Ortillery - feasible?

[Uncluttered]

Jordan Kare, from LLNL designed an entire scalable system for launching rockets with existing industrial diode/fiber lasers. (some small extrapolation on future price)
http://www.jkare.com/VG_HX_4-29-SAS.pdf

The system combines hundreds of diode pumped fiber raman lasers, each powered by it's own diesel power supply, which fits on a container truck.

The key feature is that the fiber lasers are capable of 75-90% efficiency (when pumped from a diode laser) multiple lasers are combined with a diffraction grating, and focused onto the target.
The cost is estimated at $8/watt for the fiber lasers (terrestrial based)

Instead of using one Lasersat, use dozens, or even hundreds of smaller lasersats which beam their energy into the collection mirrors of Aimsats. The Aimsat main parts would be: radiator, reflector, diffraction grating, and optics.

The Aimsat optics would be actively cooled. The radiators can be safely tucked behind the main mirror, shielding it from the sun, as well as ground based counter lasers.


A strong argument for this system, beside being a harder target, is that in peace time, you can use the lower settings to beam power to ground, or space customers.
Simply hide the Aimsat, and pretend the system was designed simply for SPS. (solar power satellite).
An SPS satellite can be designed for peace, in an open, international and auditable way. It's possible the the antenna can be designed in a way which would be near impossible to weaponize, making everyone happy.

For an SPS, you will need to add a boiler, a steam turbine, generator, and microwave array.
99% of the time, your system could be beaming carbon free electric love to the world, patiently waiting to deliver carbon free electric death. It might even turn a profit.

Your aimsat will look very much like a spy satelite. It could do double duty.

The Jordan Kare laser launch system was not designed to pulse, it was designed to produce a golf course sized continuous beam, to which I say "MWA ha ha haaaa!"

[Sarevok]

Isolder74 are you on drugs ? 3000 kilograms is a very common weight for satelites. The GPS satelites, Cassini, Keyhole spy sats, radar equipped sats etc so many satelite worth a damn mass several tons. It is very easy to put three tons in orbit. Heavy launch vehicles can deploy over a hundred tons. You clearly have no idea what constitutes an acceptable payload mass in todays economy. So please educate yourself or shut up.

[Sea Skimmer]

3,333 kg about= 7,348 pounds. I'll give you my math mistake but I will not give you on how expensive a launch weight that would be. Once again this does not include the struts and supports to hold this array. The Specs I posted were for the solar cells themselves and not mounting equipment. Only the array itself.

It would cost under 100 million dollars with the cheapest boosters, less then the price of one F-35. You clearly have no fucking clue what you are talking about because as has already been pointed out many real satellites are that large or even much heavier and boosted into much higher orbits then this idea requires too which is very important in its own right. They cost fucking billions of dollars already. Current USAF space launchers cost as much as a half billion dollars empty. Space is not cheep, this is not news.

3333 square meters of area is required for that array. That is a space of 3333 meters by 3333 meters.

Are you blind, drunk right now, or just never completed first grade? 3333x3333 meters would be 11,108,889 square meters. 3333 square meters = 3333 x 1

That is a huge area. How would you manage to even DEPLOY an array of that size? Unless you launch this in multiple sections it isn't going to work.

The same damn way you deploy an array of any size. Fold it up and then extend it. Multiple launches are perfectly feasible too. In fact it would be perfectly feasible to have the entire spacecraft be in several pieces even in orbit, with solar panel satellites sending power to the laser satellite by microwave. The US military is aggressively studying distributed spacecraft like this because they only make sense. If the satellite is in fact several pieces then it can be incrementally upgraded in orbit by replacing them one at a time.

What’s more fucking Japan, a nation I trust knows more about spacecraft then you, intends to have a solar power spacecraft with one GIGAWATT capacity by 2030 which fits nicely with the 15-20 year R&D timeframe any major military program will have today. This spacecraft will downlink the power to the ground too, a far more demanding task then going point to point in space.

While Sea Skimmer has made a conclusive argument that neither power sources are feasible. It more or less shows that STI and space-based weapons in general are unreasonable for more then one reason. Mass required to power the weapon, the mass of the weapon itself and then mass of the equipment to cool the energy weapon.

Actually I drew no specific conclusions on solar power, especially not one which I do not agree with. Try again moron.

The largest array currently in operation is on the International Space Station. Each section only produces 7kw. Each 108.6-ft. long solar array wing is connected to the ISS's 310-ft. long truss and extend outward at right angles to it. Altogether, they cover an area of 27,000-sq. ft. about acre. When fully extended, a pair of wings and their associated equipment span about 240 feet, the largest deployable space structures ever built. They were launched in 4 sections. That array only produces 28 kw. This is more then the station actually needs.

So what, are you trying to claim we will run out of space in space? Give me a break.

To build a array with those solar units to power a energy weapon would be unimaginable.

Why? Fucking spell it out because so far your grasp of spacecraft has been tenuous at best, and you don’t even know how heavy a fucking ton is, so we certainly have no reason to take your word on anything.

To be viable you have to launch more then one of these weapons.

Prohibitively Expensive.

Compared to what exactly, that would offer the same total global air dominance alone, never mind the ground strike capability? The F-22 program has cost 65 billion dollars just for designing and building the planes for example, never mind operating them and it doesn’t offer anything like the wide area capability. The F-35 program is estimated at over 1 TRILLION dollar lifetime cost now. In fact no plane does or could what high power space based laser could unless it were high hypersonic air breather, and thus fantastically expensive in its own right.

One of the nice things about a space based laser would be minimal operating costs once orbited since we already own and operate all the ground control stations. With aircraft and missile systems the majority of the costs end up being in operations since they burn so much fuel and need so many spare parts and men. Effective orbital lasers would let us phase out weapons which cost as much as 65 million dollars per shot, in the form of GBI. GBI needs four missile salvos to be fully effective too.. think about how quickly that would add up trying to defeat 30 incoming ICBMs. That's not counting the GBI silo or the massive radars; a space based weapon can use IR tracking.

[Isolder74]

Quote:
While Sea Skimmer has made a conclusive argument that neither power sources are feasible. It more or less shows that STI and space-based weapons in general are unreasonable for more then one reason. Mass required to power the weapon, the mass of the weapon itself and then mass of the equipment to cool the energy weapon.


Actually I drew no specific conclusions on solar power, especially not one which I do not agree with. Try again moron.

No you talked about nuclear power and the coolant array required to use one of those as a power source. You seem to think that because I was talking about solar power you think i meant you were too.

Isolder74 wrote:
3,333 kg about= 7,348 pounds. I'll give you my math mistake but I will not give you on how expensive a launch weight that would be. Once again this does not include the struts and supports to hold this array. The Specs I posted were for the solar cells themselves and not mounting equipment. Only the array itself.


It would cost under 100 million dollars with the cheapest boosters, less then the price of one F-35. You clearly have no fucking clue what you are talking about because as has already been pointed out many real satellites are that large or even much heavier and boosted into much higher orbits then this idea requires too which is very important in its own right. They cost fucking billions of dollars already. Current USAF space launchers cost as much as a half billion dollars empty. Space is not cheep, this is not news.

100 million to just power the weapon. Yikes! How about the weapon itself? The control systems?

Isolder74 are you on drugs ? 3000 kilograms is a very common weight for satelites. The GPS satelites, Cassini, Keyhole spy sats, radar equipped sats etc so many satelite worth a damn mass several tons. It is very easy to put three tons in orbit. Heavy launch vehicles can deploy over a hundred tons. You clearly have no idea what constitutes an acceptable payload mass in todays economy. So please educate yourself or shut up.

And do you realize that that is not the only part of the problem?

3000 kg that takes up 0.82 acres of deployed space. How much space would that be undeployed? That still does not include the mounting equipment. What size of a rocket would you need to launch that? You can't just stick it in a box and have it magically deploy. This is using best case current tech, btw. If using the tech for solar power on the International Space Station it will be even heavier and even more huge. 10 of the ISS arrays would be needed to just be even modest(70 kw). 4 of those require a strut 240 feet long 10 would be approximately 600 ft. Those each took one shuttle trip to launch.

How much space does that array take folded up? What about the support trusses and deploying system? What about the Energy Weapon itself? And the batteries to store the power until you need to fire it(you need to store enough power to fire the weapon on demand)? And the control/targeting equipment(That itself would be similar to a normal communication/GPS sat.)? What about the fuel and systems needed to control, orient and keep the satellite in orbit to fire on targets? This a multilaunch project to just be conservative.

Even the lightest particle cannon is large, laser weapons more so. You are talking about puting this in orbit, sans the plane of course. Or this with all of the support equipment required to fire and control the weapon.

With current space technology a space based laser weapon is not feasible.

[Sea Skimmer]

No you talked about nuclear power and the coolant array required to use one of those as a power source. You seem to think that because I was talking about solar power you think i meant you were too.

You fucking just said Sea Skimmer has made a conclusive argument that neither power sources are feasible. I made no such argument and now you are just making a really pathetic lie.

100 million to just power the weapon. Yikes! How about the weapon itself? The control systems?

Yikes? Did I not already nicely point out for you that a single GBI interceptor is already 65 million dollars? KEI close to 100 million? A spaced based laser of even far less capability then being talked about here could do the work of dozens of GBIs in a single orbit and then blow up trucks and tanks on the next orbit like nothing fucking else. Do you fucking get the fact that we spend as much as 2 billion dollars just for a single optical recon satellite? I have no more time to waste tonight on someone who is going to waste my time trying to lie about shit plain for everyone to see and force me to repeat every last fucking detail.

[Simon_Jester]

Why? Anti tank weapons hit with about a megajoule.

They also dump all that energy into an area a few centimeters across (ten, tops), within about a millisecond. It's not just total energy; it's power and intensity that matter. I mean hell, a tank with six or seven square meters of roof soaks up a megajoule of sunlight every minute and a half; that doesn't mean sunlight is an effective antitank weapon.

Focusing the laser onto a small enough target, over a short enough timescale, to penetrate the armor is not at all a trivial concern. Hitting specific targets like the gun barrel isn't either.

The obvious analogy is the ABL laser; I don't know what kind of beam diameter they use, but I strongly suspect it's not intense enough to drill tanks, or even gun barrels.

So the answer to the question is yes, it's feasible. But practical and cost effective is another matter. Satellites are predictable, expensive and easy to mission kill (you don't even need an ASAT, just lase the football field sized target that passes overhead everyday and watch several million bucks of sensory hardware become useless). And no one would allow you to put these things up there anyway, and if they did, then objections over nukes in space or hazardous chemical laser reactants wouldn't really hold the water they do now.

That's a significant problem: if I can build a megawatt laser and power it in space, a technologically equal rival can build an identical laser on the ground. And my satellite is a hell of a lot easier to kill with ground based laser cannon than the ground batteries are to kill with satellite lasers.

[Sea Skimmer]

Focusing the laser onto a small enough target, over a short enough timescale, to penetrate the armor is not at all a trivial concern. Hitting specific targets like the gun barrel isn't either.

The obvious analogy is the ABL laser; I don't know what kind of beam diameter they use, but I strongly suspect it's not intense enough to drill tanks, or even gun barrels.

ABL is mounted on a 747 with four jet engines, I would expect a space based laser would be a fair bit more accurate because its more stable a firing platform. It does have the disadvantage that it has to fire through the full thickness, and varying slang range through the atmosphere. ABL flies at 35,000 feet above most of the atmosphere thickness but it also has a great deal of slant range through the atmosphere since its supposed to boosting ICBMs 200 miles away.

The US military thinks 100kw from a laser is enough to be all around effective as a weapon at short range, it doesn't seem out of reason for a couple megawatts sustained from space to do so. We need 10% or less of the beam energy to do anything useful to the target. ABL firing time in the test videos BTW shows around 15 seconds firing time. I'm betting we can expect less in the future, they already have slews of improvements they wanted to put into the second prototype plane before Obama killed it.

That's a significant problem: if I can build a megawatt laser and power it in space, a technologically equal rival can build an identical laser on the ground. And my satellite is a hell of a lot easier to kill with ground based laser cannon than the ground batteries are to kill with satellite lasers.

I've been thinking about this very issue a lot and it does not seem that clear cut to me that ground lasers will just win by being possible. Ill just lay out my thinking in detail, you can question the logic of it at will.

As part of seizing decisive space dominance deploying the budget willing with no Iraq to waste money on 9-30 laser satellite constellation strong the US would also deploy very large space based radars with a scale in the range of 100-1,000 square meter aperture. This radar would be kept to a sane weight by using a reflector in combination with solid state transmitters. These radars would serve as the wide area sensors, while being capable of very high SAR resolutions. They would also be extension of this be able to function as really effective high power microwave weapons. HPM can respond to laser attacks very quickly, and force the enemy to deploy highly hardened laser equipment. It may not be able to function at all and break down under the attack and the tracking and guidance systems sure aren’t going to like it unless they are sealed up inside a static bunker. HPM use will be limited by batteries, and some targets just aren’t that vulnerable to it like an enemy truck with carbureted super motors. If the projects went ahead together then we could place the laser and radar sat close enough together that they share a pool of microwave solar panels.

Basically the equal enemy will be able to build counter lasers fortified enough to withstand counter fire, but we don’t really know a enough to make a call on mobility. Right now would need several large trucks to move any megawatt laser and its support equipment, and solid state lasers are not exactly compact. So its not a given that the enemy will have laser trucks rolling around with shoot and scoot ABL-1+ firepower, even if these were built in space with relatively high bulk. Plus wars between really great powers these days are likely to go nuclear, at which point space lasers ABM role would pay off enormously even if the satellites only had short lifespans shooting down those expensive ICBMs. This why I tend to suggest including massive nuclear bombs in space arsenals, since they’d be great for opening the nuclear space war.

Anyway any fixed laser sites would also be immediate war targets for high hypersonic weapons like future weaponized variants of hypersonic glide vehicles and the like, such as the recently test flown HTV-2. Hypersonic X-20 style stuff like that has a whole lot of thermal protection on the belly that would help a lot against lasers, and is much more difficult to track then either a satellite or a ballistic missile warhead. Stuff like that may already be in service, just look at the Hyper III which was flying all the way back in 1969. Reaction time could be high enough to destroy laser sites before a satellite has completed a single orbit. Ground ASAT sites have a major disadvantage in having to wait for the target to come to them, and the target may burn fuel to avoid overflights until the ground laser threat is suppressed.

Sure, spacecraft will be lost. This is not really different from loosing warships in a fleet or planes in a bombing raid, except we didn’t loose any people. Like fleets and planes. Spacecraft will need to operate together, to be effective, something already true of spacecraft anyway when you consider how the command and communications systems work with in orbit relays. Plus certain ELINT birds already fly in formations to triangulate target locations. We just haven’t seen nearly what man can do on the space war front yet. First because of cold war fears; now because Iraqistan has eaten all the money for advanced hardware. In the future I expect formations of war satellites carrying the second cold war of capitalist stupidity into the far depths of orbit. The costs are high but the are rather smaller then what the US threw at banks overnight. Costs for space launch would go down a damn lot too if something like Ares V was being bought by the military and NASA missions. As it is space launch costs are GOING UP thanks to the shuttle winding down, and dumping a lot of support and operating costs onto the remaining military and commercial launches at Cape Canaveral.

[adam_grif]

Fixed ground laser positions have a few advantages; they can be hooked up to the power grid or have large reactors, they can store significant portions of themselves underground (protection from counter-fire), and have the availability of air-cooling and arbitrarily large heat-sinks. If you can build one the size of one of those big ICBM launcher trucks, it may well be powerful enough to kill a sat in orbit while being able to reposition itself to hide from detection. If it isn't, you can try doing railway-gun style lasers. Less concealable, but still mobile and can be quite large. As far as mobility goes, you don't need to be able to shoot-and-scoot to have some advantages, just the enemy not knowing where they are at all times to make your deployment unpredictable is useful. Even with a couple of support trucks, it can change it's position with some manner of frequency, and potentially deploy camo nets and the like when stationary to fire.

As far as nuclear strategy goes, killing enemy satellites is basically a prelude to nuclear war anyway. Lacking any sort of early warning and with greatly disrupted communications, it's really playing with fire there. If the enemy can kill your ICBM's or a good portion of them, then the first and most obvious target is the satellites that will be doing such things. Which you can kill with your own satellites, ground based installations, kinetic kill satellites, or whatever.

Given orbital speeds, it's pretty scary to think how things might be able to spiral out of control - when it takes 15 mins to send an ICBM to Moscow you at least have some time to think it over, when your entire defenses and early warning could be offline within 2 minutes it may be even worse. Automatic retaliation systems to be installed perhaps?

[LaCroix]

What’s more fucking Japan, a nation I trust knows more about spacecraft then you, intends to have a solar power spacecraft with one GIGAWATT capacity by 2030 which fits nicely with the 15-20 year R&D timeframe any major military program will have today. This spacecraft will downlink the power to the ground too, a far more demanding task then going point to point in space.

Am I the only one to think that this system can be used as a weapon? Sending a Gigawatt worth of microwave down to earth would probably fuck up everything not especially built to receive that sort of energy, no?

Also, the satellite sending the energy needs a targeting system already to hit the receiver station, so there is only a small extra step needed to weaponize that thing.

[Starglider]

With kinetic energy impactors, why all this emphasis on trying to pick off individual tanks? Hitting static point targets is hard enough, trying to fit a useful seeker head on a high-hypersonic re-entry vehicle strikes me as a non-starter. How about replicating the 'grid square removal capability' of MLRS and conventional heavy artillery barrages, without having to actually ship those heavy vulnerable units and all their reloads and logistics chain into theatre. The ultimate bulk discount would be to put a nuclear or solar mass driver on a small asteroid; initially to push it into earth orbit, once there serving as the main weapon with a few thousand tons of ammo and heat sink available. You'd still have to ship up the projectile caps, for a predictable and survivable re-entry, but the body can just be rock cores.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

What’s more fucking Japan, a nation I trust knows more about spacecraft then you, intends to have a solar power spacecraft with one GIGAWATT capacity by 2030 which fits nicely with the 15-20 year R&D timeframe any major military program will have today. This spacecraft will downlink the power to the ground too, a far more demanding task then going point to point in space.

Am I the only one to think that this system can be used as a weapon? Sending a Gigawatt worth of microwave down to earth would probably fuck up everything not especially built to receive that sort of energy, no?

As has been mentioned, it's energy spread out over a large area. From some of the fluff I've read, you could conceivably plant crops and graze animals under the rectenna farm you'd build to recieve the gigawatt of microwave energy (since you'd be picking a set of microwave frequencies not attenuated by water molecules, and the antenna would catch most of the microwaves.)

Also, the satellite sending the energy needs a targeting system already to hit the receiver station, so there is only a small extra step needed to weaponize that thing.

Well, up until you run into limits imposed by the laws of physics, anyway. Microwave beams make terrible long-range weapons, since you can't focus them down tight enough. A SPS with, say, a fifty meter wide broadcast antenna would produce a spot nearly two kilometers wide on the ground (assuming the SPS was in geostationary orbit.) Even if it was in a 1000 kilometer high orbit, the SPS would still only focus down to a spot half a kilometer wide. And that's assuming the SPS was an enormous microwave laser. In the optimistic case, a target on the ground would experience an irradiance of . . . 534 nanowatts per square centimeter. Which is well over 110,000 times less than sitting in sunlight would deliver.

[Admiral Valdemar]

High power often makes people think the orbital microwave transmission system is a death ray, when in actual fact, as me and Shep outlined in another thread, it's no more dangerous than the idea that Wi-Fi routers are or even mobiles. The density of the beam is more important. Take a 60 Watt light bulb and compare that to a 60 Watt diode laser. Which one burns your skin first at ten metres?

Of course, you could use the microwave emitter to disrupt communications to an extent, but most military C3I systems should be properly protected making it rather useless there too.

[Sarevok]

3000 kg that takes up 0.82 acres of deployed space. How much space would that be undeployed? That still does not include the mounting equipment. What size of a rocket would you need to launch that? You can't just stick it in a box and have it magically deploy. This is using best case current tech, btw. If using the tech for solar power on the International Space Station it will be even heavier and even more huge. 10 of the ISS arrays would be needed to just be even modest(70 kw). 4 of those require a strut 240 feet long 10 would be approximately 600 ft. Those each took one shuttle trip to launch.

Ugh. Look up the Hubble, the ISS modules, the mars landers. Or just about any large satellite. Take a look at how big their solar arrays can get. Yet they all fit within a nice little package. Some of the ISS panels for example are 375 square meters in size. Thats not a far cry from a 3000 square meter panel. There is a lot of institutional knowledge about storing and launching very large solar arrays. The fact that you are stupid and incapable of understanding how it works does not change anything.

What about the Energy Weapon itself? And the batteries to store the power until you need to fire it(you need to store enough power to fire the weapon on demand)? And the control/targeting equipment(That itself would be similar to a normal communication/GPS sat.)? What about the fuel and systems needed to control, orient and keep the satellite in orbit to fire on targets? This a multilaunch project to just be conservative.

Wait what ? Every single one of the problems from batteries, to control and orientation system is solved for every satellite out there, Why would a laser armed satellite suddenly be impossible just because its got a laser on it ? We have already shown the mass required to support a laser can be lifted to orbit. We had space stations massing over 100 tons launched in one single go. Untill you prove that the laser sat needs to be a several thousand ton monstrosity there is no reason to believe it cant be built.

[Sea Skimmer]

Of course, you could use the microwave emitter to disrupt communications to an extent, but most military C3I systems should be properly protected making it rather useless there too.

HEMP protection and the like isn't a no limits kind of defense as say a 10 foot thick steel plate would be against rifle bullets. Many varying levels of shielding exist (US military manuals give examples of bunkers with as many as six zones of increasing protection) and aside from the ability of the protection to be damaged, by burning out the spark gaps and power filters ect..., in fact a lot of the defense basically relies on simply cutting power to the protected system. Either to switch to a battery for a short period or even just turning it off. That works fine against nuclear HEMP that passes very quickly, it wouldn't work so well if the enemy is attacking with a constant beam or a volley of rapid pulses over a period of minutes. Disruptions of communications is a whole extra level of trouble in its own right, and many of the solutions are either very expensive or data rate limited too, ELF being the ultimate example of that. Anyway a damn lot of vital modern hardware has no real protection.

A radar is of course a much better basis for a microwave weapon though, since its designed to focus short high intensity pulses in the first place.

[adam_grif]

With kinetic energy impactors, why all this emphasis on trying to pick off individual tanks?

I chose a tank as an example simply to get an idea about the capabilities of a weapon system. I'm not expecting death rays or reentry vehicles to be targeted at them, but if they would be hypothetically powerful enough to kill something armored like a tank, then it is capable of doing all sorts of damage to things that are easier to kill.

[Sea Skimmer]

Fixed ground laser positions have a few advantages; they can be hooked up to the power grid or have large reactors, they can store significant portions of themselves underground (protection from counter-fire), and have the availability of air-cooling and arbitrarily large heat-sinks.

Grid power is useful for peacetime operations, but it’s nothing to count on for combat. Grid power is highly vulnerable to disruption over a large area, as shown by the mass blackouts the US has suffered. The space lasers and HPM weapons can easily knock out a power grid by disabling just a few key high tension wires and substations. The sudden overload will force a cascading failure of substations as they shutdown to protect themselves. If the casade stops, the space laser can just cut a few more wires to help it along. This would be much quicker and easier then bombing power plants or other more conventional anti power tactics. This wont cripple the grid forever of course, but it will take hours or days to restart it all.

I don’t see a need for a reactor. You won’t be using the laser 99.99% of the time, so why have such an expensive sustained power source? Also reactors have fairly low thermal so the need for hardened cooling gear would go up. Normally that cooling gear for bunkers is based on surface evaporative water sprays, though since the pipe work would be exposed to laser attack you might need to use the much more expensive option of an underground heat sink. If you put the sprays under cover, then you'd loose out on protection against atomic blast which I figure still matters since you would also want the laser fort as an ABM system.

A few diesels in a bunker will work better. They only run when needed, and thermal efficiency can be close to 50% vs. 25-35% for a nuclear plant. No need to get more exotic then the mission requires. Diesel bunkers are how the highly demanding Safeguard radar systems were powered for example.

If you can build one the size of one of those big ICBM launcher trucks, it may well be powerful enough to kill a sat in orbit while being able to reposition itself to hide from detection.

Those ICBM trucks are not very mobile in reality, I mean just look how fucking huge they are, the Russians ones sit in garrisons in peacetime for a reason. If the enemy has to use such a large distinctive transporter I’d already call that mission accomplished. However something smaller should be possible, if you split the generator plant and the cooling plant onto separate trucks. The cooling plant needs a lot of volume besides weight, which makes it troublesome. But anyway take a look at the THAAD radar for how large a system like this could become.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... fig4-1.gif

That ‘prime power unit’ is generating 1.3 megawatts for the radar, the little generate for the command post is IIRC 50kw. Still this is enough to need a whole semi trailer for cooling. Cooling requirements might be less if you removed the requirement to operate in hot weather, risky move in most countries. Even Moscow hit 98.5 degrees F the other day.

If it isn't, you can try doing railway-gun style lasers. Less concealable, but still mobile and can be quite large. As far as mobility goes, you don't need to be able to shoot-and-scoot to have some advantages, just the enemy not knowing where they are at all times to make your deployment unpredictable is useful. Even with a couple of support trucks, it can change it's position with some manner of frequency, and potentially deploy camo nets and the like when stationary to fire.

A railroad system is possible, but it would not be very mobile because it will either massively disrupt commercial traffic by suddenly taking over the tracks, huge problem with those ICBM trains, or be locked into limit areas by downed bridges, wrecks, disabled trains on electrical streches and other crap like that. Barges, warships and submarines are options too, and aircraft and just about anything else really, but mobility and the ability to sustain the system while mobile will push up costs a lot and you aren’t going any ground strike capability out of it which is annoying.

I certainly expect it to be a threat, but that’s why we’d also field an improved space radar over today’s toned down program. It would vastly improve the ability of the space laser to rapidly counter pop up threats. The laser doesn't have to be totally without its own defenses either, it could have a dust screen generator or even a moving panel of armor to protect the laser unit, while the solar panels are protected by redundancy.

As far as nuclear strategy goes, killing enemy satellites is basically a prelude to nuclear war anyway. Lacking any sort of early warning and with greatly disrupted communications, it's really playing with fire there. If the enemy can kill your ICBM's or a good portion of them, then the first and most obvious target is the satellites that will be doing such things. Which you can kill with your own satellites, ground based installations, kinetic kill satellites, or whatever.

As I do believe I said before, wars against equal first class opponents are going to go nuclear, one way or another. However a space laser would be an incredible defense against any kind of nuclear missile/bomber attack should it occur, and already being in space it would have a much easier time of killing satellites which live in orbits as high as 30,000 miles.

But while it can accomplish high end tasks like this it can also intervene in any manner of small war, without forward basing, and with incredible precision firepower ensuring that it’s not a one trick pony. Being able to burn communications antennas off the roof of a dictator’s bunker instead of bombing it and damaging the disabled children’s orphanage across the street is a real nice capability. Sure you could do it with an aircraft too, but strategic air power the way the US wields it is preposterously expensive anyway

Predators and crap might like cheep for supporting ground forces in low intensity wars, but the costs really add up when you count forward deploying that stuff and operating it in the theater. A space laser constellation would be on all call all the time for whatever was needed. They might get worn out more quickly being used like that, but otherwise the operating costs don’t really change.

In addition in the future many nations will exist which can field a credible ASAT capability but either don’t have nuclear weapons, or have so few they are highly unlikely to use them except to stop a ground offensive that was going to overrun them. People like this might feel rather free to target US space assets, so we have to be able to defend those assets. Even someone like Iraq could have fielded a very basic ASAT capability using SCUD C and a modified Tall King Radar. You don’t even need guidance, just shotgun shrapnel into space. If you are not a space power yourself you’ve got no reason to care about filling space with debris.

Given orbital speeds, it's pretty scary to think how things might be able to spiral out of control - when it takes 15 mins to send an ICBM to Moscow you at least have some time to think it over, when your entire defenses and early warning could be offline within 2 minutes it may be even worse. Automatic retaliation systems to be installed perhaps?

Funny thing, the end result of that Russian Dead Hand system is supposed to be that emergency communications rockets launch, apparently ones which actually enter orbit to become satellites. Space based laser could blow those away as they launch….

However that would assume that a massive nuclear attack has already crippled the normal channels of communications and command. The small scale of current strategic nuclear arsenals (I consider 1,550 launchers damn small, if acceptably so) really doesn’t make massive counter force attacks very practical, and heightened ABM deployment would make decapitating strikes near impossible.

I would however expect that the constant US shift to strategic communications based purely on satellites would be reversed, little is know about what Russia is really doing, and more troposcatter and ground wave systems would be kept around or restored. Of course the fiber optic lines around the world already provide a pretty robust and redundant communication system in its own right.

Also we might finally build the proposed Sanguine ELF system. It was going to use 100 hard bunkers as transmitters with the antenna wires buried at 6 foot depth. Got canceled because everyone bitched that the military was adding new nuclear targets, so instead we built a soft ELF system that is now retired for being rather shitty at its job due to lack of protection.

[adam_grif]

Hey, I had a brain fart that I thought I'd share.

Big ass submarine with laser.

In my head this makes a lot of sense, because it can hide from detection underwater (even if it's not actually very good at hiding from other submarines, at least sats can't see it). Thus it emerges and fires at orbit. Submarines can have quite a lot of mass, and are quite large. They already take on water deliberately to submerge, so it's conceivable that such a system can be used to directly water-cool the laser. Even if they get spotted, it (might) be able to dive in time to put enough water between it and the sky to significantly diminish the impact of an orbital or airborne laser.

How well do lasers cut through water?

[LionElJonson]

How well do lasers cut through water?

Poorly.

[Chirios]

Why are people talking about solar power in space as if it isn't already happening?

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_m6tlF9 ... re=related
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE-8IsK- ... re=related

I understand that solar power in space is not the same as solar powered weapons in space, but surely the launch costs are similar?

[Sea Skimmer]

How well do lasers cut through water?

Certain wavelengths go through water well enough that the USN has underwater lidar to search for mines on the seabed. Handheld underwater lidar guns also exist, mainly intended for inspection structures to look for cracks or corrosion pits. However the power levels involved are very low, and only need to be high enough to create a distinctive reflection. Underwater laser communications are also known to be feasible since that once more only requires a minuet pulse of light to reach the other end. Some of these lasers may already exist on satellites for shallow water ASW. I wouldn’t rule out a shallow running submarine being able to fire a laser back into orbit with damaging firepower, but its damn unlikely to ever work well. The power levels for the best blue green underwater lasers today are in the low range of mere 10s of watts.

In a super future world when that was solved the submarine could first launch a laser relay satellite from a missile tube, then employ it to bombard shore and air targets. The laser beam itself and a second low power laser on the satellite would provide two way communications. This would give the effect as an orbital laser system without the cost of orbiting a solar power farm or any other energy source. Right now those relays have only been tested on the ground at distances up to around 1km in declassified tests. If it does ever work well some pretty nuts stuff would be possible for attack and power transmission.

[adam_grif]

I wouldn’t rule out a shallow running submarine being able to fire a laser back into orbit with damaging firepower, but its damn unlikely to ever work well. The power levels for the best blue green underwater lasers today are in the low range of mere 10s of watts.

I was envisioning it actually surfacing to fire a laser, one optimized for firing through air, not water.

In a super future world when that was solved the submarine could first launch a laser relay satellite from a missile tube, then employ it to bombard shore and air targets. The laser beam itself and a second low power laser on the satellite would provide two way communications. This would give the effect as an orbital laser system without the cost of orbiting a solar power farm or any other energy source. Right now those relays have only been tested on the ground at distances up to around 1km in declassified tests. If it does ever work well some pretty nuts stuff would be possible for attack and power transmission.

Does it even need to be orbital? A high-altitude one would still be pretty nifty.

[Uncluttered]

I wouldn’t rule out a shallow running submarine being able to fire a laser back into orbit with damaging firepower, but its damn unlikely to ever work well. The power levels for the best blue green underwater lasers today are in the low range of mere 10s of watts.

I was envisioning it actually surfacing to fire a laser, one optimized for firing through air, not water.

In a super future world when that was solved the submarine could first launch a laser relay satellite from a missile tube, then employ it to bombard shore and air targets. The laser beam itself and a second low power laser on the satellite would provide two way communications. This would give the effect as an orbital laser system without the cost of orbiting a solar power farm or any other energy source. Right now those relays have only been tested on the ground at distances up to around 1km in declassified tests. If it does ever work well some pretty nuts stuff would be possible for attack and power transmission.

Does it even need to be orbital? A high-altitude one would still be pretty nifty.

For PEW PEW on a submarine: The easiest way to do this would be to bootstrap a diode laser on a new mast. Ruggedize the little lasers they can mount on Humvees.
The mast does not need a new hull penetration, the power cables can go through existing fittings.
Of course, this weapon would too small for anything unless you are attacked by triremes.
You wouldn't even bother using the nonless-lethal settings. When greenpeace attacks with paint baloons, they use cute girls in cotton shirts, that's what hose "canons" powered by the trimpump are for.

For taking out over horizon targets with a relay drone. (good idea BTW) You need a bigger gun.
A more sophisticated way would be to use a big internal laser with a hermetically sealed laser turret outside.

You'll notice I don't say periscope. Sorry.

Periscopes will bend of you go too fast. (They'll also bend if you don't. Bastards.)
You need to keep moving, or you will have thermal bloom issues. Going fast with a periscope will negate your stealth, so you might as well broach anyway.
Besides. Several minutes before, you just vertically launched a relay drone.

This is unfortunate, but it does allow you to have a nice big laser turret


OK. Not as big as that one, but certainly a respectable size.
The turret should be built INTO the sail, not mounted on a hydraulic lift. The rear of the sail has a few HF sonar receavers which can be moved, and a hydrogen discharge, which can also be moved.
Simply have two doors on either side slide open. You won't need a full range of motion. This isn't an anti ship weapon. You need to track your optical relay drone, missile launch etc.

I remember the reactor thermal output being around 150MWs. The electric output is a respectable 25+ megawatts.

Its fairly reasonable to assume that with this amount of power, the near future limitations for this system are with the raman/fiber/diode lasers themselves.
You can up the output by mixing lasers together, you'll need a lot of room.
If you modernize and shrink all the electronics in the forward upper level, just forward of the sonar shack, you might be able to fit something. Piping large fiber optics from there to the sail is trivial. The conduits already exist.
Lets forget the fact that it's going to get REAL hot up there. The chillwater pipes already exist, and it's not out of the question to install a dedicated coolant pump.

Now, for some REAL power, you need to mess with the reactor iself.

The S6G reactor is a pressurized light water reactor. It has proven itself reliable, and resonably safe. But...It has to go.
Pop out that S6G, and modify or replace it.

What you want is nuclear pumped fission fragment laser....
Nuclear pumped lasers get exited under neutron flux. You can design you reactor to do double duty. Ideally, you would have a pulse reactor, to rapidly turn it on and off in any frequency. Being able to moderate your lasers frequency allows you to better deal with heat blooming and other things that get in the way of extreme optical death.

You will need to somehow optically pipe the output to the turret in the sail. It might be easier and safer to pipe through a hull breach and follow the along the towed array fairing until you reach the sail. This will give your optics a little extra cooling too if they need it.