From: Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Date: Fri Feb 12 1999 - 07:21:16 MST
Darin Sunley wrote:
> What do you people think would
> be "realistic" space-based weaponry, i.e. weaponry that obeys
> the laws of physics that might reasonably be deployed from an
> interplanetary spacecraft with the goal of disabling/destroying another
> interplanetary spacecraft?
It all depends on your assumptions. As Anders pointed out, there is lots of
speculation about applications of mundane technology in usenet, and they
also get a lot of unlikely suggestions from guys who think they've invented
perpetual motion machines and force fields. However, I haven't seen much
written about the kind of future most of us expect (with nanotech, advanced
biotech, AI/massive automation, and very rapid change).
The way things are going now we will probably have primitive nanotech and
rather advanced biotech before anyone puts weapons on an interplanetary
spacecraft. If we get real advances in AI in the same time frame the
situation is going to be far to chaotic for meaningful predictions - IE and
nanotech would both advance so fast that our prediction horizon would be
reached within a few years. If AI and nanotech both advance at a slower
rate, we might get a brief era in which space warships could be built.
That means we should assume cheap diamondoid construction, a high level of
automation, amazingly good sensors and computers, and at least limited sorts
of self-replication. I'm also going to assume free use of nuclear weapons
and power systems, mainly because people who are squeamish about such things
aren't likely to build combat spacecraft in the first place. That leaves me
with the following ideas:
A warship's missile-defense lasers should be completely effect out to a
range of a few thousand miles. Lasers should have an effective range of 10
to 100 times that far against other ships, depending on how fast they can
dodge. That suggests ships armed with heavy lasers for close range combat,
and missiles mounting bomb-pumped lasers for long-range combat. Ordinary
nuclear missiles could be useful for killing kinetic energy weapons, other
missiles, nanobot swarms, and other target's that don't have much missile
defense.
Plasma weapons and charged particle beams probably aren't viable weapons,
because they can't match the range of the lasers. Neutron beams could be
very effective, if someone can figure out how to get a decent beam intensity
without building a particle accelerator the size of Nebraska. If stealth
technology is good you could do interesting things with mass drivers and
stealthy payloads (nuclear bombs are still more effective than nanobots for
anything except planetary bombardment).
For more exotic possibilities, try particle beams that use anti-matter
particles. They would have a slightly shorter range than lasers, but would
do far more damage to large targets. Of course, you have to carry a supply
of antimatter around to use as ammo, which makes your ship a bit more
vulnerable.
Overall, I would expect a trend of very rapid growth in ship size (large
ships using even primitive nanotech would be very difficult to disable).
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com
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