Orbital Defense Platforms
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- Опубліковано 2 гру 2023
- In science fiction we often see immense starships attacking planets, crushing or besieging them, but in our own future we may deploy powerful orbital fortresses to defend our world.
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Orbital Defense Platforms
Episode 423b; December 3, 2023
Produced, Written & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur
Graphics:
Fishy Tree
Jarred Eagley
Jeremy Jozwik
Ken York/YD Visual
Legiontech Studios
Rapid Thrash
Sergio Botero
SpaceResourcesCGI
Udo Schroeter
Music Courtesy of:
Epidemic Sound epidemicsound.com/creator
Stellardrone, "Red Giant", "Ultra Deep Field"
Sergey Cheremisinov, "Labyrinth", "Forgotten Stars"
Taras Harkavyi, "Alpha and ..."
Miguel Johnson, "So Many Stars" - Наука та технологія
Nothing takes the fight out of someone faster than seeing a cannon larger than their whole spaceship.
It does generate a brief pause.
"I don't care how high tech you are, a BFG is a BFG"
-some unsc commander probably
"The Last Argument of Kings"
and since they can't dodge, you just lob projectiles at it from teh edge of the solar system and destroy it.
Or bigger then there home planet 😂
Just as long as the enemy doesn't infiltrate with a bomb. If they do though, make sure you have a supersoldier on hand to give it back.
UNSC super MACs are the best.
So long as they ask for permission, first.
That is what Marines are for.
@@patrickkenyon2326 The thing I love about Halo: While spartans were awesome, it was the UNSC marines that put the boot to alien necks for 20 years while the navy folded like tissue paper.
@@iainballas Marines are tough as nails.
Ask the Japanese.
Or Iraqis.
The crippling problem with these sorts of stations is that you can't put a grate over the exhaust port.
Something that will stop a banana
the problem is they can't dodge long range projectiles. their orbital condition makes them extremely easy to destroy.
Well that would look awful, we got to think about resale.
@@SoloRenegade It's not long range projectiles you need to worry about, it's keeping X-wings away from the equatorial trench.
@@RCAvhstape It's absolutely about long range projectiles.
I defeated the X-wings by removing the trench.
Lord Admiral Nelson’s famous dictum _“A ship’s a fool to fight a fort”_ accurately reflects the immutable advantages of strong, resilient, and offensively capable land-based forces against relatively poorly armored and fragile naval forces. This applies to planets in spades.
Except those ports become obsolete shortly after. Arguably because US and Japanese rarely fight those in the past, they adopt to more modern solutions faster.
@@TheRezro Yes, that solution being to bypass the fortress completely in most cases. Something you can not do if you are attacking a planet, as you must deal with the fortresses in order to approach the planet at all.
The rest of the RN (who had mastered the art of shore bombardment, and built classes of dedicated ships for the purpose) chuckle politely.
@@Dang_Near_Fed_Up bypassing a fortress in space is in fact a LOT easier than when limited to the 2D limitations of sea-faring vessels.
Doesn't rly work in space since you have the low ground and it is much easier to get around
"Just leave fortress Sol alone. Where do you think the phrase 'a mass driver behind every chunk of rock' originated?"
Nothing cools the desire to assault a planet quite like a constellation of orbital forts, each of which masses significantly more than the entire attacking fleet.
But arguably spending that cash on interceptor fleets nay be better investment.
@@TheRezro
Not really. Anything meant to be deployed away from home has to have much better propulsion and internal supply storage. In a defense platform, more that mass can become weapon mass.
@@TheRezro You are thinking about a single purpose defense platform, I would posit that those would not exist. I would think that those platforms would instead be multipurpose platforms.
For instance a 0 or near 0 G manufacturing platform, think of how many special materials could be produced without the disruption of gravity, or even atmosphere, on the manufacturing process.
Or just the opposite an ultra high G, immense pressure, or specialized atmosphere manufacturing plant that produces materials with densities that make diamonds look like tissue paper.
Orbital refineries for raw materials harvested from asteroids are also a possibility. The materials shipped to the refinery as a mass packet, requiring no transport ship to get to the platform I might add.
Orbital solar collectors could send power down to the planet below, making the planet completely solar powered. Think of the advantages of free power for an entire planet.
Orbital shades could also protect the planet and allow for planetary climate control or even terraforming.
Then any or all of those manufacturing platforms are also the base from which the defenses for the planet are incorporated into. This not only makes the system cost effective, it should in theory turn a profit as well as providing special materials and resources otherwise unavailable to the planet as well as providing protection / defense.
@@icecold9511 This is especially important because, since at _SFIA_ FTL is considered impossible unless stated otherwise, a 'mobile' fleet is centuries away from any other star... and you've probably got decades to react to an incoming fleet.
@@boobah5643
Even with FTL, the issue remains a defender advantage. A mobile fleet trades mission capability for versatility and offensive use.
I played an online game that had orbital defence platforms. I was in a faction that worked well together and we stacked up somany orbital platforms in our starsystems that when enemies jumped into the system and got into missile rangethe server would lag out and their fleet would explode once it caught back up to the calculations. After awhile nobody would fight us because of all the server lag we made when defending.
When I played Sins of a Solar Empire with my friends years back in school, I would always choose the Advent as species because of their laser weapons and the research tree in laser power and range extensions. Then I would place my orbital defense networks in overlapping patterns around my planets, to the point where I could not employ any other orbital infrastructure. And after maxing out the laser research, those platforms could target ~80% of the entire stellar system.
My friends stopped attacking after everyone's PCs would start lagging to compute the particle effects. At one point it was so bad, a maxed out capital ship entered my system, was engulfed in an enormous ball of glowing plasma and after the orbital platforms went through their firing sequence - space debris. All over the course of what should have been ~3s, but took almost half a minute to compute.
kaymish6178
_That_ is a *_hilarious_* deterrent, like _what?_ 💀
@@midnight8341 Hey I remember playing Sins too! Although I preferred the Vasari for defense simply cos their orbital fortress was actually mobile, unlike the other two. :D
The more Isaac Arthur I watch, the more annoyed with Stellaris's game balance I get. XD
Reminds me of super Macs from halo, the orbital weapon stations that have rail guns bigger than most ships. They talk about them in the fall of reach and halo 2.
Rail guns bigger than most ships? No
The SDS system in battletech is an excellent example of a orbital defense. ground based batteries supporting orbital drone warships, which are in turn stationed at orbiting battle stations when not in use. inflicted apocalyptic losses during the last few years of the Star League
Yup. That sound reasonably.
"Cortana, you have the MAC"
I mean imagine trying to invade a planet that has possibly thousands of cannons firing projectiles that travel at an appreciable portion of the speed of light
One of my personal favorite ODPs from sci-fi is the Necklace of Artemis from Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Those things were so effective that one of the main characters Yang Weng-Li had to launch massive multi km long chunks of ice moving a near light speed in order to destroy them.
It seems like instead of firing a single large laser at a jittering target, firing an array of considerably less powerful lasers at a target. That is conveniently spaced so it hits every other meter at the engagement range.
You'd do less damage, but you'd be MUCH more likely to score a hit. And a hit in space can be detrimental real fast.
Sure, but you're talking about lasers. You're basically turning the laser into a search light, one effectively closer than the platform firing it, then trying to hurt someone with it by shining it on them. So, you hit the target, and it heats up a bit... but space ships already deal with heat, and you've already spent most of your energy trying to heat up ships that aren't actually there; is it enough to do any damage before the ship radiates it away?
Not saying it can't work, but there's very much a tradeoff here; split your output too many ways (multiple lasers, moving mirrors, whatever) and you've done little more than announce that you're firing your laser to your target.
In Miami, there is a statue of the man who invented air conditioning. I expect there will be several to the man who can efficiently remove space debris
BabV! "-it was the last-of the Babylon Stations..." The series pioneered some of the eRly CGI effects loke you said, even some before DS9. The show won some awards for its effects also.
For an RKM, even if you manage to intercept it with a cloud of small mass objects, if it's already on target you aren't changing its momentum enough to knock it off target. You may have even made it worse by turning it into a beam of plasma headed toward your planet instead of a chunk of titanium or whatever. That still transfers 10^21 joules into your planet. Severe, rapid atmospheric warming.
You need to intercept it with something big enough to substantially change its momentum, or hit it with your own RKM, an anti-RKM if you will. Both defensive approaches are much harder than the initial RKM approach.
It somewhat depends on where you drop the small mass objects; further away means more of the RKM debris will be deflected enough to miss. And if you're shooting into/through a busy orbital space then that debris likely just became someone else's Very Bad Day.
Which is why stories where it's against the rules to bombard planets are _very_ careful when it comes to orbital infrastructure; even if you're not worried about an accidental colony drop, an RKM (or fraction thereof) that misses an orbital station can do Bad Things to the planet it's orbiting.
Ah the old it is better to be hit by a shotgun slug then shotgun pellets debate.
I never understood why tho, as a soft ish defence like kevlar cloth have better time with pellets, as do our atmosphere against small stuff that is left.
And defenders could no doubt soften it up even further with man made obstacles at the least.
To be fair you should fire a few thousand RKMs to show them your serious. That would ignite the atmosphere…
@@user-ww5sj3ny2y yeah, the danger is probably not ONE RKM indeed.
I dunno how the debries and energy released during intercepting them will affect both the defence or ofence.
Defence sensors detecting them, and stuff getting left to possibly foul the following RKMs guidance, and possibly even collision with the debris.
If the RkM are so spread out as to not affect one another, or be cowered by the same defence/debris cloud.
They may lose some of the point of overwhelming a spot on the defence.
Still, with good enough guidance and planning I can see a focused attack on one "point" of a defence grid always being best way to get past any defence.
Space is huge, and a simple diverse angles would be way enough to both saturate and hopefully not make it more difficult for oneself.
Timing and WHERE any defence, and how deep it is, is always a factor.
@@jerryandersson4873 well the coin WOULDNT release its full energy. Most of its energy will be turned to plasma. A big hunk of led can take that heat.
Also the mass of the RKM is still very much headed your way. Some of it is not plasma. Some of it is fragments. Most of the RKMs are still on track.
And I would think of them as more like a long ranged weapon system instead of a close in weapon system. Think 3000rpm And track an enemy ship about as well, but from insane distances.
At those distances, it would be like a huge shotgun and you would shoot a whole area of space in hopes of a couple near hits.
Like depth charges
Another informative Sci-Fi Sunday episode Isaac.
Now if only more Sci-Fi implemented the tech well as you described...
look, some of us aspiring authors are working on it.
Babylon 5 is my all-time favorite Science Fiction series. When i saw the Orbital defense plaftorms title i thought about B5 as well and the president turning the platforms in on the planet.
Jinking around is very important in avoiding weapons and debris. You could use super conductors to push and pull off of each other (using the super conductors just for the large fields, not the meissner effect because that breaks down in large magnetic fields). Thanks Issac, this is a great episode. I like the numbers thrown in! The distance, the jinking at distance and the percentage of hitting the target. That's good info! Love it!
Take a look at the space based defense of Earth in the pilot of Buck Rogers (1980's TV series), it basically was a planetary minefield with only a few safe paths to reach Earth known only to the Terran Defense Forces. Paths which could be changed by altering the minefield.
Now imagine trying to navigate this while being fired upon by tens of thousands of projectile and energy weapons (not in the TV show). You would never stand a chance as the attacker, as you would be wrecked by weapons fire on well known and pre-plotted firing solutions.
One detail a lot of people miss is that Nuclear Pump Laser and Casaba-Howitzers (plasma) would work excellently as warheads for the long range missiles. They are possible way to counter point defense weapons. As those do not exactly work against ray weapons. With of course a option for fragmentation rounds or kill vehicle. Depending what work best. Beside near Earth space combat, I see no point in attempt of directly hitting the target.
Unless they've read an Honor Harrington book, since in that setting missiles (admittedly, gravitic propulsion there) with bomb-pumped laser warheads are the primary weapons for warships.
And maybe a lot of people do miss this, but I'd thought it was a pretty well-known series.
I've been idly working on a post apocalyptic sci-fi setting and I've known I wanted orbital infrastructure to exist in some form. This one got me thinking. Theres some really powerful imagery and fun narrative to be found in orbital defence platforms constantly shooting down *something* out there in the solar system that keeps trying to hit Earth. The question of what keeps attacking, and what happens if something slips through are fun ones.
"relativistic kill missile" sounds funny like there is "relativistic wound missile" or "relativistic heal missile"
Yeah its a bit of name, iirc it is from a novel called "the killing star"
Launching neighboring gas giants in to your sun to replenish the helium your mining from it.
Kill is short for Kinetic Kill, which means Kills by impact, as opposed to Kills by exploding.
"When I saw the target planet's orbital forts had cannons with a muzzle big enough that I could fly my ship into it . . . I knew exactly where I needed to aim my ship, didn't I?" -- Warpilot Junior Grade Zack Zodgers
Feels like the "First rule of warfare don't get hit." Was missed.
The Honor Harrington series has a lot of work on this sort of thing, and ships don't start to outweigh orbital defenses until they can build missile range outside the platform's reach, and throw weight can swamp the platform's defenses.
Or just the accuracy of kinetics just get that good keeping in mind that stations aren't that mobile in specially those that are connected to the planet that requires them to stay synchronize with the rotation of the planet it makes them fish in a berral if you can somehow out effective range them and hit them with something that they can't defend against like a bunch of targets to small and fast to shoot in space the speed and direction of projectiles stay the same so they will hit a full force at any range it just a matter of the targeting computer speed of projectiles and the distance and mobility of the target and size is what decides the effective range in in that aspect railgun that can shoot stuff at the fraction of the speed of light is king
Orbital Defense Platforms.........very useful for blowing up Xenos.
Yes Xenons 🤪👍
The Exforce Series by Craig Alanson has pretty good depictions of near world space combat, including the extensive use of ODNs (Orbital Defense Networks) by all space faring species. One of my favorite parts is when the Jeraptha used shaped nuclear devices attached to STO missiles to create single use GRASER weapons.
Honestly, all of the space combat is solidly done. Things like momentum, distance and the speed of light are constantly mentioned. Makes me wonder if he's a fan of the show.
The Lost Fleet series does a great job of describing practicle space combat.
Regarding the winch idea, space fighters in Brandon Sanderson's Skyward series of books sometimes have energy lassos that they use for free manoeuvring or grabbing enemies to pull them into a kill slot.
Figures, one of the few books by him I haven't read yet :)
Which is funny because I finished the last book and looked up to this notification. Totally on topic
I always get giddy when you talk about Babylon 5
Orbital Defense Platforms will be awesome additions to my planet Swarms along with thin film shields in the direction of enemy system(s), armed space habitats, & early warning array immediately outside my Oort Cloud! They will never be able to kill us all off!
its funny to think that you could stop a human sized chunk of something like plutonium moving at 87% of the speed of light using the interstellar equivalent of pocket sand
Halo probably had the best examples of how to do orbital defense platforms being absolutely huge guns, much larger then any ship based ones (Atleast until you get like the UNSC Infinity) powered by enormous surface power plants that ships couldn’t hope to match which were so effective at long range extreme damage, the covenant with their incredibly tanky ships literally could not approach these without getting huge parts of their fleets obliterated (like what happened with the few batteries Reach had despite that battle being a loss)
Remember a book by David Campbell Hill - "Invasion" were the approaching invasion fleet was attacked by a Gamma Ray Beam from an united Soviet & USA weapon project.
Basically they were dead "Men"(more rodent, marsupials like) flying after that. still the book didn't address what a fatally irradiated ship crew would do on final approach. I guess the only viable strategy are kamikaze attacks.
It was written in the 80s so.
Thank you for making my Sunday morning much better. Last night was too much so I need this video.
We got this. Keep pushing 🤙🏾
In Earth's case taking out Lunar defense installations might need to come first
@14:25 this is an area where real world "phasers", or "Phased Array Lasers" shine. While less power efficient than a monolithic laser optic, phased arrays (already popular in modern radar and radio communications, such as Starlink) can steer a beam onto target without any moving mechanical parts.
The first rule of warfare is always leave a comment for the algorithm.
a new IA released right on bedtime is a great coincidence every time 💗
What a refreshing topic!
Everyone LOVES to debate over how to destroy earth/ planets/ stuff all the time. In contrast defending against such attacks mostly boils down to "striking first" or "energy shields".
I'm convinced there is a lot more room to explore on the topic of defending against space based weaponry.
Hey Issac, Do you upload these episodes to a Podcast platform?
I am trying to spend less time on UA-cam and I'd love to keep updated with your channel.
Yep, we’re on every major podcast platform
Has anyone seen Legend of the Galactic Heroes? They have some truly massive space fortresses covered in a liquid metal ocean. It might not be practical but it's an interesting idea.
"Iserlohn Fortress", IIIRC...a practical 'meta-planet as a mobile defense platform'...
And they had several different types! Masterpiece Scifi anime!
I love this channel! You always think of scenerios that I would have never considered and the way you weigh the pros and cons of everything with logic and science. Mad props.👍
Before watching this video, let me take a shot at this topic: stationary military objects in orbit around a planet are a terrible idea. No reasonable amount of armor will help them survive a volley of multi ton Kinetic Kill Vehicles approaching them at 10 - 100km/s, and even if you were to blow some up with nuclear missiles the fragments will still keep moving in your direction due to immense inertia. And each KKV is likely much cheaper than a nuclear missile.
Even if we want to give these orbital platforms some limited mobility, it's gonna work against their main strength as you'd have to greatly reduce their armour mass in order to give them acceptable delta V with reasonably sized propellant tanks.
I just thought about this, but the way to really screw with orbital defenses is to send relativistic kill missiles, and use a laser weapon of relatively weak effectiveness, so that the beam of the laser arrives just before the kill missiles, blinding sensors on these platforms with the laser, and then bang, no more platform. Also any light that is blocked by the missiles, will only appear as if the collimation of the laser is beginning to fade.
Arguably on of the best episode thus far.
Really enjoyed this episode, thanks! Changed a lot of ideas i had about the subject with your usual sharp intellect.
one way to make lasers "guided" could be reflector drones.
just stick a mirror to a high speed drone and launch it towards the enemy. The evasion routines of the drone could be syncronized with the mothership so it can keep the beam on the drone from.far away even when said drone is pulling some absurd evasive maneuvers. the drone can then reflect the beam on target.
Will drinks and snacks be served on these Orbital Defence Platforms?
Of course! Got to make sure your personnel are well taken care of. Along with tourist if offered, inspection teams, and meeting top brass.
That's the first rule of warfare.
Defending a planet is pretty absurd when you really think about it. A few nuclear missiles and a few thousands decoy missiles would destroy cities, and they are very hard to stop because a planet is so huge that defending very possible direction is practically impossible.
A good idea is: not living a planet, nuclear explosion is not very effective in vacuum of space
The thought you need guided munition to shoot at a planet is wild
A planet is a moving target.
Ask NASA.
Man I love Babylon 5!
They dont need the self destruction codes, just go to the reactors and make them inoperable
Even back ups , batteries, anypower source
Always love to watch your videos.
Thank you for something cheerful on this rainy Sunday morning.
I love your long ones. I often go to sleep listening to your stuff and dream of space scifi stuff. Its amazing lol!
I love the way this dude talks! Reminds me of one of my favorite people back in the navy! Great video!!
I appreciate a scifi techical deep dive. I really appreciated David Drake's admirable attempt at combat from planetary assaults with starahips to orbital combat at relativistic and orbital speeds. The whole "Daniel Leary" series and even better high science fiction "Igniting the Reaches" books. All this stuff and more.
Great vid!
Always look forward to these episodes, as they make my Dork Sunday for art and crafting so much better. Thank you.
Very nice episode, as always.
Regarding this topic, for an interesting take on it I can recommend taking a read at the setup of defense stations protecting the sol system in the sci-fi novel series Perry Rhodan, at least around the time they are attacked by the "Time Police" (I think at least, it's been a while since I read that cycle). Overall it's a (while not terribly realistic) great sci-fi series to read imo, at least the first few (15 or so) cycles (story arcs).
In ww2, sometines a battleship would fire a volley from their main guns with each turret at a slightly different elevation, in hopes that one shell would hit (after getting the range of the target).
I would think laser weapons could do the same. A ship could be outfitted with 5 separate laser weapons, capable of aiming in the same direction. The ship could range the target, and fire once at where the target is now, visually, and the 4 other lasers could fire to the top, bottom, left, and right of the target. The ship could triangulate and estimate how far away from the target to ask the other 4 lasers.
It’s basically a shotgun blast of laser weapons.
One of the better bits of military Sci-fi I've watched in the past year.
I brought cold fried chicken and Coca-Cola for the notification gang!
I brought tea for the psykers arriving once other people started watching.
I brought a nice cup of joe
🍗 🍻 💻
How do you fry it cold?
@@MrSimonw58 liquid helium.
Such wonderful science fiction.
Kinetic weapons are so often overlooked in sci fi. We forget Force = mass x acceleration. You don’t need a large explosive. All it takes is a small object moving incredibly fast to cause massive damage on Impact.
There have been media that explored the idea of dropping a telephone size tungsten pole from orbit onto a location, causing destruction equal to a nuclear bomb.
So, how about creating a creating kinetic ammunition, fired by rail gun from small maneuverable craft, like a destroyer? That would be extremely dangerous to a large enemy spacecraft.
I read in a book, “he Last Ship”, that the most effective weapons are not huge bases, large naval ships, or large ICBM missiles. The most effective weapons platform is a small platform that can deal a large amount of damage, and can be replicated and prod use in high qualities.
A nuclear Cruise Missile from a destroyer is more dangerous than an ICBM fire from a fixed position far from impact, and traveling in high orbit. A nuclear cruise missile is one of hundreds on a single destroyer. That destroyer is one of hundreds of destroyers. That cruise missile can be fired from very close to the post of impact. That cruise missile flies low, and fast, hugging the terrain, nearly untraceable untill it’s too late.
The lesson is that the best orbital defense would be hundreds of small platforms with high powered laser cannons, or missiles, places far apart. That way the loss of one hardly affects the planets defense. And the strike can hit the enemy from any direction.
Maybe lots of big cheap easy to make mirrors in various orbits around the sun able to coordinate focusing beams from the sun in most directions. Meanwhile maintain classical weaponry for predictable killer sunbeam shadow zones And perhaps secondary mirrors to bring some solar firepower into the shadow arena.
Thank you video brilliant compliment
*Imperial Space station has been upgraded to level 5* [Credit Noises]
So orbital system won
In the X series of videogames and associated books, humanity builds a giant ring around the Earth as a defensive platform against a fleet of AI ships, that they had sent out centuries before. In fact, the construction was considered a necessity to prevent those ships from destroying Earth's surface (and ecosystems) further. Ironically, after it was destroyed through an act of sabotage, sections of the ring fell down on Earth causing huge devastation.
Colony drops are a very concerning thing.
Stargate atlantis startek ds9, babylon 5, etc used these. The earth defenses in babylon 5 that president clark turned towards the planet were awesome. Planetary sheilds and surface mounted weapons would work wonders as well.
Stargate Atlantis used a single orbital defense weapon if I remember correctly? And I truly love that series to bits, but the logistics of that episode were also kinda bad in a the-script-needs-this-to-happen kind of way. That orbital cannon wasn't in planetary orbit, it was in stellar orbit around the outskirts of that solar system (it took them what 10h, 14h to go there by puddle jumper?) and the Wraith ships just left hyperspace right next to them? Why exactly? Because the Wraith knew it was there, just that it had been dead since 10000 years. And yes, hybris and all, but if I want to attack and eradicate someone, I'm going to do my darndest not to fall out of hyperspace next to the only, very obvious defense force left in the entire system (except the city itself).
Now, just from a writing perspective, it would have been a great opener for the battle if they had moved the platform from its orbit (maybe it got de-orbited during the battle 10000 years ago and has been drifting through the solar system ever since) above Atlantis (you know, where the Wraith had to show up eventually) the ships were greated with an active defense platform upon falling out of hyperspace, immediatedly opening fire and destroying one of them with debris falling from the sky around the city during the battle. Then it could have been destroyed just as it was in the series.
And yes, moving it would have probably been hard, but the Ancients had to do it and I doubt they would build anything without engines anyway, so if they hinted at the platform in an earlier episode and started that episode a few weeks earler to allow enough time for maneuvering with partly-damaged engines... that would have made more sense in my opinion.
The B5 one was ridiculously overpowered. Could wipe out the eastern seaboard of North America in one hit.
Going to war with God?
True. As you know, the wraith are among those alien races too stupid to actually exist in reality for said reasons.
It is kind of interesting to hear that space combat is actually only one dimensional when it comes down to it.
Well, from a certain fidelity of simulation, yes. But facing definitepy does matter a lot, as ships are a lot more likely to be tapered cylindrical than spheroid, making armour significantly weaker, and target cross section greater from flanking shots.
But there's also the fact you are largely limited to linear orbital paths. All on all its a very unique combat environment, best approximated perhaps by submarine combat, with information lightlag being replaced with sonar bearing uncertainty.
Relevant information video that matches audio
Without magical shields, mobility is better than mass at solar distances.
A ship could spend any amout of time propelling asteroids with optimal timing of collision. With a light hour of distance, nothing could hit you.
"Colony drop is not a war crime" Zeon principalpality officers respond to the press
5:50 It got me thinking, there can be unexpected beam attacks in space akin to pirate attacks in oceans in old times. Could it be a good idea, then, for a battle ship to consistently engage in random stray motion while moving.
If that's a valid strategy then oh boy!.. The crew must hate the constant random G's they experience while on board!
Truly a job only for highly trained highly accustomed genetically modified space veterans as depicted in season 1 of "The Expanse".
I hereby steal the term "automated killamajig" for all of time. Perhaps the greatest thing I have ever heard!
In Supreme Commander 2, one of the best methods of destroying an opponents very heavily defended base is to send your massive and relatively cheap flying super units over the base and let the defenders own anti air defenses shoot it down and crush everything underneath it. This tactic is called 'flopping' and can be devastating if you aren't able to bring it down before it reaches the base
Another thing worth bringing up, planets are BIG. You can have a shitload of missile silos and other ground based defenses that just overwhelm an enemy fleet by sheer numbers.
Problem with that is that space is even bigger.
Just seen it on my feed and tapped just to like the video and comment but will watch later!
Thank you
Given that structures using active support sit atop a long tube firing mass up the tube, a final shot by a dying structure could be to release its support material in the direction of the attackers.
Seems like carrier-launched fast-attack craft armed with long-range two-stage cruise torpedoes with multi-kinetic-warheads launched in synch-fired waves would be better than charging your capitals into engagement range
Interesting piece
6:00 If your beam emitter could be orientated while firing, and you are able to sustain a beam during some seconds, you could create a movement pattern to sweep the uncertainty window and greatly increase the chances of hitting tne target
Morning everyone!
Honor Harrington fan glad to see this episode!
I should probably add a shout out to Tyler Alexander Vernon for creating Troy.
@@rharris22222you have great taste
@@UpperDarbyDetailingThanks. I think it's more like I have been captured. I saw John Ringo on TV once, read "Live Free or Die," found David Weber through searching for more Ringo, started listening to HH on Audible, and absolutely could not stop listening to either author. I start sweating and shaking if I go too long without a fix of Ringo, Weber, or Kratman or one of the other "Hard science fiction" authors.
I especially like how both authors seem to ask ahead of time "How little cheating of physics can I do and still tell the story?" And often they tell you exactly where the cheats are create a rational fiction to cover the new physics. HH in particular seems to have started by Weber asking himself how much cheating was required to transport Horatio Hornblower into space.
@@rharris22222There is a Weber- White book series that is very similar to Honor Harrington.
David Weber and Steve White.
The first book is called " Crusade"
Vet the designers for Goa'uld influence before the paltforms go to orbit, though.
i love how you arrange 19 century strategy to space combat,
1) an enemy just need to be on orbit at the other side of the planet, the defense platforms cant be omnipresent
while the defense could never reach the atacker the atacker just need to bombard the surface or even better just drop some biological poision on the atmosphere and the planet is gone ;D
2) since aceleration laws still work on space, an aproaching atacker just need to drop some misiles from far and sincronize them to arrive at the same time , so the defenses will be overhelmed in the second they can detect the atack., considering the aceleration of the space ships could be near light, the atack would be the start and the finish of the defense on the same second.
still i love your tryes ;D
1 does not work for missiles that can fly around the planet.
I imagine that it will be the same then as now. A constant battle between offense and defense.
When it comes to physical slug ammo. Think of the "Gyro Jet" ammo only the size of the rounds used in Naval Guns.
This entire episode was just an essay on the defenses of Calth.
Fundamentally, surely in almost every case its better to have a swarm of small weapons platforms rather than one giant station? Same with dyson spheres, same with habitats - it just seems smarter to keep everything spread out and independent if your goal is long term survival. Not to mention, much easier to build and maintain, and probably wouldnt need to be manned
You have touched on the possibility that science could come to an end one day, when we have discovered all there is to discover. That made me wonder if math would be the same. In a sense math doesn’t really exist, like the laws of physics do, but will mathematicians always have more theorems to prove, as each new theorem can be used to logically prove more theorems, or is it possible there is some limit to math?
Goedel's incompleteness theorem covers that actually. No system can be simultaneously consistent (ie a statement can only be exactly true or exactly false and nothing else) and complete, (ie every conjecture can be proven or disproven from a finite base of axioms). That is my understanding at least
In essence, while every theorem can be used to prove more theorems generally, there are times when no matter what you do you just go in circles. The famous example is the 5th postulate. Mathematicians had toiled for so many centuries to either prove it or disprove it, but it turned out that it could not be done. The base of axioms (axioms are the statements you accept to be true in order to build your first theorems) of math at the time simply did not cover it.
So, axioms must be completely _independent_ statements, and the fact that there's already examples of many only obviates the trickery of Goedel's theorem. It was just silly to assume that the bunch of axioms we'd identified already would somehow be special and the only ones in existence, and, ultimately, _not_ as infinite as the primes
@@luigivercotti6410So if there is potential for an infinitude of axioms, there is a lot for mathematicians to do. Unless many results are all trivially similar when you choose some different axioms.
@@topdog5252Yes, you could say there is "a lot", I guess infinity counts as "a lot". As for what happens, taking different axioms can lead you to _wild_ places if you go far enough. Some of the craziest mathematical constructs we've had so far, like Non-Euclidean space, and the Banach-Tarski theorem all stem from taking an alternative position on key axioms, namely the 5th postulate and axiom of choice respectively. I'm sure there'll be things that don't change all that much or at all if you flip one axiom off or another on, stuff that's either completely or mostly covered by other axioms in your base, but if you push it, eventually, it's gonna go bananas somewhere. It has to, it's like if two identical ships started off from the same point with just the slightest misalignment in direction, eventually they'll find themselves in opposite ends of the world.
The real question for me is the motive. Like I always said, math is just logic, they're one and the same, and all logic, ultimately, is just an advanced form of tautology. Yes, some people can always go forth and keep deriving seas of theorems across a whole galaxy of axiomatic worlds, just for the fun of it, and to see what might lie next; But that sort of wanderlust can't fuel an entire civilisation with some vested interest in practicality. Obviously every avenue must be explored, because you never know for sure just where the tools for the next technological/scientific breakthrough might be hiding, but when the options are literally infinite, and your time and resources, whether on the planet, in your astral system, in your galaxy, or even to the heat death of the universe, are all very much not, priorities have to be considered.
What might happen to the math of a civilisation at the end of time? If they, like us humans surely would, still always look up, and still struggle to find any escape, any loophole, any tool to cheat their death, but all the "obviously practical" kind of math has either run out, or more likely the terms "practical" and "obvious" are things that you and I today can't even begin to comprehend how they might apply to a race of intergalactic gods; Well, what then? Do you take shots in the dark and just hope your salvation, if there ever was one, waits round the next corner? Maybe, most likely now that I think about it, there's advanced fields of meta-math, math that you can use to predict where the math you need to do is hiding, and meta-meta-math too, and so on and so forth, but what if your program "returns 0", so to speak? What if your equations tell you that no, you can't escape, that even though the realm of tautology is infinite, still nowhere in it lurks anything that will give you ftl, time-travel, the power to defy entropy or anything else? What then? I suppose you could always make more advanced theories of meta-meta-meta-meta times a billion-trillion -math, but it's not like there _has_ to be some solution there, and seeing as you're running out of time, is this really how you want to spend what will probably be your last moments? In a black, empty world, delving madly into ever more obscure and abstract math, divorced from all physicality and intuition, logic on logic on logic that describes logic on the subject of logic, surrounded by nothing except your buzzing thoughts, like an ant fallen in the middle of the Pacific trying to swim its way to shore, not even knowing in what direction or if at all there's land anywhere?
Anyways, good night
There is also the limitation of the title of this video. Orbital defence.
If you expand to planetary or system defence things change. An invader might discover that the orbital defence of a nearby moon or Lagrange point has fired missiles with a linear accelerator to save fuel, leaving the missiles fuel for manoeuvring. Suddenly the invader could find himself under fire from different directions at once.
Expand that to defence platforms throughout a star system on various moons and asteroids entire approach vectors to the target planet become unusable. Limited approach vectors allows the defender to pepper the era with defences or have defence fleets in position.
It probably comes down how well defended you want your planet/system to be, your budget and how long there were stellar operations in the system as they could be build up slowly over a long time.
There is one nautical defence that has been overlooked or misnamed in science fiction. The Monitor. A Monitor was a very small ship with a very slow engine that was usually anchored on strategic positions around a coast. They had only one armament, one or two cannons the likes a battleship usually have.
In space they would probably nothing more than armed satellites, however a frigate or destroyer sized ship with a big weapons is a little more mobile than a satellite and could be carried to other star systems by big transport ships. So they would not even need their own FTL drive. Aside from defence, I can see a few other uses for them as well. My guess is they would be automated, remote-controlled (maybe with a tether) or crewed depending on the situation.
Though their original nautical use of denying the enemy passage through a region of space could still be useful.
Anyway, they have their uses, are flexible and not too expensive. Loosing one to damage or several to destroy an enemy battleship would be cheap in comparison.
I really think smaller ground based weapon system will be used in cunjunction with the enormous skyscraper guns. If things in space are hard to miss, things on earth are quite hard to spot, think of a nuclear submarine cruising at -3000 km under sea level with a hundred antimatter missiles just waiting to be unleashed, or a more modest very large self propelled artillery gun with a smart ultra dense shell in perpetual motion between series of pre positionned bushes and caves, scooting and shooting before hiding. Multiply these weapons by a factor of 10 000 and now you have a stealthy, very mobile and relatively easy to replace weapon systems to complements the skyscraper guns. Theses wouldn't be as powerful but would work great to overwhelm point defenses and attack smaller craft trying to get close or even land planetside.
I also think an airforce would be maintained and that it wouldn't just be all spacecraft patrolling the skies. Aerodynamics aren't just about how to expend less energy moving through a medium, it's also the ability to maneuvre at all in this medium. An aircraft designed from the get go to evolve in air has a massive upper hand over a spacecraft not designed for air combat. Because it has access to ground based communications and infrastructure it is also a fully automated jet with little lag between input and action.
Hiding on the ground/ under the ocean also has the benefits of being able to mask your thermal signatures. Spaceship will stand out of the cold background of space, making stealth very difficult, a submarine has all the water surrounding it to cool itself.
For aircraft it's also about energy efficiency. If they use chemical fuel, an atmospheric vehicle can use the planet atmosphere as part of the fuel or at least additional reaction mass, allowing them to have high thrust while still having high energy efficiency. Even if they use fusion power, an atmospheric vehicle can use the atmosphere as reaction mass, allowing it to accelerate/ decelerate as much as the engine allows since it can just suck more air in to push out. A spacecraft would have to conserve reaction mass because that would be more likely to run out before the fusion fuel.
It would be rather unpleasantly hot on a submarine 3000km below sea level....
It is always layered defense. Classic onion. I skip detection, targeting, reaching etc.
But you naturally would have fleets patrolling around. Long range sniper canons, but also point defense dealing with enemy munitions and also something like infiltration attempts. Like something popping from hangar of hijacked cargo freighter.
I think you had a typo, 3000km below sea level is very well within the earths mantle and getting any projectile out of there would be hard, antimatter or not.
But also, you might have forgotten one important detail about those huge guns in any (gwell written) setting: those skyscraper-sized defense cannons are not build because they look cool and intimidating, but because it takes a truly insane amount of energy to not just simply make it into orbit, but then also still have enough momentum left to reliably intercept anything, let alone a moving spacecraft hundreds of thousands of kilometers out there. Just compare it with the infrastructure needed for SpinLaunch and how insane that project is for just going into orbit with small payloads. And how high their energy bill is. You're not going to have 10000 of these skipping around the planets surface and constantly connecting to ultrahigh-power outlets where ever they happen to plop down. Now, if you allow things like antimatter, then it's a bit of a different topic, but a) having any type of reactor being mobile is way harder than just the stationary one, b) people are not going to be happy that an antimatter-powered space defense platform just plopped down in the park across the road from their apartment building, severely limiting its use in the most densely populated areas and c) IF that thing gets hit, it's not gonna be a simple atomic or hydrogen bomb plopping off, that's gonna be an Armageddon device for everything in a radius of half a thousand kilometers or more, potentially killing multiple other platforms and starting an apokalyptic chain reaction.
Or if they use antimatter-fueled missiles, the ecological damage these are going to do during deployment are already insane in space, but inside earths atmosphere...? I feel like this is gonna be a hard sell to the population of that planet.
@@logansmall5148 no, you see, he wrote -3000km under sea level. The negative number is the detail here. These submarines are in orbit, almost a hundreth of the way to the moon.
Great episode - especially when the Crazy President turned the Orbital Defense Platforms against Earth.
Nothing like a crazy President scribbling out SCORCH EARTH - while targeting his own people.
Oh should I have said *SPOILERS* about to be revealed??🤪
John Sheridan was great in that episode - "He still not apologizing for destroying the Black Star. "
My favorite was weapons that take so long to charge, he had the time to kill them.
And it took so long because of how ridiculously powerful it was. One beam could take out the eastern seaboard of North America. Given that regular weapons were effective to a limited level against First Ones, who exactly were they planning to use this giga gun? Going to war with God? Dial it back to 10% and your refire rate is much better.
Interesting first contact scenario: an interstellar apology showing hot to defend sol system from incoming rkm fragments.