I've been reading the posts on hurling various things at other things as
an attack, interesting but problematic. There seem to be two classes of
objects to be thrown, kg sized at moderate velocities (10's of km/sec) and
gm sized at fractional light velocities (10,000's of km/sec). There would
then be two classes of targets, ships and planets (space stations are so
small compared to planets that they will be treated as ships).
Here are the problems as I see them, correct me if I'm wrong :-)
The large projectiles are detectable and moving slowly enough to be
attacked with lasers or missiles or simply pushed off course by
repulsors or tractors ( detected early enough, only a small deviation
would be required for it to miss by a large amount). If the target is a
ship with a drive - move out of the way - these things aren't tracking you.
If its a planet with a reasonable atmosphere, ignore it. Kg sized objects
burn up in our atmosphere. It was also suggested that the travel time might
be months, while this would certainly be an annoyance to the planet or
space stations (which are the only things whose position can be predicted
that far in advance) they would be easy enough to detect and destroy.
- - -- However, coordinateding such an attack with a regular assult *might*
tie up enough of their resources to give you an edge...
The small projectiles are totally worthless against a planet with an
atmosphere and any installation on a planet without an atmosphere that
doesn't have enough armor to defend against this sized projectile is in
trouble anyway. There is a good chance over the lifetime of such an
installation of encountering a natural assult of this kind. So most
installation will be able to deal with it, probably by being underground
which also adds radiation protection and thermal insulation. The other
problem is one of engineering, how does one accelerate the gm sized object
to these velocities? Off hand, only two weapons come to mind that would
be similar in concept, the particle beam and the gauss gun. So this would
be a ship sized gauss spinal mount? Even so, could it really expell material
at 1/10 light speed? I'm not sure without thinking about it longer than
I have already, but I'm inclined to think not. Moreover, I assume the ships
have a navigational deflector which would have to be able to deal with
particles of this size or maybe larger, moving at these velocities, routinely.
Without this deflector, ships moving around our solar system would be taking
a major risk! (Clarification: Routinely be able to deflect these particles
but not routinely have to.)
In my opinion, you would be better off with missiles. They do their own
acceleration thus requiring minimum equipment on the ship. They can track
and evade. If you stand off a bit, giving them acceleration room, they can
appear on the target ships sensors, moving at great velocities, perhaps
giving them a chance to hit before the ship can react (ie the advantage of
speed, if any, is preserved). As for detectability, make 'em stealth
missiles :-)
T.L.Hayes | [email removed]
MIT/Lincoln Laboratory | - or -
Lexington, MA | [email removed]
Got an AK-47 for his best friend, business the American way.
- Queensryche