Space Based Weapons-Your opinions

Hi guys (and gals)
There is alot of disscution about space based weapons going on.
I was wondering which weapon or weapons do you think are best
for space.

My guess would be artillery shells with nukes in them so you
dont even need to hit them.You'dd need to supply the cannon
with oxygen so it can fire.

The diffinition for space based weapon for this thread is:Any weapon which resides out of the atmosphere and is completly selfcontained (except for reloads)and is used for one of the following things Space combat (ship to ship) ,bombarding ground targets and hitting space targets(Can be mounted on space craft).

How about a large space station or satellite armed with tactical nukes for ground bombardment and give it lasers or rail guns for defending its self in space. That or thrust vectored missles. I think rail guns with explosive shells would be useful for ground bombardment. But yeah a rail gun would be the most versitile so I would use those a lot.

I guess a big Command & Conquer style laser. I would have to say that ship-to-ship combat in space would be far too expensive. IMO space should be a place for peace and neutrality. We should be sending up scientists, not nukes.

Multiple small space stations floating around a equipped with solid state lasers lets throw a particle beam or two some nukes maybe a rail gun and you have a killing machine anyone being targeted by it is gone.

You know you never really know what our goverment has. Oh lets add hows about space mine layer. And maybe we could add some little space drones with something deadly and compact. Lets not forget to add somekind of high tech stealth technology.

Yeah lets throw in a shield that would protect the space stations um maybe some basketball size things that attach to any thing in site not friendly and those thing blow up with the force of a small nuke also some other top secret stuff.

no weapons would be best for space. keep the final frontier free from our wars!

like they say in that movie:

"All these worlds are yours, except Europa...
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE."

-koji K.

[edit on 6-7-2004 by koji_K]

Thanks fellas
All are good ideas

I agree that space shouldnt be used for wars ,hell i dont
think there should be wars anywhere! but war is essential
for our survival.For example if we encountered a alien spieces
in the distant future and we had no battle ships,no nukes
and only non leathal guns. we wouldnt be able to put
up a fight (ok guys get your pitch forks:lol.
Though war id bad it is essencial as long as there is
evil in the universe.

It seems to me that projectile based weapons are going to be used only sparingly because of newtons law "For every action there is an opposite and equal re-action". You fire a projectile and you are pushed out of position (away from your target) as you fire it (push mass), then you have to expend energy to keep youself in position. They don't make a lot of sense. Energy beam weapons make much more sense. There is still some infitesimal amout of recoil from fireing light or some other EM beam, but it is almost negligible. I suspect it may eventually lean towards exotic waves and effects that converge at the target. A possible defense might at least initially be a reflective surface on spacecraft/objects.

A frightening thought is that if you hold the 'high' ground in free space it is not so hard to push asteroids and stuff into collision courses with gravity well planets and moons. A planet could mount some defense against them, but if you push enough of them at a planet, it will probably be overwhelmed. ('Moon is a Harsh Mistress' by Heinlein.)

Well, a deep subject. I wonder why the U.N. dosen't keep tabs on satallites. You know? once they're up there, not many people can say what they have or don't have maybee motorola and boeing have a little something up their sleeves. just a thought.

Oh and lets add some giant magnifiying glass to this satellite/space station. But hey it doesn't hurt to much to be prepared against the greys. Ever seen Tommorow Never Dies. That shows what an evil corporation can do with a satellite.