From: mikkelhaaheim@gmail.com   
      
   Le vendredi 22 juillet 2016 19:30:23 UTC+2, Rick Pikul/Chakat Firepaw a   
   écrit :   
      
   >    
   > Your fleets can't move until the sensor platforms are down or the whole    
   > point of shooting them down is lost.  Any fleets that happen to be under    
   > way when your KKVs are spotted get KKVs of their own launched at them.   
      
   Depends. Sure the fleets can move. You just have to be careful that the   
   movement does not look like hostile manoeuvres. It helps if your warships do   
   not look or act like warships.   
      
      
   >    
   > He clarified to to be stuff like "chunks of regolith".   
      
   I did not see this, but yes, it is an option, especially for the buckshot.   
      
      
   >    
   > There are a limited number of places you can launch from, most of the    
   > sensor platforms are going to require that kind of time in flight from    
   > any of them.   
      
   nonsense. There are literally hundreds of thousands of different astronomical   
   bodies to launch from. Plus, you could easily launch from any vessel in   
   transit. Get a simple mass driver, and there will be no way to detect such   
   launches.   
   I will grant that polar orbit will need time to get to, or they will need the   
   high velocity flight. Buckshot time.   
      
      
   >    
   > New platforms means that you haven't gotten stealth by killing the    
   > sensors.   
      
   Wrong. You don't need to kill ALL the sensors. You only need to kill ENOUGH   
   sensors.   
      
      
   >    
   > Yes completely different.   
      
   Well, this is a matter of interpretation, and it is not really important.   
      
      
   >   
   > So now we're up to _trillions_ of evenly distributed pellets, all to    
   > probably _fail_ at getting any kind of mission kill.  100Mm radius at 1    
   > pellet/ha equals 3 trillion pellets, one pellet per hectare means you    
   > probably do no more than a few micrometeorite holes in the sail.   
      
   400 trillion, to be exact (4 pellets/m^2, 10 000 km^2); which comes to   
   (200m)^3 material (for 1 cm^3 pellets). However, considering the smallest   
   cross section for a "useful" (I am being extremely generous) platform would be   
   just over 16 m^2, this    
   estimate is overkill. Forget high kinetic impact... if you shot the hubble   
   with 64 9mm rounds, even underpowered, its optics would be ripped to shreds.   
   Also, 10 000 km is probably unnecessary.    
   Let's try something more realistic: 1 pellet / 10 m^2, 1000 km^2 spread. This   
   only requires (30 m)^3 of material. For that matter, with high kinetic energy,   
   5mm pellets would be sufficient, so you only need 1/8 of that material   
   estimate.   
   If you went with the explosive route, you would have lateral saturation from   
   the explosion, meaning that you don't need to have  even 1 pellet / platform   
   cross section area (let alone 2 to 64). If a single larger pellet (remote   
   detonation grenade,    
   actually) approaches within 10m, the platform will be shredded. This would   
   mean an areal density of 1 unit / 400 m^2 (this time, being conservative... it   
   would actually be closer to 1 / 900 m^2)...I don't remember my suggested   
   spread.   
   There is no hope of escape for any useful platform. I used hubble as a basis,   
   and its 1 arcsecond maximum resolution is not even useful for the purpose.   
      
   >    
   > If you want to have a good chance at a mission kill, you are going to    
   > need something like one pellet per 10 m^2 or 1000 per hectare.   
      
   Yes. I originally had 4 per m^2. For clarification, I was talking about a   
   spread of 10 000 km, not a radius.   
      
      
   >    
      
   >    
   > It doesn't take many platforms for there to be no holes.  This is    
   > especially true if the platforms are on highly inclined solar orbits.   
      
   Dead. Wrong.   
   Unless you are talking about super-platforms with thousands of telescopes,   
   each. Thousands of 10m+ telescopes, each. I am being generous... 10m   
   telescopes are next to useless in terms of resolution... but if you have   
   several such platforms (at least 4),    
   you can link them up to provide a vrtual telescope. Prcoessing power is going   
   to be a horror, though.   
   Scanning takes time, and is easily defeated.   
   Honestly, given the field of view involved, it is questionable that you would   
   be able to pack the number of required telescopes to provide real-time   
   coverage in a volume smaller than a small moon.   
      
      
      
   > This discussion isn't about "how to fight a space war" in general, it's    
   > about the standard Nicoll's law efforts to find a way to get stealth in    
   > space.   
      
   Which is meaningless without context. You have to understand how stealth   
   works, and how it is used, in the context of fighting battles... in space, or   
   on Earth. There is not a single argument that does not apply to the current   
   state of warfare. There is    
   no such thing as an undetectable construct, even now. It is within our current   
   technical abilities to put up observation platforms that could track every   
   moving thing on the surface or in air, so long as it is outdoors. We don't   
   even need satellites to    
   do so, but they are much more efficient. yet we still have stealth aircraft.   
      
      
   > You can't shoot at them until after they launch, unless you are going to    
   > start obsessively shooting at every potential launch window.   
      
   Every launch installation, yes. Launch installations are also difficult to   
   hide, especially after they have already been used. But, again, warfare is   
   never easy. It is assumed that you will never get all of them. You get as many   
   as you can, and take    
   advantage of what you can.   
      
      
   >    
   > Successes on this scale are incredibly rare, there's a reason I was    
   > alluding to the idea of the President of the United States being a Soviet    
   > agent.   
      
   And yet...   ...   
   There is nothing preventing a soviet spy from becoming president. We would   
   never know. The only difficulty to overcome is that it is so difficult for   
   ANYONE to become president, but a soviet spy would have as good a chance as   
   anyone else. But that would    
   likely stop the war from happening in the first place. Espionage is not so   
   rare. It occurs in the corporate world all the time... and most militaries   
   rely on corporations to produce their observation platforms. There are   
   security measures, but these are    
   never perfect... especially when you don't know if war is coming, or who the   
   enemy is going to be.   
      
      
   >    
   > You still aren't getting stealth out of it.   
      
   You still  aren't understanding what stealth actually is.   
      
      
   >   
   > IOW:  You don't have stealth.   
      
   No... IOW, stealth is not an absolute.   
   Stealth is not about not being seen. It is about not being noticed.   
      
      
   >    
   > They become useful very quickly, nearly instantly if you have more than    
   > one launch point.  Sure, you would rather the platforms be way out of    
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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