5 ms·

From a military technology standpoint, throwing rocks from the moon is probably the next technological step in warfare. The way cannons ended the era of the fo

From a military technology standpoint, throwing rocks from the moon is probably the next technological step in warfare. The way cannons ended the era of the fortress, rocks will end the nuclear status quo.

nradov 5y ago
This is nonsense. Rocks don't throw themselves. If a moon rock smashes Washington DC then our missile submarines will still nuke Beijing or Moscow in retaliation. Nothing can end the nuclear status quo until someone builds a defensive system that can't be saturated by a massive retaliatory strike. MAD still applies.
- politician 5y ago
  No, what happens is that everyone rushes to the moon to recreate MAD in terms of rocks instead of in terms of nuclear weapons. During the transition period from atomic MAD to kinetic MAD, deterrent politics will become very complicated and war planners may make miscalculations. See also: prompt global strike. First strike from kinetic bombardment can be far more devastating than first strike from ICBMs due to the surprise factor and simplicity of yield configuration. Moon-based mass drivers can be trivially protected from Earth-launched counter attacks, since the inbound trajectories can be calculated, the projectiles take days to arrive, and can be intercepted by point defense systems that have lower delta-v requirements. Basic OODA loop supremacy stuff.
  - nradov 5y ago
    None of that is relevant to MAD. Boomers still provide a survivable second strike deterrent. Even if an adversary can defend their lunar weapons, it won't matter because their earthly cities will be smoking craters.
    - politician 5y ago
      I agree with your point in the near term, but beyond that I disagree with you about the effectiveness of submarines for maintaining the second strike deterrent for two reasons. First, there is some threshold amount of off-Earth allied population that will undermine and make irrelevant the SLBM deterrent. In the extreme case, consider a Martian opponent. Second, there is a gamble that a first strike against military targets won’t provoke a return strike against the civilian population. In this case, a restrained first strike that takes out key submarine docks could degrade the advantage provided by Boomers. A limited attack on that kind of infrastructure is hard to pull off, but an asteroid strike might be one of the few ways that it could be done with sufficient plausible deniability. Gravity-based kinetic weapons will force a rethinking of nuclear MAD — the history of war consistently shows that expensive hardened fixed positions are eventually made into vulnerable death traps through cheap technology.
twicetwice 5y ago
I don't really understand why this is the case. Nukes don't defend against nukes—MAD defends against WMDs. Why do new and fancier WMDs make MAD no longer effective?
- iandanforth 5y ago
  "The nuclear status quo" is a balance made possible by MAD. In an arms race there may be a period of technological superiority. During that period MAD does not exist. Bombardment from space creates at least two scenarios that upset MAD. 1. First strike capability Small projectiles sufficiently accelerated may escape detection from ballistic detection systems. This could give an actor sufficient confidence in their ability to eliminate return strike capability. 2. Plausible deniability For a period it may not be possible to determine which actor launched a strike. This can cause sufficient hesitation (and the expectation thereof) for an actor to initiate a strike and the target to fail to retaliate due to insufficient confidence in their target. I'm sure there are other scenarios as well.
  - discardedrefuse 5y ago
    Also, replacing nukes with moon rocks means that you don't have to worry about securing those nukes.
    - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      How do you secure the infrastructure that hurls the moon rocks?
      - guhidalg 5y ago
        The same way we guard the nukes: floppy disks.
      - discardedrefuse 5y ago
        Control access to the moon.
      - 5y ago
discardedrefuse 5y ago
I'm sure you already know, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein is such a great book that deals with exactly this.
- Kim_Bruning 5y ago
  Also in The Expanse (possible spoilers?) it takes the Belters a surprisingly long time to realize they're holding the ultimate high ground in this respect.
  - omegalulw 5y ago
    I mean not really? That scene [SPOILERS AHEAD] always seemed like a plot hole to me - you need massive Delta V to change trajectories of objects in space to hurl them towards earth and you need them to be massive to not burn up in the atmosphere. That takes a loooot of juice. It's much easier to use the "Rods from God" idea - that is more precise and minimizes collateral damage.
    - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
      There's a surprising number of near-earth objects that might (almost) hit earth anyway, that really only need a nudge. And if you're not in a huge hurry, you can use high ISP electric powered rockets. And since you're in the inner solar system, solar power isn't very expensive either. IRL you can use brain-power to avoid using muscle-power! On the other hand, in-universe, they've got brute-force Epstein drives. For them this is Tuesday.
      - omegalulw 5y ago
        But if you want to "nudge" an otherwise near miss asteroid you gotta wait till however long till it comes around, which can be 1000+ years? From https://www.britannica.com/science/Earth-impact-hazard/Frequency-of-impacts https://www.britannica.com/science/Earth-impact-hazard/Frequ...: > Because there are far fewer large NEOs and long-period comets in space than smaller ones, the chances of a collision decrease rapidly with increasing size. The impact-hazard community—primarily scientists with an interest in the issue—has defined a global catastrophe to be an impact that leads to the death of one-fourth or more of the world’s population. An impact by a 1-km- (0.6-mile-) diameter NEO, the smallest believed capable of causing such a catastrophe, is estimated to occur about once per 100,000 years on average, based on the assumed population in space of such objects. On the other hand, an impact by a 100-metre (328-foot) NEO, the smallest believed capable of causing regional devastation, is estimated to occur about once every 1,000 years on average.
adrianN 5y ago
Once we build the necessary infrastructure to detect a rocks-from-space attack, we might finally have the means to prevent natural asteroid impacts. We have far too few eyes looking for small, dark objects on a collision course with us.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  To be honest, the asteroids that could smite us in an "end of dinosaurs" event are very rare. Most of them have been cleared out of their orbits by either Earth or other planets billions of years ago. It is still worthwhile to watch the sky for them, but the risk per year seems to be lower than any man-made disaster I can think of.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    I'm also concerned about asteroids that are not big enough to wipe out the dinosaurs, but big enough to kill a few million people. Those are a lot harder to detect.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Hm. When thinking about how pock marked earth is, I'm not so certain. Also space is dynamic. As I understand it, we only have a vague understanding of what happens in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hills_cloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hills_cloud & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud and how the trajectories of objects therrin could be perturbed by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet s and the movements of our nearest solar neighbours which probably have similar 'clouds' of objects around them. And it wouldn't need to be as big as Dino-Ex, either. Imagine what would happen if something like this impacted or air-bursted with the population density and fragile logistic dependencies of today: https://phys.org/news/2008-03-cuneiform-clay-tablet.html https://phys.org/news/2008-03-cuneiform-clay-tablet.html Also in that region, just a few thousand years earlier: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60867-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60867-w Suspected as a possible cause for the onset of the Younger Dryas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi... edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_possible_impact_structures_on_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_possible_impact_struct... Sort for age, look at diameter of crater in kilometers for the first dozen youngest and think about what that would do for any contemporary agglomeration.

nradov 5y ago

This is nonsense. Rocks don't throw themselves. If a moon rock smashes Washington DC then our missile submarines will still nuke Beijing or Moscow in retaliation. Nothing can end the nuclear status quo until someone builds a defensive system that can't be saturated by a massive retaliatory strike. MAD still applies.

politician 5y ago
No, what happens is that everyone rushes to the moon to recreate MAD in terms of rocks instead of in terms of nuclear weapons. During the transition period from atomic MAD to kinetic MAD, deterrent politics will become very complicated and war planners may make miscalculations. See also: prompt global strike. First strike from kinetic bombardment can be far more devastating than first strike from ICBMs due to the surprise factor and simplicity of yield configuration. Moon-based mass drivers can be trivially protected from Earth-launched counter attacks, since the inbound trajectories can be calculated, the projectiles take days to arrive, and can be intercepted by point defense systems that have lower delta-v requirements. Basic OODA loop supremacy stuff.
- nradov 5y ago
  None of that is relevant to MAD. Boomers still provide a survivable second strike deterrent. Even if an adversary can defend their lunar weapons, it won't matter because their earthly cities will be smoking craters.
  - politician 5y ago
    I agree with your point in the near term, but beyond that I disagree with you about the effectiveness of submarines for maintaining the second strike deterrent for two reasons. First, there is some threshold amount of off-Earth allied population that will undermine and make irrelevant the SLBM deterrent. In the extreme case, consider a Martian opponent. Second, there is a gamble that a first strike against military targets won’t provoke a return strike against the civilian population. In this case, a restrained first strike that takes out key submarine docks could degrade the advantage provided by Boomers. A limited attack on that kind of infrastructure is hard to pull off, but an asteroid strike might be one of the few ways that it could be done with sufficient plausible deniability. Gravity-based kinetic weapons will force a rethinking of nuclear MAD — the history of war consistently shows that expensive hardened fixed positions are eventually made into vulnerable death traps through cheap technology.

twicetwice 5y ago

I don't really understand why this is the case. Nukes don't defend against nukes—MAD defends against WMDs. Why do new and fancier WMDs make MAD no longer effective?

iandanforth 5y ago
"The nuclear status quo" is a balance made possible by MAD. In an arms race there may be a period of technological superiority. During that period MAD does not exist. Bombardment from space creates at least two scenarios that upset MAD. 1. First strike capability Small projectiles sufficiently accelerated may escape detection from ballistic detection systems. This could give an actor sufficient confidence in their ability to eliminate return strike capability. 2. Plausible deniability For a period it may not be possible to determine which actor launched a strike. This can cause sufficient hesitation (and the expectation thereof) for an actor to initiate a strike and the target to fail to retaliate due to insufficient confidence in their target. I'm sure there are other scenarios as well.
- discardedrefuse 5y ago
  Also, replacing nukes with moon rocks means that you don't have to worry about securing those nukes.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    How do you secure the infrastructure that hurls the moon rocks?
    - guhidalg 5y ago
      The same way we guard the nukes: floppy disks.
    - discardedrefuse 5y ago
      Control access to the moon.
    - 5y ago

discardedrefuse 5y ago

I'm sure you already know, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein is such a great book that deals with exactly this.

Kim_Bruning 5y ago
Also in The Expanse (possible spoilers?) it takes the Belters a surprisingly long time to realize they're holding the ultimate high ground in this respect.
- omegalulw 5y ago
  I mean not really? That scene [SPOILERS AHEAD] always seemed like a plot hole to me - you need massive Delta V to change trajectories of objects in space to hurl them towards earth and you need them to be massive to not burn up in the atmosphere. That takes a loooot of juice. It's much easier to use the "Rods from God" idea - that is more precise and minimizes collateral damage.
  - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
    There's a surprising number of near-earth objects that might (almost) hit earth anyway, that really only need a nudge. And if you're not in a huge hurry, you can use high ISP electric powered rockets. And since you're in the inner solar system, solar power isn't very expensive either. IRL you can use brain-power to avoid using muscle-power! On the other hand, in-universe, they've got brute-force Epstein drives. For them this is Tuesday.
    - omegalulw 5y ago
      But if you want to "nudge" an otherwise near miss asteroid you gotta wait till however long till it comes around, which can be 1000+ years? From https://www.britannica.com/science/Earth-impact-hazard/Frequency-of-impacts https://www.britannica.com/science/Earth-impact-hazard/Frequ...: > Because there are far fewer large NEOs and long-period comets in space than smaller ones, the chances of a collision decrease rapidly with increasing size. The impact-hazard community—primarily scientists with an interest in the issue—has defined a global catastrophe to be an impact that leads to the death of one-fourth or more of the world’s population. An impact by a 1-km- (0.6-mile-) diameter NEO, the smallest believed capable of causing such a catastrophe, is estimated to occur about once per 100,000 years on average, based on the assumed population in space of such objects. On the other hand, an impact by a 100-metre (328-foot) NEO, the smallest believed capable of causing regional devastation, is estimated to occur about once every 1,000 years on average.

adrianN 5y ago

Once we build the necessary infrastructure to detect a rocks-from-space attack, we might finally have the means to prevent natural asteroid impacts. We have far too few eyes looking for small, dark objects on a collision course with us.

inglor_cz 5y ago
To be honest, the asteroids that could smite us in an "end of dinosaurs" event are very rare. Most of them have been cleared out of their orbits by either Earth or other planets billions of years ago. It is still worthwhile to watch the sky for them, but the risk per year seems to be lower than any man-made disaster I can think of.
- adrianN 5y ago
  I'm also concerned about asteroids that are not big enough to wipe out the dinosaurs, but big enough to kill a few million people. Those are a lot harder to detect.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Hm. When thinking about how pock marked earth is, I'm not so certain. Also space is dynamic. As I understand it, we only have a vague understanding of what happens in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hills_cloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hills_cloud & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud and how the trajectories of objects therrin could be perturbed by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet s and the movements of our nearest solar neighbours which probably have similar 'clouds' of objects around them. And it wouldn't need to be as big as Dino-Ex, either. Imagine what would happen if something like this impacted or air-bursted with the population density and fragile logistic dependencies of today: https://phys.org/news/2008-03-cuneiform-clay-tablet.html https://phys.org/news/2008-03-cuneiform-clay-tablet.html Also in that region, just a few thousand years earlier: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60867-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60867-w Suspected as a possible cause for the onset of the Younger Dryas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi... edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_possible_impact_structures_on_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_possible_impact_struct... Sort for age, look at diameter of crater in kilometers for the first dozen youngest and think about what that would do for any contemporary agglomeration.