With remotely realistic engines, where would Space Pirates intercept craft?

[SomeGuy123]

3 hours ago, fredinno said:

But that makes it easier to be hacked.

This is the "science and spaceflight" forum.  Yet, no one here seems to be even vaguely aware of what real hacking involves.  

There is a radio receiver on the space freighter.  Maybe a laser receiver.  It translates incoming signals to binary messages.  Those messages are from authorized or non authorized peers sending them.

Well, a ship like this probably does need to process messages from sources that are not 'authorized'.  So a competent engineer would install a separate radio and an isolated computer to respond to "unauthorized" messages. 

Then, for messages that are authorized, the steps are :

      1.  Decode the binary message

      2.  Verify the message is the right length

      3.  XOR it with a 1 time pad

      4.  Check if the message has a valid message type header and the CRC matches

If #4 doesn't pass, reject.

That's a tiny front end.  A good engineer would use a very simple computer to run it, something that has too little complexity to be vulnerable to hacking at all.  Period.  End of story.  If you don't have the 1 time pad, a random code that changes for every bit of every message, it will just ignore it.  

Remote Hacking would be literally impossible.  The reason the computer you are reading it is hackable is because any software you have installed can send and receive network messages at will.  So every single piece of software you are running is a vulnerability.  So if Bonzai Buddy Desktop Buddies XL, written in a hurry by inexperienced programmers, has a bug where a certain message lets a remote attacker to overwrite the actual code used by this program, that remote attacker can then execute any instruction that BBDBXL is privileged enough to run.  Since many windows applications are run as administrator, and the administrator/not security barrier is paper thin, hackers get in a lot.

Now, if people boarded this automated ship from their pirate skiff, that's a totally separate story.  They can just open up the panels that have the ship's remote control receivers and remove the circuit boards.  They then need to install some kind of controls that they can use - the easiest would probably be to directly disconnect the main engines from the ship's control bus and install a piece of equipment such as a bootleg knockoff of the same ship control systems the ship does, except the bootleg knockoff won't demand a password.

To prevent piracy, shipping companies could add ever more elaborate lockouts and even armed sentry turrets that deploy.

Once the pirates have control, they would disconnect the least valuable cargo.  This would give them enough delta V to send the freighter to a different destination.  

For this to be possible at all, there would have to be "lawless" areas of the solar system where they can have their base.  Like Somalia today.  The western nations all know where the pirates are based, they even know the exact town, but they are not willing to commit the ground forces for an invasion or send a bombing run.

 

Edited January 22, 2016 by SomeGuy123

[Hary R]

28 minutes ago, SomeGuy123 said:

For this to be possible at all, there would have to be "lawless" areas of the solar system where they can have their base.  Like Somalia today.  The western nations all know where the pirates are based, they even know the exact town, but they are not willing to commit the ground forces for an invasion or send a bombing run.

 

Give me some more possibility for my writing, thanks. About that part, one can imagine that their main base is actuality know but for some political reason, they are left alone (not hard to imagine in fact). After all, we try to imagine a context where space pirate can exist in a realistic way.

So boarding is mandatory...

Edite: By the way. Indeed, I have no idea how real hacking work thanks for the insight. 

Edited January 22, 2016 by Hary R

[AccidentsHappen]

I'd think that space pirates would have to have such precise trajectories to intercept freighters travelling between systems that it would be more logical to instead travel to a space station that has a constant, predictable orbit. Only problem with that is, why would space pirates want to ransack a space station? Most would just be performing science experiments and accommodating people, so unless the pirates are holding hostages ransom or selling zero-g cucumbers on the black market, I don't really see the point in heading there. I think the only time space pirates would intercept a freighter is if it had an extraordinary cargo, something very rare and very expensive, otherwise I don't see the point in even bothering with all the effort. But thats just me.

[SomeGuy123]

6 minutes ago, Hary R said:

Give me some more possibility for my writing, thanks. About that part, one can imagine that their main base is actuality know but for some political reason, they are left alone (not hard to imagine in fact). After all, we try to imagine a context where space pirate can exist in a realistic way.

So boarding is mandatory...

It also is starting to sound fun. 

A pirate skiff is basically a stolen main engine from a freighter, a bunch of fuel tanks, and like 1 guy in a space suit riding the rocket.  It has to be light.  

When the pirate gets to the automated merchant ship, anything could be there to stop him.  He's all alone and there are many dangers, many lockouts, many sensors that if they detect him may trigger countermeasures to make it more difficult.  "Big scores" - ships with more valuable cargo - would have proportionally more security, all the way up to an armed warship full of space marines being hidden inside the cargo bay, with the waste heat from the armed warship vented out the same radiators the freighter uses.  (so in this one situation stealth in space would actually work - everyone can see the freighter, they can't see the warship inside)

It's totally a viable game.  Space Pirate simulator 9000.  You have your secret base, you upgrade it xcom style, you have your ship, you can upgrade it but there are tradeoffs (the more things you add to increase it's capabilities, the more fuel it takes and the higher your profile is), looted parts from freighters you can use, etc.

Edited January 22, 2016 by SomeGuy123

[Hary R]

47 minutes ago, SomeGuy123 said:

It also is starting to sound fun. 

A pirate skiff is basically a stolen main engine from a freighter, a bunch of fuel tanks, and like 1 guy in a space suit riding the rocket.  It has to be light.  

When the pirate gets to the automated merchant ship, anything could be there to stop him.  He's all alone and there are many dangers, many lockouts, many sensors that if they detect him may trigger countermeasures to make it more difficult.  "Big scores" - ships with more valuable cargo - would have proportionally more security, all the way up to an armed warship full of space marines being hidden inside the cargo bay, with the waste heat from the armed warship vented out the same radiators the freighter uses.  (so in this one situation stealth in space would actually work - everyone can see the freighter, they can't see the warship inside)

It's totally a viable game.  Space Pirate simulator 9000.  You have your secret base, you upgrade it xcom style, you have your ship, you can upgrade it but there are tradeoffs (the more things you add to increase it's capabilities, the more fuel it takes and the higher your profile is), looted parts from freighters you can use, etc.

One guy or more realistically a very small team, think of the Somalian on there little boat, 2 or 3 guy with some weapon. The stolen/salvage part for the ship is a good idea and a very plausible one.

 

48 minutes ago, AccidentsHappen said:

I'd think that space pirates would have to have such precise trajectories to intercept freighters travelling between systems that it would be more logical to instead travel to a space station that has a constant, predictable orbit. Only problem with that is, why would space pirates want to ransack a space station? Most would just be performing science experiments and accommodating people, so unless the pirates are holding hostages ransom or selling zero-g cucumbers on the black market, I don't really see the point in heading there. I think the only time space pirates would intercept a freighter is if it had an extraordinary cargo, something very rare and very expensive, otherwise I don't see the point in even bothering with all the effort. But thats just me.

Well you said it, a station is not a very good target and station that have some form of value will certainly be well guarded (private or government doesn't matter).

A reason for pirate to attack freighter,rare goods, spare parts, they were paid to do it (the famous political reason) and here is a thing I know very well (it's part of my job), money transfer. You may think that money transfer are all made by wire today but in reality, real money are still sent to the receiver bank. No reason for it change in a spacy future, the bank in the colony will still ask for real money to be sent. So pirates have a chance to still it.

Edited January 22, 2016 by Hary R

[fredinno]

5 hours ago, AccidentsHappen said:

I'd think that space pirates would have to have such precise trajectories to intercept freighters travelling between systems that it would be more logical to instead travel to a space station that has a constant, predictable orbit. Only problem with that is, why would space pirates want to ransack a space station? Most would just be performing science experiments and accommodating people, so unless the pirates are holding hostages ransom or selling zero-g cucumbers on the black market, I don't really see the point in heading there. I think the only time space pirates would intercept a freighter is if it had an extraordinary cargo, something very rare and very expensive, otherwise I don't see the point in even bothering with all the effort. But thats just me.

Stealing science data for sale. Maybe for supplies and resources. Even things like the ISS can be a welcome sight for a resource-strained pirate, since it has enough supplies for several months for 7 people, which is likely the most a pirate ship would carry.

Edited January 22, 2016 by fredinno

[Hary R]

2 hours ago, fredinno said:

Stealing science data for sale. Maybe for supplies and resources. Even things like the ISS can be a welcome sight for a resource-strained pirate, since it has enough supplies for several months for 7 people, which is likely the most a pirate ship would carry.

Supplies is most obvious reason, but I see this only if it's a remote station. As for stations that are close to a controlled space by any governmental organisation (think of earth leo station), no pirate will go there, they will be detected well before arrival and captured as they close in or destroyed if that's how they like it. Deep space and remote station on the other hand... days or months before law enforcement arrive, that's where pirates are.

Edited January 22, 2016 by Hary R

[magnemoe]

8 hours ago, SomeGuy123 said:

This is the "science and spaceflight" forum.  Yet, no one here seems to be even vaguely aware of what real hacking involves.  

There is a radio receiver on the space freighter.  Maybe a laser receiver.  It translates incoming signals to binary messages.  Those messages are from authorized or non authorized peers sending them.

Well, a ship like this probably does need to process messages from sources that are not 'authorized'.  So a competent engineer would install a separate radio and an isolated computer to respond to "unauthorized" messages. 

Then, for messages that are authorized, the steps are :

      1.  Decode the binary message

      2.  Verify the message is the right length

      3.  XOR it with a 1 time pad

      4.  Check if the message has a valid message type header and the CRC matches

If #4 doesn't pass, reject.

That's a tiny front end.  A good engineer would use a very simple computer to run it, something that has too little complexity to be vulnerable to hacking at all.  Period.  End of story.  If you don't have the 1 time pad, a random code that changes for every bit of every message, it will just ignore it.  

Remote Hacking would be literally impossible.  The reason the computer you are reading it is hackable is because any software you have installed can send and receive network messages at will.  So every single piece of software you are running is a vulnerability.  So if Bonzai Buddy Desktop Buddies XL, written in a hurry by inexperienced programmers, has a bug where a certain message lets a remote attacker to overwrite the actual code used by this program, that remote attacker can then execute any instruction that BBDBXL is privileged enough to run.  Since many windows applications are run as administrator, and the administrator/not security barrier is paper thin, hackers get in a lot.

Now, if people boarded this automated ship from their pirate skiff, that's a totally separate story.  They can just open up the panels that have the ship's remote control receivers and remove the circuit boards.  They then need to install some kind of controls that they can use - the easiest would probably be to directly disconnect the main engines from the ship's control bus and install a piece of equipment such as a bootleg knockoff of the same ship control systems the ship does, except the bootleg knockoff won't demand a password.

To prevent piracy, shipping companies could add ever more elaborate lockouts and even armed sentry turrets that deploy.

Once the pirates have control, they would disconnect the least valuable cargo.  This would give them enough delta V to send the freighter to a different destination.  

For this to be possible at all, there would have to be "lawless" areas of the solar system where they can have their base.  Like Somalia today.  The western nations all know where the pirates are based, they even know the exact town, but they are not willing to commit the ground forces for an invasion or send a bombing run.

 

Yes, note that one defense system against bording is to point engines towards target and do an burn, This work under nivens law, an better engine with higher trust or isp will work better.
No its not an long range weapon but it don't have to be. you only need to be able to turn the ship fast enough to aim at the pirates inside effective range. 
This is not even an defense system but collision avoidance   

[wumpus]

Assuming the freighters are using Hohmann transfers, the obvious/easy way is before transit burns/after capture burns (everything beyond this assumes Hohmann transfers: shipping freight historically is done on the cheap, and our pirates can assume this doesn't change).

Docking with a ship on a Hohmann transfer is another story.  If you know the schedule, it is much easier: you just match the transfer (if you need to stay out of controlled space expect to pay a lot for lack of the Oberth effect).  If the freighters know that pirates are out there, they won't publish a schedule but will still likely all launch within a week or so (note to pirates: the freighters are likely in a convoy).  Assuming your spies know when the convoy launches, they can make an appropriate correction burn to intercept within a month or two.

Note that if it makes much economic sense at all to launch freighters (we are assuming a Somalia situation instead of something like the Battle of the Atlantic where ships were lucky to make it across), the pirates can afford to make corrections for a late intercept and assume the freighters aren't yet looted.

I'm guessing the thing to do is fire up KSP with hyperedit and see where you can generate intercepts to Hohmann transfers.  My guess is that you might want a pirate base on something like a leading or trailing orbit of Earth or Mars.  Ideally you would want an orbit similar to a Hohmann transfer that would line up (have a low delta-v to intercept) to Hohmann transfers during proper (least delta-v) approach.

Note that pirates might have to make interesting choices between preying on Earth-Mars traffic vs. Earth-Venus traffic: presumably Mars has longer times between transfers and thus clumps the convoys up more.  I doubt either planet gives a good place to keep a base that allows low delta-v per launch (although I think Earth-Venus has annual transfers: it sounds like there might be an orbit that could exploit that - of course, being too obvious means the Solar Patrol finds your base...).

- [edit] Note I'm assuming that Aldrin cyclers won't match the freighter schedules, but I really don't understand Aldrin cyclers.  My guess is that the freighter owners will plot the orbits of lost freighters and figure out fast which cycle paths the attacks are coming from, so the most efficient base is probably not the best one.

Edited January 22, 2016 by wumpus

[wumpus]

While this looks more like a mod than part of the game, I'd suggest that Squad at least think about this type of thing (piracy vs. shipping and planetary navies vs. pirates) for some hypothetical KSP 2.0.  It might at least lead them to an good game.

[MatttheCzar]

Id say the low orbit of a colonized planet, where it would be harder to see if an automated frieghter suddenly was reconfigured to dock with another ship...