Space Warfare I - The Gravity Well

[Nyrath]

http://rocketpunk-manifesto.blogspot.com/2009/06/space-warfare-i-gravity-well.html

[Sundog]

Re: Space Warfare I - The Gravity Well

 

Also posted in the linked article:

 

Sundog said...I'd like to challenge some points here.

 

I don't disagree regarding low orbit. Engagement times for incoming SOMs (Surface to Orbit Missiles) are too short, and a low-orbit SOM is too small and too launcher mobile. The advantage is indeed with the ground.

 

Where I have the problem is control of high orbit. With a half-hour window to do something about an incoming SOM, as you point out, there's plenty that can be done to counter it. What I don't agree with is that energy weapons would take their place.

 

Assuming E-Weapons are in use, the energy curve is ALL on the orbital side. They can have relatively light, defensive arms to deal with SOMs once they crest the atmosphere. The ground facility needs a LOT more power - it has to punch through Kilometers of energy-scattering gas before reaching vacuum, and then still have enough cohesion to reach out to high orbit and do damage. You're talking a much larger emitter and a massively greater power source.

 

Now the counter argument is, of course, that since they don't have to move, the defensive facility and power source can be as large as necessary. However, this obviates the concept of "getting lost on the clutter". Besides being rather obvious visually, any such power plant is going to stand out like a flare in thermal from the waste heat. Even if you manage to pump the heat elsewhere and disguise the base, your first shot will be backtracked to your emitter site pretty much instantly.

And that heat has to go somewhere - a flare point is going to tell the orbital enemy of the existence of your base, if not it's location.

 

A maxim of modern warfare is "if I can hit it, I can kill it". You'll get one shot with your E-Weapon - then the Thor clusters will rain down. Simple kinetic impactors will hit with enough force to punch out any imaginable armouring. You might take out a ship - for the loss of a facility of roughly equal cost.

 

Finally, I think you're betting too much on the capacity to be stealthy from space. Spy satellites today have quite incredible resolution, and it's much easier to drop a tiny, hard to spot and hard to hit spy sat into low orbit than it is to find and kill said sat - especially if your major tracking stations were among the first targets destroyed. Modern spy sats can differentiate between an 18-wheeler and a bus - it's not that much of a stretch to be able to differentiate between a cargo hauler and a missile hauler.

 

Now, none of this invalidates your position on the near future, but I think it throws a few wrenches into the idea that the ground vs space argument is in favor of the ground.

June 9, 2009 9:29 PM

Just so our native experts can, y'know, poke massive holes in it...

[Outsider]

Re: Space Warfare I - The Gravity Well

 

At least in regards to beam weapons, an advantage the space side would have over fixed ground installations would be its ability to concentrate firepower.

 

Ground based installations may be greatly cheaper than ship based ones, but they're effectively (and probably actually) immobile. They need to be spread around the planet to defend against attacks from any direction. Half of them will be on the wrong side of the planet entirely to shoot their beams at any attacking ships. And the closer the ships are willing/able to get to the planet, the more ground stations will be so masked*. Of the ones not masked by planet, many will have to aim low on their local horizons to bear their beams on the attacking ships, meaning those beams will be atmosphere degraded significantly more than they would were they shooting more or less straight up. The only planetary installation that gets a prime shot (minimal atmospheric degradation, ie shooting more or less straight up) will the be one that is being attacked at the moment.

 

 

 

*Assuming an Earth sized planet : Ships at 100 km altitude are only 'over the horizon' for ground bases within ~1200km. Which means (unless I did my math wrong) only about 1/100th of the planet's surface, and 1/100th of the ground bases, can see/shoot at them at any given time. Being able to fight a tithe of a tithe of your enemy's forces at a time would seem to be a great advantage to me.

[Nyrath]

Re: Space Warfare I - The Gravity Well

 

Of course you realize that if you are so inclined, the blog post I linked allows one to post your comments. Rick enjoys reasoned debate.

 

Ah, Sundog, I see you are already there.

[Sundog]

Re: Space Warfare I - The Gravity Well

 

One for our resident physics whizzes - supposing a solid steel impactor six inches in diameter and 3 feet (36 inches) long were de-orbited onto a target. If there was a wire mesh suspended from lighter than air supports over the target, how strong would the mesh have to be to cause the impactor to cease to be a threat to a hardened target? I figure you'd at least have to start the impactor tumbling, as that would let it rip itself apart at the extreme speeds it's travelling at.