| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 09:28 am 
So, we know that they're going to be introducing space wars sometime in the future right? Well, if we have space fighters and shields, then why can't we have kinetic bombardment?
The basic principle of this is, a satellite or group of satellites in orbit around a planet launch what is basically a telephone pole made of tungsten to impact a terrestrial target, theoretically impacting with the force of a small nuclear weapon at a speed of 9 km/s.
I think that they would have to be manufactured planetside, but assembled in orbit. The satellites would be part of the space industry group, but the actual poles would be part of the strategic group. In order to prevent overuse, they would have the same limits as a nuclear weapon, but the satellite would have to return to the proper position to launch the weapon. This could only be done every game day or two. You could only use these on countries on planets with empires of yours on them, for example, if you had empires on KB and FB, then you could maneuver the satellites to the other planet, however this would take much longer, say one game month, or just a couple of weeks. I'd like to hear what you think about this. I'd put this in the polls, but I just had one going. |
| Maestro2000 | Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 01:18 pm
Interesting |
| white darkness | Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 05:28 pm
What I was referencing with my discussion of sand and throwing rocks.
It doesn't even have to be high tech. Just strap some guidance rockets on any free floating space junk of decent size and alter it's trajectory so that it'll impact on the target. |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 06:29 pm
Hell, you don't even need a booster. Send out a ship, capture some medium-to-large sized space debris, calculate a trajectory, drop it into the atmosphere, let gravity take over, and watch a large city's lights go out. |
| white darkness (Little Upsilon) | Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 06:36 pm
aye, but a simple booster would allow for course corrections for awhile. Wouldn't be good to have your space junk get hit by other space junk and knock it off course. |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 10:48 pm
Ah, but if you use, say, a mechanical piston to jettison the object in question in LEO, with the proper calculated trajectory, gravity could take over and act as a guidance system. You would just need to launch it in the right place at the right time. |
| Crafty | Saturday, July 23, 2011 - 11:43 pm
Is tungsten able to withstand the energies of atmospheric braking? If so, why wasnt it used on the shuttle project (R.I.P) instead of those iffy tile arrangements. If not, then you would need a way of insulating the projectile anyway so tungsten would seem a bit expensive when anything quite dense would do.
And dont suggest me...I'm so dense you couldn't get me out of earths orbit :p |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Sunday, July 24, 2011 - 05:02 am
Tungsten's melting point is 6192 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm not sure if that's enough to survive reentry, but I think it would be. Of course, it would probably be punching almost straight down into the atmosphere, which might change the temperature.... What's the amount of heat energy generated on reentry? |
| Crafty (Fearless Blue) | Sunday, July 24, 2011 - 05:45 pm
The shuttle endured 1650 C (3000 F) apparently, so I would think tungsten could handle it, although a peak shock layer temperature of 7800 K (7527 C or 13580 F !!) is reached. And the missile angle of entry wouldnt have to be so steep so the resistance is less, hence lower temps.
Hmmm, methinks WDs bucket of sand and rocks would be a blob of molten glass after that, providing he had selenium of course ;) |
| white darkness (Little Upsilon) | Sunday, July 24, 2011 - 08:31 pm
Sand drifts in space. And 300 tonnes of ferrous asteroid, quite a good bit of it will impact. So what if a few tonnes of it burn off into the atmosphere? It's cheap rock floating in space, not something specially mined and milled. |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Sunday, July 24, 2011 - 11:34 pm
It may be a cheap asteroid floating in space white, but I don't think that the thrusters and fuel needed to move a 300 ton rock 60 million miles and put it on the right trajectory to hit the intended target would be cheap. In fact, it would probably be cheaper to launch a 20 foot tungsten pole into orbit. |
| white darkness (Little Upsilon) | Monday, July 25, 2011 - 08:13 pm
Ahhh, you don't have to drive it in, you just have to give it a push and let gravity take care of the rest. |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Monday, July 25, 2011 - 09:24 pm
Still man that would take a REALLY long time. We're talking like months, maybe years. It'd be better just to use the Rods from God. |
| white darkness (Little Upsilon) | Monday, July 25, 2011 - 09:25 pm
This is true, it'd take awhile to kick them into a stable orbit, but once they're in orbit, it'd only take a single kick to knock them out.
Would I plan ahead and get my toys into orbit, oh yeah. |
| Crafty (Little Upsilon) | Monday, July 25, 2011 - 09:57 pm
Your 'kicking' isnt as easy as all that. Any method devised so far to deflect extraterrestial objects from colliding with us has proved either science fiction or extremely expensive. Nuclear warheads, solar pressure, blah blah blah.
But they never asked me, I could do it with my mind... ommm ommm omm yiddymun.
Crafty'Cosmonaut'Cockney |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - 04:39 am
Not to mention the fact that it would be incredibly dangerous. You forget to carry the two, and you accidentally send a chunk of rock the size of New York into the middle of Europe. |
| Open Sesame (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - 07:35 am
Wh-
Where the hell is the main engi... No I don't see
panel F8 anywh-oh there it is, okay. Now flip it
twice right? To? Those too? Those are on a different
panel. I have to... but I don't see the other
buttons! Hold on, okay hold on I'll go check the
screen. Ah, there. Now, what am I oh the asteroid
just hit New York. |
| white darkness (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - 07:04 pm
Once it's inbound and in earth's gravity well it becomes harder to adjust the farther in it gets. Now taking the earth's solar system, I could easily harvest from the asteroid belt and kick those into a stable orbit for mining or impacts. 
Nuclear warheads are kind of silly, except for the potential of breaking it up into small chunks. Solar pressure would work, but it'd have to be a long way out and you'd have to raise it's albedo.
And yeah, get your measurements mixed up and you'll accidentally crash one into the planet, sort of like probes that crashed into Mars on accident because they got feet and meters mixed up. |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - 07:05 pm
Let's see... Calculate for gravitational pull and random space junk.... Decide how high we want it.... The size of the nuke.... Add three, multiply by seven, subtract four.... Alright, we got it, detonate the nuke and put it in orbit. Oh fuck, we forgot to carry the two, should we tell people that we just caused an extinction event? |
| Crafty | Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - 10:19 pm
Wasn't it the Hubble telescopes mirror they nerfed by using mill's and inches (or fractions of)?
How about a bucket of anti-gravitons? Dont quite know what you would make the bucket from though...
And nukes aren't that strong, you couldnt destroy a small country with one let alone decimate any self respecting asteroid. A point noobs here should note.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
the troof is out there |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - 12:04 am
The point of kinetic bombardment isn't destruction of asteroids, the asteroid comments are just us making jokes. Kinetic bombardment is slamming tungsten poles into the atmosphere and hitting a target. |
| Crafty (Fearless Blue) | Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - 10:35 am
I know billybob, but WD and I have an ongoing joke about buckets of sand and the like.
I wonder how much kinetic energy a frozen turd could create coming from space. |
| white darkness (Little Upsilon) | Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - 08:36 pm
Heading for a planet not much. Getting slammed into by a spaceship traveling at .5C or so, I don't think there's a ship anymore.
And while these ideas are humorous. To me they make more sense potentially than frikkin' lasers.
Everyone knows that lasers go with sharks.
So you can have sharks with frikkin' laser beams on their heads. |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 05:14 am
Well, if it was entering the atmosphere at terminal velocity from a height of 6000 miles (10,000 kilometers), at a speed of 9 km/s, it would impact with the force of.... Let's see...nothing. It would have burned up during reentry. |
| Crafty (Little Upsilon) | Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 12:38 pm
A titanium encrusted turd? |
| white darkness (Little Upsilon) | Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 06:51 pm
Pretty much anything I come up with as long as it's got a 15m diameter will leave a crater behind. |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 08:16 pm
Ok, a titanium encrusted turd, maybe. Although the titanium would probably just act like aluminum foil, and the turd would still probably vaporize. Then all's that would be left is the titanium, which could probably punch a pretty good hole into a house or something. |
| Crafty (Fearless Blue) | Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 09:16 pm
I was amazed to discover that small meteors that impact earth have their crusts instantly frozen when going through one of the layers of the atmosphere (upper?) but the interior remains extremely hot for some time. So that would be a cool missile, blows a hole in the roof and showers the occupants with hot turd! SPLAT |
| Open Sesame (Little Upsilon) | Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 11:18 pm
Screw tungsten, sand and turds.
WE NEED NEUTRONIUM. |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Friday, July 29, 2011 - 05:29 am
See the thing is, not only has neutronium never been proven to exist, the nearest hypothetical source is dozens or hundreds of light-years away, and it's so dense that by the time is was within a million miles of the Earth it would have crushed half the solar system. |
| Open Sesame (Little Upsilon) | Friday, July 29, 2011 - 11:29 am
Effective, right? |
| Billy_Bob_Joe_Bob_Steve (Kebir Blue) | Friday, July 29, 2011 - 08:39 pm
Well, if you're trying to cause a 100% extinction event then yes, it is. |
