Feesability of Asteroid weapons in Big 3

[Omega-13]

I recently refreshed myself with Mike Wongs pages on asteroid impacts on a planet, ,aswell as his page on shields handling kenetic energy, and it got me wondering,
would asteroids make good weapons in the big 3,

This is what i was thinking,
A civilization from the big 3, is wanting an inexpensive weapon that could bring harm to a planet, on a global scale.

A few things that one might think about before building a weapon system

*how long does it take to build*
*how much does it cost*
*does it employ stealth technology*
*how long does it take to deploy*
*does it cross moral and ethical boundries*

If we take our own solar system as an example, we have 2 asteroid belts, the belt between earth and mars, and the outter belt, past pluto. In this belt there are millions of asteroids, of all shapes and sizes,

The weapon seems to be right in the enemy's own backyard, what if a civilization could use these asteroids to attack the planet.

If a race, was to attach impulse engines onto these asteroids, ,enough to move it, and move it at a speed where it could reach the enemy planet within a matter of hours, it would spell total destruction to whatever planet it might hit.

A 7 km asteroid, with a density of 2.6 g/cm^3, has a mass of 466,708,666,666 tons
22,000,000 tons (stardestroyer)

Now that is A LOT, if that plowed into a planet, at a significant speed, it would be over for life on that planet
the asteroid is free, the engines cost much less then any weapon system you might ever build to destroy a planet

But compared to b5, st, ,and sw ships, 7 km is pretty small, ,but that is just giving you an idea of the potential, the problem is,

how big of an asteroid can these racecs push?

Mounting engines on them, can be done covertly, by small ships and working robots, hidden inside a belt, they would be undetected,

even so, the asteroid isn't exactly giving off huge radar signals, or EM radiation, it might go undetected for sometime,

You could even put shields on it, to help it on its journy,

something to think about, most shields in the big 3, don't seem to be geared much towards Kenetic energy attacks, so a shield erected over a population base, or planet might not stop it,

if it were larger,

thoughts?
comments?

[Shinova]

B5 has mass drivers, which are in an essence, shooting asteroids at a planet; though I'm not sure if that's exactly theway to do it. There's no reason to believe that the big 3 are not capable of sending large-sized asteroids toward planets.

But depends on what universe the planets belong to. SW planets often have planetary shields.

[Omega-13]

B5 has mass drivers, which are in an essence, shooting asteroids at a planet; though I'm not sure if that's exactly theway to do it. There's no reason to believe that the big 3 are not capable of sending large-sized asteroids toward planets.

But depends on what universe the planets belong to. SW planets often have planetary shields.

yes thats true, though can these shields hold in place, after a 400 billion ton asteroid hits them at 22 km/s
??

and thats only 7 km
not sure what sort of bracing these shields have

[Crown]

not sure what sort of bracing these shields have

Big fuck-off ones I would suppose. Does anyone remember how big the 22 asteroids that Thrawn put over Coruscant were

[Illuminatus Primus]

30 m diameter IIRC.

Doesn't matter anyway. They were all destroyed. They were put up there to prevent traffic from getting to the planet surface for fear of impacts (they thought there were hundreds up there).

[Omega-13]

The shield generator on Hoth , or the one on Endor, weren't that big, certainly no where near large enough to even attempt to absorb the stress for a 400 billion ton asteroid moving at 20k+ km/h

[Crown]

30 m diameter IIRC.

Doesn't matter anyway. They were all destroyed. They were put up there to prevent traffic from getting to the planet surface for fear of impacts (they thought there were hundreds up there).

That's my point. They thought that there was 278(?) up there and their only concern was the effect on traffic, and how it would look to others. They certainly weren't worried about them actually hitting the shield.

[Omega-13]

30 m diameter IIRC.

Doesn't matter anyway. They were all destroyed. They were put up there to prevent traffic from getting to the planet surface for fear of impacts (they thought there were hundreds up there).

That's my point. They thought that there was 278(?) up there and their only concern was the effect on traffic, and how it would look to others. They certainly weren't worried about them actually hitting the shield.

they were only 30 m in diameter.....

[SirNitram]

The shield generator on Hoth , or the one on Endor, weren't that big, certainly no where near large enough to even attempt to absorb the stress for a 400 billion ton asteroid moving at 20k+ km/h

The Endor one withstood a ship impacting the shield well enough, as I recall...

[Darth Wong]

A shield network spread over an entire planet would involve thousands of nodes at a minimum. If each node had a working radius of 30 km, you would need more than a quarter million of them to cover the whole surface of an Earth-sized planet.

Obviously, if they can interlink, then there is some rather significant dispersion of reaction force with such a large number of generators. Also, if the shield geometry is variable, they should be able to greatly reduce the reaction forces by pushing the boundary outwards and slowing down the impactors over a larger distance, thus spreading out the impulse over time.

[Admiral Valdemar]

A shield network spread over an entire planet would involve thousands of nodes at a minimum. If each node had a working radius of 30 km, you would need more than a quarter million of them to cover the whole surface of an Earth-sized planet.

Obviously, if they can interlink, then there is some rather significant dispersion of reaction force with such a large number of generators. Also, if the shield geometry is variable, they should be able to greatly reduce the reaction forces by pushing the boundary outwards and slowing down the impactors over a larger distance, thus spreading out the impulse over time.

As shields are a topic of discussion now, would an intensely strong (thousands of Teslas or more) EM field do the trick or would we need some new type of physics to produce a field we haven't seen before?

[Ted C]

The Centauri mass drivers from B5 were launcing projectiles with a diameter of only about 20m, and they picked these up in near orbit.

Large asteroids will probably be hard to locate most of the time. It would take weeks or more to get one to a planet at sublight speeds, and it would take substantial amounts of force and energy to change its course in the first place.

B5 races don't seem to have the means to apply enough force to drastically change the course of a really massive asteroid.

Trek races could slowly alter the course of a large asteroid over a period of many hours, but it would still probably be weeks before it reached its target; plenty of time for the enemy to launch a deflection mission.

Star Wars technology is sufficient to rapidly accelerate something as massive as a Star Destroyer, so they can probably change the course of asteroids with relatively little difficulty, but it still seems unlikely that they could accelerate them to relativisitic speeds or move them through hyperspace, so such an attack would take a long time to develop. Furthermore, their solution to breaking planetary shields is the Death Star! Building that monstrosity would take far more effort than just altering the courses of large asteroids, so it seems likely that planetary shields have the means to resist asteroid bombardment.

[Ender]

B5 has mass drivers, which are in an essence, shooting asteroids at a planet; though I'm not sure if that's exactly theway to do it. There's no reason to believe that the big 3 are not capable of sending large-sized asteroids toward planets.

But depends on what universe the planets belong to. SW planets often have planetary shields.

yes thats true, though can these shields hold in place, after a 400 billion ton asteroid hits them at 22 km/s
??

and thats only 7 km
not sure what sort of bracing these shields have

Given that in Wars, Planetary shields were designed to counter the kinds of attacks you are describing, I would say it's a safe bet they can handle it.

[aerius]

Trek races could slowly alter the course of a large asteroid over a period of many hours, but it would still probably be weeks before it reached its target; plenty of time for the enemy to launch a deflection mission.

There was a TNG episode where the Enterprise was trying to move a moon back into its proper orbit by putting a warp field around it and pulling. They'd actually moved it a tad before some plot complication kicked in. I'd think that they could get a smaller asteroid up to speed pretty fast using the same technique.

[Darth Wong]

If it takes a long time to accelerate, it takes a long time to decelerate. This is a problem; a weapon that requires a week to launch is rather inflexible. Worse yet, if you change your mind and the target planet surrenders at the 11th hour, you can't stop it.

[Omega-13]

B5 has mass drivers, which are in an essence, shooting asteroids at a planet; though I'm not sure if that's exactly theway to do it. There's no reason to believe that the big 3 are not capable of sending large-sized asteroids toward planets.

But depends on what universe the planets belong to. SW planets often have planetary shields.

yes thats true, though can these shields hold in place, after a 400 billion ton asteroid hits them at 22 km/s
??

and thats only 7 km
not sure what sort of bracing these shields have

Given that in Wars, Planetary shields were designed to counter the kinds of attacks you are describing, I would say it's a safe bet they can handle it.

not sure its ever stated anywhere that planetary shields can withstand the impact of a large asteroid,
smaller ones, yes,
not sure about the big ones

[Ted C]

There was a TNG episode where the Enterprise was trying to move a moon back into its proper orbit by putting a warp field around it and pulling. They'd actually moved it a tad before some plot complication kicked in. I'd think that they could get a smaller asteroid up to speed pretty fast using the same technique.

Yes, but that technobabble would also be their undoing. They could move the moon to a higher orbit while it was encased in that field, but the moment they turned that field off, the moon's normal mass would return, and conservation of energy would drop it back to almost where it started. They might be able to get the moon to higher orbit in a few hours, but they'd have to spend much longer (months, probably) adding KE to it as they slowly reduce the strength of their warp field in order to actually keep it there.

[Admiral Valdemar]

If it takes a long time to accelerate, it takes a long time to decelerate. This is a problem; a weapon that requires a week to launch is rather inflexible. Worse yet, if you change your mind and the target planet surrenders at the 11th hour, you can't stop it.

Newton's laws a bitch.

Unless of course you only accelerated it at half your possible rate and had drives that could do twice that power in the opposing direction, you could stop it if given time but it's still pretty silly unless you had immense propulsive drives to decelerate it, in which case why bother anyway?

[DocHorror]

I remember in 40k the Imperium redirected a huge comet to impact onto a technologically advanced world that was holding up a Crusade...

I think it was Lord Solar Macharius who ordered it...

It seemed that nothing could stop Macharius. Within five years his armies reached the old borders of the Astronomican. They found planets which had not seen an Adept for over five thousand years, where tales of the Emperor, of Space Marines, and the dark days of the Horus Heresy were treated as myths. They found worlds where humans had turned to the dark certainties of science, and created many new and wondrous machines. There were worlds which welcomed Macharius with open arms and others which resisted the forces of the Imperium in vain. The Adeptus Mechanicus long lamented the destruction of Adantris Five whose hyper-technology kept the Imperium at bay for two years before it was destroyed in the conflagration of a re-directed comet. Of its secrets nothing now remains.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I remember in 40k the Imperium redirected a huge comet to impact onto a technologically advanced world that was holding up a Crusade...

I think it was Lord Solar Macharius who ordered it...

It seemed that nothing could stop Macharius. Within five years his armies reached the old borders of the Astronomican. They found planets which had not seen an Adept for over five thousand years, where tales of the Emperor, of Space Marines, and the dark days of the Horus Heresy were treated as myths. They found worlds where humans had turned to the dark certainties of science, and created many new and wondrous machines. There were worlds which welcomed Macharius with open arms and others which resisted the forces of the Imperium in vain. The Adeptus Mechanicus long lamented the destruction of Adantris Five whose hyper-technology kept the Imperium at bay for two years before it was destroyed in the conflagration of a re-directed comet. Of its secrets nothing now remains.

Well that would make more sense. Have lateral thrusters on the comet/asteroid/meteor instead. That way you don't expend a shitload of energy and propellant on slowing the bugger down, just alter the direction it is travelling and hope it doesn't go into orbit and come back a few years later.