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Old 11-18-2020, 03:57 PM   #11
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Defending Asteroids [Space/Spaceships]

The best defense for an attempt to coopt an asteroid mining operating is just to shoot missiles at the unauthorized vessels heading for the asteroid. Problem solved.
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Old 11-18-2020, 04:40 PM   #12
Say, it isn't that bad!
 
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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Only if you require that the impactor be less maneuverable than an asteroid mine.
At that point, your impactor is a missile; and if we're adding a military guidance system and course adjustment to one side, we can add point-defence to the other.
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Old 11-18-2020, 06:35 PM   #13
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Originally Posted by Say, it isn't that bad! View Post
At that point, your impactor is a missile; and if we're adding a military guidance system and course adjustment to one side, we can add point-defence to the other.
So you can add maneuvering thrusters to your asteroid mine, but I can't add a webcam, a much smaller set of maneuvering thrusters, and a raspberry Pi-level control system to my projectile?

Sure, the impactor could be described as a missile. So could a hobbyist RC airplane.
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Old 11-18-2020, 06:41 PM   #14
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Defending Asteroids [Space/Spaceships]

Blowing up asteroids to prevent asteroid mining is on a par with bombing open pit mines to prevent mining: utterly not worth the bother. If you want to sabotage someone's mining, blow up the actually valuable stuff: the hardware they're using to do it.
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Old 11-18-2020, 06:59 PM   #15
Daigoro
 
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Default Re: Defending Asteroids [Space/Spaceships]

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Blowing up asteroids to prevent asteroid mining is on a par with bombing open pit mines to prevent mining: utterly not worth the bother.
It's going to be a lot harder to mine if it's in an expanding cloud of debris travelling at hundreds of metres per second.

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If you want to sabotage someone's mining, blow up the actually valuable stuff: the hardware they're using to do it.
This still also makes sense though. Hijacking the ore freighters or intercepting the mass stream work too.
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Old 11-18-2020, 07:10 PM   #16
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Default Re: Defending Asteroids [Space/Spaceships]

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It's going to be a lot harder to mine if it's in an expanding cloud of debris travelling at hundreds of metres per second.
First of all, even a modest sized asteroid is going to need pretty significant yield nuclear weapons to actually do that. Secondly, I guess it's time to pick one of the other several hundred thousand possible mining targets.

M-type asteroids simply aren't rare enough to be a meaningful resource constraint until you're getting pretty close to a Kardashev-II civilization.
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Old 11-18-2020, 10:26 PM   #17
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Blowing up asteroids to prevent asteroid mining is on a par with bombing open pit mines to prevent mining: utterly not worth the bother. If you want to sabotage someone's mining, blow up the actually valuable stuff: the hardware they're using to do it.
...Yes, the point of blowing the place up is to destroy the equipment, not the minerals.

The point of using a mostly-dumb high energy weapon is that a big impactor (or a big bomb) that smashes everything around is often cheaper and easier to deliver than many small smart weapons that individually break the valuable bits.
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Old 11-18-2020, 10:52 PM   #18
Say, it isn't that bad!
 
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Default Re: Defending Asteroids [Space/Spaceships]

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So you can add maneuvering thrusters to your asteroid mine, but I can't add a webcam, a much smaller set of maneuvering thrusters, and a raspberry Pi-level control system to my projectile?

Sure, the impactor could be described as a missile. So could a hobbyist RC airplane.
No, I mean that if someone's sending missiles at my asteroid mine, I'm putting some point-defence on it, and maybe some mass driver cannons of my own.

At which point we need to ask what resources are available, and what the local government situation is like, because if one side or both can send missiles at each other, I'm going to guess "not much".

Noting here that it's easier to sneak mass driver shot through a gap in a surveillance system, than it is to sneak a missile.

Sneaking a mass driver shot just requires that there be predictable gaps in coverage, and that the system traffic management doesn't manage to monitor most of the rocks floating around; sneaking a missile requires lengthy gaps in coverage. Either of which fits in with local government being... scarce.

Which reminds me of a video game I played around the mid-1990s that was fairly literally "Asteroid mining colony wars: the game".
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Old 11-19-2020, 03:31 AM   #19
Ulzgoroth
 
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Originally Posted by Say, it isn't that bad! View Post
No, I mean that if someone's sending missiles at my asteroid mine, I'm putting some point-defence on it, and maybe some mass driver cannons of my own.

At which point we need to ask what resources are available, and what the local government situation is like, because if one side or both can send missiles at each other, I'm going to guess "not much".

Noting here that it's easier to sneak mass driver shot through a gap in a surveillance system, than it is to sneak a missile.

Sneaking a mass driver shot just requires that there be predictable gaps in coverage, and that the system traffic management doesn't manage to monitor most of the rocks floating around; sneaking a missile requires lengthy gaps in coverage. Either of which fits in with local government being... scarce.
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.

And if, say, your asteroid miners send their cargo home in one-way transfer/reentry pods instead of re-usable freight ships, those pods will have all the functions an intra-belt strategic missile needs and then some...
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Old 11-19-2020, 04:01 AM   #20
Say, it isn't that bad!
 
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Default Re: Defending Asteroids [Space/Spaceships]

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
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.

And if, say, your asteroid miners send their cargo home in one-way transfer/reentry pods instead of re-usable freight ships, those pods will have all the functions an intra-belt strategic missile needs and then some...
The second one is a good point. The first one sounds plausible enough, but I don't know enough to say whether or not.
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In which I post about a TL9-10 solar system

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=169674

If you don't know why I said something, please ask. Assumptions are the death of courtesy.

Disappointed in the behaviour I have too-often encountered here.
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