Planetary shields shouldn't even be a factor

[Lukedanieljames]

If you really think about it, planetary shields shouldn't even be a factor in the starwars universe. Maybe planets in solar systems with no large asteroids in them, but that would be very rare.

This is my idea, instead of coming up with super weapons like the galaxy gun, deathstar and suncrusher, why not use asteroids as giant mass drivers?

Think about this. If you want to crush your enemy, say it is a situation where you just want to bombard the planet, but instead your fleet is heldup by a very strong shield. Take an asteroid from the system, and put some very big engines on it. It would probably take dozens, but slamming an asteroid 250 miles in diameter going 100,000 mph is going to overrun any type of planetary shield I would imagine.

Or not?

[Chris OFarrell]

If you really think about it, planetary shields shouldn't even be a factor in the starwars universe. Maybe planets in solar systems with no large asteroids in them, but that would be very rare.

This is my idea, instead of coming up with super weapons like the galaxy gun, deathstar and suncrusher, why not use asteroids as giant mass drivers?

Think about this. If you want to crush your enemy, say it is a situation where you just want to bombard the planet, but instead your fleet is heldup by a very strong shield. Take an asteroid from the system, and put some very big engines on it. It would probably take dozens, but slamming an asteroid 250 miles in diameter going 100,000 mph is going to overrun anytime of planetary shield I would imagine.

Or not?

Not.
At least on the higher grade full coverage planatery shields.

[Mr Bean]

Think about this. If you want to crush your enemy, say it is a situation where you just want to bombard the planet, but instead your fleet is heldup by a very strong shield. Take an asteroid from the system, and put some very big engines on it. It would probably take dozens, but slamming an asteroid 250 miles in diameter going 100,000 mph is going to overrun any type of planetary shield I would imagine.

Or not?

Not.
1. Ground based Turbolasers
2. Sensors which will see the rock coming... several minutes/hours/days/weeks eariler.
3. Space based forces which can melt a planet can slag a rock.
4. Shear strength of SW Shielding which can temporarly shrug off even planet killing energy levels.

[Lukedanieljames]

Ok just to make this interesting, say the side with the asteroid also puts a generator on the surface of the asteroid with a planetary shield on it, so now the asteroid has a planetary shield aswell.

[Stark]

So instead of shooting a gun (reusable) or using a starfleet to intercept (reusable), you're destroying a valuable high-end shield generator and powerplant. The shield generator wouldn't help anyway: the impact would tear the generator free, fragmenting the asteroid just as well as a straight impact would. No amount of protection would prevent such a relatively small object being tractored onto a safe path, in any case.

Try and do some thinking instead of saying 'I bet a fast asteroid would defeat planetary shielding that can survive prolonged fleet bombardment... because I say so'.

[Lord Sabre Ace]

Ok just to make this interesting, say the side with the asteroid also puts a generator on the surface of the asteroid with a planetary shield on it, so now the asteroid has a planetary shield aswell.

It want to make a planet uninhabitable, a shot from a superlaser would be cheaper. A Base Delta Zero operation would eventually get through the shields and would be even cheaper than that.

[NRS Guardian]

Considering that Alderaan's planetary shield could withstand something on the order of 1e38W for tenths of a second I doubt an asteroid could do the job. Besides the simple fact we don't see giant mass drivers or asteroids used as weapons probably means shields and point defense have rendered them obsolete. If planetary shields could be defeated so easily, why invest in Torpedo Spheres, Death Stars, and the Galaxy Gun? All of which were somewhat expensive and very specialized.

[Lukedanieljames]

Considering that Alderaan's planetary shield could withstand something on the order of 1e38W for tenths of a second I doubt an asteroid could do the job. Besides the simple fact we don't see giant mass drivers or asteroids used as weapons probably means shields and point defense have rendered them obsolete. If planetary shields could be defeated so easily, why invest in Torpedo Spheres, Death Stars, and the Galaxy Gun? All of which were somewhat expensive and very specialized.

156513308243812855121600000000 OR 1E27J

is the energy of the asteroid impact with the momentum being
7e24 kg m/s


So what is the heaviest/fastest object ever to hit a planetary shield? Have we ever seen a shield even take this order of magnitude of momentum energy? I know the shield failed in empire strikes back on the stardestroyer from an asteroid only measuring a few dozen meters across.


So if the planetary shield withstood 1e38w for a tenth of a second, that means it withstood

1e+37 W so that is far above what the asteroid would do, but how much momentum did that laser blast have?

Maybe the asteroid could tear the planetary shield generators right off their bases. ?

[Adrian Laguna]

I know the shield failed in empire strikes back on the stardestroyer from an asteroid only measuring a few dozen meters across.

In ESB one can see asteroids be vaporized after impacting the shields on a Star Destroyer one or two times. There was another scene where an asteroid impacts the Conning Tower of a Star Destroyer that had its shields down for communications. At no point in time does an asteroid bring down a Star Destroyer's shields.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Well during Star by star the outer layer of Coruscants shield handled multiple Vong ships slamming into it.

Didn't the Lusankya break through a weak spot in the shield ?(during peace time, so the military grade additional layer wasn't working)

Maybe the asteroid could tear the planetary shield generators right off their bases. ?

And where do you think the generator would be? Under the shield! .
Idiot.

[Stark]

Okay, lets check the list of attributes.

He's ignoring most points
He's comparing ISD generators directly to planetary shields
He's misinterpreting ISD examples
He's ignoring the possibility of intercept, the unlikelyhood of it being undetected, etc
He's presented no method to actually get to this asteroid and set up the generator, imparting momentum etc without being detected
He's ignoring the fact that if a ship/s can impart that momentum, they could just do that work on the shield DIRECTLY

Is this just a pie-in-the-sky scenario, or is it actually expected to be useful? How many times does he expect it to work before the simple countermeasures are implemented?

A single small craft could destroy such an asteroid with seismic charges. Is it supposed to be heavily shielded and escorted as well?

[Dooey Jo]

Maybe the asteroid could tear the planetary shield generators right off their bases. ?

And where do you think the generator would be? Under the shield!

Actually, since the generator is what's holding the shield up, any physical impactor that slams into the shield would create a force on the shield generator. Being under the shield itself wouldn't protect it from that. I think Mike wrote something about it on his site... ah! Here it is.

Now, asteroids are probably too small to tear off the generators, but it's not impossible to do so simply because the generators are under the shield (unless they have some magical reaction-force remover tech installed).

[The Nomad]

Maybe the asteroid could tear the planetary shield generators right off their bases. ?

And where do you think the generator would be? Under the shield! .

Which doesn't change the fact that the momentum of the impact would be imparted on the shield generator, which is precisely his point. Re-read the "Physical collisions" page on the main site.

However, considering a 1E38 W superlaser would impart ( IIRC, F=dp/dt and here p=E/c ) around 1E30 newtons of force, and a 250 km asteroid, or rather planetoid ( assuming nickel-iron composition, this gives us a mass of about 6.5E16 tons ) impacting at 0.5c would have a kinetic energy of about only 9E35J for a total momentum of about 1E28 kg*m/s ( thanks to the Relativistic calculator and its author ) . Assuming the impact liberates said momentum and KE in a tiny fraction of a second ( millisecond ? I don't know, could a more knowledgable board member comment this please ), the sheer wattage would be about equivalent to that of a SL, but the force imparted would be at least an order of magnitude greater.
Which is ultimately useless, since the wattage alone would overcome the shielding ( discarding heat sink capabilities, which I assume would be overwhelmed anyway ), additionnal momentum is not worth the trouble.

Besides, the act of installing ion drives on a planetoid ( perhaps even a hyperdrive, after all you wouldn't hope an enemy would allow you to build such a weapon in their own system unless they were under heavy siege, which will undoubtedly result in their ultimate demise thanks to massive, continued fleet bombardment and the likes of Torpedo Spheres anyway ), and structurally reinforcing it so that it could be accelerated to such insane speeds without breaking into fragments, then praying that it doesn't get shot down and fragmented long before it becomes a threat to its target, renders this kind of one-shot weapon unworthy of the effort. Even though a Death Star might represent a much higher initial investment, the fact that it can be refired every few hours or so make it a more logical choice, and probably a less expensive strategy in the long run.

EDIT : I forgot an important part in the momentum formula .

[Ace Pace]

Well during Star by star the outer layer of Coruscants shield handled multiple Vong ships slamming into it.

Didn't the Lusankya break through a weak spot in the shield ?(during peace time, so the military grade additional layer wasn't working)

The Lusankya broke through the shield by concertrating fire from the below on very few sectors.

[Lukedanieljames]

Maybe the asteroid could tear the planetary shield generators right off their bases. ?

And where do you think the generator would be? Under the shield! .

Which doesn't change the fact that the momentum of the impact would be imparted on the shield generator, which is precisely his point. Re-read the "Physical collisions" page on the main site.

However, considering a 1E38 W superlaser would impart ( IIRC, F=dp/dt and here p=E/c ) around 1E30 newtons of force, and a 250 km asteroid, or rather planetoid ( assuming nickel-iron composition, this gives us a mass of about 6.5E16 tons ) impacting at 0.5c would have a kinetic energy of about only 9E35J for a total momentum of about 1E28 kg*m/s ( thanks to the Relativistic calculator and its author ) . Assuming the impact liberates said momentum and KE in a tiny fraction of a second ( millisecond ? I don't know, could a more knowledgable board member comment this please ), the sheer wattage would be about equivalent to that of a SL, but the force imparted would be at least an order of magnitude greater.
Which is ultimately useless, since the wattage alone would overcome the shielding ( discarding heat sink capabilities, which I assume would be overwhelmed anyway ), additionnal momentum is not worth the trouble.

Besides, the act of installing ion drives on a planetoid ( perhaps even a hyperdrive, after all you wouldn't hope an enemy would allow you to build such a weapon in their own system unless they were under heavy siege, which will undoubtedly result in their ultimate demise thanks to massive, continued fleet bombardment and the likes of Torpedo Spheres anyway ), and structurally reinforcing it so that it could be accelerated to such insane speeds without breaking into fragments, then praying that it doesn't get shot down and fragmented long before it becomes a threat to its target, renders this kind of one-shot weapon unworthy of the effort. Even though a Death Star might represent a much higher initial investment, the fact that it can be refired every few hours or so make it a more logical choice, and probably a less expensive strategy in the long run.

EDIT : I forgot an important part in the momentum formula .

thank you very much in following up with some additional math,
I mean the asteroid that I said was 400km in diameter, it could be any size, it could be 1000 kilometers in diameter, the bigger the better. I don't see how the deathstar would be cheaper in the longrun. You have to maintain it, you have to research how to build it, you have to have a crew on it, you have protect it constantly from the rebels, a lot of work for nothing in my opinion. To refine my point,
the planetary shield goes on the asteroid, the asteroid is escorted by the fleet, so it has the fleet and a huge planetary shield on it. The fleet escorts the fleet all the way to the planet where the momentum of the enormous asteroid tears the supports for the shield generators right off their bases. Like I said before, its easy to see a planetary shield would be overwhelmed,

Torpedo sphere's and planetary turbo lasers aren't going to penetrate a planetary shield on the asteroid before its too late. As for detecting it, a planet under seige usually has less of a navy than the invaders, or it wouldn't be underseige, so I don't believe that is too much of a problem.

The ISD shield generators were down ?? I never heard this, I know ISDs can communicate with shields up in far greater interferance, such as the battle of Endor, regardless, the math is simple.

The planetary shield generator stations wouldn't be able to support the momentum of the asteroid, especially if it got really big, 500+ km wide

[Ghost Rider]

And where do you think the generator would be? Under the shield! .

Which doesn't change the fact that the momentum of the impact would be imparted on the shield generator, which is precisely his point. Re-read the "Physical collisions" page on the main site.

However, considering a 1E38 W superlaser would impart ( IIRC, F=dp/dt and here p=E/c ) around 1E30 newtons of force, and a 250 km asteroid, or rather planetoid ( assuming nickel-iron composition, this gives us a mass of about 6.5E16 tons ) impacting at 0.5c would have a kinetic energy of about only 9E35J for a total momentum of about 1E28 kg*m/s ( thanks to the Relativistic calculator and its author ) . Assuming the impact liberates said momentum and KE in a tiny fraction of a second ( millisecond ? I don't know, could a more knowledgable board member comment this please ), the sheer wattage would be about equivalent to that of a SL, but the force imparted would be at least an order of magnitude greater.
Which is ultimately useless, since the wattage alone would overcome the shielding ( discarding heat sink capabilities, which I assume would be overwhelmed anyway ), additionnal momentum is not worth the trouble.

Besides, the act of installing ion drives on a planetoid ( perhaps even a hyperdrive, after all you wouldn't hope an enemy would allow you to build such a weapon in their own system unless they were under heavy siege, which will undoubtedly result in their ultimate demise thanks to massive, continued fleet bombardment and the likes of Torpedo Spheres anyway ), and structurally reinforcing it so that it could be accelerated to such insane speeds without breaking into fragments, then praying that it doesn't get shot down and fragmented long before it becomes a threat to its target, renders this kind of one-shot weapon unworthy of the effort. Even though a Death Star might represent a much higher initial investment, the fact that it can be refired every few hours or so make it a more logical choice, and probably a less expensive strategy in the long run.

EDIT : I forgot an important part in the momentum formula .

thank you very much in following up with some additional math,
I mean the asteroid that I said was 400km in diameter, it could be any size, it could be 1000 kilometers in diameter, the bigger the better. I don't see how the deathstar would be cheaper in the longrun. You have to maintain it, you have to research how to build it, you have to have a crew on it, you have protect it constantly from the rebels, a lot of work for nothing in my opinion. To refine my point,
the planetary shield goes on the asteroid, the asteroid is escorted by the fleet, so it has the fleet and a huge planetary shield on it. The fleet escorts the fleet all the way to the planet where the momentum of the enormous asteroid tears the supports for the shield generators right off their bases. Like I said before, its easy to see a planetary shield would be overwhelmed,

Torpedo sphere's and planetary turbo lasers aren't going to penetrate a planetary shield on the asteroid before its too late. As for detecting it, a planet under seige usually has less of a navy than the invaders, or it wouldn't be underseige, so I don't believe that is too much of a problem.

The ISD shield generators were down ?? I never heard this, I know ISDs can communicate with shields up in far greater interferance, such as the battle of Endor, regardless, the math is simple.

The planetary shield generator stations wouldn't be able to support the momentum of the asteroid, especially if it got really big, 500+ km wide

Read his post dumbass.

He literally states WHY this is such a stupid venture...but hey plod along like a moron.

Escorting an asteriod...especially one that can be detroyed by FIGHTER MUNITIONS.

But keep going I'm sure, you'll find a way why this is dumb but likely long after the fact.

[Lukedanieljames]

Read his post dumbass.

He literally states WHY this is such a stupid venture...but hey plod along like a moron.

Escorting an asteriod...especially one that can be detroyed by FIGHTER MUNITIONS.

But keep going I'm sure, you'll find a way why this is dumb but likely long after the fact.

The math is there, and how can fighter munitions hurt it if its covered in a planetary shield?
answer that for me please

[Ghost Rider]

Read his post dumbass.

He literally states WHY this is such a stupid venture...but hey plod along like a moron.

Escorting an asteriod...especially one that can be detroyed by FIGHTER MUNITIONS.

But keep going I'm sure, you'll find a way why this is dumb but likely long after the fact.

The math is there, and how can fighter munitions hurt it if its covered in a planetary shield?
answer that for me please

You didn't read his post, did you fucktard.

Oh but you read the part that favored you and not

Besides, the act of installing ion drives on a planetoid ( perhaps even a hyperdrive, after all you wouldn't hope an enemy would allow you to build such a weapon in their own system unless they were under heavy siege, which will undoubtedly result in their ultimate demise thanks to massive, continued fleet bombardment and the likes of Torpedo Spheres anyway ), and structurally reinforcing it so that it could be accelerated to such insane speeds without breaking into fragments, then praying that it doesn't get shot down and fragmented long before it becomes a threat to its target, renders this kind of one-shot weapon unworthy of the effort. Even though a Death Star might represent a much higher initial investment, the fact that it can be refired every few hours or so make it a more logical choice, and probably a less expensive strategy in the long run.

But hey whatever favors your illogical and inspid argument is good, what does not is bad.

[Duckie]

They couldn't penetrate it. Rather, the impact would rip the shield off of the asteroid and send it backwards, probably obliterating the asteroid by touching the shield if the momentum itself didn't do that. And for the cost of a planetary shield you could easily bombard and obliterate the planet without wasting it on a single relativistic impact.

[Wyrm]

Which doesn't change the fact that the momentum of the impact would be imparted on the shield generator, which is precisely his point. Re-read the "Physical collisions" page on the main site.

To be preciese, the momentum of the impact would be imparted onto the component of the shield generation system that is mechanically anchored to the shield. The shield has to be anchored somewhere; otherwise when the ship or what-have-you accelerates, the shield doesn't and you smash into your own shield. OUCH!

This mechanical anchoring is usually assumed to be the shield generator itself, but not necessarily. Where the shield is anchored depends on the particular system, but it's always there (if the shield is practical). In SW, we assume that the shield generator is also the mechanical anchor.

[LordShaithis]

The math is there, and how can fighter munitions hurt it if its covered in a planetary shield? answer that for me please

A planetary-scale shielding system can't be cheap. Throwing one away on a kamikaze attack everytime there's a siege seems rather wasteful, when a torpedo sphere or sustained fleet bombardment can do the job without being destroyed.

In other words, something like this would probably work, technically speaking. It's just way more trouble and expense than it's worth.

[wilfulton]

Hmm...lemme see if I can't find a few holes in this idea.

Yippee, we found us a BFA (Big Fuckin' Asteroid). The plan is to slam the aforementioned BFA into the enemy's planet.

Our assets-
Space Fleet,
BFA

Enemy Assets-
Sensors capable of spotting BFA rather easily,
Space Fleet,
Planetary shields
Planet-based HTL's capable of slagging BFA.

Shit, look at that last one, we need to equip our BFA with a planetary shield. Hee, hee, snicker snicker snort.
Ooh...BFA doesn't do us any good if it's just sitting out there. We need to equip it with engines so we can maneuver it into position.
Hmm...can the BFA in question survive the acceleration? Maybe, maybe not, it would be pretty damned embarrasing if our BFA simply crumbled into space dust during the delivery sequence, so we better add on some structural integrity fields (?) and artificial gravity genertors to neutralize the effects of acceleration.

Ooh...where are we gonna make said modifications to our BFA? In the enemy's star system? Bad idea, they have a fleet, and can easily drop in and say hi. Possibly blow up the transport ships carrying all this equipment to our local neighborhood BFA. Maybe we could equip our BFA in a star system under our control, where the enemy is less likely to:
A. See just what we are doing
B. Show up and crash our party prematurely

That necessitates adding a hyperdrive to our BFA, to get it from point A to point B. Now equipping a BFA with a hyperdrive, be it 250, 400, 1000, etc km in diameter is probably going to require a hyperdrive something like what you'd put on the Death Star, just to move something that big. Now we have to fuel it. So where are we?

BFA:
Planetary Shield
Engines, structural bracing/reinforcement
Hyperdrive
Fuel for both engines and Hyperdrive...
Assembly time
Technical crew to put this thing together and keep it running

Wait...technical crew, you ask.
Murphy factor, you're adding progressively more moving parts, something is apt to go wrong.

This is a view in simplest terms now, but souping up our BFA is starting to look a little pricey. Said resources might simply be better spent in expanding our fleet, or, quite possibly, just building ourselves a Death Star. All we'd have to do to begin with is add the planet destroying superlaser. I mean shit, we're practically there.

BFA's sound nice, but don't seem very practical.

[Perseid]

Which system would you be planning on using this tactic in, because depending on the system would depend on the defences you've got to get through, and since your dedicating such a lot of resources (planetary shields and sub-light drives on an asteroid plus time to engineer said asteroid, plus the escort fleet) you wouldn't want to target a system that isn't essential to the war effort.

Lets say for arguements sake your an Imperial Remnant Commander with a little more than a sector fleet at your disposal, and your attacking shall we say Coruscant. You've got to consider multiple different problems.

Firstly any system that you would want to attack after spending all those resources is going to be well defended, and if your going after Coruscant, or any sector capital planet for that matter, then theres either a sector fleet in system, or close by. This would negate your escort fleet since they would either have to turn to engage the enemy fleet or sit there and take a beating, neither of those options is appealing for this tactic.

Secondly you've got the ground based weapons systems to consider, your looking at numerous HTL's as well as Ion cannons, and we know how effective the planetary Ion cannons are (see the seige of Hoth). These weapons pose problems for both the fleet and the asteroid, since every little thing is being fired with the aim of taking out that asteroid.

Thirdly you've got the orbital weapons plantforms to consider as well. Coruscant is ringed with Golan II's and Golan III's as well as the torpedo spheres and other weapons. Golan III's have more fire power than an ISD and are going to be a big headache when you enter their weapons range.

You then have to consider that before the planetary shields go up a general call for reinforcements is going to go out.


So using your proposed tactic would be a complete waste of resources, since the only places you'd be able to hit are planets that are unimportant, since you need weaker defences in order for this to work, by weaker defences I mean less gun's pointed at you not a weaker shield, and in that case a normal seige would work far better and be less costly.

The Death Star, Galaxy Gun, Sun Crusher, and all the other planet destroying weapons weren't just designed to destroy planets (or stars in the Sun Crushers case) they were designed to do so from outside the standard engagement range. This allowed them to appear in the system at several planetary diameters away and blow up the planet before the enemy could mount a decent offensive.

Your idea of using an asteroid to batter down the shields is equivalent to an army in medival times using a battering ram to break down the main gates when a Catapult or Trebuchet would do the same job, and whilst more expensive to build, means you don't take any where near the losses doing it the other way.

[Gil Hamilton]

It might, however, be a useful tool for destroying individual shield generators. Shields still have to conserve momentum, so if you drop a suitably large object on them, the shield stopping and deflecting the rock should impart significant momentum on the shield generator. Something massive enough should crush/rip the generator free of it's moorings and that shield generator is down until they fix it.

However, the problem comes up with:
(A) Multiple generators. If they have a back up(s), then you've destroy the generator but you need more rocks to break down that one.
(B) Preventing your rocks from getting exploded while in bound. Giant space rocks can be intercepted and generally don't come with native means to protect themselves. While the Death Star can too, it is a moon sized metal ball covered in thousands of guns, so people are welcome to try and intercept it.
(C) How are going to move it? You need to bolt a drive section and a powerplant on it, plus fuel. Attaching such a system to an asteroid would be a major engineering project. Not so much on the grand scale of StarWars, maybe, but do you think that who you are attacking is going to sit there and watch you moor an engine onto a rock for weeks? If you've got enough ships in system to actually defend your engineers while they work, the rock is a redundant item.

It seems massively convoluted.

[Noble Ire]

(A) Multiple generators. If they have a back up(s), then you've destroy the generator but you need more rocks to break down that one.

Most planetary Shield networks consist of webs of dozens or hundreds of generators, like the ones on Coruscant, Bothawui, and the argicultural world in the Thrawn Trilogy. At most, an asteroid would knock out a small area of coverage for a little while.