5 ms·
Thirdly: A debilitating attack if you don't seek to preserve anything of the colony, is also relatively easy.
by handedness 6y ago
Thirdly: A debilitating attack if you don't seek to preserve anything of the colony, is also relatively easy.
- ALittleLight 6y agoIf the colony has one or more nukes it could establish mutually assured destruction or at least a significant deterrent.
- handedness 6y agoAnd so shall history echo with rhymes, even in a vacuum.
- numpad0 6y agoWell, a habitat with propulsion in space is itself a deterrent.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoFor a colony further up the gravity well that produces resources locally, "rods from god" style weapons suddenly make much more sense than for earth-based nations. Nukes might simply not be worth the effort.
- BelenusMordred 6y agoYou don't need nukes at orbital speeds. A tungsten rod has equivalent power.
- vl 6y agoNot even close! An easy way to make upper boundary estimate: let’s say you use Falcon Heavy to deliver your kinetic weapon. Falcon Heavy burns around 500 tons of fuel. This is upper boundary for energy of your payload (since most of the energy goes to lifting rocket itself and air resistance). So even ultra-heavy payload of 64 tons will have way less then 0.5 kilotons of energy (TNT equivalent used for nukes). Any nuke is way beyond that. Of course, another way to estimate is to not to be lazy and actually multiply mv^2/2. Truly massive 64 ton kinetic weapon reaching target at 7 km/s will have energy of 1.6x10^12 J. Modest 20 kiloton nuke has energy of 8.4x10^13 J. I.e. 50 times more.
- numpad0 6y ago> let’s say you use Falcon Heavy to deliver your kinetic weapon. Why? pick up an NEO and aim for Sydney, or wherever it needs to go. Easy, unless your settlement isn't orbital or you don't have electric propulsion.
- andredz 6y agoWhat is a NEO?
- grzm 6y agoNear-earth orbit
- andredz 6y agoThanks. :)
- numpad0 6y agoNear-Earth Object. Asteroids around Earth. There is infinite supply of all sizes of boulders in space that you can just grab and turn into missiles given you have sufficient level of technology.
- andredz 6y agoThank you. Is there a sci-fi book where NEOs are used that you'd recommend? I'm not too versed in that genre.
- vl 6y ago(Roughly speaking) Kinetic weapon has as much energy as you spent getting it on orbit from surface, thus fuel in the rocket provides useful estimate and comparison point for energy available. To get from orbit to surface you actually need to slow down, ie reduce energy.
- 6y ago