The OPs problem here is that in the attempt to change the analogy from naval combat to aerial warfare is that he fails to grasp the medium again.
Space is big, space is empty. FTA this means everything is easily trackable, not only are thrusters visible from across the solar system (except perhaps if you're headed directly for someone, but the thrust required there would be insane), but even every object in the solar system is glowing in infrared energy and thats background objects, not to mention you've strapped nuclear power plants, life support and whatever other heat producing apparatus onto your ship to make it glow even brighter.
The problem with being visible from a distance means it favours those who can hide. Basically, it favours mines. It's simple strap a laser onto a small rock, bury capacitors inside it and have them charged by solar panels. Why? Because the aim is to one-shot your target somewhere important. The mine is disposable, if it one shots the target you might get lucky enough to use it twice. If not you'll have dozens of others waiting. You've got 3 targets: Power supply (nuclear reactor/capacitor bank/whatever), main engine (you cripple their thrust and they're a sitting duck) and control centre (heck, you're likely able to nail all habitable space in one shot as a space ship is more likely to have a vastly expanded cockpit rather than a whole ship of habitable space)
The other problem with space combat is heat. Before you'd even fire a missile or a bullet, you're going to be aiming infrared lasers on your targets from light minutes away. If a ship is habitated then you only need to get it to the point where the life support can't shift enough heat to keep the air temperature below 40C. In uncrewed ships you're talking hot enough to make processors malfunction, which isn't considerably hotter than people can tolerate. These might cope better as cooling can be dedicated to very small areas.
The problem with space is that objects can get very hot, very fast and unless you bring a lot of material to heat sink and dump, you've got problems.
Space will be a war predominated with mines and heat. There are currently about 25,000 objects in space. If only 1% of these are ship-killer mines, would you attack Earth? Well, you'd need more than 250 ships, assuming you're able to kill all the mines in a very short time before they can refire.
Want to attack a mining base in the asteroid field? Find the rock without the massive laser hiding in it! Furthermore, try to wage an effective assault when you're pulverizing everything within a million kilometers of you, and still have the weapons/energy/heat sink capability to fight your target that has a massive rock of shielding and heat sinking, versus your ship.
What about launching asteroids or comets at your target? Well 1 if it's viable to nudge an asteroid from hitting earth, then it's viable to nudge the asteroid your in so that it's missed.
Mines are just as detectable as anything else. Problem: how does your mine know when to go off? If it has sensors, it has electronics; if it has electronics, those electronics are running at something above 3 Kelvin; if you're running anywhere above 3 Kelvin, you can be seen against the cosmic background.
Also, asteroids are incredibly vulnerable, because they can't move. You don't even need to get into range; just boost up another rock and nudge it into a collision trajectory.
I don't disagree, but remember the number of asteroids over 100km is around 200. The number of asteroids over 1km is between 700,000 and 1.7 million. That means the very big asteroids are between 0.0003% and 0.0001% of the objects in the asteroid belt. Given that the smallest known Aten asteroid is ~5m in diameter, then it's an easy conjecture that the asteroid belt is likely to have tens if not hundreds of million asteroids <1km in diameter.
They're going to have enough mass that blasting them is going to be impractical. It's going to be a waste attacking a mining asteroid if you're dumping hundreds of munitions at every nearby rock.
> If it has sensors, it has electronics; if it has electronics, those electronics are running at something above 3 Kelvin; if you're running anywhere above 3 Kelvin, you can be seen against the cosmic background.
This is very true, however given the variation in albedo's of asteroids and meteoroids then there's going to be a wide range of 'normal' temperatures for asteroids. With enough processing power you could assume that people would eventually start calculating asteroid albedo vs distance from sun vs apparent temperature. If you've got a light rock that's hot as all hell, then you might be best to shoot it just in case. Probably not likely for civilians at least, even the military might not want to be running too much processing power as they'd have greater heat sinking issues to worry about.
The real thing that will determine how hard or easy to find mines will be is human mining. How much dirt and debris are we going to be producing, or even purposefully producing. If we're mining bigger asteroids are we going to require ships to land, or simply dump payloads into orbit for ships to snag. If we're doing the latter, then we're talking about hundreds of objects running well above background levels. How much rock are we going to strip off an asteroid and leave nearby?
If piracy or warfare becomes real, then mining companies will likely want to limit the approach vectors for incoming ships. What better way than dumping copious amounts of junk in your orbit. Given that a cubic meter of silica weighs around 2500kg, then you're not likely to crash your ship into it at any speed. Put thousands of these in orbit, and people are only going to approach from the clear paths.
Again, all these rocks would be hotter than background, and you only have to mine 1% for it to be a solid defence. Making someone take 100 shots in 1-hit wins warfare is a very effective defence.
Space is big, space is empty. FTA this means everything is easily trackable, not only are thrusters visible from across the solar system (except perhaps if you're headed directly for someone, but the thrust required there would be insane), but even every object in the solar system is glowing in infrared energy and thats background objects, not to mention you've strapped nuclear power plants, life support and whatever other heat producing apparatus onto your ship to make it glow even brighter.
The problem with being visible from a distance means it favours those who can hide. Basically, it favours mines. It's simple strap a laser onto a small rock, bury capacitors inside it and have them charged by solar panels. Why? Because the aim is to one-shot your target somewhere important. The mine is disposable, if it one shots the target you might get lucky enough to use it twice. If not you'll have dozens of others waiting. You've got 3 targets: Power supply (nuclear reactor/capacitor bank/whatever), main engine (you cripple their thrust and they're a sitting duck) and control centre (heck, you're likely able to nail all habitable space in one shot as a space ship is more likely to have a vastly expanded cockpit rather than a whole ship of habitable space)
The other problem with space combat is heat. Before you'd even fire a missile or a bullet, you're going to be aiming infrared lasers on your targets from light minutes away. If a ship is habitated then you only need to get it to the point where the life support can't shift enough heat to keep the air temperature below 40C. In uncrewed ships you're talking hot enough to make processors malfunction, which isn't considerably hotter than people can tolerate. These might cope better as cooling can be dedicated to very small areas.
The problem with space is that objects can get very hot, very fast and unless you bring a lot of material to heat sink and dump, you've got problems.
Space will be a war predominated with mines and heat. There are currently about 25,000 objects in space. If only 1% of these are ship-killer mines, would you attack Earth? Well, you'd need more than 250 ships, assuming you're able to kill all the mines in a very short time before they can refire.
Want to attack a mining base in the asteroid field? Find the rock without the massive laser hiding in it! Furthermore, try to wage an effective assault when you're pulverizing everything within a million kilometers of you, and still have the weapons/energy/heat sink capability to fight your target that has a massive rock of shielding and heat sinking, versus your ship.
What about launching asteroids or comets at your target? Well 1 if it's viable to nudge an asteroid from hitting earth, then it's viable to nudge the asteroid your in so that it's missed.