War in Space, Space to Earth War, Moon to Earth War

[Wonderful Plans]

I wasn't much of a Star Wars fan although I can appreciate the original movies and recognize them for their worth. Before Star Wars there was Star Trek, both scenarios seem unlikely but I can foresee that what reality will bring us with space tactics should be a balanced blend of the two concepts. Exploration and mining for resources versus territorial disputes and a scramble for tactical advantage over Earth from Space.

The Moon is of course number one on every space faring countries' list. In Ad Astra there is a battle portrayed between Moon cruisers and I would expect this sort of thing actually happening between two established Moon colonies be they corporate, private or governmental.

Personally, I don't think there will be an everlasting peace in space. Space craft are so delicate and combat so extremely easy in space that most two way combatants will end in mutual destruction. So, the tactics of success will be sneakiness and ambush and deception. We will have Russia, China, Japan, India and the U.S.A. as the largest contenders in space combat. The E.S.A. appears to be taking a more neutral role and I fear that they might get pushed out of the space race if Brexit is any indication of a near future E.U. split. And if so I would expect that emergent space agencies from a post-E.U. state would originate in France, Germany or Italy, perhaps jointly.

Corporate mining will be huge when they can start popping out the appropriate equipment at economical values. You got Virgin Galactic leading the private sector and talk of space hotels for tourists.

This subject seems broad and multi-fauceted. Any ideas anyone? What do you think of the space race of the mid-21st century?

 

[DOR]

The problem with warfare in space is distance.
Try hitting a moving target at 100 yards, then up the ante to a million yards (568 miles), and then a billion yards (568,182 miles).
Rinse and repeat.

 

[Officer of Engineers]

The problem with warfare in space is distance.
Try hitting a moving target at 100 yards, then up the ante to a million yards (568 miles), and then a billion yards (568,182 miles).
Rinse and repeat.

Actually, it is extremely easy and extremely terrifying. You don't hit the asteroid. You hit the recipiant, targets on earth. And it's damned easy to move rocks into Earth's gravity well. Just place a few well placed explosive charges to nudge the rock out of place and let the sun's and the earth's gravity wells do the rest.

 

[JRT]

For your amusement...
(notice the date on the article)

Science: Extra-Atmospheric War
Monday, Sept. 02, 1946
Time Magazine

It will not come in a year, nor perhaps in ten years, but U.S. scientists and military lookers-ahead are already planning soberly for war beyond the atmosphere. Eventually, they are convinced, the earth can be decked out with man-made satellites, revolving in orbits hundreds of miles out, keeping baleful watch with instruments on man's little world. Even before that day, they believe missiles can be sent through the atmosphere's outer reaches, and directed to hit any target on earth.

Such developments had been long predicted, but usually by freewheeling prophets or Buck Rogers...

Reading more requires a log-in that I don't have.

 

[DOR]

Actually, it is extremely easy and extremely terrifying. You don't hit the asteroid. You hit the recipiant, targets on earth. And it's damned easy to move rocks into Earth's gravity well. Just place a few well placed explosive charges to nudge the rock out of place and let the sun's and the earth's gravity wells do the rest.

I assume you totally discount targeting, as in, hitting the designated continent?

 

[Wonderful Plans]

Where are some engaging and intellectual responses here? I think this subject is broad and fresh enough and relevant enough to warrant some deeper considerations. Any thoughts on the upcoming new chapter in human history? The huge and great space race. I personally think that whatever happens in the next 20 years of human occupation of space will decide the next course the whole of humanity will take.

 

[Officer of Engineers]

I assume you totally discount targeting, as in, hitting the designated continent?

It's called course correction. Such attacks would take years to accomplish as the rock would take years to reach Earth. Something as simple as placing a probe on the flight path of the rock with its own gravity well would nudge the rock along its flight path.

Look up ideas how we are going to avoid the next dinosaur killer. The same ideas could guide one to earth.

 

[Officer of Engineers]

Where are some engaging and intellectual responses here? I think this subject is broad and fresh enough and relevant enough to warrant some deeper considerations. Any thoughts on the upcoming new chapter in human history? The huge and great space race. I personally think that whatever happens in the next 20 years of human occupation of space will decide the next course the whole of humanity will take.

Until we solve the fuel mass problem, ie we have to carry our fuel with us into space, this is all just purely speculative. The Return on Investment ain't there once you calculate in the fuel you need to get there and get back.

 

[astralis]

Until we solve the fuel mass problem, ie we have to carry our fuel with us into space, this is all just purely speculative. The Return on Investment ain't there once you calculate in the fuel you need to get there and get back.

for the immediate purposes of the moon and Mars, it's doable at high cost.

especially if you're someone like Elon Musk, where the purpose is not RoI but just where he wants to blow his money to build his legacy.

for anything much beyond that, though, yeah, we'll need to move from chem rockets.

 

[Wonderful Plans]

Until we solve the fuel mass problem, ie we have to carry our fuel with us into space, this is all just purely speculative. The Return on Investment ain't there once you calculate in the fuel you need to get there and get back.

Once fuel and equipment building materials are found on particularly feasible asteroids all those prices will plummet because the bulk of everything can be found in zero gravity. (Iron, hydrogen, silicates)

 

[JRT]

Until we solve the fuel mass problem, ie we have to carry our fuel with us into space, this is all just purely speculative. The Return on Investment ain't there once you calculate in the fuel you need to get there and get back.

Nuclear fission is viable with high energy density and adequately high power density.

 

[JRT]

Once fuel and equipment building materials are found on particularly feasible asteroids all those prices will plummet because the bulk of everything can be found in zero gravity. (Iron, hydrogen, silicates)

Processing raw materials into a multiplicity of useful materials is nontrivial. Conventional terrestrial industrial efforts make use of large economies of scale, not just in their own industrial processes, but also in the purchased components utilized in those industrial processes, and it seems unlikely that extraterrestrial efforts would expand beyond very small laboratory scale.

Consider the sizes of steel mills, aluminum mills, chip fabs, oil refineries, manufacturing plants for ball bearings, capacitors, wire, etc. Even a modest 3D printer needs a source of materials, and can be quite finicky about quality control in manufacturing those materials used in the printer.

 

[Wonderful Plans]

Processing raw materials into a multiplicity of useful materials is nontrivial. Conventional terrestrial industrial efforts make use of large economies of scale, not just in their own industrial processes, but also in the purchased components utilized in those industrial processes, and it seems unlikely that extraterrestrial efforts would expand beyond very small laboratory scale.

Consider the sizes of steel mills, aluminum mills, chip fabs, oil refineries, manufacturing plants for ball bearings, capacitors, wire, etc. Even a modest 3D printer needs a source of materials, and can be quite finicky about quality control in manufacturing those materials used in the printer.

You're not considering what big industry and big corporate has already done and is already doing on scales greater than ancient Egypt. In the U.S.A. the government has to compete with big business to stay #1 and if it weren't for the military sector they would be badly beaten. If it can be done and a plan well modeled and the technology is possible and the money is there then there you go, they'll push through the plans as hard and fast as they can. It's trillions and trillions of dollars. Some asteroids have the potential to contain more of a single resource than all of the minable Earth.

 

[Officer of Engineers]

Once fuel and equipment building materials are found on particularly feasible asteroids all those prices will plummet because the bulk of everything can be found in zero gravity. (Iron, hydrogen, silicates)

Major problem. They're not all on the same rock. And last I check, there's only one rock with enough water and oxygen to make it economically feasible to do industrial production.

 

[Double Edge]

You're not considering what big industry and big corporate has already done and is already doing on scales greater than ancient Egypt. In the U.S.A. the government has to compete with big business to stay #1 and if it weren't for the military sector they would be badly beaten. If it can be done and a plan well modeled and the technology is possible and the money is there then there you go, they'll push through the plans as hard and fast as they can. It's trillions and trillions of dollars. Some asteroids have the potential to contain more of a single resource than all of the minable Earth.

His point is how do you make things in space. You seem to think that can be solved. I'm not so convinced.

It would take a massive investment to build the infrastructure. What will be the impetus to do that ?

Let's say we get past this then the question of finding those minerals comes up

Do we know what is out there and where it is ? no, we have to go prospecting

Let's say we find a rock that has what we want. How then do we guide it to its destination to process it

Nudge it towards the moon and then let it impact at some designated point ?

We go back to the initial question ? why do it in the first place

Unless what we want is no longer available here and we have no other choice.

When is that likely to be the case ? i don't know.

 

[Wonderful Plans]

His point is how do you make things in space. You seem to think that can be solved. I'm not so convinced.

It would take a massive investment to build the infrastructure. What will be the impetus to do that ?

Let's say we get past this then the question of finding those minerals comes up

Do we know what is out there and where it is ? no, we have to go prospecting

Let's say we find a rock that has what we want. How then do we guide it to its destination to process it

Nudge it towards the moon and then let it impact at some designated point ?

We go back to the initial question ? why do it in the first place

Unless what we want is no longer available here and we have no other choice.

When is that likely to be the case ? i don't know.

How do you make things in space?

Theorum says that you would start with a small operation launched from Earth. The mining equipment of the operation would be remote controlled from the safety of either a space craft or a land base on a separate asteroid or the Moon. Starting slow, the resource would be returned to Earth to sell and reinvest back into the mining operation. This would grow the operation to whatever size needed to satisfy the owner, setting up operation in a hollowed out asteroid or on the Moon, where climate controlled production facilities would process the resources that can be used to build more craft. Just like any other business you wouldn't start off with a huge and grand operation. This would all happen over years of time.

All of the technology exists to make this happen.

 

[Officer of Engineers]

Just like any other business you wouldn't start off with a huge and grand operation. This would all happen over years of time.

But by its very nature, this has to be huge and a grand operation. To deliver the ROVER to Mars took over a $billion and all we got back are nice pictures and some measurements

 

[Wonderful Plans]

But by its very nature, this has to be huge and a grand operation. To deliver the ROVER to Mars took over a $billion and all we got back are nice pictures and some measurements

Of course this sort of thing would be expensive. But regardless of however many billions of dollars the price tag would total, all that money would amount to far less in physical volume and weight that the crafts and equipment would possess than if the same amount were spent on an Earth-bound operation.

A lot of that money would go into the launch.

 

[Officer of Engineers]

Of course this sort of thing would be expensive. But regardless of however many billions of dollars the price tag would total, all that money would amount to far less in physical volume and weight that the crafts and equipment would possess than if the same amount were spent on an Earth-bound operation.

A lot of that money would go into the launch.

Are you reading what you wrote? So you're telling me that it is cheaper to goto an asteroid that we don't know what it has, tens of light minutes out into space, than to mine the stuff on earth? In short, we have to spend over a $billion just to send one single drill, never mind a return vehicle, to an asteroid. Even Californium at $25mil per gram, we make that stuff here on earth. About the only stuff more expensive is anti-matter at $62TRILLION per gram but we're not going to find that on an asteroid. So, if you do the math, even an entire asteroid 10 miles across of pure diamond won't be worth the investment to get it.

 

[Wonderful Plans]

Are you reading what you wrote? So you're telling me that it is cheaper to goto an asteroid that we don't know what it has, tens of light minutes out into space, than to mine the stuff on earth? In short, we have to spend over a $billion just to send one single drill, never mind a return vehicle, to an asteroid. Even Californium at $25mil per gram, we make that stuff here on earth. About the only stuff more expensive is anti-matter at $62TRILLION per gram but we're not going to find that on an asteroid. So, if you do the math, even an entire asteroid 10 miles across of pure diamond won't be worth the investment to get it.

Mining is environmentally destructive and space is limited. Also, resources are more abundant on lifeless asteroids and lifeless moons because they lack continental subduction and organic matter. All that dirt is gone and the resources sit closer to the surface in higher abundance because there was less mixing. Some moons half the size of earths moon contain triple the water content of the whole earth, same situation with other elements like nickel and iron and carbons. The extremities of space temperatures also keeps some rare natural earth gases in a crystaline frozen state, giving opportunity to mine higher volumes with less time and energy.

There were several articles that I read about this a year or two ago published by the leading science journals. What makes space mining so attractive is the possibility of resources thousands of times as abundant as that of mines on earth. This would make companies tens of trillions.

But with a possibility of a hostile warlike human prescence that could make space mining impossible for private corporations, the hostile environment could force corporations to become their own sovereign nations in order to create their own impenetrable defenses.