Feel like checking out the site again, and I love Jarden’s understatement of seeing the aftermath of fireblade. While reading I had something on Youtube on in the background and it got me thinking (yes, mass panic is ensuing).
What kind f Defenses would the various races have for space be it conflict or something natural, and space junk?
In the case of Humans The difference with pre and post Alien Contact. The inspiration came from finding a Universe episode from History Chanels's youtube Page, and their imagining of what space combat might look like a 100 years from now. This also brought back memeories of reading a few volumes of a friend's manga Planets.
Link to the episode in question
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87SE7K3 ... p=gAQBiAQB
Starting with he most mundane, space junk: Debris of manmade objects ranging from loose peaices that fell or broke off, to satalites and other large constructs that are no longer needed. This might seem harmless as when has litter killed anyone...but remember that the earth spins at around 1000 miles per hour or 1670 Kilometers per hour. When testing the dangers of such objects, Scientists metal balls the size of a normal marble (say like a cat's eye), and see what kind of impact they would have on some thick metal plates. I was a kid when I saw that documentary (forget which one, maybe discovery channel before it was all Reality TV). The impact from one of these little ball bearings left a basketball sized dent. So year, You can see this in one chapter of the Planets Manga with the Character of Yuri. A Russian man that joined what amounts to space trash collectors after a screw collided with the shuttle he and his wife was on, causing massive damage and taking the love of his life. \
So how would our space faring peoples handle this? I think the garbage truck drivers in space is a good start, and I can see drones doing much of it as this is a tedious and never ending, and probably just as much a thankless task as sanitation work on Terra is (despite the necessity of both). Thoughts, Ideas?
Laser defenses: A laser is essentially light, wgch meanss they can hit a target on the moon from earth orbit in about 2 seconds. Today we have gotten to the point now where we can cut elaborate designs in metal in everyday workshops, and even dedicated anti missile aircraft. The Cutting lassers still are huge and the aircraft in question are basically large modified passenger planes, but I can see things getting smaller in the future if we haven’t blown ourselves into a madmax setting (Computers were once the size of classrooms, and now they can fit in your pocket, so why not). That said there has to be defences. One idea would be to have a cloaking device that bends light, which we are experimenting on. Not sure if this would effect the lasser but might with the targeting array.
Really big impacts: Get an object going fast enough, and you won't need explosives! Go fast enough and the impact alone can deliver the necessary damage we need conventional and less so conventional bombs and missiles for. A rocket that just goes super fast can act as a bunker buster, or hurl a asteroid or meteor of sufficient size and it will collide into a planet or moon to do the rest. There is a reason one of the stronger theories of the Extinction of the Dinosaurs was due to giant falling rock. So what could be used to deal with these, as since the only combustible element, if any, is the fuel to project it?
Another problem is what if it came from Railgun. Conventional projectiles may not work in space. The side away from the gun gets too hot and overheats and doesn’t work as intended. The side away from the sun gets too cold and doesn’t work as intended. But a rail gun that uses magnets to hurl an object, does not have this problem. So how would one deal with this?
Satellites: The modern world could not work without satellite communication. While, yes, we do have internet connections underwater (which has electrical signals that attracts sharks to take a bite out of it, fun fact) we still largely rely on satellites for everything from gas pumps to the stock market, to weather prediction, to phones, to the internet, to photo and video surveillance. How would we protect them from say excess solar radiation and storms (the magnetosphere protects earth from much of this, and the results can often be seen as the Northern and Southern Lights). However not everything in space would have such protection. I am assuming that in Outsider the tech is sufficient enough to keep us from having cellular damage by the second from the constant radiation of outer space, but how much EMP protection would be needed for say an electric storm or a nearby nuclear explosion (which would have a bunch of radiation pool up in a area, and a far wider area of its EMP to effect an area)?
What kind of defenses would be in Space
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Re: What kind of defenses would be in Space
Starlink is the first satellite internet to actually relay through space, every other one goes straight to a ground station and all intercontinental communication was undersea cables. Still about 98% is.
Re: What kind of defenses would be in Space
SaintofM: you might be interested in this series of blog posts at Rocketpunk Manifesto: http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/201 ... ratch.html
It's ten years old, but still informative, and the comments section is excellent. I linked the last one because that contains an index to the entire series, but you might want to start at the beginning, and work your way through it. I think you will find his essays on lasers and kinetic weapons esp interesting. His writing style is very informal and easy to read, yet well researched.
It's ten years old, but still informative, and the comments section is excellent. I linked the last one because that contains an index to the entire series, but you might want to start at the beginning, and work your way through it. I think you will find his essays on lasers and kinetic weapons esp interesting. His writing style is very informal and easy to read, yet well researched.