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Paranoid uses for starship


tomf

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Weaponising is fairly easy. Load a cargo Starship with dosens of 5-ish meter long metal (preferably aluminum or volfram) rods with tiny retrorockets. Deorbit them over a specific location. A thin stick flying at Mach 25 is very hard to hit with anti-missile weapons, and the insane speed means that, upon collision, the rod will, quite destructively, explode. That's a fairly nice weapon, if you ask me.

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40 minutes ago, Kasyan said:

Weaponising is fairly easy. Load a cargo Starship with dosens of 5-ish meter long metal (preferably aluminum or volfram) rods with tiny retrorockets. Deorbit them over a specific location. A thin stick flying at Mach 25 is very hard to hit with anti-missile weapons, and the insane speed means that, upon collision, the rod will, quite destructively, explode. That's a fairly nice weapon, if you ask me.

It will take just several of them, because its payload is several tens of tonnes.

The choice between the aluminium (2.7 t/m3) and tungsten (19.25 t/m3) is strange.

Kinetic ebergy of a typical rod-from-god is several tens of TNT tonnes, just negligible, and requires a direct hit which is unlikely possible.

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20 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I don't disagree with some of your points, but I would like to comment that even with Starship "taking" the Moon in the long term scenario you proposed also feels unfeasible to me. It is just too big.

Starship's primary design goal is doing this..... but on Mars.

You could argue neither are feasible, which also might be true, but that is also not what was asked in the thread. If you aren't paranoid about it being possible, you can't answer as a paranoid general ;D

 

On a serious note, any long term "base" on the Lunar surface might happen with or without Starship if Artemis gets off the pad. What we mean by "taking the Moon" is very vague and could mean a whole bunch of things. For the "paranoid general" scenario, its the worst possible end-game sort of setup, which is far future stuff. For me as a not paranoid person, I'd say an ISS continual presence on the Moon supported by Starship is much more reasonable, if Starship's development continues at its current pace.

Militarily an ISS level presence on the Moon means nothing, the same way the ISS has no real military value. Both would be highly symbolic however. Starship itself would continue to be built out to support its original goal of supporting Mars missions. In the mean time I see no reason it couldn't continue to build on whatever Moon base is created, exists, or whatever crazy billionaire wants to build and pay SpaceX for their own home away from home. 

The other thing to consider is SpaceX has experience, but they also currently don't have such a large head start no one else can catch up. But if your country is still flying existing tech, and Starship is already landing people on the Moon, or made their return trip test to Mars. The game might already be over in terms of "catching up" with Starship and SpaceX.

 

 

Edited by MKI
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14 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

It will take just several of them, because its payload is several tens of tonnes.

The choice between the aluminium (2.7 t/m3) and tungsten (19.25 t/m3) is strange.

Kinetic ebergy of a typical rod-from-god is several tens of TNT tonnes, just negligible, and requires a direct hit which is unlikely possible.

Tungsten is not my choice, it’s from an old article on PopMech (can’t find the source right now). I suppose tungsten is tougher and more likely to survive reentry, but I’m not particularly sure.

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4 hours ago, Kasyan said:

Tungsten is not my choice, it’s from an old article on PopMech (can’t find the source right now). I suppose tungsten is tougher and more likely to survive reentry, but I’m not particularly sure.

The idea is maximum mass behind a minimum of atmospheric drag, so you lose as little kinetic energy to aero drag as possible. Higher density is good, but at least the cap needs to be able to handle the usual problems of the bow shock, particularly at the velocities it will experience shortly befor impact.

guidance is relatively easy, a thruster in the back that turns the rod slightly side on, steering with body lift the same way the Falcon 9 returns.

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On 9/9/2021 at 1:12 PM, Kasyan said:

Weaponising is fairly easy. Load a cargo Starship with dosens of 5-ish meter long metal (preferably aluminum or volfram) rods with tiny retrorockets. Deorbit them over a specific location. A thin stick flying at Mach 25 is very hard to hit with anti-missile weapons, and the insane speed means that, upon collision, the rod will, quite destructively, explode. That's a fairly nice weapon, if you ask me.

Why aluminum or volfram and not steel?  or just cast iron (cheap)?

I assume there is some advantage to one or both that outweighs the simple kinetic engergy?

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21 hours ago, MKI said:

Starship's primary design goal is doing this..... but on Mars.

You could argue neither are feasible, which also might be true, but that is also not what was asked in the thread. If you aren't paranoid about it being possible, you can't answer as a paranoid general ;D

Starship is supposed to build a city on Mars. That is not "taking" it. There would still be tons of territory for other countries to use.

I'd like to clarify what I meant by "taking" was "occupying the surface". It is hardly an occupation if you only have a small town sized lunar base.

21 hours ago, MKI said:

What we mean by "taking the Moon" is very vague and could mean a whole bunch of things. For the "paranoid general" scenario, its the worst possible end-game sort of setup, which is far future stuff. For me as a not paranoid person, I'd say an ISS continual presence on the Moon supported by Starship is much more reasonable, if Starship's development continues at its current pace.

I still don't think the far-future extreme scenario is reasonable even for a paranoid general. It is just too outlandish.

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10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I'd like to clarify what I meant by "taking" was "occupying the surface". It is hardly an occupation if you only have a small town sized lunar base.

Eh, since this thread is already dangerously political, let's take another example: the Arctic.

Bases like this

1726354.psd+(1).jpg

aren't exactly occupying much space, yet they provide an anchor point for interdiction and this enforcement of territorial claims - such as Russia's efforts to get recognition of the Eurasian extended continental shelf.

CLlTGWUVAAAdumR.jpg

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I'm going to go conspiracy theorist for this one, if you'll indulge me...

To find what Elon's (whoever he is) true motive, we need to find the connections. He has a 'business' building solar panels and batteries. He is building a that Starship to take massive payloads to orbit. I hear NASA has proposed using one to put a large telescopes into orbit.  It's pretty clear what's going on here.

In case you can't see it, let me lay it out for you. Starship puts a massive telescope into orbit. Nobody is going to question it because it will be all public and official. Not a spy satellite, not a problem.  Little will we suspect that this 'telescope' is actually the most powerful laser ever made. But it won't be enough.

Next they'll send up a massive sunshade to go with that massive telescope. JWST needs one, why not this one? Nothing strange, right? But that 'sunshade' is a really a massive solar array to power the massive laser, something one of Elon's companies can easily supply without question. But that still isn't enough.

Then there's a third servicing mission to add more things to the 'telescope.' They'll talk about scientific payloads, but it'll be a massive bank of batteries to make a capacitor for the laser plus a massed krypton-ion thrusters, like Starlink uses, for better maneuvering. With Starship's massive payload capacity and a bit of subterfuge, it'll be too late to stop it.

Target this orbital death ray with ASAT launchers and it'll burn out the guidance of the missiles in flight, then it can turn and fire its laser to change orbit and avoid all interceptors. Then it will be able to burn all satellites on orbit and attack anywhere on the ground in a direct line to the laser. Everything on-board will be solar powered and by the time they need to re-supply krypton gas, all opposition will be too suppressed to stop a re-supply launch. It will dominate a huge area!

...Once again, I'm channeling the mindset of conspiracy theorist here. I doubt this would happen, but I think it would be more fun if I let everyone poke the holes in this one. I am well aware this is a stock villain superweapon. But it's not about how cliché it is, but plausible it sounds. 

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5 hours ago, 55delta said:

Target this orbital death ray with ASAT launchers and it'll burn out the guidance of the missiles in flight, then it can turn and fire its laser to change orbit and avoid all interceptors.

OK, one question, Mr Bond: is Elon Musk secretly a North Korean?

 

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On 9/1/2021 at 11:17 AM, Beccab said:

 

Starship Earth to Earth is dumb... you've got a long boat ride, a lot of bureaucracy to keep track of everyone, a long boat ride to the Starship as it has to be far out enough to not disturb nearby cities, and before all of that, you have to filter anyone who can't take 2-4 gs of acceleration so they don't pass out on the way up. After all that, you have to do all this again in reverse. Even if it works out, you'll take longer than a plane, pump an absolute excrementton of greenhouse gases, and if anything goes wrong during the flight you'll have a slim chance of seeing it through to the landing. Another one of Elon's schemes to pull in investors. Might as well just catch a plane - Starship is only going to be useful for space travel.

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38 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Starship Earth to Earth is dumb... you've got a long boat ride, a lot of bureaucracy to keep track of everyone, a long boat ride to the Starship as it has to be far out enough to not disturb nearby cities, and before all of that, you have to filter anyone who can't take 2-4 gs of acceleration so they don't pass out on the way up. After all that, you have to do all this again in reverse. Even if it works out, you'll take longer than a plane, pump an absolute excrementton of greenhouse gases, and if anything goes wrong during the flight you'll have a slim chance of seeing it through to the landing. Another one of Elon's schemes to pull in investors. Might as well just catch a plane - Starship is only going to be useful for space travel.

Trend to agree, also if share an Concorde problem, if you are not traveling between major cities you will then need to tavel to an airport for one or two extra flights. 
Now unlike Concorde range is unlimited if you use an first stage who increase complexity a lot. 
Also paranoid leaders will get more paranoid if regularly overflown by ultra heavy launchers who has been used as strategic bombers. 
One of the engines failed on the Tokyo to Paris tun so we need to abort to Moscow, However Moscow air control and communication is pretty much down because some hacking, its also been an major terrorist attack in Moscow.
You are in air defence and have no idea about the starship abort. 
At 9/11, air force had to use aggressive maneuvering and warning shots to get private jets to land. Luckily most had news streams so they knew stuff had gone pear shaped. 

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19 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I still don't think the far-future extreme scenario is reasonable even for a paranoid general.

I think this falls into some sort of "false premise" fallacy somehow. A paranoid general is as paranoid as they need to be to justify the end argument... so yea its totally outlandish, so the general needs to be totally paranoid.

 

A less paranoid general probably doesn't see any threat Starship is uniquely capable of. You need a really paranoid general to to the "far future extreme scenario" to see an "extreme threat". If its "too outlandish" then the general isn't "paranoid enough". 

The whole topic really boils back down to the premise of getting some general paranoid enough about what is currently flying grain silos and finding some sort of "threat" from them that is unique to Starship. When there's enough tech to launch stealth nukes around the world in 30 minutes, you gotta really stretch to see a threat in Starship as it stands right now.

 

Then again there's the very realistic argument "Starship is too outlandish to work, there is no threat". Which is what non-paranoid people would say, but then that's not fun XD

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  • 2 weeks later...

Talking with someone about the matter and there were two ideas:

First, if Elon is serious about using Starships as self-contained orbital telescopes, what prevents Starship as a spy satellite?

Second, if Starships is allowed to fly P2P as proposed elsewhere, what if someone develops a bare-bones, disposable, one-person vehicle that could separate at the top of the sub-orbital flight? What if said vehicle could be maneuvered just enough to land at a designated spot in a country that happens to between the two points of the sub-orbital trajectory? What if this could be used to parachute in intelligence operatives or similar types deep into other countries?

I know it was mentioned that anything sounds plausible to a paranoid-enough person. But do any of these sound plausible to an authority figure who is much less paranoid and just generally concerned about the security and integrity of his home country?

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2 hours ago, 55delta said:

Talking with someone about the matter and there were two ideas:

First, if Elon is serious about using Starships as self-contained orbital telescopes, what prevents Starship as a spy satellite?

Second, if Starships is allowed to fly P2P as proposed elsewhere, what if someone develops a bare-bones, disposable, one-person vehicle that could separate at the top of the sub-orbital flight? What if said vehicle could be maneuvered just enough to land at a designated spot in a country that happens to between the two points of the sub-orbital trajectory? What if this could be used to parachute in intelligence operatives or similar types deep into other countries?

I know it was mentioned that anything sounds plausible to a paranoid-enough person. But do any of these sound plausible to an authority figure who is much less paranoid and just generally concerned about the security and integrity of his home country?

They certainly are "real" threats in that they could reasonably exist, but there are a number of reasons why those two are not very plausible in terms of posing an "actual" threat.

Starship spy satellites aren't really that ground breaking. There isn't much more you are going to see than can already be seen with current spy sats, and there are methods that can be used to prevent optical spy sats from being useful. For example, building massive coverings over SSBN docks, timing operations to occur when a spy sat is not passing over head (spy sats are easily tracked because they need to register like every other orbital object), and so on. Now one might go and say "but look at all of that useful spy sat imagery of North Korea's nuclear program!", to which I would say they probably deliberately left these operations uncovered as a signal to the world that its program is serious.

That bare-bones one person vehicle will very clearly be present on top of the Starship because of the high resolution imagery available for all to see during Starship operations, and in any case, will be trackable by radar. It would also be obvious something had separated when the P2P Starship lands, alerting officials that a spy may have landed- if the reentering vehicle hasn't already been spotted by infrared cameras or civilians with Mk 1 eyeballs.

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2 hours ago, 55delta said:

First, if Elon is serious about using Starships as self-contained orbital telescopes, what prevents Starship as a spy satellite?

The lack of the telescope.

But the hull is nice.

2 hours ago, 55delta said:

Second, if Starships is allowed to fly P2P as proposed elsewhere, what if someone develops a bare-bones, disposable, one-person vehicle that could separate at the top of the sub-orbital flight? What if said vehicle could be maneuvered just enough to land at a designated spot in a country that happens to between the two points of the sub-orbital trajectory? What if this could be used to parachute in intelligence operatives or similar types deep into other countries?

For that money you can rent a piece of the state border and hire its guards. No need in the jamesbonding.

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3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Starship spy satellites aren't really that ground breaking. There isn't much more you are going to see than can already be seen with current spy sats, and there are methods that can be used to prevent optical spy sats from being useful. For example, building massive coverings over SSBN docks, timing operations to occur when a spy sat is not passing over head (spy sats are easily tracked because they need to register like every other orbital object), and so on.

https://thespacereview.com/article/3967/1

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On 9/25/2021 at 12:36 PM, SunlitZelkova said:

Starship spy satellites aren't really that ground breaking. There isn't much more you are going to see than can already be seen with current spy sats, and there are methods that can be used to prevent optical spy sats from being useful. For example, building massive coverings over SSBN docks, timing operations to occur when a spy sat is not passing over head (spy sats are easily tracked because they need to register like every other orbital object), and so on. Now one might go and say "but look at all of that useful spy sat imagery of North Korea's nuclear program!", to which I would say they probably deliberately left these operations uncovered as a signal to the world that its program is serious.

Although... maybe the actual threat is not a bespoke Starship spy satellite, but the excess capacity on any Starship launch? Any Starship zipping about replacing broken Starlink satellites with new or repaired units could carry a hidden secondary camera payload of substantial size.  How would you time a SSBN movement to avoid potential spy sats when there is a potential spy sat overhead at all times? Even though you might not quite cram an entire KH-11 into the Starship unnoticed, very valuable intelligence could be collected by lesser devices if they can catch those most secretive of maneuvers out of the blue.

Of course the number of earth imaging satellites has exploded and even cube sat sized units can provide surprisingly good resolution these days, so in a way there are potential spy sats overhead at all times already.  A determined state could avert those by spending money, though, as in buying imagery from said satellites at the time and some other place than the operation they seek to hide. It is the non-commercial satellites that are most troublesome.

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4 hours ago, monophonic said:

A determined state could avert those by spending money, though, as in buying imagery from said satellites at the time and some other place than the operation they seek to hide. It is the non-commercial satellites that are most troublesome.

If I was paranoid about "eyes from the sky", I wouldn't try to hide anything. I'd try to show more so they wont know what they are looking at.

So for example, if I'm building a base/outpost, I'd spend my money building fake bases as decoys in multiple locations. Or even in my real bases add decoys to make it appear it has more troops than it really has. I'd also have fake "secret tech" in multiple places to further confuse the enemy. Finally I'd only make "teases" of all this fake tech, and still try to hide it. 

All this is probably cheaper and easier than trying to hide everything from surveillance, and completely ignores ground based old-fashion reconnaissance. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I was going to bring this thread back to point out how difficult to hide and ineffective an orbital laser weapon would be. But I thought of something better.

Imagine that someone was crazy enough to make Starship into a nuclear bomb (instead of using a better, purpose-built ICBM.) That is, a Starship loaded with a single nuclear device (as opposed to a MIRV) somehow fitting into its cargo bay and used as a ICBM. If the whole cargo section could be used, and that such a nuclear device could be built and installed, how power could a Starship nuclear weapon be?

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