[World Building] A Future History of Space Force

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Oddly, this suggests that spacecraft the size of refrigerators or cars might be fighting each other with belt-fed guns on turret mounts.

As much as Space Car Wars sounds awesome, do keep in mind that automatic chemical-propellant weapons also have issues with heat buildup. Perhaps not as much as modern lasers have (particularly if you assume these Full Auto Fridges are using polymer-cased munitions), but it certainly isn't a negligible amount, particularly when you don't have a convenient atmosphere to dump all that waste heat into.

EDIT: On the other hand, spin stabilization doesn't seem like it would be necessary without an atmosphere to tumble through, and I think smoothbore barrels may not heat up quite as quickly as rifled barrels (the latter needs friction to impart the spin), so maybe it would be less of an issue?