Would an aerial city or fortress make a viable WMD today?

[draynay]

They'd just get shot down by Metal Gear.

[cubby]

that's one example, but the idea of a flying city is a very old thing in fiction.

Instead of the idea of it being inhabitable for society, I'm more interested in how it could be used as a weapon in reality and how it would fare from a terrain perspective

We are light years away from a flying city. We have trouble launching small rockets into the sky - keeping an actual city airborne would require an insane amount of energy, in a form that doesn't exist right now.

Why do you think if China can make island cities that floating cities are feasible/possible?

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If we're making wishes then it'd make more sense to wish for all people/nations to have the same good values so that we can abolition militaries... They're a waste of resources.

We actually need the military, or some version of it, on a global protection scale. I agree that resources are currently wasted on some parts of it. But even with world peace, we'd need some form of militarization continuing for the long road of space colonization.

[Forogil]

My brain didn't recall the specifics correctly, but the idea isn't mine; https://www.businessinsider.com/air-...n-force-2017-9

The rods in question are telephone-pole-sized, roughly, and weigh a few tons. Still, nearly impossible to detect before impact, and pretty goddamned devastating, with zero fallout to worry about. Also, less time to impact than ICBMs.

This does not seem right at all.

They claim speeds of about 3km/s, which ignoring friction mean that a minimum height of 450km (likely a lot more); but you can't just stop a satellite in orbit and get it to drop straight down without using a lot of energy - the energy needed is comparable to getting it to orbit; and that will surely be noticed. You could possibly get by with less if it had a much more elliptic orbit, but then it would hit sideways and might miss (bounce on the atmosphere and all that).

Normal satellites in low earth orbit move sideways with 8km/s - so assume that instead to get an upper bound.

And the math does not work out: 100 kilogram hitting with 8km/s is only 3e9 J. A kiloton of TNT is 4e12 J; so the 100 kilogram with orbital speed only generates as much energy as 700kg TNT.

Wikipedia citing the AirForce seem to confirm my math; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

[cubby]

Less time to impact is a bit debatable. Depends a lot on the amount of satellites you have and if the ICBM is continental or submarine launched. (especially now that intermediate range treaty is dead.)

The launches would of course be detected, if these weapons ever became operational there would be telescopes and other satellites looking at them 24/7. Both satelite and modern sumbarine launched weapons can reach their targets before counterlaunches are possible.

So all you end up with is just a extra expensive weapon.

The more interesting modern weapons are the nuclear missles and torpedos Russia is working on. they do fun stuff like fly the long way around instead of the fastest path to bypass defenses, and that torpedo can stay underwater for months on it's own just cruising around behind your fleet until its needed.

I was just reading that the Russian torpedo has multiple-megaton range and can cause radioactive tsunamis, making hundreds of miles of shoreline (and cities) uninhabitable for decades.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Guys, say what you will about the OP in particular and the thread topic... but is this topic no worse than a certain somebody's "intelligence question: 2 people walk out a bar" thread that absolutely makes no sense?

[Ettan]

mmm no

But in a sense it is something we really need.
Somwehere where we could construct big ships and habitats (like very very very big ships) already in orbit or low gravity.
So that these would never need to be capable to overcome earths gravity and could be constructed purely for space travel (so without the need for rocket engines).
This would be an obvious boon in that we could make ships created for space travel, so low thrust engines but capable of sustaining this for a looooong time.
The holy grail would be coming up with something capable of providing constant acceleration.

Rockets will never get us anywhere really, as while rocket thrust is strong, their burn/ output is still calculated in seconds for a reason (and space is pretty freaking huge).


But its more feasable to use the moon for that. Start building automated bases on the moon for mining/ refining then eventually either construct it directly on the moon or build the massive shipyard in one of the earth-moon systems stable lagrange points.
As bringing all the materiel up from the earths gravity well would be a titannic waste of resources.

[prwraith]

I'd pay to see that perfect 360 degree point defense system.

[cubby]

mmm no

But in a sense it is something we really need.
Somwehere where we could construct big ships and habitats (like very very very big ships) already in orbit or low gravity.
So that these would never need to be capable to overcome earths gravity and could be constructed purely for space travel (so without the need for rocket engines).
This would be an obvious boon in that we could make ships created for space travel, so low thrust engines but capable of sustaining this for a looooong time.
The holy grail would be coming up with something capable of providing constant acceleration.

Rockets will never get us anywhere really, as while rocket thrust is strong, their burn/ output is still calculated in seconds for a reason (and space is pretty freaking huge).


But its more feasable to use the moon for that. Start building automated bases on the moon for mining/ refining then eventually either construct it directly on the moon or build the massive shipyard in one of the earth-moon systems stable lagrange points.
As bringing all the materiel up from the earths gravity well would be a titannic waste of resources.

Along those line capturing smaller asteroids and converting those to interstellar ship would be viable as well. Or repurposing those resources on the asteroid (i.e. the entire asteroid) to craft the ship hull.

We have to tackle cold fusion and then anti-gravity (not that those are linear developments) to crack open constant acceleration - because you're right, that's about the only way we become an interstellar species.

But first - to the Moon! (or, rather, back to the Moon!)

[draynay]

Guys, say what you will about the OP in particular and the thread topic... but is this topic no worse than a certain somebody's "intelligence question: 2 people walk out a bar" thread that absolutely makes no sense?

Only because that thread is sensationally terrible.

[Calfredd]

Guys, say what you will about the OP in particular and the thread topic... but is this topic no worse than a certain somebody's "intelligence question: 2 people walk out a bar" thread that absolutely makes no sense?

Made even funnier that it seems like the mods goofed and only moved the first post to Fun Stuff and left the headless corpse wriggling around in general off-topic.

[Hellobolis]

I was just reading that the Russian torpedo has multiple-megaton range and can cause radioactive tsunamis, making hundreds of miles of shoreline (and cities) uninhabitable for decades.

rule 1 of fighting the US in a conventional war: you have to be able to take out carrier groups.

but getting close to a carrier group is difficult. solution: biggest bomb ever made.

[smityx]

An O'neil Cycliner purposesly deorbited and crashed into Earth. I believe that is the background of some Gundam cartoons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder

[shadowmouse]

actually, as someone pointed out, I was more intrigued by the bad future scene in Bioshock Infinite, where Comstock's floating city supported by smaller blimps lays siege to New York with missiles.

But I recall also seeing a movie where a similar concept happens, except instead of nukes or missiles the weapon was a satellite laser attached to it that scorched the population below in seconds.

In all cases, the element of surprise meant no one could even have the time to retaliate. I thought how amazing this would be from a real life military perspective. We're all on the ground in real life pointing nukes at each other with no means of anything but mutually assured destruction. I wish America sorted out a means of gaining such an insurmountable geographical advantage that we can hold all the cards again.

And what better than the sky? The ocean is already so contested.

"And this is why we can't have nice things."

I grew up in the 60s, and I grew up watching constant images of mushroom clouds, seeing Cronkite reporting on Vietnam, and all the rest. As a young college student in the late 70s the Vietnam war still cast quite a shadow, particularly through the G.I. Bill. This post made me look up something that was likely to come up as we did things that seemed improbable then, sitting out on the quad smoking pot in support of legalization, wondering where politics and the economy were going to take us and what would happen if Ronnie Rayguns got his way. A particular topic would pop up, as we wondered if the draft was going to come back, and I'll link the NPR 50 year anniversary article: https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/13294...50-years-later

It won't resonate in today's political climate, but perhaps it should because we used to draw down troops, we used to declare wars (by which theory we haven't had a war since WWII) and I remember the impression a recovering Europe made on me in the mid-late 60s, Canada just afterwards, Europe again in the mid-late 80s, and then once more near the end of the 90s and I remember how I felt each time I returned to the US -- home -- after my time abroad. In the 60s, I felt things were better, in the 80s, I was shocked, in the 90s there was a near fingernails on the blackboard sense that things were taking a wrong turn, and with the turn of the millennium I became a long-term expat watching as things unfolded.

Today, I see that those days sitting on the quad may finally be sorting out to allow marijuana and derivatives to be legally sold with some restrictions. I see discussion of defunding or at least making an effort to demilitarize police. I see a new attempt to address several long standing social issues. I may even be seeing a new awareness of a need to fix a civilian infrastructure that has been left lagging. And yet I still see that we are driven by threat (try to read the news without seeing a fluff piece on China or Russia) rather than challenge (I remember school stopping to watch things like moonwalks).

"I wish America sorted out a means of gaining such an insurmountable geographical advantage that we can hold all the cards again."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/were-n...-19-these-days

From birth, we here in the US are raised to think of this as the greatest country in the world. Well, it’s time to think again. We no longer live up to our own hype by almost any metric.

But we have a far flung military (and a legacy of mangled veterans to prove it) and a really big prison system! That's good, right?

"We can no longer insist on having both guns and butter," Bacevich says. "We are compromising the possibility of sustaining genuine prosperity at home."

As Eisenhower warned, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense, a theft. The cost of one modern, heavy bomber is this: a modern, brick school in more than 30 cities."

https://www.npr.org/2011/01/16/13293...ges-the-nation

[Ihavewaffles]

Op, did u also recently watch captain america the winter soldie n avengers age of ultron?