Defending Asteroids [Space/Spaceships]

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

A completely dumb kinetic weapon is quite likely not good enough to hit a planet over interplanetary ranges. If you're not shooting from really rather close, the difference between what you'd shoot from a mass driver and what you're calling a missile disappears.

If the planet lacks defenders, a dumb kinetic weapon will be able to hit it just fine so long as the fire-control computer did its math right (and no undetected large debris or similar gets in the way) - the paths taken by the planet and projectile, and anything in between, is highly predictable if they're all just drifting (that is, not maneuvering). Of course, most targets that you want to use a weapon on are going to be defended, and over large distances it becomes rather easy to stop such by just throwing something in its way, lasing it so it misses (either by slowing it down or knocking it off-course), etc.

So, you're right that, outside of extreme close ranges, pretty much any kinetic weapon is going to be a missile of some flavor.

[Polkageist]

Obviously the correct answer is to collect an incredibly deadly life form from an alien planet that nobody knows about, keep it in a secret laboratory and develop it into a terrifying bio-weapon. Then, when someone tries to take away your asteroid simply let them arrive and unleash your very controllable and not at all indiscriminate beasts.

Nothing could go wrong.

[Kale]

You'd have the mine and probably docking facilities for some sort of freighter(s). There would be habitat systems for the miners, and storage and maintenance areas for equipment. These would either be on a station drifting near the asteroid, on the surface of the asteroid, or under the surface in caverns. The docking area would have to be exposed no matter what, so that seems like a fairly obvious target. A shotgun kinetic strike of shrapnel at high velocities would probably be enough to wreck the docking fixtures and any exposed structures assuming the floating station or surface scenario.
For general defense a few AKVs (autonomous kill vehicles) in a loose orbit around the asteroid could help screen the facilities, with the number of AKVs dependent on how important the asteroid was.

[ericthered]

Thinking about infrastructure in the real world, there are two types of attack to worry about:

The first is theft. Theft involves the crooks taking all or part of the thing to protect and profiting off of it. It can involve the destruction of the item, but usually requires it be taken mostly intact.

The second attack is destruction. Most of the time, people don't harden their possessions against destructive attack. Instead, they rely on deterrence. offenders who engage in destructive behavior anyway either are doing so with minimal gain and resource deployment (vandals), or are doing so as part of a larger project that requires communication as well as destruction, such as protection rackets, terrorists, or invading governments. Usually the response to this is to track down the source of the attacks after they happen or are threatened.

So the ability to harden a single asteroid against a projectile isn't as important as the ability to retaliate against someone who does so. The best way to secure the asteroid is a network of telescopes and missiles of your own somewhere else.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Varyon

If the planet lacks defenders, a dumb kinetic weapon will be able to hit it just fine so long as the fire-control computer did its math right (and no undetected large debris or similar gets in the way) - the paths taken by the planet and projectile, and anything in between, is highly predictable if they're all just drifting (that is, not maneuvering). Of course, most targets that you want to use a weapon on are going to be defended, and over large distances it becomes rather easy to stop such by just throwing something in its way, lasing it so it misses (either by slowing it down or knocking it off-course), etc.

So, you're right that, outside of extreme close ranges, pretty much any kinetic weapon is going to be a missile of some flavor.

Its true that orbital paths are highly predictable. But it's also true that even a planet is an incredibly small target over interplanetary ranges. Space probes generally make small mid-course corrections to stay on target.

[AlexanderHowl]

Gravitational influences cause long distance journeys to go off course during a journey. Even the amount of light reflected or the amount of heat radiated in a specific direction can accelerate or decelerate an object. While an average difference of one millimeter per second velocity may not seem like much, it ends up being a positional change of 31.55 km over a year long journey. For a 10 km asteroid, that may cause the attack to completely miss and be unnoticed (and for it to potentially attack a completely different target).