How hard is orbital bombardment

[Kale]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

No, it really doesn't. I'm not sure that the target zone would become charged, but if even if it did, the forces involved wouldn't overcome the Earth's gravity.

But the rocks were made of handwavium!
I'm pretty sure it was put in to obey the 'rule of cool', but somebody might also have thought about a particle bolt being charged. Or they figured it would warp reality somewhat. The Psi powers seemed to tend to do that.

[SuedodeuS]

Originally Posted by Kale

But the rocks were made of handwavium!
I'm pretty sure it was put in to obey the 'rule of cool', but somebody might also have thought about a particle bolt being charged. Or they figured it would warp reality somewhat. The Psi powers seemed to tend to do that.

In anime, an area with high active power density always results in stuff floating - rocks, hair, etc. Ever seen Dragon Ball Z? It's just one of those anime physics things - right next to "constant thrust = constant velocity in space," "the human body contains at least 9 gallons of blood under high pressure," "blades make perfectly clean cuts," and of course "evil has a higher wavelength than good, thus it results in a red aura as opposed to good's blue" (humorously enough, this one is actually something of a plot point in a setting/story I may eventually write).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

True. It's not just that particular scenario, it's a common SFnal trope to present societies that have anomalous energy sources, out of scale with what the society looks like. To a degree that's probably inevitable, but it gets really glaring for societies with common relativistic travel.

For a classic (and extreme) example of this sort of scale issue, see 'Doc' Smith's Lensman space operas.

Not sure what you mean but as to near-C rocks they'd be no threat in Lensman because the Patrol has long range FTL sensors. Living beings have to watch them (mostly) but if you sent a near-C rock at Tellus it'd be detected a month or two out and easily destroyed or diverted.

[blacksmith]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Past a certain point it makes it irrelevant, though. A largish rock (or anything else) moving at very near c has so much energy that disruption in the upper atmosphere doesn't help much, the energy still gets dumped into the biosphere and has its effect.

But then targeting is not an issue you are just busting the planet.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kale

But the rocks were made of handwavium!
I'm pretty sure it was put in to obey the 'rule of cool', but somebody might also have thought about a particle bolt being charged. Or they figured it would warp reality somewhat. The Psi powers seemed to tend to do that.

Is the SOL Cannon supposed to be Psi-tech?

[Kale]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Is the SOL Cannon supposed to be Psi-tech?

Akira mostly had cyberpunk tech with no Psi involved. That said, they had gear that could detect Akira's rising power, so they did have some tech that could interact with Psi. I think the SOL Cannon was supposed to be regular ultra tech. I agree with SuedodeuS though; I think it was just one of those anime tropes they threw in.

[BlackLiger]

Isn't a MIRV technically orbital bombardment anyway? Since it's mounted on an ICBM which skims the top of the atmosphere and potentially leaves it for a short period, it enters orbit. As such, it fires it's secondaries, resulting in the mutiple warheads, resulting in it being bombardment from orbit. :P

[Kale]

Originally Posted by BlackLiger

Isn't a MIRV technically orbital bombardment anyway? Since it's mounted on an ICBM which skims the top of the atmosphere and potentially leaves it for a short period, it enters orbit. As such, it fires it's secondaries, resulting in the mutiple warheads, resulting in it being bombardment from orbit. :P

The MIRV travels at a lower altitude; it's just skimming the upper atmosphere.
The kind of bombardment we're talking about is launched from something in a stable orbit, like a warship or satellite.

[teviet]

MIRVs are very different from the kinetic bombs considered here, since they get almost all their destructive energy from the nuclear warhead. For kinetic projectiles from low Earth orbit, the terminal energies are at most about 8 times that of a similar mass of high explosive. For H-bombs, it's more like a few million times.

TeV

[Dangerious P. Cats]

I really like the idea of dropping guided telegraph pole sized rods from orbit, it fits nicely with the sorts of sci fi settings I tend to build and it has the added bonus of having a large number of non-combustable munitions in you ship which reduces the number of weak point that a lucky hit could destroy. The one thing I need explaining is why such munitions won't burn up when colliding with the atmosphere? Asteroids tend to do this when they hit earth atmosphere, even those as large as texas.