/k/ - Weapons

>>540224

But then the enemy just have to claim that you are shooting at their scientific and commercial satellites, and they will have quite a lot of ammo for a propaganda war. Also, it's a great reason for all of your rivals to band together. So I'm not entirely sure that you gain more in the long run. Shooting down satellites isn't hard if you invest in the technology. Here's a paper on using a 406mm gun for this. The first vehicle is a self-propelled gun with a 406mm cannon, the second one has a 420mm cannon. Either of them would be cheaper and a lot more discrete than a manned space station.

>>540229

As if anybody cares. If any two of the planet's space faring nations (Germany, France, Italy, GB, US, Russia, China, Japan and India :^)) were to go to war with each other, any consideration for "keeping a clean face" would go out the window. At that point it would be an all out war, with possible involvement of NATO and other military alliances. WWIII would be an understatement.

>1)

"Muh UN conventions, you can't have weapons in space", country that put up the satellite gets cucked.

>2)

It gets shot up by some missiles, or if you want to be more extreme about it, a Super Russian Fun Gun. Country that put up the satellite then gets fucked.

>3)

The satellite is kept defended, and world governments start to just accept that it's there.

>>540232

Got any smug polish girls?

Manned space stations around Earth wouldn't change much of anything. The first spy satellites were manned. The first, and so far only, space craft to make it into space with a weapon designed for ship-to-ship combat, Salyut 3, was a manned spy satellite. They became obsolete when it was discovered that you could get adequate picture resolution beamed back to Earth by radio.

Weapons in space aimed at Earth wouldn't provide much of a benefit either. ICBMs can reach just about any point on Earth in minutes now, and the weapons pick up speed in flight. Firing from a station means de-orbiting the weapon, or slowing it down, and the weapon wouldn't get to the target very much faster even by starting out in space. In fact, it may take longer if the station is on the other side of the planet and needs 20 minutes to reach its window.

Space-based weapons in LEO (low Earth orbit) would also be very vulnerable to both orbital weapons and surface launched weapons. It takes a rocket the size of a building to get a person into orbit, it takes a rocket the size of a couple of cars to get a small bomb up to LEO altitude. Once there the bomb doesn't even need to hit, it can just explode and litter the path of the satellite or station with millions of tiny BBs. Since they're stationary relative to the ground and the station is moving at several kilometers per second, when the two meet the larger one is going to get shredded.

The only way for a space-based weapon system to be worthwhile is to put it in a higher orbit or put it on the moon. At that point it's no longer useful as a spy platform, and its weapons will need enough delta V to get back to Earth. It's possible but we're looking at a minimum transit time of hours or even days for everything except lasers and particle beams. The CEP (circular error probable) will be significantly larger than any Earth-based weapon, and the warheads could still be intercepted with nuclear or non-nuclear interceptors.

I know it's not what you want to hear, but unless there are people or robots in space there isn't much of a reason to weaponize it. Wars are fought over resources, and yes, land or other territory is a resource. If no one wants to claim an island it's not going to be the site of a battle.

>>540272

>the only way for a space-based weapon system to be worthwhile is to put it in a higher orbit or put it on the moon. At that point it's no longer useful as a spy platform, and its weapons will need enough delta V to get back to Earth. It's possible but we're looking at a minimum transit time of hours or even days for everything except lasers and particle beams. The CEP (circular error probable) will be significantly larger than any Earth-based weapon, and the warheads could still be intercepted with nuclear or non-nuclear interceptors.

Well this got me thinking.

How about a laser from the moon, but instead of wasting so much time and effort on trying to focus is so much, that the laser becomes an effective weapon on earth, why not use lots and lots of tiny mirrors in space around earth instead?

The laser doesn't need to be focused to a tiny point on earth at all, it doesn't even need to be directed at earth. By placing many many many tiny mirrors in space, each of which is essentially a cubesat that autonomously calculates the required angle for optimal weapon effect, could reflect a percentage of the laser light to a single point on earth.

Since the laser generator would be on the moon, defending it would be piss easy, and destroying a bunch of tiny space mirrors would requrie about as much effort as launching a bunch of tiny space mirrors would, so you could just keep launching them when they get destroyed.

The laser would also not have to be too powerful, just enough to get the desired effect if something like 1/4th of it's energy reaches the mirrors (the rest just passes in the empty spaces between them) to be enough to be effective after the atmosphere absorbed some of it.