War in Heaven

By Fletcher Pratt
Who is going to use death-rays when solid-shot and space-mines will bring far cheaper victory? An article about space-warfare.
Virtually all science fiction authors and most of those who read the stuff have speculated at one time or another upon space-warfare. How will it be waged? What will the ships be like, the weapons, the tactics? Fletcher Pratt, even more renowned as a military and naval historian and student than as a science fiction author here take a peek into an all-too probable future and comes up with some well-thought-out answers that are guaranteed to surprise all would-be spacemen.
The mighty ship released a flashing sheet of energy but the Uranian space-vessel's beams were met by a counter-energy screen that caused its blinding heat to ricochet in flashing showers from a barrier invisible against the star-studded black wall of space....
Oh, yeah? It reads well—or has a few thousand fictional times—but it doesn't make sense in a too-real future.
Look chum, a searing bolt of flame has to have something that will support combustion or it will go out. And what do you mean sheet of energy? How do you generate it? How do you expect to keep radiation in a tight beam across a couple of thousand miles of space when you can't even prevent a beam of light from spreading after a couple of thousand feet?
The tractor and repulsor beams, screens of force and death-rays of high-power interplanetary stories simply aren't going to work. At least not according to any science we know now. About the only kind of ray that might be dangerous would be ultra-violet.
But the Sun itself produces ultra-violet faster and in greater quantity than any generator man could build and unless the crews of space-ships are very thoroughly protected against it there won't be any space-ships.
Maybe the BEMS from Arcturus will come around with something more serious but it is a better-than-even-money bet that they can't do any more about the laws governing radiation than we can. And if they can't space war will have to be fought with far more mundane weapons.