Space Forum / Space Flight / June 2006

In my experience, the soft underbelly of all spacecraft is their
software.  Clearly then the weapon of choice would be the computer
virus.  (A la "Independence Day".)  Along these lines, we should be
developing and promoting a space-qualified version of Windows for use
in other countries' space programs ...

mark

distances in space tend to be quite large. But then agian orbits are
hard to change. Ball berrings looks like a nice "grenade". Just don't
stay in orbit afterwards. Case in point just about anything will result
in quite a mess in LEO and will make somewhat useless.

Higher up the distances would make anything other than carfully guided
projectiles with signifcant steath pretty useless. Lasers could damage
optical instuments etc. But significant damage is more a starwars (aka
reagan not Vader) myth. Its pretty easy to get rid of the radation.
XRays would do better... but well multimegawatt average power Xray
lasers do not exist and would perhaps be a bit heavy.

I have assumed near term. Most of your sugestions are not near term
IMO.

Greg

    ... something like this:
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/almpart1.htm ?
Regards
                                Adam Przybyla

Well, we all know that the US miltary has been playing with energy
weapons for a while now, and I imagine they could probably put
something pretty nasty in space on current technology, if they had the
will and the funding to do so. However, laser weapons do require a
pretty hefty power source, so unless someone comes up with a cheaper
way of getting into orbit it probably wouldn't be the most
cost-effective option at the moment.

I'd say antimatter is prohibitively expensive to produce, even on
military budgets. I think it will probably be a long while before you
start seeing it in weapons. (Mercifully) However, an electromagnetic
massdriver would be a very effective weapon, and doable on current
tech. Not sure about the energy requirements, but I think it could be
fairly compact. I believe I saw on the internet somewhere someone had
made a hand-gun sized massdriver. Scary.

The main trouble with atomic weapons in space, i believe, is that there
is no medium to propogate the blast. They will do lots of damage if
they score a direct hit, but if they miss by any significant amount,
all they really do is release a lot of radiation, and since your target
spaceship is likely to be radiation-shielded anyway...

??? Can't comment on this.

I think the most viable weapon on current tech is likely to be some
form of guided missile. You release it, and then it uses its own rocket
motors and computers and whatnot to fly straight to the target, in much
the same way guided missiles work down on Earth, only without such
annoyances as gravity and terrain to contend with. Of course, the
question is, what kind of warhead do you put on it? If you can get
enough velocity behind it, no warhead is necessary, you could just
shape it so that it pierces the hull and/ or explodes from sheer
kinetic energy. Depending on the range, the detection systems of the
target and its maneuverability, these things might be quite easy to
dodge, so they'd either want to find a way of evading detection or
splitting up en-route to cover a wider target volume.

Another option might be some kind of stealthy robotic drone that sneaks
up to the enemy craft, either under its own guidance or by remote
control, latches on to the hull and starts cutting holes in it with
special tools, but that might be a little far-fetched.

David Weber's Honor Harrington books (for all their numerous faults) go
into excrutiating detail on space-age weaponry and warfare-. It's all
set in the far-future with some very very fantastic tech, but the basic
principles of space-based missile combat and so forth seem pretty
sound, and would apply even to current tech. It might be worth your
while reading one or two of them, if you feel like it.

I don't know about spacecraft-to-spacecraft weapons, but I once held a
declassified document from the early 60's outlining the feasibility of
several conventional weapons for use on the moon.

The Pentagon authorizes all sorts of "blue sky" studies like this, and back
then everything about space exploration was an unknown.  But it seemed that
whoever authorized the study wanted to look into what kind of weaponry and
what kinds of modifications to existing weapons would be needed if it came
down to armed conflict between Americans ans Soviets on the moon.  As I
recall, there was a fairly large section on modifying existing projectile
weapon technology for use in vacuum; something about changing the bullets to
include an oxydizer, and using graphite lubrication in place of gun oil
(which would boil away in vacuum or burst into flames in a pure O2
environment).  I think there was also some stuff about needing to make the
gun from materials with very similar coefficients of thermal expansion to
deal with the wide thermal ranges expected, but I don't recall seeing any
mention of how to handle recoil in a 1/6th G environment.  If I recall
correctly, there was also some stuff about modifying the sights to work with
a spacesuit helmet, and the trigger to work with pressurized gloves.

I also remember hearing about a plan to put up a cloud of copper BB's in LEO
in case an ICBM attack became imminent.  The thinking was that any ICBM
warhead reentering through the cloud would come out with it's ablative
shield covered with a layer of highly conductive (thermally) copper, and
would burn up.  The fact that radio teloscopy or human space travel would
then become impossible for about a thousand years was considered an
acceptable tradeoff (and I have to say that I agree with that asessment,
harsh as it seems).

As far as technology for use against a manned spacecraft, both the US and
the Soviets had farily active anti-sattellite programs in the 80's, and
killing a robotic craft isn't that different from killing a manned vehicle.
I guess there are two schools of thought - one is that if you blow something
up in orbit, the pieces will sooner or later (probably sooner) become more
of a menace to your own spacecraft than the original threat.  In this school
of thought, EMP (like an x-ray laser) would be a better bet; wipe out the
electronics and you've turned a manned spacecraft into a travelling tomb,
with no messy space junk to clean up.  Of course, the other school of
thought is that you stick with known technology, and that means projectile
weapons and explosives.  In that school of thought, you blow them up and let
other people worry about space junk.

Personally, I'd be surprised if the Boys in Blue hadn't already come up with
something like a cross between "brilliant pebbles" and a cluster bomb; small
but massive (as in heavy) objects with a rudimentary propulsion and GNC
system, possibly carried in a cluster munition (ok, a "mother ship"),
deployed in either a retrograde or polar orbit.  In time of war, the mother
ship could release clouds of these things at several useful altitudes, and
from there they'd wait until activated from the ground to maneuver in front
of a bogie heading in thier direction.   Basically, you're talking about a
bullet with an impact velocity of 34,0000 MPH, hitting a vehicle that
doesn't have any systems that aren't critical.  In a pinch they could even
be used against ground targets.

Oh, by the way, X-Ray lasers need an atomic detonation to "pump" the
particles, and having a nuclear warhead in orbit is a violation of a LOT of
international treaties.

Torpedoes make a lot of sense, as they can leverage the kinetic energy
inherent in being in a different orbit.  You probably don't even
benefit much from explosives; the sheer mass should be pretty damaging.

Take a sizable chunk of metal, and attach the DART systems to it,
without the 'slow end approach' code. (heck, it's ready to go for your
purposes; the slow approach is the only part they're still debugging :)

Any kind of beam weapon requires line-of-sight and so is less useful.
(unless you're near a black hole, which creates other problems)  I
would expect (for no particular reason) that spacecraft combat in a
gravity well involves two wildly different orbits and sniping at
targets of opportunity.

other thoughts? Is this trending in the direction of
sci.fiction.space.tech?

Leave the canoles, bring the Casba Howitzer.

http://spacebombardment.blogspot.com/2006/04/plasma-howitzer-concept.html

You have to be careful to avoid littering LEO with thousands of bits of
shrapnel. It's rather a Pyrrhic victory to deny space to both sides of
the conflict!

So the most ecologically sound way to attack an orbiting satellite would
be to use a small unmanned tug to match orbits with it then deorbit it.

The victim burns up in the Earth's atmosphere, along with all the
evidence that you shot it down!

You could also use an aircraft-launched ASAT to put a steel mesh net or
a cloud of ball bearings at the right height in the path of the target.
The target's own orbital velocity will then cause it significant damage.
The problem with this is that the ASAT is unlikely to have enough mass
to decelerate and burn up the resulting mess, leaving lots of nasty
remains in orbit.

Beam weapons aren't too useful if you want to avoid polluting LEO as
they do nothing but make holes, blind sensors or cause outgassing and
consequent random orbital changes. They're better for dealing with ICBMs
which are never intended to reach orbit.