but I have to give this a shot as I only like one idea posted here, to use Wernher von Braun's work as inspiration for US space assets.
My thought on the matter of a US fleet is that it should be the only major fleet. Another nation might have a fleet, but I think it would consist of only a handful of ships. Japan might have one super ship, in line with anime or a group of five heroes and their five ships that may or may not combine into a single supership.
A US fleet should launch using nuclear pulse propulsion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion
The US would not have used this method of launch until this point because the EMP from launching using nukes would be sufficient to destroy all non-hardened ground and orbital electronic assets. Not to mention the political 'fallout'. The good thing is that a nuclear pulse rocket can lift millions of tons and could replace every single satellite in one launch. In fact, the heavier you make such a rocket the more efficient it works. There is also something very satisfying in using hundreds of nukes like this, and it makes some sense since the US has lots of nukes.
So, we're in space, what engine do we use? We can have it that each rocket is the ship and that they each use nuclear pulse propulsion. This would be good because the nukes can be used to power bomb pumped X-Ray laser rods, the blast plate can be used defensively, and the nukes can blind sensors so they can work like fighter craft flares. Nuclear pulse propulsion also means the space ship can be millions of tons, that means battleship levels of armor and weapons. Lasers, rail guns, and missiles. The book Footfall by Larry Niven has a ship called Michael, which has a several feet of armor, battleship guns off the Iowa class, and parasite craft. I would dump the parasite craft for missiles and add the above mentioned weapons, but that's all.
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=977
http://www.up-ship.com/apr/michael.htm
The fleet can't have just one type of ship, though. There should be a frigate or cruiser to go along with the above battleship. Some of the nuclear pulse propulsion rockets could be purely for lifting smaller ships to space. These smaller ships can be nuclear thermal rockets.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/06/nuclear-dc-x-recent-nuclear-thermal.html
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3c.html
They would just have two or four weapons each, either two laser emitters, two rail gun turrets, or two of each, or a bunch of missiles.
The fleet should also be supported from the air and ground using flying laser platforms and sea ships, maybe even from secretly launched orbital weapon platforms. That's an alternate way to go, use only orbital weapons launched over the decades. You can have it that the Star Wars program was a secret success, and that current research into lasers and rail guns isn't new success but new refinement or a roundabout method of declassification.
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I'd guess that the enemy spaceship has priority defending itself from boarding over maintaining steady course for optimal firing solutions, so the Nazi saucer would simply ram the light boarding craft when it's on the final stage of approach. And there goes your expensive, highly trained boarding force hurdling into space, helpless...
And if you would survive the landing and be able to make an airtight channel and cut a hole to the pressurised hull, the enemy would simply drop the pressure on that part of the ship (as there would surely be airtight compartments), and you would be again in vacuum dieing.
Hand to hand combat isn't going to happen in space before you can get fully flexible bulletproof spacesuits. Otherwise it's just too hazardous to be preferable over just killing the enemy from distance (and then salvaging what can be salvaged).
Boarding spaceship is about as hard as boarding submarine. It's not going to happen
"BSG explains it visually easily and believably enough for a fiction film: "
Exactly. It doesn't matter if it works in physics, it LOOKS like it works and that's good enough for a film like Iron Sky.
BSG explains it visually easily and believably enough for a fiction film:
In space, large ships have to maintain a steady course to get any kind of a firing solution (or to launch and retrieve fighters, etc.).
So locking on to them and boarding them is rather easy. Just calculate their trajectory, overcome the defensive fire, adjust your course and let the cpu's deal with the fine tuning with landing.
Make an airtight pressurised channel to the hull. Cut a hole in the pressurized hull quickly, enter and enjoy!.
That's why the defending ships have emergency support teams (of red-shirted security guards;) at the ready...
I'd say that trying to board a spaceship in the middle of combat would be a foolish thing to do. As you would certainly have to do very much damage to the ship during the entry (as the enemy most certainly wouldn't allow you to simply dock on the airlock engage to hand to hand combat), I don't think the ship could be very usable right after the seals have captured it. And because all random pieces of junk left in the orbit will pretty much stay there unharmed until the battle is over (and won), it would make a lot more sense to leave the salvaging to your space pioneers instead of highly trained special combat units...
It's just so much easier to simply kill the crew by shooting the ship and then patch the holes and install some new hardware if needed.
If the Earth fleet is going to finally attack the moon base, I think most of their fleet could be comprised of salvaged Nazi UFO:s. The Space Seals would then try to infiltrate the moon base rather than try to capture individual spaceships.
Surely the UFOs themselves are bending the laws of physics? I can't see how they could possibly fly in real life.
Kris S: BSG is space opera, a genre that by its nature lets you bend the laws of physics a bit. (Though they do a good job of making it seem to make sense for the layman.) In a dark comedy about Space nazis on the moon, I do not dare give a suggestion on how much they should bend the laws of physics.
Though a drop ship that makes a flyby and drops of seals with big decelerator rocket pods strapped on would look cool. I don't know if you could theoretically balance the needed relative velocity to be able to get through a point defence system and the amount of G you would need to get below for the seals to survive the deceleration. But then, neither would most others.
Just getting two spacecraft to meet is difficult enough when both are really trying. :)
But the new version of Battlestar Galactica gave quite a good example of how to do it in fiction I think.
Well, they could lay some det-chord on the hull, and blast an opening.
That would result in rapid decompression. Next they would enter the vessel, and either take it over, or sabotage it.
Most spacecraft have multiple sealing compartments to protect from decompression. So after fighting their way through a couple, they could even discard their suits.
Boarding a spacecraft is propably near impossible. It could be done if the spacecraft that should be boarded would be completely crappy, but I kinda doubt that. Considering that the nazis' have much more experience about building spacecraft than the defenders.
Space Balls?