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Post by shiolle on Nov 7, 2017 14:45:37 GMT
Well, the romantic version of piracy would cost a shit ton. There are other ways. For example: Put a missile battery equipped with cold gas missiles somewhere, pretty much impossible to detect, the missile battery will destroy any ship without a certain frequency, how do you get that frequency? Simple, transfer 1$ per ton of cargo to a untrackable swiss bank account and you are safe. That's not piracy though. It's interdiction. After the ship is destroyed if you don't pick up the pieces immediately (revealing yourself) they will fly too far apart to collect economically.
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Post by Kerr on Nov 7, 2017 14:54:00 GMT
Well, the romantic version of piracy would cost a shit ton. There are other ways. For example: Put a missile battery equipped with cold gas missiles somewhere, pretty much impossible to detect, the missile battery will destroy any ship without a certain frequency, how do you get that frequency? Simple, transfer 1$ per ton of cargo to a untrackable swiss bank account and you are safe. That's not piracy though. It's interdiction. After the ship is destroyed if you don't pick up the pieces immediately (revealing yourself) they will fly too far apart to collect economically. It's the closest you can get to being an space criminal, it's a protection fee, If they don't pay their ships will be destroyed.
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Post by dichebach on Nov 7, 2017 15:30:56 GMT
In the 16th through 18th century "Pirates" were often well-funded professionals, given "Letters of Marque" by governments, not desperate "Somali" refugees.
Today, on the Internet, "Cyber Pirates" may well be government sponsored criminals with advanced degrees who have a higher standard of living than some of the middle-class victims they prey on!
It may be that the relative costs and risk of space piracy will make it unattainable to the "Somali refugee" class of criminal. But if nuclear-weapons equipped nations (which it would seem will be a much larger "club" in 50 or 100 years than it is today) who have been largely alienated from the Space Rush want in on the action, something akin to Piracy may be their only option. One could regard the Iranian hostage crisis as a form of piracy as well as their general view toward funding so-called "terrorism" (which they regard as asymmetrical warfare) over the past 30 years or so. Likewise many of the international relations policies of DPRK if not China and many other nations are arguably on the same continuum as Semi-Covert State-Sponsored Caribbean piracy during the 16th through 18th centuries.
The Dutch flight that was shot down over Ukraine . . . not piracy per se, but what arguably constituted an act of war, and yet, none of the external parties whom were wronged have taken a single step further toward war. Possibly the same point with the Indonesian flight . . . perhaps just a mechanical failure, perhaps an insane suicidal pilot, or perhaps something more conspiratorial. It doesn't matter what you believe the fact is: no one knows for sure. This demonstrates that, in a complex international world, being constantly monitored by thousands of satellites and land-based monitoring, it is nearly impossible for any world power to achieve 100% detection of all acts of international crime at the scale of large passenger vehicles, and even when partial information is readily at hand, sorting out exactly what happened is rarely so easy that the story is immediately made available to the public. All this to say: contexts in which detection and analysis of space crime can achieve 99% detection fidelity and thus eliminate plausible deniability or ambiguity from such incidents strike me as being far beyond the realm of fantasy sci fi.
Yes, this is the "ecology" which Qswitched has chosen to present to us in his game, but I don't see how anyone could seriously argue this is a likely near future sceneario. The NSA collects so much information, they have like a 1,000 or 10,000 year backlog to analyze it all!
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Post by Enderminion on Nov 7, 2017 15:40:51 GMT
Well, the romantic version of piracy would cost a shit ton. There are other ways. For example: Put a missile battery equipped with cold gas missiles somewhere, pretty much impossible to detect, the missile battery will destroy any ship without a certain frequency, how do you get that frequency? Simple, transfer 1$ per ton of cargo to a untrackable swiss bank account and you are safe. That's not piracy though. It's interdiction. After the ship is destroyed if you don't pick up the pieces immediately (revealing yourself) they will fly too far apart to collect economically. the point is the fee not the bits of ship
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Post by shiolle on Nov 7, 2017 15:52:09 GMT
It's the closest you can get to being an space criminal, it's a protection fee, If they don't pay their ships will be destroyed. Yes, but what kind of orbit will it use to intercept ships regularly without boosting? Every ship is follows its unique trajectory and these missiles don't have a lot of dV. Edit to avoid double post: In the 16th through 18th century "Pirates" were often well-funded professionals, given "Letters of Marque" by governments, not desperate "Somali" refugees. Today, on the Internet, "Cyber Pirates" may well be government sponsored criminals with advanced degrees who have a higher standard of living than some of the middle-class victims they prey on! It may be that the relative costs and risk of space piracy will make it unattainable to the "Somali refugee" class of criminal. But if nuclear-weapons equipped nations (which it would seem will be a much larger "club" in 50 or 100 years than it is today) who have been largely alienated from the Space Rush want in on the action, something akin to Piracy may be their only option. One could regard the Iranian hostage crisis as a form of piracy as well as their general view toward funding so-called "terrorism" (which they regard as asymmetrical warfare) over the past 30 years or so. Likewise many of the international relations policies of DPRK if not China and many other nations are arguably on the same continuum as Semi-Covert State-Sponsored Caribbean piracy during the 16th through 18th centuries. The Dutch flight that was shot down over Ukraine . . . not piracy per se, but what arguably constituted an act of war, and yet, none of the external parties whom were wronged have taken a single step further toward war. Eventually this strawman argument will advance enough that any hostile action or act of terrorism becomes piracy, when in fact none of them are: Nor does it have anything to do with the topic of this thread, which is infantry in space.
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Post by Enderminion on Nov 7, 2017 16:20:14 GMT
It's the closest you can get to being an space criminal, it's a protection fee, If they don't pay their ships will be destroyed. Yes, but what kind of orbit will it use to intercept ships regularly without boosting? Every ship is follows its unique trajectory and these missiles don't have a lot of dV. doesn't have to be a missile, might be a hyper velocity slug or laser weapon, missiles can have upwards of 15km/s with drop tanks so Dv isn't that much of an issue to begin with
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Post by Kerr on Nov 7, 2017 16:28:59 GMT
It's the closest you can get to being an space criminal, it's a protection fee, If they don't pay their ships will be destroyed. Yes, but what kind of orbit will it use to intercept ships regularly without boosting? Every ship is follows its unique trajectory and these missiles don't have a lot of dV. Edit to avoid double post: In the 16th through 18th century "Pirates" were often well-funded professionals, given "Letters of Marque" by governments, not desperate "Somali" refugees. Today, on the Internet, "Cyber Pirates" may well be government sponsored criminals with advanced degrees who have a higher standard of living than some of the middle-class victims they prey on! It may be that the relative costs and risk of space piracy will make it unattainable to the "Somali refugee" class of criminal. But if nuclear-weapons equipped nations (which it would seem will be a much larger "club" in 50 or 100 years than it is today) who have been largely alienated from the Space Rush want in on the action, something akin to Piracy may be their only option. One could regard the Iranian hostage crisis as a form of piracy as well as their general view toward funding so-called "terrorism" (which they regard as asymmetrical warfare) over the past 30 years or so. Likewise many of the international relations policies of DPRK if not China and many other nations are arguably on the same continuum as Semi-Covert State-Sponsored Caribbean piracy during the 16th through 18th centuries. The Dutch flight that was shot down over Ukraine . . . not piracy per se, but what arguably constituted an act of war, and yet, none of the external parties whom were wronged have taken a single step further toward war. Eventually this strawman argument will advance enough that any hostile action or act of terrorism becomes piracy, when in fact none of them are: Nor does it have anything to do with the topic of this thread, which is infantry in space. It works as a deterrent, it doesn't need to have military grade effectiveness, it doesn't need much delta-v on it's own as it uses the targets relative velocity to do damage. And paying the fee is cheaper than travelling other routes, travelling slower or having defensive systems.
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Post by shiolle on Nov 7, 2017 16:49:30 GMT
It works as a deterrent, it doesn't need to have military grade effectiveness, it doesn't need much delta-v on it's own as it uses the targets relative velocity to do damage. And paying the fee is cheaper than travelling other routes, travelling slower or having defensive systems. Maybe I misunderstand something. Two ships using the same Hohmann transfer trajectory departing within a few days of each other will be millions of kilometers apart at midpoint of their trajectory. What kind of orbit does this missile battery or other weapon system have to follow to be able to intercept both ships reliably? The farther away it is from either points ships go between, the harder it is to do and the longer the periods where it cannot intercept anything with limited dV it can impart. The closer it is to either point, the better it matches launch windows, but is also easier to detect.
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Post by defacto on Nov 7, 2017 17:04:15 GMT
I don't want to derail this further but... I deposit cold gas missiles I secretly produced on a body using my cold gas spaceship (must avoid detection) that I produced using non-civilian methods (civilian ships have enough hull emission to be detected) in a secret shipyard that is also undetectable and was also established secretly with materials that can't be traced... finally i extort traders that pass by the dv-envelope of my cold gas missiles... it's not just the missiles that need to be stealthy, it's every step, from the very beginning (even just planning), that needs to be completely watertight, otherwise everything is ruined and you either surrender to the authorities or get nuked by a passing-by patrol ship.
Basically, it feels like the 'stealth in space' problem, but even more problematic since you have less resources. I think I'd rather invest in that trader than extort it. Or maybe use my secret shipyard to build more traders.
Still... to tie it all with infantry in space... even without space piracy, I think there is plenty of reason to assume space criminality, or at least a need for security of some sort. If you have large civilian interplanetary economy. There needs to be some level of force between stern words over the radio and a rain of hydrogen bombs. Police forces, 'coast'-guard, station militia and security forces, maybe even true space marines/espatiers, wielding cool near-future tech. Deterrence would be the main purpose, combat extremely rare, actions like boarding hostile ships in flight practically non-existant, but maybe something that espatiers train, in order to maintain that they have the capability.
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Post by Kerr on Nov 7, 2017 17:08:48 GMT
It works as a deterrent, it doesn't need to have military grade effectiveness, it doesn't need much delta-v on it's own as it uses the targets relative velocity to do damage. And paying the fee is cheaper than travelling other routes, travelling slower or having defensive systems. Maybe I misunderstand something. Two ships using the same Hohmann transfer trajectory departing within a few days of each other will be millions of kilometers apart at midpoint of their trajectory. What kind of orbit does this missile battery or other weapon system have to follow to be able to intercept both ships reliably? The farther away it is from either points ships go between, the harder it is to do and the longer the periods where it cannot intercept anything with limited dV it can impart. The closer it is to either point, the better it matches launch windows, but is also easier to detect. Millions? Light pressure alone would result in a earth-mars hohmann in a 1000km error. The thing is, It doesn't have to be reliable, it works by fear of it working. It doesn't have to be missiles, just something simple that can operate in cold for long durations of time. Kirklin mines, blast launchers, casaba howitzers (extreme case). defactoAs I said, stealth in space is possible, but really hard.
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Post by Enderminion on Nov 7, 2017 17:17:48 GMT
your intercepting a point at a time on a Hohmann orbit, you have more then twice the Dv needed to do a hohmann orbit
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Post by defacto on Nov 7, 2017 17:21:21 GMT
defacto As I said, stealth in space is possible, but really hard. Well, as I said, it's certainly possible but completely impractical, even more so if you're a pirate. It's like if the only way for the somali pirates to continue doing piracy would be to secretly construct a nuclear attack submarine in their garage. That could be considered possible but I think that there are better criminal opportunities.
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Post by Kerr on Nov 7, 2017 17:32:08 GMT
defacto As I said, stealth in space is possible, but really hard. Well, as I said, it's certainly possible but completely impractical, even more so if you're a pirate. It's like if the only way for the somali pirates to continue doing piracy would be to secretly construct a nuclear attack submarine in their garage. That could be considered possible but I think that there are better criminal opportunities. If it is completely impractical is debatable.
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Post by defacto on Nov 7, 2017 17:56:51 GMT
If it is completely impractical is debatable. Everything is debatable, but given something resembling COADE I think it's pretty obvious (with the reasoning above) that it is completel y impractical for pirates and only very marginally maybe practical for someone with a large amount of resources, like a nation. I'm really grasping at straws to find some kind of near-future setting where this type of piracy would be even marginally practical. It's just so completely riddled with failure points and sensitive. Space combined with the technology needed for space travel simply lends itself too well for surveillance and control for this to be possible without some serious magitech/plot-tech.
I could maybe imagine some other types of criminality that could work, based in messy environments like the inside of a station (still a lot easier to control than something on Earth), or maybe some really forlorn-hope style stuff where the people doing the crime don't expect to survive but do it for some cause... I do think that space criminality might be a possibility, just not your brand of piracy.
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Post by shiolle on Nov 7, 2017 17:57:13 GMT
Millions? Light pressure alone would result in a earth-mars hohmann in a 1000km error. The thing is, It doesn't have to be reliable, it works by fear of it working. It doesn't have to be missiles, just something simple that can operate in cold for long durations of time. Kirklin mines, blast launchers, casaba howitzers (extreme case). Pirates with nukes. Anyway, that's what I'm saying: the difference between trajectories of different ships transiting between the same destinations would require quite a lot of delta-v to correct. Kirklin mines on a specific trajectory have such a low chance of intercepting anything they are pointless. Also, the ability of the weapon platform to intercept its targets have to drive insurance payments up enough that it's not easier to just rely on insurance and tell authorities about any such demand. On the other hand, the system have to be sophisticated enough to avoid targets it rather wouldn't want to engage. Because if there is an attack on a warship, that draws attention to the criminals they would rather avoid. It also depends on the strike to be completely sudden, i.e. ship's on-board sensors unable to detect the weapon before it hits, because otherwise its trajectory will eventually betray the weapon platform itself. your intercepting a point at a time on a Hohmann orbit, you have more then twice the Dv needed to do a hohmann orbit I'm sorry, was that an answer to my question? I'm not sure I understand it, and if I do, I can't agree with it. Also, a missile with 15 km/s of delta-V and a cold gas thruster proposed earlier for stealth will have a mass ratio of 1.3 billion. So it is either insanely expensive, not stealthy or doesn't have as much delta-V (most likely two of those at once). Even a more modest 5 km/s will require a mass ratio of 1000.
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