Timeline for How long would it take to nuke an alien spaceship in orbit?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
19 events
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| Nov 28, 2018 at 7:39 | comment | added | Rekesoft | @Renan No, they is just saying it's a magical ship. Why they want to think that, is beyond me. The space probes, or space labs like the ISS or the MIR, have been hit by dust while travelling or in orbit. It has not destroyed them. A direct hit with a solid piece of steel above a few grams would do, however. As I said, you don't need to utterly destroy a vehicle to disable it. Just one conventional torpedo can disable any warship. It may sink it or not - probably not - but its ability to continue its mission is severely compromised, and most likely it must return to base for reparations. | |
| Nov 27, 2018 at 18:23 | comment | added | Saiboogu | @Renan That's my belief, against something that size. | |
| Nov 27, 2018 at 17:07 | comment | added | The Square-Cube Law | @Saiboogu you are basically saying nothing we can pack will even tickle it, right? | |
| Nov 27, 2018 at 16:47 | comment | added | Saiboogu | @Rekesoft Both your examples have mass limits dictated by physics and our current technology. Both still require very lucky strikes to take them down with a single hit (or overpowering weapons - a nuke for the carrier, missile for the plane). A multikilometer interstellar space ship? They're already far beyond our technology. They've already traversed an environment that would destroy vehicles built with our technology. I'd buy an unlucky nuke disabling with one hit, maybe - but the truth is if a ship that big was taken down by plucky humans it was likely too fragile to make it here. | |
| Nov 27, 2018 at 9:27 | comment | added | Rekesoft | @Saiboogu " Once your target gets up to multiple kilometers in length, it seems likely that even a few kilotons of energy released on the surface will not be a disabling shot." [Citation needed] By comparison, a 500 ton, 70 m long plane can be brought down by poking a little hole in its hull. A 50,000 tons, 250m long aircraft carrier can be sunk with a single missile with a conventional explosive warhead. You don't need to reduce something to individual atoms to destroy the fighting capability of a vehicle. Doubly so in an environment as harsh as the space is. | |
| Nov 24, 2018 at 18:15 | comment | added | Chris H | @reirab the EKV was only included to give an indication of payload. One big warhead = one big target, but lots of little warheads =lots of hull breaches. I've a vague feeling the Soviets had higher power portable warheads but failed to find them the other day | |
| Nov 24, 2018 at 8:43 | comment | added | reirab | @ChrisH That's why I said significantly-sized nuclear warheads. 2 kT is pretty small when going up against something a few km in diameter. The EKV isn't nuclear at all. It's essentially a suborbital cannon ball with course-correction thrusters, following the "hit it with a really fast rock" strategy. The U.S. currently has only two operational ICBM warheads (W87 and W78) and both weigh several hundred pounds. For something multiple km in diameter, these are what you're going to want to shoot at it. | |
| Nov 23, 2018 at 16:40 | comment | added | Chris H | @reirab W82 was a 2kT 155mm shell weighing 43kg. The groundbased midcourse defense carries the exoatmospheric kill vehicle at 64kg, and is designed to intercept ICBMs in space. So the question is more whether 2kT is enough (multiplied by howveer many you're prepared to launch). And that's just a few wikipedia hits | |
| Nov 23, 2018 at 15:07 | comment | added | Saiboogu | @Rekesoft Once your target gets up to multiple kilometers in length, it seems likely that even a few kilotons of energy released on the surface will not be a disabling shot. After all, the ship (probably) had a way to survive near relativistic impacts with dust and debris on the way here. | |
| Nov 23, 2018 at 13:29 | comment | added | Spratty | @Saiboogu - not if it finds the thermal exhaust port... | |
| Nov 22, 2018 at 11:19 | comment | added | Rekesoft | A SAT impacting against a spacehisp on a retrograde orbit to that of the spaceship it's going to have the same power as a powerful nuke without need for explosives. Just the kinetic energy of two objects at orbital speed and opposite directions of rotation is enough. | |
| Nov 22, 2018 at 5:38 | comment | added | reirab | As Ray alluded to, I think the main problem here is going to be size. ASATs tend to be relatively small. ICMBs are huge because significantly-sized nuclear warheads are quite large and heavy. ICMB warheads weigh hundreds of pounds, at least. | |
| Nov 21, 2018 at 22:18 | comment | added | anon | @JoeBloggs Not even that. Most satellites carry very little fuel on-board; if you can knock them out of orbit enough, they won't be able to correct. Hit them the right way and they'll hit the atmosphere before they can correct, and poof, no more satellite. Depending on the alien tech, that might work, or maybe they do carry enough fuel to "catch" themselves. | |
| Nov 21, 2018 at 21:26 | comment | added | Saiboogu | An ASAT has the guidance ability, but it would be a gnat against a kilometers wide spacecraft. | |
| Nov 21, 2018 at 21:08 | comment | added | Joe Bloggs | @Ray I guess it takes a lot more to kill an alien spaceship than something that has to be put together in a clean room in case of grit... | |
| Nov 21, 2018 at 19:29 | comment | added | Ray | @JoeBloggs The real question is whether any of them produce enough thrust to carry a warhead that's big enough to do some damage. Some ASAT missiles don't even have explosive warheads; they're kinetic kill weapons. | |
| Nov 21, 2018 at 13:26 | comment | added | Joe Bloggs | @Kingledion Put a powerful enough nuke on it and the answer is probably! :-) | |
| Nov 21, 2018 at 13:16 | comment | added | kingledion | Are they big enough to do some damage to a large alien spaceship? | |
| Nov 21, 2018 at 13:15 | history | answered | The Square-Cube Law | CC BY-SA 4.0 |