Earth vs x

[Jedi Master Spock]

Well, we may have had six flights a year, but we also have a couple things that slow down space exploration:

• Since the same technology can be used to make ICBMs, technology sharing has been slim.
• Budget priority is low. NASA operates on eighteen billion dollars, the ESA on three billion euros, the Chinese space agency something like 20 billion yuan, and the RKA even lower, around 35 billion rubles. Increase the budget by 1-2 orders of magnitude and we get a lot more flights - maybe not a huge number immediately, but a lot more after a few years of development.
• Political considerations.

Get around the politics problem and things get a lot easier.

Start spending ten or more times as much on space, and the infrastructure will be developing as quickly as you can to develop your nuclear gunboats. Hopefully by the time that you're ready to start building, launching, and testing them, you'll have managed to get the world working together, but it is a pretty tall order, and there is a slight risk of touching off a really deadly war.

Personally, I'd suggest preparing to surrender really well, preparing some good hidey-holes, and sending an ark should be as high a priority. Given unknown levels of technology and unknown numbers, there's the possibility that human tail is going to get kicked but hard at the least sign of resistance.

In some circumstances, swallowing our collective pride and hailing our new overlords for a few generations may turn out to be the best strategic choice.

[Mike DiCenso]

Right now there is simply no real reason to have more manned spaceflights than what we do. The Cold War between the U.S. and former U.S.S.R took things in a direction they might not have otherwise gone. We went to the Moon in a 10 year span of time, but potentially sacrificed long-term economical space travel by curtailing programs like the X-20 Dyna-Soar and X-15 that could have been evolved into resusable, orbital spacecraft.

Instead, resources were poured into the quick development of giant rockets and capsules to meet the goal of landing a man on the Moon in a decade. Other technologies, though controversial, that could have given humanity routine access to the solar system, such as Orion and NERVA, were also curtailed during this time period or cancelled.

The post-Moon Race years focused both superpowers into lower key areas, and neither really put resources into developing manned spaceflight or otherwise into a truely economical venture. The Space Shuttle program, was severely curtailed, and the lack of a clear mission for the craft resulted in it becoming too many things to too many people in order to justify it. The Russians continuing with a series of space stations, but never developing any kind of resuable spacecraft to succeed the aging Moon Race-era Soyuz capsules. The Soviet-era Buran program coming far too late, and copying many of the less economical aspects of it's American counterpart to be useful.

Now things are slowly changing; private industry is finally starting to slowly get into the manned spaceflight arena after decades of false starts. Keep an eye on companies like Space X and Virgin Galactic to see where they go. But these efforts are only now coming to some level of fruition because there is an economic incentive to make them happen, and then in the case of Virgin Galactic and it's SpaceShip 2, suborbital spaceflight only.

If there was such an overwhelming need, such as an alien invasion, then we could see such an effort, though whether or not it could succeed in a decade, or less is a stretching credibility. It would truely have to be a united Earth effort. But humanity would have to accept the inevitable accidents, and not shut down the program for years on end as happens with Soyuz and Shuttle. Also humanity would have to accept the resultant planetary as well as near-Earth space enviromental damage and pollution that quick-and-dirty interplanetary drives like NERVA and Orion leave in their wake.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Personally, I'd suggest preparing to surrender really well, preparing some good hidey-holes, and sending an ark should be as high a priority. Given unknown levels of technology and unknown numbers, there's the possibility that human tail is going to get kicked but hard at the least sign of resistance.

In some circumstances, swallowing our collective pride and hailing our new overlords for a few generations may turn out to be the best strategic choice.

A possible "out of box" idea, depending on what the intentions of the aliens ultimately turns out to be, is to essentially "hold the planet hostage" with carefully placed nuclear and chemical weapons around the world, should the aliens seek to take Earth intact for their own colonization efforts.

Towards the end of possibly finding out the aliens' intentions, I might suggest that a series of automated, fast Orion drive ships be launched in the first few years of the collective human effort. This would serve a two-fold purpose:

- First, test out the technologies for various fast interplanetary and interstellar spacecraft.

- Second, attempt communication with the alien fleet, the goal being to accomplish this with more than five years to spare at time of intercept. The automated starships will be able to transmit friendship messages via every means possible, and act, if necessary, as a transmitter for the aliens should they decide to reply.

The ships will be sent with no weapons on-board whatsoever, and they will make the approach to the alien fleet in as passive a manner as possible, only transmitting as much data back to Earth on the size and capabilities of the incoming fleet.
-Mike

[Flectarn]

of course you can only make a ship powered by nuclear bombs zipping along at a decent fraction c seem so passive

[Who is like God arbour]

1. There is only one treaty.
2. It's not as if one of these powers could do it in a moment. It would need time in which the other powers would react and an arms race would be the consequence.
3. Even someone like Bush knows his limits. Look what a furore his plan to station missile interceptor missiles in Poland and Czech Republic has created in Russia 1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6.
   
   Imagine how Russia would react, if they learn, that the USA is developing and creating "a fleet of space based nuclear capable gunboats".
4. I also think, that these powers would ignore each treaty as soon as they think, that it is advantageous to them.
   
   But they have always to consider the possible reaction of the rest of the world.
   
   And the risk of escalation is not worth, what a superpower could win.
   
   If you are already a superpower and have enough weapons to obliterate each attacking nation if necessary, the need for even more weapons of mass destruction is relative low.
   
   They are not able to achieve more than mutual assured destruction anyway.

All this is true.

Yet none of it changes the fundamental issue - building a fleet of space based nuclear gunboats is such an enormous challenge (in money, technology and resources) with what we can achieve in space today that it's pretty much impossible to begin with.

Just for a sense of scale in the whole space thing, in the past 48 years we've had a grand total of 262 manned spaceflights1. That translates to about six per year.

Just six.

Now consider that statistic and then tell me that having whole fleets of heavily armed spacecraft sounds like a realistic option, given ten years prep-time (or about 60 flights (not ships) in total). And please do take into consideration that most of these flights where only just into orbit. If we go for flights that went anywhere 'far away', like say the moon, we're going to reach a number below ten flights.

My first post:

Seriously, if building and maintaining a fleet of space based nuclear capable gunboats was so easy we'd already have them zooming overhead. Every major power on this planet has wet dreams over the mere idea of controlling Earth from orbit. None of them have ever succeeded.

Outer Space Treaty

Mutual assured destruction

Balance of terror

Escalation / De-escalation

Cuban Missile Crisis

Not that I'm saying, that we would have already "a fleet of space based nuclear capable gunboats". But the motivation to spend efforts in the development and creation of such a fleet may not have been as big as you assume.

I have never claimed, that we would have already "a fleet of space based nuclear capable gunboats". My position was, that no real effort was done to develop and create such a fleet.

As Jedi Master Spock and Mike DiCenso have tried to explain, if there would have been a real effort, we could have far more advanced space flight technologies. But how far advanced these technologies would be, is another question.

[General Mayhem]

Giving it some thought the missile defence shield may offer some help as well. also when a friend ask me this last year the first thing i came up with was a large(50m) Orion missile, it need not worry about shock absorbers or how many gs a crew can take, also it would have a mass of over 4,000 tons and be moving at 15-25% c. that is a lot of kinetic energy. we do have the tech to build this missile if we needed to, we have enough nukes to propel it and as i said it has no need to protect a crew from shocks. it would not even need a warhead.

[l33telboi]

Wouldn't we be better of just firing a nuke?

Of course not, nukes don't create black holes.

(As in the Hadron thingy is not built as a weapon so it likely does not have the range, accuracy or power to actually do anything worthwhile)

Realistically speaking, I doubt it could even kill a human if exposed to something other then vacuum.

[Trinoya]

Orion missile, it need not worry about shock absorbers or how many gs a crew can take, also it would have a mass of over 4,000 tons and be moving at 15-25% c. that is a lot of kinetic energy.

The only foreseeable problem with utilizing this as a weapon would be its inability to correct itself. Furthermore, the attackers, in this case an invasion force capable of interstellar travel, may just be able to move out of the way.

NOTE: In addition to this, this brings up the inevitable problem that the attackers could just as easily (if not more easily) propel similar (if not greater) tonnage at the earth. As sad as it may be, they may very well have no use for the humans residing upon the earth, and are just interested in the raw resources, which an asteroid or two would not eliminate for them. It would also not leave any pesky radiation of significant quantity in its wake (failing radiation from our own nuclear reactors which will be split open from shockwaves alone...).

None of the ideas presented so far are terribly out there and all well within the capability of the earth to construct, perform, and utilize. Though I question the value of sending people off on potential suicide missions to stars far far away on the off chance it would save our race still.

I do, however, enjoy the entire, "welcome our new overlords" idea and I sincerely believe that it is the most useful proposition so far for the survival of the human race.

[Mike DiCenso]

of course you can only make a ship powered by nuclear bombs zipping along at a decent fraction c seem so passive

You only need to use the nukes very early on in the mission to accelerate to about 5% or so of c on a trajectory that will not say, fly directly into the heart of the alien fleet, but will pass off to one side of it, whle at the same time does not do anything else that could be construed as a hostile act, relying mainly on passive sensors to gather data, and transmits it back via a tight beam to Earth. Communications from Earth will be kept to the necessary minimum possible.
-Mike