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I think the Mars series has a bunch of references to this, too. Basically if we ever had to go to war with the moon or mars colonies, it would just be kinetic w

I think the Mars series has a bunch of references to this, too. Basically if we ever had to go to war with the moon or mars colonies, it would just be kinetic weapons.

Razengan 7y ago
If we come upon the aftermath of such a weapon that launched meteors at a planet, would there be any signs that it wasn't a natural event?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- RaiseProfits 7y ago
  You might be able to detect acceleration at point of impact if it’s at an angle to the velocity at point of impact. This is assuming the mass driver is allowing the asteroid to fuel its own acceleration via mass drivers + a fuel source, not a separate frame of reference mass driving the asteroid into orbit.
- jerf 7y ago
  On Earth it would absolutely show up. Because Earth is tectonically active, and has an active atmosphere that erodes things in relatively predictable ways, along with a number of other processes that can date things, we'd be able to tell that there's a whole bunch of impacts that seem to have taken place at suspiciously close to the same time, even millions of years after the fact. If there's more than a couple of them, it may even be the case that it becomes clear that they were specifically targeted; e.g., 2/3rds of the planet is water, if we found 8 impacts on land or coasts at the same time and could show that there were 0 in the middle of the water, that would be very strong evidence for intelligent action, for which "military" is the most likely conclusion. In other environments, it may be much more difficult, but similar effects on more detailed scales may be in play. It's possible the space war was won with One Big Rock, but for a variety of reasons, I'd expect space war is more likely to occur with a variety of smaller rocks. Primarily, One Big Rock is harder to steer at militarily useful speeds, and you have to be pretty committed to wiping out not just your enemy, but the entire ecosystem. A lot of much smaller rocks would be more militarily useful in all sorts of ways, speed of deployment and redundancy being among the most important. If there is a war between a space-faring civilization and the groundpounders, the space-farers win if they just degrade the ground civilization to the point that they are no longer space-faring and unable to interfere. Spending the considerably greater resources to massively overkill past that goal is possible, but would not be the most likely outcome in my opinion because of the outsize expenditures and much longer time to return on said expenditure vs. smaller, more nimble attacks.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    That would be quite the thing if the dinosaurs won the war with Mars.
    - riffraff 7y ago
      Or maybe mutual annihilation? The dinosaurs where more ruthless and ended up wiping out the whole biome while martians limited themselves and ended up only killing the dinosaurs but letting Life survive. Thank you, interplanetary brothers.
- Symmetry 7y ago
  Depends on how big the meteor. Large enough natural explosions would tend to lay down a layer rich in iridium in the sediments. But if it's just an explosion the size of the Tunguska event nobody looking a million years in the future will ever know it happened.
LoSboccacc 7y ago
same as aurora 4x you can use the mass driver both to transfer minerals if the other end has one of equal strength to capture them or bombardment. heck it even simulates the bombardment dust cloud triggering a runaway cooling and subsequent ice age of you send enough mineral packets in short time!
loeg 7y ago
And not to spoiler it, but the Expanse series gets into this too.
- pitaj 7y ago
  Such a great show. They really hit the perfect compromise between realism and fun.
  - loeg 7y ago
    Yep. I love the books and the show.

I think the Mars series has a bunch of references to this, too. Basically if we ever had to go to war with the moon or mars colonies, it would just be kinetic weapons.

Razengan 7y ago

If we come upon the aftermath of such a weapon that launched meteors at a planet, would there be any signs that it wasn't a natural event?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
RaiseProfits 7y ago
You might be able to detect acceleration at point of impact if it’s at an angle to the velocity at point of impact. This is assuming the mass driver is allowing the asteroid to fuel its own acceleration via mass drivers + a fuel source, not a separate frame of reference mass driving the asteroid into orbit.
jerf 7y ago
On Earth it would absolutely show up. Because Earth is tectonically active, and has an active atmosphere that erodes things in relatively predictable ways, along with a number of other processes that can date things, we'd be able to tell that there's a whole bunch of impacts that seem to have taken place at suspiciously close to the same time, even millions of years after the fact. If there's more than a couple of them, it may even be the case that it becomes clear that they were specifically targeted; e.g., 2/3rds of the planet is water, if we found 8 impacts on land or coasts at the same time and could show that there were 0 in the middle of the water, that would be very strong evidence for intelligent action, for which "military" is the most likely conclusion. In other environments, it may be much more difficult, but similar effects on more detailed scales may be in play. It's possible the space war was won with One Big Rock, but for a variety of reasons, I'd expect space war is more likely to occur with a variety of smaller rocks. Primarily, One Big Rock is harder to steer at militarily useful speeds, and you have to be pretty committed to wiping out not just your enemy, but the entire ecosystem. A lot of much smaller rocks would be more militarily useful in all sorts of ways, speed of deployment and redundancy being among the most important. If there is a war between a space-faring civilization and the groundpounders, the space-farers win if they just degrade the ground civilization to the point that they are no longer space-faring and unable to interfere. Spending the considerably greater resources to massively overkill past that goal is possible, but would not be the most likely outcome in my opinion because of the outsize expenditures and much longer time to return on said expenditure vs. smaller, more nimble attacks.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  That would be quite the thing if the dinosaurs won the war with Mars.
  - riffraff 7y ago
    Or maybe mutual annihilation? The dinosaurs where more ruthless and ended up wiping out the whole biome while martians limited themselves and ended up only killing the dinosaurs but letting Life survive. Thank you, interplanetary brothers.
Symmetry 7y ago
Depends on how big the meteor. Large enough natural explosions would tend to lay down a layer rich in iridium in the sediments. But if it's just an explosion the size of the Tunguska event nobody looking a million years in the future will ever know it happened.

LoSboccacc 7y ago

same as aurora 4x you can use the mass driver both to transfer minerals if the other end has one of equal strength to capture them or bombardment. heck it even simulates the bombardment dust cloud triggering a runaway cooling and subsequent ice age of you send enough mineral packets in short time!

loeg 7y ago

And not to spoiler it, but the Expanse series gets into this too.

pitaj 7y ago
Such a great show. They really hit the perfect compromise between realism and fun.
- loeg 7y ago
  Yep. I love the books and the show.