Ort Cloud/Keiper Belt Refueling
- Thread starter RandyT0001
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Aramis,
As much as I appreciate your tenacity, I think you are grossly underestimating the scale of your dilemna.
1. How can you defend a system when an enemy can pretty much jump in anywhere inside it? Something like 99.99999999999% of the solar system is empty space!
2. In our solar system, Kuiper objects are located between 30AU's and 50AU's from the sun. If you isolate them to +/- 10deg from the ecliptic, you are talking about a tremendous volume of space. How many Earth/Venus sized worlds would you have to strip mine just to manufacture enough mines to adequately fill a volume of space this size? I'll leave this calc to Mal!
3. Now think about the Oort cloud; it's a rough sphere that may extend from 50,000AU's to 3LY from the sun. How many AHL's do you need to defend this volume of space?
Let the enemy enter your system. Let him group his forces. Strike at his temporary bases or supply caches. Disrupt his formations and communications. Gather intelligence. Then, when he thinks he's ready, let him try to penetrate the inner system. Harass him all the way to your concentration of forces. Then draw him into battle where your forces are strongest, not spread out and thin.
Where forces are fairly comparable, he can't siege you because he has the same problem you do; he can't split up his forces without significantly reducing his odds! Let him drive your forces from near the high value area (homeworld, gas giant, space station, etc.) and now he has enemies on two sides and he's immobolized; forced to stay near his prize. Unless he is willing to totally destroy the high value area, time is on the side of the defender, who is not limited by an extended supply chain and reliance on far off iceballs.
In the case your facing the combined fleets of several subsector's bent on forcing your rebellion to it's knees, you're screwed and better be trying to get out of Dodge shortly after they show up on your screens!
As much as I appreciate your tenacity, I think you are grossly underestimating the scale of your dilemna.
1. How can you defend a system when an enemy can pretty much jump in anywhere inside it? Something like 99.99999999999% of the solar system is empty space!
2. In our solar system, Kuiper objects are located between 30AU's and 50AU's from the sun. If you isolate them to +/- 10deg from the ecliptic, you are talking about a tremendous volume of space. How many Earth/Venus sized worlds would you have to strip mine just to manufacture enough mines to adequately fill a volume of space this size? I'll leave this calc to Mal!
3. Now think about the Oort cloud; it's a rough sphere that may extend from 50,000AU's to 3LY from the sun. How many AHL's do you need to defend this volume of space?
Let the enemy enter your system. Let him group his forces. Strike at his temporary bases or supply caches. Disrupt his formations and communications. Gather intelligence. Then, when he thinks he's ready, let him try to penetrate the inner system. Harass him all the way to your concentration of forces. Then draw him into battle where your forces are strongest, not spread out and thin.
Where forces are fairly comparable, he can't siege you because he has the same problem you do; he can't split up his forces without significantly reducing his odds! Let him drive your forces from near the high value area (homeworld, gas giant, space station, etc.) and now he has enemies on two sides and he's immobolized; forced to stay near his prize. Unless he is willing to totally destroy the high value area, time is on the side of the defender, who is not limited by an extended supply chain and reliance on far off iceballs.
In the case your facing the combined fleets of several subsector's bent on forcing your rebellion to it's knees, you're screwed and better be trying to get out of Dodge shortly after they show up on your screens!
You don't have to mine the space. You just have to be able to mine the individual chunks.
a handful of nukes for every major chunk.
Which is why I suggest that, in the OTU, they must not exist.
Likewise, you're making the same error several flag officers in WW2 made: THEY DON"T NEED THE *(*() System, unless the system is a major production base. We could have left thousands of japs on various soloman islands, and simply bypassed those we had no airbases on, save that the theater commander could not grasp rule one of naval warfare: If you can go around it, and it can't come get you, it may as well not exist!
They just need to be able to refuel and proceed on to major targets.
Anything that isn't making warships is NOT A F'ING TARGET! Mostly becuase anything not making warships can be bypassed if no attempt is made to min the oort.
It's not an area minefield. It's separate minefields on the finite number of chunks.
You don't have to be closer, either, just able to get to them before they can finish refueling. Under T4, this could be done with specialized SDB's pulling 15+G's...
For the Oort, that's problematic; time to put mines on the big ones, and drive the small ones inbound.
For the Kuiper, it's far less so.
I do unsterstand the volume, but the VOLUME is immaterial. Pun intended.
You never need to defend a volume with a radius more than the maximum damaging range of your opponents best weapon. (The 2mile limit was the public maximum range of the Major Battleships guns in the 1880's...)
You may need to defend multiple volumes. But even then, the oort is estimated at about 10K bits over 1km, last I heard. So thats a mere 40K warheads, with small triggers and thermal decay batteries, and a sufficiency of wedges to maintain 100year plus, and it's affordable. It could also explain the small fleets if the GTFT Econ generates the kind of GDP it appears to.
But you're not defending the volume of the zone. just the points within it. And you've had time to shepherd them, too.
Area Denial is a land-war tactic.
Volume denial is an Air-War tactic.
Resource denial is the basis of wet-naval, and should be the basis of space-naval, warfare, and should be the cause for the AD and VD tactics.
Suggestion: go read AT Mahan's "The Influence of Seapower Upon History"...
a handful of nukes for every major chunk.
Which is why I suggest that, in the OTU, they must not exist.
Likewise, you're making the same error several flag officers in WW2 made: THEY DON"T NEED THE *(*() System, unless the system is a major production base. We could have left thousands of japs on various soloman islands, and simply bypassed those we had no airbases on, save that the theater commander could not grasp rule one of naval warfare: If you can go around it, and it can't come get you, it may as well not exist!
They just need to be able to refuel and proceed on to major targets.
Anything that isn't making warships is NOT A F'ING TARGET! Mostly becuase anything not making warships can be bypassed if no attempt is made to min the oort.
It's not an area minefield. It's separate minefields on the finite number of chunks.
You don't have to be closer, either, just able to get to them before they can finish refueling. Under T4, this could be done with specialized SDB's pulling 15+G's...
For the Oort, that's problematic; time to put mines on the big ones, and drive the small ones inbound.
For the Kuiper, it's far less so.
I do unsterstand the volume, but the VOLUME is immaterial. Pun intended.
You never need to defend a volume with a radius more than the maximum damaging range of your opponents best weapon. (The 2mile limit was the public maximum range of the Major Battleships guns in the 1880's...)
You may need to defend multiple volumes. But even then, the oort is estimated at about 10K bits over 1km, last I heard. So thats a mere 40K warheads, with small triggers and thermal decay batteries, and a sufficiency of wedges to maintain 100year plus, and it's affordable. It could also explain the small fleets if the GTFT Econ generates the kind of GDP it appears to.
But you're not defending the volume of the zone. just the points within it. And you've had time to shepherd them, too.
Area Denial is a land-war tactic.
Volume denial is an Air-War tactic.
Resource denial is the basis of wet-naval, and should be the basis of space-naval, warfare, and should be the cause for the AD and VD tactics.
Suggestion: go read AT Mahan's "The Influence of Seapower Upon History"...
Aramis,
If you expend your limited resources on denying your on-again/off-again enemy access to extremely distant fuel sources, what resources are you going to dedicate to defending the relative plethora of fuel concentrated in the icy moons or gas giants closer to the hab zone? There comes a time when trying to extend your defenses to encompass all possible resources becomes self defeating and uneconomical. As your island hopping example so adequately demonstrated, you must concentrate your efforts, otherwise the attackers just by-pass your best defenses.
As a side note; I must concede that you really don't have to mine every Kuiper/Oort object as you just need to mine the one your enemy goes to first or second. After losing a unit to a mine, he will 1) be expecting more, and 2) expend resources to detect/sweep mines even if they aren't there.
BTW: Yes, I have read Mahan several times (and Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Yamamoto, Churchhill, Nimitz, MacArthur, Miyamoto, and even some Nelson); it was required reading where I attended university. I have also received a great deal of training in naval strategy and tactics (specifically littoral warfare) from a rather distinguished military institution at Newport, RI. The concepts you write about are not foreign to me; but I am hard of hearing, so please continue to shout
If you expend your limited resources on denying your on-again/off-again enemy access to extremely distant fuel sources, what resources are you going to dedicate to defending the relative plethora of fuel concentrated in the icy moons or gas giants closer to the hab zone? There comes a time when trying to extend your defenses to encompass all possible resources becomes self defeating and uneconomical. As your island hopping example so adequately demonstrated, you must concentrate your efforts, otherwise the attackers just by-pass your best defenses.
As a side note; I must concede that you really don't have to mine every Kuiper/Oort object as you just need to mine the one your enemy goes to first or second. After losing a unit to a mine, he will 1) be expecting more, and 2) expend resources to detect/sweep mines even if they aren't there.
BTW: Yes, I have read Mahan several times (and Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Yamamoto, Churchhill, Nimitz, MacArthur, Miyamoto, and even some Nelson); it was required reading where I attended university. I have also received a great deal of training in naval strategy and tactics (specifically littoral warfare) from a rather distinguished military institution at Newport, RI. The concepts you write about are not foreign to me; but I am hard of hearing, so please continue to shout
Given the inhabited time frame, and number of wars, I expect the first 10 parsecs of border either lack said objects due to system engineering, or are heavily mined.
Once you establish the borders, the space behind can be far less patrolled.
In a small state like the RC, the needed depth of 12 Pc (about as far as you can effectively tanker, and, TW, the maximum TNE/MT design inherent capability at 3J4) is deeper than the whole of the state; then the expense can become prohibitive.
The 3I, even with a 12pc wide zone has more than enough to make the placement of monitors outside the safes and in the kuiper fairly workable. Meson bays, PA's, J1 6+G
Logically, either the 3I has done this, or Oort an Kuiper objects are much rarer, or they didn't form.
you need to defend each world, but the kuiper belt are, for this purpose, worlds. And given the probable improvements on tech, Detectable from 1Pc+. I forget how far it worked out to under the Definitive Sensor Rules resolution on a 100km rock. I remember it was detectable at 1Pc+; this makes it a viable refueling point for invasion.
If you can't prevent their forces from massing via multiple routes, you have lost the war.
The other option would be to find some excuse to deny oort refueling.
Once you establish the borders, the space behind can be far less patrolled.
In a small state like the RC, the needed depth of 12 Pc (about as far as you can effectively tanker, and, TW, the maximum TNE/MT design inherent capability at 3J4) is deeper than the whole of the state; then the expense can become prohibitive.
The 3I, even with a 12pc wide zone has more than enough to make the placement of monitors outside the safes and in the kuiper fairly workable. Meson bays, PA's, J1 6+G
Logically, either the 3I has done this, or Oort an Kuiper objects are much rarer, or they didn't form.
you need to defend each world, but the kuiper belt are, for this purpose, worlds. And given the probable improvements on tech, Detectable from 1Pc+. I forget how far it worked out to under the Definitive Sensor Rules resolution on a 100km rock. I remember it was detectable at 1Pc+; this makes it a viable refueling point for invasion.
If you can't prevent their forces from massing via multiple routes, you have lost the war.
The other option would be to find some excuse to deny oort refueling.
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
Um, this is just a thought mind you, instead of mines why not just place a really big beam weapon in the hab zone and have it fire on suspected targets of opportunity in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud? Now, I understand that beam diffusion will be the biggest problem as it reaches the outer system, not to mention the speed-of-light delay. Just picture if you will, a solar power satellite about 1 kilometer in width and 5 kilometers in height aiming its microwave transmission array at a cometary target - the target will probably not take direct damage from the beam (save for some electronics fragging), but isn't it possible to cause the ices on the comet itself to sublime from the microwave beam and fracture the body so it could create shrapnel hits on a ship? Of course, we may need a bigger solar power satellite...
Or even just mirrors and use a direct focus. Imagine a series of 3 mirrors, each about 1000km in diameter made from solar sail material and located at the trojan points and the lagrange point between the world and its primary. The two mirrors at the trojan points would redirect the sunlight onto the mirror at the lagrange point (L1, I think) which would act as a focal array to concentrate the sunlight onto a single point - the target cometary body in the outer system.
These are just ideas I'm throwing out mind you, I have not done all the math on this yet. For some reason, I'm thinking large this evening.
Or even just mirrors and use a direct focus. Imagine a series of 3 mirrors, each about 1000km in diameter made from solar sail material and located at the trojan points and the lagrange point between the world and its primary. The two mirrors at the trojan points would redirect the sunlight onto the mirror at the lagrange point (L1, I think) which would act as a focal array to concentrate the sunlight onto a single point - the target cometary body in the outer system.
These are just ideas I'm throwing out mind you, I have not done all the math on this yet. For some reason, I'm thinking large this evening.
Given the "official" diffraction limits by TL, the input energy would need to be Starkly Astonishing!
Quite Doable... I once designed a 50KTd Laser under FF&S which had a significant range. The price, however, was as significant as the range. Cheaper to have lots of little drones out there.
One other thought:
If they Jump inbound upon your approach, you can simply get the course, and jump back as soon as you read the jump flash.
Quite Doable... I once designed a 50KTd Laser under FF&S which had a significant range. The price, however, was as significant as the range. Cheaper to have lots of little drones out there.
One other thought:
If they Jump inbound upon your approach, you can simply get the course, and jump back as soon as you read the jump flash.
Wil,
You've gone through Special Pleading and out the other side on this one.
First, jump flash is murky bit on canon. No word on signal strengths, no word on what is actually IS. Some bits of canon even suggest it can be 'massaged' or 'muted' in certain ways; i.e. that sidebar in GT:FI featuring the IISS ELINT mission.
Second, only TNE mentioned that information could be derived from jump flashes and even then TNE hedged its bets with lots of 'ifs', 'maybes', 'sometimes', 'occasionallys', and so on. You MAY BE able to learn something IF you're close enough, IF you have the right sensor set up, IF you get a good enough look, IF, IF, IF, IF, ad finitum. That's hardly something to count on for operational intelligence.
Third, what happened to your interception force's real space vector when it jumped back 'in'? They've worked up one helluva vector zooming out to the KBO or Oort object in question and they'll carry that vector with them through jump, a vector that may take sometime to adjust I might add.
So, you're reaction force witnesses a bit of murky canon, a jump flash, performs what canon describes as a minor miracle and produces enemy course information from the flash, the interception force then jumps back home itself, and - lo and behold - just so happens to have an actually useful vector when it exits jump space to engage the intruders 168 hours later?
No thanks. That's a bit too rich for MTU, too pat, too cinematic.
YMMV.
Have fun,
Bill
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
The solar power satellite as a weapon idea needs some refinement, but the big mirrors are pretty straightforward.
I'll go ahead and argue this, because while it could be designed similarly to a laser (particularly the focal array) - it isn't. Its a big mirror, if anything it resembles the idea of a signal mirror. The mirror isn't lasing anything, its just focussing sunlight that is being reflected into it from the LaGrange point mirrors. Its just a much bigger version of the magnifying glass used to fry bugs on a hot summer's day. The most expensive part of the system is going to be the fire control system, sensors, and computers.
Well, Bill, if you see the flash, (Flash is canon from MT onwards; reading it is TNE), you can jump back to home port with reasonable assurance that it is either a target, or they're going away.
The rules are simple and straightforward in the RSB for TNE.
That is the ONLY reference I have which ays you can work anything out from jump flash.
I don't count GT worth anything, so i can't comment on the sidebars therein.
Jeff: the same diffraction limits would apply, wouldn't they?
the focal length being sought is on the order of 0-30 AU...
The rules are simple and straightforward in the RSB for TNE.
That is the ONLY reference I have which ays you can work anything out from jump flash.
I don't count GT worth anything, so i can't comment on the sidebars therein.
Jeff: the same diffraction limits would apply, wouldn't they?
the focal length being sought is on the order of 0-30 AU...
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
Yup, range is pretty ridiculous for a direct damage weapon. The key is that you are not targetting the enemy ship, you are targetting the cometary body that the enemy ship is trying to refuel from. It will take far less energy to start the gases on the ice subliming than it will to do direct damage to the enemy ship. The goal is to make the cometary body explosively outgas and damage the enemy ship through fragmentation hits.
RandyT0001
SOC-13
Yup, range is pretty ridiculous for a direct damage weapon. The key is that you are not targetting the enemy ship, you are targetting the cometary body that the enemy ship is trying to refuel from. It will take far less energy to start the gases on the ice subliming than it will to do direct damage to the enemy ship. The goal is to make the cometary body explosively outgas and damage the enemy ship through fragmentation hits. </font>[/QUOTE]I don't think that the outgassing is at that high of a velocity. IIRC, the gases coming out have a speed of about 35mph. Even if it were 10x that much the fragment material is going to have a low density. I seriously doubt that it could damage a ship to any great degree considering that the hulls of ships are designed resist attacks from lasers, plasma, fusion, PA weapons. IMO
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
Crap, back to the drawing board then....
Actually, jef, I think you may be on to something... in a totally different light (pun intended)....
how they Shoal and shepherd those objects!
If such a device can be built adequately to MOVE the things, you aim at the spinward end. Slow it down to drop it in closer... when it's where you want it, speed it up.
Few bodies, and allows coalescing it into a planetoid belt... long term system engineering. And, for the scale, good enough and maybe cheap enough to explain the lack of such objects needed for conformity to Imperial history.
They just intentionally smashed every detectable into a GG.... centuries ago!
how they Shoal and shepherd those objects!
If such a device can be built adequately to MOVE the things, you aim at the spinward end. Slow it down to drop it in closer... when it's where you want it, speed it up.
Few bodies, and allows coalescing it into a planetoid belt... long term system engineering. And, for the scale, good enough and maybe cheap enough to explain the lack of such objects needed for conformity to Imperial history.
They just intentionally smashed every detectable into a GG.... centuries ago!
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
Now that is thinking way bigger than I was...
But its great! I like this idea, there is a lot that I can do with it.
Hey, do you think one more mirror would be needed, Aramis? For angling the beam onto the centerline of the comet for thrust since the original idea had the beam just hitting it broadside to the comet's direction of orbit (assuming a circular orbit, there wouldn't be much of a problem for elliptical orbits).
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
One other thing, Jeff, about the outgassing - wouldn't you actually be doing their job for them? That is, turning the H2 to gas, so they can refuel?
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
Well, the original hope was to cause the lower temperature volatiles to go first - like methane and carbon dioxide with the water going later as it heats up. The ice chunks from the subliming volatiles would actually damage the enemy ships, but they would need a higher velocity to penetrate the hull sections. There would be gaseous methane and water to use, but the enemy ship would still need to scoop and crack it for hydrogen.
You'd need at least two... primary and object, essentially, like a giant reflector telescope.
Fritz: the mirror idea isn't going to generate enough in the right density for "Atmospheric" scooping. Cometary and asteroidal refuels have always been implied to be shoveling actions...
Fritz: the mirror idea isn't going to generate enough in the right density for "Atmospheric" scooping. Cometary and asteroidal refuels have always been implied to be shoveling actions...
RandyT0001
SOC-13
So you're saying one could find them, change their orbit so that they are repositioned into a belt and maybe even send some into a nearby gas giant? Have you thought about the size of these things, a large number are going to be several kilometers in breadth, lots of mass. A lot more mass than the biggest Imperial starship. You would have to have a very large maneuver drive and power plant to push it around. Provided you have the drives and can attach it to the KBO within a couple of days and send it off, have you considered the probably number of KBO's and ort cloud objects there are?
Let's assume 50,000 on average per system. (Nobody can honestly say howmany there are but I think 50,000 is probably only 10% of what most systems might have.) Let's assume that you have 50 of these KBO "movers" ships or drives. Each takes two days to position and then move the object into a new orbit (that new belt). OK, 50,000*2/50/365=(about)5.5 years of constant 24 hours a day moving for one system. 5.5 years * 5500 starsystems (lets assume only 50% of systems have KBO's and/or an ort cloud) = 30,250 years to do the half of the Imperium's 11,000 worlds. To do it within the Imperium 1000 year existance you would need 1513 KBO/ ort cloud object movers (each costing several billion CR each). And realistically it will probably take three times the alloted two days to attach and move the objects (if not more).
Honestly, I don't think this plan will work. What service, navy or scouts conducts these operations? If it is left to the individual mainworlds to "cleanse" their own system, many worlds wont have the necessary tech to do it so it would have to be an Imperial run (or at least a colonial, sub-sector) program.
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