if we develop the technology to colonise other planets in the Solar system, or at least plant orbital space stations, would there be any defence against the corresponding advances in missile technology?for example, say we develop a space engine that allows us to travel to Saturn in a couple of months. would there be any defence at all against the same engine placed in a missile? it feels like such a weapon could not be intercepted or armoured against.
>>65324783You ever heard about lasers?Amyways: yeah, of course. Everything has a defense, how effective it is varies, but it exists
If you have an engine that can achive this, then you apply that technology to a similar counter-weapon. Kind of like how in the naval arms race of the late 1800s there was a constant back and forth of>new material science advancement made>applied to guns>old armor now ineffective>new material science advancement applied to armor>new material science advancement made>applied to armor>old guns now ineffective>new material science advancement applied to gunsIn any case it's all kind of a moot point, once we get to the point where we can put weapons in space anyone with nukes can just threaten to hit the sun with them and then it's MAD scaled up to the entire solar system, not just Earth
>>65324837>just threaten to hit the sun with themthe sun is itself a much larger nuclear reaction, what good would that do?
>>65324783>interstellar invaders>..travel to Saturn (Titan)
>>65325065yeah I know I saw that seconds after posting but ehinterstellar AND interplanetary, let's say>OblivionI wish I could get a sound pack of the drone noises for all my phone alerts
>>65324931It's so kind of you to engage with the retarded
>>65324783no just countermissiles hitting the missiles and so oni do think you can do a lot with thermal and radar deception tho id imagine. its impossible to predict which will dominate long term.
>>65324783>counter missiles>burning lasers>blinding lasers>Dust>Really bright flares + move a little
>>65324783Development any any true torch drive would have similar consequences if we were to figure out how to easily produce antimatter in mass quantities. You're talking about a spacecraft with a mass of lets say 10,000kg to 100,000kg able to reach velocities of around 2,000 to 5,000 km/s. All you'd need to do would be to point it on a collision course with Earth and the resulting impact would be on the gigaton TNT equivalent level. We're talking asteroid impacts and shit.
>>65325795You don't need a torch drive to get to saturn in 2 months. You need high isp
>>65324783i use my missile to place more missile to place smaller missile in a swarm pattern to intercept your missile.
>>65325804>You need high ispYeah it's not gonna happen with chemical rockets featuring specific impulse in the low hundreds. Even NERVA would be lacking.But you also need high thrust. You're ngmi with lame hall effect thrusters.In other words, you do need a torch drive. Maybe not a magical torch drive burning 24/7 at 1g, but a torch drive nevertheless. Something like a simple He3+D2O open cycle inertial confinement fusion reactor. Could bring a ship in the aforementioned 100-ton category to Saturn within a week with two relatively short and barely survivable high g burns.
>>65325498Why would you cut the last second of missiles.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NkF2zEzqWR4
>>65324783>interstellar >in the Solar systemFucking retard.Anwyays.It wouldn't be that different from today's missiles and interceptor missiles except the relative velocities involved would be literally interplanetary and so would the detection distances.One likely arms race factor would be missile maneuverability, how many gs they can pull without breaking apart when dodging/intercepting.
"Near" future designs would most likely use afterburner fission fragment rocket engines or AFFRE's. It isn't unreasonable to have a decent spacecraft with a dry mass of 5,000 metric tons and a wet mass of 10,000 metric tons with a delta-v of around 50-55km/s with an acceleration of 0.05g, a burn time of 24 hours and "only" 50GW worth of waste heat you'd have to get rid of since the mass flow rate would be around 50kg/s of LH2. which would be a pretty big boy. Farther down the road you can get into micro fission-fusion engines or fusion rockets that use nanogram amounts of antimatter to catalyze the fusion rather than massive fuckoff lasers. Those could get you your torch drive 1,000-2,000 km/s delta-V with high acceleration (0.5-1g+).
>>65324783To answer the question: That engine would probably be way to big/expensive to just put in a missile. For space to space combat, missiles would probably still just be chemical rockets combined with lasers, kinetic weapons launched via coilguns/railguns, and even crazy shit like casaba howitzers. The real question is why you're even fighting in space to begin with. Space is hard and it is very, very expensive. The most realistic way that humanity will expand into space would be first to dominate cis-lunar space. Harnessing resources and building infrastructure on the moon gives you a lot of advantages with also a lot of money to be made. Now things like strategic defense initiative proposals become economically feasible which could trigger a mad dash to the moon and to develop it. There will also have to be immense infrastructure set up to support large scale operations which means you now have things you need to protect. There will also be a natural formation of a purely space to space economy rather than a space to Earth economy. The natural flow would be to ensure you can continue manufacturing weapons and protecting your assets in space which will develop into nations going outward towards places like Mars to do the same thing there. At that point it now becomes feasible to start making colonization programs for space colonies e.g. O'Neil cylinders which you can think of as island nations in space (tax base/Galactic Lebensraum). As cool as things like Star Trek are. Humanity will expand into space for the same reasons why it expands on land: out of conquest.
>>65325937A torch drive implies high thrust for a long time which is not possible even with theoretical drives. There's tons of fusion and anti mateer concepts that have insane isp and very low thrust but would get you to the outer solar system quickly. Their more like match drives than torches
>>65325795>spacecraft with a mass of lets say 10,000kg to 100,000kg able to reach velocities of around 2,000 to 5,000 km/s. All you'd need to do would be to point it on a collision course with Earth and the resulting impact would be on the gigaton TNT equivalent level. We're talking asteroid impacts and shit.yeah, that's what I've been thinking aboutisn't it impossible to defend against a missile like that?>>65326022now that I haven't heard ofwhere can I read about that?>>65326048>space macroeconomicsyeah I got that sorted, except one thing: can you think of any material on Earth worth conquering for?best I can come up with is organic minerals
>>65324783>>65324832LASER NET
>>65326069No, your ass implies that.>"Torch Drive" describes a class of reaction engines for spacecraft propulsion characterized by high thrust and high specific impulse, and hence very high power levels.The defining characteristics are high isp high thrust no matter where you look.Even the system I described was literally called a torch drive.
So is a torch drive missile undefeatable?
