Nuclear Warfare in Space

Bob Mahoney writes:
>Adrian Hurt asks:
>
>>Next, a more Traveller-based question. Given all the current fears about what
>>a nuclear war would do (e.g. nuclear winter), could a naval force, e.g. a
>>battle squadron, effectively destroy a planet by using a few salvoes of
>>nuclear missiles? If so, is this accounted for in any account of the Frontier
>>Wars or any other wars? Is it provided for in any rules?
>
>In the latest issue of _Challenge_, there is a "courier" senario, in which a
>number of background/flavor elements are included.  One of these mentions that
>Lucan has ordered his admirals not to surrender any High Population worlds.
>
>There is a later mention of an admiral ordering the nuclear bobmardment of a
>world he was about to lose to advancing forces, in order to change the world's
>status so that it was *no longer* a High Population world...  He is awarded the
>"Starburst for Extreme Heroism" by Lucan.   (*Nice* people!)

You don't need any nukes. Just a few starships or system defense boats. dock
them to a small asteroid (say a chunk of nickel iron a couple of kilometers
across). Use their power plants to nudge it into an orbit that will hit the
planet. Preferably in an ocean if the planet is reasonably earthlike.

Can you say "Dinosaur killer"? For that matter since the asteroid is only
going to hit at 10-15 km/sec and the impact energy depends on the *square*
of the velocity, maybe throwing a smaller asteroid at a higher speed would
be better. 6 G for a few days will give a velocity in the *thousands* of
km/sec! (5e3 km/sec day 1, 10e3 day 2, etc...) At these speeds, who needs
a warhead? Anything short of anti-matter won't even affect the outcome!

If anyone is interested, I'll dig out the figures from an old article
on giant meteor strikes and convert the data to ship impacts on planets.

> Can you say "Dinosaur killer"? For that matter since the asteroid is only
> going to hit at 10-15 km/sec and the impact energy depends on the *square*
> of the velocity, maybe throwing a smaller asteroid at a higher speed would
> be better. 6 G for a few days will give a velocity in the *thousands* of
> km/sec! (5e3 km/sec day 1, 10e3 day 2, etc...) At these speeds, who needs
> a warhead? Anything short of anti-matter won't even affect the outcome!

I've thought along similar lines as well. Find a small asteroid (say, a few
100's of tonnes). Attach a power plant, manoeuvre drive and control system to
it. Move it out of orbit, to a suitable distance, and let it head for the
target world for 4 weeks at 1G (keep the drives cheap, simple and expendable).
Resulting velocity = 10 x 4 x 7 x 24 x 60 x 60 = 0.24e8 m/sec. I'll let
someone else add in any relativistic calculations. But the gear needed could be
stuffed into an empty 50 tonne weapon bay on a cruiser.

> If anyone is interested, I'll dig out the figures from an old article
> on giant meteor strikes and convert the data to ship impacts on planets.

Yes, dig them out, and let's zap Capital! :-)

 "Keyboard? How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt			     |	JANET:  [email removed]
 UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian     |  ARPA:   [email removed]