Real Space Combat: 2050

Joachim Heck writes:

@:) [ Space Station Fred is in danger! ]

@:)   What happens next?  How do our heroic astronauts save their
@:) station (launched only three years ago due to budget constraints)?
@:) If that (heavy) robot runs into the station it will cause severe,
@:) possibly fatal damage.  Even if it doesn't, it will throw the
@:) station's solar panels out of alignment - and without power the
@:) station will have to be abandoned.

  Here are my thoughts on this and I'd appreciate any input people
have as to the likely evolution of space weaponry.

  Options to save SS Alf:

  1) ground-based laser attack on incoming projectile (service robot):
I don't know whether a really powerful laser will be available in 50
years but I guess it's possible.  Standard tactic in that case would
be to hit the projectile, heat it very rapidly and let the exploding
metal sides of the thing push it off its collision course with our
dear space station.

  2) anti-projectile projectile:
Our intrepid spacefarers could jury-rig their own "missile" and launch
it at the incoming one.  This might cause a lot of debris to head
their way which might not be what they're looking for.

  3) anti-projectile cloud:
The station could vent gas or water (or fuel, whatever) in a cloud
between it and the incoming object.  At typical orbital speeds I don't
guess this would cause a lot of damage to the object.  Maybe it would
slow it down or change its orbit?

  4) move:
Assuming congress decided to include thrusters on Fred, it could
presumably get out of the way.	Or could it?  I don't know what kind
of manouverability a space station would have and I don't expect it
would be much.	On the other hand, space, even low Earth orbit, is
quite large and it might not take much movement to get out of the way
of an unguided projectile.

  Ok, so we have ground attack, "missile" attack, defensive "shield"
and manouver.  These things would all be relatively easy to represent
in FT.	I suppose what I'm thinking of is a floating map, where one
table edge represents the earth's atmosphere.  Ships move by default
along a line parallel to this table edge.  If you want to keep track
of the distance moved you could get different ground-based
installations to be available at different times, which might be
interesting.  Presumably they would get a AA megabattery or some such.
As for the ships I would probably outfit them with C batteries and
missiles since I can't really come up with a good excuse to use bigger
batteries (railguns might be plausible, I suppose).

  What I don't know is

  a) how much thrust to give these ships (not much, I guess)
  b) how to handle orbital thrust effects (go faster - go higher)
  c) how to handle momentum from weapons fire
  d) whether this would ever actually be interesting.

-joachim