How do you Defeat Aliens who control the Orbitals?

jvilnis wrote:How do yoou defeat a race of Aliens who control high orbit and can throw rocks at you down the gravity well?

Unless you can somehow get up to defeat their ships you are always going to be at a enormous disadvantage.

Planetary force screens. Commando Cody's Cosmic Dust Blanket. Dinintegrator cannon that make the rocks go away. Artificial gravity rays that return the rocks to the aliens, at ten times their prior speed.

Killmouski wrote:

jvilnis wrote:How do yoou defeat a race of Aliens who control high orbit and can throw rocks at you down the gravity well?

Unless you can somehow get up to defeat their ships you are always going to be at a enormous disadvantage.

David Webber gave us the answer in the first few chapters of the book. Then he lost his mind and introduced Vampires.

I digress. He gave humans the inability to surrender. This is something the puppies have never encountered. We also had some very advanced technology in certain areas. Finally, the puppies taught us everything we knew about their civilization, because we "surrendered" and were now one big happy family (not).

We don't defeat. We fight an asymmetrical war, and take them over from within, by hacking their computers and using their tech against them.

I was very disapointed with this book. It was the first book of his I read, and I am cringing at the prospect of reading another.

Sorry you feel that way. There are reasons for what I did in the book, although the delay between it and the sequel mean that I have been slower in getting those reasons out.

Part of the problem is that I wrote a short story/novella for an anthology TOR published. I was deliberately going as far off the reservation as I could in it (for various reasons) and the thread with Vlad and Buckevsky was the entire story. Tom Doherty at TOR loved it (and I kinda liked it) so he asked me to expand it into a novel. I said "I can do that, but only if I make some changes to turn it into science fiction and not fantasy." He said go for it, and I did.Then Real Life intervened and I was waaaaay delayed in getting the next book written. Which is what Into the Light is.

Mind you, I thought OOTD worked just fine, and I did give you all sorts of clues when Vlad turned up that Smething Strange Was Coming.

jvilnis wrote:How do yoou defeat a race of Aliens who control high orbit and can throw rocks at you down the gravity well?

Unless you can somehow get up to defeat their ships you are always going to be at a enormous disadvantage.

Er... I could have a VERY, really VERY BIG laser array on the planet, and some collapsible re-targeting mirrors could be launched on rockets to focus the beams after they left the atmosphere.

Good thing about planetary artillery - it could be of any possible size, energy requirements and could generate as much heat as it needed. We have oceans to cool it, mountains to cover it, and a lot of space for power generators.

Of course, it wouldn't help against long-range ballistic attacks (albeit if they aren't relativistic, the planetary laser could still be useful in diverting projectiles by ablation), but the ships on high orbits would be a perfect melting points)

Dilandu wrote:

jvilnis wrote:How do yoou defeat a race of Aliens who control high orbit and can throw rocks at you down the gravity well?

Unless you can somehow get up to defeat their ships you are always going to be at a enormous disadvantage.

Er... I could have a VERY, really VERY BIG laser array on the planet, and some collapsible re-targeting mirrors could be launched on rockets to focus the beams after they left the atmosphere.

Good thing about planetary artillery - it could be of any possible size, energy requirements and could generate as much heat as it needed. We have oceans to cool it, mountains to cover it, and a lot of space for power generators.

Of course, it wouldn't help against long-range ballistic attacks (albeit if they aren't relativistic, the planetary laser could still be useful in diverting projectiles by ablation), but the ships on high orbits would be a perfect melting points)

Reminds me of a thought I had a few years ago.

Back during the 1st underground US nuke test, the test nuke was placed at the bottom of a deep (200m?) vertical shaft and covered by what was essentially a massive manhole cover. when the test occured, the manhole cover was caught midair atop a pillar of flames in 1 frame of highspeed film, and it's wreckage was never found. Disagreements among the project scientists and specialists raged over what happened to the cover, with some believing it was turned to plasma in the fireball - others that it had been imparted escape velocity and had left earth forever.

In the last 70s, after spacetrack radar had been turned on, an un-accounted for object in a fairly high orbit was "tentatively identified" as the cover, but only because it is the rough size of the cover, and no other known space trash fit the trajectory.

And that was an accidental by-product of the test.

It would be an exercise in math, but it would be possible to build single use "launchers" in a cluster, designed to smack a capitol ship in orbit. Use "hardened" launch tubes and specially designed covers to maximize success.

Unfortunately, you couldn't test the system, unless it was built before the attackers arrived, and the whole concept might be a 1 shot wonder, as after the 1st launch, the attackers may have sensors capable of detecting additional launch tubes, no matter how well disguised.

Theemile wrote:
Reminds me of a thought I had a few years ago.

Back during the 1st underground US nuke test, the test nuke was placed at the bottom of a deep (200m?) vertical shaft and covered by what was essentially a massive manhole cover. when the test occured, the manhole cover was caught midair atop a pillar of flames in 1 frame of highspeed film, and it's wreckage was never found. Disagreements among the project scientists and specialists raged over what happened to the cover, with some believing it was turned to plasma in the fireball - others that it had been imparted escape velocity and had left earth forever.

In the last 70s, after spacetrack radar had been turned on, an un-accounted for object in a fairly high orbit was "tentatively identified" as the cover, but only because it is the rough size of the cover, and no other known space trash fit the trajectory.

And that was an accidental by-product of the test.

It would be an exercise in math, but it would be possible to build single use "launchers" in a cluster, designed to smack a capitol ship in orbit. Use "hardened" launch tubes and specially designed covers to maximize success.

Unfortunately, you couldn't test the system, unless it was built before the attackers arrived, and the whole concept might be a 1 shot wonder, as after the 1st launch, the attackers may have sensors capable of detecting additional launch tubes, no matter how well disguised.

Very interesting. I hadn't heard there was evidence for the cover in outer space. That's remarkable.

However, there is a discrepancy. A cannon launch (just like the bomb or in the Verne From the Earth to the Moon novel) cannot put something into orbit. You need a second acceleration sequence at high altitude, or you are in an orbit that passes through the planet and fails to come out the far side. Perhaps the top made a close pass by the moon..you can get orbit with a three body solution.

phillies wrote:

Theemile wrote:
Reminds me of a thought I had a few years ago.

Back during the 1st underground US nuke test, the test nuke was placed at the bottom of a deep (200m?) vertical shaft and covered by what was essentially a massive manhole cover. when the test occured, the manhole cover was caught midair atop a pillar of flames in 1 frame of highspeed film, and it's wreckage was never found. Disagreements among the project scientists and specialists raged over what happened to the cover, with some believing it was turned to plasma in the fireball - others that it had been imparted escape velocity and had left earth forever.

In the last 70s, after spacetrack radar had been turned on, an un-accounted for object in a fairly high orbit was "tentatively identified" as the cover, but only because it is the rough size of the cover, and no other known space trash fit the trajectory.

And that was an accidental by-product of the test.

It would be an exercise in math, but it would be possible to build single use "launchers" in a cluster, designed to smack a capitol ship in orbit. Use "hardened" launch tubes and specially designed covers to maximize success.

Unfortunately, you couldn't test the system, unless it was built before the attackers arrived, and the whole concept might be a 1 shot wonder, as after the 1st launch, the attackers may have sensors capable of detecting additional launch tubes, no matter how well disguised.

Very interesting. I hadn't heard there was evidence for the cover in outer space. That's remarkable.

However, there is a discrepancy. A cannon launch (just like the bomb or in the Verne From the Earth to the Moon novel) cannot put something into orbit. You need a second acceleration sequence at high altitude, or you are in an orbit that passes through the planet and fails to come out the far side. Perhaps the top made a close pass by the moon..you can get orbit with a three body solution.

As I said, "tentatively identified." I read the gist of article at the time as "we ruled everything out else we could think of, and this was all we could think of that fit the bill." I always wondered (if the object really was the cover) if it had originally had a very elliptical orbit, which over the ~20 years it was out there before being tracked slowly normalized.

Either a highly elliptical orbit, or a moon pass would mean that the cover was imparted with enough energy to do serious damage to an object in orbit - armored or not.