Re: Real life space war weaponry

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
12 Feb 1999 14:17:16 +0100

Darin Sunley <umsunley@cc.umanitoba.ca> writes:

> 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?

This question is almost constantly debated on rec.arts.sf.science

The short answer seems to be: depends a lot on what kind of propulsion you have, and if it is possible to detect other spacecraft well.

The trick isn't to do enough damage, at the speeds interplanetary spacecraft moves even some nails coming in the opposite direction can be enough to disable or destroy it, it is to hit it - space is large and spaceships are small.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y