How to kill a battleship...

Leonard Erickson writes :
Subject: (2670) How to kill a battleship...

> A *big* mass  driver  on  an  asteriod  hull.  It  fired  multi  kilogram
> projectiles  at  say  10  km/sec or better. They were aimed as a "time on
> target" barrage. Sure, it takes *months* for them to  arrive  on  target.
> So  what?  You  *cannot*  armor  against a several kilo projectile with a
> relative velocity in the tens of km/sec. And all a big ship gets  you  is
> the  chance  to  intercept more of these "rocks".If we assume high TLs in
> traveller, I bet we could boost  these  things  to  a  high  fraction  of
> lightspeed.  In  which  cause they are equivalent to a nuke! And they are
> *inherently* stealthed. Scratch any ship  whose  moves  you  can  predict
> sufficiently  far  in  advance.  True, this is *definitely * limited to a
> "Pearl Harbor" scenario, but they can  happen...  say  just  as  the  big
> naval manuevers get underway?

The  drawback  with  this method of attack might well be that space isn't
entirely a vaccum. Interplanetary dust and gasses will  tend  to  collide
with  the  projectiles,  and while this is no real problem at low speeds,
it gets worse as the projectile ( or spaceship ) gets faster.

At a high fraction of lightspeed, the projectile will have to be made  of
something  very  special  if  it  is  not  to  be  ripped  apart  by such
collisions, and it will certainly radiate *lots * of  energy  from  them.
As  for  a  defence  against  such  things,  once they have been detected
smashing their way through space, how about an old-fashioned  sandcaster?

The  impact  with  all  those  particles  will  the  projectile  no  good
whatsoever,   and  if  it  can  somehow  survive  those  impacts  at  0.1
lightspeed then it's  time  to  fall  back  on  repulsors  ,  lasers  and
throwing the kitchen sink at it :-)

Perhaps someone with more astronomical know-how could let us know what
you're likely to run into travelling through a crowded solar-system at
such speeds, and what the impacts will do ?

			Simon Anderson

The problem with throwing things in the way of a kinetic weapon (ie- .9
c asteroids) is that sand, marbles, ANYTHING in the way would, at the
most, shatter the asteroid.

Problem: at near light speed, the pieces wouldn't deviate too much
before hitting the target. So you get a tight cluster of shots rather
than one big one. Ooo. Though at near light speed, you would probably
notice the incoming asteroid. But not in enough time to do much...

And if the asteroid is travelling much slower, you would get many
projectiles hitting. Of course, a nuke hitting one asteroid would
destroy it quite nicely.


Another problem- if you are on a long-period scale (ie- war over a year
or so), it's much easier to toss asteroids into collision orbits than to
destroy the asteroids coming at you. Especially if you time it right.
(Probably.)

Then there's space hammers. (I forget the actual term... this is close)
Essentially an immense rod of some material with a few guidance
controls. Launched at the target, they simply gather enough speed in
orbit to COLLIDE with ground targets.

Asteroids hitting earth surface can be as bad as any nuclear weapon...
including global cooling. Though they aren't radioactive, so that's a
plus (or minus... depending on how sick you are...)

- - -Me
{Pooh Bear incarnate.}