The issue, of course, is delivering that ordinance and setting it off on your tightly protected military world. I don't think it'll be too kind to you when you start shooting nukes at it.

Of course, removing the outer crust doesn't make the planet inhospitable, not by sci-fi standards anyways. It might eradicate most, if not everything, on that planet, but you can always come back and set new installations to mine the exposed (and radiated) ore. Granted, that's probably not a very cost-effective solution and certainly wouldn't look good in the eyes of your neighbors... or the galaxy's equivalent to the U.N. if your universe has one.

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but you can always come back and set new installations to mine the exposed (and radiated) ore.

If they come back...nuke them again! :p.

@guest_swithich_-, on Jul 9 2008, 01:50 PM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

I'd say that man is going to have to develop more suitable methods of conflict resolution to survive his own advancements in technology.

PAX.

@mackilroy, on Jul 9 2008, 02:33 PM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

It's technically feasible to remove the crust of the planet with the current megatonnage possessed by both the United States and the Russian Federation. That would, in effect, destroy the planet.

Maybe, if you placed a few right and detonated them all at once, you might be able to flip one of the smaller plates, but the crust is out of reach right now. Don't get me wrong, flipping a plate over is enough to accomplish the same goal: the sudden removal of easy habitation of the planet.

@ue_research---development, on Jul 9 2008, 11:30 PM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

If they come back...nuke them again! :p.

Big explosions solve everything!

@joshtigerheart, on Jul 9 2008, 02:05 PM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

You are aware of just how ludicriously difficult it is to destroy a planet, right?

Well if you are going to play that card, ahem... "You are aware how ludicrously difficult it is to a) travel as fast or anywhere near the speed of light, b ) create lasers that can shoot ships down from x millions of miles, c) create shields to protect from b ), d) Survive cosmic rays in open space, e) create any continuous power source that allows a-d f) pack the capability of a-e in one small ship, many of which are supposedly captained by one person." I thought since we are on the subject I might as well dream. My method would be resonant frequencies...but I see your site shot that one down...darn.

Nice site by the way.

And by planet destroying, I meant destroy all life on that planet...I don't think the planet is going to argue with you when all the people are gone.

@artanis, on Jul 10 2008, 02:24 AM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

PAX.
Maybe, if you placed a few right and detonated them all at once, you might be able to flip one of the smaller plates, but the crust is out of reach right now. Don't get me wrong, flipping a plate over is enough to accomplish the same goal: the sudden removal of easy habitation of the planet.

Peace...ya if you can figure that one out...or anyone can figure that one out, then you will solve all of Earth's problems, because getting x billions of people to get along and not fight is, well...impossible in my eyes...because I certainly can't exist without a fight.

Hmm...I'm not sure about all that, but I think even a plate movement deep enough in the earth of a great magnitude could cause some major changes (earthquakes) through out the world. I don't know how powerful it would be or how much explosives you would need, but I don't think you'd have to flip a whole plate.

This post has been edited by Swithich : 10 July 2008 - 04:42 AM

@guest_swithich_-, on Jul 10 2008, 09:39 AM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

Peace...ya if you can figure that one out...or anyone can figure that one out, then you will solve all of Earth's problems, because getting x billions of people to get along and not fight is, well...impossible in my eyes...because I certainly can't exist without a fight.

I think he was talking about this.

@joshtigerheart, on Jul 8 2008, 09:13 PM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

Well, at least some of the time you're going to want to invade a planet and leave its resources unharmed so you can exploit them yourself. You also have to consider that planet-side weaponry have considerably more space to be built on. That ship might be able to fire a few nukes at a world, but that world very likely could shoot an exponentially greater number of nukes back, give or take vast quantities based on how developed the planet is.

True.

I guess a large part would come down to whether or not shielding works in an atmosphere and if ground installations are able to pack enough armor to withstand high key orbital bombardment. That includes strong enough Point Defense to destroy large asteroids inbound at hypervelocities. The big disadvantage is that a planet is (relatively) stationary, and is unable to move to avoid fire. The advantage is it's large size, allowing for a larger PDS grid and a satellite network.

@warlord-mike, on Jul 9 2008, 10:43 AM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

Alternately, there's the far-more abhorred but just as effective method of Viral or Nerve Agent Bombardment.

Like nukes, viral/nerve agent bombardment has its drawbacks. The first is you need a pretty large amount to saturate a decently sized planet. The second is that introducing a viral agent into an ecosystem can cause things to change/evolve in ways that may not be desired (for example, making the current corn crop on a world mutate into something uneatable). The third is that you will be unable to enter the atmosphere at all until the agent is gone, so hopefully you've got a timed expiration trigger on the agent.

@guest_swithich_-, on Jul 10 2008, 04:39 AM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

Well if you are going to play that card, ahem... "You are aware how ludicrously difficult it is to a) travel as fast or anywhere near the speed of light, b ) create lasers that can shoot ships down from x millions of miles, c) create shields to protect from b ), d) Survive cosmic rays in open space, e) create any continuous power source that allows a-d f) pack the capability of a-e in one small ship, many of which are supposedly captained by one person."

Well, B, D, E, and F aren't so ludicrously difficult, as we already do have lasers and space-going craft that run on a few people. It's just a manner if improving existing technology, though shooting lasers millions of miles is probably a bit much. Don't lasers dissipate? Anyways, A and C are the hard parts, since, as far as I am aware, we don't have anything that can achieve those sort of effects. Though we can break the sound barrier.

Stuff about orbital bombardment from various people said:

<snip>

Shielding from the bombs? I assume it'd be possible, since Sci-fi crafts' shields tend to work in the atmosphere. It may even be possible to shield the entire planet, such as with the radiation shields and the like from Master of Orion 2. Granted, those didn't block orbital bombardment for some reason (probably for balance), but if you can get something like that, you can laugh at your enemies nukes as long as your shield is up. Though you're going to need a huge or multiple generators. Fortunately, planets are very big.

This post has been edited by JoshTigerheart : 10 July 2008 - 11:34 AM

Regarding the point that space combat is ludicrously expensive and interplanetary war would be all about orbital bombardment and getting troops on the ground, consider this:

In modern warfare, as useful as ships and planes are, the battles are still focused on the ground, waged by infantry. At best, bombers support the infantry by destroying enemy stuff in large quantities. Fighters intercept/protect bombers. Ships are used to transport troops across oceans. Warships intercept/attack troop ships. Assuming interplanetary war is still all about the ground battle, then spaceships will be used to transport troops to the planet. It makes no sense to just let the enemy troop transport ships land uncontested when you could build a space navy to destroy them before they reach the planet. Even if its just a bunch of missile-equipped satellites, it will most likely be (casualty-wise if not economicially*) worth it to field a space navy.

Also, assuming that FTL sensors and engines are not available (as is likely), I fail to see space combat being fought at much greater distances than modern air/sea combat.

Lets just hope that the interplanetary colonies stay friendly and earth-reliant.

*Don't forget to factor in training time and cost, deployment time and cost, and equipment manufacturing time and cost when factoring in new troop costs.

This post has been edited by LNSU : 10 July 2008 - 12:23 PM

If it's just sattelites, then you could just put in radio controls and man them from the ground. No casualties, less cost because you don't need habitational quarters.

You might want a faster signal than a radio. I think they delay between Earth and the moon for radio signals is roughly 10 seconds. Could be wrong on the exact number, but I know it is x amount of seconds.

The radio signal delay between the Earth to the Moon, for a direct transmission, (e.g. not round trip) is slightly more than 1 second, since light travels at 186,000 miles per second, and the moon is 238,854 miles away on average.

And what's faster than a radio signal? It's a form of EM radiation, which travels at approximately C. (the speed of light) Heck, light is EM radiation.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 10 July 2008 - 03:17 PM

@joshtigerheart, on Jul 10 2008, 09:31 AM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

Well, B, D, E, and F aren't so ludicrously difficult, as we already do have lasers and space-going craft that run on a few people. It's just a manner if improving existing technology, though shooting lasers millions of miles is probably a bit much. Don't lasers dissipate? Anyways, A and C are the hard parts, since, as far as I am aware, we don't have anything that can achieve those sort of effects. Though we can break the sound barrier.

I call bull s###!

B )We do not have lasers that can shoot down a ship from x millions of miles away, and the energy to create such a laser would be mind boggling.

D) there is no known way to survive cosmic rays in open space. Literally, if we send people to Mars, and if the sun sends out a plethora of cosmic rays they will be fried...not question about it. The only way that possibly this could be remedied is creating there own electromagnetic shield like Earth has...but don't kid yourself, during cosmic bombardment, there Earths field fluctuates...a small ships shield wouldn't have a chance.

E) What the hell is this power source you speak of to power lasers, shields, travel near the speed of light,etc...?

F) And if we can barely scrape out the ISS in 10 years, a massive vehicle that runs on small amounts of power from its solar arrays, how the hell are we going to design, manufacture, and make a vehicle with all this in space because even the reactor to power this thing...is going to be near impossible to get into space, it would take us half a century on Earth and probably as long or longer to do it on the moon just to put this stuff together and find a way to get it into space once we figured it out.

Don't kid yourself we are no where near creating anything remotely resembling even a hint of anything that exists in EV: Nova.

Wow, calm thew heck down and reread my post. Key line: "It's just a manner if improving existing technology". I'm not saying we have it now, we'd need to improve current technology to reach it. We have lasers, we just need to make them better and more energy efficient. We have a space station (albeit still under construction) that doesn't get fried by this cosmic bombardment, we just need to miniturize whatever it is using. We have the capability of doing cold fusion, among other potential power generation methods, we just need to devise a way to make the energy output higher than the energy input. We have spacecraft now, we just need to take all of the above, improve them to reach whatever standards would be required, and combine them into a spaceship.

There's a reason why sci-fi typically doesn't take place tomorrow.

And just to point out, if Nova's methods of generating power for a ship are to be taken as possible to power spacecraft, then we already can do two methods in a cost-effective manner: solar panels and fission reactors (though the latter isn't entirely safe yet).

This post has been edited by JoshTigerheart : 10 July 2008 - 03:56 PM

There are already fission-powered submarines and warships, and I have yet to hear of a meltdown onboard a sub/warship. Mind you, I haven't done my research, so feel free to prove me wrong. Its just a matter of making one big enough and making a rocket big enough to launch it into space.

Dude Swithich, relax. And you may want to take Josh's advice regarding the post too.

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fission reactors (though the latter isn't entirely safe yet).

The US Navy has been operating nuclear-powered ships for decades now without a single ship lost due to the reactor melting down or malfunctioning. (At the same time, Russia has suffered several severe accidents.) So it's really a question of discipline and adherence to proper operating procedures, not whether or not nukes are mysterious magical black boxes that might blow up if the planets are misaligned.

I blame a lack of research on the safety of nuclear fission in combination with the media's portrayal of them and their meltdowns. On the other hand, my post shouldn't be taken to mean I think meltdowns are frequent, just a possibility.

In reality, fission reactors are mostly safe. Long Island. Huge accident. Why? Something failed. I forget what, but alarms went off. The trouble was that there were too many alarms. Safety systems, safety systems on the safety systems, for everything. Something was always going wrong. It goes down two degrees, an alarm goes off. So the technicians reset the alarm and ignored it. There was almost always an alarm going off. By the time they figured it out, it was too late. Chernobyl. Human error.
The point of this is that humans are generally the weak link in any dangerous system. We do something wrong, go to the bathroom at the wrong time, press the wrong button, skip a shift, raise all the control rods (Chernobyl.) If humans payed attention to it, we don't need to worry about fission reactors or fusion or whatever. Even if something does malfunction, then it can be shut off in time.

@joshtigerheart, on Jul 10 2008, 01:56 PM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

Wow, calm thew heck down and reread my post. Key line: "It's just a manner if improving existing technology". I'm not saying we have it now, we'd need to improve current technology to reach it. We have lasers, we just need to make them better and more energy efficient. We have a space station (albeit still under construction) that doesn't get fried by this cosmic bombardment, we just need to miniturize whatever it is using. We have the capability of doing cold fusion, among other potential power generation methods, we just need to devise a way to make the energy output higher than the energy input. We have spacecraft now, we just need to take all of the above, improve them to reach whatever standards would be required, and combine them into a spaceship.

There's a reason why sci-fi typically doesn't take place tomorrow.

And just to point out, if Nova's methods of generating power for a ship are to be taken as possible to power spacecraft, then we already can do two methods in a cost-effective manner: solar panels and fission reactors (though the latter isn't entirely safe yet).

@lnsu, on Jul 10 2008, 04:48 PM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

There are already fission-powered submarines and warships, and I have yet to hear of a meltdown onboard a sub/warship. Mind you, I haven't done my research, so feel free to prove me wrong. Its just a matter of making one big enough and making a rocket big enough to launch it into space.

@archon, on Jul 10 2008, 04:49 PM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

Dude Swithich, relax. And you may want to take Josh's advice regarding the post too.

@ue_research---development, on Jul 10 2008, 07:19 PM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

The US Navy has been operating nuclear-powered ships for decades now without a single ship lost due to the reactor melting down or malfunctioning. (At the same time, Russia has suffered several severe accidents.) So it's really a question of discipline and adherence to proper operating procedures, not whether or not nukes are mysterious magical black boxes that might blow up if the planets are misaligned.

@joshtigerheart, on Jul 10 2008, 09:11 PM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

I blame a lack of research on the safety of nuclear fission in combination with the media's portrayal of them and their meltdowns. On the other hand, my post shouldn't be taken to mean I think meltdowns are frequent, just a possibility.

@0101181920, on Jul 10 2008, 10:47 PM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

In reality, fission reactors are mostly safe. Long Island. Huge accident. Why? Something failed. I forget what, but alarms went off. The trouble was that there were too many alarms. Safety systems, safety systems on the safety systems, for everything. Something was always going wrong. It goes down two degrees, an alarm goes off. So the technicians reset the alarm and ignored it. There was almost always an alarm going off. By the time they figured it out, it was too late. Chernobyl. Human error.
The point of this is that humans are generally the weak link in any dangerous system. We do something wrong, go to the bathroom at the wrong time, press the wrong button, skip a shift, raise all the control rods (Chernobyl.) If humans payed attention to it, we don't need to worry about fission reactors or fusion or whatever. Even if something does malfunction, then it can be shut off in time.

Just so you all know that ! meant excitement, not anger (actually get very excited when I get to argue points...because in my family, people just shut me down, they'd rather be wrong and go about their lives, then learn the right answer and correct their mistakes).

Okay so lets go over some things. As I stated there is still no way of protecting from cosmic ray bombardment. The ISS has no system for doing so. It uses the Earth's own magnetic field for some protection, but to be honest if a large enough cosmic ray bombardment occurred, the astronauts we have in space, would be fried (the magnetic field fluctuates meaning you can actually move outside of it, if you are in a low orbit). It is also helpful to note that only a select few humans have ever ventured outside of a stellar magnetic field. That would be the Apollo missions, for a day or two when they were going between the moon and earth (both of which have magnetic fields). Going to Mars or anywhere else in the universe means at this time, an unprotected human being in a small capsule.

Now on the topic of fission reactors. It has been suggested to put fission reactors into space...okay. There are a few issues with that (and these are why it generally hasn't been done). So you send a rocket into space with exposed nuclear (radioactive) material...what if it doesn't make it, you run the risk of raining down radioactive particles on a lot of people and having them in the upper atmosphere...which is bad juju (same with reentry of a spacestation if you have extra fuel) Second, fission reactors are extremely heavy...basically they work by circulate water by heating it to a boil, running that through a gas turbine, cooling, and repeating. That whole setup is huge, and thus up until very very recently all nuclear power plants have been 1000 MW or larger. Even on military ships fission generators take up a large portion of the ship (aka. the submarine, carrier, or battleship). More importantly launching such a large quantity mass (and dense as well, Uranium/Plutonium are extremely dense) would be difficult once you include support systems, lasers, engines, fuel for engines...etc.

I think that is why a moon base (the moon has large quantities of Plutonium and Helium-3, a very unstable atom that radiates energy...in process needed...or that is the theory) is so important. Also it would take less energy to launch a vehicle from the moon...because less gravity, plus the moon gives an extra speed boost and is close to anywhere humans might want to go.

Now on the fission reactors. All accidents with fission (nuclear) reactors have occurred with first or second generation nuclear reactors. Aka, plutonium cookers. Basically what Hanford is. Such reactors were designed in the 50s and 60s, when we were still testing exactly what fission did. Fast forward to today. All new plans for reactors would probably a generation 3+ reactor (that is right we skipped generation 3 in the United States all together) and possibly 6 generation 4 reactors (chosen as the 6 most innovative from a list of hundreds of generation 3+ reactors by nuclear engineers and scientists), which are currently under testing. This stuff is really cool and I could go on for hours, but I will get to the punch line. generation 3 and later reactors have the benefit of their designs being extremely safe as well as durable. They also have the benefit of 50 or 60 years of nuclear research and thus a better understanding of who systems work. The accidents at 3 mile island and Chernobyl would never happen with todays reactors, they just wouldn't. With the new generation 4 reactors, nuclear reactor are moving away from their roots. Many have higher output exhausts (great for splitting water and making h2 for our cars in the future), several don't even use water to cool the reactors (instead using liquid lead and salt to cool the reactors), and some use a form of fuel encased in granite, which can be used to make smaller and less harmful reactors (even if they blew up...somehow you'd just have little granite encased uranium or plutonium.

Anyway here is the wiki, http://en.wikipedia....tion_IV_reactor. Really cool stuff though. Today's and the future's nuclear reactors are shadows of their former selves and that is for the better.

Anyhow I could talk all day about stuff like this, but I really should go to bed. See you all later.

Now on the safety issues.

@guest_swithich_-, on Jul 11 2008, 12:16 AM, said in On Relative Sizes of Spacecraft:

Okay so lets go over some things. As I stated there is still no way of protecting from cosmic ray bombardment. The ISS has no system for doing so. It uses the Earth's own magnetic field for some protection, but to be honest if a large enough cosmic ray bombardment occurred, the astronauts we have in space, would be fried (the magnetic field fluctuates meaning you can actually move outside of it, if you are in a low orbit). It is also helpful to note that only a select few humans have ever ventured outside of a stellar magnetic field. That would be the Apollo missions, for a day or two when they were going between the moon and earth (both of which have magnetic fields). Going to Mars or anywhere else in the universe means at this time, an unprotected human being in a small capsule.

At the moment, you're correct. There hasn't been much research and development on that subject yet because we haven't had any missions that required it.
However, the technology to create shielding is probably not so far off, either via creating a magnetic shield like earth has, albit with stronger density, or innately by space-warping drive mechanics. Add that to several layers of heavy armor, and cosmic rays become a small issue. Medical treatments to radiation may improve significantly by the time humanity is ready to venture out into the stars.