Pentagon Wants to Test A Space-Based Weapon in 2023

Expelling hydrogen atoms (ions?) at 60,000KPS while in low (or zero?) gravity sounds more like a fancy ion engine than a weapon to me for some reason.

I mean, even a hydrogen atom has significantly more mass than a photon (as would be “expelled” by an orbital laser).

Whatever happened to that old “equal and opposite reaction” stuff?

originally posted by: seattlerat
a reply to: LookingAtMars

There was a Russian Scientist that got shot through the head with a particle beam... and survived. Still, probably not a good idea to be in the path of one of theses types of weapons using accelerated particles.

In the '70s, Russian scientist Anatoli Bugorski was a researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics, working with the Soviet particle accelerator known as the Synchrotron U-70. On July 13, 1978, he popped his head into the Synchrotron to check on a malfunctioning piece of equipment when all of a sudden — zap! A safety mechanism went kaput at exactly the wrong moment, shooting a proton beam straight through his head. Although he felt no pain, Bugorski reportedly saw a flash "brighter than a thousand suns." The beam entered through the back of his head and exited through his nose. Soon after, the left side of his face swelled up like a balloon, and he was rushed to the hospital — to be treated, of course, but also to be studied, as nothing like this had ever happened before. People believed he'd be dead within a few days, at the most.

SOURCE

Good gawd that had to of hurt. Safe to say it left a mark.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Ray-gun's Star Wars 1983 to Pentagon 'want to test in 2023' = American Nihilism, 40 years in the making.

originally posted by: neo96
I thought there was some treaty that forbid space weapons.

It's not like anyone followed them anyway.

Russia and China sure hasn't.

laser pointers are not weapons are they? lol.

Yeah Op. late to the party. They have a plasma satellite weapon in orbit already.

originally posted by: Mach2
a reply to: LookingAtMars

I don't know that there is any proof, but I can't think of any technical obstacles that would prohibit it, and with the size of the black budgets, no monetary ones either. Couple that with the fact that, in modern warfare, there is a huge advantage in being able to blinddisable an adversaries satalites, and I would say it's highly probable.

I'm more of the belief it's being put out there now because Russia is making threats about renewing the arms race, and a credible threat of something like this may make them rethink their position.

The main obstacles to putting militarily useful directed energy weapons (DEW) in low Earth orbit (LEO) are size and cost.

To be able to take out ballistic missiles at a few hundred miles would require beams in the MegaWatt category (whether lasers or particle beams). If you try to generate MegaWatt power with solar arrays, you need football field sized panels. (The solar panels on the ISS are the largest ones currently in space; they only produce 90 KW). If you try to generate MegaWatts of power with a nuclear reactor (like the SCO reactor discussed on a different thread) you need the reactor PLUS football field sized thermal radiators. We don't currently have any launch vehicles capable of putting up something that large.

To be able to cover the missile launch fields at any time of the night or day, you would need a fleet of these kinds of battle stations, so that there would always be at least one in sight of the targets at all times. The current cost to launch into LEO using expendable launch vehicles is about $20,000/Kg. The launch costs alone of putting a 100 ton battle station in space would be about $2B.

However, if Jeff Bezos and/or Elon Musk succeeds with their heavy lift, reusable space launchers, both of these problems would be solved. I think this study shows that the DOD is looking forward a few years to the time when this kind of orbital DEW platform becomes feasible.

I thought space weapons were agains the rules of war?

a reply to: Deadfreak

Most people wrongly do. Only a few weapons types are banned from orbit.

originally posted by: Mach2
a reply to: LookingAtMars

I don't know that there is any proof, but I can't think of any technical obstacles that would prohibit it, and with the size of the black budgets, no monetary ones either. Couple that with the fact that, in modern warfare, there is a huge advantage in being able to blinddisable an adversaries satalites, and I would say it's highly probable.

I'm more of the belief it's being put out there now because Russia is making threats about renewing the arms race, and a credible threat of something like this may make them rethink their position.

The airforce still has 2 operational x37bs. Think of this as a way to put lasers in orbit or even capture a satellite. This is truly what space marines would use for combat