Re: Fusion Rockets and Missiles

Bertil Jonell (BJ>) and Scott Kellog (SK>) discuss the relative merits of
navigating close to a planet to avoid missiles.

BJ>   If you are close to a planet, the ship can either run its CG lifters, or
BJ> not, or run them at fractional power. That will change its vector without
BJ> any active emissions.

SK> Contra Grav lifters should be detectable by fairly low tech densiometers.
[...]
SK> A missile built for space ought to take gravitational wells into account
SK> in it's programming.

BJ> What I meant was that the ship, by varying the CG (there already is a
BJ> detectable gravitation fiddling inside it: the inertial compensators and
BJ> artificial gravitation) against the gravitation of a large body could vary
BJ> its vector in an undetectable way.

I kind of like this; this means that most serious battles will take
place around planets, which makes a lot of sense.  The problem with
space is that it's too bloody large and empty.  I have a really hard
time seeing any two ships getting together for a fight unless they
*both* maneuver to meet, or one side has an immense advantage in speed
and maneuverability.  This means that the preliminary to combat would
be maneuvering to gain advantage of position around a planet, which
also happens to be the best place to have a chance of avoiding attacks
- -- otherwise you get a mutual kill.

Note that the impossibility of avoiding a missile works against the
missile - since the missile itself can be tracked and defeated with
lasers or counter-missiles in much the same way.  I would imagine
technologies would be developed to take advantage of this.

There's also the potential for coasting missiles; the missiles would
go "dead" for a large part of their flight and hope to avoid detection
until they go active close enough to (hopefully) get in before
defenses could defeat them.  If this tactic were extended to ships, I
imagine space battles would look much like submarine combat...

In reference to detecting contragravity, I suspect that stealth
contragravity technologies would be developed; technologies to hide or
disguise the detectable emissions.

Steven J. Owens
[email removed]