Subject:
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Re: Some great Space info and dicussion
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Wed, 15 Jan 2003 19:53:13 GMT
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Viewed:
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785 times
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On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Hendo (John P. Henderson) wrote:
> Presumably, some attackers would aim to hit targets on a planet surface, and
> in such an event small fighters and small bombers might be useful.
Probably not, actually. Fighters/bombers are expensive peices
of equipment and getting them into (and out of) an atmosphere
is a problem.
If you want to bomb a territory, just drop rocks on it. Cheap,
easy, accurate, utterly devastating, and non-radioactive.
"Well, Mike, what do you think we're going to
do? Throw rocks at them?"
"Precisely, Man."
There was some physics geek who wrote this great little thing
about the effects of firing a can of ravioli at a star
destroyer at varying speeds. It's been circulating the net
for years and years - I first saw it in college. Anyways,
the sheer amount of devastation that a can of ravioli would be
able to do at even Mach 4 is pretty impressive.
(The original text is here: http://home.earthlink.net/~troyguffey/ravioli.htm)
> You might ask why would someone with space technologies bother with manned
> spacecraft in battle, or why would they need to attack a planet surface? I
> asked myself this too, thinking at first that current space programs usually
> use unmanned spacecraft for most tasks. The use of unmanned attacks is
> likely, since traversing space is so difficult.
There is a problem with using unmanned craft in dogfight
situations: ability to distinguish Friend-or-Foe. Each
ship would have to broadcast a "friend" signal, which could
be intercepted/cracked/etc. so that enemy ships are not seen
as targets.
The solution to this is to have humans remote piloting the
ships. But then, you'll end up with communication lag
times the further away the ships are from the mothership, so
this becomes less effective.
_____________________________________________b r a n d o n h a r r i s___
bharris@gaijin.com www.gaijin.com
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Some great Space info and dicussion
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| (...) True, somewhat. This is exactly what battleships and dreadnoughts can provide: off-shore bombardment. This is the purpose of the CIG (Celestial Impact Generator) on my own Armegeddon Class battleships (it is essentially a non-explosive rocket (...) (22 years ago, 15-Jan-03, to lugnet.space)
| | | Re: Some great Space info and dicussion
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| (...) At an SF convention when I was in college, one fellow gave his theory of what first contact would be like: A large rock hurtling towards Earth at relativistic speeds. Boom! Flash! His theory was that once you develop the capability to easily (...) (22 years ago, 15-Jan-03, to lugnet.space)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Some great Space info and dicussion
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| Ah, some fascinating dicussion possibilities... (...) that his definitions are "proper", implying that other definitions should be ignored. I recently posted my views on this here: (URL)This article is very well written and brings up a good (...) (22 years ago, 15-Jan-03, to lugnet.space)
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