efficiency. A 'bubble' of a certain range around your ship.

You're taking a chance on foreign objects being slow and/or small enough to evade in time, but let's face it: you're a human being in space. You're taking chances in literally everything you do.

I'm by no means an expert but you could wield it with some kind of vibration nullifying glove/gauntlet perhaps?

Close quarters weapons with thumbprint encoding so they explode if a filthy xeno picks them up.

Or you could slap a few ablative panels on your most important bits. Also if your spaceships are made of paper you aren't going to be doing any offensive docking actions in the first place.

This would be nice if it were sharpened. And I suppose it could stand to lose one 'axis'.

A gauntlet that vibrates on the opposite frequency!

The blade could have a microscopic shape that's complicated. Like, geckos stick to walls by the microscopic shapes of their footpads, and modern car tires can avoid hydroplaning by being shaped to let water pass through them. Your sword's edge could have a billion microscopic cheese graters, or microscopic flexible interlocking serrated disks.

Ablative crew that patch hull breaches with their bodies.

Whole edge is made of segments of programmable explosively forged projectile modules.
Blade itself is made up of layers of these modules so every time the edge explodes it exposes the next layer of charges.
Maybe the opposite edge is synced with the striking edge to explode in a dispersed manner to balance the reaction force and not break the users hand while he tries to cleave a tank.

yeah. that or a space gladius.

If something punches right through your life support or fuel that's exactly what they'll be doing.

1000 degree swords, mah dude!

As far as survival in the cold vacuum of space is concerned, the entire ship is important.

Again, this comes down to economy. The way I see it, ship manufacturers are going to use space as efficiently as they can. There aren't going to be many walls, floors or ceilings that don't have critical lines or leads running through them.

Sure, there's going to be some redundancy in the interest of safety, but I still can't imagine anyone whose only lifeline is the ship to be keen on using firearms instead of low-velocity alternatives.

presumably you could just have the blade isolated from the hilt.

I'd rather have a cattle prod or stun baton.

How would that work? The hilt is literally the only thing the blade is connected to.

They wouldn't have time to valiantly patch holes with their gibs if they're incinerated first.

Unless of course part of being in the space military means ingesting timed on death nanomachines that turn those gibs into a boding globual mass that can rove the ship looking for breaches.

you could electrify a sword, just saying

There are bits that are more vital than others. A lot of things can be fixed when they take damage, others not so much. This whole argument is pretty moot anyway as boarding would be a once in a million occurrence.

Yes, that would be acceptable too.

Boarding isn't the only source of conflict.

Are you sure? Cattle prods work because they have a cathode and anode.

A single blade can't be both.

And I'd still rather have a gun than risk a sword fight.

>isn't even made of molecules

wut?

If you didn't know some examples of renaissance and late medieval swordsmithing are superior to modern day recreations.

Modern steel recreations are 99% of the time made from a single type of steel that is differentially tempered/heat treated, the vast majority of period weapons were made with multiple types of iron and steel laminated together strategically to enhance durability, strength, and hardness, and also differentially heat treated. The men who put these weapons together invariably had spent their entire lives becoming experts at this art. That level of expertise is simply not matched today anywhere, even by people who copy the manufacturing techniques of laminating different grades of steel/iron together.

Also these weapons were informed by practical application of the users, and therefor I'm sure many small details are overlooked/understood by contemporary crafters.

Yes.

Advanced alloys. Look up aluminium-lithium alloys at some point. Lighter and stronger than pure aluminium, volume for volume.

>Unless of course part of being in the space military means ingesting timed on death nanomachines that turn those gibs into a boding globual mass that can rove the ship looking for breaches.

>Boarding isn't the only source of conflict.

I'm now picturing nervous aliens thinking humans are horrifying blob monsters because they've never actually seen a living one.

it could if you embedded cathodes and anodes into a non-conductive material along the blade

just a flexible but short range of movemenr connection.
basically the same principle that lets speaker play music without bouncing around on the table. Though a higher energy version.

depending on how energetic things are you could likely get away with just having a layer of rubber between that will drop user vibrations down too a negligible level.

vibration dampening as already something were used to doing.

You missed. Now hydrogen is leaking into the crew compartment.

Literally everyone hates you for smuggling that gun on board. Are you going to shoot everyone?

I don't think he's wrong. I'm a physicist (bachelors degree) and not a chemist but I think a crystalline atomic lattice is not technically a molecule.

Then use a knife instead, much easier to smuggle than a sword.

You're going to be hitting people with this thing.

What kind of connection dampens the blade's vibrations while preserving the force you impart on the sword? And is simultaneously strong enough to endure impacts?

A sword the 'sweats' mercury from micro-poors.

How about a self-balancing sword? The hilt contains a gyroscope or similar that, combined with sensors or some kind of link to a HUD, adjusts the center of gravity of the blade to better hit whatever you're trying to hit?

Let's assume you wouldn't need to smuggle a knife on board, since the ship's owner isn't as antsy about you puncturing something vital with a close combat weapon.

If your opponent has a somewhat longer knife he could thrust (or swing, if the situation permits it) at you, that's a definite advantage.

If he has a sword, you're shit outta luck range-wise.

molecules are atoms held together by covalent or ionic bonds specifically.

a lump of metal is a bunch of atoms joined with metallic bonding.
if you expand to the layman idea that a molecule is just atoms bonded together than any continious peice of metal is a single molecule, your kitchen draw is full of monomolecular spoons.

Unless I'm entering some sort of formal duel, it'd be far easier to try and shank someone in the confined space of a ship.

Don't you mean separating the blade?

>Diode swords
>Swiords
>Diords