[Ajakks]

Why exactly? I think the US ought to spend a few trillion on an actual space battleship - one that never comes down to the surface, just sits in orbit. There was a project regarding dropping telephone pole sized pieces of metal from space as an offensive weapon - put something like that on the space battleship and...

That is simply "Assured Destruction" with absolutely no mutual drawbacks or lingering consequences like radioactive wasteland. Just craters.

This is also something where the 1st country to achieve the "Space Battleship" could effectively prevent any other from also doing so...

In theory, Bezos or Musk could do it.

I don't understand why any country would bother with ground based military assets at this point.

[wongarsu]

> That is simply "Assured Destruction" with absolutely no mutual drawbacks

Nuclear countries would simply declare that they will launch nukes if any rod comes down on their territory. Even if you had thousands of projectiles in orbit (at considerable cost per projectile) this would not be significantly different from 60s-style MAD: put nukes in bunkers, in the air and in the sea to ensure they can't all be taken out. We might see the return of strategic bombers that stays in the air for weeks at a time.

Alternatively they can just shoot down your battleship with anti-satellite weapons. The risk of retaliation might be worth preventing the disadvantaged position in the long term

[Ajakks]

That reaction is not the same tho - a rod isn't even a conventional weapon, I am not certain off hand that an incredibly destructive such weapon would even be banned under current treaties. That matters bc your taking about the end of the world. Only Russia would ever shoot at the US - so, dont drop rods on Russia.

Plus - if countries don't do space wars - this will still happen 100%. It will just be a non-state actor - who do you nuke if Austin Powers is the bad guy from space?

Also, there seems to be a prevailing sense of "we'll just shoot it down" and that is actually extraordinarily unlikely - bc of all the space, in space. I wouldn't sit in orbit with my Space Battleship - maybe a lunar orbit.

Let's say I park halfway to the moon - ALL of my missiles will still hit earth, I don't think current defense systems would have any better odds - whats the difference between an ICBM that enters the atmosphere from space - shot from a silo or a spaceship?? Not much, functionally identical to the Space Battleship... missiles from earth tho, will be like in slow motion, the space battleship ought to be able to literally shoot them down with bullets - none will be able to surprise the space battleship, how do you even do a missle defense overwhelm tactic in such a situation - I can move the spaceship you know.

I may sound like I'm being unserious, but in reality, this is absolutely the future of warfare 100% - I can't be more serious, the humor is bc this topic makes me legitimately nervous.

[ryandrake]

Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress kind of mapped out what to expect if/when your adversary manages to position themselves significantly above you in the Earth's gravity well.

[Ajakks]

What an incredibly foresightful work - I have not read that, I will tho. Thanks!

And yeah, it is perhaps the most extremely imbalanced strategic advantage that can be attained.

[bdamm]

You've described a space station, which three countries have already done independently (Mir, SkyLab, Tiangong).

But dropping rods from an orbiting platform makes no sense. There's a reason that "Rods from God" didn't pan out, and it has to do with orbital dynamics. Neither Bezos nor Musk can do it, because it actually doesn't work.

[Ajakks]

I doubt it was seriously considered at the time it was discussed. Space Stations are in orbit - the space battleship doesn't have to be, that is very significant.

Earth is spinning in a giant circle around the sun. Thats facts. "aiming an asteroid" is less of making a rock a missile - and a lot more of tug-boating it into the exact right spot, in the way of earth, so that earth hits the asteroid - not anything complicated like the asteroid hitting earth.

There are a lot of little things like that...

[m4rtink]

Any realistic space warship design will need propellant - sure you can avoid ground based interceptors and kill sats but it will eat into your propellant reserves over time.

You will need to replenish from somewhere & that somewhere might as well get nuked instead of the ship, rendering it useless.

[aw1621107]

> Space Stations are in orbit - the space battleship doesn't have to be

I mean, you did say:

> space battleship - one that never comes down to the surface, just sits in orbit.

So I think it's understandable for people to take that at face value.

Furthermore, if it isn't in orbit, then where would it be?

> and a lot more of tug-boating it into the exact right spot, in the way of earth, so that earth hits the asteroid - not anything complicated like the asteroid hitting earth.

From an orbital mechanics standpoint I don't think there's actually a difference. You're changing an orbit either way.

[Ajakks]

If I were holding earth hostage with my Space Battleship - I would sit in a lunar orbit. Also, I am not kidding about tug-boating - if I fly up, match an asteroids speed and velocity, why cant I just throw a tow strap on that, accelerate, and park it an area that only has to be accurate enough for a planet to hit it - I dont need to stop it, or have it flying at the earth, it only needs to be in the way, moving a little slower than the earth.

What if I make that the space battleship's job? What if a drone can do that?

Im not really worried about resupplying the space battleship holding earth hostage -> someone will "volunteer" to do that, bc they want to live life.

[aw1621107]

> I would sit in a lunar orbit

Ah, so by "orbit" you were talking about orbit around Earth specifically?

> why cant I just throw a tow strap on that, accelerate, and park it an area that only has to be accurate enough for a planet to hit it - I dont need to stop it, or have it flying at the earth, it only needs to be in the way, moving a little slower than the earth.

Again, from a high-level orbital mechanics perspective there is little difference between the two. You start with two non-intersecting orbits and you're changing one orbit to intersect the other at the same time and place. How you go about doing so is just a question of how much time/fuel you're willing to expend, for various values of "just".

That being said, assuming I'm interpreting you correctly what you propose is probably technically possible (e.g., change an asteroid's orbit to a slightly-larger-than-Earth-sized one), but it's also very fuel-intensive compared to skipping the "parking"/"in the way" part.

If you haven't tried it already I can't recommend Kerbal Space Program enough for experimenting with this kind of thing, especially if you are alright with playing with mods. Real Solar System (changes the in-game solar system to match the our real-life one) and Principia (replaces the simplified patched conics system KSP uses for orbits with n-body gravity) would be particularly relevant here.

[Ajakks]

I absolutely will check out Kerbal - I have done nothing more than thought experiments - which I'm sure is obvious, its obvious to me. I'm sure I am saying things exactly wrong - the idea is to save fuel and remove all of the difficulties that may arise with timing or aiming. Using more fuel is exactly opposite intent.

I may be confused but I dont mean a "larger orbit than the earth" -> I mean the exact identical orbit, the exact path that earth takes around the sun -> ahead (or behind, it does not matter) of where we are and instead of 365 days to circle the sun, the asteroid is moving at a rate that will take MORE days -> so the earth will smash into the asteroid, bc it can't do anything else. I dont mean "park" in the sense that I stop its movement, nor would I select an asteroid that has such an orbit that it couldn't be manipulated into position with little difficulty.

Like, imagine the solar system was a record on record player (I've never used one either) and the earth is on a line/groove - a choice asteroid is moving in the same direction on an immediately adjacent line/groove - the asteroid only needs to move onto the earth's groove (anywhere on that specific groove the earth occupies on the record works) and then the asteroid is then sped up or slowed down (not much tho) on that exact orbit -> either will result in a collision with earth.

The only real way to stop such activities is with spaceships. That is my entire argument - you are saying that is less feasible than making a missle out of an asteroid? I appreciate the explanation fr

Tbh, it wasn't until the game Terra Invicta that I really considered the solar system, as it actually is. That game has no other relevance to this particular conversation - good game, very different kind of 4x that I recommend but unrelated.

[Ajakks]

I cant reply to your other comment - that is what I assumed you were saying but it does not make sense to me outside the process that naturally occurs - I'm assuming the suns gravity simply cant move objects of such different mass, at the same rate, and thereby the orbit and position changes accordingly?

The speed doesn't have to be much different - 366 days and earth will eventually hit asteroid - 364 days and it will eventually hit the earth.

Ahh, Im still having a hard time figuring out why that would take more energy - I'm going to be researching this all morning tomorrow.

Thanks for the help!

[ryan_j_naughton]

> There's a reason that "Rods from God" didn't pan out, and it has to do with orbital dynamics. Neither Bezos nor Musk can do it, because it actually doesn't work.

Can you say more on this? Thanks!

[MisterTea]

> . There was a project regarding dropping telephone pole sized pieces of metal from space as an offensive weapon

I remember it was nicknamed "Rods From God". Kinetic energy weapon using 9 ton tungsten rods dropped from an orbiting platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

[bhhaskin]

The technology doesn't exist and it would be a huge waste of money.

How heavy would a telephone pole sized tungsten rod be?

What happens when China, Russia, India or Pakistan find out you are building this (cause you can't hide it if it's in near earth orbit)? They would either knock it out of the sky or hit you with everything they have. We would do the exact same if anyone else was developing such a weapon.

[Ajakks]

I personally would get whatever metal in space, so weight is not the issue - solving this problem would also create almost immediately chunks of rocks that could also be dropped. In all reality, anything can be "setup" to be a weapon - many ways have been identified here.

All required innovations - of which, most are not out of reach in the slightest, all of that tech would be immensely valuable, literally everything we do to secure space superiority will be actual gains - not smaller microchips equivalent innovations - entirely new machines, entirely new economies of scale - there is no equivalent military tech that we can develop on earth.

Not only is there really no conceivable way to ignore the strategic advantage once considered, the long-term economic payoff is actually reason enough alone to pursue the radical idea of a "space battleship" - I can think of about 20 ways to cause significant global issues with one measly space battleship.

As a hypothetical alone, it has reason enough to warrant a substantial amount of the 1.5 trillion defense budget the Pentagon plays with.

[anigbrowl]

If this is satire, it's not that funny. If you're serious, it's a good example of 'the ugly American.'

[Ajakks]

I wish it were satire - we do actually need to have space defenses, asteroids exist 2st off - its just bc we ignore all the craters that we sleep at night.

We feel safe here on earth but it's really a giant graveyard trap - that so effectively exerts control over life on it, that it made all living mammals out of mice - we may actually be safer on almost any other planet.

All life on earth has eventually died out so far, we are the 1st species that could stop the most likely extinction level event - but this DART is the closest we ever got to actually taking up that responsibility - the preservation of our species and whatnot, thats just 1 minor reason.

The most important tho, given how much we have example of people "getting theirs" at all other peoples expense - this is much worse if a non-state actor gets there 1st.

Lastly, I do have to clarify the American position - we run the world, or there will not be one to run. Nobody alive today made that decision - it changes nothing, once that choice was made, we are locked into it. Did you think we are only an economic power? That is the front. We can always pivot to actual power - the kind that can destroy all cities above a certain size - we have never hid this fact, the whole world knows of MAD. That is what power is.

What is American power if someone can destroy the US and we can't destroy them?? That doesn't work for the US - nothing at all changes if the US gets that spaceship first.

You can call this ugly - there were more modern wars before we started running things, from the looks of things - the whole world will go to war the moment we are out of the picture.

[m4rtink]

The story of Footfall is basically about that - and alien space invasion force with torch drive powered space battleship in orbit.

There are ways to battle that - balistic missile submarines for one and then "Project Michael" which would be a massive spoiler to elaborate on. ;-)